The permission has been granted by the city of Tbilisi for the demolition of the landmark culture hub in Rike Park, designed by the Furkas studios. The tragedy of it all is that the symphony hall never opened for its intended purpose since its completion in 2012.

Another government critical channel in Georgia on the road to collapse. Reasons: various legislation that Georgian Dream adopted since 2024, strangling finance options (from abroad) and freedom of expression restriction, risks for persecution, leading to self-censorship.

The city prison as well as the city hall are nowadays in use by the city council of Delft. The faction rooms are accessible through the tower, in which near the top two prison cells are kept. In the ceiling is a "choke room", a closed nearly airtight coffin sized box for misbehaving prisoners.

Gerard was ultimately taken to the city prison ("Het Steen") at the city hall and central market square. Tower in the image is the 13th century city prison - the first stone building in Delft - at the backside of the 17th century city hall (built in 1618 after a city fire destroyed previous one).

#OTD in 1584 William of Orange, founding father of the Netherlands, was assassinated in the Sint-Agatha monastery in Delft (now museum Prinsenhof) by the French self-appointed assassin Balthasar Gerard, after Spanish king Filip II put a bounty on William in 1580.

In 2024, met de herintroductie van de kiesdrempel van 5% sloot hij zich aan bij de "Strong Georgia" coalitie rond de liberale partij Lelo. Hij werd als enige van Citizens via de lijst van Lelo/Strong Georgia verkozen, maar boycotte met het grootste deel van de oppositie het parlement. 📸: JG - 2024

Elisashvili heeft een activistisch verleden. Sommigen kunnen👇 beeld wel herinneren, toen hij in april 2024 als parlementslid een vuistslag uitdeelde aan toenmalig fractieleider van Georgische Droom, Mamuka Mdinaradze, tijdens de behandeling van de beruchte "buitenlandse agent"-wet. (screencapture)

A bit of an irony. Georgian Airways latest addition to its fleet is a Boeing 737-900 in single-class configuration, that was previously used by Ukrainian Airlines. Georgian Airways uses this plane solely for its Tbilisi-Moscow flights.

When Georgian Dream politicians talk about themselves.

The state of Georgian democracy in a survey about trust. Only the military and the church have a majority of trust from society. The rest, government, president, politicians, parties, electoral system, judiciary, civil society, media, lack public trust.

Priceless. Russian tourists in Tbilisi swore to protesting Georgians at parliament and gave the middle finger to the Georgian flag. They were taken by the police to the police station. "Oh, they are going to drive us in cool cars".🤪

An excellent essay on Georgia's abandonment. voxeurop.eu/en/mussolini...

While I was writing the above that exactly happened. The last results came and completing the preliminary count. As Prosperous Armenia passed the 4% they get 5 mandates, which is mostly at the expense of Civil Contract.

According to preliminary results of 110 precincts, Civil Contract of PM Pashinyan is in lead with 57%. Strong Armenia of Karapetyan is ranks 2nd now with 21.4%, Armenia Alliance of Robert Kocharyan has 8.2% and pro-Russian Prosperous Armenia is at 5.1%. Others are well below thresholds

Andries is geen tekstschrijver. Dit is de gangbare manier van citeren van een claim die tevens niet verifieerbaar is. Het was eellciht duidelijker geweest voor Andries als de hele zin in quotes was geplaatst.

According to an exit poll Pashinyan's Civil Contract won 56.7% of the vote, while his main contestant Samvel Karapetyan with his Strong Armenia won 17.5% of the vote. * note: this was distributed in Georgia, cant find Armenian source at the moment.

* I know Levon for quite some years. The ANC was until recently affiliated with the European liberal umbrella party ALDE. Here we are on a field trip in winter 2018, just 3 months ahead of the revolution that brought Pashinyan to power, discussing with Levon Armenia's complex geopolitical reality.

📸 JG april 2024

And it is confirmed: the Baku-Tbilisi train really has resumed. This morning the first train since six years arrived from Baku in Tbilisi. The daily night run takes roughly 9 hours. Video from Georgian Railways.

Imedi distributed a propaganda message on Georgia's Independence Day, equating oligarch and founder of Georgian Dream to Georgiab dissidents Merab Kostava and Zviad Gamsakhurdia, who paved the way for Georgian independence from the Soviet Union 35 years ago.

With Georgian media monitoring watchdogs, including against anti-western propaganda and Kremlin disinformation, dislodged due to the foreign agent law, an NGO has been founded to "monitor Russophobia".🫣 jam-news.net/pro-russian-...

Those looking for a good base in Kakheti, on the doorstep of Sighnaghi, Bodbe monastery and other touristic sights, we have started receiving guests for the summer season. www.booking.com/hotel/ge/nuk...

Obviously, Georgia's parliamentary speaker projects an attitude of being insulted and aggressively responded. On criticism about the election environment he responded by saying "who are they to tell us what defines [democratic] elections?". Well, that says it all.

Georgian interior mininstry going to monotor and legally respond to "hate speech" in the public space. As per usual, Georgian Dream mofivates this step that this is a practice in established democracies such as the UK, France and Germany.

Fact Investigation Platform in Armenia writes about leaked documents of a major coordinated project of Russian hybrid warfare against a range of European countries, including Armenia. fip.am/48699

The below screenshot from X illustrates precisely the intimate tango of Georgian Dream and Imedi: leaders get an unrestricted nearly private platform to distribute their damaging and undermining rhetoric, while the channel doesn't give any room to counter voices or opposition leaders.

Just a one-time announcement and promotion 😍. Our house in Georgia is available for guests. Admittedly "only" the guest annex as visible on the main image, and not the whole house. Nonetheless, a great place for an escape in Kakheti. www.booking.com/hotel/ge/nuk...

Hoe een volk in zee te drijven. Israël doet momenteel aan alle kanten aan ordinaire landjepik, waarbij ze de bevolking van huis en haard verdrijft. In het geval Gaza zijn de intenties overduidelijk. www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2026/...

De VVD is de hooligan en stokebrand in het kabinet. Net als in 2023. Totaal onbetrouwbare partner. Kiest openlijk voor sympathie voor extreemrechtse anti-statelijke vandalen.

So this is the mapping based on the absolute number gap in thousands, to plot where the absolute number growth and decline is. Both Tbilisi and Batumi top this with roughly 50k each that were missed in the estimates. Kutaisi is a good third with 36k. The rest is 10k or less off.