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Russian Police Seize Kasparov
An anonymous reader writes "Russian police seized Garry Kasparov, the Russian chess champion, for staging a political rally against Vladimir Putin. IBM's Deep Blue computer was the first to beat a world champion when it defeated Kasparov, who is one of the strongest players in history." He's also been a giant critic of the Russian administration which is increasingly restricting free speech.
Checkmate!
Seriously, this sucks.
Don't worry. George Bush has looked at Putin's soul and pronounced it excellent.
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First beaten by Blue, then by Red. For someone who spent the vast majority of their life pondering black and white, this has to be shocking splash of color.
In Soviet Russia, they sieze dissidents. What, you were expecting a joke? 'Cuz this isn't funny.
Quiz: True or False -- On a scale of 1 to 10, what is your middle name?
Surely a story about the greatest chessplayer of all time, and a key campaigner for civil liberties in Soviet Russia counts as "news for nerds" without some Deep Blue window-dressing. Do we really need to fake-tag this story as being about supercomputers to get it here?
Who tagged this "Stern but fair"? Please explain how this is "fair" and not just more of Putin's power grab?
'Every story, if continued long enough, ends in death.' --Ernest Hemingway
If the transition had been a little milder than it was then the crime bosses in Russia would not have been able to grab as much as they did. The last thing the new 'vlasti' want is to have their playground taken away from them. This is going to be an extremely tense time for Russia.
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...he's not the same as the old boss. He IS the old boss.
At least with Russia, the citizens can blame Putin for their woes. In the USA, we've got nobody to blame for Bush but ourselves.
According to a report recently issued by Reuters, the leading political candidate representing the liberal anti-Kremlin Yabloko party has been shot by an unknown assailant. The candidate is now in serious condition in a hospital. This attempted assassination caps a year-long effort, by the Kremlin, to rig the parliamentary election on December 2. Under orders from the Kremlin, banks have refused to accept donations from supporters for deposit in the accounts of opposition parties. Owners of assembly halls have canceled contracts allowing opposition politicians to stage rallies. The police have seized the newspapers of opposition parties in a draconian attempt to prevent them from spreading their message.
In early November, the election-monitoring arm of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) declined to send election observers to Russia to monitor the 2007 parliamentary election. This OSCE decision resulted from (1) the Kremlin's refusing to allow more than 70 OSCE observers to enter Russia and (2) the Kremlin's delaying the granting of visas to them. In 2003, the Kremlin had accepted 400 OSCE observers, but after the OSCE condemned the 2003 election for being unfair, many folks in the Kremlin vowed to stymie OSCE's efforts in future elections.
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
I hope that you are right, but if the world hasn't been able to do anything about Russia's horrible crimes against the people of Chechnya, how big are the chances that Kasparov can make a difference? Also, don't forget that Putin's approval ratings are pretty high even if you disbelieve the official statistics from the Kremlin, i.e. the Russians themselves might not even care about this and that is what's really required here. You can't force changes like this from the outside (are you going to sanction Russia? Use military force? Hardly), it has to come from the people of Russia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Civil_Front
Which is part of a larger organization:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Other_Russia
This more a case of politics makes strange bed fellows. All those groups have one thing in common: opposition to the current government and the direction Russia is heading. Take that common cause away, and I doubt many of these groups would have much to do with each other.
So saying Kasperov is guilty by association in this context isn't exactly fair.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Move to Saudi Arabia then you too-scared-to-live-in-a-democracy little pussy. I can't stand Clinton either, but I'm not so pussyfied that I'd wanter her arrested for scaring me.
If you can't handle freedom, go somewhere where you can have big-daddy-authority-figure hold your hand and change your diaper. Scared little bitch.
Do YOU have a problem with THAT, you anonymous little shitstain?
how big are the chances that Kasparov can make a difference
Even less while imprisoned.
He's got a massive ego, so people dismiss him as a bad loser. But his accusations of cheating aren't without merit.
My respect for him has gone up quite a bit because of this incident. I wonder if I would have the courage to stand up to police and arbitrary imprisonment, knowing what Russian jails must be like these days.
I hear lots of griping about the state of the world on /. and elsewhere, but I wonder if any of us would have the courage to put our beliefs into action like he has.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
Yeah, damn slashdot for being so against freedom of speech that they removed your post. I'm outraged! I REALLY wanted to reply and tell you how right you are, but now I just CAN'T because slashdot has gone and censored you. ...
Show me the censorship. That's all I ask. Back that childish whining up with some bruises from the abuse you've taken. Oh, that's right, slashdot doesn't censor.... ever. That's right, I said it, EVER, as in being an absolute (I'm the kind of guy that likes to tack qualifiers and quantifiers on everything). That's why it's one of the few places I actually post instead of lurk. (I know, it looks like I'm saying I troll alot, I don't, I troll alittle, (and almost exclusively non-anon) I'm just principled about free speech like that)
As far as your list of topics goes, you're not being censored, you're RIGHTLY being pushed to the back of the room by the CROWD (not the site) for being a... well... what IS the right-wing equivalent of a tin foil hat wearer? Oh yes, a Kool-Aid drinker. Very few of the little factoids you present have any basis in real-life at ALL, and those that do have a tenuous connection to reality at best.
To sum up: You're not being censored for being 'edgy', you're being ignored for being ridiculous. You don't get to be a martyr for that.
I spent a couple of years living in Russia back in the Yeltsin years of the mid 90's. Overall Russians are extremely friendly and hospitable, but they have a long sad history of instituting governments that are in effect a legitimized mafia. From the 10th through the 19th centuries the rule of the Tsars were essentially a gang of thugs with pretensions of royalty. The better part of the 20th century they switched to a government that was another gang of thugs with pretense of communism. And now they have switched to a new band of thugs with pretensions of democracy. (Actually this is still the same band of thugs as the communist ones, they just switched pretensions). It seems that Putin is slowly dropping any pretense of democracy.
"I'm making perfect sense, you're just not keeping up."
Even less while imprisoned.
They said the same about Nelson Mandela...
I would add that Iran is clearly far more democratic than Russia is today. Russia is more like Iraq under Saddam, where elections occur but nobody has any possibility of being elected except Putin. Despite meddling in the elections by the Council of Guardians, there are actual and real political dynamics which exist in Iran today. No such real dynamics occur under Russia today.
The big difference is that, unlike Saddam, Putin actually does have weapons of mass destruction.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Similar to the upcoming US election results