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Three journalists fool an entire army?

A new article in Russian at RealAzer, the newspaper that broke the news about three Armenian journalists arrested in Nakhichevan, says the Armenian journalists have apparently escaped Nakhichevan and are not arrested.

For those of you who know Russian can read the article at http://realazer.net/?mod=view&id=4646.  It says how the entire Azerbaijani army and police were mobolized in Nakhichevan to find the female journalists.  Many locals have been arrested and interrogated for allegedly helping the Armenian journalists.  I will read over the article again and post other details later.

Honorary Woman!

I did not make it to Time’s 100 this year but I have made it to something much better and honorable – I was given the title of Honorary Woman!

My International Women’s Resistance professor told the only three guys in class that we have done enough to be considered Honorary Women.

I sounded a die heart conservative the first weeks I walked into the class, so imagine how much I have changed to receive the honor.

The Time 100

The 2007 “100” list of Time Magazine that lists 100 people around the globe who shape the world includes Armenian Jewish activist Garry Kasparov:

HEROES & PIONEERS

Garry Kasparov

Illustration for TIME by Mark Ulriksen

Garry Kasparov

Garry Kasparov

Garry Kasparov likes to say he has been in politics all his life. In the Soviet Union, the nation in which he grew up, chess was a way of demonstrating the superiority of communism over the decadent West, and a chess prodigy was inevitably a political figure. Kasparov never dodged that fate; when he took on and eventually defeated Anatoly Karpov, the darling of the Soviet chess establishment, in 1985, his image as a prominent outsider—Kasparov is half Jewish, half Armenian—was fixed.

Kasparov’s status has been maintained in post-Soviet Russia. His organization, the Other Russia, a coalition of those opposed to the rule of President Vladimir Putin, has held a series of demonstrations, often broken up by the police. For Kasparov, Russia today, dominated by a combination of huge energy enterprises and former security apparatchiks (such as Putin), is a betrayal of those who dreamed of democracy in the early 1990s.

Putin’s foes are fragmented and run from old-fashioned nationalists to modern liberals; Kasparov, 44, insists he is just a moderator, not a leader, of the movement. But by giving a voice to those who believe that Russia can develop in a way different from the authoritarianism that seems always to have been its fate, the retired grand master shows that he has not yet made his last move. LINK

Now a short quiz.  Who, from the listed, is not in Time’s 100:

a. Hillary Clinton

b. Barack Obama

c. George W. Bush

d. Osama Bin Laden

e. Leonardo Di Carpio (however it is spelled)

f. Borat

AND THE ANSWER IS…. George W Bush!

Go Learn

Young Russians in Moscow have blockaded the Estonian Embassy for relocating a Soviet WWII Statue and graves in Estonia from its in situ state to a less popular location.

Perhaps vandalism but not cultural destruction, yet look at the Russian outcry.  Just makes my eyes wet that Armenians couldn’t even get the news published about the complete wipeout of their ancient medieval cemetery in Djulfa.

Why are the Russians making news?  They have threatened to cut oil supply to Estonia.  But let’s not justify the lack of Armenian oil for the Armenian inability to shake the world for Djulfa’s wipe out. 

Saving the World: My Three Cents

I just received an e-mail from my school (University of Colorado at Denver) informing the students that a referendum to increase alternative energy use and other environmental projects on our campus – shared by two other schools – has passed by 96%:

Last week downtown Denver campus students went to the polls to consider an increase in student fees to support the Sustainable Campus Program.

The response was overwhelming, with 96% of UCDHSC (University of Colorado at Denver and Health and Sciences Center) students supporting an increase of $1 per semester each year through 2011. Colleague students at Metro State and the Community College of Denver also voted for the proposal, with 97% and 95% support
respectively.

The program aims to enhance renewable energy programs, including increased purchase of solar and wind power sources, implementation of a comprehensive campus recycling program, increased energy efficiency in buildings, reduced per capita water use and education of our community on ways to become a sustainable campus.

The final steps in this effort include review and approval of the student fee by each of the institutional governing boards.  

I am extremely happy that my first time ever voting in a referendum brought the resulsts that I so wanted. I titled the post “My Three Cents,” because in addition to getting my own back to the voting booth to vote I also (literally) forced two of my classmates – whom I saw on the way – to go together and vote (we had to go to renew the student ID for one of them).

We were ten minutes late to class, but we did the right thing.

Leave that flag alone

I am really angry after finding out that a group of Azeri students has disturbed an Armenian student dance in Moscow by stealing the flag of the dancers (during the dance) and tore it apart.

Yea yea tell me the crap that Armenia has won the war with Azerbaijan that is why there is so much chauvinistic hatred toward Armenia.  That is total crap.  That kind of chauvinist hatred has started the war in the first place and Armenia had to win that war otherwise there would have been no Armenian living in Caucasus today.  

Anyhow, I got the news from the incredibly biased official Azerbaijani crappaper APA. It says an Armenian student shot at the Azeri students after they disturbed the dance and tore the flag of Karabakh. 

Google Earth Documents Climate Change

Browsing something on Google Earth I noticed some “UNCP” cubic signs on the globe.  Opening them I found out they show how the environment is changing.

Although there is no word about “climate change” or “global warming” (Google can be politically very correct, as you know), the before and after satellite images mostly document the environmental damage that has taken place on Earth.

