Gary Kasparov Arrested Over Political Fight 427
geddes writes "World chess champion turned opposition leader Gary Kasparov was arrested this morning while leading an march through Moscow in opposition to Russian President Vladamir Putin. Kasporov is a leader of the 'Other Russia' coalition which has been banned by the government from appearing on TV, and had been denied a marching permit. From the New York Times: 'Essentially barred from access to television, members of Other Russia have embraced street protests as the only platform to voice their opposition ahead of parliamentary elections in December and presidential elections next March. Early this month, Mr. Kasyanov's and Mr. Kasparov's Web sites were blocked, though it was unclear by whom.' Kasparov was later released from detention, though he was still fined for participating in the event."
So... (Score:2, Insightful)
I have long ago learned that slashdot stories and summaries have enough bias in them to drown half the world in so thats why I'm asking.
You have to say this for the Russians (Score:5, Insightful)
Unsurprising (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Re-use of old term (Score:5, Insightful)
The heavy handed leadership just means that the government is run by something similar to the Mafia. It doesn't mean that it is the right way to rule.
Re:Personally (Score:2, Insightful)
OMG.. you mean people would actually SEE and/or NOTICE the protestors in the streets, and possibly be educated and recruited to their cause?!
perish the thought!
Re:Slashdot shouldn't publish this... (Score:2, Insightful)
A: Because, Kasparov is a nerd!
Re:*cough* (Score:3, Insightful)
*cough* *cough*
Re:Kasparov tries the Moscow Gambit... (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone like Kasparov (Score:4, Insightful)
Gary Kasparov is the Russian Martin Luther King? (Score:3, Insightful)
The Russian stormtroopers then club some of the demonstators. When we see the phalanx of Russian special-forces police numbering nearly 9000 (outnumbering the demonstrators by 6 to 1), we are reminded of the American police and their dogs as they nearly mauled the civil-rights demonstrators of the 1960s.
Yet, one difference still exists between King and Kasparov. An assassin's bullet felled King. What will happen to Kasparov? Will he end in the same fate.
Re:Re-use of old term (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Lets not get holier than thou here in the US (Score:3, Insightful)
You won't be arrested for your free speech, you will be arrested for blocking traffic, and/or blocking access to buldings. You're free to peacefully march along public access pedestrian sidewalks and in public access parks, so long as you don't restrict others rights to do the same, and don't violate any loitering ordinances.
In short, you may need permits for certain deeds, but never for words.
Re:Re-use of old term (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Re-use of old term (Score:5, Insightful)
You have been mislead, China has had a large bureaucracy for the past 2000yrs regardless of who was running the show.
Re:Democracy is Receding (Score:4, Insightful)
Not so secretly, I long for a libertarian to lower taxes, and leave me and everybody else the f*ck alone to live their lives as they see fit. Sadly, the very sort of people who are attracted to and ultimately end up in positions of power are those who won't leave you alone, and insist on bending you to their will.
Re:Why? (Score:1, Insightful)
Kasparov is worth listening to. He's been publishing op-eds about Russian politics for a couple years now, and they are quite interesting. The ones I've read were in the Wall Street Journal, but I'm sure he's been contributing to other papers too. I'd suggest checking a few of his pieces out to judge for yourself if he's got anything to say, rather than dismissing his opinions out of hand just because he's something of a nerd-celebrity.
Re:Re-use of old term (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:You have to say this for the Russians (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That's it! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:You have to say this for the Russians (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:IMHO, these goons are too lenient with your stu (Score:2, Insightful)
at many sports events there are similar "adventurists". they get drunk and routy, then throw beer at players or other spectators and start fights. do they arrest everyone around that guy? no. do they require permits from everyone who wants to play street footbal or street hockey? no, they arrest the troublemaker and go away.
put up or shut up with your "adventurists". (and no.. major news channels dont count for this, you need to have on the ground first hand video of "adventurists" instigating things)
Re:ches mate... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Re-use of old term (Score:3, Insightful)
Traffic blocking. Commies? Grow up, it's fascism. (Score:3, Insightful)
After the Revolution in Russia, the entire myth building machine went into batshit insane mode. We spend untold trillions of dollars and who knows how many billions of hours of people's lives fighting the Commie Devil. Certainly millions were slaughtered -- we killed a million alone in Vietnam. Now we have the Terrorist Menace, and they are sticking us for trillions more and killing hundreds of thousands in the name of security, and even invoke the democracy meme again, tho it really doesn't apply. The last of the Commie war is still being fought against a dirt poor Cuba which would be a damned sight less poor if we hadn't embargoed it for half a century.
Russia wasn't the almighty military enemy the commie warriors said it was. The story of how the Pentagon and the CIA were pummeled into line, despite evidence they knew about that said they were far weaker and poorer than the civilian warriors demanded they see it, still remains to be told. It's a story Americans will not listen to. We had our first Iraq over sixty years ago.
Soooo. Soviet Union fell, turned into a hell on earth controlled by crime syndicates. We were fine with that! At least we can do business with the guy who cuts a prostitute up for holding back. So Putin has golden plumbing *on his airplane*. That's capitalism, by definition better than anything.
Now we have a fascist state rising from the criminal state. We're still okay with that. Putin has a good soul, Bush saw it in his eyes. A little polonium and a few reporters with their brains splattered in front of their homes is just the stuff of hard politics. Cheney probably smirks when he hears about that.
