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.

Re:"Stern but fair?"

[mapkinase]

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.

Re:gratuitous IBM inclusion

[Elemenope]

In 2004, the Libertarian and Green candidates for President of the United States were arrested for attempting to enter the building in which the presidential debates were being held.

Yes, it is that serious, and, yes, it does happen here.

Re:The Kremlin Plays Brutal Chess

[Fred_A]

What I don't get is why people still act as if Russia wasn't a dictatorship while it clearly is.

It puts on a lazy show of elections like any dictatorship is expected to do, even goes as far as not having the party in power not win with 97% of votes but that doesn't change anything to the reality of what's going on there. Made up wars (although the "western" democracies seem to do that a lot lately), numerous murders, broadlight corruption at every level of the state...

That the states play the "our good friend Putin" game because of the hydrocarbons flowing out of Russia is one thing, but that a lot of people still somewhat believe it's a "rough" democracy still baffles me (not that the parent poster sems to believe so).

Re:gratuitous IBM inclusion

[timeOday]

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.

Actually I think being the last human to hold the absolute title of "chess champion" is pretty significant too. Not that they won't keep having contests to see who the currently best human is, but the fact that the very best chess players are computers has changed chess for me. Humans have never been the fastest runners on earth, or the strongest, or had the best vision. But we were the best chess players. No longer. Maybe we should hand the political reigns over to supercomputers after all :)

Re:The Kremlin Plays Brutal Chess

[iminplaya]

What I don't get is why people still act as if Russia wasn't a dictatorship while it clearly is.

It doesn't matter. It never did. As long as they're not Communist, everything is hunky-dory.

Finish the analogy

[apankrat]

> This is akin to arresting Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.

This is also akin Hillary organizing illegal political rally against George Bush.

Re:gratuitous IBM inclusion

[turgid]

And here in good old Blighty, let us not forget the frail, old Holocaust survivor who got arrested under Anti-Terrorism laws for shouting, "Nonsense," at a Labour Party conference.

Keep on rockin' in the Free World.

Re:obligatory joke

[thrillseeker]

how big are the chances that Kasparov can make a difference

Even less while imprisoned.

Re:The Kremlin Plays Brutal Chess

[happyemoticon]

Then why does America still have such close ties to China? Nixon and Kissinger really helped improve things, true; both America and China had bones against the USSR; and it's better to be at peace than at war (at least in my opinion, but why is there no strong ideological war being carried out? The real answer is that they're awesome trading partners, unlike the inefficient, walled-off USSR. I feel like I'm playing a shell game, and at some point, "democracy" was replaced with "capitalism". As was said before, now that they're pumping dinosaur juice out to the rest of the world and we can build a McDonalds in Red Square, we like Russia.

I suppose this is a trite observation. Of course democracy has been usurped by capitalism. I just hadn't really thought about it in terms of foreign policy before.

Re:The Deep Blue Win

[florescent_beige]

He's got a massive ego, so people dismiss him as a bad loser. But his accusations of cheating aren't without merit [about.com].

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.

Re:obigatory joke

[shutdown -p now]

I can't say for the other countries, but here in Russia most people do not appreciate Kasparov as a politician. That might have something in common with Putin's high approval rating.

I wonder

[SmallFurryCreature]

Why is there so little reporting on what this Kasparov actually stands for? Check wikipedia, about the only thing I can find is that he is far-left (communist?) and that the Other Russia party is a coalition of parties including communists and nationalists. Well, that is a load of my mind. That is Stalin and Hitler in one party, why choose when you can have two!

It is kinda like the US people who keep saying vote Ron Paul, then you read up on the guy and learn that, yes there people who would make even worse presidents then Bush.

Just what does Kasparov stand for, just because he is against Putin who clearly ain't all that nice does NOT make kasparov himself any better. The problem with the media is that they like the idea of heroes, Putin clearly no longer is one so they need someone else. The world doesn't work like that.

No comments so far seem to explain anything about Kasparov except one commenter who points out that his dad was jewish. Oh well that eases my mind. I think another person rallying against a troubled goverment promising better things had a jewish father (step-father).

Godwin or not, just what does the Unitied Civil Front (his real party, Other Russia is a coalition of multiple parties) stand for? I do not know and don't speak russian and the western media seems almost reluctant (or kasparov just ain't as intresting as britney spears) to report on it.

Re:obligatory joke

[Spy der Mann]

Even less while imprisoned.

They said the same about Nelson Mandela...

So, then Russia is a state sponsor of terrorism

[einhverfr]

Look at the Litvenenko case. The assassination was designed to be clearly traceable to Russia (since you can fingerprint artificial isotopes to show what reactors they come from), and could not have been done without state help. Russia denies this, and this represents an assassination of a dissident emigrant specifically to warn other emigrants not to speak out against Putin. This is violence for the sole purpose of invoking terror, and it is arguably a greater threat to our way of life than Al Qaeda ever has been.

Re:obligatory joke

[SlashThat]

:S
Is this guy from the KGB? Or how they call it now... FSB?

