Monday, November 13, 2006

Is Google going to get a fatwa on its head?


(The Guardian) Google has provoked the wrath of Iran's notoriously suspicious authorities by appearing to question the country's sovereignty over the province of Azerbaijan in an entry on its Google Video website.

In a move tailor-made to wound Iranian patriotic pride and arouse a blizzard of protest, the Azeri provincial capital, Tabriz, is located "in southern Azerbaijan, currently in the territory of Iran". To add insult to injury, the ancient city is listed as being in Azerbaijan, rather than Iran. Tabriz and southern Azerbaijan have belonged to Iran for more than 4,000 years.

More and the video here.

1 comment:

Dag said...

I decided to check out a job offer in Baku, Azerbaijan, which brought me to Azerbaijan Airlines, wherein sat a squarish woman in a red military suit that would have looked good on an L.A hotel doorman but on this lady made her look less than feminine. She sat behind her desk and stared at me as I approached, not quite trembling but cautious. I handed her my passport and told her I wished to book a ticket to Baku. She folded her arms across her ample bosoms, so to say, and barked at me in a voice deeper than mine: "Why you want go... Azer! Baijan!"

Hey, I've dealt with all-star wresters before, so I decided to play this one calmly, sort of flatter the girl, but all I could think to say is that her moustache is far nicer than Nietzche's. I passed on the flattery, thinking I don't need any more scars or broken bones.

The details of getting a visa could only come from the mind of a Marxist at work, Groucho Marx, that is. It was incoherent and basically determined in advance to be technically illegal to be in Baku even with a legitimate visa, given that the dates issued didn't and couldn't by design match up with the flights. That way, if one falls afoul of the minders in any fashion at all they have immediate grounds to toss the offender in the bucket for ... who knows how long.

I returned to my flat and told my mates, all experienced world travelers, that i wasx headed to Baku, which promted them to ask where on Earth is that. I laughed, I scoffed, I said knowingly, "You know, there was a time in my life when I didn't even know what kind of money they use in Azerbaijan." Too bad for me that my friends know me, and I was immediately exposed as a terrible bull-shitter. I knew nothing about Azerbaijan.

We could all stand to learn a great deal about our situation regarding that nasty Muslim backwater. It is an open wound in our world from which emanates much of the worse jihadi terror today. Because it's a backwater, much like Afghanistan and Sudan, it is out of mind of most people, and there lays its appeal to the Muslims who organise from its depths. It is also a place from which energetic people can make great progress in the physical struggle against jhihadis, similar to conditions in Jugoslavia during recent the war. It is one place on Earth where the local laws do not apply to Westerners. It's a frontline state and proxy that we have no need to regard as anything other than an enemy state. Ones only meaningful restraint would be prudence.

Post-war Serbs make a living in Chechenia and one might consider as Westerners doing the same in Azerbaijan. The State Dept. might not approve now but it's a matter of time till that becomes a matter of indifference to them at most. Azerbaijan is a goldmine of oil, ready for development and exploitation, a reasonable place for reasonable people under reasonable government and culture, all of which would need be imported.

Azerbaijan is rightly a province of Armenia, and it could and should be part of our modern West. If we do nothing to reincorporate that area to our Christian history as it was, or to restore it to at least its Zoroastrian roots, then we'll be faced with a superating anal fissure of a nation of jihadis till we do act, after who knows how much loss and grief till we do. act.

The place is potentialy paradise, and for those who act to claim it from the savages who today act as our committed enemies there are riches to make a man howl with delight.

I argue, in short, that such a place is ripe for the taking by force. most people, even the well traveled have never heard of it, but it could well be America in a few short generations. Most people have never heard of anything so outrageous as invading a nation and colonizing it. I write this to urge you to think of things never thought before. Make Azerbaijan the 51st American state.