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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."
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
Castled by the police.
Get it? Eh? Because the prison cell is like... Oh gosh.
Is there another side to this story? IS there a valid reason for the TV ban? Is it even a TV ban? And so on.
I have long ago learned that slashdot stories and summaries have enough bias in them to drown half the world in so thats why I'm asking.
I think you meant "Czechmated".
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
In Soviet Russia... Uhm... Wait a minute here.
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.
their political system may be awful mess, but it goddamn cool that being a chess champion there makes you a national hero too big for the government to mess with lightly.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
We like to think we have freedom of speech and a peaceful protest like this wouldn't be broken up here. That is false. In Russia they require permits and his permit was denied. He and some other protesters were arrested for marching without a permit.
Most don't know that here in the US you are required to have a permit also, just as they did in Russia they can refuse to grant your permit will try to silence your protest and just happened in Russia. If you March anyway you WILL be arrested for trying to exercise your free speech.
Putin has Russia locked down almost as tight as Stalin. Only, instead of killing people, he just chases them out of the country, or locks them up. Remember how one political dissident's lawyer recieved death threats, and fled to Amsterdam? Yeah, guess who ordered the death threats. Hint: It's not Yeltsin. He owns most of the TV and media outlets - he can clean up his mess by making it a non story. I wish Kasparov was only the first example of Putin's ironhold grip on political discussion.
kasparov blames team of ibm scientists for masterminding his capture.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
In lots of places, even if you are denied a permit, you are still allowed to protest. And if you don't do anything besides not move on when told to ... Well you can't be legally arrested. (I believe this is the case in all of Australia, but at least NSW and Tasmania.)
That doesn't stop you being arrested however. Charged. Forced to fly across the country to one court date. Forced to get a lawyer. Get charged with other charges because the cops are trying to blackmail you into pleading guilty to a "lesser" charge (traffic charge for example). Refuse to bow to blackmail. Fly across the country again the day before the court date. Get rung up by your lawyer and told that all charges have been dropper.
Can you guess that I'm bitter? The fact is, in more civilised countries, you are allowed to demonstrate and protest. And so long as you don't break other laws (such as smashing shit up), then you are not breaking any laws. And thus the police have no right to arrest you. But as I've mentioned before, there are shitloads of examples where they will. (In the case above, that was me. I was "being annoying" according to one police officer who told another couple to arrest me.)
I wank in the shower.
Advancing? Bullshit. They are just catching up by stealing the technologies from the Western world and then playing with their currency exchange rates to maximize their profit. If they were advancing at the speed of light then you would assume that there would have been some major scientific and technological breakthroughs that came from China in the last 10 or so years, right? You know, something on the order of the Internet, the cellphone, the transistor, the Big Bang theory, plate tectonics, DNA, etc. Start naming some.
The heavy handed leadership just means that the government is run by something similar to the Mafia. It doesn't mean that it is the right way to rule.
there was a huge protest against a G8 meeting in florida (around '02 i think).
they had flawless preparation, including all permits.
the pro-globalist heavyweights who controlled the area simply had cops trample them anyway, declaring them "anarchist agitators" to the media, which loyally parroted their excuse to the rest of the nation, quickly burying any potential public outrage at the new police state of florida.
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OMG.. you mean people would actually SEE and/or NOTICE the protestors in the streets, and possibly be educated and recruited to their cause?!
perish the thought!
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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!
(Go ahead and mod me down - prove Republicans have no sense of humor.)
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.
A: Because, Kasparov is a nerd!
As opposed to the Free Speech Zones outside the DNC in 2004? I saw the RNC protests, they were a whole lot more "free" to protest than anyone at the DNC.
*cough* *cough*
This is exactly the point Kasparov has been trying to make. An important part of playing chess is understanding how to assess your own strength impartially. Kasparov fully understands he is playing from a weak position (he said so on BBC Radio last week). Let's hope he can use this knowledge to do better than others who might rush in foolhardily thinking they are in a psoition of strength.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Vladimir Putin has enjoyed almost rock star like popularity in Russia for his nearly 2 terms now. In fact, several years ago, there was a chart topping single called "Someone like Putin" that was the rage throughout the country (someone that won't leave me, etc, etc). It seems to me that if someone comes along to challenge him, it will take someone of equal or greater popularity to pull it off (someone like Kasparov). Also, I don't really know why, but Russians (at least in Russia), seem to crave a heavy handed goverment, and Putin is more than willing to give it to them. Unfortunately, we really don't understand this phenomenon in the west.