Re:Since slashdot is also against free speech

[anothy]

what the hell, i'm bored. in order:

• certainly violence, but not significantly more per volume than the christian or jewish holy texts. the pedophilia thing gets slightly murkier because you've got more cultural norms to account for, but the same statement probably holds (there's certainly plenty of rape incest, and other manner of sexual depravity amongst our spiritual fathers). it's a simple matter of reading the text. i doubt you've been contradicted overly much on that point; i suspect it's really the bizarre conclusions you're coming to that people are taking issue with. your posted straw man, however, makes you look like less of a tool.
• okay, say a correlation exists. i actually agree. but how strong is that correlation, and at what point does some correlation justify restricting the freedoms of everyone else? again, it's not particularly the claim you're making here that gets you slammed (although i'd love to see some citations there), it's the questionable and unsupported conclusions you draw from it.
• "anything"? really? here let me try: George W Bush is the worst US president since the beginning of the 20th century, and possibly ever. now, start the timer for deletion, or even editorial mods to unattainable negative numbers. again, i think what's behind your straw man is that particular claims regarding bush you make get ridiculed, shot down, and/or laughed at (probably deservedly so). are we seeing the pattern yet?
• a question of terms. many people don't believe abortion kills a human being because the human in question isn't finished being made yet. you're defining your terms to suit your argument, but ignoring the fact that those definitions are not universal by any means. you certainly don't have to go back very far in history (200 years is way more than enough; i can't pinpoint it much better than that) to find where the universal understanding for the creation of a human was birth. at lest your argument has a different problem than the last several here.
• i've seen a pretty good debate on this topic on /., actually. but the claim that a significant increase will not have catastrophic effects is pretty well unfounded as far as i'm aware. can you cite? i think you're just upset your particular assertions aren't taken as authoritative.
• just false. here, again, we can time the deletion or ultra-demoding: most violent deaths in Iraq in the past year or two have been muslim-on-muslim violence due to religious or pseudo-religious differences (although this might interfere with the above experiment, i'm willing to take that risk). now we're back to your straw man tactic. nobody would seriously doubt that, i think. but moving from that to some sort of assertion that the hundreds of thousands of deaths the US-led occupation is responsible for somehow don't matter, or the hundreds of direct killings by US troops every year don't matter, or that the US-led overthrow of Iraq's former sovereign government doesn't have a role to play in the current sectarian strife, is all further unfounded conclusions skipping several steps in reasoning from your stated starting point.
• um, what? on the one hand, it sounds like you're asserting that the majority of /. readers would deny the American Revolution ever happened; i think it's safe to say that's patently false. on the other hand, it sounds like you're condoning vigilantism, armed rebellion, and/or sectarian violence, which, yeah, i think you're going to have a hard time getting support for. i don't think that's actually your intent, but here you've set up a straw man so far removed from the point you're actually trying to argue that i can't even tell what that is.
• you're free to mention it. you're just stupid and wrong. Bush, by his actions, words, and decisions, is directly responsible for all sorts of badness - hundreds of thousands of deaths in Iraq, an uncounted (but almost certainly much smaller) number in the US, trillions of dollars pissed away, giving our children an

Re:obigatory joke

[einhverfr]

I am not so sure about this. Kasparov's "fear-mongering" about the end of democracy in Russia seem more fact based than one might otherwise think.

Look, I am not saying that Russia doesn't have the right to choose a system which trades central control over infrastructure development and management of the country instead of one which safeguards individual liberty. This is a choice for Russians alone and I don't think we should interfere with that part itself. However, when Putin starts assassinating dissidents outside of Russia, then he crosses a line which makes him pretty clearly a problem everyone in the world has to face. We *should* have done this when Litvinenko was assassinated with polonium from a Russian nuclear reactor. Maybe this will help people start to realize the danger that Putin poses outside Russia.

Re:The Kremlin Plays Brutal Chess

[ShieldW0lf]

The cold war wasn't between democracy and totalitarianism. It was between evil men who got their power from capitalism and evil men who got their power from totalitarianism.

Ideologically, communism is a better system of rules than capitalism, because in a communist economy, the group has an implicit duty to care about your well being and not leave you to freeze in the cold. In capitalism, they have an implicit duty to let you freeze.

Ideologically, democracy is a better system of leadership than totalitarianism, because in a democratic society, the leader is materially accountable to the population, and can be replaced if he should wield that power according to whim rather than in the fulfillment of their duty.

However, in the end, violence and deprivation are both effective tools for oppressing people, so it doesn't matter if you've got communism or democracy, if you've got totalitarianism or capitalism complimenting it, you're living with the threat of death staring you in the face.

The cold war was won when the corrupt Russian oligarchy agreed to unite with the corrupt NATO capitalists and oppress everyone under the capitalist system.

Putin is in an uncomfortable situation over there. They've already re-structured their society according to the capitalist ideology, so there aren't really any legal means he can use to prevent foreigners from raping his country and impoverishing his people, but he's decided to fight it out anyways.

Of course, good luck finding anyone saying anything like that out of any Western run news organization. The people who own those outlets are the same ones who would happily see all those Russians back in the mines making minimum wage and living in poverty while all their natural resources are systematically piped out of the country and used to heat our houses.

Re:The Kremlin Plays Brutal Chess

[ShieldW0lf]

China isn't getting things in trade for those exports. They're exporting on loan, to the tune of billions and billions of dollars, and they're doing it so they can keep justifying the existing power structures where everyone goes to a factory to work while preventing too much wealth from being created that might lead to a cease in production.

They could accomplish the same goal by dumping the goods into the Pacific as quickly as they were made. The USA hasn't had anything significant to offer by way of trade in a long, long time. If you're going to talk about China-US relations, you really need to fully digest these realities, or you're going to end up way off.

To the people of China, working in those factories is no more practically useful than the Pyramids were to the Egyptians.