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I watch Fox News ![]() Registered: 03/23/06 Posts: 2,946 |
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Kasparov aims for Putin checkmate
By Finlo Rohrer BBC News Chess legend Garry Kasparov talks to the BBC News website about Putin, politics and the game of kings. After 20 years of dominating the chess world, establishing recognition as perhaps the greatest in the centuries-long history of the game, Kasparov has a very different opponent in his sights. To Kasparov, Russian President Vladimir Putin's regime is tantamount to "fascism", dismantling Russian democracy with the support of a supine West, which is interested only in stability in the East. In London for work on a new book and promotional events, the world number one said allowing Moscow to host the G8 summit in 2006 would be the equivalent of Nazi Germany being allowed to host the Olympics in 1936. "[It is vital] to make sure there is no G7 meeting in Moscow in 2006. It will be like the Berlin Olympics in 1936, it will be the equivalent of Munich 1938, integrating Putin's Russia. "The democracies are conceding to a brutal dictator. He has abolished the nature of democratic institutions. He will go further." The West must stop its overt and tacit support for Mr Putin, Kasparov said. "What is required from the West is a simple message: 'Leave us alone.' "Don't support Putin. It is not about giving support to us, but Putin's main support comes from Western leaders. "President Bush is not shy about calling this KGB colonel his friend." Kasparov was born in the Azerbaijan capital Baku in 1963 to a father of Jewish descent and an Armenian mother. Ever since his victory over Anatoly Karpov in 1985 to become world champion Kasparov has been portrayed as an outsider who took on the Soviet establishment. Kasparov helped set up Committee 2008, a group dedicated to bringing down Mr Putin and stopping the constitution being changed so that he can run for a third term, in January last year. He takes heart from what has happened in Ukraine, and believes Mr Putin will have to leave office, perhaps even before his second term comes to an end in 2008. "There could be popular unrest. The stability [of Russia] exists only in the mind of Bush and Blair. "It lives through high oil prices and censorship." Liberal opponents in Russia say Mr Putin's control of the media and incidents like the recent forced sale of oil firm Yukos' assets make democracy impossible. Putin popularity Kasparov said the Yukos sale was "the greatest robbery of the 21st Century". But supporters of Mr Putin point to the 71% share of the vote he took in last year's presidential election, and his high approval ratings. The president himself has said he is upholding democracy and fighting corruption, and that Russia has standards that compare to anywhere in the West. But monitors from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe criticised the presidential election and earlier elections to the Duma. Away from the political arena, Kasparov is facing a frustrating time in chess. Instead of being in London, getting mobbed at a book signing at the Chess and Bridge shop on Euston Road, and working on a new book, Kasparov should have been preparing for a World Championship match with Uzbek star Rustam Kasimdzhanov. But their match in Dubai, a prelude to a match with world champion Vladimir Kramnik, was cancelled by the governing body of chess, Fide, after financial guarantees by the promoters failed to be offered. Kasparov is not pleased. "Frustrating is a very soft word. It hurts me not only psychologically and chess-wise, but it is causing substantial material damage. "It shows Fide has no respect for players and the professional elements of the game. "It is too hypothetical to discuss anything unless I see the colour of the money." While admitting his match performance must be good, Kasparov seems a little sceptical about his opponent's credentials. "He is 25 in the world by rating and I think he belongs there." And he is scathing about former protege Vladimir Kramnik's reign as world champion. "I'm the number one player in the world, Kramnik is number four. "He has failed to play the number one or the number two. He contributes to the mess as much as Fide does." He admits: "I don't care. I no longer have the same passion for playing the world championship." Enigmatic genius For the moment, he prefers to concentrate on his writing, including his popular history of the world champions. It is testament to his status in the game that he has been able to entitle the books My Great Predecessors without risking sounding arrogant. The fourth in the series, on the enigmatic American genius Bobby Fischer, currently facing extradition to the US from Japan on sanctions-busting charges, is already selling well. But Kasparov will not offer an