Awhile ago I asked you what was wrong with Garry Kasparov as a politician. As far as I know you never responded. Well, you don't need to respond anymore. I went to his website, looked at a few of his posts, watched an interview and became saddened and disappointed. Here's what I wrote ----
Kasparov was a great chess player but he's hopelessly confused as a politician. His ego is very large and as a result I fear that he fails to listen to some of the people who could set him straight. He does not seem to understand how corrupt the USA is. Does he not know about the drone strikes? the wealth and income inequality? the unwieldy and expensive healthcare system? the severely weakened labor unions? the true unemployment statistics? the slave-labor prison system? the overbearing police and surveillance state? the dangerous gun culture? the extraordinary waste within the bloated military establishment? the constant stream of lies from the US government and from the cowardly and corrupt mainstream media? the bought and paid for congress? It goes on and on. He calls this the "free world"??? He's living in an imaginary universe. ---
Furthermore, Cuba has much to be proud of. Their food production system is being decentralized. They have one of the best health care systems in the world. Literacy is very high. Of course they are imperfect, as is every nation. ---
Kasparov is right about one thing though - human rights! He's a faithful advocate of basic civil rights such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, etc.
Garry Kasparov is an ideologue, which is very disappointing. Instead of studying and reading what intellectuals say, he assumes that he already understands everything of importance. Kasparov is not an intellectual! That does not reflect well on the game of chess, if one of its greatest players is seen to be an ignorant ideologue in the world of politics. Kasparov does not even know that industrial civilization is deteriorating and will be severely reduced in a few decades. He presumably has no training at all in science, or else he might have noticed that something is going wrong with civilization itself, with overpopulation, across the board resource depletion, rainforest destruction, species going extinct, ocean acidification, pollution of rivers, lakes and oceans, loss of coral reefs, draining of fossil aquifers, accelerating climate change, melting of glaciers, etc.
Kasparov is apparently well meaning and an intense, vital and alert man, but none of those qualities necessarily lead to breadth of knowledge or depth of understanding.
Becoming chess champion of the world might require a certain narrowness of focus?
Anyway, what I'd intended to comment re the interview: That 'shun enemies' response you mentioned... would be the normal response to life in an unforgiving environment? Nothing to be gained by attacking someone who'll be toast the moment he needs help; more benefit to forming mutually-satisfactory alliances?
As a Russian listener who is sick of all the hate Stalin has been getting since his death and the intricate web of lies about him (that is nevertheless quite easy to untangle if one looks at the world from a different view as opposed to the common pro-liberal pro-Western gibberish) I was glad to hear what Dmitri said about him in response to the host's comment on a certain policy being "Stalinesque". Staling was adored by the vast majority of the population during his time and has been evilized by the West because he didn't want the Soviet Union to bow down to the American force of capitalism. Russia's pro-Western oligarchs are still destroying and devouring what the Soviet Union achieved during those tumultuous years.
Nowadays, when I hear a fellow Russian complaining about the level of corruption, the unnecessary bureaucracy, the hydrocarbon economy that Russia has gotten itself into, I always ask: "Ok, what should we do with all these incompetent and corrupt individuals that brought this mess about?" The response I hear (without exception) is "send them to prison, or a bit more rarely, hang them". Then I always say: well, isn't that what Stalin was trying to do? Dima, thank you for your perspective on these events (although, I must note, your outlook on Russia's position currently is a excessively positive). Russia's economic sector has been the biggest devotee of Western liberalism since the collapse of the Soviet Union (in fact, thanks to Gorbachev even during his time) and it will be hard to make amends.
Good stuff as usual. My ears perked up especially when you said that California would be covered in sand dunes in the not too distant future. Not literally, but you are the first person I have heard saying the obvious, something I have looked for in the mainstream press in vain, that it won't take but a few years more years of continuing drought for the ag industry to collapse. We just returned from two weeks of camping in the Mojave desert and on the way out of the Sierras on the way home, I always like to check out water levels in the reservoirs. Drove by Lake Isabella this time and saw a lot of trees sticking out of the water. These are trees that were drowned when the reservoir was filled and are becoming visible again as it is draining. Volume seems to be low as everywhere. Low volumes in reservoirs are of course unfortunate for recreational boaters, but more significantly, reservoirs are what feeds the irrigation canals. And on the way over into the southern end of the Central Valley I noticed a lot of dying pines. Why pines die I do not know, but I suspect it is from a combination of not enough water and high temperatures. Pines cannot migrate uphill as quickly as the temperatures are changing. Of course it is easy to be cavalier about the end of California's ag business, but the impact of that will reach beyond the state. Start learning to do home canning again since there won't be any fresh vegetables in winter. Some pictures of reservoir water levels in California two years ago: http://skinboatjournal.blogspot.com/2012/11/google-maps-water-policy.html
5 comments:
Awhile ago I asked you what was wrong with Garry Kasparov as a politician. As far as I know you never responded. Well, you don't need to respond anymore. I went to his website, looked at a few of his posts, watched an interview and became saddened and disappointed. Here's what I wrote ----
Kasparov was a great chess player but he's hopelessly confused as a politician. His ego is very large and as a result I fear that he fails to listen to some of the people who could set him straight. He does not seem to understand how corrupt the USA is. Does he not know about the drone strikes? the wealth and income inequality? the unwieldy and expensive healthcare system? the severely weakened labor unions? the true unemployment statistics? the slave-labor prison system? the overbearing police and surveillance state? the dangerous gun culture? the extraordinary waste within the bloated military establishment? the constant stream of lies from the US government and from the cowardly and corrupt mainstream media? the bought and paid for congress? It goes on and on. He calls this the "free world"??? He's living in an imaginary universe. ---
Furthermore, Cuba has much to be proud of. Their food production system is being decentralized. They have one of the best health care systems in the world. Literacy is very high. Of course they are imperfect, as is every nation. ---
Kasparov is right about one thing though - human rights! He's a faithful advocate of basic civil rights such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, etc.
