Tag Archives: azerbaijan

15 Jan

Qualities in boy and girl children in the Caucasus – window into cultural differences?

Fairly regularly people ask me how the Caucasus countries are similar and different. For the most part the 3 countries share a lot. But there are some meaningful differences, to me, qualitatively.

But one way to look at this is to think about how people raise their children. I don’t have any literature on this, but I *imagine* that there is a pretty solid argument that values passed onto children is a strong reflection of cultural values.

As such, from the 2007 Caucasus Barometer…

Independence
Hard work
Feeling of responsibility
Imagination
Tolerance/respect
Thrift
Determination/perseverance
Religious faith
Unselfishness
Obedience
Modesty

were the choices given to participants (adults in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia) and they were asked “which of these qualities should be encouraged in boy/girl children?” and they could choose multiple ones.

gener

In all countries and across both genders, hard work was the most popular quality. Feeling of responsibility was also rated pretty highly.

Looking at this overall, there were a few interesting blips.

Starting at the top, Armenians were much less likely to want to encourage independence in boy children. This was also the case for girl children (although, notably, girls were much less likely to be encouraged to be independent than boys in all the countries.)

Azerbaijanis were much more likely than Armenians or Georgians to encourage imagination in their children. It is also possible that the way that the word imagination was translated could have impacted this. Of all of these, I think that it is the vaguest term.

Armenians are much more likely to teach their children tolerance. Let’s all think of this for a bit.

Determination was fairly popular trait for boys, but Armenians were much more likely to pick this than Azerbaijanis or Georgians.

Georgians, unsurprisingly, were the most religious.

Now, obedience and modesty – these are key issues for Caucasus girls. And in all countries, this was emphasized for girls much more than boys. Armenian in particular had a very high rating for these. I would suggest, however, that translation could have come into play. There are some ways to translate “modesty” that imply sexuality, for example.

But all, in all, I think that this does say something about the similarities and differences between these countries.

14 Jan

#protestbaku – now that the weekend is over, what happened?

bird
Here’s the at-the-time-of-the-protest analysis.
And here are some updates from Sunday.

nodexl

Link to full.

So 517 people tweeted.

The most “networked” of those 517 are:
aztwi
ilKinHasani
muntezir
hajiyev
eminmilli
FuserLimon
JamalAliBaku
katypearce (that’s me – full disclosure)
turkhankarim
Khadija0576

And the users who were replied to the most:
raufmardiyev
muntezir
katypearce
turkhankarim
ruslanazad
azer_rammstein
petrasovdat
miriw_seyidli
hurriyet
mrnikog

But the users who were “talked about” the most:
fuserlimon
raufmardiyev
ilkinhasani
hajiyev
huseynovaturkan
muntezir
damirama
arxayferecli
islam_shikhali
turanoza

And who tweeted the most?
favstar_pop
asteris
PsychoticLynx
KizlaRepublic
PicoBee
hkubra
bakunews
Smiling_Gem
rrichard09
GoldenTent

Also, my analysis of the hashtag seems to be the most tweeted URL.

So let’s talk about the groups.

Group 1 is full of Azerbaijani tweeters that I don’t know. The center of the network though is the aztwi account, which as I understand is sort of like an aggregation site of Azerbaijani tweets.
I don’t get a sense that this group is on one side or the other. Their hashtags, for example, range from the anti-government raufgetqarnıvıqaşı to the pro-goverment khadijautan.

Group 2 is a mix of on-the-ground people that often tweet in English with foreigners that are interested. eminmilli, fuserlimon, khadija0576, ljmaximus, with the regular crowd (myself included) of Azerbaijan watchers.
Obviously this is the group with which I’m most familiar, but just to share – this group had a hashtag of #humanrights as well as the other popular tags. Like I said the other day, this group did some logistics about police.

Group 3 is Baxtiyar Hajiyev’s group. Like I wrote on Sunday, it seems to me that Baxtiyar exists in a separate network from those mentioned above.
How was Baxtiyar’s group different from Group 2? I’m not entirely sure, but as I said, I think that this may come down to language.

Group 4 is the pro-government youth groups, led by raufmardiyev.
They had totally different hashtags, URLs linked to… basically totally different. They also are notable for their use of the term YOLO as well as their “Shame on Khadija” campaign against a journalist.

—

I hope that this is interesting for people. I’m happy to run analyses like this on other hashtags or answer more questions!

13 Jan

More news coverage from Azerbaijan

—

Programme summary of Azeri ANS TV “Xabarci” news 1700 gmt 12 Jan 13
BBC Monitoring International Reports – Sunday, January 13, 2013
Presenter Nigar Mahmudova

1. 0010 Headlines.

2. 0100 The Armenian armed forces have fired on Azerbaijani positions in Fuzuli District. No casualties are reported.

