Recent Appearances...

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Recent Appearances...

Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

Describe how the war is going in one word

2022-04-30

The stories about Putin not knowing how things are going in Ukraine because people are afraid to tell him the truth surely have an element of truth. But he still the one directing this war and its atrocities, 100%. pic.twitter.com/GUvX1YxjnC
— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) April 30, 2022

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Economy

Disney Is the Worst Performing Dow Jones Stock of the Past Year

2022-04-22

[BREITBART] The Walt Disney Co. is the worst performing stock in the Dow Jones Industrial Average for the past year, plummeting 31 percent in the last 12 months. Of the 30 companies that comprise the Dow, Disney has seen its stock drop the most on a percentage basis, followed by 3M, which is down 25 percent, and Home Depot, down 23 percent.

Disney shares were down more than 5 percent Wednesday as investors remained skittish on streaming entertainment companies following Netflix’s disastrous first quarter results. Disney+ subscription results recently disappointed Wall Street when the company reported quarterly results in November, causing the stock to tumble.

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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

Grandmaster Garry Kasparov Predicts 'Palace Coup' May Oust Putin Over Ukraine

2022-04-19

[HUFFPOST] Russian chess legend Garry Kasparov on Monday explained what may lead to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ouster by his inner circle in a "palace coup."

CNN’s Paula Reid asked the longtime Putin critic and political activist if he expected to see more anti-Kremlin sentiment building in Russia as its invasion of Ukraine falters.

"Eventually, yes," replied Kasparov, a chess grandmaster for the former Soviet Union and Russia.

Kasparov then laid out "the order of moves that cannot be reversed."

"First, the Russian public and Russian elite, they have to recognize the war is lost," he said. "The bad news coming from Ukraine will inspire more people to rise because economic hardship will increase."

"So, military defeat in Ukraine, social-economic revolt and then you will have conditions, the right conditions, for a palace coup," Kasparov predicted. "Because many of Putin’s inner circle will be looking for a scapegoat and it’s always a dictator who should be blamed for all the failures."

Putin knows losing the war on Ukraine "is not an option for him," said Kasparov.

"It’s a matter of political survival and in many cases ... of physical survival," he added. "That’s why he has to pretend he is winning the war."

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Home Front: WoT

The Obama Doctrine

2014-11-02

"Do as little as necessary to appear to be doing something without actually committing to a cause or course of action."

Garry Kasparov

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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

Putin's Next Move Could Make Eastern Europe Explode

2014-10-16

[Business Insider] What is going on in Vladimir Putin's mind?

That's the question a panel of Russia experts was trying to answer Tuesday morning. Attention on Russia and the crisis in Ukraine has dwindled as the press has focused more on the West's fight against the extremist group calling itself the Islamic State.

US Secretary of State John Kerry also announced Tuesday increased intelligence-gathering cooperation with Russia on the group - also known as ISIS - a particularly significant development given the recent thaw in US-Russian relations.

But this panel, which was moderated by Reuters, took a much more alarmist tone when speaking about America's relations with Moscow and speculating about Putin. All the experts in attendance warned Putin's recent moves in Ukraine might only be the start of new territorial ambitions.

Three of the four panelists - New Yorker editor David Remnick, journalist and author Masha Gessen, Russian political activist and former grand chessmaster Garry Kasparov, and former Treasury Department official Roger Altman - agreed Putin could soon try to stretch his influence into the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

"They already are under pressure," Gessen, the author of a 2012 unauthorized biography of Putin, said of the Baltics. "That's very much where he's doing his nuclear saber-rattling, and that's where he's planning to call NATO's bluff."

Unlike Ukraine, all three Baltic states are NATO members. NATO's Article 5 requires all members of the alliance come to the defense of any member that is attacked or targeted.

Putin last month made casual mention of his country's nuclear arsenal, around the same time NATO accused Russian forces of an "incursion" in Ukraine. Many analysts have speculated Putin's next move could come in the Baltic states, something that would be a clear challenge to NATO.

