Next week, the week of August 8, Blogrel will host the Carnival of Revolutions. See something on the web that is revolution-oriented? Please submit it here: http://conservativecat.com/Ferdy/Carnivals.htm or directly to me.

In this time, in our time, we’re witnessing history unfolding every day, a spontaneous explosion of political activity breaking out around the world. We’ve seen it in Ukraine. We’ve seen it in Lebanon. But it’s happening in countless other (often neglected) places. There is so much happening, it’s often hard to keep up. The Carnival of Revolutions tries to provide a useful summary of the past week’s progress on the march of freedom in the world.

Not all of the news is great. Some is even depressing. But we’re here to tell the stories of the democratic reformers around the world, struggling for free and fair elections and/or other basic rights necessary for any democracy. We are conservatives, we are liberals, we are Democrats, we are Republicans, and we are everything in between.

We share one powerful goal, however: the advance of liberty in the world.

Democratic reformers living in “fear societies” don’t necessarily need guns or large wads of cash to succeed. They do need:

- people to “tell their story”
- people to “hear their story”
- people to “know their story”
- people to “feel their story”

…which is where we come in.

The US Senate is going to introduce a resolution calling for free and fair parliamentary elections in the Republic of Azerbaijan.

Chuck Hagel, John McCain, and Joe Biden are co-sponsoring this bill, S.RES.226. [text not on the web until Monday]

[source and source and source]

Maybe this is a who cares type of situation, but maybe not. Why does McCain or Hagel or Biden care about AZ?

There was a moderately strong earthquake in Yerevan overnight. While it was felt stronger because it was at night, it was only magnitude 3.1, with epicenter at the village of Parakar (near Zvartnots Airport).

According to REGNUM, the earthquake struck at 2:10 a.m. on July 30, and its intensity in Yerevan was IV-V points.

According to the seismic gap theory, periodic moderate and small-magnitude quakes are good as they release the energy in the fault. A disclaimer: this explanation would probably not suit well with many residents of Nork Masiv and Nork Marash who fled outside in the middle of the night.

In addition to an earlier post by Katy, on July 29 the Government of Uzbekistan formally asked the U.S. to evacuate the base.

According to BBC,

The notice to leave Karshi-Khanabad air base, known as K2, was given to the US embassy in the Uzbek capital on Friday.

A Pentagon spokesman said the US was “evaluating the note to see exactly what it means”.

A hint for the Pentagon: it means “get out.” This was predictable though. Close cooperation and cozying up to the Karimov regime (known among other things for boiling its opponents, shooting 800+ people in Andijan, and selecting the 15th century ogre Tamerlane as the national hero of Uzbekistan) was not compatible with Bush’s pledge not to work with tyrannies, most recently given in his second inaugural. The Bush people may not take their own words seriously, but Karimov did - he thought U.S. is out there to get him.

Why is relevant for Armenia? The South Caucasus, including Armenia, is an overflight zone for U.S. aircraft en route to Afghanistan. They will now have to go elsewhere (maybe in our region?), or abandon this route completely.

We have posted quite a lot on Vova Arutyunian in Georgia and his adventures in breeding hamsters and throwing grenades at Bush. Now the Georgian newspapers report that a suspect in February terrorist explosion in Gori was formerly a high-ranking military intelligence officer in the Azeri Army.

According to Rezonansi (as reported by Civil Georgia),

Anatoly Sysoev was born in 1950 in Tbilisi and served in the Soviet, and then Russian military intelligence (GRU). In 1992 he officially resigned from service, but left for Azerbaijan the same year and participated in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in 1992-1995 as a head of field intelligence of the Azerbaijani field artillery.

Civil Georgia reported earlier that

Georgian Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili alleged on July 25 that agents of Russia’s Main Intelligence Administration (GRU - Glavnoye Razvedovatelnoye Upravlenie) were behind a car bomb explosion in Gori on February 1, which resulted in death of three Georgian policemen.

He said that the law enforcers arrested in the South Ossetian conflict zone two persons who are suspected in carrying out this terrorist act. Merabishvili said that the third person, with links to this explosion is also arrested.

“According to our information, year and half ago colonel of the Russia’s GRU Anatoly Sisoev has set up a group of saboteurs, which, according to our information was trained on the territory of Russia… This group has carried out the terrorist act here in Gori,” Merabishvili said at a news conference which was held in Gori.

