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Oh yes, we’ve been preparing for this moment for more than a year. Who wants to come along?

A Danish climber is interviewed in this heart-breaking film on The Hub that shows Chinese soldiers killing Tibetans on their way to see the Dalai Lama in India.

On Global Voices, John Kennedy is keeping track of new information on the riots in Tibet and the Chinese crack-down in this post. Snippets of news are coming out via micro-blogs like Twitter, but otherwise it’s mostly Chinese who are uploading comments.

Kennedy says:

**One reader has written in asking to know why there are no apparent Tibetan voices in this post. This of course is not a deliberate omission but a problem of not being able to find them. Any such related links if left in the comments or sent to chinese [at] globalvoicesonline [dot] org will be translated swiftly and everyone’s help is most welcome in this.

Keep an eye on this post: China: Fire on the streets of Lhasa, Tibet

Every time I visit Voices without Votes I am stunned at the amount of engagement and creativity around the world in regards to the US elections.

Take this song from Jamaica for instance – it’s much better than anything that could have come out of the Obama campaign itself (via The World Wants Obama).

Jamaican reggae star Cocoa Tea has released a new song “We Want Obama”. The lyrics include this line: ‘This is not about class nor color, race nor creed. It’s about the changes, what the Americans need.”

Want more? Here’s a song about Barak Obama from Grenadian-Trinidadian artist, The Mighty Sparrow. These are the first lines of the song (see full lyrices here). This is not light fare, listen to the whole thing:

The respect of the world that we now lack,
If you want it back then, vote Barack!
Because this time we come out to vote!
Stop the war!
Stop genocide in Darfur!
No matter what,
Get health care for who have not!
The Foreign Relations Committee,
Can attest to his tenacity,
For homeland and job security.

No question US politics could do with a little more music, and I don’t mean this boring old stuff. Who will be the first to sell compilation CD’s of all the songs out there to raise money for the Obama campaign?

You can watch the a live webcast of this conference here: http://gvu.cc.gatech.edu/what/live.php
I am speaking around 3pm.

Today, Global Voices is launching a new website with Reuters that opens a window on the global conversation about the 2008 presidential election in the USA. It’s called… Voices without Votes.

There are few subjects that spark the imagination of bloggers worldwide – and United States foreign policy is one of them.

Global Voices challenges people to listen to people beyond their own borders. We translate back and forth from blogospheres in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, South America, and Eastern Europe in hopes that people may come to understand and care for one another across borders.

We also encourage international media to talk to and report on the concerns of ordinary citizens around the world. Hopefully, looking at US politics more closely through a kaleidoscope of world blogs will be a compelling and thought-provoking experience. Send us links to blogs you would like us to link to, including your own.

Global Voices Middle East and North Africa Editor, Amira Al Hussaini is going to be editing the website with help from other Global Voices editors and volunteers. Check in regularly at Voices Without Votes until Americans finally hit the polls and elect a president in November 2008.

Meanwhile, the world is still talking! Are you listening?

Who am I to question the science? Technorati, the blog search engine, claims that Global Voices is the 90th top blog in the world based on the number of “blog reactions” to the site in the past 6 months. That’s incredible. And wonderful.

More than enough silliness coming out of Fox these days to keep this site busy: Fox Attacks. Barak Obama refused to go on Fox for months, but this morning (in spite of a petition for him and Edwards to refuse the network) he granted an interview to the show, Fox & Friends about the New Hampshire primary.

CNN just asked their correspondents around the world to report on the US, and they nearly all said people around the world were cheering for Obama (especially in Kenya). The only exception was in Ramallah, where the correspondent said people were not in the least optimistic about any of the candidates.

Global Voices has a couple of reports about Obama from Iranian and Caribbean bloggers, and we’ve got another global round up planned for later today. How depressing, that the fact that a candidate is popular abroad could actually work against him in the United States… When you think back to all the global negativity about Bush in 2004, it’s really startling that he still won.

Right now, in Israel, bloggers are upset that President Bush’s current visit to Israel is costing taxpayers an astonishing $25,000 an hour, among other things.

Fouad al-Farhan is one of the few Saudi bloggers who talks about politics using his real name. He is outspoken in favor of freedom and against political corruption. He was arrested a few weeks ago and is being held for “questioning” without charges. His family cannot speak to him. Saudi Arabia has imprisoned many journalists in the past, but this is the first time a blogger has been arrested. A global movement of bloggers are campaigning to free him. Please sign the petition, it may really help.

I got the video from fantastic blog called Osocio that links to social advertising and non-profit campaigns (via Sivacracy).