Amid the bluster from Putin - who also reportedly said in a private conversation he could invade Poland, Romania, and the Baltic states if he really wanted to - NATO states made a point of countering with strong rhetoric of their own.

President Barack Obama traveled to Estonia last month on the way to a meeting in Wales with other NATO states, in a trip the White House said was aimed at reassuring NATO allies in the Baltics that felt threatened by Putin's moves in Ukraine. The message, a White House adviser said, was for Putin to "not even think about messing around" with the region.
Excellent map and link at the site.

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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

Blogger Law' Sails Through Russian Parliament

2014-04-30

The Federation Council overwhelmingly approved the tighter controls on Russian blogs and websites that attract more than 3,000 daily visits, under legislation the government says is needed to formalize the definition of blogging in Russian law.

Opponents say the law will enable Putin to silence opponents who are rarely given air time on the mostly state-controlled or pro-Putin television channels, and have instead used the Internet to organize protests against the former KGB spy.

The State Duma lower house has already backed the law and it now needs Putin's signature to go into force. Both chambers are dominated by the United Russia party loyal to the president. The new rules will require popular bloggers to register by name with Russia's communications oversight agency and conform to regulations on the mass media.

The Kremlin denies allegations of censorship or pressure on the media and says Russians have the right to express their opinions and stage protests. But Putin has described the Internet as a CIA project and parliament has approved moves requiring social media websites to keep their servers in Russia and save information about users for at least six months.

With 61 million users, Russia is Europe's fastest-growing Internet audience, according to a 2013 report by industry body comScore, and blogs have been seen by Putin's opponents as one of the few popular platforms beyond the Kremlin's reach.

The editor of a popular Internet news site, Lenta.ru, was dismissed this year and independent TV Dozhd has gone off the air. The head of VKontakte, Russia's answer to Facebook, has been ousted and fled the country. The government has also blocked access to the Internet sites of Kremlin critics Alexei Navalny and Garry Kasparov because they "contained calls for illegal activity".

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-Obits-

Chess champ and Jew-hating, anti-American nutcase Bobby Fischer goes titzup

2008-01-18

REYKJAVIK, Iceland Bobby Fischer, the reclusive American chess master who became a Cold War icon when he dethroned the Soviet Union's Boris Spassky as world champion in 1972, has died. He was 64.

Fischer died Thursday in a Reykjavik hospital, his spokesman, Gardar Sverrisson, said. There was no immediate word on the cause of death.

Born in Chicago and raised in Brooklyn, Robert James Fischer was a U.S. chess champion at 14 and a grand master at 15. He beat Spassky in a series of games in Reykjavik to claim America's first world chess championship in more than a century.

The event had tremendous symbolic importance, pitting the intensely individualistic young American against a product of the grim and soulless Soviet Union. It also was marked by Fischer's odd behavior possibly calculated psychological warfare against Spassky that ranged from arriving two days late to complaining about the lighting, TV cameras, the spectators, even the shine on the table.

Spassky said in a brief phone call from France, where he lives, that he was "very sorry" to hear of Fischer's death.

Former Russian chess champion Garry Kasparov said Fischer's conquest of the chess world in the 1960s was "a revolutionary breakthrough" for the game.

But Fischer's reputation as a chess genius soon was eclipsed by his idiosyncrasies. He lost his world title in 1975 after refusing to defend it against Anatoly Karpov. He dropped out of competitive chess and largely out of view, emerging occasionally to make erratic and often anti-Semitic comments, although his mother was Jewish.

"The tragedy is that he left this world too early, and his extravagant life and scandalous statements did not contribute to the popularity of chess," Kasparov told The Associated Press.

Fischer lived in secret outside the United States but emerged in 1992 to confront Spassky again, in a highly publicized match in Yugoslavia. Fischer beat Spassky 10-5 to win $3.35 million. The U.S. government said Fischer's playing the match violated U.N. sanctions against Yugoslavia, imposed for Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic's role in fomenting war in the Balkans.

