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?

Newly Independent

There are no more people more happy with US now than Muslims in a certain land. Do not dismiss this as an outlandish, for this certain land is Kosovo and people are Albanians of Kosovo. They adore Bush and for a good reason.

Unilaterally declared independence is not a step easily supported by Great Powers, and as such appears to be strange. Understood therefore is Russian rage and disbelief of Orthodox Christians, who look in dismay on selling out of a sacred land (Kosovo is remembered by Orthodox Serbians as a sight of a famous battle with Ottomans and their defeat at the hand of thereof). Nuns and priests with crosses crying over Kosovo was a pitiful sight, and rage towards the "Unchristian" and Satanic West selling them out was palpably real.

I have just recently read in a radical Islamist newspaper thatthe true reason behind American support for Albanians is not altruism but a desire, to split Islamic unity at the time where fight with the West is intensifying.

In all of this a plight of Albanians themselves is of least importance. They have decided their fate by voting and now have come in cautiously into international spotlight, waiting in line to join Europe. They do not want to live in Serbia after what have been done to them, nor are Serbians are willing to accomodate them.

Kosovo's declaration of independence is controversial. With the disintegration of communism in Europe, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia broke down into their constituent, formally sovereign republics, the last of which (declaring independence) was Montenegro (3 June 2006). The separation of Kosovo is politically of a different nature, as Kosovo did not possess the republic status. For this reason, a number of countries fear that it is a precedent, affecting other contested territories in Europe and non-European parts of the former Soviet Union, such as Chechnya (which although not one of the original Soviet republics, now does have republic status).

The text of Kosovo's declaration of independence addressed this issue by stating " ... Observing that Kosovo is a special case arising from Yugoslavia's non-consensual breakup and is not a precedent for any other situation, Recalling the years of strife and violence in Kosovo, that disturbed the conscience of all civilized people, ...". In other words, Kosovo's declaration of independence claims that Kosovo is a special case after the crisis in the 1990s and that it is not a precedent for this reason. Nevertheless, a number of countries like Spain and Cyprus do not plan to recognise Kosovo as an independent state because they fear that it will be regarded a precedent. It is also true for Azerbaijan, who may feel a certain affinity to Albanian case, but considers recognition of Kosovo independence detrimental to its national interest with Nagorno-Karabakh trying to be recognized. We should not allow it to happen.

Nevertheless the jenie is out of the bottle and has to be delt with. As a human being and a Muslim I am with Albanians on this one. As an Azeri nationalist I worry about the precedent that has now been set.

Dolce Vita Rubbished

I always wondered how Italy is governed - of courseI knew that it is corrupt and partially incompetent, and I knew about paralysis of government which plagued the country after the war, and how successive governments were unable to take on organized crime. Yet it is a dynamic country - a great exporter of high-end goods, a tourist destination and an envy of the World. How is it so, that country always paralyzed by indecision and infighting in the fractured government - where scandal is never far away - managed to become a great European economic powerhose and a source of almost all good quality fashions and textiles? I assume that Italians are best to be left with no government at all. History has to be called to explain economic success of Dolce Vita!

The practical problems of rubbish collectionin Naples are complicated by the fact that the local organised crime network,known as the Camorra, has created a multi-billion dollar industry of waste management in and around the city.