The Godfather of Hate

How the arrest of a journalist leaks to the infamous agenda of an ultranationalist

Pictured: Hasan Zeynalov, member of Azerbaijan’s “Sicilian” mafia who is more famous for persecuting Azerbaijani journalists and less famous for his sinister agenda in Turkey to keep the Armenian-Turkish border closed.I hope that after the murder of Turkish-Armenian editor Hrant Dink there is more appreciation for the work of journalists among Armenians.

I am not sure that my optimism is applicable to the case for Armenia’s journalists yet, who are usually beaten, threatened and harassed in Armenia. Speaking of torture against journalists, I want to continue telling the underreported story of one journalist who was placed in jail yesterday, with the hope that there will be transnational outcry for persecution of journalists worldwide in general, and in Azerbaijan in particular. And not only because persecution of Azerbaijani journalists is too alarming (deaths, unbelievable high fines, regular beatings), but also because it is in the interest of everybody in the Caucasus – Armenia, Azerbaijan and the rest – to have democracy and freedom of speech. Journalists are the only ones in those isolated conflicts that can bring the rails to the truth on the table. They are the ones who can de-demonize “the other” by showing how much common all people have among each other.This is exactly why Eynulla Fatullayev was placed in jail for 2 ½ years yesterday. “Why do you interview Armenians?” This is the question that Fatullayev, in his own words, is being asked.

In his “last words” (before the court decision), published at Fatullayev’s founded Russian-language Realniy Azerbaijan website, the Azerbaijani journalist ridicules the fact that in the twenty-first century people ask him why he interviews Armenians.

“It is my duty to do so,” has uttered Fatullayev, “After I am free again, I will be occupied with the same exact work.”

Fatullayev is not playing games. He knows how serious it is to challenge Azerbaijani authorities. Before establishing his own newspaper, Fatullayev worked with editor Elmar Huseynov. Huseynov was an Azerbaijani journalist who was murdered in March of 2005 after having written “The Godfather,” an article that accused the labeled Azerbaijani authorities “Sicilian mafia.” Before his murder, Huseynov, along with Fatullayev, was taken to the court by an Azeri ultranationalist – Hasan Zeynalov, Nakhichevan’s permanent representative in Baku since at least 1998.  This is the same Zeynalov who made news in 1998 when talking to the BBC he denied state-sponsored vandalism against Armenian monuments – especially the now-gone-to-dust Djulfa cemetery – in Nakhichevan by saying, “Armenians have never lived in Nakhichevan, which has been Azerbaijani land from time immemorial, and that’s why there are no Armenian cemeteries and monuments and have never been any.”

In my research about the Djulfa vandalism – the annihilation of several thousand hand-crafted medieval Armenian monuments called khachkars – I have seen pattern between persecution against journalists in Azerbaijan and destruction of Armenian monuments in Azerbaijan. It is interesting how Zeynalov himself has been apparently involved in both, but there is more to come – something hard to believe.

Zeynalov is now the Azerbaijani Consul General to Kars (unless there are two Hasan Zeynalovs – which would prove my speculation wrong), where he is involved in “proving” that there is no Armenian heritage there (just like Armenians have never lived in Nakhichevan).  For example, only last month Zeynalov alarmed to the Azerbaijani press that an Armenian delegation had visited Kars and “By the study of some historical sites, the delegation tries to prove the relation of these areas to Armenians. During the visit the Armenian representatives discussed the opening of the state border.” In August of 2006, the mayor of Turkey’s Kars city – across the Armenian border – was attacked by Zeynalov for having advocated for the opening of the Armenian-Turkish border.  

I don’t know when Zeynalov transferred to Kars, but I can’t help to speculate that his mission is to stop the border from opening (why would Azerbaijan need a representative in Kars in any way?).  He is further busy organizing a commemoration for “Azerbaijani genocide” in Kars.

I don’t think the line of anti-democracy and anti-“otherness” has ever been this bold in Azerbaijan before. And the bottom line is – ultranationalist Azerbaijanis are not only danger to ordinary Azerbaijanis, but to ordinary Armenians and ordinary Turks likewise and vice-versa.

Azeri journalist sentenced to 2 1/2 years of prison

The international media is finally reporting the trial of an Azeri journalist who is accussed for “insulting” some Azeri refugees for having challenged Azerbaijan’s official claim that Armenian forces have killed up to 600 civilians in the 1990s during the Karakabh war.

The Associated Press informs

Eynulla Fatullayev, editor and founder of newspapers Real Azerbaijan and Everyday Azerbaijan, was found guilty of disseminating false information about a 1992 attack during the country’s six-year war with Armenia.

He was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison.

Slain Turk was Armenian?

Many of you perhaps know that three Christians were slain in Turkey this week for publishing Bibles.  They were murdered in Malatya, the city where assassinated Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was from.

Photo

Hearing about “Christian Turks” one automotically speculates whether these are hidden Armenian converts who are returning to their roots through Christianity, even though not through the Armenian church.

Speculation is speculation, but an Associated Press photograph testifies that one of the slain Turks was burried today in an Armenian cemetery in Malatya.

Moreover, the New York Times had alluded to the indirect connection of the Armenian genocide to the killings:

The recent nationalist attacks are ghosts from Turkey’s past. Malatya once had a heavy Armenian population. But in eastern Turkey, Armenians were driven out or killed in a series of purges culminating in the 1915 genocide, in which 1.5 million Armenians died. Subsequently, nationalists were urged to settle in the area to preserve a Turkish identity there.

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