While some of you are whining about "losing your freedoms", do any of you realize that both Chavez and Putin are trying to change each of their country's constitutions in an effort to retain power? Hurry up and build the damn shield already...........
Riot police arrest 150 in new anti-Putin demo
AFP
Russian riot police on Sunday detained opposition leaders and some 150 other protestors in Saint Petersburg as they broke up the second demonstration against President Vladimir Putin in two days.
Exactly a week ahead of December 2 parliamentary elections, anti-riot troops swarmed through Saint Petersburg to prevent a small group of protestors from marching on the historic Winter Palace, home of the tsars until the Bolshevik Revolution.
An AFP correspondent witnessed about 150 arrests, including Boris Nemtsov, a leader of the opposition SPS party and a presidential hopeful in scheduled March 2 presidential elections.
Echo of Moscow radio reported that Nikita Belykh, the top leader in SPS, was also detained.
The disturbances came 24 hours after police broke up a similar anti-Putin march of around 2,000 people in the capital Moscow, arresting chess legend turned opposition leader Garry Kasparov. A court late Saturday sentenced Kasparov to five days in jail.
In Saint Petersburg, police could be seen clubbing seven activists from the radical leftist youth group the National Bolsheviks before forcing them into a van, along with others gathering for the unauthorised demonstration.
Other political figures detained included Maxim Reznik, local head of the opposition party Yabloko, and other leading activists with the SPS party.
Kasparov's The Other Russia coalition accuses the Kremlin of corruption, crushing dissent, and rigging December 2 parliamentary elections to ensure victory for Putin's United Russia party.
Putin is due to step down after a presidential poll in March, but is standing as the lead candidate of United Russia, which is forecast to win at least two thirds of seats in the State Duma.
The Kremlin leader was due on Monday to visit Saint Petersburg, the country's second city, and police took no chances with the protestors.
City authorities refused to authorise a march, giving permission only for a stationary demonstration in a different square.
Police deployed en masse well before the rally. Officers stood in line, each separated by around five metres (15 feet), the entire length of the city's central Nevsky Avenue.
Trucks full of riot police reinforcements were also visible in side streets.
"They have launched a military operation in the city," said Olga Kurnosova, an aide to Kasparov. "The authorities are scared of people who do not want to support the Putin personality cult."
Putin on Wednesday described his opponents as Western-backed "jackals" and promised a "total renewal" of Russia's leadership in the coming election season.
"In the months to come we will have a total renewal of the top leadership of the state," he told several thousand supporters in Moscow.
Recent weeks have seen growing calls by supporters for Putin to stay on in a leadership role, despite a constitutional bar on him holding the presidency more than twice in a row.
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Originally Posted by Prada
