Hey, Daily Cooz posters: wanna see what political oppression really looks like?Kasparov stuff and background deleted. H/T: Drudge.
Russian authorities pulled hundreds of opposition activists off buses and trains and detained them along with scores of others on Saturday ahead of a rare anti-government rally in Moscow, organizers said. The police action did not prevent more than 2,000 people from gathering in a central square, where leftist and liberal groups demanded that Russian President Vladimir Putin stop what they called Russia's retreat from democracy.
Note that "leftist" and "liberal" mean opposed to communism, just the opposite of in the US.
"In 15 months political power will be changed," said Mikhail Kasyanov, a former prime minister who is now an opposition leader, referring to the March 2008 presidential election.
Care to make a wager on that?
"Next year everyone should make a personal decision about what to do with our country – whether we allow these people to continue their illegal undertakings ... or we finally make our main goal to build a democratic and socially oriented state," Kasyanov told demonstrators.
The demonstrators chanted "Freedom" and held banners reading "No to Police State" and "Russia Without Putin."
The demonstration, organized by the Other Russia movement and other opposition groups, had originally planned to march down a main Moscow avenue. City authorities banned the march, allowing only the rally. Organizers had vowed to conduct the march in defiance of the ban. But Natalya Morar, spokesman for Other Russia said police and defense troops had sealed off Triumfalnaya Square – the scene of the protest ‐ and lined the avenue.
An AP photographer
About 80 protesters, including Ivan Starikov, a senior member of the liberal Union of Right Forces, were detained in