Global Voices Online

Önər Blog [AZ] posts a video [EN] made by the OL! Azerbaijani Youth Movement for the Democracy Video Challenge. OL! has been exemplary in its use of new media in the region and was co-founded by now imprisoned video blogging youth activist Adnan Hajizade.

AZ Cookbook, Food from Azerbaijan & Beyond, turns two and marks the occasion with a recipe for cream cheese-swirled brownies.

Global Voices Online's Caucasus editor interviews journalist Seda Muradyan on her documentary film, From Home to Home, for the Frontline Club blog. The film tells of how Armenians and Azerbaijanis in two villages made an extraordinary deal as the conflict over Nagorno Karabakh flared up.

Flying Carpets and Broken Pipelines comments on the selective application of the law in Azerbaijan and uses the example of imprisoned video blogging youth activists Adnan Hajizade and Emin Milli to illustrate its point.

The Armenian Observer comments on the twentieth anniversary of the pogrom of Armenians in Baku at the beginning of the conflict with Armenia over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh. Between 48 and 66 people were killed as a result of the bloody ethnic tensions which would later erupt into full scale war and which until this day, despite the 1994 ceasefire, remains unresolved. The blog notes that the Armenian and Azerbaijani media continues to exaggerate the death toll of a series of atrocities committed by both sides against the other and says that there can be no healing until such a situation changes.

Flying Carpets and Broken Pipelines experiences Baku at morning and night, reflecting on the Azerbaijani capital and the social, economic and political situation in the country.

Emotions on Air, Mind Mute visits an orphanage in Azerbaijan and compares the officially stated aim of making 2009 the Year of Children with the reality faced by those seemingly forgotten and destined to remain in residential care.

Women's Forum interviews blogger Scary Azeri, now also a contributor to the online gender-specific site based in Azerbaijan. The blogger, born and raised in the oil-rich former Soviet republic, speaks about her blog and reaction to it. Crossing many cultural divides, the blog has already become popular with foreigners as well as those living in the South Caucasus region. Global Voices Online interviewed Scary Azeri in July.

Flying Carpets and Broken Pipelines says that the start of a new year has not been kind to Azerbaijan with several stories breaking that the blog describes as gloomy. In particular, it mentions new charges against an imprisoned journalist, threats to cut electricity supplies to households that have not paid their bills, and the occupation of a village in the Azeri exclave of Nakhichevan by special police forces after the Day of Ashura.