More Russian Protests...

(via Gateway Pundit)

Protesters took to the streets in several Russian cities in response to an increase in car tariffs.  Police clubbed, kicked and detained dozens at the unauthorized rally.

Click the link (above) for more details, including video.

Putin (and his puppet) & Kasparov Clash Again...

Like a well-played epic chess match, Putin and Kasparov continue in their real-life strategic maneuvering for the soul of Russia.  A knight moved here, a pawn captured there.  Looks like a few more pawns were captured yesterday:

Police thwarted a banned anti-Kremlin protest in central Moscow on Sunday, seizing dozens of demonstrators and shoving them into trucks.

Organizers said 130 people were detained around the capital but police put the number at 90. The opposition movement headed by fierce Kremlin critic and former chess champion Garry Kasparov said the co-leader of the group was one of those seized.

The Other Russia movement organized the protest, in defiance of a ban, to draw attention to Russia's economic troubles and to protest Kremlin plans to extend the presidential term from four years to six. Critics say the constitutional change as part of a retreat from democracy and is aimed at strengthening the grip of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his allies.

News broadcasts on the main television networks made no mention of the Moscow crackdown or of protests in St. Petersburg and Vladivostok.

Kasparov Speaks Out On Russian Invasion of Georgia...

Opposition Party leader Garry Kasparov speaks out against the Medvedev/Putin regime's military attack and invasion of northern Georgia. This act of war (that's what it is) will not end soon, nor well.

Kasparov Pulls Out... and Putin is Man of the Year???

Garry Kasparov has pulled out of his fledgling run for president of Russia. [hat-tip to First Things]:

Former world chess champ and thorn in Vladimir Putin’s side Gary Kasparov has called it quits: He will not continue his bid for the Russian presidency as the “Other Russia” candidate.
Kasparov has been a none-too-subtle critic of what he considers a thugocracy in the original Russia. But it seems that opposition to opposition has made a viable candidacy untenable, to the point where Kasparov couldn’t even rent meeting space.

Meanwhile, Time Magazine selects Putin as the "Man of the Year"???

Odd... very odd.

More on Kasparov, Putin and the Russian elections...

From yesterday:

The former world chess champion is awaiting his opponent's next move.

Garry Kasparov, released from jail after serving a five-day sentence for leading a protest against Vladimir Putin, acknowledged Friday he holds the weaker position in his confrontation with the Russian president.

But Kasparov predicted the upcoming election season, which begins with Sunday's parliamentary vote, will force the secretive Putin to reveal his strategy in the nail-biting political game gripping the country as Putin's time in the Kremlin runs out.

As the campaign for the March 2 presidential vote gathers pace, Kasparov said, the Kremlin's beleaguered, fractious opponents can regroup for a new push aimed at "dismantling Putin's regime."

He hopes their ranks will be strengthened following Sunday's vote, which will also push dissenting voices further to the margins.

More news today:

Russians voted Sunday in a parliamentary election where the only question was whether President Vladimir Putin's party would win a strong majority of seats or a crushing share.

The election follows months of increasingly acidic rhetoric aimed against the West and efforts, by law and by truncheon, to stifle opponents.

A huge win for Putin's United Russia party could pave the way for him to stay at the country's helm once his presidential term expires in the spring. The party casts the election as essentially a referendum on Putin's nearly eight years in office.... Putin is constitutionally prohibited from running for a third consecutive term as president in March. But he clearly wants to keep his hand on Russia's levers of power, and has raised the prospect of becoming prime minister; many supporters have suggested his becoming a "national leader," though what duties and powers that would entail are unclear.

It continues:

Opposition parties, meanwhile, claim authorities have confiscated campaign materials and that the managers of halls have refused to rent them out for opposition meetings. Police have violently broken up opposition rallies — most recently in Moscow and St. Petersburg last weekend — and national television gives the parties hardly any coverage.

In contrast, Putin's speeches to supporters have been broadcast in full and repeated throughout evening newscasts.

"The fact is, they're not just rigging the vote. They're raping the democratic system," said chess champion and opposition leader Garry Kasparov on Sunday.