Over the years, Fischer gave occasional interviews with a radio station in the Philippines, often digressing into anti-Semitic rants and accusing American officials of hounding him. He praised the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, saying America should be "wiped out," and described Jews as "thieving, lying bastards." His mother was Jewish.

He also announced he had abandoned chess in 1996 and launched a new version in Argentina, "Fischerandom," a computerized shuffler that randomly distributes chess pieces on the back row of the board at the start of each game. Fischer claimed it would bring the fun back into the game and rid it of cheats.

In July 2004, Fischer was arrested in Japan and threatened with extradition to the United States to face sanctions-busting charges. He spent nine months in custody before the dispute was resolved when Iceland a chess-mad nation and site of his greatest triumph granted him citizenship.

Fischer told reporters that he was finished with a chess world he regarded as corrupt, and sparred with U.S. journalists who asked about his anti-American tirades. "The United States is evil. There's this axis of evil. What about the allies of evil the United States, England, Japan, Australia? These are the evildoers," Fischer said.

In his final years, Fischer railed against the chess establishment, alleging that the outcomes of many top-level chess matches were decided in advance.

Instead, he championed his concept of random chess. "I don't play the old chess," he told reporters upon arrival in Iceland. "But obviously if I did, I would be the best.
Check out the picture at the link. Fischer looked like he'd been dead for a couple of weeks already.

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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

Putin anoints deputy prime minister as heir to presidency

2007-12-11

President Vladimir Putin ended months of speculation yesterday by naming Dmitry Medvedev, a 42-year-old economic liberal, as his preferred candidate to win Russia's presidential election next year.

The move all but guarantees that Medvedev, a first deputy prime minister, will win overwhelmingly in the poll on March 2. "I have known him very closely for more than 17 years and I completely and fully support this proposal," Putin said, during a meeting with leaders from four parties who announced they were all backing Medvedev's candidacy.

Medvedev, a former St Petersburg lawyer and Black Sabbath enthusiast, is regarded as more liberal and less hawkish towards the west than Sergei Ivanov, Russia's other first deputy prime minister, who was also a frontrunner for the job.

Putin is expected to retain influence over Russia's security services, including the military and the Federal Security Bureau or FSB, the successor agency to the KGB, which he headed before becoming president in 2000. Unlike Putin, Medvedev has no links with the security services. The president, who has to step down in May, has made it clear he intends to "influence" his successor, and has not ruled out returning to the Kremlin at some point.

"It's quite obvious that Medvedev won't be the almighty president that Putin used to be," said Fyodor Lykyanov, editor in chief of the journal Russia in Foreign Affairs.

Sergei Markov, a leading Kremlin analyst, said he expected three people to run the country after May: Medvedev, Putin and Viktor Zubkov, the prime minister. "Medvedev's ideology is liberal patriotism," Markov told the Guardian. "He is more liberal than Ivanov. He has no experience of working with law enforcement agencies, who will tend to see Putin as their main political chief."

Western diplomats were hopeful yesterday that a Medvedev presidency could lead to a rapprochement between Russia and the west, after a year which has seen disagreements over Kosovo, missile defence and the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London.

Medvedev has no experience of foreign affairs. A rare speaker of English, his only appearance on the international stage was earlier this year at the annual economic forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos. He is largely known abroad through his chairmanship of the state gas giant Gazprom. Here, he has taken an uncompromising line in negotiations with Russia's neighbours over gas prices.

So he can't speak English, has no experience in security, none in foreign affairs, and is known only as an arm-twister. Perfect for the job, doncha think?

Yesterday Putin said Medvedev's candidacy represented "an administration that will carry on the same policies that have brought us results for the past eight years". His United Russia party is expected to nominate Medvedev at a party congress on Monday. After that there are no serious obstacles between him and the presidency.

