Day: September 23, 2023

Robert Ananyan

My Opinion: That’s right! That’s how you address the “ethnic minorities”,  your neighbors: “brothers and sisters”. This is the correct tone, and that’s what Mr. Aliyev should say also. It takes time. He came closer to it. All ethnic groups of Caucasus are the “brothers and sisters” brought together by History. We started to understand this. 

Georgian PM: To our Abkhazian, Ossetian “brothers and sisters”, only together can we ensure lasting stability, reach our full potential as united nation

 

Michael Novakhov’s favorite articles

 

Michael Novakhov’s favorite articles

 

The Azerbaijani government has begun arresting anti-war activists in the country following its offensive to take over Nagorno-Karabakh. 

At least five people known for publicly criticizing the attack were arrested in the last few days, and one’s whereabouts is unknown.

In the weeks preceding the offensive, Azerbaijani state-run and government-aligned media had mounted a smear campaign against the country’s small community of anti-war voices that emerged after the Second Karabakh War in 2020.

The first reported detention was of former Azerbaijani diplomat Emin Shaig Ibrahimov. He was arrested on September 20 and placed in administrative custody for a month for “spreading prohibited information,” according to his lawyer Agil Layic. 

Layic quoted his client as saying that he was taken from his home by plainclothes officers pretending to be utility workers, and that his house was raided without a warrant, with his laptop and cell phones confiscated. 

“The real reason for his arrest is his use of social media for expressing his views and criticism,” Layic said, quoting his client. 

Ibrahimov has long been known for his skeptical social media posts about Azerbaijan’s activities vis-a-vis Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia. In his last Facebook post before his arrest, he reiterated his belief that Azerbaijan’s blockade of the only road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia, its installation of a checkpoint on that road, and launch of the latest assault, were all agreed with Russia, which has peacekeeping contingent in the Armenian-populated region. 

On the same day, another outspoken critic of Azerbaijan’s war efforts, Amrah Tahmazov, was put in jail for a month on the same charges. Tahmazov is known for his opposition to the 2020 war (in which Azerbaijan retook most of the territory it had lost in the first war in the 1990s) and the Azerbaijani government in general. In May too, he served a one-month administrative sentence after he wrote a Facebook post criticizing President Ilham Aliyev in defense of a fellow hunger-striking activist. 

A day earlier, activist Javid Ahmadov was summoned to the State Security Service, and released after reportedly being interrogated for four hours about his anti-war stance. 

Nemat Abbasov, another activist who is himself a veteran of the 2020 war, was detained on September 20 for a month on charges of disobeying the police. He had written on Facebook that “[a]ny mentality that legitimizes human deaths is stupid and wicked. Whatever their intention, thoughts that serve hatred, death, and any such concepts must be rejected.” 

A day later, journalist Nurlan Gahramanli was arrested for a month on charges of spreading prohibited information. His friends who attended his hearing said he told the court that he had been beaten by officers of the prosecutor’s office. He is quoted as saying that he believes his arrest was because of his anti-war posts.

On September 13, before the offensive, Gahramanli had told VoA that he had been summoned to the State Security Service and threatened with rape for his posts condemning Baku’s apparent plans for a new offensive. 

Another activist, Afiaddin Mammadov, was arrested on charges of hooliganism and intentionally causing damage to a person’s health. His supporters say it was a set-up. According to one fellow activist, he found himself in the vicinity of a person who had stabbed himself, he (Mammadov) was then punched in the face so he could not leave the scene and had the knife forcibly placed in his hand so it would have his fingerprints. 

Another government critic, Movsum Mammadov, was reportedly summoned to the prosecutor’s office in Kurdamir, a town in central Azerbaijan, two days ago. His whereabouts have been unknown since then. In his most recent Facebook posts, he mocked the launch of the new war and lamented the loss of soldiers’ lives. 