Kasparov, who was jailed for five days after the Moscow protest, spoiled his ballot by writing on it "Other Russia," the name of his opposition umbrella group.

Sunday's vote "meets none of the criteria of a free, fair and democratic election. In effect, it is not even an election," Andrei Illarionov, a former adviser to Putin, wrote in a commentary for the Cato Institute think tank.

...tick-tick-tick...

Kasparov arrested again...

I've told you here, here and here, to keep an eye on Russia & Putin. Garry Kasparov has been arrested again during a protest demonstration.

Russian riot police detained another key opposition figure among 200 demonstrators in Saint Petersburg Sunday, a day after a court jailed opposition leader Garry Kasparov for a similar protest against President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

The disturbances, exactly a week ahead of December 2 parliamentary elections, came 24 hours after police dispersed a similar march of around 2,000 people in the Russian capital Moscow and arrested Kasparov.

A court late Saturday sentenced the former world chess champion to five days in jail and his lawyer told AFP Sunday he was being held at Moscow police headquarters.

Update on Kasparov in Russia...

The former world chess champion Garry Kasparov entered Russia's presidential race on Sunday, elected overwhelmingly as the candidate for the country's beleaguered opposition coalition.

Kasparov has been a driving force behind the coalition, which has united liberals, leftists and nationalists in opposition to President Vladimir Putin. He received 379 of 498 votes at a national congress held in Moscow by the Other Russia coalition, coalition spokeswoman Lyudmila Mamina told The Associated Press.

Kasparov's place on the March ballot was not assured. His candidacy still needs to be registered and is likely to be blocked.

Remember, when the media uses phrases like "liberals, leftists and nationalists" in reference to opposition to the leadership in the former Communist superpower it's not the same as using those phrases in describing Western "leftist" ideology.

More of the story here.

Kasparov vs. Putin (Round One)

Way back in March of 2005 I had posted an article about former World Chess Grandmaster, Garry Kasparov, intending to retire from chess tournaments in order to consider a run against Russian President Putin sometime in the near future. Well, Putin may not be running for re-election in 2008, but he's already "thrown the first punch" against Kasparov (as per this article):

President Vladimir Putin ordered the FSB to combat extremism ahead of parliamentary elections in December and a presidential poll in March next year, which he is barred from contesting. Putin boosted the FSB's budget by about 30 percent and told a Jan. 31 meeting of security staff that they had a key role to play in keeping order through the election cycle.

Kasparov and former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov organized marches against Putin in Moscow and St. Petersburg over the weekend that ended in Kasparov's arrest. Some 9,000 police were deployed at the Moscow rally, which ended with baton-wielding officers breaking it up. Kasparov said that 400 were arrested. Police put the figure at 130.

The article continues:

"About 75 percent of all officials in Russia today" have links with the FSB or police, Kasparov said. Putin made his career in the KGB, serving for several years in East Germany, and briefly headed the FSB. "Extremist charges are under the umbrella of the FSB," not the regular police, Kasparov said.

The Other Russia, a loose coalition led by Kasparov and Kasyanov, plans to hold more marches, perhaps in several cities simultaneously, Kasparov said. He said this would be a challenge to police, which deployed people from several regional forces for the April 14 march in Moscow.

Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied the Kremlin sees Kasparov as an extremist, while adding that he couldn't comment on the FSB investigation into his activities.

Additional articles about the incident are in the New Zealand Herald, Twin Cities Newspaper (registration needed), Times OnLine (UK), and The Independent (UK). What's interesting is that this article via Yahoo News quotes former Soviet Union leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, as opposing Kasparov and the protesters and supports Putin.

Is that another Cold War chill in the air that I feel? *brrrrrrrrr*

Long-reigning Champion Chess Grandmaster Kasparov Retires... for Politics

I saw this article in my local paper this morning. I'm always fascinated by the game of chess. I'm familiar with the pieces and the rules of engagement, though I could never fully grasp the all-important mid-game strategy (planning three, four, six, eight moves ahead). It makes my head hurt to think that far ahead. Though I always enjoyed following the "big matches," and Kasparov has been the best for a very, very long time.

