Global Voices Online

Social Science in the Caucasus posts more details, including a video, on Creative Commons and comments on the importance of introducing the licensing concept to the South Caucasus. My Caucasus Knot also weighs in on the significance of promoting Creative Commons in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia.

Social Science in the Caucasus examines statistics released by the US Citizenship and Immigration Service on the number of immigrant and nonimmigrant visas issued to citizens from the three South Caucasus countries. According to that data, Armenia has the most number of visas issued with Georgia second and Azerbaijan third.

Blogger Interrupted comments on the opening of an Azerbaijani cultural garden in Cleveland. The blogger wonders why with a 100-strong Azerbaijani community such an initiative was taken.

Unzipped Gay Armenia is excited by news that Armenia might be represented in this year's Mr. Gay Europe. The blog notes that the country's involvement will be a significant event and follows the region's first ever entrant last year from neighboring Azerbaijan.

Social Science in the Caucasus, the blog of the Caucasus Resource Research Centers, looks at the the subjective well-being of citizens living in all three South Caucasus republics. Although the data used for the survey is from 2006, the survey finds that the impact of poverty and unemployment is more significant than in other former Soviet countries such as Ukraine and Russia.

After laying the blame for the stabbing of a pro-opposition journalist by his gay lover, Queerty comments on news that the authorities are once again playing the homophobic card in the run-up to the presidential election in Azerbaijan. State TV claims that a leading opposition leader and possible candidate in the October vote is homosexual. Unzipped: Gay Armenia also comments on the news, and says that in a region such as the Caucasus such tactics work every time.

Window on Eurasia examines the role of Russian language in former Soviet republics based on the findings of a Eurasia Foundation report, Russian Language in the Newly Independent States, which divides the countries into three groups. The blog comments on suggestions by one Russian newspaper on how Moscow should use this data in terms of maintaining the influence of Russian in its former sphere of influence.

Window on Eurasia writes about the 40th anniversary of the launch of the Soviet samizdat publication, the Chronicle of Current Events.