God Save Us All From FIDE

Last night NM Sulaiman Smith made an appearance at the Ironman Chess Club. In 1995 Sulaiman attended the Million Man March in Washington D.C. (https://www.britannica.com/event/Million-Man-March) and former GCA President Thad Rogers began to call him “Sulamillionman,” and then laugh.

When Mr. Smith extended his hand it was greeted by my fist. Sulaiman grinned while turning his hand into a fist, and we then “bumped.” Ever since Barack Obama gave his wife, Michelle, “the fist bump heard round the world”

it was interpreted by most people as the friendly gesture it was meant to be and politicians were soon fist bumping one another on TV chat shows. Some called it the “fist bump of hope”. The more straight-laced New York Times said it was a “closed-fisted high-five”, according to Leonard Doyle writing in the Independent. Unfortunately Leonard also wrote this: “Millions of people saw Mrs Obama daintily bump fists with her husband last week just before he claimed the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination at a rally in St Paul, Minnesota. More common on the sports field, the gesture was decried as “Hizbollah hand jabbing” on the Human Events blog. On Fox News, the host asked, in all seriousness, if it was, “a terrorist fist jab?”.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/was-this-really-a-terrorist-fist-jab-the-right-says-so-845141.html

I liked the bumping of fists as opposed to the antiquated custom of shaking hands, which only spreads germs, and disease. It has been my experience that every time I have greeted a person of color with the fist a smile has been received. After moving into farm country in Lavonia, Georgia, I made the mistake of offering a fist one time and it went around the mostly white community that I was “one of them.” As in, “You know, he’s from Atlanter.” (The misspelling is intentional) Lavonia is deep in the heart of Trump country. I was like a fish out of water for three years before making it back into civilization.

“The handshake has existed in some form or another for thousands of years, but its origins are somewhat murky. One popular theory is that the gesture began as a way of conveying peaceful intentions. By extending their empty right hands, strangers could show that they were not holding weapons and bore no ill will toward one another. Some even suggest that the up-and-down motion of the handshake was supposed to dislodge any knives or daggers that might be hidden up a sleeve.” (https://www.history.com/news/what-is-the-origin-of-the-handshake)

Checking the usual Chess websites today found this article at Chess.com: Coronavirus: Should Players Shake Hands Before A Chess Game? by Peter Doggers. (https://www.chess.com/news/view/coronavirus-shake-hands-before-chess-game) Peter provided a link to the “…upcoming World Senior Team Championship (March 5-15 in Prague)…” and off I went.

Once clicking on (http://www.wstcc2020.net/information/fide-medical-security-protocol/) this was found:

FIDE Medical security protocol

MEDICAL SECURITY POLICY AND PROTOCOL FOR UPCOMING FIDE EVENTS

I will not provide everything given as protocol because you can click onto the link and read it for yourself as it is quite lengthy. I would, though, like to share some of the unbelievably insane things, even for FIDE, written, beginning with number

“3. Masks shall be made available for use by participants who have flu-like symptoms”

Now I do not know about you but if I were playing in the World Senior Team Championship this would NOT make me feel better about attending the event. It gets worse, or better, depending on your perspective:

“Participants who are coughing or sneezing are especially encouraged to use these masks to avoid possible spread of the covid-19 virus.”

Yes sir, it certainly would give me a feeling of assurance to know my opponent sitting only a couple of feet across the board was wearing a mask as he was dying of some Wuhan pathogen developed in a not so secret laboratory in China. How about you?

It gets better, or worse, depending…

4. The events rooms shall have proper and well-functioning ventilation and air circulation with fresh air intake.

“This measure will ensure that the air in the meeting rooms is fresh and that the meeting rooms have rapidly circulating air at all times to minimize the risk of transmission of covid-19 virus.”

This did not work well for the unfortunate passengers confined to quarters breathing the “rapidly circulating air at all times” taking a “three hour tour” aboard a cruise ship.

Click on and check this one out:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/coronavirus-infections-keep-mounting-after-cruise-ship-fiasco-japan

Now take the “three hour tour” in a minute:

Then there is:

5. Events rooms shall not be overcrowded and there shall be sufficient physical separation between people.

This shall minimize the chances of possible transmission of covid-19 virus between meeting attendees.

Say what?

I love the “sufficient physical separation between people” part considering this headline:

Stand Back: Flu Virus Travels 6 Feet

By Rachael Rettner January 31, 2013

“If you know someone who is suffering from the flu, you might want to keep your distance. Infectious flu-containing particles exhaled by a sick person can travel at least 6 feet, according to a new study.”

https://www.livescience.com/26753-flu-virus-travel-six-feet.html

FIDE has invariably been a place to go for laughs, but this is ridiculous to the point of absurdity, especially considering the very lives of Chess players are concerned, especially so when it comes to Seniors because professionals know the most susceptible among us are male Seniors. For example:

Why the Coronavirus Seems to Hit Men Harder Than Women

Women mount stronger immune responses to infection, scientists say.