Nevertheless yesterday's announcement was a surprise. Recent speculation had suggested that Putin would endorse either Ivanov or Zubkov. "The majority of Russia's political analysts thought it was going to be Zubkov," Lilia Shevtsova, a senior associate at Moscow's Carnegie centre said. "Over the last month Medvedev was nowhere to be seen. He was sitting in his lonely government office."

Asked why Putin had picked him, she said: "He has proved many times that he is loyal. But he isn't a silovik (a member of Russia's security agencies)."

Which means he'll let Vlad run the security agencies in all but name.

Several other candidates have said they will contest the presidential election. They include the veteran communist leader Gennady Zyuganov and Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion and leader of the opposition coalition, the Other Russia.

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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

Fraud claims in Russia poll

2007-12-03

Opposition parties say there's been widespread fraud and intimidation in Russia's parliamentary elections President Vladimir Putin's United Russia party was expected to win a majority of up to 65 percent of votes, a show of public support which Putin hopes to use as a mandate to retain influence after his second presidential term ends next year. The former World chess champion and arch Kremlin critic, Garry Kasparov accused the Russian authorities of "raping the whole electoral system." The Kremlin called the vote democratic and transparent.

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International-UN-NGOs

Nobel Peace Prize nominees who didn't win

2007-10-14

Wall Street Journal

In Olso Friday, the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was not awarded to the Burmese monks whose defiance against, and brutalization at the hands of, the country's military junta in recent weeks captured the attention of the Free World.

The prize was also not awarded to Morgan Tsvangirai, Arthur Mutambara and other Zimbabwe opposition leaders who were arrested and in some cases beaten by police earlier this year while protesting peacefully against dictator Robert Mugabe.

Or to Father Nguyen Van Ly, a Catholic priest in Vietnam arrested this year and sentenced to eight years in prison for helping the pro-democracy group Block 8406.

Or to Wajeha al-Huwaider and Fawzia al-Uyyouni, co-founders of the League of Demanders of Women's Right to Drive Cars in Saudi Arabia, who are waging a modest struggle with grand ambitions to secure basic rights for women in that Muslim country.

Or to Colombian President Àlvaro Uribe, who has fought tirelessly to end the violence wrought by left-wing terrorists and drug lords in his country.

Or to Garry Kasparov and the several hundred Russians who were arrested in April, and are continually harassed, for resisting President Vladimir Putin's slide toward authoritarian rule.

Or to the people of Iraq, who bravely work to rebuild and reunite their country amid constant threats to themselves and their families from terrorists who deliberately target civilians. . . .

Many, many more at he link.

These men and women put their own lives and livelihoods at risk by working to rid the world of violence and oppression. Let us hope they survive the coming year so that the Nobel Prize Committee might consider them for the 2008 award.

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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

10,000 young Russians the new Red Guards to fight Kremlin's opponents

2007-07-20

Meet the new Red Guard, soon to be just like the old Red Guard.

At a lakeside camp five hours drive north of Moscow, 10,000 young Russians are learning why the president, Vladimir Putin, is such a brilliant leader and why his opponents are so evil.

In the middle of the camp stand large portraits of Other Russia's leaders under the banner: "The Red Light Street". Vocal opponents of Mr Putin's rule, Other Russia's three male leaders, including the world chess champion Garry Kasparov, are portrayed as prostitutes. In lurid colours they pout and pose in stockings, their faces frozen in feline grins. "I didn't know who those people were until I came here," 20-year-old Lena from St Petersburg said."Now I know they are fascists."

Nearby, there was a poster depicting an intercontinental ballistic missile with the slogan: "Let there be sovereign democracy," a reference to the Kremlin's definition of democracy stripped of western influence.

The two-week summer camp is run by Nashi, the biggest of several pro-Kremlin youth groups, and in Nashi's vocabulary Mr Putin's enemies are fascists. Nashi, which means "ours", is funded by the Kremlin and was founded in the wake of popular demonstrations that toppled pro-Moscow leaders in Georgia and Ukraine. Its stated goal is to promote nationalist values for a greater Russia.