The Azerbaijani government has never been at ease with those calling for peace or criticizing the country’s stance on the Karabakh conflict. During the 2020 war, several peace activists were summoned to the State Security Service, though none were arrested at that time. 

In September last year, following Azerbaijan’s attacks on Armenian territory, pro-government media started a campaign against oppositionists who condemned the offensive, calling them traitors. One young politician, Ahmad Mammadli, known for his anti-war calls, was placed in administrative detention at the time. 

And most recently, on the eve of the latest offensive, Azerbaijani media resumed its smear campaign against anti-war activists. 

“During the recent war [President] Aliyev has also continued his usual business of imprisoning his critics,” Altay Goyushov, historian and government critic, posted on X (formerly Twitter). “Several peace activists including Amrah Tahmazov were locked behind bars yesterday. Amrah is accused of violating the internet rules of Azerbaijan, which in the language of local authorities means that he caused troubles to Aliyev’s propaganda ring.” 

California Governor Gavin Newsom late on Friday vetoed a bill to prevent heavy-duty driverless trucks from operating in the state, in a relief for companies developing autonomous technology to haul goods across the U.S.

The labor-backed Assembly Bill 316, which requires a trained human driver to be present in autonomous vehicles weighing over 10,001 pounds, was passed by a heavy majority in both houses of the state legislature.

“Considering… the existing regulatory framework that presently and sufficiently governs this particular technology, this bill is not needed at this time,” Newsom said in a veto message on Friday.

A veto by the governor can still be overturned if the legislature chooses to vote in favor of the bill with a two-thirds majority in each house. This, however, is rare and has not happened in California since 1979.

While many states, including Texas and Arkansas, have allowed the testing and operation of self-driving trucks, California – home to Alphabet (GOOGL.O), Apple (AAPL.O) and some of the most cutting-edge tech startups – bars autonomous trucks weighing more than 10,001 pounds.

But the department of motor vehicles has been working towards developing a regulatory framework to lift that restriction, prompting the suggested bill, industry sources told Reuters.

Developing autonomous technology has proved harder and more expensive than expected, leading to job cuts and even companies shutting shop. Some that are still testing and deploying driverless trucking operations include Aurora (AUR.O), Daimler Truck (DTGGe.DE), Kodiak Robotics and Gatik.

Supporters of the technology say the bill would hamper chances of achieving autonomous hauling of goods, for example, from the bustling seaports in Southern California to locations across the state, and cause future investments in autonomous infrastructure to flow to other states.

But labor unions led by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters have been calling for Governor Newsom to sign the bill, saying autonomous trucks – some of which weigh over 80,000 pounds – were unsafe and would lead to job losses.

Governor Newsom in his veto message said any regulations framed by the department of motor vehicles would be transparent, with inputs from stakeholders and experts to ensure safety.

He directed the labor and workforce development agency to develop recommendations to mitigate any potential impact on jobs from the deployment of such vehicles.

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Allegations by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that India is behind the June killing of a Sikh community leader in Vancouver have placed the nation’s large Indian Canadian community at the center of an escalating diplomatic row.

According to the most recent government statistics, 1.8 million people in Canada, or 5.1% of the population, consider themselves to be of South Asian origin. Just over 770,000 identify themselves as followers of the Sikh religious faith, accounting for more than 2% of the national population. “South Asian” is generally defined as referring to the Indian sub-continent, including present day Pakistan.

Immigration to Canada from the then British-controlled Indian sub-continent started in the late 1800s and has included large numbers of Sikhs. There are estimated to be more than 220,000 followers of the Sikh faith in Greater Vancouver, making up about 8.5% of the metropolitan area’s population.

Reeta Tremblay, who was born in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, is a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Victoria. She says the South Asian community, including Sikh followers, play a huge part in Canada.

“You have lot of entrepreneurial community, even if you look in our Vancouver, you know, in our Vancouver Island, we have very prominent, prominent Sikh community,” she said. “We have lots of prominent non-Sikh Hindus who are in business, in academic sector, professional sectors. So, there’s a huge, you know, there is an influential community.”

