Global Voices Online

Fernando Casale features Holy, an experimental Argentinean musician living in Spain. As always, songs are available for download.

In a comprehensive analysis of the recent elections, U.S-El Salvador Sister Cities argues that on “an objective level, it is important to signal the breakdown of the institutionality of these elections, beginning with campaigns that kicked off far before the stipulated start dates, woeful disorganization on election day (indelible ink that not only rubbed off, but also caused painful burns, polling centers that opened late, irregularities in the voter list, etc), and the unconstitutional dual role that Antonio Saca took up.”

Brian Campbell has an inside look at the impressive list of poets who will be attending the fifth annual Costa Rican International Festival of Poetry, which will take place from May 27 to June 4.

Luís Afonso Assumpção says things aren't looking good for Economy Minister Antônio Palocci.

Stacy-Marie Ishmael riffs on the fact that the Trinidad & Tobago Football Federation has outsourced the country's “official” World Cup song to “two guys from Leeds”, and other Trinbagonian ironies.

ClaudeMills.com tackles the subject of the sexual harrassment of men in Jamaica in an article which quotes business consultants, a psychologist and at least one potential victim who says, “I know what it is like for a woman to shower unwanted attention, but I don’t think a Jamaican man would even complain if it happened to him.”

Stunner previews the Jamaica Carnival celebrations, which has many people attending “soca-robics” sessions to get in shape.

In a week focused on the past, Robert Wright recounts his trip to an exhibit at the Centro Cultural Recoleta on the dictatorship from 1976 to 1983. “The idea is that by examining the past in detail, it will never happen again.”

Leon wonders why the 18th Commonwealth Games aren't getting more media attention. “Is it because the mighty U.S is not involved, since the Commonwealth games only include former territories of Britain? (But wait, America is a former territory of Britain!).”

VSO intern Michiyo gets to spend some time in a Makushi Amerindian village in Guyana's Rupununi region, and experience first-hand the community's efforts at running an eco-resort. As usual, she also offers a Japanese translation (JA) of her post.

A miniskirt almost upsets the matchmaking plans of Guyana-gyal's Auntie M.

GlowMain features Venezuelan drum and bass DJ, Aureliano Alarcón Smith, also known as DUBB (ES). A download of a live set is available.

The Limey has a bit of fun at the expense of the promoter of an awards ceremony to which Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Halle Berry and others were allegedly invited.

For much of the tech-centered, Spanish-speaking blogosphere, Meibell (ES) is most well known as the wife of veteran, Venezuelan-turned-New-Yorker blogger, Sebastian Delmont. But Liz Henry says that Meibell is taking charge with a call to Venezuelan mommy bloggers based in Caracas. A similar blog mom meetup takes place in Buenos Aires tomorrow.

Ivan Lenin at Rush-Mush translates a Belarusian LJ user's eloquent explanation of what the protest in Minsk is about: “The current resistance is a note of protest. A revolution probably won't happen. But there is a hope that the authorities will remember the tents on the square, next time they consider making an unconstitutional desicion.”

br23 blog sums up the fourth day of the protest in Minsk and links to a Radio Open Source talk show on Belarus, in which he took part yesterday.

Oleksandr at Messages From Canada discusses Ukrainian president's inadequate response to the fraudulent election in Belarus.

LJ user samuel_smith posts photos from a rally (RUS) that took place in front of the Belarusian embassy in Kyiv today. The protesters mocked the recent election in Belarus by casting ballots that had no alternative candidates on them, thus giving Aleksandr Lukashenko 183% of the vote. They also went to Ukraine's foreign ministry and demanded that Lukashenko is proclaimed persona non grata in Ukraine. (Complete English translation is here.)

Rajan Rishyakaran recently got his exam results back. That got him writing about the differences between the Singapore and Malaysian systems of education. Singapore's is highly competitive and meritocratic while Malaysia's has affirmative racial discrimination.

A Xeno Boy in SG tells a little fable about how Singapore's threatening diversity was domesticated and coopted. “The city mimicked democracy, mimicked prosperity, mimicked diversity, mimicked lives. It was a wonderful performance. And the City became the City of Laughter.”

Claudio Romano at wanderingkhunphu struggles with the eternal question of money and sex as he fights off Thai transvestites.

Vietnam's Ministry of Culture and Information is considering banning overseas Vietnamese filmmakers from releasing films within Vietnam. Diacritic.org has more here.

Howie Severino talks about the linguistic divide in the Philippines between Tagalog a.k.a. Filipino (the language spoken in and around the capital Manila) and English (the widely-used colonial lingua franca). “…a foreign correspondent once noted that our presidents use Filipino only when they want to tell jokes or be folksy. When it’s time to explain something serious like foreign policy or economics, it’s always in English, as if it’s beyond the unwashed natives to know about it. Or perhaps language is the unspoken wall in the Philippine version of apartheid.”

Mahamoor on the growth of online Sri Lankan communities in recent times and the growing conversations in the Sri Lankan context.

Light Within on Pakistan Day -”The people of Pakistan celebrate the 23rd of March, every year, with great zeal and enthusiasm, to commemorate the most outstanding achievement of the Muslims of South Asia who passed the historic Pakistan Resolution on this day at Lahore in 1940.”

The Middle Stage on the art, life and times of Amrita Sher-Gil. “Half-Indian and half-Hungarian, of aristocratic lineage, she was born in Budapest and brought up in the Hungarian capital and in Shimla. She studied art in Paris in the wake of high modernism”

Argentine blogger Diego F. González has created 11 Feeds, an aggregation of eleven of the most-read feeds by techie Spanish-speaking bloggers.

