Global Voices Online

Luke Distelhorst reports that Mongolia, a country without a single inch of ocean coastline, has come out as a supporter of whaling. Like many other countries with a newfound support for whaling, Mongolia receives aid from Japan.

Raffi, whose work has been victim to piracy, writes about Armenia's record industry.

James summarizes a Russian language post on the final humanitarian aid project of the European Comission in Tajikistan.

CXW says that blogging is increasingly popular in Kyrgyzstan and profiles the blog of the EKOIS project which provides loads of information on environmental issues in Kyrgyzstan.

Ani reports on the two celebrations of World No-Smoking Day in Armenia this year and discusses smoking in the country.

Bob Glass writes that unions in Costa Rica will take to the streets today, one day earlier than planned.

Both Sean and The Limey post photos sent in by readers of a cruise ship that ran aground off the coast of Bermuda. Christian Dunleavy suggests jokingly that the ship was piloted by Lt. Col. David Burch, and run aground in a effort to distract the public from a news story about Burch's being slammed by the Broadcasting Commission for an allegedly racist comment he made on radio.

Luís Afonso Assumpção and Justin Delacour have two very different views of Brazil's Landless Workers' Movement.

Larry Smith compares the immigration policies of the US and the Bahamas: “Although the Bush Administration can be blamed for many things, the immigration plan it rolled out two and a half years ago was a far-reaching reform that should become a model for our own efforts to deal with illegal Haitian immigration.”

A West Indian sports commentator's mimicry of an Indian cricket fan's commentary in Hindi is “not cricket”, says Barbadian blogger Titilayo.

Eduardo Arcos asks his readers “who won last night's presidential debate? So far there's some consensus that Lopez Obrador performed best. Isopixel says that site traffic on Chilanga Banda, which was liveblogging the debate almost doubled during those two hours. In English, Alvaro Ruiz-Navajas and Boz both offer their analysis.

London-based Trinidadian blogger Seldo grapples with the idea of returning to Trinidad. In his lengthy and eloquent post he asks hard questions of himself and his homeland and contemplates the role a white, privileged, gay Caribbean man can play in shaping his country's destiny.

After observing the behaviour of some university professors at two recent conferences in the Caribbean, Professor Zero wonders, among other things, whether academics who consider reason “oppressive” might be guilty of bad faith.

Blogs de Bolivia points us [ES] to Blogosfera Hispana, an aggregator of Latin American aggregators.

Los Alamos is quite the international band: based in Buenos Aires, with a lead singer from the U.S. and an album soon to be produced in Brazil. Fernando Casale has posted two sample tracks.

United We Blog! covers the aspect of bringing Nepal Army under civilian control from an American perspective - “Mike Bailey, a retired US army colonel addresses a video conference from Washington DC organized by the American Center in Kathmandu.”

Shimmi has a compelling photograph of girls in a Tsunami refugee camp.

Lives in Focus profiles Shabana and podcasts an interview with her. “Shabana, 20, realized she was HIV+ after her husband’s health began rapidly deteriorating. A Muslim woman, she now serves as a counselor trying to educate those in her community about the dangers of HIV/AIDS and how it spreads. “

Rana on Rahul Gandhi's visit to Singapore, the nepotistic politics in the Congress and why Singapore's governance may not be relevant to India. “That is the tragedy of India. A country with more than one billion people, it is ruled by a party which is bound together only by allegiance to one family.”

Bus Uncle, whose rise to infamy was aided largely by the translations of EastSouthWestNorth blogger Roland Soong is, as seen in Soong's most recent post on the subject, starting to see his fortunes turn.

Soong translates: “Bus Uncle was assaulted in Mongkok when four people charged into the restaurant where he works, pointed to him and said: ‘That's him!' and then proceeded to beat him up…If at first the restaurant owner thought that he was getting a bargain by paying Bus Uncle HK$9,000 a month to generate additional traffic, it is now a negative asset because nobody wants to be involved in any risky situations.”

It seems Islamist forces have ousted US-backed warlords from the centre of the Somali capital Mogadishu according to Fontaine at Yebo Googo, but warns that although the fighting is over the balance of power is fragile and the future of the country uncertain.

Leading African HIV activists and other campaigners from around the world are anxious that previous gains made at the international level five years ago. Olivia Phiri, Zambian blogger at Real Life of a Journalist reports on appeals made to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. Activists are concerned that the outcome of current three-day UN meeting on HIV and AIDS in New York might not only be a step backwards but also be actively harmful to those with the disease.

