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Thousands of people took to the streets of Tbilisi on Saturday, July 8, protesting against the LGBTQ Pride Festival that was to be held near Lake Lisi. The event was to be the culmination of Tbilisi Pride Week, held July 1-8. Estimates vary on how many thousands of protestors came out, but it was enough to force the cancelation of the event. The Georgian Orthodox Church, which represents about 85% of the Georgian population, issued a statement earlier in the week condemning “attempts to introduce a perverted lifestyle” in Georgia. LGBT propaganda is “inadmissible and unacceptable” and “violence against [the]...

July 8 (Reuters) - Up to 2,000 anti-LGBT protesters broke up a Gay Pride festival in the Georgian capital Tbilisi on Saturday, scuffling with police and destroying props including rainbow flags and placards, though there were no reports of injuries. Organisers accused the authorities of actively colluding with the demonstrators to disrupt the festival, but a government minister said it was a difficult event to police as it was held in an open area, near a lake. "The protesters managed to find... ways to enter the area of the event, but we were able to evacuate the Pride participants and...

Politics Fact Checker Biden administration The 202s Polling Redistricting tracker June 8, 2022 at 6:00 a.m. EDT Christina Pushaw, press secretary for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), has become a prominent protector of her boss and a fierce critic of the media. (Paul Hennessey/SOPA Images/Shutterstock) A spokeswoman for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) this week registered as a foreign agent of a former president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, belatedly detailing work she performed for the politician between 2018 and 2020. The spokeswoman, Christina Pushaw, made the disclosure following contact from the Justice Department, according to her attorney, Michael Sherwin. She...

THIS is the horrifying moment a woman randomly stabbed a three-year-old boy in the street. Distressing footage captured the assault on Pekini Street in Tbilisi, Georgia, while the boy was walking with his parents and little brother. CCTV from a nearby pharmacy shows the family calmly walking along the street when an unknown woman approaches them and runs her knife across the child’s face. After that, she goes for the kid again but his parents stop her from striking him for a second time, Jam News reports. The boy’s parents say they’ve never seen the attacker before. She managed to...

U.S. Links Charity to Chechen RebelsBy Nabi Abdullaev Staff Writer The head of a U.S.-based Islamic charity who is suspected of having ties to Osama bin Laden is in jail facing a grand jury investigation after the FBI showed he had lied about his support for Chechen rebels. Federal officials accused Enaam Arnaout, a Syrian-born U.S. citizen, and his Benevolence International Foundation of perjury last month for claiming they did not provide support to "people or organizations known to engage in violence, terrorist activities or military operations of any nature." Arnaout, 39, was arrested April 30. He had been under...

Why does it matter to the rest of us what happens in Georgia and environs? Answer: if the West cannot help an aspiring ally with dreams of joining Nato and the EU, cannot even protect it from Russian hegemony, what are we doing meddling in the Middle East or anywhere else? And if we can’t help Georgia, then what is left of the West’s victory in the Cold War? I reported on the national elections in Tbilisi, Georgia, last October. On one occasion, I was shown a text from a politician of the party that won the election to a...

Prime Minister of Georgia Bidzina Ivanishvili admitted responsibility of Georgia for the outbreak of the war in August of 2008. He stated that the actions of the authorities of the country before crossing the border of Georgia by Russian forces were inadequate. This statement will have tangible consequences, first of all, for President Mikhail Saakashvili. "The political noose" around the Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's neck is getting tighter. He is not yet being investigated, but the new authorities have already talked about the possibility of his interrogation about the events of 2008. The country may begin a new investigation into...

SNIPPET: "So there I was, doing that thing I do - targeted collection, and triage based on a range of frequently changing criteria - when I happened to notice this image:" SNIPPET: "georgi.ir: sometimes what isn't there is still interesting"

The sudden death of an exiled Georgian billionaire may have been another "Alexander Litvinenko-style" murder, it is feared. A major crime squad is investigating the death of 52-year-old Badri Patarkatsishvili, whose body was found at his country mansion in Surrey at about 11pm last night. His family said he suffered a heart attack - but Surrey Police have launched an investigation to confirm the exact cause of death after reports of a plot to kill him. Sky News' home affairs correspondent Mark White said: "The police want to leave no stone uncovered. "In the light of Litvinenko's death in 2006...

U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in a classified report late last year that Russia’s military intelligence was responsible for a bomb blast that occurred at an exterior wall of the U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi, Georgia, in September. ... The Times reported last week that Shota Utiashvili, director of information and analysis for the Georgian Interior Ministry, said the embassy blast and others in his country were the work of a Russian military intelligence officer named Maj. Yevgeny Borisov. “It is written without hedges, and it confirms the Georgian account,” said one U.S. official familiar with the U.S. intelligence report. This official...