3. 0116 In a comment on the death of soldier Ceyhun Qubadov in a military unit in Daskasan District, the commander of the Samkir army Corps, Lt-Gen Rovsan Akbarov, said that two people have been arrested over the death incident and that every officer who is responsible for the incident will be punished. He also added that the claims about the beating of Qubadov are baseless.

4. 0233 Today a group of young people tried to stage a rally in Baku’s Fountains Square in protest at the death of soldier Ceyhun Qubadov. The police have demanded the participants in the rally to disperse as it was unauthorized. The participants in the rally chanted slogans: “Martyrs do not die! Country will not be divided!”, “Our soldiers should not die, our army should not turn into a morgue!”

5. 0310 The deputy chief of the Baku Police Main Department told ANS TV that about 350-400 people participated in the rally protesting the death of the army private and that 50 participants in the rally have been detained by the police for the violation of the public order.

6. 0338 A woman has died of carbon monoxide in northern Quba District.

7. 0553 Report on reconstruction work carried out in a section of the Qazimammad-Qazax pipeline which was damaged after the blast on 11 January.

8. 0845 Bad weather has inflicted damage to country’s economy to the tune of 10m manats.

9. 1122 Foreign news: France; Mali; the USA.

10. 1635 Nine years have passed since the introduction of the Latin alphabet in Azerbaijan .

11. 1920 Report on a camel in Yemen.

12. 2000 Presenter signs off. Weather.

—

Azeris stage protest over soldier’s death, several detained
BBC Monitoring International Reports – Saturday, January 12, 2013
A group of people in Azerbaijan ‘s capital Baku are staging a rally protesting against the death of an army private, the Baku-based private APA news agency reported on 12 January. Some of the protesters were detained by the police.

A group of parents, whose sons died during military service in the army started the rally. They said that the soldiers had not died in combat and demanded that those responsible for their deaths be found and punished, APA reported.

The participants in the rally are carrying placards with slogans: “Martyrs do not die! Country will not be divided!”, “Our soldiers should not die, our army should not turn into a morgue!”, “End to the death of soldiers!”, APA said.

At first, police did not interfere, but later they demanded that the protesters disperse, saying that the rally was not authorized, APA reported, adding that several protesters, who chanted political slogans, were detained.

BBCM note: The rally was organized by a Facebook group following the death of an army private Ceyhun Qubadov, who died in a Defence Ministry unit in western Daskasan District on 7 January. A total of 77 Azerbaijani privates died in non-combat incidents in 2012.

—

Programme summary of Azeri ANS TV “Xabarci” news 1700 gmt 11 Jan 13
BBC Monitoring International Reports – Sunday, January 13, 2013
Presenter Nigar Mahmudova

1. 0010 Headlines.

2. 0059 The Armenian armed forces have fired on Azerbaijani positions in Agdam, Goranboy and Tartar districts. No casualties are reported.

3. 0111 A blast took place in a section of the Qazimammad-Qazax pipeline passing through Goycay District on 11 January.

4. 0310 The head of the press service of the Azerbaijani Prosecutor-General’s Office, Eldar Sultanov, told ANS TV that Prosecutor-General Zakir Qaralov has received the mother of soldier Ceyhun Qubadov who died in a military unit in western Daskasan District on 7 January. He also said that two suspects – a soldier and an officer have been arrested over the case.

5. 0404 The mother of the deceased soldier , Samira Qubadova, has addressed the public, saying he believes that the criminal case launched into the death of her son will be investigated objectively and the people responsible for the death of the soldier will be punished and that no-one has the right to use her sorrow for political gains.

6. 0435 Azerbaijani Ombudsman Elmira Suleymanova has appealed to the Military Prosecutor’s Office over the death of soldier Ceyhun Qubadov, asking to punish all culprits.

7. 0453 The Azerbaijani Prosecutor-General’s Office has issued a statement over the death of Sevinc Babayeva whose name was featured in controversial videos circulated by the former university rector Elsad Abdullayev. The statement says the investigation into the case is under way.

8. 0551 The judge of the Baku Serious Crimes Court, Haci Agababa Babayev, whose name was featured in a controversial video circulated by Elsad Abdullayev, has resigned from his post.

9. 0627 Report on snowfall in Samaxi District.

10. 0820 Report on a traffic jam caused by bad weather in Baku.

11. 1027 Air temperature will go up in the country starting from tomorrow.

12. 1040 Report on life insurance.

13. 1346 IDP families residing in hostels in Baku will be resettled to new houses in February.

14. 1524 Military training held at schools are inadequate; video report.

15. 1802 Sas newspaper marks its 22nd birthday today.

16. 1840 Report on Microsoft company’s privacy policy.

17. 1915 Presenter signs off.

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Security tightened in Azerbaijani capital ahead of rally – agency
BBC Monitoring International Reports – Saturday, January 12, 2013
Security has been heightened in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku ahead of the upcoming protest over the death of an army private in Azerbaijan , Baku-based private Turan news agency reported on 12 January.