Cristian of Owlspotting posts a candid reflection on homophobia and gay rights in Romania: “If “Will and Grace” was a Romanian sit-com, Will would either be spending a lot of time in the emergency room, or he would be experimenting with innovative forms of denial.”

Jane Keeler of From Russia With Blog writes about getting assaulted by a drunk man in Vladimir; Brigid of Laughter in the Dark recounts her experience of being harrassed by a group of drunk men in Volgograd - and follows up with three more posts of her open correspondence on the disrespect for women's rights in Russia with Andrei, a Russian male reader.

Sean Guillory discusses an LA Times article by Kim Murphy, which claims that “the Soviet practice of condemning the political dissident to mental asylums continues in the cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg as well as in periphery of the Federation. Those seeking to pose an electoral challenge to local notables, speak out about corruption, women who want to divorce their powerful husbands, and those who complain about acts of labor, civil, and personal injustice are either condemned by local judges or are forced to sign consent forms to be institutionalized.”

Muckraked! writes about a recent attack on a St. Petersburg human rights activist: Ivan Pavlov, director of the Institute for Information Freedom Development, an organization that “takes secretive government agencies and state-run enterprises to court in order to force them to publicly release information about their practices.”

Wonkette of Weichegud! ET Politics posts a roundup of reaction to the ongoing treason trial in Ethiopia. More than 70 people are charged with crimes which carry the death penalty. As the post points out they are considered to be prisoners of conscience by human rights group Amnesty International; in one case the evidence brought against a defendent included the accusation of treason for decorating a hall with the wrong flag.

Yuri Mamchur of Russia Blog writes about the most recent case of copyright violations in Russia.

Paras Indonesia blog is asking the legislators upset over the Indonesian edition of Playboy magazine why they are not troubled by pirated pornographic DVDs and child trafficking . “The legislators who whine about Playboy have never bothered making an official visit to Glodok, West Jakarta, to observe the city’s main pirate DVD market, where hardcore pornographic films are widely available, including to minors, for a mere Rp5,000 per title. The piracy and sale of pornographic films is tolerated due to police corruption. A bigger problem in Indonesia is trafficking in children, which is also often tolerated by crooked officials.”

James blogs about a local football club that treats its players, all of them foreigners, badly by paying them an unbelievably low allowance. The president of the team had argued that he is providing an opportunity to the players. The bloggers counters the president's statement “Doesn't he even have a human heart? By misleading the players into coming here and giving them such a low allowance (it's not even worth calling a salary!), is he really thinking of his players' welfare, or just about his company?

In Seeking Life photoblog, we can see an interesting photo about a deranged addicted man in the street. The blogger says this poor man, hooked on drugs, is sitting on a pathway near Vali Asr (Pahlavi) street of Tehran. He is in deep delusion and talking to someone loudly but no one is there.

Our Local Style in Brunei is not in favour of lowering the standard of English language in Brunei's schools.

Is leader of China's ‘NotBuyHouse' movement Zou Tao a fraud, as translations of several Chinese blog postings from EastSouthWestNorth's Roland Soong seem to suggest? Or is he, as seen in a well-researched post from Virtual China's Lyn Jeffrey, a ‘longtime political activist' with a long history of working as ‘a social activist and volunteer working on the social problems of the weak and poor'?

According to one story Lyn quotes from interest group-linked news site Epoch Times, Zou was detained recently on a trip to Beijing to deliver a letter to top Party leaders.

A link to Youtube video from Sunday's candlelight vigil in Hong Kong's Victoria Park on Sunday at Nathan's n8ma blog here. The vigil commemorated the killing of peacefully-protesting students, workers and citizens of Beijing seventeen years ago; link to a newscast from the time here.

Wrapping up the related bloggage is a post looking at the controversy this week over news that Hong Kong Chief Executive Officer Donald Tsang appears to have attended a pro-democracy rally following the killings. Further translations from EastSouthWestNorth blogger Roland Soong [#021].

FG blogger Mulboyne takes a look at the recently-published book ‘Japan: A Traveler's Literary Companion‘ and the stories in it which, the blogger writes, “like the country and the people, are beautiful and compelling.”

Tangos at China Web2.0 Review validates fears of web users in mainland China that Google and its e-mail service Gmail are next up on the Great Firewall of China block, but blogs good news as well with word of a rumored Chinese version of MySpace, Kongjian, soon to be released from mainland search engine Baidu.

