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Georgia Refuses To Adopt EU Sanctions On Iran Citing 'National Interests'

Via The Cradle

Georgia officially refused to implement the EU's newest sanctions against Iran, Interpress news reported on this week, with Tengiz Sharmanashvili, a member of parliament for the ruling Georgian Dream party, saying Tbilisi backs international measures only when they serve Georgian interests.

"If it goes against Georgia's interests, we do not care whose interests it serves," Sharmanashvili said. 

via AFP

"The question of whether Georgia joins a resolution or takes steps in international affairs is determined by one criterion alone: whether it serves the country's interests at that particular moment," he added.

Sharmanashvili pointed to Turkey and Serbia, both of which hold EU candidate status and likewise stayed out of the latest sanctions round against Iran. 

The package, announced by EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, is built around three decisions. 

The first reworks the existing sanctions regime, dropping and adding individuals and revising the entry for one organization. 

The second extends measures over Iranian military support for armed groups operating in Russia, West Asia, and the Red Sea region, with four individuals removed. The third lists six more individuals over "human rights violations" in Iran. 

Nine countries signed on to the measures. European Economic Area members Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway backed them, as did EU candidates Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Ukraine. 

Georgia's refusal follows a broader loosening of its foreign policy from the bloc's line. 

The EU's 2025 enlargement report states that Georgia's alignment with the Common Foreign and Security Policy was 40 percent as of October 2025, a decrease from 53 percent the previous year.

Brussels has run into growing internal resistance to its sanctions policy, including on measures targeting Russia. 

Diplomatic backing for a recent round of sanctions measures against Russia has collapsed, the Financial Times (FT) reported on 19 July, with Greece, France, Italy, Germany, Austria, and Portugal each demanding carve-outs or blocking the package altogether to protect industries still profiting from Russian trade. 

Diplomats described the scale of the refusals as "unprecedented," warning that the process risks hollowing out the sanctions themselves.

Responding to new EU sanctions, Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesperson condemned the move as irrational and unlawful, arguing that by punishing Iran for its legitimate self-defense against US-Israeli aggression, the EU is actively complicit in arming genocidal aggressors. pic.twitter.com/wHwXdnLMUP

— Press TV 🔻 (@PressTV) March 11, 2026

"It is a major crisis for the whole sanctions approach. If everyone demands derogations and loopholes, then at the end of the process, each package of sanctions is just an empty box," one told FT.

Tyler Durden Sun, 08/23/2026 - 08:10

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Turkey & Israel On Brink Of Military Clash After Netanyahu Ordered Strikes On Syrian Airbase

At a moment of the ongoing Iran conflict, Israel and Turkey are escalating their competing claims and rhetoric over Syria, to the point that full-blown war is being threatened.

NBC writes of the irony of two American regional allies on the brink: "A pair of key American allies, an attack on a strategic military base and an intense election campaign: The United States has been scrambling to de-escalate this week after Israel launched strikes that appeared aimed not just at the country’s regional rivals but at its voters," in a Saturday report.

The day prior, Turkey issued another arrest warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, citing the prior Israeli military crackdown on the 'Gaza aid flotilla' last May.

But the big issue which could draw the two powers into a military confrontation is the Israeli airstrikes on an air base in northwest Syria early Tuesday.

Israel had specifically framed the eight strikes on the Abu Al-Duhur airbase in northwest Idlib province as necessary to curtail Turkey's expanding military presence in Syria. A statement indicated the following:

Netanyahu’s office claimed Israel and Syria had agreed to “a status quo in security matters”, which Damascus was “on the verge of breaching” by permitting Turkish troops to deploy at the airbase near Aleppo.

One glaring contradiction is that Israel seemed fine with the Turkish military occupation of northern Syria throughout nearly all of the prior proxy war against the Syrian government when Assad was in power.

But now Turkey is cozying up to the new Sharaa/Jolani regime, even reportedly sending anti-air defenses to central Syria - and only now is Israel vehemently objecting.

Washington has actually been siding with Turkey and Syria, calling the Israeli action an 'unnecessary escalation'.