Western diplomats and critics say it appears aimed at giving the Kremlin a ready-made mass movement to call on in times of trouble. The group came to prominence last year when it hounded the British ambassador to Russia for months after he attended an anti-Kremlin conference. A spokeswoman said it had 100,000 members across Russia.

At Nashi's third annual summer camp at the Lake Seliger beauty spot many of the 10,000 Nashi activists wore red T-shirts with slogans proclaiming the greatness of Russia or Mr Putin. They start the day with mass exercise, then head off to play volleyball, sail boats or cycle around quiet roads. Such summer camps, which declined after the fall of communism, are now making a comeback under the sponsorship of political groups.

There are lessons outlining Mr Putin's foreign policies or economic initiatives, an army camp shows off Russia's military and a Nashi security service trains to work alongside police. "We have to show how the policies of Putin have worked," Nashi leader Vasily Yakemenko said. Behind him, a puppet-master prepared a show. Later, the Putin puppet would vanquish pro-western presidents in Georgia and Ukraine, the Russian exile Boris Berezovsky and the Other Russia coalition.

Drinking alcohol is banned in the camp, but other activities are encouraged. A display shows why the woolly mammoth died out - not enough sex. Russia is fighting to stop a fall in population as a result of alcohol abuse, AIDS and migration. Alexander Zlatmenkov held hands with his fiancée, Julia. They are both 23, and with 39 other couples will marry at the camp. "It's important for us to set an example and it's fun and interesting," he said. All the Nashi members who spoke were aged between 18 and 23, were at university or had just left and came from lower income families whose parents worked in jobs such as teachers and engineers.

Activists said Nashi gave them pride in themselves and pride in Russia, directed them away from alcohol and drugs and gave them a summer holiday with friends. Most did not consider themselves political. Andrei, 22, was more candid. He said Nashi's aim was political and that previous Nashi members were already making their way through government ranks and pro-Kremlin businesses. "I think this camp is the Russian version of camps now being run in the West," he then said. "That's true, isn't it?"
Unfortunately, there's more at the link.

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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

Getting the facts straight about the old-new Russia

2007-07-17

BY BRET STEPHENS

In the six or seven years in which they interacted on a regular basis, Vladimir Putin's police state and journalist Fatima Tlisova had a mostly one-way relationship. Ms. Tlisova's food was poisoned (causing a nearly fatal case of kidney failure), her ribs were broken by assailants unknown, her teenage son was detained by drunken policemen for the crime of not being an ethnic Russian, and agents of the Federal Security Services (FSB) forced her into a car, took her to a forest outside the city of Nalchik and extinguished cigarettes on every finger of her right hand, "so that you can write better," as one of her tormentors informed her. Last year, the 41-year-old journalist decided she'd had enough. Along with her colleague Yuri Bagrov, she applied for, and was granted, asylum in the United States.

Ms. Tlisova and Mr. Bagrov are, as the wedding refrain has it, something old, something new: characters from an era that supposedly vanished with the collapse of the Soviet Union 16 years ago. Now that era, or something that looks increasingly like it, seems to be upon us again. What can we do?

The most important task is to get some facts straight.

Fact No. 1: The Bush administration is not provoking a new Cold War with Russia.
That it is seems to be the view of Beltway pundits such as Anatol Lieven, whose indignation at alleged U.S. hostility to Russia is inversely correlated with his concerns about mounting Russian hostility to the U.S., its allies and the likes of Ms. Tlisova. In an article in the March issue of the American Conservative, the leftish Mr. Lieven made the case against the administration for its "bitterly anti-Russian statements," the plan to bring Ukraine into NATO and other supposed encroachments on Russia's self-declared sphere of influence. In this reading, Mr. Putin's increasingly strident anti-Western rhetoric is merely a response to a deliberate and needless U.S. policy of provocation.