The agency said the Azerbaijani authorities were “extremely afraid” of the upcoming rally and were taking all measures to prevent it.

“Police units and security services have been amassed in every district (in schools) of the capital since morning, and they are waiting for instructions,” the agency said.

“Yesterday [11 January], the authorities embarked on unprecedented propaganda. On behalf of numerous pro-government NGOs, they addressed people, urging them to call off the rally and refrain from destabilizing the situation,” the agency added.

“The grieved mother of soldier Ceyhun Qubadov, who had died in the military unit in Daskasan District, was shown by TV channels. In depression, she was calling on young people not to attend the rally, although just yesterday she was indignant urging the public not to remain silent,” the agency said.

The rally is to be held planned in the centre of Baku at about 12gmt on 12 January.

Original Source: Turan news agency, Baku

—-

13 Jan

#protestbaku hashtag versions 2 and 3

Since people are so fond of my first analysis, here’s a new one that is more up-to-date.

This is a bit harder to understand because it now includes all the people that have been retweeting, but hey, thought I’d share…

nodexl

Link to full version

Who is the most popular on this hashtag?

Top 10 Vertices, Ranked by Betweenness Centrality:
aztwi
ilKinHasani
muntezir
hajiyev
eminmilli
FuserLimon
JamalAliBaku
turkhankarim
damirama
abayramov

—

Group 1 is now pro-government.

Here are their most popular words:
protestbaku
khadijautan
aztwi
azerbaijan
yolo
1/12/2013 12:00:00 AM
əskərölümünəson
əsgәrölümünәson
350çoxolar
əsgərölümünəson

The use of #khadijutan (an offensive tweet at a journalist) and “yolo” make it pretty clear.

Group 2 is the on-the-ground activists that tweet in English plus foreigners that are friendly with them (myself included).

Group 3 looks to be people in Turkey but also includes Bakhtiyar Hajiyev.

Group 3’s most popular words:
protestbaku
azerbaijan
əsgәrölümünәson
әsgәrölümünәson
türkiye
esgerolumuneson
khadijautan
azərbaycan
turkey
azerbaycan

—

I ran this again on Sunday 12noon Pacific time.

noidexl

link to full

541 people tweeted using this hashtag.

Someone asked about location. People don’t always tell the truth, of course, but 167 of the tweeters listed Baku as their time zone. 264 (49%) of the tweeters listed Baku or Azerbaijan as their location.

12 Jan

#protestbaku hashtag analysis

EDIT 5pm Pacific, 5am Baku – Since this has been so popular, I’ve made a more inclusive version here.

Thankfully the hashtag #protestbaku caught on and I was able to archive the tweets for analysis. I helped create it about 3 hours before the protest started.

thebirthofahashtag

So here’s a map of the hashtag (thanks Marc Smith!)

nodexl map

link to full

What does this tangle of wires mean? These are clusters of people who are communicating with one another. You can see that there are some pretty tight networks here. (And if you’re familiar with the Azerbaijani Twitter scene, the clusters shouldn’t surprise you too much.)

Group G1 on the far left consists of a lot of Azerbaijanis who don’t live in Azerbaijan anymore. A lot of the URLs that they were tweeting can be considered ones that allow for them to “keep up” with what happened during the protest.

Group G2 are people that, more or less, were on the ground and centers around Adnan Hajizada. Their URLs tweeted were more of photos than liveblogs or videos. They also were more likely to talk about logistics – where police were, as well as break news.

Group G3 includes people that I’m not really familiar with. They linked to a lot of YouTube videos though and used words that are affiliated with the pro-government groups.

Group G4 is very much pro-government people. Their hashtags used were against the protest, more or less. Rauf Mardiyev, the leader of the pro-government youth group is the center of that.

Group G5 is more opposition but seems to center around Baxtiyar Hajiyev, another opposition leader. I’m not really sure why Baxtiyar’s group is so distance from Adnan’s. Perhaps Adnan (and Emin Milli) have a different Twitter following because of their relatively early fame and frequency of tweeting in English. Looking at Baxtiyar’s twitter confirms that he mostly tweets in Azerbaijani.

Groups G6 and G7 seems to be unimportant.

You can download an Excel spreadsheet of all of this and play around with things like word frequency — no statistical knowledge required.

—

I also did a TweetReach analysis of #protestbaku. You can do the last 50 tweets for free. I bought a set of 1500 tweets though. Here’s what that found.

– There were 188,045 Twitter users who were exposed to a tweet that contained the #protestbaku hashtag.
– There were over a million “impressions” – 1,075,736 to be exact. That means, essentially, someone’s eyes potentially read #protestbaku over a million times in the last day.

The twitter who got the most exposure was Jamal Ali with 50,300 impressions. The most retweeted and most mentioned was @muntezir.

With that I have a list of tweets, most popular, etc. if anyone is interested.

