The US and other Western nations have compared the bill to a similar law enacted by Russia in 2012. The Russian law was part of Moscow’s response to the US government funding NGOs and opposition parties.
Outside parliament on Monday, protesters chanted slogans against what they called “the Russian law”, and shouted “Russians! Russians!” at police and ruling party MPs.
Inside the chamber, opposition MP Aleko Elisashvili was shown on television punching Mamuka Mdinaradze, faction leader of Georgian Dream, as he spoke from the despatch box.
Protesters against the bill told Reuters that they saw Georgia’s future membership of the EU, which is overwhelmingly popular in the country of 3.7 million, as being on the line.
“I don’t like that the government is trying to suppress NGOs and put some labels on them as if they are foreign agents,” said Luka Tsulaia, a 32-year-old computer programmer.
“It’s about maintaining independence and also maintaining the laws so that we can integrate with the European Union better.”
The Eastern European Centre for Multiparty Democracy (EECMD), with the financial support of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), carries out a new project, “Democracy Needs Democrats: Strengthening Political Parties and Movements”.
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The EECMD will work with four political parties/movements – “Aleko Elisashvili – Citizens,” “For Justice,” “Lelo for Georgia,” and “Shame Movement” – to advance the results of the previous project and implement the sections of the action plans developed through the strategic planning process.
Levan Ioseliani represents the Civil Movement, an NGO established by himself and Alexander (Aleko) Elisashvili.
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After Aleko’s results, we held meetings in Brussels, where EED [European Endowment For Democracy] took an interest in financing a movement that would advocate civil ideas and would help new people get involved in the politics. Our second donor is NED [National Endowment for Democracy]. We established the Civil Movement with Alexander Elisashvili.
This won’t be the end of it. Elections are coming up in October.
In the Russo-Ukrainian war, US propaganda has exploited a time tested syllogistic sophistry. First you identify the nation at war with the individual who leads the nation. It is not Russia’s war on Ukraine, it is Putin’s war on Ukraine. Then you identify the individual with Hitler. At various times, Hilary Clinton, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio and Zbigniew Brzezinski have all compared Putin to Hitler, as have James Clapper, Kevin McCarthy, Polish President Andrzej Duda, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and others. What powerfully follows psychologically, is that, since the war is a war against “a second Hitler,” any method used to stop him is morally and militarily justified.
There is a distressing and familiar sight in the nation-state of Georgia. Young protestors have taken over a central area and are chanting anti-Russia slogans, often obscene and in English, as they wave Ukraine and EU flags and clash with the police.
Since March 7, 2023, a few thousands protestors are confronting the police in front of the parliament in Tbilisi, capital of Georgia. They are demanding the removal from the parliament of a new draft law and against Russia, the Euro-Atlantic integration of the country. The law would require all organizations that receive more than 20% of their funds from abroad to register as foreign agents. The targets are indeed the groups that the US and the European Union are sponsoring, in order to demand the Euro-Atlantic integration. The scenography of the demonstration reminds the previous West-inspired color revolutions in Eurasia since 2003. Because as usual, the movement is not democratic, possibly revolutionary or neither, would not emancipate the people nor maintain independence of the country.
The controversy over the Georgian surprise military attacks on South Ossetia and Abkhazia on 8.8.08 makes a closer look at the controversial Georgian President and his puppet masters important. An examination shows 41 year old Mikhail Saakashvili to be a ruthless and corrupt totalitarian who is tied to not only the US NATO establishment, but also to the Israeli military and intelligence establishment. The famous ‘Rose Revolution of November 2003 that forced the ageing Edouard Shevardnadze from power and swept the then 36 year old US university graduate into power was run and financed by the US State Department, the Soros Foundations, and agencies tied to the Pentagon and US intelligence community.
CIA Director William J. Burns traveled in secret to Ukraine’s capital at the end of last week to brief President Volodymyr Zelensky onhis expectations for what Russia is planning militarily in the coming weeks and months, said a U.S. official and other people familiar with the visit.
Ukraine and Georgia’s NATO aspirations not only touch a raw nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about the consequences for stability in the region. Not only does Russia perceive encirclement, and efforts to undermine Russia’s influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests. Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face.
Nearly a year in, the war in Ukraine has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and brought the world to the brink of, in President Joe Biden’s own words, “Armageddon.” Alongside the literal battlefield has been a similarly bitter intellectual battle over the war’s causes.
“NATO does not want to allow self-determination of the Russians”
Interview with Prof. Dr. iur. et phil. Alfred de Zayas, international law expert and former UN mandate holder
Current affairs in focus: Were the elections in the Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaparozhye and Kherson oblasts in accordance with international law?
Prof. Dr. Alfred de Zaya: Referenda are fundamentally a human rights-compliant method of “taking the temperature” and determining the will of a population. Art. 1 of the UN pact on civil and political rights stipulates the right of self-determination for all peoples – including the people of Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaparozhye and Kherson – and of course the people of Crimea.
Article 19 of the Covenant stipulates the right of all people to freedom of expression. There is nothing more democratic than referendums. However, the UN has failed here. The UN has held self-determination referendums in Sudan, Timor-Leste and Ethiopia/Eritrea. But only after tens of thousands of people had been killed. The UN should have intervened earlier and held preventive referenda.¹
Are referendums irrelevant if they are not conducted by the UN?
Of course, popular referendums are important, even if international bodies ignore them. Of course, there are referendums all over the world, which unfortunately are not organized and carried out by the UN, but solely by the affected population themselves, for example the 1962 referendum in Algeria, which led to independence.²
On Tuesday, the military forces of Azerbaijan shelled territory in neighboring Armenia. “The hostilities erupted minutes after midnight, with Azerbaijani forces unleashing an artillery barrage and drone attacks in many sections of Armenian territory, according to the Armenian Defense Ministry,” reports to the Associated Press. The premier corporate propaganda outfit cited serious damage to “civilian infrastructure and also wounded an unspecified number of people,” including 49 Armenian soldiers (later updated to 99 soldiers).
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