Today is World Water Day and Oscar Reyes has a collection of photos from the World Water Forum currently underway in Mexico City. Gil Schmidt notes that 15 - 18% of Puerto Ricans lack consistent water services. Monica Campbell writes of innovative solutions by young people across the globe. Majda and Ginting, writing from the World Water Forum in Mexico, have met with colleagues from Urugyuay, Paraguay, and Colombia to discuss how to build a water campaign at their NGO, Friends of the Earth International.

Idland on the continued “Scramble for Africa” and the business of development economics and creative statistics.

Grandiose Parlor comments on the Nigerian census and wonders despite 4 censuses and the widespread violence reported around the census whether Nigeria has what it takes to exist as a progressive nation.…”How does the insurgency in the Niger-Delta impact the census in this area? Is there any provision (by the government) to address the (expected) undercounting of the people of this region?”

What an African Woman Thinks writes about “daring to be different” and discusses what is normal and what is deviant…..Because sometimes, too often in fact, it seems to me that that question degenerates into who is like us and who is not. And, it can, in this cruder form, make a virtue of who we are and a vice of who we are not, simply because we are the majority, and might, of course, makes right.”

Kikuyumoja’s realm also posts on World Water Day. He forcuses on the global water statistics and conflicts that arise over access to water. …”Over 260 river basins are shared by two or more countries. To date, the UNESCO’s International Shared Aquifer Resource Management project (ISARM) has inventoried over 150 shared aquifer systems with boundaries that do not correspond to those of surface basins.”

Concoction reminds us it is World Water Day. She focuses on the act of “fetching water” which is largely ignored….fetching water is not something men do unless they are alone.” At which point the man has daily incentives to pay a lobola to purchase his daughter as his lover, wife, mother of his children and, of course, as his cook and water fetcher which is included in that bride price of up to ten cows (which chug 50 liters a day and compete with the women for water access).

Ayaan Hirsi Ali blogs reports on a football match between gay men and muslims that took place in Amsterdam to mark the International Day Against Racism. The Muslim team won 4-0

Ore's Notes writes about her visit to see the Vagina Monlogues in Lagos last Thursday… Ore is not so sure about the call to reclaim words like “the C-Word” as a means of removing power from the speaker of the word.

Kenyan poet, Mshairi expresses her homesickness through a poem “Home (Again)” It is that time of the year for Africans in the Diaspora to begin to pine about warmer climates.

Guyana 360 has received their copy of the recording of a phone conversation between the police commissioner and a member of parliament. Living Guyana doesn't seem to have received theirs, but posts a transcription of the conversation anyway.

Akhbar Sufi (Sufi news) is a new blog which is talking about Iranian Sufis' problems with Iranian government. Akhbar Sufi (Persian) says in Semenan decision has already been taken to destroy Sufis' worshiping building as it was done in Qom.

UDPS Liege publishes a reader's plea (FR) that Etienne Tshisekedi-led opposition party UDPS learn the art of political negotiation and to make concessions rather than maintain a purist principled stance on key issues.

Blogger Tony Katombe of Le Blog du Congolais publishes (FR) an eloquent email received from a Belgian reader who thanks him for shedding light on Belgium's past and present entanglements with the DRC. Katombe then embarks on his version of “I Have a Dream” in which through his blog he dreams of enlisting average Americans and Europeans in the fight for Congolese democracy.

OhmyNews! reports that a growing number of Japanese are seeking organ transplants in China, where lax regulations and a high number of executions make organs available for desperate buyers.

Shanghaiist cites a recent report in Chinese which says that 90 couples get divorced in Shanghai every day. One-night stands are increasingly being blamed for this. Via Simon World.

Glutter is in shock over the detention of Beijing or Bust blogger and documentary film-maker Hao Wu (Wu Hao in Chinese), with whom she took part in a BBC World Service panel discussion on censorship in China. She posts a transcript of the discussion.

ESWN translates a Chinese-language news report from Boxun.com (ZH) about the result for the recent elections in Taishi village for a representative to the National People's Congress (NPC).

Danwei reports on the next development in China's love affair with the internal combustion engine: Traffic TV. “The ad delivery machines that have appeared in around 10,000 taxis and buses throughout [Beijing] will now deliver up-to-the-minute reports of traffic jams and accidents so you'll know why your commute is taking so darn long,” writes Joel Martinsen.

Bingfeng Teahouse is surprised at the profusion of beliefs and practices–including feng shui–found among the well-heeled professional folk of Shanghai, which do not fit in with a rationalist world view.

LJ user l_u_f_t posts a Radio Liberty report (BEL) claiming that the police are beating up protesters who are going down into the subway to go home and then return to the square. There's a photo of one boy with an impressive scratch on his body. The boy, Mikhail Avdeev, says the cop who attacked him introduced himself as Vladimir Naumov, interior minister of Belarus, and that he wanted to tear apart the white-red-white flag but failed and ended up tying it into a knot. Photos from the square are posted at http://news.lyakh.org/; the one displayed here was taken 2 1/2 hours ago, at 9 am Minsk time today.

Noting that nearly 50% of Peru's registered voters are under 35, Peru Election 2006 examines possible scenarios for a second round of voting. Un Lobo en Perú concentrates on the strategy of conservative presidential candidate, Lourdes Flores Nano as campaigning both winds down and heats up.