—

So what? What does this mean?

A few things…

1. In this protest, Twitter “mattered” – but it mattered in different ways for different people. For people on the ground, it was used a bit for logistics, but mostly for getting information out. For people not present, it was a way to spread information.

2. There is polarization. This isn’t surprising. I guess the amount of guff from the pro-government twitter crowd was a little new for me. They’ve gotten louder in the past year, but their simultaneous tweeting during the protest and use of the hashtag was interesting, to say the least.

3. Personally I “met” a lot of new Azerbaijani tweeters today through this hashtag. Were these people whom I just don’t run into otherwise? Were they people that don’t tweet usually but did for this event? It goes to show that a hashtag has the potential to bring people together.

4. Speaking to the clusters of groups, I wonder if someone who would be interested in pulling people together for greater collection action could focus on those people who are between networks?

I’d love to hear other thoughts on this. I usually keep my comments off to avoid spam, but I’ll turn it on now!

28 Dec

Why the pardon?

Mixed reaction to Azeri leader’s pardon decree
BBC Monitoring International Reports – Friday, December 28, 2012
Azerbaijani human rights activists have displayed a mixed reaction to the 26 December pardoning decree of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.

The president pardoned 87 people, including two prisoners of conscience and 11 political prisoners according to the lists of local human rights activists and the report of Christoph Strasser, rapporteur of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Turan reported on 26 December.

Leyla Yunus, director of the Institute of Peace and Democracy, told Turan on 27 December that this happened in the lead to discussions during the PACE winter session of Strasser’s report on political prisoners in Azerbaijan.

“Now the authorities can say that steps have been taken to resolve the problem, although they deny the very existence of the problem of political prisoners,” Leyla Yunus said.

The human rights activist said that the problem remains unresolved and 54 political prisoners remain in jail. She pointed out that most of the pardoned political prisoners already did the vast majority of their sentences.

This is the first such decree that released as many as 14 political prisoners, Leyla Yunus added. “Nevertheless, it is a positive event that the Azerbaijani authorities released 14 political prisoners at once. This is without a precedent in Azerbaijan, because earlier not more than five or seven political prisoners were released,” the rights activist said.

Leyla Yunus added that there are also new alarming tendencies with unjustified delays in trials. The trial of human rights activist Baxtiyar Mammadov, who protected the rights of the residents whose houses were demolished near the State Flag Square, began in April, and the trial of the editor-in-chief of the Xural newspaper, Avaz Zeynalli, began in May.

Meanwhile, the monitoring group of the Azerbaijani human rights organizations said that the presidential decree is an important step towards resolving the issue of political prisoners, Turan reported in another report on 27 December.

“We believe that this will be duly assessed during the PACE January session, where two reports on Azerbaijan will be on the agenda,” Saida Qocamanli, head of the Bureau for Human Rights and Legal Compliance, told Turan. She pointed out that among those pardoned are 14 people named in Strasser’s report. Qocamanli also said that 18 political activists and journalists from Strasser’s report were released ahead of time earlier.

The list includes 85 people, but only 48 of them remain in jail. For some of them the trial has not been completed or they have yet to be tried, Turan reported.

“We very much hope that before Azerbaijan presides over the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe in 2014 the problem of political prisoners will be closed,” Qocamanli said.

18 Dec

Will be at Stanford in January

I’ll be giving a talk at Stanford’s Liberation Technology Center in January.

Link here

Title:
Not Free to Be You and Me: Equivocation and Internet Freedom in Azerbaijan

Abstract:
Azerbaijan has a unique approach to Internet regulation that represents a ‘middle path’ between open access and censorship. Because the Internet is both unpredictable and a prime venue of unsanctioned content, it threatens what the Azerbaijani government values most: power through consistency, consistency through power.

There are three generations of Internet control that a government can use. The first generation is widespread filtering and direct censorship. Second generation controls manipulate regulations on acceptable content and change the “use of defamation, slander, and ‘veracity’ laws, to deter bloggers and independent media from posting material critical of the government or specific government officials, however benignly (including humor)”. The third generation competes with Internet freedom “through effective counter information campaigns that overwhelm, discredit or demoralize opponents”.

While Azerbaijan does little first generation control (although it has sporadically filtered opposition news sources, especially before elections), it instead discourages technology use in three ways: media framing (third generation), monitoring (third generation) and arrests (second and third generation). Together these have created psychological barriers that impacts Azerbaijani technology use.

Despite this, the Azerbaijani government repeatedly claims that “there is Internet freedom in Azerbaijan.” By electing to define Internet freedom in the strictest sense of the word, the government uses a semantic shift to deflect criticism.

A mixed-methods nationally representative study of Azerbaijani Internet use will demonstrate the detrimental effect Azerbaijani government efforts to dissuade Internet use has on Internet use and free expression.