The Russian stormtroopers then club some of the demonstators. When we see the phalanx of Russian special-forces police numbering nearly 9000 (outnumbering the demonstrators by 6 to 1), we are reminded of the American police and their dogs as they nearly mauled the civil-rights demonstrators of the 1960s.
Yet, one difference still exists between King and Kasparov. An assassin's bullet felled King. What will happen to Kasparov? Will he end in the same fate.
Geez, China's relative growth is not a product of totalitarianism. It's the result of a Capitalist experiment conducted by Britain concerning a territory of theirs known as Hong Kong. Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997, currently Hong Kong is still a business world mecca. Mainland China is stuck somewhere between a poverty stricken totalitarian sh*thole and something of a socialist capitalism, essentially torn between business and oldworld governance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong#Economy
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
The Russians may have cheap labor, but that's only because a decent living and viable middle class is being denied them. Russia now has less than half the population of the old Soviet Union - less than 150 million and falling. So there they sit, on the greatest mass of land and resources of any nation with a population that barely bests that of Japan. Their greedy, self-serving Kremlin masters steal anything of value, triggering a tremendous brain-drain, withering the army, and rusting the navy. They are surrounded by energy-hungry nations and remain slaves to the classic Russian Paranoia handed down through the centuries. And, as usual, no matter who's running the place they always employ ham-fisted diplomacy and civil oppression. They still have respectable infrastructure and an somewhat educated workforce to draw upon. Russia could be mighty, wealthy, and successful. Oh well.
people like you need to move to china or iran where "those damned people who want rights" will be put in their place.
honestly, IMHO you can go get violently soddomized for your blanket, trollish comments.
the vast majority of protests are perfectly civil until cops come in and instigate violence.
i have plenty of access to videos of cops throwing the first blow, then running around beating people in attempts to confiscate their cameras and prevent the documentation of their fascist behavior.
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How do you think the U.S. advanced so rapidly during the Industrial Revolution? It wasn't because they did a lot of innovating themselves - they stole a LOT of technology from Europe, over Europe's protests (with lots of outrage about "intellectual property theft").
Now China is doing the same thing the U.S. (and the rest of the Western countries), with pretty much the same we-cant-compete! whining from the "victim" countries. Funny how that works out.
"There is no bureaucracy to get in the way."
You have been mislead, China has had a large bureaucracy for the past 2000yrs regardless of who was running the show.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Part of the story is the other participants in the opposition movement. Despite his apparent popularity in the West, Kasparov's participation alone probably would not have caused the permits to be denied.
A gallery of news photos from the event may help to understand the story better. I am not going to try explaining the backgrounds of all the opposition groups, but one of them is called "national-bolsheviks" and even a quick glance at their symbols may suggest that the West would not want the leaders of this movement to rule in Russia. Some "national-bolshevik" events have turned violent in the past, so the Russian Federal and Moscow City governments may have a legitimate security concern when considering the location and type of these events.
In this case, the authorities actually did allow the opposition meeting on one of squares in Moscow, but not the preceding march starting from a different square. So there was no total ban, but the opposition did not get everything they wanted. The response of Western governments to the anti-globalization marches may be a reasonable analogy. I am not saying that there is no concern over democracy in Russia in general, but in this specific event both sides have contributed to the outcome.
For those who cannot read the captions in Russian, these are pictures of Kasparov from the march.
there are times in life I wish I had mod points and this is one of them. I'm a big fan of the Russian culture, I find it facinating but the Russian government IMO just can't be trusted. Russia is a country inundated with organized crime and instead of stomping it out the Russian leaders ride the mafia all the way to power. It's sad to see such potential go to waste. During the space race Russia truly did innovate in the beginning giving us yanks one hell of a run for our money until they just couldn't keep up and had to start stealing technology from the US. Unfortunately for the former USSR communism is fundamentally flawed.
And they need land and resources.
You must be kidding. Saying that Russia is in need of land and resources is like saying that China is facing a manpower shortage. Even accounting for the percentage of the country covered in permafrost, they have more usable land than any other country in the world. And as for their natural resources, they are hardly hurting there either.
