If you're Azerbaijani and are looking for a name for your child, the Baku authorities have a little something for you -- a list of permitted names that they have taken the trouble to compile.
First names associated with "individuals who have committed aggression against the Azerbaijani people" will be blacklisted by a new color-coded nomenclature that is akin to the American system of terror alert colors.
You are in the clear if you choose a name from the green category; meaning those names that fit Azerbaijan's “national, cultural and ideological” values, Trend news agency reported. Yellow is for "undesirable" names that sound funny in other languages and are "not recommended." Red is for names of aggressors which carry "an insulting meaning in our language."
In theory, that means that "Ali" is green, "Artush" is red and "Astrid" is yellow.
If the name you picked warrants a red alert, the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences, which oversaw the scholars working on the first-name alert system, advises that you submit it to the Academy for clearance.
Little more than a week after US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton took a stroll in Russia’s alleged sphere of influence, reports are emerging that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev may also be packing for the Caucasus. Azerbaijani, Armenian and Russian news media today reported that Medvedev will visit Baku and Yerevan later this summer.
Azerbaijan's 1News.az claims that Medvedev plans to sign a border treaty with Baku during his September visit; Russia's ITAR-TASS reports that Medvedev will head to Yerevan in August for a meeting of the Collective Security Treaty Organization. The summit is reportedly expected in "the second half of August," according to News.am.
The Kremlin has not confirmed the news yet, but such visits could provide a fresh episode in the ongoing soap opera about Washington and Moscow's struggle for influence in the region.
Armenia and Azerbaijan are both trying to maintain a delicate balance between the two big brothers. By contrast, one place in the South Caucasus where Medvedev cannot set his feet, but any US official is always welcome is Georgia.
Several Azerbaijan couples were decorated last week with medals for “love and fidelity” after staying married for over 25 years. At a ceremony dedicated to Russia’s Family, Love and Fidelity Day, which is celebrated on July 8, Azerbaijani officials and representatives of Russian groups in Azerbaijan awarded couples in a bid to "revive good traditions."
Earlier this year, Azerbaijan adopted a law against domestic violence in a bid to squash certain bad traditions. Such brutality against women has largely been a taboo topic. In September 2009, the United Nations' Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women noted that in Azerbaijan “such violence appears to be at times socially legitimized by a culture
of silence and impunity and is socially accepted."
The system, to be set up wherever large numbers of people congregate, is allegedly designed to protect all and sundry from "illegal activities" and to ensure a "fast reaction to emergency situations."
Police, though, appear to have little trouble with making arrests as it is.
A handful of youth activists, who came to protest in front of the presidential administration building on July 8, the one-year anniversary of bloggers Adnan Hajizade and Emin Milli’s detention, was promptly scooped up and shipped off in police cars, Mediaforum.az reported.
Embassies and rights groups have been taking turns to demand the release of Hajizade and Milli, along with newspaper editor Eynulla Fatullayev. Critics view the arrests as an attempt to keep new media from turning into a fresh outlet for criticism of the government. Among others, Norway, the US and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe have all called on Azerbaijan to release the three men, but, so far, in vain.
A week before she comes to Tbilisi, the European Union’s chief diplomat, Catherine Ashton, announced that Brussels is looking to assist Georgia's Action Plan for Engagement, a fence-mending scheme for ties with Abkhazia and South Ossetia recently tabled by the Georgian authorities.
The gist of the plan is to diversify the money-earning options for residents of both breakaway regions, while offering their populations the same social welfare and civil rights available in Georgian-controlled territory. The plan dodges the fact that the de facto governments of both regions consider themselves to be running independent countries; Tbilisi has no control over either territory. Rather, the ongoing argument about the regions’ status would be set aside to focus on "common grassroots initiatives." Grants would be offered to the breakaway regions through a so-called trust fund run by an international organization, while a “Joint Investment Fund” would help bring in business investment. A common economic space is meant to help exchange goods and services with neighboring populations in Georgian-controlled territories. An international humanitarian organization would coordinate the project via offices in Sokhumi, Tbilisi and Tskhinvali.
The plan also proposes a status-blind identification document that would be recognized by all three sides for travel between the territories; a so-called Neutral Travel Document is proposed for travel abroad. Most residents of both regions now carry Russian passports.