17 Dec

This Week in Absurdistan.az…

Lots of attacks on the Freedom House report

Azerbaijani Council of State Support to NGOs disagrees with report of Freedom House
Azeri-Press News Agency ( Azerbaijan ) – Monday, December 17, 2012
The Council of State Support to Non-Governmental Organizations under the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan objected to the inclusion of Azerbaijan into the list of “non-free” countries by the Freedom House. The Council issued a statement saying that the Freedom House has once more demonstrated its commitment to double games of the Western circles: “Including Armenia, which is used as an instrument of aggression against regional states by some forces of the world, into the list of “partly free” countries the Freedom House demonstrates its purposes clearly.

The report covering absurd ideas on the freedom of assembly, freedom of expression, restriction of the use of Internet , arrest of bloggers, intolerance of the situation in prisons and tortures against prisoners in Azerbaijan made by the organization trying to create a negative image of our country in the world does not differ from the accusations of some pro-Armenian deputies having hostile approach to Azerbaijan . They continue to stand for their political and economic interests rather than human rights in Azerbaijan . Otherwise, attention would have been paid to the main problem of the country, occupation of 20 per cent of territories by Armenians and more than one million refugees.

http://en.trend.az/news/politics/2098585.html

Azerbaijani top official: Freedom House report is based on subjective judgments
Trend News Agency (Baku, Azerbaijan ) – Thursday, December 13, 2012
Author: E. Mehdiyev, Trend News Agency, Baku, Azerbaijan
Dec. 13–Head of Azerbaijani Presidential Administration’s Social and Political Department Ali Hasanov assessed annual report of Freedom House on the situation with human rights in the world as a report of the NGO prepared on the basis of subjective judgments.

If an independent country criterion for Freedom House is an observant position of law enforcement agencies towards attempts of a group of irresponsible persons to hold illegal protest actions in the city center and sow anarchy and chaos, while preventing such attempts brings down the country’s rating on freedom, then let the organization assess actions of the Central European countries’ law enforcement agencies against participants of such actions.

For us, preventing chaos and anarchy, attempts of those who lost the sense of responsibility, violating the internal stability, hindering normal activities of people and other illegal actions of such type is a requirement and observance of the legality. As for the impunity of “journalists” -who insult citizens, slander and are engaged in racketeering using their profession, and betray their people and the state, then it also does not coincide with the wishes of the Azerbaijani society now,” Hasanov told Trend on Thursday

Every Azerbaijani citizen regardless of his profession should realize responsibility for his actions and respect the rights and freedoms of others, Hasanov said.

“There is a balance of human rights in legal states. One person’s rights end where another person’s rights begin. This is the way we understand the balance of human rights in Azerbaijan “.

“As for opinions and views on other issues indicated in the report of the Freedom House- restriction of the freedom of journalists, threat to Internet freedom, harassment and arrest of bloggers, presence of intolerable situation in prisons, torture of prisoners and others, we believe that they are nothing more than the subjective opinions,” Hasanov said.

“These reports have been mainly based on the information of several NGOs’ reports, preparing false reports for them within the country and funded by some Westerns circles of anti-Azerbaijani nature,” he said. “They have nothing to do with Azerbaijan ‘s current situation.”

Hasanov also commented on the negative evaluation by Freedom House of some reconstruction and resettlement operations, conducted in accordance with the general project of Baku, and added that it is the same old story for Azerbaijan .

“Such accusations are based on the same lie and slander,” he said.

“Armenian lobby and some Western anti-Azerbaijani circles are involved in this campaign which started from the Eurovision Song contest,” he said.

“All reconstruction and improvement operations in Baku are conducted on the initiative of President Aliyev for the people, their well-being, the accomplishment and beauty of the city,” he said.

“This is done for expanding and reconstructing the domestic infrastructure, restoring the city’s harmony, which was broken earlier, comfortable living of hundred thousands of residents of cities and tens of thousands of residential areas, ensuring convenient movement in accordance with Baku’s general plan,” he said.

“But, unfortunately, one could not avoid resettlement of some families to other places during these operations,” Hasanov added.

“According to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s special order, the rights of people who have been resettled were fully ensured,” he said. “More suitable alternative variants and convenient housing or the relevant payments were proposed to them. These people agreed to this.”

“Of course, some people, who have been resettled, were dissatisfied because they did not want to leave the houses where they lived for many years, which is natural,” he said. “But there were few dissatisfied people as opposed to those satisfied and those who backed the future improvement of the conditions in these residential areas of Baku.”

“Tens of thousands of people have been resettled in Azerbaijan ,” he said. “Of course, one can find three — five dissatisfied people, so they would talk to the press and appear on television, which has been done.”