Information on Sysoev can be found here:
Azeri “Ekho” newspaper (in English)
Azerbaijan Monitor Newspaper (in Russian)

Earlier today I posted about a letter being sent to President Kocharyan about the scholar Yektan Turkyilmaz. I’ve received an update that a number of Armenian and Armenian-American academics have signed the letter and that a copy was sent to Yerevan on Friday. An updated list will be sent on Monday, noon Istanbul time (GMT + 2), 2 hours behind Yerevan. I’m sure that supportive Armenian citizens and Armenian-Americans, not to mention politicians adding their names to the list could be helpful.

Interested? E-mail Dr. Ayse Gul Altinay

I made a category so now you can see all of the weird Armenian stuff on eBay that we’ve posted.

Here’s today’s:

Via Oneworld, BBC News has an article on Georgia’s education system and the efforts to improve it rapidly, especially via standardized testing.

See more Blgorel education in Georgia coverage here.

Via ArmeniaNow, a new law that will be debated in the fall will allow lobbying groups access to the National Assembly. Parliamentarians would be required to reply to proposals presented by accredited lobbyists.

In general, Armenian NGO representatives and small and medium entrepreneurs present at the discussion were happy with the draft law, because they believe it will allow them not only to voice their concerns about social and economic aspects of life in Armenia but also be more involved in affecting legislative changes.

As reported by Azg, via Groong, the HayFilm studio is now up for sale after many months of anticipation from interested buyers. The asking price is: 266968 thousands AMD and the winner must invest a minimum of 30 billion AMD in 10 years and to guarantee the maintenance of working profile for at least 50 years. [all this from the privitization.am site]

Matt blogged on Hayfilm earlier this year. A few different business people and investors have already showed interest. ArmeniaNow covered one. ArmeniaDiaspora covered a few more.

Wouldn’t it be fun for a bunch of people got together and bought it?

What do we know about HyeFilm? Arm-Cinema has the most background, but I think that it would be interesting to do an investment study, nonetheless.

There is a letter circulating that will eventually be presented to Robert Kocharyan asking that the Kurdish-Turkish scholar Yektan Turkyilmaz [see our coverage] be released and his digital research material returned to him. It is organized by a number of Turkish scholars that have worked on Genocide research like Taner Akcam and Fatma Muge Gocek. Orhan Pamuk is involved as well.

The Committee for Solidarity with Yektan Turkyilmaz is headed by Ayse Altinay who can be e-mailed at altinay@sabanciuniv.edu, if anyone is interested in signing this petition.

Please see the letter after the jump
more…

One of my favorite personal blogs, Glendale Chick (a 20-something college student in Glendale, she’s Armenian and outspoken and I love reading her stuff), commented on the discussion on Cilicia.com and here about Armenian pop stars. She hypothesizes that Sirousho and some other young Armenian women that she knows in Glendale are victims of Daddy Girl’s Syndrome: their personal self-esteem and success is based upon their social status. They are very sweet to elders, choose friendships based on social ladder climbing… you can imagine.

What I find interesting is that in my time, during my college years, spent observing (AKA hanging out with) young Armenian-Americans, I focused most of my negative feelings on the young men. The double standard that I saw examples of happened more often than I liked: the young men could attend college, the young women could only if they remained at home (or maybe if they lived in an all-women’s dorm, maybe); young men could date non-Armenians, the young women could not; young men didn’t have curfews, young women did…

I felt that the young women were victims of this system. Enjoying playing social status games was all there was to do without school or a job.

I’d like to hear other people’s thoughts on this.

I will state that this is NOT the situation in every Armenian-American home, nor is it right or wrong; rather it seems to occur in many families that are less assimilated.

Hey, GlendaleChick, inch es asum? Want to write a young female Armenian in America commentary for Blogrel?

There is so little on the web about Armenian pop stars / celebrities. I’d love for someone in the know to start writing about it. Any of you out there interested in doing a monthly update? People.am has a little bit, as does abide.am, but I think it would be fun to have something regular on here in English. If interested, please e-mail me. Pop culture is still culture. We’ll create a seperate category for it so people not interested won’t have to read it.

Why pop stars, you ask?
more…

It isn’t Armenia, sure, but the status of American military bases in the neighborhood certainly is topical.

The New York Times did a Q&A on these bases today.