"I'm making perfect sense, you're just not keeping up."
then you arrest the adventurists, not shut down the protest or require permits.
at many sports events there are similar "adventurists". they get drunk and routy, then throw beer at players or other spectators and start fights. do they arrest everyone around that guy? no. do they require permits from everyone who wants to play street footbal or street hockey? no, they arrest the troublemaker and go away.
put up or shut up with your "adventurists". (and no.. major news channels dont count for this, you need to have on the ground first hand video of "adventurists" instigating things)
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I don't understand why this is funny -- I mean, it's a play on words, sure. Do that many Slashdotters think Czech was ever part of the USSR? It wasn't. Beyond that, Kasparov was born in Azerbaijan, which is nowhere near Czech. Also, for the mods: his name is Garry. With two arrs.
I have to agree, I can't think of any examples, and yet the post gets modded +4 informative...either everyone else on Slashdot knows of hundreds of examples or /. is becoming very liberal in it's US bashing w/out evidence...
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
The U.S. has been at war with the socialist bogeyman since Marx published. I don't need to say too much how much the Gilded Age wealthy used their newspapers and their government influence to convince people that labor laws = unions = communism = anarchy = slavery = the end of the world. Those men were the among the worst slavers in history. They should have felt right at home.
After the Revolution in Russia, the entire myth building machine went into batshit insane mode. We spend untold trillions of dollars and who knows how many billions of hours of people's lives fighting the Commie Devil. Certainly millions were slaughtered -- we killed a million alone in Vietnam. Now we have the Terrorist Menace, and they are sticking us for trillions more and killing hundreds of thousands in the name of security, and even invoke the democracy meme again, tho it really doesn't apply. The last of the Commie war is still being fought against a dirt poor Cuba which would be a damned sight less poor if we hadn't embargoed it for half a century.
Russia wasn't the almighty military enemy the commie warriors said it was. The story of how the Pentagon and the CIA were pummeled into line, despite evidence they knew about that said they were far weaker and poorer than the civilian warriors demanded they see it, still remains to be told. It's a story Americans will not listen to. We had our first Iraq over sixty years ago.
Soooo. Soviet Union fell, turned into a hell on earth controlled by crime syndicates. We were fine with that! At least we can do business with the guy who cuts a prostitute up for holding back. So Putin has golden plumbing *on his airplane*. That's capitalism, by definition better than anything.
Now we have a fascist state rising from the criminal state. We're still okay with that. Putin has a good soul, Bush saw it in his eyes. A little polonium and a few reporters with their brains splattered in front of their homes is just the stuff of hard politics. Cheney probably smirks when he hears about that.
They could strip people to the bone with boiling oil, and we'd STILL think they were better than them commies. As a matter of fact, they ARE boiling people's skin off with vats of oil. We don't care.
Vonnegut said that what we see today is the rise to power of psychopathic personalities. People like them because they are decisive. But, they are decisive because they don't care about the repercussions of their decisions. Putin is strong, and Russians like strong men, as Hendrick Smith wrote. I'd like to point out that PP leaders also require a large population of PPs who don't care either. Without masses of people with no moral sense, PPs can't keep power.
As long as unions are illegal and we can do business with someone, we don't fuck with them. Rule by kleptocrats. I'd rather have a socialist neighbor who spends all their money on health care and full employment than a hypermilitary power ruled by psychopaths. But we're so fixated on our century and a half of war (on the behalf of the very wealthy who created the war in fear of change in their power) on commies, unions and suchlike that we will support a thousand mirrorshaded mass murderers who will sell us bananas at near cost than a socialist who wants to spread the wealth. The mountain of bodies we have dedicated to the god of money must be a thousand feet tall.
Russia's core problem with "freedom" and "democracy" was that they were Russians. What they do to the weak is part of their culture, not about Marxism. communism was our bogeyman, not theirs, as we see clearly now. They have a fascist soul, and it doesn't matter how the paychecks are cut -- it's about power. But we loves us some businessmen. We don't want democracy, we want money, we want gas pipelines, we want cheap labor. We are looking straight into the face of pure evil and laughing as it beats the democrats in the streets of Russia. Fuck those losers, they were blocking traffic. Party on.
Oh my, is this for real? The first US patent granted was for making potash. Now, dont you think there was prior art? Read up on the history of engines, trains, cars, electricity, chemistry, drugs....
Okay, how about Samuel Slater, who took an apprenticeship in a British factory, memorised the workings of the machines. In evasion of British laws limiting the distribution the details of such inventions, he disguised himself as a farmhand to leave the country with the knowledge, which he used to set up factories in America, earning himself fame and wealth, despite basically being an IP thief. Whatever one thinks of patents and the draconian IP laws applicable to such inventions, he was let in on a trade secret, and used deception to succeed in stealing that secret.
