Looks like the young Azerbaijani soccer club Gabala is in safe hands now. Premier UK soccer player and sports manager Tony Adams is coming to town to coach the team for between five to 10 years. Adams has vowed to bring the small-town club to the highest international standards. Mark my words, the former Arsenal defender said, we “are definitely creating history” here!
If local media is to be trusted, Baku may need to pony up an annual bill to the tune of 1.5 million pounds, or about $2.2 million. Tony insists the actual bill is lower, but even so, what’s a couple of million between true soccer fans?
A Brazilian soap opera would look tame by comparison. In the latest installment of Georgia's ongoing clash between Orthodox Christian fundamentalists and cultural liberals, Malkhaz Gulashvili, the founder of the ultra-radical People's Orthodox Movement, has hightailed it to separatist South Ossetia after a TV station fistfight which he claimed was the work of a pro-government think tank.
Liberals counter that Gulashvili's People's Orthodox Movement disrupted the broadcasts at Kavkasia television station, which had the indiscretion to discuss the smutty, anti-Church novel Saidumlo Siroba/Holy Crap in a May 7 talk show that included Gulashvili, publisher of The Georgian Times.
Police arrested seven young activists for the brouhaha, but Gulashvili, allegedly skirting both Russian and South Ossetian border guards, fled through the mountains with his son to Tskhinvali, a flight he claimed was prompted by an attempt by Tbilisi assailants to rape the young man.
Confused yet? But wait, there's more. Brandishing the charge of "fascism," some liberals have accused Gulashvili of being a Russian spy on a mission to destabilize Georgia in the run-up to the country's May 30 local elections.
Tune in next week when, undoubtedly, in one format or another, the drama will continue.
While Turkey and Russia plow along with natural gas pipelines north and south of the Black Sea, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Romania have decided that the shortest and fastest distance between two points is a straight line.
Baku, Tbilisi and Bucharest on May 12 set up a company that will build two liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals on either side of the Black Sea to get Eastern Europe the Russia-free natural gas it reportedly craves.
LNG naysayers point to the project's technical difficulties and to its lack of financing plans to argue that the trio's expectations may be getting the best of them.
Compared with the tangled Nabucco pipeline drama, however, the LNG project partners have little in the way of outstanding political issues. The project's key to success may lie in the old Russian maxim "The fewer people, the more oxygen." ("Меньше народу, больше кислороду.")
As Georgia rushes to embrace Western ways, a cultural taboo on sex before marriage for women is one tradition that is still holding strong. And even while acknowledging the macho tenets that shape it, the taboo is one tradition that many Georgian women from all walks of life say they do not want to buck.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin took part this weekend in the cherry-picking history game that both Russians and Georgians like to play. Laying a stone at the new "We Were Together in the Fight against Fascism" memorial, Putin took his audience down memory lane to a time when Georgians and Russians had a common enemy.
“We are ready to engage in dialogue with every constructive political force in Georgia,” declared Putin after ragging on Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili for allegedly trying to erase positive Georgians' positive recollections of Russia. Saakashvili, falling into the "non-constructive" category, was not invited to Moscow for the 65th anniversary of the Nazi defeat.
Two of the “constructive” politicians on hand in Moscow were ex-Parliamentary Speaker Nino Burjanadze and ex-Prime Minister Zurab Noghaideli. The two, neither of whom boast poll ratings to rank in the A-league of Georgian politicians, told domestic audiences that Putin wants peace.
The establishment of direct contacts between Georgians and Abkhaz and South Ossetians could prove the test for any peaceful feelings. Noghaideli last week called for discussion to focus on "the return of people, nations," rather than "the return of territories," while Burjanadze today told the BBC that she hopes that "Russia will not hinder" such contacts.
Tbilisi mayoral candidate Zviad Dzidziguri has a gun and is not afraid to use it. The Conservative Party leader says he pulled out his gun and fired several shots into the air on May 6 to defend himself from poster-bearing supporters of his rival, Mayor Gigi Ugulava of the ruling United National Movement.
Conservative Party loyalists and government supporters blame each other for starting the brawl. The Prosecutor’s Office has launched an investigation. “If such provocations repeat themselves, I will do the same,” Dzidziguri declared.
Mayor Ugulava described the incident as an attack on the United National Movement and called on all political groups competing for Georgia's key municipal office to exercise restraint during the campaign season.
But after a May 6 smash-up between protesters and police, popular fears persist that the campaign may descend into bare-knuckle confrontation.
What room, if any, will be given to ideas may be determined this weekend during televised candidate debates on Georgian Public Broadcasting co-financed by USAID. Aside from Ugulava and Dzidziguri, the debates will feature Alliance for Georgia leader Irakli Alasania, ex-energy boss Giorgi Chanturia for the Christian-Democratic Movement, and beer magnate Gogi Topadze of the Industrialists Party.
Baku insists that the time is up for Armenia to return to Azerbaijan bits of occupied land bordering disputed Nagorno Karabakh.
“Armenia has requested two weeks with regard to the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, but several months have gone by and there has been no reaction,” said Azerbaijani presidential spokesman Novruz Mamedov on May 5. Deputy Foreign Minister Araz Azimov said the same the day before, adding that the key mediators -- the US, France, Russia -- have proposed a timeline for the Armenian withdrawal from Lachin and Kelbacar, territory sandwiched between Armenia and Karabakh.
Yerevan has responded angrily, but did not outright deny discussions about the timeline for a potential pullout. “Some destructive people in Azerbaijan . . . are left with no other options than to offer endless lies, sable-rattling and muscle flexing,” said Armenian foreign ministry spokesperson Tigran Balaian.
Oh, the horror! A green, biomorphic mountain of a building may arise in the good city of Yerevan if nobody stops Forrest Fulton Architecture.
The 915,000-square-foot creature is a competition proposal from the Birmingham, Alabama-based firm. Called Lace Hill, the project’s design is meant to pay tribute to Mount Ararat, the Armenian cultural symbol which sits just across the closed border in Turkey.
"Native plants" cover its hill, which breathes through apertures "recalling traditional Armenian lace needlework," and exudes water from some of them. Its bowels contain bars, restaurants, hotels . . . you name it.
Yerevan city planners have not officially expressed interest in the project, but the idea of having on home soil an Ararat-look-alike could prove alluring.
Radical Islam is already a household term, but how about some radical Christianity for a change? In Georgia every now and then, radical Christians and radical liberals come to blows -- both literally and figuratively.
The demonstration was topped off by the presentation of a new book that mocks the Georgian Orthodox Church. The title of the book, "Saidumlo Siroba," is a profane send-up of the Georgian term for the Last Supper. (It translates literally as "Secret Hogwash," but is closer to "Holy Crap.")
Needless to say, the book got a mixed review in heavily Orthodox Christian Georgia. The Organization of Orthodox Christian Parents, self-styled defenders of Georgian Orthodox traditions known for once chasing away witches and demons from a Tbilisi Halloween party, descended upon the gathering.
The Georgian Orthodox Church has not endorsed the violence, but Georgia’s loosely organized liberals say that in this case silence denotes consent.
The view from Baku is no less merry. Civil society activists and reporters chastise the government for what they describe as attempts to intimidate independent media.
