>I get a lot of frenzied little boys posting here demanding the king meet all their needs before they will talk. How pathetic. A mature politician interested in dialogue would take the king's invitation and build on it. The king has created an opportunity. Responsible leaders would capitalise on it and begin dialogue.
- Blogdai http://nepalnow.blogspot.com/
>A return to the old constitution could not stir a popular movement, a more radical idea was needed to attract crowds. Today, a constituent assembly or even a republic meets the requirement according to popular rhetoric.
- Samudaya http://www.everybodybreed.com
>The Maoists should immediately declare a unilateral ceasefire and come out on the streets with a peaceful campaign. The reason is quite simple: it is only through non-violent means that an oppressive regime is defeated.
- Ganatantra Nepal http://ganatantranepal.org/
Blogging in Nepal took off after February 2005 as a means to both bypass official censorship and to protest against it. The royal takeover was marked by a crackdown on the Nepali media and as in other repressive regimes, blogging here graduated from personal, sometimes self-indulgent observations to an important vehicle for free speech.
This month, the blogging boom accelerated. While journalists struggled to get out the news and Nepalis desperately gobbled up all the information they could find, local bloggers kept posting on the web. Their reports, pictorials, personal essays and analysis filled the Nepali blogsphere.
After 1 February 2005, Kantipur reporters Dinesh Wagle and Ujjwal Acharya felt the need to express their thoughts and opinions to a wider audience in a non-news format and created United We Blog! tying it to the political slogan, 'For a free and democratic Nepal'. Other journalists started contributing and a year on, United We Blog! has become a home for uncensored analysis, news and images about Nepal, all of it open to debate and discussion from readers. Radio Free Nepal also started as a response to King Gyandendra's ban on independent news broadcasts.
Blogdai has been posting since December 2004, becoming more active with his slightly politically conservative postings in the past year. His blog is a unique collection of news and analysis, translations and Q&As with much of the response from readers speculating about whether Blogdai is a kuire .
Samudaya is a collective promoting the promotion of the active involvement of young Nepalis. Its April entries range from news snippets, discussions and images from contributors in Nepal, to pictorials and audio files.
Friends of Nepal includes links to websites, papers and updates on the Maoist insurgency. International Nepal Solidarity Network, also blocked by authorities in mid-2005 and also accessible via a mirror site, has a wide collection of images. The Associated Press's AP blog contains excellent personalised accounts from its correspondents covering the pro-democracy protests, proving that traditional media outlets can also blog.
Most blogs oppose the king's February First takeover. For instance, WeBlog Nepal asks, 'Do the royals read newspapers? Do they listen to FM? Then why is the king so silent when the street protests are deafening with slogans against him?'
Srijan's Blogger Nepal calls the king 'out of touch with reality', adding that a ruler who was in sync with the people's needs would not make shocking comments such this from his 1 February 2006 speech: 'the Maoist movement had dwindled down to a few criminal activities'.
Similar scepticism is expressed by Joy of Road Blog Ahead. She is critical of the royal government and especially the behaviour of security forces, which becomes brutally clear in viewing the work of photographer Sagar Shrestha in the blog Bijaya Paudel's Journal.
Mero Sansar offers rare audio files of the sloganeering protesters on the streets during the recent 20 days of demonstrations. Twenty-four activists, journalists and doctors who were detained on 8 April for defying a curfew and then incarcerated at Duwakot started their own photoblog, Chaubise, by smuggling out digital images on pin drives.
Blogging has its limitations in Nepal, where only 0.7 percent of the population has an internet connection. But because of its non-news format, blogs give people interested in Nepal a much more detailed and nuanced picture than the international media about what is happening here.
Blogging can be considered free speech at its purest because it makes information interactive, taking it out of the hands of journalists. But for the same reason, the blogsphere has a credibility problem, an image of being home to self-indulgent rantings of the over-enthusiastic.
But its future in Nepal looks bright thanks to bloggers like Blogger Nepal's 'Srijan', who posted recently: 'I may support a republic but if a majority of Nepalis still support a constitutional monarchy, so be it'.
Blogdai http://www.nepalnow.blogspot.com
United We Blog! http://www.blog.com>
Youth for Peace and Democracy http://sharadchirag.blog.com/
Prabasi Nepali http://www.prabasinepali.com/
AP blog http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/ 1104AP_INT_Nepal_Weblog.html
WeBlog Nepal http://www.weblognepal.com/index.html
Ganatantra Nepal http://ganatantranepal.org/
Samudaya http://www.everybodybreed.com
International Nepal Solidarity Network http://66.116.151.85/
Friends of Nepal Blog http://blog.friendsofnepal.com/
Srijan's Blogger Nepal http://www.srijan.com
The Radiant Star www.ujjwal.com
Planet Nepal http://planetnepal.newweb.net/
Radio Free Nepal http://freenepal.blogspot.com
Umesh Shrestha's Mero Sansar http://www.merosansar.com
Joy of Road Blog http://www.customjuju.com/joy/joyblog/ ?p=166
Bijaya Paudel's journal http://bijayapaudel.bravejournal.com/
International Nepal Solidarity Network http://www.insn.org/
Keep Nepal Free http://friendofnepal.blogspot.com/
Web Chautari http://www.webchautari.com/
Chaubise http://www.chaubise.blogspot.com/
