Iran and Georgia have a long relationship but for two hundred years there was no contact.

On the twenty-seventh of June, our Prime Minister placed his signature under the Georgia-EU Association Agreement, cementing the country’s relationship with the European Union.

If you approach a Georgian passer-by in the street and ask him or her about cornerstones of Georgian culture, Christianity will probably be on the top of the list you’ll receive.

I have been keeping an eye on expats and immigrants in Georgia lately, both due to my occupation and out of general curiosity.

“Cyclists are a bane of any economy. They don’t take out loans to buy cars, they don’t buy petrol, they don’t use car repair shops, they don’t get insurances, and they don’t pay for parking.

May 9 was Victory Day, a holiday dedicated to triumph of Allied forces over the Third Reich. As always, our northern neighbors spent this day whipping themselves into an almost religious frenzy over their victory

There probably isn’t a single person in the world who’d question Georgian age-old musical tradition.

Technically, I heard her long before I saw her, but it’s largely irrelevant. She had a strong voice, far stronger than was needed to fill every corner of the underground passage which I was crossing to catch a taxi home on the other side.

On 13 December, another famous patriot was buried at Mtasminda Pantheon, the final resting place of such great Georgian public figures, poets and writers as Ilia Chavchavadze, Akaki Tsereteli, Vazha-Pshavela, Otar Chiladze and others. Chabua Amirejibi died at the age of 92. He was the author of “Data Tutashkhia,” the novel acknowledged as a masterpiece of modern Georgian literature.
Much has been said about his genius, and a lot more will be said in the future, because he has become a part of Georgian history. It is difficult to talk about Amirejibi’s life. He was a legend of the generation that grew up at the time when copies of his acclaimed book changed hands among his devoted readers. Amirejibi also was a great man as well as a great writer, whose biography reflects the difficulties and paradoxes of Soviet history.

Anna Maria Cecillia Kalogeropoulou was born in New York on 2 December 1923, but she was a Greek soprano. She received her musical education in Greece and started her career in Italy. She was a matchless phenomenon with a unique voice, and her musical achievements are recognized world over. She could be called “the goddess of opera.”

John Merlin Simmons is the director and one of the founders of the Ele Lembra Foundation, which runs the project Chance – a program assisting underprivileged children in Tbilisi.

Thirty years ago, on 18 November 1983, a group of seven friends, six boys and a girl, citizens of Soviet Georgia, hijacked a plane with over 58 passengers. The plane was scheduled to fly the Tbilisi-Batumi-Kiev-Leningrad route. The kidnappers’ dream was to escape from socialist Georgia to the United States of America, where they hoped to feel free of communist restrictions. This story opens to a tragic page in the history of Georgia, about which unanswered questions abound.

The last week’s important events included Temur Chkheidze’s 70th birthday. Chkheidze is a celebrated Georgian theatre director and public figure, and a leading figure on the Georgian cultural scene. Several events were held during the week to celebrate the occasion. One took place at Marjanishvili Theatre in Tbilisi, where he was awarded the title of “High Priest of Art,” an honor accorded to only a very few notable Georgians. Currently one of his most talked about productions, Yasmina Reza’s “Art,” is running successfully at the same theater, and playing to a full house regularly.

There is a new term being used more and more in the west - “Big Data”. This means not one or twenty measurements but a very large number of measurements or data points. These can come from many points for those who know how to get them, and can clarify a great deal in a graph or a map or used in other ways. In large organizations it is now very common to use them to judge employees but more importantly to judge managers. It is also being used to judge municipal services and many other things that a government does. With it, you can make decisions based on data rather than guesses. All over Europe and North America and increasingly in Asia, businesses and governments are using big data to improve judgment and decision making.

Beijing is the capital city of great China. Its current population as our hospitable guide Grace told us, is around 20 million. What else? A big city, not as huge as Shanghai, but has its own charm. I will be sincere now and the weather is the best compared to the South and North, the two cities we have been depicting previously (those of Changchun and Shanghai) – quite a mild one. However, frankly speaking, this is the city where one gets really exhausted in a transport – a lot of traffic jam. Bicycle as in Shanghai, is a very popular form of transport. Surprisingly enough, there are no special tracks for the people to ride them, but they still do – no matter how old they are, whether they are male or female, etc. Now, our journey begins:

In terms of income, Georgia is among the least equal countries in the former Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was itself extremely equal. As the old saying goes, “everybody had plenty of money, but there was nothing to buy. Now you can buy anything you want but nobody has any money.” Well some people have some money. Economists and mathematicians measure how equal or unequal a society is by using a number called the Gini Coefficient. The lower the number out of one hundred, the more equal, the higher the number the less equal.

Our Reporter in China

Here we go again. This is Shanghai, the hottest city of China in all senses of this word, and of course the most ultramodern one. Frankly speaking, if one had asked me before what I was that I would be most interested to discover in China, I would not have had a ready-made answer – Shanghai. Shanghai – can you believe that I was there?! I myself can hardly believe it. It was in Shanghai, the city of marvels. And my friend was with me taking a lot of photos, being as productive as she could possibly be.

People disagree on what is best for business or even how much business matters to an economy. The Soviet Union had an economy of sorts and didn't really have any legal business that was driven by market principals. In many parliaments and certainly in the US Congress there is disagreements about how to help the economy and how to promote business. A few years ago, United States Treasury Bills were downgraded in their ratings. Some members of Tea Party wing of the Republican Party had made statements that it wouldn't matter if the US defaulted on its debts. So the rating agencies downgraded what everybody had believed was the safest long term investment in the world and it became more expensive for the US to borrow. Since before it was completely clear what would happen with US Treasury Bills, then it became a little less certain, some people got nervous.

There is plenty of conversation about local self government in Georgia but it tends to focus around boundaries and elections and spheres of competence rather than on tax. But where the money comes from and where it goes is usually the best way to look at these things. Currently almost all state revenues are national and come from VAT, income tax, and import tariffs. Taxing something discourages it, so VAT raises prices and makes people buy less, an income tax discourages employers from hiring people, and import tariffs makes goods that are imported more expensive so increases prices on imports.

There is a new draft law about philanthropy, charity and volunteerism. This law takes several important steps desperately needed in Georgia. For many years, legislation has suffered from a problem that mirrored a wider issue in Georgian society. Georgian laws, most importantly tax laws, have assumed that all people are selfishly motivated, will cheat every chance they can and are only interested in getting as much money for themselves as possible. With the neoliberal worldview of the previous government, many senior officials believed that all businesses should peruse only money and pursuing any other goals was somehow socialistic and dangerous. Much of this is a product of the Soviet and communist systems, that talked of higher goals but were the most cynical regimes in history. Even now more than twenty years after the death of these systems, Soviet countries have the lowest social trust of any countries in the world.