Kasparov Seized by Russian Police

 amen!

Dio-gen, it would be great if in the process of calling American experts "liars" you would read someone's post fully. This is about the 4th time I've asked you to read a post fully so as to not look silly. In answer to your last question: how do you know these caravans are from Iran:

From the post you quoted: The proof to StacyBearden's and mine arguments about Iran and Syria are the tons of weapons (like guns and rokets) which were found on the ship "Karin A" and which are found on illegal caravans, which pass the israeli-egyptian border. Military experts are sure they are in origin from Iran and that the very first origin of some of them was from russia (according to the unique simbols and design of the weapons and according to intelligence data).

 that's beside the point! this is a chess site not a political & religious forum. And if i'm interested in Kasparov, i'll go to that post: it wasn't labelled political debate.

That is political.  Democracy is one example of a political system which governs a nation.  There's no need for this heated debate/argument between people of different countries over foreign policy or current events.

My government has its problems, yours has its problems.  Here, we play chess.  I don't know whether Kasparov would make a good president, but I do know that he was a phenomenal chess player. 

This is a friendly community which is built upon the passion for chess, and often times discussions of politics such as this undermine that.

 Don't read the post.

DON'T TAZE ME BRO

Bush's approval rating is pretty low.

Wow, dio-gen , Kasparov's mother is Armenian! You made mistake.

In Russia every chessplayer  knows it. What country do you from ?

Okay. Why do any of you feel as though it is necessary for you to comment? So few of you are Russian or have actually been to Russia, thus you don't know what your talking about. Putin is an excellent leader who has done so much for Russia. Face the facts people- RUSSIANS LOVE PUTIN!!! Kasparov has no chance. So deal with it.

What I said sounded rude, but it bothers me that so many people don't know what they are talking about and act like they know everything.

I see a great deal of ignorance here, mostly from American posters (surprise, surprise). You keep trying to apply the mechanics of one system (western democracy) to another (postcomunism). It just doesn't work.

The first thing you need to understand is the nature of comunism. In it, no one was rich nor could become rich, but neither was anyone poor. People had very few concerns, all they had to do was obey the law and not upset the regime. In return, all their nees were taken care of: food, employmen, housing, you name it the state provided it. 

Then came transition. The promise that they would have an opportunity to have more then they had and be able to speak freely led the people to overthrow communism. But the promise was a fruit of a poisoned tree. Opportunity was there only for the able, and the previously lifelong state patronised people were far from able. In fact, they were totally hapless. In capitalism you get what you're worth and for most that menat very little, certainly less then what they had during communism. They became overburdened with worry; How to find employment, where to live and how to pay for all of it. Decisions on this had to be made fast, and the people had no expirience in making them. They never even imagined there will be a time when they would have to!

Then came privatisation. The able few suddenly got rich. And was NOT as I've seen writen, entirely legal. In the west, it is possible to become rich over night legally. In postcomunism it is not. There is no stock market, dynamics of the economy is sluglike compared to the developed capitalist countries (beaurocracy is rampant of course) and normal acquiring of wealth takes years. You say they bought companies of low value and made them bigger. What they actually did was buy undervalued companies and then sold them for their real value right away. And the undervaluation was not a case of bad managment or circumstances. The state appointed beaurocrats who ran the companies were bribed by the oligarchs to ruin the companies to drop their price. Buying was also not fair or legal, oligarchs being close to the rules got unfair advantage over other bids. Their newly acquired wealth was not used to further growth of the country, not even in symbolic ways like donations to the poor like western rich do. It all went into luxury and show typical of nouveau rich. The justice in postcomunism is dispensed much like in comunism: the ruling party appoints and relieves judges depending on how well they serve the goverment. The goverment, not the course of justice.

So you have the situation where the most drop in standard significantly while a few rise dramatically. When you call this "democracy" and "capitalism", it's understandable that there terms are not going to be very liked by the public.

So when a guy like Putin comes along and takes money away from the oligarchs and improves the position of the poor in return for taking away democracy, he is  going to be very popular. That's what Putin is selling, a light version of comunism. And he has a lot of satisfied customers...