Global Voices Online

The Basturma Chronicles offers up a paper examining the dynamics of the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh.

Elizabeth reports on Dushanbe real estate and the challenges in obtaining it.

Indonesian blogger Marting Manurun in his post titled Radicals, beware! points to an announcement by Indonesian government that warns radical groups that the government would take serious actions against them. Martin asks “Now, with all the rhetoric, will the government finally face them strictly? Don’t think of making ‘special laws’, or another ‘anti-terrorism’ law, to face them. Just use the authority provided by the Civic Code (KUHP) as it has already had all that needed to stop them.”

Tolkun Umaraliev says that “World Cup Crazies” in the southern Kyrgyz city of Osh are getting together throughout the competition to bet on and watch the games.

Luke Distelhorst reports that a Mongolian journalist was turned away from a corporate press conference because that journalist has done a good job reporting on the company in the past.

Ben Paarmann notes that Kazakhstan has finally officially announced it will join the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline and gives an overview of the country's oil export options.

Over at Sunuguerte, Forum sur l'Arachide au Senegal, a blog on the peanut industry in Senegal, contributor Moubarak Lo writes (Fr): “[Privatized peanut venture] Sonacos may fail. Because of the role of the peanut as a wealth creator and as a poverty reducer in the rural world, the government must fight tooth and nail to save the venture.”

Bills of Lading makes predictions for World Cup 2006. If you're betting, please head over there and educate yourself a bit! “I was a 10-year old cricket obsessed kid during France ‘98 & the football World Cup meant nothing much to me. I only saw the finals & immediately took a liking to the game. Zidane became my new hero & Croatia my favourite team. But a lot has changed since then.”

Guptavati writes on the politics of rape. “Rape.Sexual Abuse..These words stir up something very primitive, a fear,a reaction so primordial in me that it defies logic,reasoning and everything else in me that swears by my usually dry rationality.”

Transcurrents.com on Trincomalee tamils fleeing to India. “The impact of total war will be felt by all sections of Sri Lankan society. It is however the Sri Lankan Tamils of the North - East who will bear the brunt of renewed conflict and undergo the greatest degree of suffering.”

Blogger Kangni Alem onTogo's soccer team (Fr): “Business is business and Togolese players are right, logically speaking, to privilege their bank accounts over the country's honor. They demand bonuses, pay them their bloody bonuses. After all that is the rule of thumb for all other national teams! (…) My advice to the team:(…) just loose fast and get back home.”

United We Blog! on football fever as remembered from 1990 and other times.

“The murder rate has hit its all time high in Jamaica, but yet sometimes I feel very removed from it. Nobody in my family seems to be perturbed,” begins Back on the Rock, as she tells the story of the “neighbourhood crackhead” who keeps stealing things from her house in Kingston.

Club Soda and Salt condemns the Trinidad and Tobago government's decision to increase the year's spending by TT$4 billion, including “$650 million … for continuing gasoline subsidies. These are meant to protect the Trinidadian public from the rising price of oil. This is incredibly poor policy”.

“Up at the airport, the roundabout is festooned with flags and twenty-foot mascots playing steel pans and guitars. I followed a taxi into the car park, and it had I IS A WARRIOR TOO splashed across the entire back window. We are all instructed to wear red for the foreseeable future.” At the Caribbean Beat blog, Jeremy Taylor reports on World Cup fever in Trinidad and Tobago, the day before the national team, the Soca Warriors, play their first match.

As hurricane season begins, Taran Rampersad worries that “the Caribbean in general can't handle a Category 3 hurricane. All everyone is discussing at this point is how fast one can recover”.

Geoffrey Philp sends birthday greetings to two major West Indian writers: the late Guyanese poet Martin Carter, and the Barbadian novelist George Lamming.

Slovakia goes to the polls on June 17, and Lemuel of Deleted by Tomorrow continues his educating and entertaining series on the Slovak politicians - The good, the bad, the ugly (Part 2: The Ugly).

