Say It Ain’t So, Alejandro

After the news concerning Grandmaster Chess player Alejandro Ramirez

https://www.chess.com/news/view/wall-street-journal-women-accuse-alejandro-ramirez

hit the fan this writer decided to not touch it with a pole of any length. My thinking was changed after reading something at Chess.com earlier today, a day spent reading any and everything found on the matter. Before writing readers must be informed of from where this writer is coming.

I have two sisters. It was instilled in me at a young age that they were to be protected at all costs. I was the oldest child, and as a male it was up to me to protect my sisters. One night the sister born after me came home crying because her boyfriend had run her new yellow Mustang, and her, off of the road. With Mother begging me to stay I was out of the door in a heartbeat, looking for a fight. Long story short, the culprit was located and word got around that there would be a fight at South Park. Boys and girls began piling into vehicles and heading to SP. They came from Mickey D’s and Shoney’s to park at the gravel parking lot, and on the street, as there were too many vehicles for the parking lot.

The boy my sister had been dating was a big, hulking dude, much larger than me, but he was not the first boy to approach. That would be the older brother of one of the players on my team at the Boy’s Club. He did not like the way I coached his younger brother, and did not like me. Some of my classmates said it was the best fight they had ever seen because we were about the same size, and both knew how to fight. He went down. I was completely exhausted. I had fought in the Golden Gloves and knew my way around a ring, but still, it took all I had to knock him out.

I was breathing heavily and kneeling on one knee on the gravel parking lot when the big galoot came at me. One of my friends later said he “feared for my life.” As the big fellow approached with an excrement eating grin on his ugly mug, I waited until he got up real close and personal before jumpin’ up with a handful of gravel that was thrust it into his face… Then I kicked him in the groin, and proceeded to, as one onlooker informed my Mother, “beat the shit outta him.” It ended when the police pulled me offa the bleeding jerk. One of the cops said, “You go on home now Michael because Mary is worried about you.”

Some of you reading this may find the above reprehensible and “beyond the pale,” and you may be right…but things were different ‘back in the day’. Today one boy would be dead from a gunshot wound and the other probably spend decades behind bars, so yeah, to my thinking, things were better ‘back in the day’, at least in that respect. Back then it was instilled in me that I was to protect my sisters, and my Mother, no matter what. Women were considered the “weaker” sex. I realize things have changed greatly over the decades and women now serve in the military alongside men, but still…

My favorite librarian, Heather, was kind enough to send me a copy of an article in the Washington Post concerning the allegations against GM Ramirez. The title of the article is: Chess Bodies Failed to Act After Misconduct Allegations — Numerous women have accused U.S. grandmaster Alejandro Ramirez of sexual assault.
His behavior was allegedly an open secret. The authors are Andrew Beaton and Joshua Robinson
(file:///C:/Users/xpert/Downloads/ProQuestDocuments-2023-03-09.pdf)

The article begins: “When former U.S. women’s chess champion Jennifer Shahade

https://www.uspoker.com/blog/on-the-button-talking-us-online-with-pokerstars-ambassador-jen-shahade/41158/

alleged on social media last month that she had been sexually assaulted by a grandmaster named Alejandro Ramirez, she had no idea it would set off a broad wave of additional allegations. Shahade says she was sexually assaulted twice by Ramirez, one of the most recognizable faces in U.S. chess over the past two decades. Her allegations and others in recent years were reported to top chess bodies, including the U.S. Chess Federation and the St. Louis Chess Club

which failed to act or effectively investigate when learning of them, according to interviews and documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.”

Those words, “…the U.S. Chess Federation and the St. Louis Chess Club, which failed to act or effectively investigate when learning of them,” are a scathing indictment of any and everyone connected with both of those organizations. Every person having anything to do with either the StLCC and USCF should be ashamed.

Unfortunately, the article continues, and it gets even worse: “Then after her tweet, messages poured in. Ten other women from the chess community reached out to Shahade to say they had also been assaulted or harassed by him, according to texts and direct messages the Journal reviewed. The allegations represent a stunning turn for Ramirez, 34, who was once the second-youngest grandmaster in the world and the first from Central America to earn the title. Ramirez, born in Costa Rica, switched to representing the U.S. in 2011. He has also coached, mentored younger players and built a profile as a commentator. In interviews with the Journal, eight women accused Ramirez of wrongdoing, saying that he used his status in chess to put himself in positions of influence and make repeated unwanted sexual advances toward them since 2011. Ramirez, they said, became physically aggressive as he forcibly kissed and groped them without their consent. Three were under the age of 18 at the time of the alleged incidents, including one who said Ramirez supplied her with vodka before he coerced her into performing oral sex.“

The remainder of the Washington Post article follows with pertinent parts highlighted by this writer:

“On Monday, two days after being presented with a detailed list of the allegations against him by the Journal, Ramirez issued a press release through his attorney saying that he had resigned from his roles at the St. Louis Chess Club and as coach of the St. Louis University chess team because the investigations now being run by U.S. Chess and the club had become a “negative distraction.”
Albert Watkins, Ramirez’s attorney, didn’t comment on specific allegations, saying he had been directed to respect the confidentiality of the investigative undertakings. “In this era of introspection and sensitivity to all matters ‘Me Too’ related, Ramirez remains very supportive of those who seek to raise issues of concern about anyone,” Watkins wrote in an email.
Allegations about Ramirez’s conduct have been known to top chess bodies — including the U.S. Chess Federation the St. Louis Chess Club, the global hub for the game backed by billionaire Rex Sinquefield

https://www.shutterstock.com/editorial/image-editorial/jeanne-cairns-sinquefield-husband-rex-click-queen-12525696c

