Kasparov Arrested By Russian Police 374
New submitter perdelucena writes "Former world chess champion Garry Kasparov was arrested outside a Moscow court, where the verdict in the trial of the Pussy Riot group members was being announced on Friday, Russian police said." Update: 08/18 01:14 GMT by T : Kasparov has written an account of the arrest.
Congratulations Russia (Score:3, Interesting)
From the Czars, to the Reds, and now to Putin, you're still serfs, all these centuries later.
Oh I know, you look to "strength" in the Kremlin. Well you got your "strength": crush all dissent. Rendering you an antiseptic den of ass kissing and tyranny and oligarchs. You're greatest weakness is your "strength", fools.
Depressing. Pathetic. All hail imperial 17th century Russia, for all time apparently. Still playing at strong man games. The West moves on to Democracy, China gets rid of its warlords. But not you Russia: still stuck in the past with your lame belief in the big strong man, like a bear! Disgusting.
Unless you Russians actually fucking do something about it. Win your country. The Russian Revolution, take 2: democratic this time.
Don't be a fucking serf!
WSJ bias (Score:2, Interesting)
It would be refreshing to see the WSJ providing a similar pulpit for any of the many progressive, liberal, and leftist protestors arrested by police in the US.
Unfortunately, that day may never come.
Boycot USSR WINTER OLYMPICS 2014 (Score:4, Interesting)
A little threat by all of the western world would convince KGB agent putin to reverse the evil decisions.
Also in the same city is the new russian grandprix so perhaps all the F1 teams should boycot that too, or at least do a protest 50mph race that would take 12hrs to complete. hahahhaha.
Re:Checkmate. (Score:4, Interesting)
"The situation in USSR, and then Russia, in late 80s to early 90s, was such that a lot of people clamored for everything even remotely Western, and especially American, solely on the grounds that it has to be awesome if it comes from people who live so great. You guys could have easily go in and do some actual good there, there was so much goodwill to fall back on it was insane."
I don't dispute this. Maybe you misunderstood me. That's what The People wanted, but the powers that be would never let them have it. Any attempt by the US to help or educate or aid the Russian people was rebuffed -- with prejudice -- by the government.
I have said this for many years: it is clear that what The People want is not what they're getting. And yes, to say that attempts to help from outside were "discouraged" is an understatement.
"Instead you did the usual shit, which is to say, promote extreme rapid economic liberalization - "shock therapy" is what they called it - which resulted in this. And, eventually, people elected Putin, because "democracy" became a swear word associated with utter economic collapse and extreme poverty."
Don't blame outsiders for what was engineered from the inside. I repeat: assistance was offered. Not only by the U.S. government but by many private organizations around the world. It was refused by the people in power. This is the ever-present problem with any kind of economic or political revolution: you have to be extremely careful who or what takes the place of the old power structure. Often, the result is disaster.
But you can't blame that on outsiders. Nobody "conquered" Russia, to be able to impose their will from the outside. That isn't what happened here. And pretending that it did is not productive.
Re:Checkmate. (Score:5, Interesting)
The US and the USSR were pretty much the only major powers which weren't gutted by WW2. The USSR nearly was, and probably bore the true brunt of the defeat of the European Axis powers. It was just big enough to absorb its losses, whereas Britain and France were not. The Soviet entry into the Pacific theater against Japan was probably at least as significant in the Japanese acceptance of unconditional surrender as was the use of atomic weapons by the US, which is not really understood by the public at large.
Churchill was very conscious of Stalin's ambitions, and sought to position the West favorably for the postwar period for probably a year before the end of the war. But the British star was already waning and it was America which was already sitting at the head of the table. Truman and Eisenhower were looking more toward ending the war in Europe with fewer American casualties (looking to finally focus on the Japanese), and were willing to let the Soviets bleed Hitler from the East, and let the Russians pay the price in lives for doing so. Which made the loss of Eastern Europe into the Soviet sphere of influence inevitable.
I give Stalin a lot of credit for quickly building the Soviet economy after the end of the war, despite grievous losses. While Americans were demobilizing and reaping the peace dividend and building the consumption economy, the Soviets were making sure their near-defeat never happened again. It took a while before the American public noticed there was a new global competitor, so it became necessary for American leaders to propagandize the matter, and make the public afraid. Which is where the anti-communist ideology and space race and nuclear arms race came in so handy. People who are afraid are more easily led.
The Baby Boom generation has been rather non-introspective about these matters, as has America as a whole. We haven't really figured out what it all means and drawn mature conclusions because we just haven't bothered to examine it very closely. Godwin's Law is a great illustration of this.
Re:um... ok? (Score:5, Interesting)
Regarding 2:
No. Not especially if you are Russian - more like especially if you're a human living in the world of today, where a Russia that reverts to old habits is a dangerous fucking thing. As someone who was actually alive when the soviet union broke up in '91 and have visited some ex-soviet states in the time since, I've seen both sides of the coin. Trust me, this one is better.
Or was. It's getting bad again, and it's getting bad quickly. Putin sucking up to the church, smashing down on any political dissent... If this is allowed to go unchecked it's a matter of when not if russia will start the rearmament of their military forces, if they haven't already, and once more become a volatile player in world politics with their finger on the launch button.
Now I live in Sweden, so I'm close enough that maybe I should be worried for my own sake, but I'm not. We've got Finland between us and the Russians, and nobody fucks with those guys and get away with it. But on a political scale and a global relations scale, this is worrying news indeed. The fact that other countries just wave it off, well... that's no surprise. But you can bet your ass their military advisers have started drawing up plans for the worst case scenario.
Re:Checkmate. (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh, and saying that corporations own the US government is like saying favored shop keepers own their local mafia. It is completely backwards and utterly ridiculous. This economic fascism(corporatism to use a newer definition describing the nominal private ownership of the means of production directed by the state) is a function of our government, the ones with all the guns, not those that pay off our government to point them somewhere else. Just imagine the power disparity between one institution and the other. Saying these insignificant corporations own the government is an obvious distortion of the truth to shift blame away from the violent actor(the state) to the one benefiting from the violence(the corporation). They are certainly not blameless, not because they own this vast state, but rather because they actively participate with it. That is a far more accurate description of events.
Thanks for that.
Good to see at least one other person commenting that grasps the reality. Government has the exclusive power to use violence and imprisonment, and writes the laws and determines who is breaking them. The government has the power to do a "Darth Vader" - "I have altered the deal. Pray I do not alter it further." and has done so in the past.
As has been famously said, it is the nature of government to grow. A government "grows" by increasing the amount of wealth, capital, and property it controls, and it's power and control over the population.
Corporations/businesses/industries sitting on all this wealth, property, and capital that the government wants ultimately to control (along with individual wealth/property/capital) are effectively forced to make "deals with the devil" because their competitors are attempting to do so, in order to gain regulatory/legislative advantage to force them out of business.
This in no way excuses the behavior, but one can clearly understand the reasons for it without condoning it. It's sort of like trying to be "the last one killed" by helping the murderer(s) tie the other soon-to-be victim(s).
It's predictable and one of the biggest reasons to keep the central government relatively small, domestically weak, and spending only a fraction of the total GDP is does currently. And a pox on both major US political parties. Both are equally guilty of expanding government, particularly after the '50s.
Strat