“How is it possible that the opinions of 3-4 individuals out of tens of thousands of displaced persons are re-published by some Western circles, Western press, and Freedom House includes this in its report? Wouldn’t it be better for them to consider the opinions of other displaced people, when preparing this kind of information? If to summarize the report of Freedom House, it does not differ from the reports prepared by a number of NGOs that they submit every year. Azerbaijan is not the only country mentioned there, as there are all post-Soviet countries included as well, in the majority of which, freedom and human rights are allegedly violated and restricted,” Hasanov said.

“The negative evaluation of the most post-Soviet countries indicates that the methodology and approach of the “Freedom House” are wrong,” he said. “The sources that it relies are making statements proceeding from their subjective positions. Most of these sources are NGOs funded by targeted funds and interested in forming a negative image of Azerbaijan .”

Prisoners to Skype? WHAT?

BRIEF: Prisoners in Azerbaijan may be able to use Skype to communicate with families
Trend News Agency (Baku, Azerbaijan ) – Monday, December 10, 2012
Author: K. Zarbaliyeva, Trend News Agency, Baku, Azerbaijan
Dec. 10–There is a possibility that in Azerbaijani prisons, communication between prisoners and their families through the Internet program Skype may soon be coming, but it is currently forbidden by law and accordingly can’t be used, head of the Prison Service Madat Guliyev told journalists.

He added that if legislation is amended, then there will be conditions allowing the use of Skype by prisoners.

Touching upon the smuggling of prohibited items into prisons, Guliyev said that 11 mobile phones were found today during an inspection of prison No. 2.

He added that unfortunately, in such cases, it is often found that relatives of the prisoner are involved.

And looks like Azerbaijan’s gonna get some fat pipe, but this remains to be seen

TAE fiber-optic line to be transferred to reserve for stability of Azerbaijani sector of Internet
Trend News Agency (Baku, Azerbaijan ) – Thursday, December 13, 2012
Author: H. Veliyev, Trend News Agency, Baku, Azerbaijan
Dec. 13–Trans-Asia-Europe (TAE) fiber-optic cable backbone will be used as a reserve channel to stabilize the AzNET segment, a source close to the project told Trend on Wednesday.

It is facilitated by the upcoming plans of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technologies of Azerbaijan to implement a large-scale project for the development of broadband Internet in Azerbaijan in 2013, the main component of which is the expansion of broadband Internet coverage of rural areas, where the optical infrastructure is still underdeveloped.

“Laid optic lines of FO-20 standard have the potential not to cope with the greater bandwidth. Therefore, all the lines need to be replaced by cables of FO-48 standard. Regarding TAE, this project used cables of FO-12, FO -16, FO-20 and FO-24 standards. Therefore, the implementation of the project of development of broadband Internet contributes to the fact that TAE, used as a key line, will be transferred to the reserve,” the source said.

Today, over 35 percent of the villages of the country are covered by the optical links. Production Association Aztelekom Azerbaijan laid about two thousand kilometers of fiber-optic communication lines in the regions. Over 500 kilometers of cable were laid by the efforts of commercial providers.

Interfax: Investment in Azerbaijani hi-tech sector to 2020 may top $7 bln
Interfax News Agency (Moscow, Russia) – Friday, December 7, 2012
BAKU. Dec 7 (Interfax) – The government of Azerbaijan expects that investment in its hi-tech sector to 2020 could top $7 billion.

“The government will spend $3.6 billion to 2020 on the production hi-technology products and services. In addition, we expect the same amount of foreign direct investment. The European Union is one of our most reliable partners in this respect,” Communications and IT Minister Ali Abbasov said at a meeting with ambassadors of EU member states in Azerbaijan , a ministry press release says.

The minister told the diplomats about reforms in and the outlook for ICT. “Our main aim is to reduce to a minimum the dependence on the oil sector that the country’s economy has, and to achieve annual 20% growth in ICT in the next 10 years. Thanks to this, the volume of the ICT sector will grow four-fold by 2020,” the minister said.

To achieve the target aims the internet needs to be developed, he said. “We plan to achieve an 85% boost to broadband internet use in the next three years, while the minimum speed will be 10 megabits per second,” Abbasov said.

“The Azerbaijani government plans in the next few years to focus on an electronic government project. By 2020 around 80% of the country’s population will use electronic services,” he added.

In order to develop the ICT sector, Azerbaijan plans to increase competitiveness and ease customs and tax policy, the minister said.

BRIEF: Next phase of Azerbaijan ‘s broadband internet development to be completed by 2016
Trend News Agency (Baku, Azerbaijan ) – Friday, December 7, 2012
Author: H. Valiyev, Trend News Agency, Baku, Azerbaijan
Dec. 07–Aztelekom production association has laid around 2,000 kilometers of fiber-optic communication lines in Azerbaijan for its broadband internet project, Aztelekom CEO Magomed Mammadov said at a press-conference on Thursday.

According to Mammadov, more than 500 kilometers of cable were laid with the assistance of commercial providers.

“At present, the work on laying optical infrastructure is carried out in almost all regions of the country. Extending optical infrastructure will increase the number of broadband internet users,” Mammadov said.