— for several years. A lawyer for the St. Louis Chess Club wrote in a 2021 letter that it was aware of Shahade’s allegation in 2020. In 2021, the club and U.S. Chess were informed of allegations against Ramirez, according to interviews and documents reviewed by the Journal. Ramirez was nonetheless tapped to coach the U.S. women’s team at the World Chess Olympiad in 2022. Ramirez is now being investigated by the U.S. Chess Federation and the St. Louis Chess Club, where he was a resident grandmaster. He was removed from coaching St. Louis University’s chess team on Feb. 16, the school said, the day after Shahade’s tweet. Ramirez was also taken off the Athletes’ Commission of FIDE, chess’s world governing body, pending the U.S. Chess probe. “The University takes matters of sexual harassment and misconduct very seriously and has robust policies and procedures in place to respond to any report it receives,” St. Louis University said in a statement. The organizations that oversee the game continued to place Ramirez in roles that often involved working closely with women, even after first learning about allegations about him. “I was concerned that there was a clear and present danger that he could have interactions with girls and women,” Shahade said of her decision to go public. St. Louis Chess Club didn’t respond to specific questions about its knowledge of the allegations. After the Journal’s inquiries, the club said in a statement that it accepted Ramirez’s resignation on Monday and that it has no further comment on this employment matter. Ramirez was the club’s highest-paid employee in 2018 and 2019, according to its tax returns. The U.S. Chess Federation referred to a statement dated Feb. 15 in which it said it was “aware that one of its employees has made serious allegations about a member of the chess community” and had opened an investigation, without naming Ramirez. Shahade, a 42-year-old women’s grandmaster, said she was sexually assaulted by Ramirez twice. In the more recent of the two incidents, in 2014, she said they were at a small gathering in St. Louis when, at a moment when no one else was around, he “slammed” her against the wall and forcibly kissed her. Shahade said she confronted Ramirez in October 2020 when he was set to serve as a commentator with her on the U.S. junior girls championship. After telling the club, she said they told her to call him and deal with the matter. A message reviewed by the Journal shows she contacted him the day of the opening ceremony, when he was among the planned commentators. Shahade said that, during a phone call, Ramirez immediately agreed to step down from the commentary role that October. She also said he later called back and apologized for his behavior with her. Videos show he didn’t serve as a commentator at the tournament.
In 2020, Shahade said she also spoke with U.S. Chess officials about Ramirez’s alleged behavior. Shahade has served as the woman’s program director for U.S. Chess since 2018. In 2021, Greg Shahade, Shahade’s brother and a high-level player, contacted St. Louis Chess Club and U.S. Chess to inform them of Ramirez’s alleged behavior, according to emails reviewed by the Journal. Two months later, a letter came back from a lawyer representing the club, acknowledging that it had heard about the allegations in October 2020. The letter said they weren’t aware of any inappropriate conduct by Ramirez. It further said that the club was not the proper party to review and investigate the matters he raised.”
(file:///C:/Users/xpert/Downloads/ProQuestDocuments-2023-03-09.pdf)

The Chess world has a BIG PROBLEM. How is it possible this serial lecher was able to get away with this reprehensible behavior for over a DECADE? How did he manage to keep his position at the St. Louis Chess Club during all that time? Did the allegations fall on deaf ears, or were the MEN involved unconcerned, or uncaring about what was happening? What did Rex Sinquefield know and when did he know it?

Chess has reached a point where multitudes of female players, mostly young girls, have taken up the Royal Game, which is great for Chess because their parents spend unbelievable amounts of money joining organizations, such as the United States Chess Federation, and state organizations. Chess tournaments are filled with female players these daze, most of whom drop out around puberty, only to be replaced by other girls, who pay and play until puberty hits and they, too, drop out of the world of Chess. Those who derive their income from the game must be in a state of fearful shock about now, knowing that something like this could put a stop to the golden goose. Those in charge of Chess should have gotten “in front of this” but instead decided to stay behind it, hoping it would just “go away.” If the Chess world cannot protect the women it is time for a Chess reckoning.

Another Anti-Vaccine Radio Host Bites The Dust

Another Anti-Vaccine Radio Host Is Killed By Covid—Adding To A Growing List

Tommy Beer Forbes Staff

Bob Enyart, a conservative radio talk show host in Denver who urged listeners to boycott Covid-19 vaccines and vowed never to get a shot, has lost his life after contracting the virus, one of his co-hosts announced earlier this week, in what is but the latest instance of a right-wing radio pundit succumbing to the coronavirus.

Bob Enyart reportedly used to “gleefully read obituaries of AIDS sufferers while cranking ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ by Queen,” and called for women who received an abortion to be sentenced to death. DP

Key Facts

On his show, entitled Real Science Radio, Enyart falsely claimed the vaccines were developed using aborted fetal cells and wrote on the show’s website blog in August advising “everyone to boycott Pfizer, Moderna and the Johnson to further increase social tension and put pressure on the child killers.”

According to a Washington Post report, Enyart “used to gleefully read obituaries of AIDS sufferers while cranking ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ by Queen,” and repeatedly called for women who received an abortion to be sentenced to death.

At least four other right-wing radio hosts have died of Covid-19 since early August after each previously cast doubt on the safety of vaccines or fought against mask mandates and other public health initiatives.