American foreign policy experts, having been caught off guard by the swift regime changes in Tunisia and Egypt, are now examining other countries where citizens have been oppressed and denied basic democratic freedoms. Countries where peaceful street protests have turned violent, where opposition political parties have been brutally squashed, and where economies are in tatters, elections rigged, judicial systems corrupted, and free media bound and gagged. One of those states is Georgia, where U.S.-backed President Mikheil Saakashvili must be concerned by the latest turn of events in Egypt. He and former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak have many similarities. Georgian opposition...

Georgia is replacing Russian with English as the country's second language, two years after a major war with Moscow. Two years after the Russia-Georgia war, Tbilisi is aiming to replace Russian with English as the country's second language. English classes have been introduced in public schools across the former Soviet state and the government hopes all children will speak the language by 2014.

A US warship arrived in Georgia's Black Sea waters Thursday for exercises with the country's coast guard, the US embassy said, in the latest of a series of such visits that have infuriated Russia. The USS John L. Hall guided-missile frigate arrived in the vicinity of the Georgian port of Poti, an embassy spokesman said, about 30 kilometres (19 miles) from the de facto border with the Russian-backed breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia. "The aim of the visit is to conduct joint exercises with the Georgian coast guard," said the embassy spokesman, who declined to be named. He said the...

Russia secured on 17 February the right to maintain a large, long-term military presence in the Georgian rebel region of Abkhazia, signing a deal for a military base that was condemned by Tbilisi and the West. The base will accommodate at least 3,000 Russian land troops, already stationed in Abkhazia, for at least 49 years, Abkhaz officials said. "This agreement creates a foundation for the development of Abkhazia as an independent state," Medvedev said at a signing ceremony in the Great Kremlin Palace. Moscow recognised Abkhazia in August 2008 after crushing an assault by US ally Georgia on another pro-Russian...

NATO on Wednesday denounced as "invalid" a Russian pact establishing a military base in the rebel Georgian region of Abkhazia, urging Moscow to revoke it. "NATO considers invalid agreements between Russia and the (Georgian) territories," which its 28 member nations do not recognise, alliance spokeswoman Carmen Romero said. The Russian-Abkhaz deal, signed in Moscow Wednesday during an elaborate "state visit" by rebel leader Sergei Bagapsh, builds on previous agreements allowing Russia to maintain thousands of troops and border guards in Abkhazia. The base pact allows Russian forces "to defend the sovereignty and safety of the republic jointly with the armed...

Note: The following text is a quote: https://www.osac.gov/Reports/report.cfm?contentID=96983 "YOU ARE HERE: Home > Reports > Consular Affairs Bulletins > Report Warden Message: Georgia Carjacking; Concerns over Highway Travel CONSULAR AFFAIRS BULLETINS Europe - Georgia 7 Feb 2009" SNIPPET: "U.S. Embassy Tbilisi issued the following Warden Message on February 7: The U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi would like to inform American citizens that an armed carjacking occurred February 7 on the main east-west highway near Igoeti. The vehicle was taken to South Ossetia and a telephone belonging to one of the victims was used to make a ransom demand. While this believed...

Polish President Lech Kaczynski arrived to Georgia to celebrate 5th anniversary of Georgia's Rose Revolution. When Polish president car was approaching Russian check point nearby brorder with Osetia presidential convoy got shot up. Shooting was directed from the side of Russian check point - presidential minister Michal Kaminski said. President Kaczynski wanted to visit refuge camp of Georgians who were forced to leave Osetia occupied by Russian Army. After the incident convoy was forced to return to Tbilisi.

I was in Tbilisi recently to report on the Russian anschluss into Georgia. You must not expect me to be impartial on the matter. I have visited Georgia four times in as many years and witnessed the country's self-transformation after its Rose Revolution. It went from two centuries of asphyxiating "protection" by Russia, followed by a post-Soviet decade of mafiotic corruption, to a kind of light unto nations under its young president, Mikheil Saakashvili. No doubt all that was provocation enough for Moscow. Even before the war began in early August, the Russians had prevailed on Georgia's Abkhaz and South...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 25, 2008 – Russia continues to defy international calls for the country to pull its forces out of Georgia, and humanitarian operations continue, a Pentagon official said here today. Russian troops continue to occupy the breakaway region of South Ossetia, and Russian troops continue to maintain troops in Gori, a Georgian city that is the gateway to South Ossetia, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said. “It is fair to say they are still not living up to the terms of the cease-fire agreement,” Whitman said during a meeting with reporters. The terms of the cease-fire include monitoring by military...

Georgia did not believe Russia would respond to its offensive in South Ossetia and was completely unprepared for the counter-attack, the deputy defence minister has admitted. Batu Kutelia told the Financial Times that Georgia had made the decision to seize the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali despite the fact that its forces did not have enough anti-tank and air defences to protect themselves against the possibility of serious resistance. “Unfortunately, we attached a low priority to this,” he said, sitting at a desk with the flags of Georgia and Nato (to which Georgia does not belong) crossed behind him. “We...