They could strip people to the bone with boiling oil, and we'd STILL think they were better than them commies. As a matter of fact, they ARE boiling people's skin off with vats of oil. We don't care.
Vonnegut said that what we see today is the rise to power of psychopathic personalities. People like them because they are decisive. But, they are decisive because they don't care about the repercussions of their decisions. Putin is strong, and Russians like strong men, as Hendrick Smith wrote. I'd like to point out that PP leaders also require a large population of PPs who don't care either. Without masses of people with no moral sense, PPs can't keep power.
As long as unions are illegal and we can do business with someone, we don't fuck with them. Rule by kleptocrats. I'd rather have a socialist neighbor who spends all their money on health care and full employment than a hypermilitary power ruled by psychopaths. But we're so fixated on our century and a half of war (on the behalf of the very wealthy who created the war in fear of change in their power) on commies, unions and suchlike that we will support a thousand mirrorshaded mass murderers who will sell us bananas at near cost than a socialist who wants to spread the wealth. The mountain of bodies we have dedicated to the god of money must be a thousand feet tall.
Russia's core problem with "freedom" and "democracy" was that they were Russians. What they do to the weak is part of their culture, not about Marxism. communism was our bogeyman, not theirs, as we see clearly now. They have a fascist soul, and it doesn't matter how the paychecks are cut -- it's about power. But we loves us some businessmen. We don't want democracy, we want money, we want gas pipelines, we want cheap labor. We are looking straight into the face of pure evil and laughing as it beats the democrats in the streets of Russia. Fuck those losers, they were blocking traffic. Party on.
Re:You have to say this for the Russians (Score:3, Insightful)
I've watched plenty of people get arrested for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I don't want to make this a Dem vs. Rep thing, being a worthless leader is hardly a party specific character trait. Most of the absurd arrests are from an overzealous idiot somewhere relatively low on the totem pole, but violations of the basic rights we were all told we have in elementary school happen on a daily basis all over the country and it is rare that those violations are addressed in any meaningful manner.
Re:Re-use of old term (Score:3, Insightful)
As a side note, I happen to basically agree with both you and Kreplock, however my uneasy feeling has a root in the 150 million statistic without citing any sources.
I do not question the accuracy of that number (not the issue for my concern here) Kreplock uses, only the fact that no sources were offered + your ability to 'jump on the bandwagon' with modpoints without ANY objective viewpoint for the discussion.
When (if!) you actually get modpoints to 'play' with, read the moderator's guidelines....an obvious link to these will be provided to you if you ever get the mod points.
If you've already been granted modpoints, then DO check out that moderator's guidelines link that is displayed when you click on that 'You have Moderator Points' link.
P.S. Kreplock...you just got in the crossfire- sorry!
narzy...modpoints aren't WMD, they're meant to further reasonable discussion, not as 'smack down' device.
Re:Re-use of old term (Score:5, Insightful)
Counter-Argument: "You're wrong: Persons A, B and C did not steal stuff."
Do you see the logical fallacy in your arugment?
Libertarianism has an achialles heel too (Score:3, Insightful)
While I agree with much of what the Libertarians say with regard to less government restrictions on individual freedoms and lower taxes, they also advocate less government regulation of industry (in fact, they advocate virtual no restriction on corporate behaviour). This poses a problem and is their achialles heel: unregulated capitalsim tends to evolve into corporate fascism, as the 19th century proved very dramatically (c.f. child labour, private police murders of early union organisers, etc.).
Having a weak democratically elected government, and undemocratic corporatism running rampent is a sure recipe for the very authoritarianism you and I both decry. The only difference is that the dictators will come from captains of industry and private armies, rather than politicians and publicly funded armies.
What we need is a hybrid of Libertarianism and social liberalism, where indivudual freedom is held sacrosanct, but corporations are treated as governance bodies and required to submit to the same constitutional limitations on their treatment of human beings just as political governance bodies (i.e. the "government"). Alas, I see no one advocating such a thing--which leaves a gaping political hole in the landscape where a non-dystopian future might lie.
Re:ches mate... (Score:3, Insightful)
A: Dude from Russia
B: Czech joke!
C: LOL!!!!!MODMODMODMODMOD
I mean, there's no denying that New York and Texas have a relationship as well, but you don't see this being funny (well, pretend it'd be funny on its merits):
-What's a Texan's favorite broadway show?
-New York, New York!
-LOL!!!
Re:Grow up, it's fascism (Score:3, Insightful)
While after Europe was rid of the plague of German fascism the socialists/workers in Spain struggled against their own fascist dictator, who was backed by the usual suspects (i.e. a bigger part of the military and the old 'elite') and ignored by all of the allied governments who were just too busy celebrating their "victory" over fascism. If the fighting in WWII had really been for the sake of protecting democracy and fighting fascism the very fact of Franco, being an overt authoritarian fascist ruler, should have made him an enemy, not "neutral"!
This concept was continued by the new superpower to rise after WWII, the US. And there is ample evidence in the events that happened ever since and the situation at this very moment that the socialist movement was seen as a far greater problem than fascism ever was. Just have a look at the history of the countries of Indochina, Iran, Iraq and a host of South American countries during the "Cold" War. You'll see time and again that democratically elected socialist governments were violently disposed followed by an authoritarian/fascist corrupt governments with the support of the US military/intelligence.
Re:Gary Kasparov is the Russian Martin Luther King (Score:4, Insightful)
Polonium.
~X~
Re:The fine was quite small, (Score:3, Insightful)