Dick Farrel, a Florida-based conservative radio host and anchor on Newsmax TV who had called vaccines “bogus bullsh*t” and characterized Dr. Anthony Fauci as a “lying freak,” died on August 4 due to complications from Covid-19.

In late August, Marc Bernier, who spoke out against Covid-19 vaccines and even called himself “Mr. Anti-Vax” on his radio show from Daytona Beach, died after battling the virus for weeks.

Jimmy DeYoung Sr., a religious radio broadcaster from Tennessee who published an interview advancing a conspiracy theory that the Pfizer vaccine would make women sterile and asked if the virus and vaccines were forms of governmental control, died on August 18 after contracting Covid.

Phil Valentine, a popular conservative talk radio host in Nashville who voiced vaccine skepticism and mocked Democrats’ efforts to encourage people to get the jab, was killed by the virus in mid-August after reportedly telling his brother he regretted not being a “more vocal advocate” of getting inoculated.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2021/09/16/another-anti-vaccine-radio-host-is-killed-by-covid-adding-to-a-growing-list/?sh=1ad61a343105

Conspiracy Crackpot Tries To Crash Train Into Hospital Ship To “Wake People Up To Government Takeover”

The Associated Press reports:

Investigators arrested a California train engineer Tuesday after he allegedly derailed a train in a bid to crash into the USNS Mercy,

the hospital ship treating non-COVID-19 patients at the Port of Los Angeles to lessen the burden on area hospitals, prosecutors said.

Eduardo Moreno, 44, was expected to appear in court Wednesday for arraignment on train wrecking charges.

Around 1 p.m. Tuesday, Moreno allegedly ran the train at full speed off the end of the tracks near the Navy medical boat, smashing through several concrete and chain barriers, before sliding through a parking lot nearly 250 yards from the Mercy, according to the criminal complaint.

https://www.mlive.com/coronavirus/2020/04/man-believing-coronavirus-conspiracy-theory-details-train-tries-to-ram-navy-hospital-ship.html

The Washington Post reports:

Prosecutors say Moreno was “suspicious of the USNS Mercy,” believing officials were lying about its true purpose. He believed “it had an alternate purpose related to covid-19 or a government takeover,” they said.

Moreno told detectives he had been “putting the pieces together.” He no longer believed “the ship is what they say it’s for.” He believed “they are segregating us, and it needs to be put in the open,” according to the affidavit, which doesn’t explain what Moreno might have meant by that.

He was pushing his last train of the day, a cargo bound for Vietnam, when the idea hit him: He could “draw the world’s attention” to the USNS Mercy if he derailed the train, and then “people could see for themselves,” according to the affidavit. He could “wake people up.”

Moreno faces 20 years in prison.

Conspiracy Crackpot Tries To Crash Train Into Hospital Ship To “Wake People Up To Government Takeover”

An Epidemic of Loneliness

George Will

is a columnist for the Washington Post and his latest effort is titled, We have an epidemic of loneliness. How can we fix it?

Excerpts follow, but I would like to begin with this, which is frightening: “America’s largest job category is “driver” and, with self-driving vehicles coming, two-thirds of such jobs could disappear in a decade.”

I drove professionally and I do not just mean when driving a taxi. There were various driving gigs in varied places when younger. I once drove a brand new Ford Probe across the country from Atlanta to Los Angeles in less than three days. I slept, or more properly napped, only in rest areas, stopping to take only one shower in a truck stop along the way because of tremendous time pressure, something with which all Chess players can identify. The person contracted to drive the car to the architect who had won it in a raffle at an architectural convention in Atlanta pulled out at the last moment. The owner of the company called me because, as he put it, “You are the only driver who can get it there on time.” The car was delivered to the owner on time. He gave me a twenty dollar bill as a tip. Enraged, I said, While driving a taxi for Buckhead Safety Cab Mickey Mantle once gave me a fifty dollar bill for a three fifty fare!” The cheapskate just glared at me…

Another driving gig was transporting Bell South vehicles to various cities in Southern states. Vehicles heading to the larger cities would usually go via hauler because those drivers could transport multiple vehicles. The single vehicles heading to smaller cities had to transported by individuals such as yours truly. Some of the drivers had worked for an airline, which at the time meant Delta Airlines in Atlanta, and they could return home using their free miles, while I would have to return on my own, which meant the Greyhound bus or Amtrak. The older drivers had no desire to go to, for example, Lake Charles Louisiana.

I, on the other hand, loved heading to Lake Charles because it meant a trip to New Orleans, a visit with the sui generis Jude Frazier Acers,

the Chess King of Decatur street (https://www.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/item/456-the-chess-king-of-decatur-street) and a night on Bourbon Street, before heading to the Amtrak station, and a train leaving the next morning at seven, giving me plenty of time for sleep on the return trip.

George begins his column, “If Sen. Ben Sasse is right — he has not recently been wrong about anything important — the nation’s most-discussed political problem is entangled with the least-understood public-health problem. The political problem is furious partisanship. The public-health problem is loneliness. Sasse’s new book argues that Americans are richer, more informed and “connected” than ever — and unhappier, more isolated and less fulfilled.”

“In “Them: Why We Hate Each Other — and How to Heal,” Sasse’s subject is “the evaporation of social capital” — the satisfactions of work and community. This reflects a perverse phenomenon: What has come to count as connectedness is displacing the real thing. And matters might quickly become dramatically worse.”

