{"id":14697,"date":"2012-04-12T18:53:33","date_gmt":"2012-04-13T02:53:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=14697"},"modified":"2012-04-12T18:53:33","modified_gmt":"2012-04-13T02:53:33","slug":"the-road-to-georgian-premiership-runs-through-dc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2012\/04\/12\/the-road-to-georgian-premiership-runs-through-dc\/","title":{"rendered":"The Road to Georgian Premiership Runs Through DC"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Once again exemplifying the ridiculous amount of sway the US wields over nominally independent countries, a new report on Georgia&#8217;s upcoming elections has Bidzina <a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/stories\/0412\/75054.html\">Ivanishvili, a billionaire and would-be prime minister of Georgia, spending large amounts of money on US PR firms and lobbying groups<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>Ivanishvili, the richest man in Georgia, has a long-standing feud with his likely opponent, current President Mikhail Saakashvili, and is hoping to parlay that lobbying into some support in the US Congress. <\/p>\n<p>Its working, to some extent. Already Rep. Jim McDermott (D &#8211; WA) has introduced a bill condemning Saakashvili and accusing him of &#8220;harassing&#8221; Ivanishvili.<\/p>\n<p>It isn&#8217;t some dirty trick to Ivanishvili, but rather the way politics works in Georgia now. Saakshvili has been using his own position as president to fuel a lobbying campaign for years, and the reality is that winning a key position in the Georgian government obliges one to win US support to that end. For a position as important as prime minister, few methods are as expeditious in securing that support than cold hard cash. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Once again exemplifying the ridiculous amount of sway the US wields over nominally independent countries, a new report on Georgia&#8217;s upcoming elections has Bidzina Ivanishvili, a billionaire and would-be prime minister of Georgia, spending large amounts of money on US PR firms and lobbying groups. Ivanishvili, the richest man in Georgia, has a long-standing feud [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-14697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14697"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14698,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14697\/revisions\/14698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14697"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=14697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}