Global Voices Online

The Golden Road to Samarqand has an informal survey of student attitudes on political issues in Kyrgyzstan.

Luke Distelhorst has an update on the protests in Mongolia including the very sad news that a protester lit himself on fire.

Adam Isacson breaks down the DAS scandals.

Ben Paarmann describes how Kazakhstan carefully manages its currency to avoid appreciation as oil prices rise.

At Le Pangolin , Musi Kanda calls (FR) for a letter faxing drive to President Denis Sassou N'Guesso to demand the release of Christian Mounzéo and Brice Mackosso, two human rights activists he says are being detained on fake charges. Mr. Kanda is outraged by the lack of activism on this issue in the Rep. of Congo and he provides a form letter, hoping international sympathizers and Congolese diasporans will help.

James of neweurasia writes about a foreign donor-funded computer training program to be run by a mosque in Tajikistan and says that if this is not an explicit strategy to bolster moderate Islam, perhaps it should be.

Ethel, who describes herself as a tourist in her own country, posts some pictures of Semana Santa from the town of Juayúa.

Chapinadas describes Semana Santa, or Holy Week in Guatemala. Guate360 has a similar post (ES), but in Spanish.

Many developing countries are now looking at China's model of state guided growth favourably compared to the US one of minimum intervention. Indonesian blogger Martin Manurang asks if the success of Chinese economic policies will help reduce American influence in the world.

Rafael Janania discovers (ES) that he's not the only blogger in Honduras.

Opposition party UDPS will hold a forum entitled “Political Crisis in the DRC and UDPS' Refusal to Participate in the Electoral Process” on May 1 in Liege-Outremeuse, Belgium, writes (FR) UDPS Liege. ( Time and address provided in the post.)

The US Ambassador to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean “says there is no factual basis on which to suggest that criminal deportees from the United States are contributing to the escalating crime situation in the Caribbean”. Francis Wade isn't convinced.

Asian Sex Gazette on rape in India, the notion of friendship and a crucial question - “Women in the city question why men often interpret friendly gestures as a sign of promiscuity.
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Trivial Matters has photographs from an anmial shelter in Mumbai. Stories of dogs and a camel follow.

The last Mughal Emperor in India and the final legacy that remains leglected - at Indian Muslims.

Moju on University politics and the violence on campus in Colombo. “At the same time, the sort of violence in which students engage is becoming more and more harmful and has spawned a new culture of violence among youth everywhere.”

Baisakhi celebrations in Pakistan via Metroblogging Islamabad - “Thousands of Sikh pilgrims from across the world, including India, Britain, Canada, Afghanistan, Germany and Switzerland, arrived early in the morning to participate in the three-day celebrations.”

There's no bridge, and a lot of troubled water in Malaysia. It's all about the cancellation of Malaysia's plan to build a bridge to Singapore. Jeff Ooi has been following the fallout and also wondering whether the Malaysian press was gagged over the story.

mrbrown emphasises that his most recent podcast does not contain “explicit political content” because that is prohibited during the election period under the Singapore's Election Advertising Regulations. Instead it is about “a galaxy far far away” which happens to contain a complex civilisation holding elections.

Le Bao Tuan at Sticky Rice tells us about his English class, and going for a drink, Vietnamese style.

Does Thailand need a Senate? a particularly well-timed question, given that it's being chosen right now, aired on the Senate Elections post at Bangkok Pundit. One of the country's political scientists thinks the Senate is a farce.

In the Philippines many bloggers are, understandably, excited by not one but two conferences on blogging and the internet taking place in the capital Manila. In one part of town there is the second Philippine Blogging Summit iBlog2. Blogger disini judges it a success: We had more speakers (5 times more than that original 5 in iBlog), 2 separate rooms, and surprisingly, more attendees (a total of more than 200 sign-ups) than the first Philippine Blogging Summit while Clair found it a great experience but too cramped. And also taking place is Free Expression in Asian Cyberspace: A Conference of Asian Bloggers, Podcasters and online Media - the sessions are being blogged at Inside PCIJ.

imperfect world 2006 points towards a blog run by the Bangladesh Military Forces.

As election fever heightens in Singapore - speculation is becoming intense that an election date will be announced very soon - opposition political activist and blogger Goh Meng Seng gives a rousing post Time For Battle as he announces blog silence for three weeks.

There's a new video blog site in Thailand. In fact it's apparently not just new, it's the first! Called, descriptively, Thailand Video Blogs it is part of the Thai-Blogs.Com group. I found the tattoo festival footage particularly interesting.