Garry Kasparov is an ideologue, which is very disappointing. Instead of studying and reading what intellectuals say, he assumes that he already understands everything of importance. Kasparov is not an intellectual! That does not reflect well on the game of chess, if one of its greatest players is seen to be an ignorant ideologue in the world of politics. Kasparov does not even know that industrial civilization is deteriorating and will be severely reduced in a few decades. He presumably has no training at all in science, or else he might have noticed that something is going wrong with civilization itself, with overpopulation, across the board resource depletion, rainforest destruction, species going extinct, ocean acidification, pollution of rivers, lakes and oceans, loss of coral reefs, draining of fossil aquifers, accelerating climate change, melting of glaciers, etc.
Kasparov is apparently well meaning and an intense, vital and alert man, but none of those qualities necessarily lead to breadth of knowledge or depth of understanding.
This was an excellent interview, by the way.
Since I live in California, I certainly hope that we don't have sand dunes in the central valley any time soon!
Becoming chess champion of the world might require a certain narrowness of focus?
Anyway, what I'd intended to comment re the interview: That 'shun enemies' response you mentioned... would be the normal response to life in an unforgiving environment? Nothing to be gained by attacking someone who'll be toast the moment he needs help; more benefit to forming mutually-satisfactory alliances?
As a Russian listener who is sick of all the hate Stalin has been getting since his death and the intricate web of lies about him (that is nevertheless quite easy to untangle if one looks at the world from a different view as opposed to the common pro-liberal pro-Western gibberish) I was glad to hear what Dmitri said about him in response to the host's comment on a certain policy being "Stalinesque". Staling was adored by the vast majority of the population during his time and has been evilized by the West because he didn't want the Soviet Union to bow down to the American force of capitalism. Russia's pro-Western oligarchs are still destroying and devouring what the Soviet Union achieved during those tumultuous years.
Nowadays, when I hear a fellow Russian complaining about the level of corruption, the unnecessary bureaucracy, the hydrocarbon economy that Russia has gotten itself into, I always ask: "Ok, what should we do with all these incompetent and corrupt individuals that brought this mess about?" The response I hear (without exception) is "send them to prison, or a bit more rarely, hang them". Then I always say: well, isn't that what Stalin was trying to do?
Dima, thank you for your perspective on these events (although, I must note, your outlook on Russia's position currently is a excessively positive). Russia's economic sector has been the biggest devotee of Western liberalism since the collapse of the Soviet Union (in fact, thanks to Gorbachev even during his time) and it will be hard to make amends.
Good stuff as usual. My ears perked up especially when you said that California would be covered in sand dunes in the not too distant future. Not literally, but you are the first person I have heard saying the obvious, something I have looked for in the mainstream press in vain, that it won't take but a few years more years of continuing drought for the ag industry to collapse.
We just returned from two weeks of camping in the Mojave desert and on the way out of the Sierras on the way home, I always like to check out water levels in the reservoirs. Drove by Lake Isabella this time and saw a lot of trees sticking out of the water. These are trees that were drowned when the reservoir was filled and are becoming visible again as it is draining. Volume seems to be low as everywhere. Low volumes in reservoirs are of course unfortunate for recreational boaters, but more significantly, reservoirs are what feeds the irrigation canals. And on the way over into the southern end of the Central Valley I noticed a lot of dying pines. Why pines die I do not know, but I suspect it is from a combination of not enough water and high temperatures. Pines cannot migrate uphill as quickly as the temperatures are changing.
Of course it is easy to be cavalier about the end of California's ag business, but the impact of that will reach beyond the state. Start learning to do home canning again since there won't be any fresh vegetables in winter.
Some pictures of reservoir water levels in California two years ago: http://skinboatjournal.blogspot.com/2012/11/google-maps-water-policy.html
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