Slashdot Mirror
Gary Kasparov Arrested Over Political Fight
geddes writes "World chess champion turned opposition leader Gary Kasparov was arrested this morning while leading an march through Moscow in opposition to Russian President Vladamir Putin. Kasporov is a leader of the 'Other Russia' coalition which has been banned by the government from appearing on TV, and had been denied a marching permit. From the New York Times: 'Essentially barred from access to television, members of Other Russia have embraced street protests as the only platform to voice their opposition ahead of parliamentary elections in December and presidential elections next March. Early this month, Mr. Kasyanov's and Mr. Kasparov's Web sites were blocked, though it was unclear by whom.' Kasparov was later released from detention, though he was still fined for participating in the event."
but that doesn't excuse it. It was apparently about AUD50 (from the ABC.
Anyway, this is just another example of how legitimate protests are squashed by authorities. If Putin and Co continue to suppress the opposition, I wonder if Mr Berezovsky will carry out his threat to have a "Russian Revolution"?
Meh, and you wonder why some of the old people want the Soviet Union back.
I wank in the shower.
Francis Fukuyama was wrong. So wrong.
Liberal Democracy isn't the only ideology still remaining after the fall of the Soviet system. Neo-Facism and the cult of the leader in Russia. The One Party State in China. Theocracies in the Middle East. Tin Pot dictators ruling their roosts all across the third world. Even the "liberated" countries of eastern europe are falling back into authoritarianism.
And faced with this, what are liberal democratic societies doing? They're evolving into not-so-liberal democracies with human rights taking second place to "security" and profit. Once again, the US leads the way and the rest of the western world follows. I'd like to be more optimistic, but somedays I truely feel that the great democratic experiment is doomed to be a slow and ignominious failure.
Apathy is not the cause of democracy's downfall. The sad reality is that a great many people simply to not agree with our free society, with our rule of law or with our casteless social structure. These people are your friends, your neighbours and coworkers, and secretly they support presidents like Putin, and laws that ban street rallies and protests. They're simply waiting for the time when it becomes acceptable to voice those opinions once more. That time may be closer than you think.
May the Maths Be with you!
In the last years of Boris Yeltsin's presidency, Russians began to realize that their post-Soviet capitalistic reforms had been too much too fast, leaving the economy in even worse shambles than before, and allowing the rise of the Russian mafia from the chaos. Yeltsin decided it was time to slow down reforms and let people catch up, so he turned to a little known St. Petersburg political aide with a growing reputation for efficiency to be his last prime minister and implement the slow down. That man was ex-KGB agent Vladimir Putin.
Putin slowed down the capitalistic reforms, and then some. He returned some major companies to state-control, including most of the media. The economy is much improved during his tenure. He revived the secret police en masse. When a major oil tycoon decided to form a political party to challenge Putin, the tycoon was arrested on mafia-related charges, and his company was taken over by the state. Similar things have happened to a number of major political opponents. The court system has lost much of its veneer of independence from the executive branch. Putin is well-known for cronyism and a preference for Soviet-style rule. The Bush administration and others have publicly chastised Putin for hurting democracy. In fact, it wouldn't be unreasonable to suspect him of close ties to major players in the mafia, though impossible to prove. Right now the favorite to succeed Putin appears to be one of his former KGB associates who is now one of his top deputies. If you want specific charges that opponents have leveled against Putin, read anything by Anna Politkovskaya, such as Putin's Russia. Just be aware she has a strong anti-Putin bias (which may be why she was murdered).
Kasparov is just one of the latest to attempt an anti-Putin political movement. Obviously Kasparov could expect a meager fine for holding a public demonstration in a spot where he didn't have a permit. The subtext is much more interesting. Pro-Kremlin youth gathering where he expected to protest? Was it really arranged before Kasparov's? I doubt it, especially the way this exact same excuse is being used repeatedly across multiple cities. Who knows; it's hard to be sure what's going on in Russia under Putin.
US didn't respect European patents. This was a major dispute in the 19th century. England had patented many new industrial machines, and the US was the one place where these machines could be used without paying royalties.
Giving concrete examples would be silly, since it is more or less everything: Machines, factory designs, steam engines, locomotives, etc.