From Bloomberg News:
Russian police arrested opposition leader and former world chess champion Gary Kasparov today along with more than 100 supporters and several journalists at an unsanctioned protest against President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
Thousands of riot police swarmed streets around central Moscow’s Pushkin Square, the historical focus of democracy protests, after the city’s authorities pledged the same display of police force that greeted the last protest in the capital, in December.
Kasparov, who leads a loose coalition of opposition groups called The Other Russia, was arrested minutes after the rally was to begin, said his spokeswoman, Natalya Morar. The Other Russia hopes to field candidates in the nation’s parliamentary elections in December and presidential election next March.
“We demand free elections, not imitations or farces,’’ Mikhail Kasyanov, a former prime minister who has turned against the Putin government, said in a brief speech at Turgenev Square, an alternative site that was sanctioned for the rally.
Opposition leaders charge that Putin is forcing Russia into a controlled system where the two main parties will both be supporters of the Kremlin—United Russia and Fair Russia.
Maybe so. But what’s in Putin’s soul, Mr Kasyanov? Because that’s what’s important.
Asked to comment, former world chess champion Bobby Fischer refused to condemn Putin’s actions, noting that “sometimes you have to kill a few Jews”— which seemed a rather curious response until the infamous recluse began referring to himself as “the great king Shalmaneser” and smearing himself with a stick of margarine before firing handfuls of plaster rooks at reporters.
So take that for what it’s worth.
(h/t Pablo)
Checkmate!
So when is Bu$hco going to make the step up from playing checkers? We’ve got less than two years to get those concentration camps filled before President Hillary liberates all the truthy prisoners.
For the children, of course.
Pablo, I hear that the contracts for the concentration camp logistical support weren’t bid properly, and got pulled back.
And, by “bid properly”, I mean that they weren’t rigged for Halliburton to win all of them.
Of course.
Russia is Russia.
People expected a lot of changes after the “fall,” but the old system was run by people who used the system to get what they wanted – and the same people run the new system.
Absolute power and all that, it can’t go away overnight. One does have to wonder if revolutions HAVE to be bloody, or else they don’t result in any actual change.
Not that there’s any gurantee that the change will be for the better if it is bloody, as a quick survey of past revolutions will indicate.
Or, translated to CSI-theme-ese: Meet the new boss…
OK, We Won’t Get Again is now officially now as “the CSI Theme.”
I’ll be over here, aging…
TW “taking25”—Cuz at my age, taking five just don’t do it…
Well, it’s actually the other CSI theme, but, you know.
And I probably wouldn’t come to that association so quickly if my wife didn’t watch every freakin’ crime show on the dial.
But at least I have found a suitable revenge…
I think it’s clear what’s happened here—Deep Blue has taken over the Russian government.
Check and mate, Kasparov. Your Kiev defense can’t keep you out of a Moscow prison.
And again in St. Petersburg.
So Putin would be, like, some Phone Company robo-character out of The President’s Analyst?