Ethan of Room 12A writes about Yulia Tymoshenko event organized by the American Chamber of Commerce: “Yulia's least attractive quality is her taste for self-pity, which combines easily with her nose for conspiracy. Clearly cognizant that she was addressing a business audience, Yulia went to some lengths to stress that her reputation as a populist determined to complete the process of re-privatization was a creation of mass media enterprises controlled by her political opponents. While I don't doubt that such entities exist, Yulia provided plenty of public utterances to support the allegation during her fore-shortened tenure as prime minister last year.”

Peter Myers of Adventures in Moldova writes about his experience of visiting an “under-attended” high school physics class in Moldova: “Grigore Fyodorovici lamented to me after school about the fact that no boys came, because ‘they're the ones who really need physics.' Girls don't need physics, he reasoned, because most of them will go into languages or history. Boys aren't as good at learning languages, but they are very good at math and science.”

David McDuff of A Step At A Time provides links to the news about Svetlana Bakhmina's sentencing. Bakhmina, 35, used to be a Yukos lawyer and is the mother of two young children. Today, she has received a 7-year prison sentence.

Isoglossia.com writes about the Slovenian 10 Tolar banknote: “the smallest of Slovenia’s folding money, both in buying power and physical size; like many other nations, Slovenia issues notes with sizes relative to worth. […] At today’s rate of exchange, this note is worth […] $0.051558. Imagine having a nickle bill.”

Douglas Arellanes discusses the main candidates' chances in the upcoming June election in the Czech Republic.

Seen on the Chinese Law Prof Blog today is a post on Reporters Without Borders' announcement of Yahoo!'s role in the persecution and arrest of yet another Chinese internet essayist, Jiang Lijun:

“As in the Shi Tao case, the information was apparently provided by a Hong Kong company subject to Hong Kong law, not a mainland PRC company subject to mainland PRC law (for an analysis of which PRC laws apply in Hong Kong, click here).”

Michael of The Glory of Carniola compiles quotes about Slovenia from disappointed sex tourists: to them, the country is too quiet and expensive, too well-integrated into the EU.

As Russia is protesting a 3-hour Jamestown Foundation seminar on North Caucasus that took place April 14, W. Shedd of The Accidental Russophile discusses some of Russia's unfulfilled international obligations.

Leon Felipe Sanchez introduces the new weblog, Aprender la Libertad (Learning Freedom) (ES), which he is co-authoring with Ariel Vercelli (ES). The blog continues themes from a book by Vercelli with the same name.

The Sun Bin blogger takes issue with Chinese president Hu Jintao's choice of gift for George W. Bush: Sun Tzu's The Art of War.

“This is the best choice of gift by a Chinese leader. ‘I am not your enemy. I want you to win. I am sure I would be benefited if you choose the best path for yourself and I am not intimidated if you get that right path'…Send a few copies to [Taiwanese president] Mr. Chen Shui Bian as well,” the blogger writes.

This coming Sunday I'll be taking pictures of my local farmer's market. You should do the same and submit your photos and posts to the Farmer's Markets Worldwide Parade. Elena Hernandez explains in Spanish. Two bloggers from Venezuela have already signed on.

Nina, sister of illegally-detained Beijing or Bust blogger Wu Hao, spent the last few hours of his thirty-fourth birthday unable to access the MSN Spaces blog on which she documents the efforts being made to learn of her brother's whereabouts and secure his release.

“My little brother also has an insatiable sweet-tooth, so I ordered our famous Sichuan sweet dumplings with fermented rice. My little brother was absent, so I had to help him finish this simple birthday meal,” she writes of the birthday celebration she held on Wu Hao's behalf.

Another day, another percentage point of votes counted in Peru. Un Lobo en Peru, contrary to what Andres Oppenheimer says, claims that Ollanta Humala is not compromising his nationalistic rhetoric. Comments start to get heated at Peru Election 2006.

The opening editorial for this week's issue of the Chinese-language, internet-based, international politics-analyzing Far & Wide Journal takes a quick look at the diplomatic buildup to Chinese president Hu Jintao's visit to the United States this week, past visits of Chinese leaders and Bush's visit last month to India.

“Compared with Deng Xiaoping as well as Jiang Zemin's first visits to the United States, dealing with China-U.S. relations is even more complicated for [current Chinese president] Hu Jintao. While the majority of people's sights will be focused on the issues of trade and the Renminbi, America's policies towards China are in fact still not clear. The U.S. still hasn't figured out how to get along with such a large country still in the process of coming into its own,” writes F&W researcher Lu Nan. [zh]

Barbados Free Press believes that “Castro’s revolution will die with him”.

In ‘A soft leader treats a hard leader to dinner,' blogger Wu Zuolai posts some photos of Chinese president Hu Jintao's dinner party at Bill Gates' house yesterday.

“How can we soften something hard?” retorts one reader in the comment box. [zh]

“[B]y 2020,” writes the China Confidential blogger-reporter, “the world's most populous nation will have to import 70 percent of its oil. Soaring demand for oil is certain to be accompanied by increased competition for secure oil supplies.”