So anyway, there's an example, no need to accuse people of making things up. Can we go back to the US-bashing now we have evidence?
Prague Spring, Polish People's Republic wasn't part of USSR either but we helped beating Czechoslovakia into submisission. Don't forget about Warsaw Pact and other means that Russia used or is using to make it's neighbours obedient, even today. I will be trolled into oblivion but whatever.
Don't use modpoints to 'further your opinion', they are meant to further increase CONSTRUCTIVE discussion, not as a means to 'slap down your opponents'.
:)
As a side note, I happen to basically agree with both you and Kreplock, however my uneasy feeling has a root in the 150 million statistic without citing any sources.
I do not question the accuracy of that number (not the issue for my concern here) Kreplock uses, only the fact that no sources were offered + your ability to 'jump on the bandwagon' with modpoints without ANY objective viewpoint for the discussion.
When (if!) you actually get modpoints to 'play' with, read the moderator's guidelines....an obvious link to these will be provided to you if you ever get the mod points.
If you've already been granted modpoints, then DO check out that moderator's guidelines link that is displayed when you click on that 'You have Moderator Points' link.
P.S. Kreplock...you just got in the crossfire- sorry!
narzy...modpoints aren't WMD, they're meant to further reasonable discussion, not as 'smack down' device.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Argument: "Lots of people stole stuff."
Counter-Argument: "You're wrong: Persons A, B and C did not steal stuff."
Do you see the logical fallacy in your arugment?
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.
Not so secretly, I long for a libertarian to lower taxes, and leave me and everybody else the f*ck alone to live their lives as they see fit. Sadly, the very sort of people who are attracted to and ultimately end up in positions of power are those who won't leave you alone, and insist on bending you to their will.
While I agree with much of what the Libertarians say with regard to less government restrictions on individual freedoms and lower taxes, they also advocate less government regulation of industry (in fact, they advocate virtual no restriction on corporate behaviour). This poses a problem and is their achialles heel: unregulated capitalsim tends to evolve into corporate fascism, as the 19th century proved very dramatically (c.f. child labour, private police murders of early union organisers, etc.).
Having a weak democratically elected government, and undemocratic corporatism running rampent is a sure recipe for the very authoritarianism you and I both decry. The only difference is that the dictators will come from captains of industry and private armies, rather than politicians and publicly funded armies.
What we need is a hybrid of Libertarianism and social liberalism, where indivudual freedom is held sacrosanct, but corporations are treated as governance bodies and required to submit to the same constitutional limitations on their treatment of human beings just as political governance bodies (i.e. the "government"). Alas, I see no one advocating such a thing--which leaves a gaping political hole in the landscape where a non-dystopian future might lie.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I don't deny that Czech has had close ties with Russia in the past. What I was confused by was basically what happened between A (editor), B (GGP), and C (mods):
A: Dude from Russia
B: Czech joke!
C: LOL!!!!!MODMODMODMODMOD
I mean, there's no denying that New York and Texas have a relationship as well, but you don't see this being funny (well, pretend it'd be funny on its merits):
-What's a Texan's favorite broadway show?
-New York, New York!
-LOL!!!
The very fact that Franco rose to power and established his fascist government at the very same time the neighboring countries were liberated is a huge indicator that fascism wasn't that much of a problem for the western governments/elites than the threat of a social revolution posed.
While after Europe was rid of the plague of German fascism the socialists/workers in Spain struggled against their own fascist dictator, who was backed by the usual suspects (i.e. a bigger part of the military and the old 'elite') and ignored by all of the allied governments who were just too busy celebrating their "victory" over fascism. If the fighting in WWII had really been for the sake of protecting democracy and fighting fascism the very fact of Franco, being an overt authoritarian fascist ruler, should have made him an enemy, not "neutral"!
This concept was continued by the new superpower to rise after WWII, the US. And there is ample evidence in the events that happened ever since and the situation at this very moment that the socialist movement was seen as a far greater problem than fascism ever was. Just have a look at the history of the countries of Indochina, Iran, Iraq and a host of South American countries during the "Cold" War. You'll see time and again that democratically elected socialist governments were violently disposed followed by an authoritarian/fascist corrupt governments with the support of the US military/intelligence.
And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
"What will happen to Kasparov? Will he end in the same fate?"
Polonium.
~X~
~X~