This includes Jagmeet Singh, leader of Canada’s New Democratic Party, who is a turban-wearing Sikh.

Attention has been placed on the diaspora since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused India of being behind the June killing in suburban Vancouver of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a prominent Sikh community leader. The Indian government has reacted with warnings about travel to Canada and by halting the issuing of travel visas to Canadians.

Nijjar was a prominent supporter of Khalistan, a proposed separatist sovereign enclave for Sikhs in the current state of Punjab, India.

Dave Hayer, who has lived in suburban Vancouver since immigrating in 1972, has experienced much of the local Sikh community’s recent history.

His father, Tara Singh Hayer, was publisher of the Indo-Canadian Times and was often critical of violence within the local effort to create Khalistan. He was paralyzed by an assassination attempt in 1988 and killed 10 years later.

A former elected member of the provincial legislature, he feels that Trudeau should have provided more evidence before accusing India, but he also says New Delhi is going too far.

“I think the prime minister overdid by what he said, because he should have shown what proof he has, but the senior officials from the RCMP or other law enforcement agencies show what proof they had to say what he was saying,” he said. “I think India is also probably overreacting to the case.”

University of Victoria’s Tremblay recalled that when Trudeau was first elected, he talked about having more Sikh followers in his Cabinet than Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had in his. The comment that did not go over well with the Indian leader.

A longshot candidate for governor in the U.S. state of Missouri and his supporters describe his use of a flamethrower at a recent “Freedom Fest” event outside St. Louis as no big deal. They said it was a fun moment for fellow Republicans who attended, and that no one talked about burning books as he torched a pile of cardboard boxes.

But after the video gained attention on social media, State Sen. Bill Eigel said he would burn books he found objectionable, and that he’d do it on the lawn outside the governor’s mansion. He later said it was all a metaphor for how he would attack the “woke liberal agenda.”

“From a dramatic sense, if the only thing in between the children in the state of Missouri and vulgar pornographic material like that getting in their hands is me burning, bulldozing or launching (books) into outer space, I’m going to do that,” Eigel said in an interview with The Associated Press. “However, I would I make the point that I don’t believe it’s going to come to that.”

Experts say Eigel’s use of the flamethrower is a sign that rhetoric and imagery previously considered extreme are now being treated as normal in American politics. While Eigel didn’t actually destroy books, his later statement about burning ones he deemed offensive ratcheted up fears that the video’s circulation and his words on social media could help take the U.S. to a darker place.

“The slippery slope is that everything is a joke — everything can be kind of waved away,” said Kurt Braddock, an assistant professor of public communications at American University in Washington. “Everything can be seen as just rhetoric until it can’t anymore and people start using it as an excuse to actually hurt people.”

The 30-second video that put Eigel at the center of a social media storm is from a Sept. 15 event for Republicans at a winery near tiny Defiance, Missouri, about 48 kilometers west of St. Louis. He and another state senator shot long streams of flame onto a pile of cardboard in front of an appreciative crowd.

The video posted on the X platform, formerly known as Twitter, caught the attention of Jonathan Riley, a liberal activist in Durham, North Carolina, who posted Sunday that it showed “Missouri Republicans at a literal book burning,” though he’d later walk that statement back to a “metaphorical” book burning.

“It fit a narrative that they wanted to put out there,” Freedom Fest organizer Debbie McFarland said about claims that Eigel burned books. “It just didn’t happen to be the truth.”

Some of Republicans’ skepticism over the online outrage stems from Eigel’s status as a dark horse candidate to replace term-limited Republican Gov. Mike Parson. The best known candidates for the August 2024 GOP primary are Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe.

The Ashcroft campaign declined to respond to the video, the uproar it caused or Eigel’s follow-up statement. Kehoe’s campaign had no official comment, but Gregg Keller, a Republican consultant working on Kehoe’s campaign, said Eigel’s promise to burn objectionable books is “typical electioneering hyperbole.”