opinion on who is the greatest. "Writing the books I had to walk in the shoes of these great personalities and look at the events through their eyes. "I am setting out the information for readers to decide." http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world -------------------------------- Kasparov: Putin's Gangster State Garry Kasparov pens an article in today's WSJ titled "Putin's Gangster State.": Putin's Gangster State By GARRY KASPAROV This month's flurry of auctions for pieces of the state-controlled Russian energy company Rosneft has attracted an impressive number of A-list banks and Western energy companies. Many reputable corporations seem happy to loot the corpse of Yukos, the dismembered parts of which are being sold and handed off, over and over until the last drops of blood are cleaned away. [Kasparov] That's a disappointment, but not a surprise. The surprise will come when the investors find out their Russian partners are cashing out as quickly as possible, ready to head for the hills -- or their mansions abroad -- in the face of rising political and economic uncertainty. Anyone trying to make a fast buck investing in Russian President Vladimir Putin's police state should first practice our traditional triple kiss. That's one for kissing off moral principles, another for Mr. Putin's backside, and the last to kiss their money goodbye when a fresh government comes in and starts looking into all these dirty deals. While the Kremlin's favorite oligarchs pack their suitcases (doubtless full of cash), the former head of Yukos, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, sits in prison for not bowing low enough in front of the Kremlin throne. Yukos was only the biggest and best-known example of what has become standard practice under the Putin regime. There is no dividing line between bureaucrats, gangsters and the police. Allegiance to the Kremlin is the only thing that matters. The loyalty screws are being turned tighter, illustrating the administration's increasing instability and paranoia. In recent weeks, the Kremlin's political cleansing continued with the liquidation of the Republican Party led by Duma member and Kremlin critic Vladimir Ryzkhov. In a batch of recent political appointments, old cronies from St. Petersburg were called up in force -- for example Alexander Veshnyakov, one of the architects of our stage-managed election process, has been replaced. Vladimir Churov, who in his four years in the Duma never proposed a single piece of legislation and never once spoke in parliament, is now in charge of next year's presidential election. Mr. Churov was elected to the post on a competitive basis -- with one name on the ballot. It would be easy to believe that Mr. Putin picked up the concept of "stay the course" when President Bush discarded it last year. Mr. Putin's course, in brief: Loot as much public and private money as possible and get it into the companies and personal accounts of those loyal to the Kremlin. Clean the looted assets abroad with IPO's, auctions and eagerly complicit Western investors. Crack down on any sign of public or political opposition, no matter how small, using overwhelming force. Invalidate or ban parties and groups opposing the Kremlin. Harass, beat and even jail their activists. Shape the election laws to strip away democratic rights and civil liberties. Create menacing new laws that allow the executive and its courts to define anything they like as "extremism." Maintain tight control of the media, especially television, and use it to promote the regime and its leaders while blaming "foreign-sponsored extremists" for all problems. Western political leaders, pundits and investors are willing, even content, to accept this in the name of the cherished legend, "stability." But when 20,000 police are amassed in Nizhy Novgorod to smash an opposition rally, does that speak of stability? What about when the local government blocks access to a Russian pro-democracy opposition Web site? The outdated Russian infrastructure is collapsing and it's taking the Kremlin's façade of stability down with it. The standard of living for a huge majority of Russians is declining steadily. The 20 million or so Russians lucky enough to live in Mr. Putin's dream world of energy riches and its ripples are all the West sees, or wants to see. The remaining 120 million are becoming poorer and more agitated by the day. The uncertain battle over what will happen when Mr. Putin is supposed to step down from power in 2008 is the primary cause of the increasing shakiness of the administration. But it is not the only cause. The nationwide pyramid scheme that sucks the money out of the regions and funnels it to Moscow and St. Petersburg is running dry from the bottom up. There are countless bureaucrats who are now being squeezed, so they must squeeze harder themselves. The