“Loneliness in “epidemic proportions” is producing a “loneliness literature” of sociological and medical findings about the effect of loneliness on individuals’ brains and bodies, and on communities. Sasse (R-Neb.) says “there is a growing consensus” that loneliness — not obesity, cancer or heart disease — is the nation’s “number one health crisis.” “Persistent loneliness” reduces average longevity more than twice as much as does heavy drinking and more than three times as much as obesity, which often is a consequence of loneliness. Research demonstrates that loneliness is as physically dangerous as smoking 15 cigarettes a day and contributes to cognitive decline, including more rapid advance of Alzheimer’s disease. Sasse says, “We’re literally dying of despair,” of the failure “to fill the hole millions of Americans feel in their lives.”

“Work, which Sasse calls “arguably the most fundamental anchor of human identity,” is at the beginning of “a staggering level of cultural disruption” swifter and more radical than even America’s transformation from a rural and agricultural to an urban and industrial nation. At that time, one response to social disruption was alcoholism, which begat Prohibition. Today, one reason the average American life span has declined for three consecutive years is that many more are dying of drug overdoses — one of the “diseases of despair” — annually than died during the entire Vietnam War. People “need to be needed,” but McKinsey & Co. analysts calculate that, globally, 50 percent of paid activities — jobs — could be automated by currently demonstrated technologies. America’s largest job category is “driver” and, with self-driving vehicles coming, two-thirds of such jobs could disappear in a decade.”

I hope you will read the entire column.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/we-have-an-epidemic-of-loneliness-how-can-we-fix-it/2018/10/12/e8378a38-cd92-11e8-920f-dd52e1ae4570_story.html?utm_term=.e87c12c89089

Charles Krauthammer: Leaving Life, and Chess, with No Regrets

Charles Krauthammer, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and intellectual provocateur, dies at 68

by Adam Bernstein June 21

Charles Krauthammer,

a Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist and intellectual provocateur who championed the muscular foreign policy of neoconservatism that helped lay the ideological groundwork for the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, died June 21 at 68.

The cause was cancer of the small intestine, said his son, Daniel Krauthammer. He declined to provide further information.

“I believe that the pursuit of truth and right ideas through honest debate and rigorous argument is a noble undertaking,” Dr. Krauthammer wrote in a June 8 farewell note. “I am grateful to have played a small role in the conversations that have helped guide this extraordinary nation’s destiny. I leave this life with no regrets.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/charles-krauthammer-pulitzer-prize-winning-columnist-and-intellectual-provocateur-dies-at-68/2018/06/21/b71ee41a-759e-11e8-b4b7-308400242c2e_story.html?utm_term=.60d25502de35

Charles was a conservative thinker who loved Chess. Decades ago, after learning of his love for the Royal game I began to read his column on a regular basis, something mentioned at a small gathering of Chess players, some of whom were Republicans, one of whom asked why I read Krauthammer. “Because he plays Chess,” was the reply. He seemed unable to grasp the fact that I read a conservative columnist until one legendary Georgia player spoke up, saying, “On some issues Bacon is to the left of Jane Fonda, but on others he is to the right of Attila the Hun!” Uproarious laughter ensued…I mentioned reading George Will because he had written several books on Baseball. “Sometimes I agree with him, and sometimes I don’t,” I said, “But I take what he has to say in consideration, just as with Krauthammer.”

Chess: It’s like alcohol. It’s a drug. I have to control it, or it could overwhelm me. I have a regular Monday night game at my home, and I do play a little online.
Charles Krauthammer (http://www.azquotes.com/quote/163123)

The Pariah Chess Club

By Charles Krauthammer December 27, 2002

I once met a physicist who as a child had been something of a chess prodigy. He loved the game and loved the role. He took particular delight in the mortification older players felt upon losing to a kid in short pants.

“Still play?” I asked.

“Nope.”

“What happened?”

“Quit when I was 21.”

“Why?”

“Lost to a kid in short pants.”

The Pariah Chess Club, where I play every Monday night, admits no one in short pants. Even our youngest member, in his twenties, wears trousers. The rest of us are more grizzled veterans numbering about a dozen, mostly journalists and writers, with three lawyers, an academic and a diplomat for ballast. We’ve been meeting at my house for almost a decade for our weekly fix.

Oh, yes, the club’s name. Of the four founding members, two were social scientists who, at the time we started playing, had just written books that had made their college lecture tours rather physically hazardous. I too sported a respectable enemies list (it was the heady Clinton years). And we figured that the fourth member, a music critic and perfectly well-liked, could be grandfathered in as a pariah because of his association with the three of us.

Pariah status has not been required of subsequent members, though it is encouraged. Being a chess player already makes you suspect enough in polite society, and not without reason. Any endeavor that has given the world Paul Morphy, the first American champion, who spent the last 17-odd years of his life wandering the streets of New Orleans, and Bobby Fischer, the last American champion, now descended John Nash-like into raving paranoia, cannot be expected to be a boon to one’s social status.

Our friends think us odd. They can understand poker night or bridge night. They’re not sure about chess. When I tell friends that three of us once drove from Washington to New York to see Garry Kasparov play a game, it elicits a look as uncomprehending as if we had driven 200 miles for an egg-eating contest.

True, we chess players can claim Benjamin Franklin as one of our own. He spent much of his time as ambassador to France playing chess at the Cafe de la Regence, where he fended off complaints that he was not being seen enough at the opera by explaining, “I call this my opera.” But for every Franklin, there is an Alexander Alekhine, who in 1935 was stopped trying to cross the Polish-German frontier without any papers. He offered this declaration instead: “I am Alekhine, chess champion of the world. This is my cat. Her name is Chess. I need no passport.” He was arrested.

