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Georgia: Catching a New Wave of Cinema

Georgian cinema has the wind at its back once again after spending a lengthy period in the creative doldrums. With two films short-listed for an Oscar...

American Hamburgers and Changes in Georgia

I'm sitting at Tbilisi's first Wendy's and do not feel the slightest bit guilty. This is the second time I've had a burger here since the joint opened...

Georgia Signs On to Europe

There should be no doubts about it. Georgia proved its commitment to a European trajectory when it initialed the Association Agreement, a comprehensive...

Georgian Priests Should Remember Jesus' Words

The charitable State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic, or SOCAR, has begun providing free gas to some 200 churches throughout Georgia at a value...

Saakashvili Era Is Over But Will Be Missed

Dear Misha, I am going to miss you. Don't get me wrong, I am glad your era is over. It is just hard to imagine Georgia without you.

Georgia After Saakashvili

Georgians will have to get used to the fact that the government is now going to move much more slowly than under Saakashvili. It's called democracy...

Georgian Boycott of Olympics Is a Bad Idea

Shortly after Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili appealed to the U.S. and European Union to punish Russia and boycott...

Soft Power On Abkhazia Will Not Work

In Georgia, it's called the fall of Sukhumi. In Abkhazia, it's called the liberation of Sukhum.

Georgians Face Apartheid in Abkhazia

On the Abkhaz side of the Inguri River, which separates Abkhazia from Georgia, there is a real border crossing now with razor wire and Russian soldiers...

Georgia's Anti-Muslim Crusade Gains Force

Imagine a church has erected a 10-meter cross in a little Georgian village and a month later, police come to dismantle it and take it away, claiming...

Georgia's Melting Pot Tested by Xenophobia

Tbilisi is perhaps most renowned for its melting-pot legacy, where in a few short blocks in the Old Town you will see an Armenian Apostolic Church...

A Giant Fence Between Georgians and Ossetians

Five years ago, I watched Russian jets blast Georgian villages and hundreds of people flee their homes with what they could carry in their hands during...

Saakashvili's About-Face In Lobbying Washington

Chalk one up for President Mikheil Saakashviliэs PR machine, whose lobbyists have managed to convince U.S. Representative Michael Turner that Georgia...

Swindling Homebuyers in Georgia

Georgia's latest high-profile indictments are of former vice speaker of parliament, Rusudan Kervalishvili; her sister, Maia Rcheulishvili; and their...

Why Europe's Standards Don't Apply to Georgia

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said he was worried about Georgia because he believed the parliamentary minority "is being threatened publicly...

How Saakashvili Failed In a War Against Drugs

Guys used to park at the end of our street to shoot up. They littered the ground with their used needles until one day they disappeared, imprisoned...

Why Georgians Are Now Talking of Homophobia

Beso stopped by the house last week. His dark eyes looked heavier than usual. "I'm so ashamed to be Georgian. If I could, I would leave this country...

Georgia's Homophobic Church

"Why is everybody so aggressive?" I asked two priests standing at a bus stop as thousands of people ran by me in pursuit of gay activists. "Is this...

Tbilisi May Get Burned By CIA Murder Inquiry

Georgian Justice Minister Tea Tsulukiani wants to reinvestigate the unsolved murder case of a CIA operative who was shot in the head 20 years ago in the...

Saakashvili Gives Birth To a Real Opposition

About 10,000 people gathered Friday in front of Tbilisi's parliament building to hear President Mikheil Saakashvili and members of his United National...

A Good Georgian Gamble

What started as crusade to outlaw gambling advertisements has morphed into a push to prohibit casinos in Georgia. Lawmakers say they want to protect...

Why I'd Take Tbilisi Over Rome or Zurich

When CNN published a travel story earlier this month showing Tbilisi's ranking as one of the worst cities in the world, it sent locals in a tizzy....

The Georgian Art of Drinking and Toasting

David Manjiashvili slipped on his high-tops early one morning, intent on finally getting his father off his back by going for what would be the first...

My Own Dance With Awkwardness in a Cab

Merab steered his taxi into incoming traffic to make a brazen U-turn and said the marshrutka strike, which had wreaked havoc on Tbilisi's public...

Georgia Dream Makes Power Sharing Difficult

When Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili conceded defeat in October's parliamentary elections, it was supposed to usher in a new era in the country's...

