Global Voices Online

neweurasia summarizes recent defense and security news from Central Asia.

Leila Tanayeva notes that Kazakhstan's president has called for the country to develop halal industry in its food sector. She asks though whether or not Kazakhs really care if their meat is halal.

Safrang says that unless the US takes steps to prevent the death of civilians in its military operations in Afghanistan, the fight against the Taliban will be slowly lost as legitimacy fades.

At Geoffrey Philp's blog, filmmaker Mikey Jiggs writes about the experience of making a documentary about dub poet Malachi Smith.

Namibia Notes writes about Namibia's government policy limiting the sale of live, on the hoof, animals to feed lots and abattoirs in South Africa, “The Namibian Government put the limits in place to promote local abattoirs and feed lots, and thus add value to a basic product. The curse of being a former colony means that your valuable resources are extracted in their most basic (and least profitable) form so the colonizing country can gain both from the use of that material and from the wealth created by turning it into a usable form.”

Tear of Eritrea writes about political persecution in Eritrea, “Suppression of Political Dissent and Free Expression Governing party and government leaders and journalists arrested in 2001 as alleged traitors, spies, and foreign agents continue to be held incommunicado in undisclosed prisons. In 2006 a website issued a detailed but unconfirmed report asserting that 31 prisoners, including the leaders and journalists, were being held in isolation cells in a remote jail built expressly to hold them. The report claimed that nine of the 31 had died in captivity (one by suicide).”

On the occasion of the writer's 80th birthday, el Cubano de la isla meditates upon (es) a fleeting encounter between Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez and Ernest Hemingway in Paris: “The sad thing is that when wake up tomorrow, I'm not going to be in Paris, but in Havana, and in spite of how fond García Márquez is of this city, it will be difficult for me ever to happen to run into him on a street corner. . . “

London-based Trinidadian blogger Sinistra posts part three in her “Young and black in Babylondon” series. In this installment, she's asked whether she's “half-caste”.

Nicholas Laughlin didn't manage to watch this weekend's eclipse from a mountaintop, but he invites anybody who watched it from “a strange or interesting location” to leave comments and share links to their photos at the Caribbean Beat blog.

imagonovus has a lovely Flickr photoset devoted to the lighthouse in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. Among them is a beautiful image of this weekend's lunar eclipse.

Egyptian blogger Baheyya gives us an insight to the perils of succession in Egypt. “With Hosni Mubarak’s rapidly advancing senility and Gamal Mubarak’s incremental supremacy, the moment of power transfer is imminent and its direction appears clear. But there are so many wild cards and possible eleventh-hour developments at this juncture that the only certainty is that extraordinary uncertainty will accompany the process of succession,” she writes.

Want to catch up on reading about the Ikhwan (Muslim Brotherhood). The Arabist lists a number of reading resources here.

The new head of the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, one of the finest cultural centre dedicated to the Arab world in the world, is Dominique Baudis, a prominent figure of France’s pro-Israel movement, announces Issandr El Amrani in The Arabist.

An Israeli state-owned corporation has won a contract to supply the U.S. Marine Corps with state-of the-art armored vehicles for use in Iraq, the latest in a long line of Israeli defense sales for use in the war, writes US-based Lebanese blogger As'ad AbuKhalil.

Robert Wright continues with his ever-entertaining narration on stencil graffiti in Buenos Aires.

Carlos Chang congratulates [ES] fellow Peruvian blogger Luis Alarcón whose website was selected by Smashing magazine as one of “45 Fresh, Clean and Impressive Designs.”

Drug War Chronicles and Bloggings by Boz both look at efforts by President Evo Morales to export coca-derived products despite U.S. claims that coca cultivation will lead to an increase in drug trafficking.

Panamanian web designer Jorge Arango is a fan of This American Life. After watching an interview with the show's host, Ira Glass, on the art of storytelling, Arango applies some of those same lessons to the business of small scale web design.

Miguel Octavio takes a look at an explosive threesome theory which contends that an Argentine-made nuclear reactor arrived in Iran with Venezuela's participation.

“Now that the Constituent Assembly is on track again, it becomes important to know who is working on what issues,” writes Miguel Buitrago who goes on to explain in detail how the assembly will go about crafting a new constitution.

Accordng to Khorshidkhanoum, Eight women’s rights activists who were arrested in the peaceful demonstrations in front of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court Sunday were released today.The 24 women who are still in section 209 of Evin Prison have started a hunger strike in protest to their illegal confinement.

