This ain't no peach

[godfry n. glad]

But it is Georgia...in the Caucasus.

I'm only barely aware of what's happening...but instability in Georgia is bad news for us.

We're talking pipeline.

As in oil.

We shoulda kept it on the friendly with the Iranians.

[Ensign Steve]

Wait. Are you talking about my Georgia or the Russian one?

[Watser?]

The worst of it is over though I think. The president agreed to early elections.

[Watser?]

Ah, here it is (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7087209.stm): Opposition leaders in Georgia say they have called off their protest campaign against President Mikhail Saakashvili after he announced early elections.

[livius drusus]

He's not lifting the state of emergency, though. Georgian Leader Says Emergency Rule to Last as Needed (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/11/world/europe/11georgia.html?th&emc=th)

[livius drusus]

That includes keeping all broadcast news stations dark except for the state-sponsored one (http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h0_eHlfGxFI6QZbHC1CPtmsHTpEgD8SRMVSG0), incidentally. Shady, and hugely hypocritical considering how Saakashvili came to power in the first place.

This month, Imedi filled the airwaves with round-the-clock images of opposition protests, just as Rustavi 2 did in the fall of 2003. But unlike Shevardnadze, the ex-Soviet foreign minister who was reluctant to use of force and stepped down, Saakashvili acted quickly and strongly against protesters who say he has curtailed individual rights and mismanaged the economy.

Officials accused Imedi of becoming an opposition mouthpiece and boycotted the station.

And just a few hours after Imedi broadcast live footage of police beating demonstrators with truncheons in blue clouds of tear gas, authorities sent 200 riot police to throw it off the air.

Lewis Robertson, an American who is the channel's director, said troops stormed in three hours before Saakashvili announced a state of emergency. Much of the station's equipment was destroyed and employees were tear gassed and shot with rubber bullets, he said. A woman who was nine months pregnant was forced to lie on the floor with a gun pointed at her head, he said.

"It was brutal, and there was no reason for it," Robertson said. "Right now the country is getting information from one channel and one channel only — that's not democracy, that's not freedom of speech, freedom of the press."

[Watser?]

Not cool.

[Watser?]

Georgia will lift a state of emergency on Friday, nine days after it was imposed amid opposition protests, the country's speaker has said.

"Georgian life will return to normal on 16 November," Nino Burjanadze said.

President Mikhail Saakashvili initially announced a two-week emergency on the sixth day of protests in Tbilisi.

He said a week ago he would hold early polls, meeting a key opposition demand as international criticism grew of a police crackdown on protesters.BBC News (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7094034.stm)