Protesters Beating a Dead Horse in Georgian Streets

Thousands of people did not gather in front of the Presidential Palace in Tbilisi a week ago to demand Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's resignation...

Conquering the World With Wine and Food

In August 2008, I was sitting on a curb in the Georgian village of Akhalgori with journalist Wendell Steavenson watching Ossetian troops loot stores...

Georgian Chauvinism Raises Its Head Again

Relations between Georgian Muslims and Christians have been heating up in the village of Tsintskharo in the southeastern region of Kvemo Kartli. Lawmaker...

Georgia Isn't on the MAP For NATO Membership

It should come as no surprise that Georgia did not make it to NATO's Membership Action Plan, or MAP, this year. President Mikheil Saakashvili has put...

opinion Paul Rimple

How Saakashvili Tries to Avenge Ivanishvili

After Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili conceded defeat the day after his party lost in the Oct. 1 parliamentary elections, he said he would work...

Georgia's Chicken Has Come Home to Roost

Bacho Akhalaia, Georgia's former interior minister, arrogantly returned to Georgia a week ago from a self-imposed exile following parliamentary elections...

Georgia Justice Hinges On Who Is the Leader

As my cleaning lady predicted, former Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania has come back from the netherworld of Georgian supposition with nails and coffins...

Georgia's Democracy Needs More Fair Trials

Former Georgian Prime Minister Nino Burjanadze has appeared from her lair to call on the incoming parliament to release those "political prisoners"...

Georgia's Vote Shows Democracy in Action

In 2003, Georgia rose up and nonviolently deposed President Eduard Shevardnandze under a common banner of "no more corruption." People thought that...

Saakashvili and His Rival Are Afraid of Each Other

When President Mikheil Saakashvili wakes in the morning, the first thing he sees out the window of his glass-domed presidential palace is another house...

14 Deaths Is Only Fact In Georgia Border Clash

Twenty armed militants from the North Caucasus supposedly wandered into Georgia from Dagestan on Aug. 28, and the next day three Georgian servicemen...

How Villages Are Erased From the Georgian Map

Type Tamarasheni, Georgia, into Google Maps and you will see the vestiges of a typical Georgian village. People tilled their soil, played dominoes...

4 Years After the War, It's Still Georgia's Fault

On Wednesday, 17,000 Georgian refugees will look north toward the mountains where they once lived and recall how they fled under a Russian barrage...

Saakashvili, It Seems, Will Not Pull a Putin

In a move that took everybody by surprise, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili plucked Vano Merabishvili from his imposing position as the interior...

How Saakashvili Fights Georgia's Media Mogul

In the past eight years, many people have come along to challenge the leadership of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. All were former allies...

Gays Show Defiance Against Homophobia

The very first march against homophobia in the history of Georgia was aggressively thwarted May 17 by the Union of Orthodox Christian Parents, a violent...

FSB Tells New Tale About a Terrorist Plot

On Thursday, the Federal Security Service claimed that it had found a huge arms cache in the breakaway territory of Abkhazia. It said Chechen warlord...

Georgia's Green Policy Means More Pollution

Georgia's legislature has just passed groundbreaking legal amendments to attract foreign investors to come pollute the Georgian environment. Thanks...

Don't Believe What Georgia's Polls Tell You

Almost half of all Georgians support Mikheil Saakashvili's National Movement Party, according to a recently leaked poll commissioned by the National...

'Free Press' Means 'Free To Support Saakashvili'

On Feb. 27, 46-year-old Solomon Kimeridze died of contusions in a police station located in a small Georgian town. The prosecutor's office maintains...

Endangered Species Are Poached, Not Protected

The Georgian Tourism Department and Caucasian Safari, a private hunting outfitter, was in Las Vegas in February, trolling for sportsmen at the Safari...

Mosque Dispute Shows Church's Backwardness

Media reports that a mosque is going to be built in Batumi has got some Georgians in a tizzy, including the leader of the Georgian Orthodox Church...

Try Telling Tbilisi That You Can't Buy Me Love

The latest Pacific island nation caught in the tug-of-war struggle of influence between Georgia and Russia is Fiji, which recently received 200 new...

How Rivals Use Canards to Villify Tbilisi

Prior to preparing for his visit with U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington on Jan. 30, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili spent much of January...

Georgia's Midnight Express

Crossing the Georgian border from Armenia or Azerbaijan, the first thing you notice, besides the new customs buildings, is a sense of legitimacy...

