Monday was Tax Day. “Or as Democrats call it — Christmas in April,” says Jodi Miller. In this edition of NewsBusted, she also touches on Margaret Thatcher’s death, the Boston Marathon bombings and Vladimir Putin’s confrontation with topless Femen protesters in Germany.
British police believe foul play cannot be completely ruled out in the death of Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, whose body was found with a piece of material around his neck. Berezovsky, a vocal critic of President Vladimir Putin, was found dead in a luxury mansion in Ascot, an affluent town west of London.
In the United Kingdom, police have cordoned off the house of the late Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky who was found dead over the weekend. Police are treating Berezovsky’s death as unexplained after searching his house for chemical, biological and nuclear material. Suspicions have been aroused because of his longtime vocal opposition to Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
As frenzied doomsayers around the world prepare for the apocalypse sometime today, Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed the Mayan prediction as a hoax, saying at a yearly Q&A that the earth won’t end for another 4.5 billion years, when the sun goes out.
Is President Obama campaigning for re-election as Commander in Chief or Commander in Sleaze? Witness this new Obama spot aimed at “progressive” chicks whose thinking begins and ends with their lady parts.
And where did Obama’s posse get this bright idea? From Alpha male Vladimir Putin, who ran similar cherry-popping ads in his re-election bid earlier this year.
As they say, birds of a feather flock together, whether they be dodos or vultures. Maybe after Obama is fricasseed on Nov. 6, he can invite Vlad over to the new Obama pad in Hawaii, and they can party hearty, awaiting all those virgins in the stratosphere promised by Mohammed. H/T The Right Scoop
UPDATE: It turns out both Putin and Obama ripped off this high-concept from Women’s Voices. Women Vote, a group that cast itself as non-partisan, but whose board members were all Democratic operatives and whose funding came from the leftist Tides Foundation, underwritten by Teresa Heinz Kerry. Here is a telling WVWV spot from 2006.
Ekaterina Samutsevich, one of the three members of the punk rock band Pussy Riot, has been freed following an appeal filed by her new attorneys. A Moscow judge today overturned her original two-year jail sentence and released Samutsevich on probation, citing circumstances surrounding her original arrest. Meanwhile, the judge upheld the two-year jail sentences for the two other band members. The Pussy Riot protesters were arrested in February after performing a blistering anti-Putin “punk prayer” from the altar of Moscow’s largest Russian Orthodox cathedral.
Despite the jailing of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot and government crackdowns on dissidents, anti-Putin protesters haven’t abandoned their fight for greater civil liberties in Russia. SBS Dateline from Australia reports from Moscow on the opposition movement.
Nashi (meaning “Ours”) is a popular political youth group in Russia with direct ties to the Kremlin. Members of Nashi recently published an erotic calendar as a salute to Vladimir Putin, professing their love and devotion for him. This short documentary by Danish filmmaker Lise Berk Pedersen follows 16-year-old Masha Drokova, a Nashi commissar, who faces a crisis of conscience that tests her beliefs. The catalyst: Her friend Oleg Kashin, a popular anti-Putin reporter, is brutally beaten by “unknown perpetrators” in an assault captured on a security camera. H/T ITVS International
A Russian judge today found three members of the punk band Pussy Riot guilty on charges of hooliganism for their February concert at a Moscow cathedral protesting the rule of President Vladimir Putin. In the concert, an act of guerrilla theater, the trio called upon the Virgin Mary to drive Putin away from Russia.
The band members each received sentences of two years imprisonment, commencing from the time of their arrest in March. The specific charges, “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred,” carried stiff sentences of up to seven years, but prosecutors were recommending that the band members be jailed for three years, and Putin himself had advocated leniency in their case. Judge Marina Syrova read from the lengthy verdict for about three hours before announcing the sentencing around 6 pm Friday, Moscow time.
“We accept this as our ethical misdemeanor, but an ethical misdemeanor should not be a cause of criminal punishment,” band member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova said. Meanwhile, outside the courtroom, arrests occurred as supporters and opponents of the band gathered. Those detained included chess master Garry Kasparov, a vehement Putin critic. Pussy Riot vigils also were staged in New York, London, Paris and elsewhere.
Here’s a World Edition report on the trial from Taiwan’s Next Media Animation.
And here’s an interview with the three other members of the band — Sparrow, Squirrel and Balaclava — who remain at large and have continued to elude Russian authorities.
Meanwhile, a Femen protester in Kiev uses a chainsaw to cut down a cross in support of Pussy Riot. The cross was near Independence Square in this Ukraine city.