But Israeli leadership responded: "We conveyed that message: don’t," Netanyahu told Israeli Army Radio. "But apparently they didn’t hear it, so we made sure they understood it better."

South China Morning Post has pointed out that the region is one jet shootdown away from a potential Turkey-Israel clash. "Because Israel gave no advance notice, the sudden appearance of its fighter jets on Turkish air-defense radars near the border could easily have triggered a clash," SCMP writes.

For much of the past two years, President Erdogan has been increasingly vocal in condemning Netanyahu for genocide in Gaza and expansionist policies in the region. There has even been rhetoric on both sides which has come close to calling for assassinations of each's leaders.

This is the first time I heard the Israeli government refer to 🇹🇷 as an “enemy state” https://t.co/9VXAzOFytG

— Sinan Ciddi (@SinanCiddi) August 21, 2026

Turkey is a powerful NATO ally, while Israel is Washington's closes partner in the Middle East. US diplomats are scrambling to contain the rhetoric and creeping escalation.

Turkey sees the situation as one where Israel wants to eventually push its occupation of southern Syria all the way to Damascus, while Israel has likewise warned that Turkey must not establish a permanent military presence in Syria. Both are going after the post-Assad spoils and seek to be the dominant voice over Syria matters.

Tyler Durden Sun, 08/23/2026 - 07:35

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Spain's Pools Hit By Disgusting 'Brown Challenge' TikTok Filth

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

Spain's peak summer season has been disrupted once again by a revolting viral trend that has forced the closure of swimming pools and waterparks across the country, leaving families stranded and facilities scrubbed clean at public expense.

At PortAventura World's Caribe Aquatic Park on the Costa Dorada this week, lifeguards evacuated both the adult and children's pools after detecting human faeces in the water.

The incident, reported on a Tuesday afternoon and allegedly repeated the next day, left the popular resort's aquatic areas shut for the remainder of the day under strict health protocols.

In recent years, Foreign Instagram & TikTok users have taken it upon themselves to try and get public pools to close by defecating in the water.

It's caused a serious public health crisis, already leading to the closure of more than 300 pools in Spain, which all had to be... pic.twitter.com/sWXRbaXvLC

— Lozzy B ??? (@TruthFairy131) August 22, 2026

The park, which draws millions of visitors annually including large numbers of British and Irish tourists, applied mandatory cleaning and testing procedures before reopening.

One swimmer captured the scene on social media, writing: "It's 4.33pm in the afternoon and some pig has just defecated in the pool and they've kicked us all out. This isn't AI, this is reality. If you're at Caribe Aquatic Park you'll have seen it. We're all out of the pool."

@bartoloventura1 Holi son las 4:33 de la tarde y un gorrino o gorrina se acaba de defecar en la piscina de Costa Caribe y nos han sacado a todos esto no es Ia esto es una realidad si estáis en Costa Caribe lo habréis visto estamos todos fuera de la piscina#bartoloventura1 #viral #fyp #portaventuraworld #viral ? sonido original - bartoloventura1

The so-called "brown challenge" or "reto marrón" involves deliberately defecating in public pools or releasing faeces from bags concealed in swimwear, with the explicit aim of forcing closures.

?? Meanwhile in Spain

Waterparks are being forced to close in peak season.

Why?

Because culturally enriching Youths are participating in 'The Brown Challenge' whereby they defecate outside in the Swimming Pool Water. pic.twitter.com/RBGIGduWGf

— Concerned Citizen (@BGatesIsaPyscho) August 22, 2026

By law, contaminated pools must be thoroughly cleaned, hyperchlorinated, and often tested repeatedly for bacteria such as E. coli. Facilities typically remain closed for 24 to 48 hours.

Health authorities warn of risks including norovirus, Salmonella and Cryptosporidium, which chlorine does not always eliminate and which can cause severe stomach illness, particularly in children.

PortAventura officials stated: "The safety and well-being of our visitors is our top priority, and our team is trained and prepared to manage this type of situation with the utmost diligence and efficiency."