The plan conspicuously makes no mention of Russia, which has recognized both regions as independent countries and keeps both under protective cover. Although Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin recently called for direct talks between Tbilisi and the two regions, it is doubtful that he had in mind the kind of contact proposed by the Action Plan.
Many eyes in Azerbaijan had been focused on US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in hopes that she would take President Ilham Aliyev’s government to task for allegedly gagging free speech. But after Clinton offered only a measured reproach, one Baku court took matters still further.
Three days after Clinton's July 4 visit, the court convicted a jailed newspaper editor on fresh charges. In a move condemned by various international rights groups, Eynulla Fatullayev was found guilty of drug possession -- a ruling that extended his eight-and-a-half-year prison term by another two and a half years. The decision came three months after the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg requested the journalist's release.
Fatullayev, the onetime editor of the now defunct Realny Azerbaijan newspaper, has been convicted of everything from terrorism and slander to tax evasion and, now, drug possession.
Journalism and rights advocacy groups assert that the charges are the price for Fatullayev's criticism of the Azerbaijani authorities.
Clinton’s office on July 7 issued a statement in response to the fresh jail term, but don't look for fireworks. Pledging Washington's readiness "to assist" Azerbaijan with "the necessary reforms for democratic and economic progress," the statement only noted that the conviction "is not a step in the right direction."
Khvichava lives in a tiny village in West Georgia together with her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren and supposedly does not look a day over 100.
Georgia has long enjoyed a reputation for longevity, but Khvichava’s claim brings to mind an old Georgian joke.
A centenarian mountain man complains to a doctor that he has not been feeling well recently. The doctor smiles charitably and says that the man is about to kick the bucket. “This is going to be devastating for my dad,” the man sighs.
“Dad?!” the doctor exclaims. “For Christ’s sake, how old is he?”
“Just turned 130,” the white-bearded man says, and adds, shaking his head, “If I die now, he will have to postpone his wedding."
The doctor jumps from his chair and shouts: “He is getting married at such an age?”
The man responds with a gesture: “I know, my dad does not really want to get married again, but his parents insist.”
Still struggling to plug the gusher in the Gulf of Mexico, British Petroleum is looking to drill new holes in the Caspian Sea. BP Chief Executive Tony Heyward travelled to hydrocarbon-rich Azerbaijan on July 6 to meet with President Ilham Aliyev and oversee the signing of a deal with the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijani Republic (SOCAR) on prospecting for and developing natural gas finds in the offshore Shafag and Asiman fields.
The signing dispelled speculations that Heyward’s visit to Azerbaijan had to do with BP’s efforts to shed some assets to cover its $3.12 billion battle with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Russia’s energy giant Gazprom said earlier that it would be happy to purchase BP’s business in Azerbaijan; in particular, its stake in the major Shah Deniz field.
“America is America, Georgia is Georgia, [South] Ossetia is [South] Ossetia,” Putin observed. “It is not necessary to rely on somebody and expect manna from heaven."
Tbilisi was quick to respond that Moscow is trying to pass the buck to the breakaway authorities while continuing to occupy Georgia’s territories. Georgian Deputy Foreign Minister Giga Bokeria termed the statement "a cheap attempt to skirt responsibility." Parliamentary Speaker Davit Bakradze defined an "occupation" as "the responsibility of that power which occupies."
The post-Clinton visit exchange shows that Tbilisi and Moscow are back to square -- or, rather, triangle -- one: Tbilisi continues to rely on the US to keep Russia out, while Moscow continues to push for Tbilisi to keep Washington out.
Call it palm-tree diplomacy. Abkhazia’s de facto president, Sergei Bagapsh, is bound for Venezuela, Nicaragua and may swing by Cuba later in July to deepen ties between the Caribbean countries and the onetime fun-under-the-sun capital of the Soviet Union.
With his Abkhaz passport, though, Bagapsh can only travel to Venezuela, Nicaragua, Russia and the South Pacific island of Nauru. The rest of the world still regards Abkhazia as part of Georgia.
Casting an apparent eye at recent US comments that spoke of Russia's "occupation" of the breakaway territory, Bagapsh said that neither the US nor the European Union can succeed in tearing Abkhazia away from its Russian protector. That relationship was forged not out of "considerations of the moment," he argued, but by Abkhazia "following its heart."
“Whether the Americans come to want it or not, nobody will tear anybody away from anybody,” Bagapsh declared.
