by now everyone aught to be seeing the fly in their soup. everywhere the empire goes they do their best to own and control, everywhere they go, and this is one of those stories;

The government of Georgia has tried for some time to implement a law “On transparency of foreign influence”. Its aim is to publicly identify organizations and parties who receive a significant amount of their budget from abroad:

The draft law “In order to ensure transparency”, initiated for the second time by the Georgian Dream faction, envisages the registration of such non-entrepreneurial (non-commercial) legal entities and media outlets, whose income – more than 20% – is received from abroad as an organization carrying out the interests of a foreign power. According to the project, everyone who is considered an “organization carrying the interests of a foreign power” must be registered in the public register under the same name in a mandatory manner. At the time of registration, it will be necessary to reflect the received income. At the same time, the organizations will have the obligation to fill in the financial declaration every year.

Those organization who currently receive money from the various U.S. or EU government or non-government organizations are of course not amused that they will have to reveal their association with such sources. They want to lobby for foreign positions without being identified as foreign influencers.

They have therefore launched protests against their country’s government and parliament which has passed the law in the first reading. Two further readings will be required to finalize the law.

The protesters against the law claim that it is a “Russian law” against “foreign agents”.

Since 2012 Russia does have a law that is somewhat similar to what Georgia is attempting to implement but such type of laws are certainly not a Russian intervention:

Supporters of the [Russian version of the] law have likened it to similar legislation in the US that requires lobbyists employed by foreign governments to reveal their financing.

The U.S. equivalent to the Russian and Georgian law is of course the much older Foreign Agents Registration Act:..........more.........