Or Aron Nimzovich, author of perhaps the greatest book on chess theory ever written, who, upon being defeated in a game, threw the pieces to the floor and jumped on the table screaming, “Why must I lose to this idiot?”

I know the feeling, but at our club, when you lose with a blunder that instantly illuminates the virtues of assisted suicide, we have a cure. Rack ’em up again. Like pool. A new game, right away. We play fast, very fast, so that memories can be erased and defeats immediately avenged.

I try to explain to friends that we do not sit in overstuffed chairs smoking pipes in five-hour games. We play like the vagrants in the park — at high speed with clocks ticking so that thinking more than 10 or 20 seconds can be a fatal extravagance. In speed (“blitz”) chess, you’ve got five or 10 minutes to play your entire game. Some Mondays we get in a dozen games each. No time to recriminate, let alone ruminate.

And we have amenities. It’s a wood-paneled library, chess books only. The bulletin board has the latest news from around the world, this month a London newspaper article with a picture of a doe-eyed brunette languishing over a board, under the headline “Kournikova of Chess Makes Her Move.” The mini-jukebox plays k.d. lang and Mahler. (We like lush. We had Roy Orbison one night, till our lone Iowan begged for mercy.) “Monday Night Football” in the background, no sound. Barbecue chips. Sourdough pretzels. Sushi when we’re feeling extravagant. And in a unique concession to good health, Nantucket Nectar. I’m partial to orange mango.

No alcohol, though. Not even a beer. It’s not a prohibition. You can have a swig if you want, but no one ever does. The reason is not ascetic but aesthetic. Chess is a beautiful game, and though amateurs playing fast can occasionally make it sing, we know there are riffs — magical symphonic combinations — that we either entirely miss or muck up halfway through. Fruit juice keeps the ugliness to a minimum.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2002/12/27/the-pariah-chess-club/ebf8806d-eb6b-43b6-9615-766d3e5605ef/?utm_term=.a39c79610415

Charles Krauthammer playing chess with Natan Sharansky at Krauthammer’s office in an undated photo. (FAMILY PHOTO)

Charles was as comfortable with Presidents as he was with Chess players.

Charles Krauthammer with President Ronald Reagan in an undated photo.

Charles Krauthammer with President Jimmy Carter in an undated photo. (PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE KRAUTHAMMER FAMILY)

Charles Krauthammer with President George W. Bush in 2008. (COURTESY OF THE KRAUTHAMMER FAMILY)

When Chess Becomes Class Warfare

By Charles Krauthammer March 1, 1985

Capitalism’s vice is that it turns everything — even, say, a woman’s first historic run for the White House — into cash. Communism’s vice is that it turns everything — even, say, chess — into politics.

Chess? You may have trouble seeing chess as politics. Americans think chess is a game. The “Great Soviet Encyclopedia,” in one of its few correct entries, defines chess as “an art appearing in the form of a game.” And like all art under socialism, it is to be turned into an instrument of the state.

You think I exaggerate. If I quoted you Nikolai Krylenko, commissar of justice, in 1932 — “We must finish once and for all with the neutrality of chess. . . . We must organize shock-brigades of chess players, and begin the immediate realization of a Five Year Plan for chess” — you’d say I was dredging the history books for Stalinist lunacies. So I bring you fresh evidence of communism’s penchant for politicizing everything, for controlling everything it politicizes, and for letting nothing — shame least of all — jeopardize that control. I bring you L’affaire Karpov, a tempest for a teapot.

The story is this. On Sept. 10, 1984, the world chess championship begins in Moscow. Both players are Soviet citizens: champion Anatoly Karpov and challenger Gary Kasparov. To win, one must win six games. Draws don’t count. After nine games Karpov is ahead 4-0. An astonishing lead.

Kasparov then launches the most relentless war of attrition in the history of championship chess. He deliberately forces draw after draw, at one point 17 in a row, to one purpose: to exhaust the older and frailer champion.

On Nov. 24, Karpov does win a fifth game, but he will not win again. On Dec. 12, Kasparov wins his first. The score is 5-1. Then 14 more draws.

Then something extraordinary happens. Karpov, known for his metronomic logic and unshakable composure, loses game 47, playing “as though in a daze,” writes chess master Robert Byrne. Game 48: Karpov loses again. The score is 5-3.

By now, says another expert, Karpov “looks like Chernenko.” Chernenko looks bad, but Karpov is 33. He has lost 22 pounds and did not have very many to start with. He is close to collapse. He is about to fall — as Nabokov’s fictional champion, Luzhin, fell — into what Nabokov called “the abysmal depths of chess.” Kasparov is on the brink of the greatest chess comeback ever.

And on the brink both will stay. Six days later, on Feb. 15, the president of the International Chess Federation, under enormous pressure from Soviet authorities, shows up in Moscow and declares the match a draw — and over. Karpov is saved by the bell, except that here the referee rang it in the middle of a round and at an eight count.

Why? One can understand the Party wanting Karpov to win in 1978 and 1981, when the challenger was Victor Korchnoi — defector, Jew, all around troublemaker, Trotsky at the chessboard. But Kasparov is not Korchnoi. He is a good Soviet citizen, a party member, and not known for any politics. He is, however, half Armenian, half Jewish. Until age 12, his name was Gary Weinstein. He is no dissident, but he is young (21) and independent. Above all, he is not reliable.