According to him, at present, the number of broadband connections in the Aztelekom network reaches 102,000, while at the beginning of this year the figure stood at about 25,000.

“Aztelekom has developed the next stage (2013-2015) of the project, during which optic fiber will be brought to the end user,” Mammadov said.

BRIEF: Azerbaijan to be fully covered by broadband Internet by 2015
Trend News Agency (Baku, Azerbaijan ) – Thursday, December 6, 2012
Author: H. Valiyev, Trend News Agency, Baku, Azerbaijan
Dec. 06–The volume of investments in the development of the Aztelekom production association’s network as of 2012 is expected to hit 25-30 million manat, Aztelekom director general Magomed Mammadov told media today.

“The volume of investments in the development of the state operator’s network has hit about 20 million manat for nine months,” he said. “Investments are made through internal funds.”

Currently, the main challenge for Aztelekom is to increase the number of broadband Internet users.

Mammadov said it is planned to allocate more than 200 million manat to implement the project of developing broadband Internet in the regions in 2013. The project will be financed by the State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan .

“By 2015, all the Azerbaijani territory will be covered by broadband Internet and the minimum Internet speed will be 10 Mbits / s,” he said. “Operations have been prepared to prepare the documents to develop broadband Internet .”

06 Dec

Today in the Clusterf#*k that is Azerbaijani Internet Policy

think of the children

A fun new trend in the constant stream of nonsense that is the Azerbaijani government’s Internet policy. (tl;dr the government is setting up new ways to control the Internet without appearing to control the Internet.)

Keep those Azerbaijani kids off the Interwebz! Now we’re worried about the kids!

Here are some news stories (some copy and pasted from databases)

Azerbaijan promotes distance learning, but children`s Internet access needs control
AzerNEWS ( Azerbaijan ) – Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Author: Nigar Orujova
A new Internet portal for children will be created in Azerbaijan in the coming months to broadcast educational TV programs, the Education Ministry`s ICT Bureau head Samir Mammadov said Tuesday, adding that the ministry has launched the implementation of the Tehsil TV (Educational TV) project.
“The project`s primary goal is to inform Azerbaijani population of the country`s educational programs, pro­jects and overall situation in the Azerbaijani education system, including news and lessons,” Mammadov said. He said the portal will be a platform for all those involved in the process of education — teachers, schoolchildren and their parents.
Under the project, the Education Ministry has ordered recording a number of programs and lessons for the portal, while signing a contract with a studio to record such programs on a regular basis is still ahead.
“The project, implemented in the frame of the state program on the education system`s informatization, will be presented in the near future,” Mammadov added.
The use of the Internet for educational purposes is invaluable, as the Web can easily provide a schoolchild with all the required information. However, schoolchildren` Web usage should be controlled by parents and teachers.
According to the head of the State Committee for Family, Women and Children`s Affairs, Hijran Huseynova, the government should take substantial action to limit the use of the Internet by schoolchildren.
“The use of the Internet in order to improve the education of children is positive, but on the other hand, through the Internet , children have access to unnecessary information,” she commented. “Moreover, this leads to serious problems and causes dangerous results. In this issue, first of all, parents need to be in control. At the same time, a serious approach should be exercised at schools.”
A package of amendments and addenda to the domestic legislation has been drafted to ensure control over children`s use of the Web both at Internet cafes and at home, chief adviser for the State Committee, Parviz Aliyev, said on Monday.
The committee has conducted monitoring in Internet cafes [ed: great!] to examine the situation in this area. The results showed that children were going to “ Internet clubs” during lessons and visit websites with negative impact, Aliyev said.
“The monitoring revealed that sometimes children do not go to school day after day and spend time in Internet cafes,” Aliyev said. “Parents think that children are at school while the school does not inform parents about their children`s absence. Parents [often] are not interested in their children`s school attendance, they do not build relations with the school. The monitoring revealed that 15 schoolchildren were at Internet clubs during lessons.”
Some of the proposals made pertain to age limits for children`s access to Internet cafes, the time spent there and websites they should be allowed to visit.
According to Aliyev, it is also proposed to install cameras in Internet cafes to keep track of visitors during the day. [ed: lovely.]
Fines are envisioned for Internet cafes violating these requirements and parents who do not supervise their children. The Internet cafes ignoring warnings will face administrative penalties and may be closed.
According to Aliyev, the proposals also envision Internet service providers` applying filters for children who use the Internet at home.
Aliyev said the package of proposals has been submitted to the Ministry of Communications and Information Technologies.