TOL's Belarus Blog highlights homophobic attitudes that seem to be prevalent in the country and are even shared by the otherwise progressive politicians: [Artur Finkievich, a leading “Youth Front” activist] said that if his organization comes to power, they will treat those who has non-traditional sexual orientation as monsters. They will limit such people so they couldn’t work with children, couldn’t take any governmental posts…”

Giustino of Itching for Eestimaa and Estonia in World Media (RUS) report that the Dutch Ambassador has decided to leave Estonia due to the recent racist and homophobic attacks on his partner.

Poland's Equality Parade will take place Saturday; Becca of Boo writes on her plans to participate and also muses about the importance of “standing up for fundamental rights in what should be a modern, European state” at p3. The beatroot and p3 report that the All-Polish Youth decided to cancel Saturday's “Intolerance Parade.” The beatroot also writes about how the Euston Manifesto relates to Poland.

Vutha in a post titled Reaction to watching World Cup 2006 compares the reaction of various people on monks watching the World Cup matches. “Meanwhile, there are different reactions to Buddist monks watching football match because they think that it is against the Buddisht faith and monks are required to challenge discipline and to learn if they watch sports. Another opion raised that monks can watch footbal World Cup but not allowed to scream, cheer with a angry face or happy feeling and bet money on football match.”

Dictionary of the Serbian Mess and Pustolovina: Adventure in Serbian write about instances of xenophobia in Serbia.

Peter Myers of Adventures in Moldova posts a music video (origin and performers unknown, I guess) that shows Moldovon countryside and local wine-drinking traditions.

Muckraked reports that Ivan Pavlov, the human rights lawyer who was attacked last week, won the lawsuit against Russia’s Bureau of Standards and Measures, which he believes had caused the attack.

Andy in his blog talks about a new book on Cambodian history “A book arrived through my letterbox today for review, namely John Tully's A Short History of Cambodia : From Empire To Survival, courtesy of Australian publishers Allen & Unwin. Thanks guys. Its a 270-page book intended for tourists, students or general readers wishing to find out more about Cambodia's history.”

In addition to José Luis Orihuela's list of weblogs in Spanish dedicated solely to the World Cup, Colombian blogger Blue Elephant will be writing contributing to the football poetry at fulbo.net. Finally, from El Salvador, “Hunnapuh” took a look at site statistics to find that page views were extraordinarily low today. Half of those who did visit the page, came to download an Excel version of the World Cup calendar.

MABB asks readers “is Morales Delivering?” Buitrago is convinced that he is: first with the nationalization of hydrocarbons and now land reform.

“Everyone has their own way of celebrating or dealing with the inconveniences of the World Cup,” writes Shanghaiist blogger Peijin Chen of pregnant Chinese women who have painted soccer balls on their bellies in ‘Desperate football housewives.'

China's nightmarish university entrance exams wrapped up today. Seen in a post from Danwei's Joel Martinsen are rumors that ‘full-mark' essays from the composition section are already being collected for publishers with response anthologies in the works.

“In the days following the exam each year,” Martinsen writes of Gao Kao (高考) the annual test which often leads several senior high school under pressure to kill themselves, “the national media is filled with analyses of the essay questions. Papers invite big-name authors to reflect on the topics or to try their hand at answering them.”

NGOs in South Korea have banded together, writes Kotaji blogger Kotajihwal, to prevent World Cup fever from drawing attention away from pressing social and political issues.

Roland Soong at EastSouthWestNorth translates an essay making waves on a Chinese BBS recently written by a woman calling herself the Franz Kafka of China. In a bid to draw readers to her works, Daiqin (黛秦) provided some illustrations: photos of her naked and in a bra. Readership rocketed.

Chinablawger Kevin Fisher blogs in response to an article from a journalist advocacy group which condemns internet company Yahoo for cooperating with Chinese authorities in imprisoning Chinese journalists:

“These Chinese reporters were guilty of things like forwarding a governmental email to foreign reporters. In the case of one Chinese journalist, Shi Tao, he emailed a warning to Chinese writers to avoid topics about Tiananmen during the event's anniversary. Apparently the reporters were using Yahoo to send such pro-democratic information around the world. The Chinese enforcement agencies went to Yahoo and demanded information about the account and discovered that Shi Tao was the owner of the account. Chinese police then arrested him.”