Bahraini blogger Mahmood Al Yousif goes on a rampage against a local newspaper for publishing an article on Satan worshipping amongst students who attend rock concerts, “based completely on unsubstantiated rumours, fear mongering, discriminatory allegations and all based on fourth hand accounts.” “What you and your editors have done to allow this kind of unsubstantiated rubbish to be printed reveals the desperation that the paper must be in. You and your paper should be ashamed of yourselves. You have betrayed the trust placed in your paper and your readership,” he adds.

Bahraini blogger Mahmood Al Yousif is livid that a Bahraini journalist has been fined by a court for writing about a fight, without naming those involved in it. “If this is the motive behind these continuous harassing techniques by the public prosecution or the government in general, then let’s not waste time with all of this and start a “Writers Kitty” where every writer pays a subscription of a set amount per month and be done with it!” he writes.

Ultrabrown on the depth and length of media coverage devoted to the Indian Budget exercise. “So the wall-to-wall media attention to the Indian budget last week struck me as bizarre. New Delhi released the budget last week to 20-page special sections in mainstream newspapers about taxes on gram and cement and Anna Nicole-like coverage on TV. The minutiæ of spreadsheets got more coverage than 9/11.”

Dilispeak responds to some bloggers by asserting that children taking to the religious order as monks is not entirely negative. “What i think both of them forgot is that there actually are little children who really actually do want to become monks from a very young age.Because they like what they see, and are impressed by it.”

Light Within on those punished for breaking kite flying rules. “What is the point here? Whereas big guns can get way with almost anything, it is most dreadful for any poor to commit a crime. A nightmarish chain of even starts for the entire family when some one is caught and taken in police custody. Allah bless us all and keep safe from unseen, I pray.”

Deepak's Diary on youth who go abroad to support themselves and their families. “Twenty four year old Chandra is leaving for Malaysia very soon. He is one of hundreds of Nepali youth who toil in the foreign soil, somewhat pompously called Diaspora.”

black and gray in conversation with author Sikeena Karmali. “I do believe that English has become a part of the South Asian linguistic identity in that South Asians have very much taken the language and made it theirs so that today, the English of South Asia has its own distinct identity much as American, British or Australian English. I also think that English has given South Asia an advantage in the international arena over other Asian nations such as China for example, particularly on the business and economic front.”

New Haiti-based Haitian blogger (and published author) Nancy Chapoteau of Notedor.com writes about her strange encounter with a strange plane fellow on a flight from Cap Haitian to Port-au-Prince [Fr]: “My son's reaction [to the billy-goat] was as funny as could be: ‘Was the goat wearing his seatbelt?' Instead, the poor thing ended up joining the luggage in the space reserved for that because he certainly didn't have a seat .”

Ukraine List posts a comprehensive entry on the extremely popular Ukrainian folk song: Pidmanula, pidvela. Links to video and audio of the song's various performances, as well as the lyrics in English and Ukrainian, are included.

Olechko writes about A-ba-ba-ga-la-ma-ga, a Ukrainian publishing house that produces wonderfully-illustrated books “for kids from 2 to 102″ years of age.

Foreign Notes translates a piece on Yulia Tymoshenko's recent visit to the United States and writes about the possible re-privatization of the Mariupol Metallurgical Plant.

Darkness at Noon shares several near-horror stories on getting and maintaining a Russian visa: over the years, the purely bureaucratic beast tormenting the blogger has metamorphosed into “the academo-bureacratic beast.”

Sean's Russia Blog reads a piece by FT's Moscow correspondent, a Russian repat looking for “some semblance of his past” in today's Moscow.

Lung have a photo essay on spring travel with rural migrant in China, telling the hard life of peasants (zh).

Maryannodonnell explains the different versions (official and unofficial, urban and rural) of Tianhou's legend and cultural practice in Chiwan Tianhou Temple in Shenzhen.

Joel Martinsen from DANWEI points to survey about Chinese school-children's knowledge of Lei Feng; and translates Chi Li's article arguing that: If you truly want to do good works, please “forget Lei Feng”

Trevor Loudon in New Zealand is concerned about the growing Chinese interest in East Timor.

Yemeni blogger Said Jane reported that teachers in Makalla staged a peaceful sit-in. “It's amazing how brave and determined some people are in the peaceful fight for their legitimate rights. They are modern day heroes and give hope to the world,” writes the blogger.

Kuwaiti blogger Error is outraged that phone numbers in Kuwait will soon become longer. The blogger says because of this change, Kuwait will never be the same again!!