They added, "We rigorously applied all the health protocols established by current regulations and the Public Health Agency of Catalonia (ASPCAT). Specifically, in the event of any detection and presence of faeces, vomit or other visible organic waste in the water, swimming is immediately prohibited until the situation is normalised after the corresponding protocol has been applied."

This is no isolated prank. Spanish media and local councils report that more than 300 pools have been affected in recent seasons. Municipalities from Galicia and Valencia to Madrid, Andalusia, Castilla-La Mancha and Catalonia have issued alerts.

Some towns have closed the same facilities multiple times in a single summer. Costs mount quickly: draining, refilling and lost revenue can run into thousands of euros per incident.

Fines for those caught range from €1,000 to several thousand euros, with bans from facilities, yet identification remains difficult because pools cannot install cameras in changing areas or demand ID on entry.

The Camp de Tarragona area, home to PortAventura, has been among the hardest hit. Nearby municipal pools in Vila-seca, l'Arboç and other towns have faced repeated shutdowns. Similar scenes have played out in Toledo, Zamora, Burgos, Jaén and across the Basque Country, where an Olympic-sized pool was evacuated in the middle of a heatwave.

Deliberately defecating in shared public spaces and spreading one's own filth is not the act of a civilised person. It is literally the behaviour of animals. In nature, certain creatures mark territory with waste precisely to signal dominance, to claim space, and to drive off rivals.

What we are witnessing in Spanish pools is the same impulse, only now performed by humans who have been told their presence is an enrichment rather than a burden. When people treat public spaces as open sewers, they are asserting hierarchy in the most primitive way possible,.

This public health nuisance does not exist in a vacuum. It arrives against the backdrop of Spain's accelerating migration crisis under the socialist-communist government of Pedro Sánchez.

In April, authorities launched a mass amnesty via emergency decree that opened the door for hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants to regularise their status, obtain work permits and move rapidly toward citizenship.

Queues of predominantly young men from Morocco, Algeria and elsewhere formed outside consulates as applicants scrambled for the required documents. The government initially spoke of around 500,000 people; applications soon exceeded one million.

By July the scale was clear: more than one million applications for legal status, granting recipients free movement rights across the entire Schengen zone.

Opposition figures, including Vox leader Santiago Abascal, accused Sánchez of engineering a long-term electoral advantage by naturalising large numbers of foreigners and altering the demographic balance.

European conservatives warned that the policy risks collapsing Schengen itself by allowing unrestricted onward travel. The New York Times, for its part, hailed Spain as a "beacon of the global left."

That same open-border approach has played out dramatically in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. In late July and early August tens of thousands of mostly military-age men crossed from Morocco in a matter of days, overwhelming local services.

Beaches became open-air camps littered with waste. Hospitals reported outbreaks of scabies, measles and other infections. Police and military personnel assigned to clear the sites themselves contracted scabies.

Despite official claims that most would be returned, thousands remained, and the cycle of clearance and reoccupation continued. The visible impunity has emboldened further attempts to reach the Spanish mainland.

Just days ago, dinghies packed with North African men landed on tourist beaches near Cartagena, sending holidaymakers scrambling for their belongings.

Local mayors expressed fury at the ease with which the vessels reached shore undetected. The message from Ceuta appears to have travelled: if thousands can simply walk or swim into Spanish territory and face little lasting consequence, smaller acts of disruption elsewhere become easier to attempt.

The "brown challenge" sits at the intersection of social-media exhibitionism and the broader erosion of shared standards that accompanies rapid, unmanaged demographic change.

Public pools and waterparks are among the last remaining low-cost spaces where ordinary Spanish families and European tourists gather in summer. When those spaces are repeatedly rendered unusable by deliberate contamination, the social contract frays further.

Taxpayers fund the clean-ups. Parents keep children away. Businesses lose peak-season revenue. The pattern is familiar across Western Europe: facilities built by one population become contested or degraded under pressures introduced by another.

A country that once marketed itself as a premier holiday destination now contends with closed pools, stormed beaches and the quiet calculation by many natives that the old rules no longer apply equally to everyone.

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Tyler Durden Sun, 08/23/2026 - 07:00

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