Parental and governmental control
AzerNEWS ( Azerbaijan ) – Wednesday, December 5, 2012
A lack of internet skills among parents could harm their children. However, restrictions on Internet use are not the way out. Otherwise, poor knowledge of the Internet may have a negative impact on children`s education and employment opportunities.
Parents should examine their children`s use of the Web to be sure that they use it properly. There are a number of websites with sexually explicit information, which can be detrimental to a child. Moreover, some dangerous and suspicious people who come to chat rooms may be a threat to minors.
Even if parents are Internet -illiterate, there are some tips to protect the child from offensive content on the Internet . Parents should control how much time their children spend on the Internet and enquire what they do online.
Microsoft, the world`s largest software company, is also concerned about Internet safety. In association with the American Academy of Pediatrics, Microsoft has developed age-based guidance for Internet use with family safety settings, which is available on the company`s website.
Notwithstanding modern Internet filters, guidance by parents who know their child and his or her habits best is more helpful to protect children.

Minister: Informatization level of Azerbaijani educational system to be satisfactory
Trend News Agency (Baku, Azerbaijan ) – Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Author: H. Valiyev, Trend News Agency, Baku, Azerbaijan
Nov. 28–Azerbaijani Education Ministry have submitted the next phase of project on informatization of educational system to the government of the country, the Minister of Education Misir Mardanov told reporters on Tuesday.
According to the minister, ratification of the project, implementation of which is envisaged within 7 years, is expected. Work on informatization of educational system, connecting schools to the global network and enhancing the skills of teaching staff in the field of information technology will be continued within the project.
“The current level of educational system’s informatization can be considered as satisfactory, and the level of informatization will grow further with the financing of the field,” he said.
According to Mardanov, today more than half of teaching staff, about 80.000 teachers, have been trained to enhance their skills in information technology. According to these figures, Azerbaijan exceeds average indicators.
As for equipping schools with computer equipment, today one computer falls to the share of 20 students, the minister said.
“Our main goal is not to reduce the number, for the computers, issued to schools, to be used for the intended purpose . Also one of the important aspects is to improve the literacy level of teachers in information technology, as well as increasing the number of schools connected to the Internet ” Mardanov said.

Here’s a link to a similar story in Azerbaijani.

In other Azerbaijani Internet bullshit…

Azerbaijan prepares norms for usage of state language in internet
Azeri-Press News Agency ( Azerbaijan ) – Tuesday, December 4, 2012
The norms for usage of the state language in the internet are being prepared in Azerbaijan , director of Linguistics Institute of Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences Fakhraddin Veysalli told APA. According to him, for this purpose, a research group has been already established at the Linguistics Institute: “The research group is working on these norms. The norms for usage of the state language in the internet will be created within year and a half or two years. It aims to create common norms, which will be observed by the citizens of the country while using internet .”
Fakhraddin Veysalli said that the norms must be admitted by all members of the society and considered necessary for all. After having been prepared the norms will be discussed at the Presidium of Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences and submitted to the government of Azerbaijan .
“Despite free internet , the use of language must be controlled. After these rules are confirmed under the decision of the Cabinet of Ministers, their use will be controlled. According to the State Program on the development of linguistics, the Monitoring Group, which will be set up at the Linguistics Institute, will exercise control over the issue,” he said.

And we all know how much I love talking about Internet penetration in Azerbaijan. Looks like full Internet penetration (which NO COUNTRY has yet to achieve) will be reached in Azerbaijan in 2015.

It never gets boring.

23 Nov

I Got 99 Problems, But Statistical Triangulation Ain’t One

I often have conversations with people about Internet penetration rates.

The point I’d like to make is that these statistics are complicated and it is hard to get at the “right” number. That’s why we try to triangulate — look at different sources of data to see if things seem right. We also should always assess the credibility of the source of the data.

For this example I chose mobile phone penetration.

Data sources:

ITU is the UN’s official statistics and these numbers come from the governments themselves who usually get the numbers from the telecommunications companies. These companies count number of SIM cards sold and it is not unusual for people to have multiple SIM cards. This is data to be highly skeptical about.

Caucasus Barometer, Gallup, and EBRD are surveys taken face-to-face in households. All use different sampling techniques and are collected by different organizations. None are perfect, but they’re as good as we’ve got. Of the three, I trust Gallup the least.

Noteworthy:
All of these were collected at different times of the year.

Margin of error varies in all of these.

A ~4-6 point difference is within the margin of error and shouldn’t be looked at with too much suspicion.

So what do we see?

– Look at the huge difference between the ITU and the Caucasus Barometer in all three countries in 2004.
– 2006 is a little better, but Georgia’s a little too far off to be left to chance.
– 2007 is a little questionable in both Armenia and Azerbaijan.
– 2008 is really off in Armenia and not great in Azerbaijan.
– 2009 isn’t bad.
– 2010 is all over the place. My thought is that by the time you’d are at more than three-quarters of households having phones, the ones that don’t are also probably the ones that are less likely be be surveyed – the poorest of the poor, for example.
– The 2011 difference between the CB and the ITU is likely due to SIM counting. While a household may own a phone, they may have a lot of SIMs too.