Thought Archive

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Europeans or not?

Azerbaijan has taken first steps towards the full European membership - membership in a trashy brotherhood that is. The first baby step was the Eurovision Song Contest, which is taken too seriously than it deserves here, by me included. Britain, incidentally, took the last place at the contest - as was expected from the nation scorned by continentals. Any other place at European table beyond this trashy contest can not be taken for granted. However can we be fully consider ourselves as Europeans - whatever this means - to the extent they consider us anything at all. Let us count all the pros and cons.

We are Europeans because we:

  • Have achieved a 8th place at Eurovision Song Contest in 2008.
  • Sang the song in English.
  • Have beautiful ladies walking in miniskirts around town.
  • Have drinking dens, discos, and tattoo parlors around town.
  • Baku looks and feels European city.
  • Prefer Italian clothes and shoes, French wine and German cars.
  • Hold elections and declare our love of democracy.
  • Signed every possible European charter.
  • Embarassingly hide our “backwardness” in front of Europeans.
  • Secretly long to be accepted into European Union ahead of Armenia.

We are not Europeans because we:

  • Live under a authoritarian and extremely corrupt regime
  • are ethnically Muslim, some of us practicing
  • Are not from Europe and we border Iran
  • Have oil resources accompanied with an oil curse
  • Have a traditional family values and frown upon pre-marital sex
  • Do not enjoy getting drunk
  • Ambivalent towards equal rights for minorities, especially gays
  • Like our heterosexual men to hold hands in public

It is your call. Are we?

3 comments:

Vanny said...

You are as European as you feel mate. Don't let anybody make you believe otherwise.


I bet ye that one maybe distant day, when the muslim world will shed its "backwardness" and the time comes for it to be in the spotlight for glamourous reason again, everybody will long to ditch their nationality and dream of becoming Muslim. Hahaha! Imagine that! Everybody just risking their lives to make it to Saudi and Iran! Too funny.

Vanny said...

Aaaah it would be bloody brilliant! The Frenchies queuing up in rain or sunshine just to get one day visa to Algeria. Heaven.

Hazar Nesimi said...

french are too proud to admit they want to live in Algeria. Or are they? Oh, spirit of Robespierre call on us, to let us know.