He added, “I would challenge you to find me any non-psychotic Republican who has actually burned” a book deemed objectionable by conservatives.

Eigel posted on the X platform that his flamethrower stunt was meant to show what he would do to the “swamp” in the state capital of Jefferson City, but “let’s be clear, you bring those woke pornographic books to Missouri schools to try to brainwash our kids, and I’ll burn those too — on the front lawn of the governor’s mansion.”

Republicans across the U.S. are backing conservative efforts to purge schools and libraries of materials with LGBTQ+ themes or books with LGBTQ+ characters. The issue resonates with Republicans in Missouri. An AP VoteCast survey of Missouri voters in the 2022 midterm elections showed that more than 75% of those voting for GOP candidates thought the K-8 schools in their community were teaching too much about gender identity or sexual orientation.

The outcry also comes after Missouri’s Republican-supermajority Legislature banned gender-affirming health care for transgender minors and required K-12 and college students to play on sports teams that match their sex assigned at birth. Eigel has sponsored measures to ban schools from teaching about gender identity or gender-affirming care and to make it a crime to perform in drag in public.

Aggressive and even violent imagery have long been a part of American politics. It can sometimes backfire.

Large guns have been a popular prop for some Republicans. Last year, a Black candidate seeking the Republican nomination in an Arizona congressional district aired an ad in which he held an AR-15 rifle as people wearing Ku Klux Klan robes and hoods tried to storm a home. He finished last.

In Missouri in 2016, Republican candidate and ex-Navy SEAL Eric Greitens ran an ad featuring him firing 100 rounds from a machine gun on his way to winning the governor’s race. After a sex and invasion-of-privacy scandal in 2018 forced him to resign, he attempted a political comeback in the state’s 2022 U.S. Senate race, running an ad featuring him with a shotgun declaring he was going hunting for RINOs, or Republicans in Name Only. He finished third in the primary.

Flamethowers also have popped up previously. In 2020, a GOP congressional candidate in Alabama showed her support for then-President Donald Trump by torching a mockup of the first articles of impeachment against him. She finished third in the primary. And in South Dakota, Gov. Kristi Noem’s staff gave her a flamethrower last year as a Christmas gift.

Experts who study political extremism said images involving fire or bonfires have long been associated with extremist groups. Eigel’s critics quickly posted online images involving the Ku Klux Klan and Nazi book burnings before World War II.

Evan Perkoski, an associate political science professor at the University of Connecticut, said it’s been “traditional” for extremist groups to use images of fire to “simultaneously intimidate people and signal their intentions to destroy what exists and to rebuild or start over.”

“We’ve seen this time and time again from groups across countries where groups will burn effigies, crosses and other items, or even just film themselves around large conflagrations,” he said in a email to AP. “A large part of their motivation is the symbolic, frightening nature of fire.”

Experts continue to worry about how social media can spread extreme or violent images or words to potentially millions of people, increasing the chances of a single person seeing the material as a call to violence.

Javed Ali, a former senior FBI counterterrorism official who’s now an associate professor at the University of Michigan, said law enforcement agencies struggle with thwarting homegrown political violence. He said the sheer volume of social media postings means, “Sometimes, you almost have to get lucky in order to stop it.”

Braddock, the American University professor, said that after portraying a flamethrower as a weapon against “the woke agenda,” Eigel’s supporters don’t need “that big a leap of logic” to see it as a tool for settling actual political grievances. Talking about book burning enough can plant the idea in people’s minds so that “people think it’s actually a righteous thing to do.”

Ali added: “That’s a pretty dangerous game to play.”

Eigel said he’s not worried the video will inspire violence in “reasonable, everyday Missourians,” which he said is the majority of people. But he said he’s concerned about the number of threats he, his family and his staff have received as a result.