It's not every day that Kremlin gets a heckler.What strikes me about this is the similarity with Code Pink-style anti-war protesters and left-wing moonbats screaming protests at McCain rallies or trying to "citizen arrest" Karl Rove. They too are taken away by security.
President Dmitry Medvedev was giving a speech to scientists and bureaucrats Friday marking Constitution Day when a young man stood up and started yelling.
TV footage showed the man yelling "Why are you listening to him?" and "He's violated the rights and freedoms of people and citizens!" for a few seconds before security agents grabbed him.
The audience looked startled and murmured while Medvedev kept speaking. The Russian president then smirked, telling security agents to wait to whisk the man away.
Medvedev said to applause that "the purpose of the Constitution is to allow everyone to voice his opinion" before the man was taken away.
The man was later identified as a well-known youth activist, Roman Dobrokhotov. It wasn't immediately clear how he gained access to the famously secure Kremlin.
Dobrokhotov could not be immediately located for comment.
Friday marks the 15th anniversary of the adoption of Russia's post-Soviet constitution.
One should note that whenever we hear of such a protest it means that there is not a systematic and complete fear of personal political expression. In the case of Code Pink-style nonsense, it is run-of-the-mill organized leftism, railing against imaginary crimes. In the case of Dobrokhotov, it is he, the organizer, doing the protesting, and it is an exceptional case. This would not have happened in the USSR and if it had, we would not have heard about it. (This doesn't mean the current Russian regime doesn't deserve the criticism.) In the West, the legions of idiots do the protesting, and their cries are normal and expected.
Also, in the West the protesters who are removed by security do not face long imprisonment or interrogation. What reason would we have to imprison them or even to hear their idiotic, robotic opinions? In Russia, there is no such assurance.
When Dobrokhov says "He's violated the rights and freedoms of people and citizens!" it's true. When the moonbats declare that Bush and his cabinet have committed war crimes, it's a bunch of nonsense born of a double standard, years of demoralization, and knee jerk anti-Americanism.
It's the difference between these idiots (I can't find the one with the kids screaming "This is a free state, not a police state!" as the police treat them respectfully and remove them from the oncoming motorcade, saving their idiotic lives, but you get the picture) and this.
