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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Actually, you might get arrested for peacefully protesting against Bush.
From the link:
@ASP.NET's parent-teacher meeting: "Little Johnny.NET is very bright, but he doesn't play well with others."