· August, 2011

Stories about Governance from August, 2011

Cambodia’s Sand Pirates

Residents in a Cambodian province complain against the negative impact of sand dredging in their area. Tons of sand from Cambodia are allegedly shipped to Singapore which are used to...

31 August 2011

Russia: Why We Are Leaving Our Country Behind

RuNet Echo

Recent months have seen a new spin on the topic of emigration that seems to be ever-present in the Russian online space. Several powerful blog posts written by people from different social groups have become a platform for expressing one's take on the present and future of the country and people's place in it.

31 August 2011

China: Who Could Have Known The Libyans Hate Gaddafi?

One of China's top military analysts at home, has turned the official line on Libya into something of a joke, and abroad, China's nominal support for Gaddafi may end up costing the country oil contracts and much more. Netizens look at the lessons Beijing could stand to learn.

30 August 2011

Brazil: Mozambique Cedes Land to Brazilian Agribusiness

Mozambique is ceding 6 million hectares of land to Brazilian farmers. The idea is to draw on the Brazilian experience in the Cerrado, a biosphere similar to the African savanna, where industrial cattle grazing and soy plantations have already devastated 80% of the richest grasslands in the world.

30 August 2011

Nepal: A New Prime Minister

United We Blog! for a Democratic Nepal reports that Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) leader Dr. Baburam Bhattarai has been elected the 35th Prime Minister of Nepal. The previous...

28 August 2011

Egypt: Omar Soliman Facebook Army

A poll conducted by the Supreme Council of Armed Forces on their Facebook page to see how much support each of the potential Egyptian presidential elections candidates had on the ground yielded 'fishy' results. Here are reactions online after news emerged that a Facebook army was hired to tweak them.

28 August 2011

Singapore Elects New President

Dr Tony Tan was elected Singapore's seventh president on August 27 with a winning margin of only 7,269 votes. This was enough to beat the three other candidates in Singapore’s first presidential election in 18 years.

28 August 2011

Cameroon: Deeply homophobic laws

Talking about risk of toughening the law on homosexuality in Cameroon, the bonaberi.com site reveals [fr] that: “While the first paragraph of Section 347-1 of the penal code banned homosexuality,...

28 August 2011

Cuba: Pseudo-Transparency

Without Evasion considers Raul Castro's pledge “to develop a new brave, honest and transparent journalism during the Sixth Congress of the CCP”, saying: “If the coverage of what happened in...

26 August 2011

Cambodia: Prey Sar Prison Blog

Titled “life in 1 square meter”, the blog is allegedly created by a prisoner inside Cambodia's Prey Sar prison. It's no longer online but it has been widely discussed by...

26 August 2011