 

Coronavirus deaths at Washington nursing home show seniors at high risk of contracting the disease

People over age 50 are more susceptible to respiratory illnesses, and related complications

Published: Mar 2, 2020 3:09 p.m. ET
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/older-people-account-for-more-than-half-of-the-us-coronavirus-cases-are-seniors-at-risk-2020-02-07

Coronavirus’ Top Targets: Men, Seniors, Smokers

Karen Weintraub

February 27, 2020
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/925855

When it comes to the decisions made by FIDE in the Wuhan pathogen matter I am reminded of a now (in)famous scene from the movie Jaws when the possibility of closing the beach on the fourth of July is being discussed with the mayor, who must decide between people dying or losing money:

When it comes to the life of a human Chess player and money which do you think the F.I.P.s (Fools In Power) within FIDE will choose? As my father, a very religious man, was frequently fond of saying during the sixties and seventies, “God save us all.” I will add, “From FIDE.”

Trump’s America Feels Like Germany Before Nazis Took Over

‘I’m A Holocaust Survivor—Trump’s America Feels Like Germany Before Nazis Took Over’

By Shane Croucher On 4/9/18

Stephen B. Jacobs has a warning from the past for America today: It’s happening again.

At 79 years old he is among the youngest of the living Holocaust survivors and was born six years after Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. But Jacobs can remember life in the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald; what the Nazis did to him, his family, his friends.

He worries about what’s happening right now in America, where he has lived and prospered since arriving a couple of years after Buchenwald’s liberation on April 11, 1945.

“Things just go from bad to worse every day,” Jacobs, a successful New York architect who designed the Holocaust memorial at Buchenwald, tells Newsweek. “There’s a real problem growing.”

So much so that Jacobs thinks there’s a “direct parallel” with Germany between the two world wars.

Perhaps more alarming than the far-right getting braver is the seep into mainstream politics of their hate, their talking points, their rhetoric. “It feels like 1929 or 1930 Berlin,” Jacobs speculated, ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day 2018 on Thursday.

“Things that couldn’t be said five years ago, four years ago, three years ago—couldn’t be said in public—are now normal discourse. It’s totally unacceptable.

“We thought our country had changed. In fact, it didn’t. We were operating on a misconception. ‘My god, we elected a black president in the United States! Look how far we’ve come!’ We haven’t.”

In Trump, Jacobs says, the far-right sees an “enabler.”

“I’m involved with New York real estate, I know this man personally,” says Jacobs, whose eponymous architecture firm celebrated its 50th birthday in 2017. “Trump is an enabler. Trump has no ideas. Trump is out for himself.

“He’s a sick, very disturbed individual. I couldn’t say that Trump is a fascist because you’ve got to know what fascism is. And I don’t think he has the mental power to even understand it.”

Jacobs calls New York, where he lives, an “island of resistance.” But he says Washington will soon realize too that “fascism has to be resisted.”

“Fascism could have been won in Spain. It could’ve been stopped. But appeasement of fascism is what led to everything,” Jacobs warns.

This is a man who lived what happens when fascism isn’t stopped before it metastasizes.

http://www.newsweek.com/im-holocaust-survivor-trumps-america-feels-germany-nazis-took-over-876965

With God On Our Side

Written by: Bob Dylan

Oh my name it is nothin’

My age it means less

The country I come from

Is called the Midwest

I’s taught and brought up there

The laws to abide

And that the land that I live in

Has God on its side

Oh the history books tell it

They tell it so well

The cavalries charged

The Indians fell

The cavalries charged

The Indians died

Oh the country was young

With God on its side

Oh the Spanish-American

War had its day

And the Civil War too

Was soon laid away

And the names of the heroes

l’s made to memorize

With guns in their hands

And God on their side

Oh the First World War, boys

It closed out its fate

The reason for fighting

I never got straight

But I learned to accept it

Accept it with pride

For you don’t count the dead

When God’s on your side

When the Second World War

Came to an end

We forgave the Germans

And we were friends

Though they murdered six million

In the ovens they fried

The Germans now too

Have God on their side

I’ve learned to hate Russians

All through my whole life

If another war starts

It’s them we must fight

To hate them and fear them

To run and to hide

And accept it all bravely

With God on my side

But now we got weapons

Of the chemical dust

If fire them we’re forced to

Then fire them we must

One push of the button

And a shot the world wide

And you never ask questions

When God’s on your side

Through many dark hour

I’ve been thinkin’ about this

That Jesus Christ

Was betrayed by a kiss

But I can’t think for you

You’ll have to decide

Whether Judas Iscariot

Had God on his side

So now as I’m leavin’

I’m weary as Hell

The confusion I’m feelin’

Ain’t no tongue can tell

The words fill my head

And fall to the floor

If God’s on our side

He’ll stop the next war

Copyright © 1963 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991 by Special Rider Music

Trump Knows The End Game Is Here

Younger Americans do not understand what is happening in the nation’s capital these days, which has put them in a daze. Those of my generation have been here before. A total of SIXTY NINE members of the Nixxon administration were found guilty of crimes, with many going to prison for committing those crimes. New Jersey Senator Cory Booker said recently, “We are in perilous times.” An excellent article explaining the situation appeared today at Salon. I provide excerpts only. Please click on the link and read the entire article.