I wish him luck in his political future in Russia. He certainly has the mind for it. And it appears that he has the passion, as well. Putin may have met his match (pun intended):


MOSCOW - Garry Kasparov, the brilliant and aggressive tactician regarded by many as the greatest chess player of all time, announced his retirement from professional play. He said he plans to write books and become more active in the politics of Russia, a country that's "headed down the wrong path."

The 41-year-old Kasparov has been ranked No. 1 in the world since 1984, dominating chess for two decades with formidable energy, discipline and intellect. His announcement came shortly after he won the 14-match Linares tournament in Spain.

Kasparov's mastery of chess seemed sometimes to be superhuman, and perhaps his most famous loss was a 1997 match against IBM supercomputer Deep Blue.

Shay Bushinsky, a programmer behind another chess computer, told The Associated Press that as a chess player Kasparov was "the closest thing to a computer that I know as a man. Sometimes I think he has silicon running in his veins."

But Kasparov also became famous for his colorful and vibrant personality. He was seen as an especially vital and well-rounded person in a pursuit where top players often have the image of not having interests besides chess.

"He isn't just a pawn; and he isn't just a database, either, an inflated cerebellum, a throbbing maniac in the closed system of 64 squares," novelist Martin Amis wrote of him in a 1993 essay.

Among Kasparov's interests is politics. A Russian citizen, Kasparov has emerged as an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin and is playing a leading role in the Committee 2008: Free Choice, a group formed by liberal opposition leaders.

But he was increasingly exasperated with the politics of the chess world, which has been bitterly divided since 1993 into two rival federations with rival champions. In his retirement announcement Thursday, he reiterated that he was disappointed with a failed campaign to reunify the title.

He also said part of the reason he was retiring was that he saw no real goals in professional chess.

"As a chess player, I did everything I could, even more. Now I want to use my intellect and strategic thinking in Russian politics," Kasparov said Friday in a statement cited by the Interfax news agency.

"I believe that at the moment the country is moving in the wrong direction, therefore it is necessary to help Russia, to help Russian citizens to make the country comfortable, just and free," he said in the statement.

"I will do everything in my power to resist Putin's dictatorship," he said. "It is very difficult to play for a country whose authorities are anti-democratic."

Kasparov said he would continue to play chess, write books about it and take part in tournaments, such as events in which he plays many opponents at once, or in speed-chess games.

Alexander Roshal, chief editor of a popular Russian chess magazine called 64, said Kasparov had no peers in the chess world.

"There's no one else of his caliber. No one comes close. He saw that, and said 'you go on without me,'" he said.

Kasparov evidently was thinking about retiring for a long time after it became clear the reunification title match would not happen soon, Roshal said.

"He won more than 40 super-tournaments and in a month he'll be 42," Roshal said. "For chess, that's not young, and he has no reason to waste time preparing for another tournament. He's not going to be greater than he was or is."

Born in Baku in the then-Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, Kasparov is thought by many to be the best chess player in history. His defeat by Deep Blue was seen as a watershed moment in technological advancement, but in 2003 he averted a similar defeat when he agreed to a draw in the last game of his series against Deep Junior, which could process 3 million chess moves per second.

"Kasparov has the most incredible look-ahead and memory capabilities I have ever seen," said Bushinsky, one of two Israelis who helped design Deep Junior.

Kasparov's chess talent was apparent at an early age. At 12 he became the youngest player ever to win the USSR Junior Championship. Four years later, he won the World Junior Championship, and achieved the title of grandmaster on his 17th birthday.

His first title match, from September 1984 to February 1985 against Anatoly Karpov, was the longest in chess history. After 48 games, the psychological and physical strain on Karpov, who was leading but appeared likely to lose, caused chess authorities to end the match inconclusively amid controversy.

Kasparov won a rematch six months later, becoming the youngest world champion ever. He defended his title against Karpov in 1986, 1987 and 1990.