Yet talk to actual Russians and you'll find that one of their chief gripes with this administration has been its over-the-top overtures to Mr. Putin: President Bush's "insight" into the Russian's soul on their first meeting in 2001; Condoleezza Rice's reported advice to "forgive Russia" for its anti-American shenanigans in 2003; the administration's decision to permit Russian membership in the World Trade Organization in 2006; the Lobster Summit earlier this month at the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport (which Mr. Putin graciously followed up by announcing the "suspension" of Russia's obligations under the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty).

This isn't a study in appeasement, quite. But it stands in striking contrast to the British government's decision yesterday to expel four Russian diplomats over Mr. Putin's refusal to extradite Andrei Lugovoi, the former FSB man suspected of murdering Alexander Litvinenko in London last November with a massive dose of polonium. "The heinous crime of murder does require justice," British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said yesterday. "This response is proportional and it is clear at whom it is aimed." Would that Dick Cheney walked that talk.

Now turn to Fact No. 2. Russia is acting with increasingly unrestrained rhetorical, diplomatic, economic and political hostility to whoever stands in the way of Mr. Putin's ambitions.

The enemies' list begins with Mr. Putin's domestic critics and the vocations they represent: imprisoned Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky; murdered journalist Anna Politkovskaya; harassed opposition leader Garry Kasparov. It continues with foreign companies which have had to forfeit multibillion-dollar investments when Kremlin-favored companies decided they wanted a piece of the action. It goes on to small neighboring democracies such as Estonia, victim of a recent Russian cyberwar when it decided to remove a monument to its Soviet subjugators from downtown Tallinn. It culminates with direct rhetorical assaults on the U.S., as when Mr. Putin suggested in a recent speech that the threat posed by the U.S., "as during the time of the Third Reich," include "the same claims of exceptionality and diktat in the world."

None of these Kremlin assaults can seriously be laid at the White House's feet, unless one believes the lurid anti-Western conspiracy theories spun out by senior Russian officials. And that brings us to Fact No. 3. Russia has become, in the precise sense of the word, a fascist state.

It does not matter here, as the Kremlin's apologists are so fond of pointing out, that Mr. Putin is wildly popular in Russia: Popularity is what competent despots get when they destroy independent media, stoke nationalistic fervor with military buildups and the cunning exploitation of the Church, and ride a wave of petrodollars to pay off the civil service and balance their budgets. Nor does it matter that Mr. Putin hasn't re-nationalized the "means of production" outright; corporatism was at the heart of Hitler's economic policy, too.

What matters, rather, is nicely captured in a remark by Russian foreign ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin regarding Britain's decision to expel the four diplomats. "I don't understand the position of the British government," Mr. Kamynin said. "It is prepared to sacrifice our relations in trade and education for the sake of one man."

That's a telling remark, both in its substance and in the apparent insouciance with which it was made: The whole architecture of liberal democracy is designed primarily "for the sake of one man." Not only does Mr. Kamynin seem unaware of it, he seems to think we are unaware of it. Perhaps the indulgence which the West has extended to Mr. Putin's regime over the past seven years gives him a reason to think so.

Last night, Ms. Tlisova was in Washington, D.C., to accept an award from the National Press Club on behalf of Anna Politkovskaya. "She knew she was condemned. She knew she would be killed. She just didn't know when, so she tried to achieve as much as she could in the time she had," Ms. Tlisova said in her prepared statement. "Maybe Anna Politkovskaya was indeed very damaging to the Russia that President Putin has created. But for us, the people of the Caucasus, she was a symbol of hope and faith in another Russia--a country with a conscience, honor and compassion for all its citizens."
How do we deal with the old-new Russia? By getting the facts straight. That was Politkovskaya's calling, as it is Ms. Tlisova's, as it should be ours.

Mr. Stephens is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. His column appears in the Journal Tuesdays.

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