Azerbaijan to keep Europeans warm in winter

So today is the day when a new energy union unveils in Brussels. The plan is "to establish a single European market in energy supplies, purchases and consumption, in an attempt to loosen the Kremlin's stranglehold on Europe's gas supplies"

The official press statement goes into tedious detail of what European people need and etc. There are few words of wisdom about Russia's evil grip over its energy supplies and its mischievousness towards using it in exchange for political gains (as if this was a big secret). 

Now that EU finally realized Russia is evil (it took a while, and an invasion of not one but territories of two countries) its turning into alternatives. Among them is Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Iraq and Iran. A question comes to mind: so when Russia is evil and using its energy as a political tool, none of these countries considered for diversification aren't?! Azerbaijan isn't one of these? 

Does this mean an end to rights defenders work and pleas to hold the authorities of Azerbaijan responsible? Shall we forget about our political prisoners because the focus is now on European citizens and their need to stay warm over winter?    

Bloggers for Democracy

On December 5th, European Greens organized "Bloggers for Democracy" conference at the European Parliament. I was invited as a guest speaker to talk about my experience as a blogger in the context of Azerbaijan. There were other really incredible and prominent bloggers on the same panel, as Sarrah Abdelrahman from Egypt, Oleg Kaschin from Russia and Michael Anti from China.We talked about our countries, our political contexts, revolutions, human rights and freedom of expression. 

But as always, it was the Q&A session that brought a lot more into the discussion. I will write on that more later but for now, if you missed it, if you weren't there, you can watch it below (bloggers presentations are part 2).