Why Some Georgians Still Love Stalin

Dec. 18 is a sanctified day at the Josef Stalin museum in Gori. Every year, a diehard group of pensioners bear the freezing weather to commemorate...

Saakashvili's Vision to Raise a City in a Swamp

On Dec. 4, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili announced plans to build a city of half a million people on the Black Sea coast. So far the reaction...

European Integration Means Women's Rights

A friend recently confided that she was pregnant and her partner did not want the child. She faced a choice between abortion and the severe wrath...

NATO Values Soldiers More Than Democracy

If NATO is sincere about Georgia’s democratic reform process, it should set concrete marks for the government to meet. Saying, “We are looking forward...

A Paranoia Epidemic Grips Many in Georgia

There is the Georgia with new roads, buildings and parks and policemen in new cars and uniforms who never take bribes. It's the Georgia the World...

Ivanishvili's Georgian Passport Is Redundant

On Oct. 5, Georgian billionaire and philanthropist Bidzina Ivanishvili dropped a political cluster bomb in Tbilisi when he announced his plans to establish...

Pankisi Is a Breeding Ground for Radicalism

The Pankisi Gorge is back in the news — but this time not for harboring Chechen militants. In a display of Georgian overkill, witnesses say about...

How Work Sets Georgians Free

The Heritage Foundation's Freedom Index for 2011 has been released, and Georgia has maintained its ranking of the 29th-freest economy in the world. In...

Saakashvili's Latest Trick: Move Capital to Kutaisi

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was bicycling with his family in Kutaisi last week, promoting the construction of a new parliament building in the...

Georgia's Strategy for Refugees: Evict Them

In Georgia, August is the month Tbilisians abandon the sweltering city for the cool Black Sea. It is also when authorities evict internally displaced...

3 Years On, Georgia Has Never Been This Weak

Three years after Russia debased Georgia in the war over South Ossetia, President Dmitry Medvedev is still trying to sell the idea that Georgian President...

A Plea Bargain Beneficial to All but the Defendant

The Georgian photographers arrested for espionage on July 7 were released under a plea arrangement on Friday. While many are relieved at the sudden...

Using Spy Charges to Help Chill the Media

At a news conference Saturday, the Georgian Interior Ministry revealed that European Pressphoto Agency photographer Zurab Kurtsikidze was the nexus...

A Georgian Known for Shooting Off His Mouth

In a Russian documentary titled "Caucasus 2 Metastasis" shown on Channel One, former Georgian Defense Minister Irakli Okruashvili said Georgian intelligence...

Burjanadze Can't Bring Arab Spring to Georgia

Georgian opposition leader Nino Burjanadze last week was in Kiev, where she publicly denied the allegations that her ill-fated coup d'etat was a Russian-backed...

Hollywood Tries to Explain Georgia's War

On June 5, action film director Renny Harlin will be in Tbilisi to open "5 Days in August," his film about the 2008 Russia-Georgia war. Shot nearly...

How Animal Farm Plays Out in Georgia

A European Court of Human Rights ruling found Georgia guilty of human rights violations in regards to the high-profile murder case of Tbilisi banker...

Armenia's Nuclear Plant Is a Ticking Time Bomb

While radiation continues to leak from Japan's Fukushima Daiichi power plant, Armenian officials remain confident that their antiquated nuclear plant...

Lots of Laughs, Little Freedom On Television

It's hard to take Georgia's media freedom seriously when the government trumpets its democratic development while all the main media outlets are influenced...

Get Out of Jail Free Card Costs $100M in Georgia

Relations between Georgia and Israel appear to be strained because of a scandal involving Israeli businessman Rony Fuchs. It is Israel's contention...

Going Caucasian: Tbilisi Wooing White Africans

White South African farmers may become Georgia's newest ethnic minority. In an effort to boost its agricultural potential, Georgia is wooing Boers dissatisfied...

No Threat of Egypt Scenario In Georgia

Sozar Subari used to come across as a passionate, consistent and zealous defender of human rights when he was Georgia's ombudsman, but as soon as he...

Tbilisi Gets a Little Help From Its Somali Friends

It appears that Georgia isn’t so much developing relationships with obscure countries to counter Abkhazia’s drive for recognition as much as it is...

Saakashvili's Original Notion of 'Civilized'

On his New Year’s Eve address to the nation, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said 2010 was “a serious turning point” for the country’s politics...