Karpov, a man who needed to be named only once, is. Conqueror of Korchnoi (twice), receiver of the Order of Lenin, ethnically pure (Russian) and politically pliant (a leader of the Soviet Peace Committee), he is the new Soviet man. And he receives the attention fitting so rare a political commodity: he says he was told of the match’s cancellation over the phone in his car. Cellular service is not widely available in the Soviet Union.

Now, this is the third time that Soviet authorities have tried to undermine Kasparov’s shot at the championsh. In 1983 they stopped him from traveling to his quarterfinal match in Pasadena, Calif. The official reason (later pressed into service for the Olympics) was “lack of security.” Only a sportsmanlike opponent and accommodating chess officials (they rescheduled the match without penalty) saved Kasparov from defaulting in the candidates’ round and losing his chance to challenge Karpov.

But challenge he did. The finals were held in the prestigious Hall of Columns in the House of Unions. That is, until Kasparov’s rally in the 47th game. Soviet authorities then suddenly moved the match to the Hotel Sport outside the city center. “Like moving from Carnegie Hall to a gin mill in Poughkeepsie,” says Larry Parr, editor of Chess Life magazine.

I interpreted the move to mean that Chernenko was about to die, since the Hall of Columns is where Soviet leaders (like Dmitri Ustinov) lie in state. Silly me. I was insufficiently cynical about Soviet behavior. The reason for the move was not to bury Chernenko (he continues to be propped up like a Potemkin villain), but to save Karpov. The move took eight days — eight otherwise illegal days of rest for Karpov.

It didn’t help. Karpov was too far gone. Kasparov destroyed him the very next day in the 48th game. Soviet officials then made sure it was the last.

Now do you believe me?

A month ago I would not have believed it myself. (Kasparov still does not believe it.) Fix the biggest chess match in the world? Steal the championship from one Soviet citizen for a marginal propaganda gain? In broad daylight?

Still, we must be careful. Unfortunate episodes like these tend to fuel native American paranoia about how far the Soviets will go in relentless pursuit of even the most speculative political advantage. We must resist such facile reactions. Next thing you know someone will claim that the KGB got the Bulgarians to hire a Turk to shoot the pope to pacify Poland.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1985/03/01/when-chess-becomes-class-warfare/51584d63-ede9-49bf-9b3f-40b7ea91e606/?utm_term=.ee5b4244d2fe

TYRANNY OF CHESS

By Charles Krauthammer October 16, 1998

Not all chess players are crazy. I’m willing to venture that. But not much more. Eccentricity does reign in our precincts. In my 20s, I used to hang out at the Boston Chess Club. The front of the club was a bookstore in which you’d mill around, choose a partner, put your money down with the manager and go to the back room — 20 or so boards set up in utter barrenness — for some action. (At five bucks an hour it was cheaper than a bordello, but the principle seemed disturbingly similar to me.)

I remember one back room encounter quite vividly. The stranger and I sat down to the board together. I held out my hand and said, “Hi, I’m Charles.” He pushed his white king’s pawn and said, “I’m white,” fixing me with a glare that said, “Don’t you dare intrude into my space with names.” It was dead silence from then on.

A psychiatrist colleague of mine came by to fetch me a few hours later. He surveyed the clientele — intense, disheveled, autistic — and declared, “I could run a group in here.”

Don’t get me wrong. Most chess players are sane. In fact, a group of the saner ones, mostly journalists and writers, meets at my house every Monday night for speed chess. (You make all your moves in under nine minutes total, or you lose.) But all sane chess players know its dangers. Chess is an addiction. Like alcohol, it must be taken in moderation. Overindulgence can lead to a rapid downward spiral.

Vladimir Nabokov (a gifted creator of chess problems and a fine player, by the way) wrote a novel based on the premise of the psychic peril of too close an encounter with “the full horror and abysmal depths” of chess, as he called its closed, looking-glass world. (Nabokov’s chess champion hero, naturally, goes bonkers.)

Chess players, says former U.S. champion Larry Christiansen, inhabit a “subterranean, surreal world. It is not the real world, not even close.” So what happens when a creature of that nether world seizes political power?

Impossible, you say: Sure, there have been dictators — Lenin, for example — who played serious chess, but there has never been a real chess player who became a dictator.

And no wonder, considering the alarming number of great players who were so certifiably nuts they’d have trouble tying their shoelaces, let alone running a country. Wilhelm Steinitz, the first world champion, claimed to have played against God, given Him an extra pawn, and won. Bobby Fischer had the fillings in his teeth removed to stop the radio transmissions.

Well, in some Godforsaken corner of the Russian empire, Kalmykia on the Caspian, where the sheep outnumber people 2 to 1, the impossible has happened. A chess fanatic has seized power. Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, former boy chess champion, current president of the International Chess Federation, was elected president of Kalmykia two years ago on the promise of a cell phone for every sheepherder and $100 for every voter in his destitute republic.

Naturally, nothing came of these promises. But once elected, he seized all the instruments of power including the police, the schools and the media.

Result? Ilyumzhinov calls it the world’s first “chess state.” God help us. Compulsory chess classes in all schools. Prime-time chess on TV. And in the midst of crushing poverty, a just erected “Chess City,” a surreal Potemkin village topped by a five-story glass-pavilioned chess palace where Ilyumzhinov has just staged an international chess tournament.