Oil Wars writes that Venezuela's voters' registry “was thoroughly audited in late 2005 by an independent outside agency which found that it was a largely accurate and was completely appropriate to serve as the basis for elections.” Miguel Octavio, however, is skeptical, calling the audit “Simply one more fraud.” Daniel Duquenal has gone into length about how he says the National Electoral Council inflates the registry.

Qtpd describes the change in pricing (ES) at the Carcas metro. Rather than charging per segment, each journey will now have the same price (US $0.30) regardless of distance or the amount of transfers. Three commenters agree with the policy change, though one believes that it will spark protests.

MentalAcrobatics manages to link maths to football - well its here - World Cup 2006 and I have already missed 6 minutes !

For the coffee addicts of the world, Cock and Bull Stories posts on the harzards of picking coffee - “When they tell you; ‘Finish you food, there are kids starving in India’, they should also add, ‘Drink up you coffee, there’s probably a boy in Kenya whose genitals are hanging up a tree.’

Kenyan Pundit sings the praises of an innovative and fast developing African blogoshphere.

Agathon Rwasa reports on the jailing of yet another journalists whilist war criminals are rewarded with government posts in Burundi

Squatter City highlights the cost of housing for the poor in South Africa as a shack sells for $21,000

Unilag faces reports on the kidnapping of Korean oil workers by Niger Delta militants...

Timbuktu Chronicles highlights the imporantce of alternative technologies in Africa in this case a fridge that runs on solar energy.

Costa Rica opens up this year's World Cup against host country Germany and “Ticos,” as Costa Ricans call themselves, couldn't be more excited … and nervous. Fusildechispas describes just how many people worldwide will be watching the game (ES). Bob Glass says that, despite Germany's predicted win, the Costa Rican team remains optimistic. The high school-aged nephew and friends of My Dos Colones: “They said, the only hope they had, was that Germany does not embarrass Costa Rica with a score of like 10-1.”

Rewmi Abidjan posts an interview with Blaise Compaore, President of Burkina Faso in which he (Fr) denies landing support to rebels in the North of Cote d'Ivoire and weighs in on the Ivoirian soccer team: “The team mirrors pre-conflict Cote d'Ivoire: united, entrepreneurial and open(…) This team will give Ivoirians an image of what they all look forward to: national reconciliation.”

In the aftermath of Caribbean Telecom Giant Digicel's purchase of local telecom Bouygues, InternetRapide.com describes (Fr) changes in the billboard landscape: “We can already see new 4X3 billboards on the sides of [local] roads. After the mainly blue Bouygues billboards (…) the red of Digicel will compete with the blooming flowers of Flamboyant trees.”

Collectif Haiti de Provence points to a Radio Kiskeya article which states (Fr): “Amnesty International criticized the Organization of American States (OAS) harshly for its complacency vis-a-vis blatant violations of human rights perpetrated against many on the continent, including Haitians in the Dominican Republic.”

Collectif Haiti de Provence points to an AFP article that announces (Fr)Haiti's official rejoining of Caricom. Haiti temporarily ceased being a member of the 15-country Caribbean body in 2004, after the fall of then President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. CARICOM invited President Preval to attend the organization's next summit in July in St. Kitts.

Argentine blogger Mariano Amartino celebrates the employees blogging guidelines published at the BBC (ES), which he has translated into Spanish.

Boz's Friday poll numbers this week show the neck to neck race in Mexico presidential race as well as an electoral map from Peru's recent election.

Hanif Mazroi writes that most Iranian people get bored during holidays because they do not know what to do with their free time. The blogger adds there are only a few leisure places in Tehran and the young do not know where to consume their energy. He says rich people take a trip to outside or inside Iran and have a good time and the others should get bored (Persian).

Shahr-e-ghese published an advertisement from an Iran based journal. This advertisement invites Iranian from different regions to learn to speak Persian without accent (Persian).The blogger has been surprised by reading that.