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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?
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.
I worked in Moscow for outsourcing company for several months. All of the developers were big Putin (and /.) fans. The popularity of Putin might be artificially bumped up by the relentless propaganda, but this propaganda plus excellent economic context works. People REALLY like Putin in Russia, brainwashed (which I am sure about) or not. So "fear of being imprisoned" as you nicely exaggerated has nothing to do with it.
You have to understand the political climate in Russia to see that Putinism does not have many alternatives, given sincere dislike of what West looks like in the light of American foreign policy.
Putin came to power "with the blood of Chechens up to his elbows", but he made some good changes in Russia after the lawlessness of 90's. That happened many time in history, that is how autocratic rulers usually come to power: after screw ups of democracy, they fix many things (and then they fall, of course, and that what will eventually happen to Putinisim as well). Autocratism vs democracy is like dinosaurs vs mammals. Dinosaurs are bigger and stronger, but mammals are more resilient.
Kasparov and other liberal opposition have ZERO influence or support in Russia. The only (very weak as well) opposition in Russia is a Communist party (do not laugh, it is not funny). The West of course do not care and they will support this puppet liberal opposition, anyway...
Putinism in Russia is for long for better or for worse (for whom?).
And "fairness" has very little to do in politics. Laws are typically broken by the powers.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
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
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.
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