This scene (drolly described by Andrew Higgins in the Wall Street Journal) would be Groucho running Fredonia if it weren’t for the little matter of the opposition journalist recently murdered after being lured to a meeting where she was promised evidence of Ilyumzhinov’s corruption. (Ilyumzhinov denies involvement. Perhaps it depends on how you define the word “involve.”) Kalmykia is beginning to look less like Woody Allen’s “Bananas” than Nurse Ratched’s “Cuckoo’s Nest.”

Ilyumzhinov rides around in his Rolls-Royces, presiding over a state that specializes in corruption and tax evasion. The Washington Post reports that he paved the road from the airport to the capital and painted every building along the way, but only the side that faces the road. So now the world knows what chess players have known all along: A passion for chess, like a drug addiction or a criminal record, should be automatic disqualification for any serious public activity. Column writing excepted, of course.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1998/10/16/tyranny-of-chess/8854cca6-ca40-4e90-bfa1-d9d90c5f4d6c/?utm_term=.d46f29d730b4

https://en.chessbase.com/post/krauthammer-on-che-just-how-dangerous-is-it-

http://nationalpost.com/opinion/charles-krauthammer-chess-is-not-an-olympic-sport-but-it-should-be

https://www.weeklystandard.com/be-afraid/article/9802

https://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2018/02/07/the-brute-force-of-deep-blue-and-deep-learning/#3dfc9ad49e35

Traitorous Trump Going Down

What more do you need to know about Trump?

Trump did it and he’s going down for a host of crimes, and some of them have nothing to do with Russia

Lucian K. Truscott IV

May 19, 2018

I’ve been “covering” the Trump story for over a year now, and I’m sick and tired of stacking up the details of his treachery day after day, week after week. What more do you need to know? He’s a lying, thieving, incompetent, ignorant traitor who conspired with the Russian government to steal the election of 2016 and illegally defeat a candidate who won the popular vote by nearly 3 million ballots. His presidency is illegitimate, and his occupation of the White House is a stain on our nation’s honor and a threat to our democracy. History will cast him into the same sewer in which float the putrid remains of Benedict Arnold, Jefferson Davis and Richard Nixon. Impeachment would be too kind an end for him. He belongs behind bars, broken, bankrupt and disgraced.

Every day the front pages of the newspapers and the headlines of the cable news shows are filled with evidence of Trump’s lies and thievery. Look at what happened this week alone.

Trump started out denying that he even knew Stormy Daniels, then he denied having a sexual relationship with her, then he said he didn’t know about any payoffs to her. Monday, he filed his required federal financial disclosure form in which he effectively admitted making the $130,000 payment to shut her up just before the election in 2016.

He did an about-face on trade restrictions on China, announcing that he would seek to help the Chinese communications giant ZTE, which paid a $1.2 billion fine last year for violating sanctions against trade with North Korea and Iran. Three days previously, China had issued a half-billion dollar loan to a development project in Singapore that includes Trump-branded hotels, golf courses and condos.

He opened the American embassy in Jerusalem, a move he had been warned would result in fighting and deaths in the Middle East — and sure enough, dozens of Palestinians were killed on the day the embassy opened during demonstrations in the Gaza Strip.

The Trump White House refused to apologize for a sick joke made about John McCain by one of his aides.

Trump’s former secretary of state gave a commencement speech at VMI in which he made repeated veiled criticisms of Trump’s lying and warned gravely “If our leaders seek to conceal the truth, or we as people become accepting of alternative realities that are no longer grounded in facts, then we as American citizens are on a pathway to relinquishing our freedom.”

Special Counsel Robert Mueller issued a subpoena to a former aide of Trump’s long-time consultant Roger Stone, who has admitted being in touch during the campaign of 2016 with a Russian intelligence agent involved in the hacking of the Democratic Party emails.

A major story in Buzzfeed on Thursday detailed work by Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen on a 100-story Trump skyscraper in Moscow during 2015 right through the Republican National Convention in 2016. It was revealed that Trump signed a “Letter of Intent” on the Moscow project on the day of the third Republican primary debate on Oct. 28, 2015, in Boulder, Colorado. ABC News reported last week that Trump has denied having deals in Russia “hundreds of times in the past 18 months.” Just before the inauguration in 2017, for example, Trump tweeted:

Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA – NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2017

A Qatar deal was announced. The revelation follows a report that during the transition in 2016, a Qatari diplomat was asked by Trump lawyer Michael Cohen for a $1 million “fee” in return for arranging connections to the Trump family. The government of Qatar bought a $6.5 million apartment in Trump World Tower on the east side of Manhattan recently.

The news of last week was a perfect mix of lies, thievery, buffoonery and malice that have characterized the entirety of Trump’s presidency.

He promised to get rid of Obamacare “on day one.” He failed. Obamacare is alive and well and enjoyed record registrations last year.

His executive orders on everything from immigration to environmental regulations have ignored requirements for public comments and simple federal paperwork and face lawsuits from one end of the country to the other.

He claimed that “nobody has been tougher on Russia than I have.” He has refused to enact most of the sanctions on Russia passed by Congress.

He appointed a hatchet man who had sued the EPA over a dozen times to head up the agency and that man, Scott Pruitt, currently faces no less than 14 investigations of his tenure there, including allegations that he broke federal laws on office renovations and accepting gifts from lobbyists when he rented a room at below-market rates from a lobbyist with business before his agency.

Last week he claimed he raised military pay for “the first time in 10 years.” President Obama raised military pay in every year of his presidency.

Trump has claimed repeatedly that his White House “is running like a fine-tuned machine.” He filled it with wife beaters, worn-out Wall Street bucket shop shysters and half-baked neo-Nazi flacks. At this point, more than 40 top White House officials and aides have either resigned or been fired over the last 18 months. The place leaks like a shredded fish net.

