This excerpt from Alexei Navalny’s “Rules of Life” in Esquire magazine caused a member of the United Russia party such suffering that I now have to pay him 30,000 rubles. That was the ruling yesterday by Judge Demyanenko of the Lyublino District Court. The very same judge who quite recently issued the exact opposite ruling on an absolutely identical claim brought by the very same plaintiff. At that time, the slogan “United Russia is the Party of Crooks and Thieves” was found to be entirely lawful.
Well, obviously. The situation changed, and so did the instructions. What’s amusing is that one United Russia deputy has already floated the idea: “Let every member of United Russia file the same kind of lawsuit against Navalny. There are 2 million of us, and we’ll win 60 billion rubles from him. We’ll ruin and bankrupt him.” Even more amusing is that this United Russia deputy is the notorious Burmatov—the very same man who, together with his party colleagues, staged a forest fire for a video called “Young Guard of United Russia bravely and boldly puts out forest fires.” So he is a crook in the purest sense of the word. Simply the gold standard of a crook and con man.
Right now I’m watching a live broadcast from the State Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament), where United Russia is brazenly and boorishly forcing through amendments to the law on public rallies—the very same amendments through which the Party of Crooks and Thieves also wants to ruin everyone unhappy with it by means of fines. So no matter how unhappy pensioner and United Russia member Svirid, Judge Demyanenko, and their bosses may be, I will continue to regard United Russia as “the Party of Crooks and Thieves.” Of course, we will appeal the Lyublino District Court’s ruling. I urge everyone to support me—and everyone who thinks the same—with one very simple action: write, wherever you can: UNITED RUSSIA IS THE PARTY OF CROOKS AND THIEVES On LiveJournal, VKontakte, Twitter, Facebook, a wall, or a fence. And as for those 30,000 rubles, we’ll ram them down United Russia’s throat—DMP will be arriving soon. Now for something pleasant. Yesterday, the staff of our Anti-Corruption Foundation gave me a gift, remembering my love of video-music creations done in the fashionable youth style known as “dubstep.” Thank you very much, my dear “RosPil people,” “RosYama people,” and all the other foundation folks. I love you all very much.
http://youtu.be/cOOrviv623s
From now on, call me Oleksiy—the king of dubstep.