Global Voices Online

The Kerala Articles on the the movie Sholay. “The movie was later declared a superhit and went on to become the highest grossing film in Indian movie history. Some claim that it still is when you consider inflation and other factors. It created history when it ran in Bombay’s Minerva theatre continuously for 5 years. In its wake several films were released that tried to cash in on the trend of multi-starrers and male bonding. But none of them were able to recapture the magic of Sholay.”

Desidabba on Orkut, and why it keeps getting into trouble. “It is difficult to curb sites like orkut which has such huge following. What can be done about those who form groups with wrong intention is to report the site as bogus. This is an option which orkut provides. If a certain number of users report it as bogus, the group will be removed. One other thing that can be done is, to set a lower cap on the number of users who can join a group. If a group can boast of 500 members, then it can be made public. Else it shouldn’t be.”

For A Democracy on why the Wangchuks will find the future harder than they imagined. “In the sponsorship of wangchuks, a survey had said Bhutanese are the happiest of all Asians and now the survey by government body itself, created by inventor of GNH for Jigme’s sake, has revealed that only 60 people out of 100 are happy. Ironically, the mock survey asked 350 people in mass of 700,000.”

indi.ca on what being terrorized means “Sri Lanka is fundamentally different from the LTTE in that we do have systems and freedoms to enable a moral or at least decent state. The danger is that the spectre of the LTTE causes us to lower our own moral standards, until being better than terrorists is all we aspire to. It is not, and it should not be. Sri Lanka is better than that.”

The Pakistani Spectator on a ‘planned emergency'. “If we take a look upon proceedings of post 9th March scenario, and analyze the situation deeply the question blinks in mind ‘Are we being headed towards a planned and engineered state of emergency’. In past eras, emergency in any country was declared due to agitation by the general public. This may be the first time the emergency (if declared) will be imposed to extract some favourable and desired results.”

In Kdmahmoudsalehi we read[Fa] that Mahmoud Salehi, a labour activist got arrested two months ago.Mahmoud Salehi was last arrested on April 9, 2007 and transferred to a prison in the city of Sanandaj. The Kurdistan Province Appeal Court has sentenced Mahmoud to one year imprisonment and also a three year suspended prison sentence, and the verdict was carried out immediately without prior notice to Mahmoud, his family or his lawyer.

Darkness at Noon writes about knockoff fashion in Moscow.

Russian Spy reports on why Russian women aren't too eager to have kids: “Delivering a baby in a hospital that provides services on commercial principles usually costs a minimum of 25,000 rubles (about $1,000). The amount of a monthly child benefit paid for 18 months has now increased more than twice, up to 1,500 rubles (about $40) – a sum big enough for buying two packages of good-quality throwaway diapers for a baby. The state would cough up a bit more for you to buy 4 packages a month in case you are willing to have a second child.”

“There are so many blogs out there churning out good stories that sometimes I just can’t keep up,” writes Siberian Light and posts a few quick links to his current favorites.