Defeat is inevitable. Everybody knows it, even Trump

Washington’s legal immune system is about to expel an infection from the body politic

By Lucian K. Truscott IV
01.27.2018

I remember the day I first realized that Richard Nixon was doomed and one way or another would be removed from office. It was deep in the winter of 1974, I had been working for months on my own little corner of the Watergate story, and I was on Capitol Hill to meet one of the deputy counsels on the Senate Watergate Committee. I had been given an address on Capitol Hill for their offices, and when I arrived there I found myself standing outside an old movie theater. I was confused. This was supposed to be the office of the Senate Watergate Committee! I stopped somebody on the street and showed them my notebook where I had written down the address and asked them if I was in the right place. Yes, the passerby said. You’re at the right place. They’re right in there.

I entered through the theater’s front door and found no one in the lobby, so I wandered further inside. The theater wasn’t a theater anymore. It had been transformed into a makeshift office space. Fluorescent lamps hung down from the theater’s high ceiling illuminating a rabbit warren of cubicles packed with file cabinets and office storage boxes and desks buried beneath piles of paper. Phone lines and electrical wires were rigged into overhead conduits and dropped into the cubicles. Phones rang constantly, answered in a cacophony of voices by dozens of lawyers and investigators and researchers and staff assistants and research assistants and interns.

On my way over to Capitol Hill, I had stopped off to see a friend at the Washington Post. Its newsroom was a seething pit of activity. Woodward and Bernstein were there, of course, surrounded by dozens of other reporters working the phones, rifling through files, rushing off to interview sources. Elsewhere on Capitol Hill the House Judiciary Committee was staffing up with lawyers and investigators and researchers, getting ready for impeachment hearings. Only a few blocks away were the offices of Watergate Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski, who had been appointed by Congress after Nixon had fired the first special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, in the infamous “Saturday Night Massacre.”

Jaworski’s offices were packed with prosecutors and staff assistants and researchers and experts in constitutional law, and they were interviewing witnesses and preparing subpoenas and scheduling testimony before the grand jury and filing indictments and announcing that this White House aide, or that campaign official, had pleaded guilty to one crime or another and was cooperating with the investigation. Already, Nixon campaign aide Herbert Porter had pleaded guilty to perjury, and Nixon’s personal lawyer, Herbert Kalmbach, had pleaded guilty to two charges of illegal campaign activities. The indictments of seven more of Nixon’s men were on the way: John Mitchell, H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, Charles Colson, Gordon C. Strachan, Robert Mardian and Kenneth Parkinson. Now the special prosecutor was getting ready to subpoena the White House tapes. The end game had begun.

That was the day I knew that Nixon was finished. Not because of the suitcase filled with cash from Bebe Rebozo’s bank headed for a casino in the Bahamas. Not because of the firings, resignations and indictments of figures from the Nixon reelection committee and White House. Not because it was inevitable that Nixon would have to give up the tapes, and the tapes would probably hang him.

As I stood there at the rear of the theater on Capitol Hill watching the staff of the Senate Watergate Committee at work, I realized that I was witnessing Washington’s immune system, and it had detected an infection. The offices of the Senate Watergate Committee, and the special prosecutor, and the Judiciary Committee, and the Washington Post, and the New York Times and the AP and UPI and the networks — all of them were flooding the bloodstream of the nation’s capital with antibodies focused on one thing: ridding the place of Richard Nixon.

Nixon had been in office for more than four years when on June 17, 1972, the so-called Plumbers working for the Nixon reelection committee, at the direction of the White House, were arrested at the Watergate office building in the process of bugging the Democratic National Committee Headquarters. Donald Trump was in office a grand total of four days when his national security adviser, Michael Flynn, committed a crime when he lied to the FBI about his contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the Trump campaign and transition.

See a pattern here? Resignations. Firings. Indictments. Hearings. Special prosecutor. Leaks. Media hordes. And all over Washington, D.C., offices filled with eager beaver investigators burrowing into every corner of the Trump campaign, the Trump transition, the Trump White House and Trump’s business empire.

Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller has worked his way through the White House staff and the Trump campaign, taking testimony from one witness after another, just like the Watergate special prosecutor worked his way through the Nixon White House and campaign. There is only one witness left to interview: Donald J. Trump.

There is one difference between the two cases. Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski never questioned Richard Nixon about his role in the Watergate burglary and cover-up. He didn’t have to. On July 24, 1974, the Supreme Court decided in United States v. Nixon that the president had to release the White House tapes. Fifteen days later, the inevitable happened. Facing impeachment and the probability of being prosecuted after leaving office, Nixon made a deal for a pardon and resigned.

Now Washington’s immune system is about to expel yet another infection from the body politic. The end game is here. Even Trump knows it.

https://www.salon.com/2018/01/27/defeat-is-inevitable-everybody-knows-it-even-trump/

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.