"NO MATTER WHAT happens, get Kasparov"

[sabra]

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/414fxuok.asp

"NO MATTER WHAT happens, get Kasparov." So shouted one riot officer Saturday during the violently disrupted Dissenters' March in Moscow, according to David Nowak of the Moscow Times, one of the few newspapers left in Russia that doesn't have its reporting redacted by the Kremlin. When Nowak asked another officer why "seemingly peaceful bystanders" were being hauled off the streets at random and arrested, he was told, "Do you want me to beat you with a baton?"

Welcome to life under Vladimir Putin, in which political opposition is met with swift and arbitrary punishment, and not even a tendentiously arrived at 70 percent approval rating is enough to satisfy executive confidence.

You would never know, judging by most of the U.S. media coverage of Garry Kasparov's arrest and subsequent jail sentence of five days, that the Dissenters' March was actually part of a multi-city spate of protests undertaken by Russians fed up with bullying dictatorship. It speaks well of Putin's propaganda, which brands all of his opponents as part of a monolithic sodality of crackpots and "jackals," that the Other Russia Coalition only organized two of the rallies held over the weekend--those in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Several others were independently staged in Nizny Novgorod, Tomsk, Orel, Pskov, Ryazan, Tula, and Kaluga.

As was the case under the Soviet Union, state suppression of public square-style democratic activity in today's Russia occurs well before the announced khappening. On November 21, Putin addressed 5,000 of his claque, speaking of his political antagonists thus: "They aren't going to do anything to anyone. Even now, they're going to take to the streets. They have learned from Western experts and have received some training in neighboring republics. And now they are going to attempt provocations here." And as if to send a signal that such "provocations" would not be tolerated, on November 23, the day before Dissenters' March, counterterrorism agents raided the offices of Kasparov's organization, the United Civil Front. According to the Other Russia's website, the agents said they were looking for "materials dedicated to disrupting civil order." What they instead found and confiscated were 5,000 stickers reading, "Vote for the coalition list."

[HughBeaumont]

1. Pewtin and Bewsh - two totalitarian bastard birds of a feather.

Here's hoping both leave this earth disgraced and historically shat upon.

[gasperc]

2. Bush to Putin

Let me Fuck Iraq, and I'll let you Fuck Russian, ok deal.

[JuniorPlankton]

3. Here is the problem, though

Putin is extremely well-liked by the population!
It is not like in the Soviet times when there was one candidate on the ballot and the voting turnout was 100%.
People really like what he is doing! That's the real problem, Putin is just one guy.

(Same with Bush, as much as I hate the bastard, it is the Rethuglican forces that present the real problem.)

[russian33]

7. well, that's not really a problem..

...he's liked for a reason...for stabilizing the country, and pulling it back from a brink of collapse, and from a third world level....

[JuniorPlankton]

10. There are some positives, no doubt,

but with KGB taking over everything, it may not be worth it. My good friend is a political journalist in SpB. The stories I hear; it takes me all the way to the early 80s.

[russian33]

12. i lived there in th eearly 80s

in fact, up till 1991...and it wasn't bad..for average people, which my family were

[JuniorPlankton]

13. Well, so did I

Up until 1994. And my experience was less thrilling. The way the system was set up is kept everybody (especially the average people) in line. Everybody was always in violation of some stupid rule or law, so whenever they needed to punish somebody, it was very easy. You just needed to tow the party line, that's all.
Komsomol? Sure! Whole areas closed for political reason? (History, economics, etc.) No problem!
Just do what you are told, drink yourself senseless, and you will be fine.

We all have sentimental memories of our youth/childhood. It was a good time, but not because of the system, rather despite it.

[russian33]

4. oh lord...give me a break

"the Dissenters' March"????

"Mr Kasparov was arrested as 2,000 people attended an anti-Kremlin protest in Moscow yesterday.."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article2942255.ece

2000 people is a dissenter's march? that's all they got for dissenters?

Kasparov really should stick with playing chess, he's not a good politician

[Beelzebud]

6. Yes because you can always trust state-controlled news for protest figures...

[russian33]

8. timesonline is state controlled?

by Putin? cool...

[Beelzebud]

5. Bush and Putin - Soul Mates

[originalpckelly]

9. This is one of the few Weakling Standard stories I've ever read...

and actually found to be fairly balanced. I thought that would never be written or said by myself, but there it is.

[knitter4democracy]

11. The Moscow Times is a good paper.

They are the only ones telling the truth most of the time.

Times are bad there. I studied in Nizhni in college, and I'm not surprised there was a protest march there. People are pretty independent there. Still, Putin is just too old-school for me, too close to his KGB training.

I wonder if they'll put any of this a few years from now in the Museum of Revolution in Moscow.