top is taking from the middle now, and before this year ends the elite will turn on each other. We can only hope that there is still some cash left for the next government to stabilize and rebuild. Any administration wanting to bring about genuine change will have to move a lot of debris first. In many cases the existing bureaucratic structures will have to be demolished and built again from scratch. The missing link is that, due to the Kremlin's complete control of the media, few Russians make the connection between their problems and the current administration. The reforms of the 1990s, mainly associated with Yegor Gaidar and Anatoly Chubais, created in most Russians' minds a link between free markets, democracy, corruption and poverty. The Putin regime consistently exploits those fears. They say, "it's dirty and unfair, but this is democracy, this is capitalism. Look, here is your president welcomed as a peer by President Bush and the rest." The Kremlin wins on both ends. They profit from each transaction and then go on the news to blame these shady and rapacious dealings on the corrupt and imperialistic West. The Kremlin's policy has its supporters outside of Russia as well. A recent editorial by Henry Kissinger called for "maximizing incentives" and "removing frictions to active cooperation" between the U.S. and Russia. If Ronald Reagan had had that mindset I would still be playing chess for the Soviet Union! Was President Reagan "removing frictions" when he told Gorbachev to "tear down this wall"? The lack of Western political will to stand up and acknowledge the true state of affairs in Russia only encourages Mr. Putin and his gang to push further. The politicians are passive while the foreign business elite actively supplies the Kremlin with the confidence and ammunition -- literal and figurative -- to crush the democracy movement. Those who do business with this oppressive regime are putting themselves in the compromising position of supporting repression to protect their investments. Opposition rallies will take place on April 14 in Moscow and the following day in St. Petersburg. The police state will again be out in a show of force, this much is certain. But will anyone be watching? Mr. Kissinger also referred to Russia's authoritarian government as "inherently transitory," and here I must agree. It is a transition to a dictatorship -- one that is forming right under the pinched noses, blind eyes and closed mouths of the West's political leadership. Mr. Kasparov, former world chess champion, is a contributing editor at The Wall Street Journal and chairman of the United Civil Front of Russia. http://www.robertamsterdam.com/2 -------------------- http://www.theamericanright.com/ http://www.cnbc.com/id/15838446 http://www.climatedepot.com
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iS A PoiNdexteR ![]() Registered: 09/15/00 Posts: 2,601 |
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I've posted about Garry Kasparov before.
Garry Kasparov is part of the US proaganda machine against Russia, oranized and led the illegal St Petersburg protest, and is the center of thought when Putin accuses the US of trying to stirr up dissent from within Russia. "Far more disturbing than Kasparov's status as a "contributing editor" to the Wall Street Journal, even as the same paper writes up his role in the protest movement, are his ties to the far-right foreign policy machine. Specifically, Gary Kasparov is, or was, a member of the neo-con Center for Security Policy. The think-tank's mission statement declares that it is "committed to the time-tested philosophy of promoting international peace through American strength." And Kasparov is not just a casual member - he once served on the CSP's National Security Advisory Council, an inner-working group headed by ex-CIA goon James Woolsey. It's a group with extensive ties to the Pentagon. The Center for Security Policy's member list reads like a Who's Who of the neo-con elite: along with Woolsey, it boasts Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Elliott Abrams and Frank Gaffney, and was highly influential not just in formulating President Bush's disastrous imperial strategy in his first term, but also in lobbying for the repeal of the ABM treaty, a move which was in many ways the start of the growing rift between Russia and America. "The major Western media has yet to report Kasparov's role in the Center for Security Policy. And the organization has done its best to air-brush Kasparov's membership from its history. Kasparov's name no longer appears on the CSP's website, although if you look through wikipedia, you'll find the cached web pages that used to be up. Why would they try to erase the past? From: Russian Protests: The Deleted Scenes Edited by Disco Cat (09/23/07 06:45 PM)
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