Mother Russia is hurting. And Garry Kasparov is taking the brunt of it.
On Saturday 11/24 while leading a peaceful march he was taken into custody, beaten, and jailed for 5 days. This is nothing new for Kasparov. Back in April he was beaten and arrested during a protest as well. The notable thing about that rally was that it was co-organized by Putin’s own former prime minister Mikhail M. Kasyanov.
Now, for those of you that don’t know it, Kasparov is actually running for President as the opposition leader. The problem is that Putin controls all of the public media so it’s impossible to mount any sort of campaign against him when you can’t even get any air time. Here is Kasparov talking about these challenges on NPR in October.
Finally, here he is discussing Russia’s woes with Bill Maher. It’s a brilliant article, and exactly what you’d expect from one of the smartest men alive. By the way, props to Ian Clarke for bringing this to my attention!
I’d really love to know a lot more about what is going on over there, but I don’t have time to really research it. If anyone wants to put together a guest post about how Putin is grabbing and consolidating all the power I’d be willing to consider it for inclusion here.
It’s got to be good though! ;-)
Greg says
November 25, 2007 at 12:16 pmI have come across a good source of news from Russia on http://ru.blognation.com
J says
November 25, 2007 at 10:46 am@Andre
Interesting thoughts. I didn’t know that was happening. And John is right, there seems to be no ways of getting proper news out of Russia. I don’t know if the foreign press there reports freely. I am sure the local press doesn’t..
Andre says
November 25, 2007 at 8:47 amI am glad they were all arrested. Putin has made a great deal of progress to let these US/western financed groups weaken and divide Russia. Putin should have a firm hand with them and thus prevent Russia from ever spiraling back to the chaos of the early 90’s. What is saddening is that these so called Anti Putin protesters are playing into the hands of the Americans. It is a well known fact that they are organized, funded, and supported by elements of the US government to destabilize Russia and create another puppet regime that they can control and manipulate from Washinton.