The United States maintains two bases in Central Asia, one each in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, for its postwar operations in Afghanistan. A regional group led by Russia and China has pressured the United States to remove its forces from Central Asia. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in response to recent political tension over the issue with leaders in both Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, traveled to Central Asia July 25 to discuss the U.S. military’s arrangements in the region. The United States says the bases are necessary for its efforts in Afghanistan and claims it does not intend to have a permanent presence in the region.

more…

thinking-east.net’s new issue is up today.

Topics include:

* A glimpse of life in the Caucasus
* Signs of Identity Crisis: Quest for novel solutions in Central Asia
* Special Interest in focus
* Godliness and goodness in a globalised world

There is even an article that I co-wrote with Marianna about US government exchange programs.

Assa Irada via Baku Today reports that Azerbaijani citizens do not consider fair elections a priority.

Azerbaijanis want the current situation in the country to remain unchanged and advocate for ‘preserving the positive dynamics’. Most of the people are satisfied with the present situation and support the government, the survey said.

I’m skeptical because this report did not give any numbers for these opinions.

Perhaps more interesting is that Azerbaijanis are nearly evenly divided as to where they think that the country’s allegence should be: USA or Russia.

39% of the participants said Azerbaijan should primarily aspire to close partnership with Russia, while 36% named the United States as the country’s closest ally, 2% cited Turkey and 1% - Iran.

We were going to cool down on our coverage of the Georgia grenade situation, but in light of some comments made during earlier postings, I wanted to share this from Civil.Ge:

President Saakashvili said on July 26 that it is inadmissible to make focus on ethnic origins of the criminal suspects, who have been recently arrested for Bush grenade incident and Gori car bomb explosion.

“Media often speaks about Armenian origins [of Vladimer Arutunian, who is suspected in Bush grenade incident] and about the fact that the grenade was Armenian-made. The same is about those terrorists, who were behind explosion in Gori [suspects are ethnic Ossetians]. There is no need to stressing their ethnic origins,” Saakashvili said while addressing Georgian policemen on July 26.

Saakashvili said the Georgian citizens are different not by their ethnicity, but by the way they serve their country.

A lot of people know that I collect Soviet children’s books, especially Armenian hekiatner (fairy tales).

Today I stumbled across McGill University’s online guide to Soviet children’s literature from the 1920s and 1920s. It is a lot of fun to look through.

I also collect Soviet propaganda posters, especially those directed at youth. Here’s a nice one from one of McGill’s books:

Enjoy!

The World Wildlife Federation’s bi-monthly newsletter was published today.

Topics covered:

* Shikahogh
* Environmental Awareness in the Media

Among others.

The Venice Commission posted its conclusions on the revised draft of the Armenian Constitutional amendments.

Among notable recommendations and statements are:

32. The revised draft constitutional amendments represent an undoubted improvement as compared to earlier drafts commented upon by the Venice Commission. In the opinion of the Commission, their adoption in the second reading and subsequently a successful constitutional referendum on the basis of this text would constitute a good basis for ensuring the compliance of the Armenian Constitution with the European standards in the fields of respect for human rights, democracy and the rule of law, and would pave the way to further European integration. The Commission acknowledges the efforts and the good will of the Armenian authorities.

33. It is certainly important that the discussions of the final text be pursued in an open and transparent manner with the opposition forces and the civil society in Armenia. The broadest political consensus must be found.

34. The next main challenge will be to organise an appropriate referendum campaign leading to the adoption of the new Constitution for Armenia. The Commission encourages the Armenian authorities to do their utmost to ensure the success of the constitutional reform in November 2005. The reform must be presented in due time and form to the Armenian people. To this end, it is crucial that the referendum campaign be fairly, adequately and extensively broadcast by the media.

And finally, the next paragraph is a diplomatic putdown to both the ruling class and the opposition: take your duties seriously!

35. The Commission wishes to underline that the success of this process of constitutional reforms depends on and is the mirror of the maturity of the Armenian political class. Not only the majority, but also the opposition must prove their capability of compromising in order to achieve a workable political environment, which only can lead to democracy in Armenia.

We’ve had previous postings on this subject. Hopefully, a working compromise can be found and Recommendations #33 and 34 will be followed. The key challenges now are (1) to make sure the text is not subverted in the final reading like it happened in April 2003; (2) the ruling parties must work delicately with the opposition to ensure their cooperation - something Noyan Tapan’s David Petrosian claims is happening; and (3) ensure that the public at large is aware and interested in the Constitutional reform.