“China's biggest competitor for oil, of course, is the US,” the blogger adds.

Iranianteacher writes about yellow cakes which symbolise Iran's uranium enrichment programme. The blogger says “I really can’t be happy to see the cake. We try to resolve our inferiority complex through some strange bizarre mechanism like bragging about things and covering things up; that’s why we don't even know ourselves… Who is gonna cut the cake? into how many pieces? 70 million? Will every one get his/her own share?”

At the Caribbean Beat Blog, Tracy Assing posts a short review of the “From the Amazon to the Caribbean” exhibition at the Hornmian Museum in Dulwich, England.

Congolese civil society (about 2o organizations) issued an indictment of various national and international institutions involved with the electoral process on Monday, writes (FR) Tony Katombe at Le Blog du Congolais. The statement specifically asked the international community to resist imposing an electoral process that might benefit them but harm the Congolese. The group also recommended that any prolonging of the electoral transition period beyond June 30, 2006 be the result of civil society deliberation.

Visual artist Chris Cozier acknowledges the role played in his personal and intellectual development by Trinidadian thinker Lloyd Best.

Timbuktu Chronicles points to a report by the “African Automotive Design Association” which aims to encourage automotive design in Africa….”Their mission is “…To develop and create a brand new automotive design language, style or identity for Africa”

Mzansi Afrika comments on the ethics of inter-racial adoption in South Africa. …”The main reservation I have about inter-racial adoption is that due to circumstances the black children that are adopted end up losing all contact with their own culture and heritage, they speak English and are unable to speak any African languages. I think this must be pretty hard to deal with growing up, and I'm sure that it would affect your sense of identity, and self-image and lead to a lot of painful questioning and soul searching.”

Ijebuman's Diary points to an interesting article on the “political importance of Diasporas” in Migration for Information Source.

Kikuyumoja’s realm comments on the journal, New African….. “the lasting impression is that they are constantly trying to portray this modern picture of the continent - the focus, it seems, is on showing the rest of the world what’s so new on Africa and how diverse it actually is.”

Chippla's Weblog spends some time on historical “plane spotting” in Nigeria with an overview of the different aircrafts and airlines operating in Nigeria.

EMDHR Writes reports on the protests by NGOS of the proposed appointment to the UN Rights Council of Jean Ziegler “founder of the “Muammar Khadhafi Human Rights Prize,” as an expert for the UN's new Human Rights Council. Human Rights actvists presented a letter to the UN stating “said that Mr. Ziegler's current term as UN hunger expert “embodied everything that was discredited about the old Commission on Human Rights: gross politicization, selectivity, lack of professionalism and lack of credibility.” Ziegler has been accused of paying little or no attention to regions with actual hunger crises, and instead devoting his attention to polemics against the West, capitalism, the U.S., and Israel.”

Zimbabwean blog, This is Zimbabwe comments on this years Indpendence “celebrations” stating there is nothing to celebrate with high inflation, a collapsed health service and education system and high unemployment.

Feminist African Sister is outraged that activists are having to lobby some Kenyan parliamentarians on the passing of the Sexual Offences Act. “Because, in my book the only reason one would think that a life sentence for raping a baby is too harsh and not worth supporting is, because in their warped minds they do not consider it a crime!”

Intelligent Being blogger Chen Xuyu says that China, not the Muslim world, is what Bush should most be worried about right now:

“Yes, China is the real threat to America, because the two countries' approaches to handling affairs are too different; The Bush administration is bent on pushing democracy around the world, while the Chinese are keeping a very professional attitude and manner in consorting with rogue states for energy sources. Moreover, the Chinese seem to be attempting to increase economic exports into America's backyard, Latin America.” [zh]

One reader responds to a post on the MindMatters blog which lists what Bill and Melinda Gates served Chinese president Hu Jintao for dinner Tuesday night by comparing the reception to former American president Nixon's visit to China in 1972, in preparation for which Chinese premier Zhou Enlai had a vast array of seafood plucked from the Yellow Sea.

“Nixon ate a ton and a half of abalone but our president only gets fowl and flounder, prawns and whatnot,” the reader notes. “For one this shows that Americans don't know how to properly play host and don't understand our 5000-year-old civilization's etiquette. Secondly, one can see from this how easygoing our country's leaders are, willing to go to people's homes and eat such informal stuff.” [zh]

Un Lobo en Perú explains how even mother earth is getting restless for Peru's final election results. Also noted, the lowest abstention rate in over five decades.

As the expatriate vote's influence on the Peruvian elections continues to be discussed, The Latin Americanist says that Italians living in Latin America played a crucial role in Romano Prodi's victory over Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Beef, beef, beef, and beef. Anglophone bloggers in Argentina concentrate on the cow.