The Washington Post recently reported that the lies he has told in office now number more than 3,000.

But it’s his lies about Russia that really ring a bell. Trump and his White House surrogates began by claiming that the Trump campaign never met with any Russians and had nothing to do with Russia. Revelation after revelation about contacts between Trump people and Russians followed. Then they claimed they had met with only a few Russians. More revelations about more Russians. Then they claimed they had not met with any Russians “about the campaign.” The Trump Tower meeting was revealed. Meets between George Papadopoulos and Russians in London came to light. Trump suddenly started claiming that there was “no collusion.” Evidence of collusion emerged. Then Trump began claiming that even if there was collusion, it was not illegal. Indictments came down. Now Rudy Giuliani is out there telling the world that even if Trump did something wrong, he can’t be indicted as a sitting president.

Wow. Watching Trump revisions on the Russia story is like watching a Slinky descend a staircase, flipping over and over and over and over.

But every set of stairs has a bottom and in Trump’s case, it’s the law. His lies and dissembling about Stormy Daniels came up against the law this week when he had to file his financial disclosure form. Lying or omitting information on a federal form is a felony, which is why Trump was forced to include the repayment of his debt to Michael Cohen which covered the $130,000 that had been paid out to silence Stormy Daniels in October of 2016. He lied about her and he lied about that payment until he came up against the law and then he was forced to tell the truth.

He has reached the ground floor with Russia and everything else. You can lie at rallies, you can lie to the media, you can lie to voters, but lies don’t work when they come up against laws. That’s where Trump finds himself today. He’s a lying, thieving traitor who conspired with a hostile nation to steal the presidential election of 2016 and he got caught. Not even his bone spurs will get him a deferment this time. He’s going to be drafted for the farm team at Leavenworth. He’s going down.

Lucian K. Truscott IV

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. He has covered stories such as Watergate, the Stonewall riots and wars in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels and several unsuccessful motion pictures. He has three children, lives on the East End of Long Island and spends his time Worrying About the State of Our Nation and madly scribbling in a so-far fruitless attempt to Make Things Better. He can be followed on Facebook at The Rabbit Hole and on Twitter @LucianKTruscott.

https://www.salon.com/2018/05/19/what-more-do-you-need-to-know-about-trump/

Living In A Small Town

People who live in small towns and rural areas are happier than everyone else, researchers say

by Christopher Ingraham May 17

Commuters wait for train service to be restored at Grand Central Terminal on Tuesday in New York City. (Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images)

“Heaven is wide open spaces — at least, it is for most people, according to a massive new data set of happiness in Canada.

A team of happiness researchers at the Vancouver School of Economics and McGill University recently published a working paper on the geography of well-being in Canada. They compiled 400,000 responses to a pair of national Canadian surveys, allowing them to parse out distinctions in well-being at the level of more than 1,200 communities representing the country’s entire geography.

They were able to cross-reference the well-being responses with other survey data, as well as figures from the Canadian census, to see what sorts of characteristics were associated with happiness at the community level: Are happier communities richer, for instance? Are the people there more educated? Do they spend more time in church?

Their chief finding is a striking association between population density — the concentration of people in a given area — and happiness. When the researchers ranked all 1,215 communities by average happiness, they found that average population density in the 20 percent most miserable communities was more than eight times greater than in the happiest 20 percent of communities.

“Life is significantly less happy in urban areas,” the paper concluded.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/05/17/people-who-live-in-small-towns-and-rural-areas-are-happier-than-everyone-else-researchers-say/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.a7dd61092123

I have spent many a

I live in a

And I am

The Trump Highway

‘Donald J. Trump Utah National Parks Highway’ meets ‘Stormy Daniels rampway’

by Meagan Flynn March 6 at 6:54 AM

“Some Republican lawmakers in Utah are so pleased with President Trump’s decision to shrink two Utah national monuments that they want to honor him with his own road, the “Donald J. Trump Utah National Parks Highway.”

“Democratic State Sen. Jim Dabakis responded with his own renaming proposal: If the House passes the bill, then Dabakis threatened to attach an amendment in the Senate that would rename the frontage road that runs along the would-be Donald J. Trump Utah National Parks Highway.

“He will seek to call it the “Stormy Daniels rampway,” named for the former porn star to whom Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, reportedly paid $130,000 to keep quiet about her relationship with then-candidate Trump.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/03/06/donald-j-trump-utah-national-parks-highway-meets-stormy-daniels-rampway/?utm_term=.e3f8467a7cc7

Trump, Feeling Heat & Pressure, Lashes Out

Trump lashes out over Russia probe in angry and error-laden tweetstorm

By Josh Dawsey and Philip Rucker February 18 at 9:55 PM

In a defiant and error-laden tweetstorm that was remarkable even by his own combative standards Trump

stewed aloud and lashed out with fresh anger about the intensifying Russia probe over the weekend.

Rick Wilson, a Republican strategist based in Florida and a Trump critic, said the president’s tweets read to him like “a cry for help.”

“He must be feeling a lot of different pressures building on him right now — personal and political and legal,” Wilson said. “He must feel like he has to sweep all the pieces off the chess board

and try to restart. But these problems can’t be papered over by tweets.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-lashes-out-over-russia-probe-in-angry-and-error-laden-tweetstorm/2018/02/18/8224b7de-14ce-11e8-8b08-027a6ccb38eb_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_trumptweets-715pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.eec9f15f481d