What can we do to change the minds of decision makers and people in general to actually do something about preparing for the forthcoming economic/energy crises (the ones after this one!)?
Honestly, even Britain's best comedians would have a job writing the stories of repression in Azerbaijan and the genuflection of the Eurovision organisers in front of the Azeri state!
It's amazing what you can get away with when you've got a lot of oil and gas to export... and your country happens to by close to two US theatres of operations.
The Free Range News and Alerts Network Eurovision Song Contest 2012 Bulldozes Homes and Human Rights European Broadcasting Union organises whitewash of Azerbaijan's human rights abuses in the guise of 'culture'
OK, strange subject line, but true; people are being forcibly removed from their homes for the continental festival of schalger music, Eurovision. If you've watched events in Central Asia for a while, you may have heard of some of the excesses of the states which Western nations now support as a bulwark against "international terror". Fuelled by oil wealth, in Azerbaijan this sorry story has taken a new twist. In order to beautify the city of Baku and construct facilities for the Eurovision Song Contest 2012 (22nd to 26th May 2012), people are being evicted to clear sites for construction of contest facilities.
Azerbaijan, despite its inclusion in European institutions such as the European Broadcasting Union (organisers of Eurovision), does not uphold the principles of democracy and civil rights which Europe enacted following the Second World War. National and international human rights and democracy groups are not exactly welcome in Azerbaijan – as shown in August when, in defiance of the law and a court order, the building used by various human rights organisations in Baku was bulldozed by the state. That came in the wake of a government crack-down on protest to put down any chance of a public mass movement developing in Azerbaijan in the wake of the Arab Spring.
Now the bulldozers are back again – this time to make way for the facilities that will broadcast the Eurovision Song Contest 2012. People are being forcibly evicted from their homes – the water, gas and electricity having been previously disconnected to encourage them to leave – in order to make way for the redevelopment of parts of the city which will host the contest. Some have even been arrested on concocted charges and held in custody so that their homes could be demolished.