Photos from Sunday's candlelight vigil in Hong Kong's Victoria Park can be found here at Hong Kong Digital Vision blog. Sunday marks the seventeenth anniversary of the day China's People's Liberation Army opened fire on tens of thousands of peacefully-protesting students, workers and locals in the Chinese capitol.

Two interesting posts from Richard at The Peking Duck: first on an apology from Google co-founder Sergey Brin for decisions the proliferating company has made in regards to its operations in China and reconsideration thereof.

Writes Richard: “Interesting to see that they are debating “reversing course” - I'd like to hear more about that. Maybe it has to do with the fact that for all the compromises, google.com and gmail are still often blocked in most parts of China. (Check the comments to this post for verification.)“

Followed by a take on Chinese authorities' indignant response to the American State Department's call for a full accounting of the deaths taken during student, worker and Beijing locals' protests in the Chinese capitol in early summer 1989:

“I do think China owes its people a complete and open investigation into what happened on June 4 and the following days…China may feel the story is “closed,” but history doesn't work that way. WWII ended 61 years ago and we're still examining it with a flood of new books each year, just as we still examine the fall of the Caesars.”

Michael D. Manning at The Opposite End of China blogs on a development in the case of Rebiya Kadeer, an Uyghur businesswoman accused by Chinese authorities of supporting the separatist movement in western China's Xinjiang Autonomous Region.

“Three of Kadeer's children still living in Xinjiang have been arrested,” blogs Manning, “reportedly for owing more than 29 million RMB in unpaid taxes. Kadeer's son, Alim, appears to have suffered injuries while being taken into custody due to his ‘rude and unreasonable attitude.'”

Blogswana publishes its first podcast “The Blogs Must Be Crazy” which gives a background to the project on blogging for AIDS in Botswana

The African Uptimist is another new blog on the Africa scene. This one focuses on technology and renewable energy in Africa.

A whole new set of blogs out of Uganda published under the “Life in Africa” - The African blogosphere is bursting at the seams right now. Countries like Uganda previously silent are now joining the Kenyans, Ethiopians, Nigerians and South Africans.

Saudi ISP have blocked SaudiEve's blog, and it is said that other blogs will follow.

At this point, it is unclear why exactly SaudiEve has been targeted, as she is neither the most outspoken nor the most political of the Saudi bloggers, as she mostly blogs about personal issues and not Saudi Arabia, and has never written about the Saudi government. Some bloggers surmise that her inclusion of a Christian and a Jewish travel prayer (together with a Muslim one) in her last post before a long journey was used as the excuse to request her blog being banned in Saudi Arabia, raf* said.

Many bloggers have voiced their concern and have called for activism.

You can also help by filling this unblock request form.

How many Libyans know the Emergency numbers , I am sure they know the American 911 as they hear it all the time on TV , but I am not sure if they know the Emergency Numbers here in Libya , I know some people might say it's useless , well it's kind of true. Hamed tells us why!

Nadeem asks: Why would Hamas go to all the trouble to halt suicide-attacks, form a political party, take part in the democratic process, form a government, and state that they are willing to hold talks with their occupier – if what they really want to do is bomb Israel with weapons of mass destruction?

Good news from Bahrain. Mahmood writes: “Bahrain appointed a woman judge yesterday for the first time in its history, becoming the first among the Gulf States.”

Nobetema talks about how smuggled goods & products have created difficult situation for national industry. Blogger says goods are smuggled in country without any taxes are paid. Then their price is cheaper than national made goods or products and national producers have no chance to compete. Blogger adds because of smuggled goods, one million people become jobless in country each year (Persian). According to blogger smuggled goods worth is more than 6 billion dollars per year.

Mohammad Ali Abtahi, reformist politician & blogger, reports that Mr. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani’s speech was interrupted by some people who protested against him in religious city, Qom. Blogger adds this event is important because Rafsanjani always is supported by Grand Ayatollahs . Blogger says he was informed about the religious teacher of the protestors (Persian).

Tim Muth takes a look back at the first two years of Tony Saca's presidency.

At 25 years of HIV, Honduras Daily News examines the pandemic in Honduras and Latin America.

Patrick from the Guatemala Solidarity Network shares news from Casa Alianza that soldiers are attacking and insulting street children.

Jim Shultz relates the advice of a US embassy official to Bolivian high school graduates.

Liz Henry introduces Blogeratura, “a Spanish-language blog site for ‘independent literature.'”