Putin Hits A Reporter Below The Belt

Way back in 2002, a reporter asked Russian dictator Vladimir Putin a critical question regarding his government's activities in Chechnya (whether their attempts to eradicate terrorism in Chechnya would eradicate the civilian population). Vladimir Putin responded as follows:

(there are at least two variant interpretations of what he said)

Either..

"If you want to become an Islamic radical and have yourself circumcised, I invite you to come to Moscow, I would recommend that he who does the surgery does it so you'll have nothing growing back afterward"

or

"If you want to become a complete Islamic radical and are ready to undergo circumcision, then I invite you to Moscow. We are a multidenominational country. We have specialists in this question as well. I will recommend that he carry out the operation in such a way that after it nothing else will grow."

Wow! This Putin dude makes John McCain look like a pacifist!

Andrey Illarionov

Many people don't realize the extent to which Vladimir Putin's government is a dictatorship. When we think of dictatorships, we tend to think of states in Africa or Asia, or perhaps the old Soviet states. However, Russia is very much so a totalitarian state right now. This is evidenced by the large amount of recent exiles. Putin tolerates very little opposition, and has essentially taken over the press. There is very little freedom of speech.

An interesting individual you may want to look into is Andrey Illarionov (see his Wikipedia page).

He was formerly an economic policy adviser to Vladimir Putin in Russia. In 2005, he resigned from his post and said that "This year Russia has become a different country. It is no longer a democratic country. It is no longer a free country".

He continued to say that "It is one thing to work in a country that is partly free. It is another thing when the political system has changed, and the country has stopped being free and democratic".

In October of 2006, Illarionov was appointed senior researcher for the Cato Institute while remaining in Russia. He has been an outspoken critic of the Russian government and on April 14, 2007, and June 9, 2007, he took a part in Dissenters' Marches.

The Cato Institute calls him "one of Russia's most forceful and articulate advocates of an open society and democratic capitalism". You can find his Cato Institute Profile here.

Chess Master Arrested

Chess expert Gary Kasparov was arrested at a rally organized by his "Other Russia" coalition. The rally was a group of about 3,000 people calling for the removal of Putin and criticizing the lack of choice in the upcoming parliamentary election. The trouble apparently began when 100 people tried to break through police lines.

Here is what Time magazine had to say about Kasparov: "Garry Kasparov likes to say he has been in politics all his life. In the Soviet Union, the nation in which he grew up, chess was a way of demonstrating the superiority of communism over the decadent West, and a chess prodigy was inevitably a political figure...he took on...the darling of the Soviet chess establishment...his image as a prominent outsider—Kasparov is half Jewish, half Armenian—was fixed. Kasparov's status has been maintained in post-Soviet Russia. His organization, the Other Russia, a coalition of those opposed to the rule of President Vladimir Putin, has held a series of demonstrations, often broken up by the police... Kasparov, 44, insists he is just a moderator, not a leader, of the movement. But by giving a voice to those who believe that Russia can develop in a way different from the authoritarianism..."


In case you are interested in find out more about this, here are some links

• The Other Russian Coalition web page
• The Tsar's Opponent: A New Yorker article on Kasparov
• Kasparov's Wikipedia entry
• A detailed profile of Kasparov as a chess player