I still hold with deleting them. As for Bibs' most recent comment above, many non-chess forums I have belonged to in the past simply forbid politics, religion, etc. in *ALL* areas, not just in chit-chat. A banner over the board index and/or homepage could state this plainly. Further, such a phrase could be attached to all membership applications requiring agreement to same in order to post. A de facto agreement already exists with regard to such things as offensive language. By their nature, Trolls will always seek admittance since they cannot operate without it. Therefore, some manner of vigilance and enforcement is necessary. I am content to live with the decisions of the Mods. It is their job after all.

an ordinary chessplayer wrote on 04/14/22 at 19:27:57:

Ok, that's reasonable, I will leave them alone for now, but if anyone wishes to see any of them deleted just send me a PM.

Quote:

Please tell all this to someone else. As a political activist for many years, starting with participation in the organising committee of the 2013/2014 Euromaidan in Odessa, I know many Ukrainian politicians personally. Ex.prime minister Goncharuk, Saakashvili, Mustafa Nayem (who essentially started the all-Ukrainian Euromaidan in Kiev), Grytsenko, even Nadya Savchenko, and many many others.

I was ready to write something like "don't feed the troll", but maybe it is not necessary anymore.

Hi.

No objection from me. Just if possible making sure it's not a hack would be prudent given the sheer amount of talking points from Putin's propaganda machine spewed out.

In general I think there should always in a serious forum be some kind of ratio between how much a user is claiming about things (especially serious things) and how much he or she sort of tries to back up whatever is stated. With the ideal being 1:1 or at least near and attempts, even flawed ones, potentially giving some kind of part credit. With very few attempts to back up stuff said, it does become extraordinarily hard for others in any discussion to sort of relate to the person making claim after claim. Threads thus basically get derailed. That's not good.

Have a nice day.

I have decided to delete the SteveUK account as it is clear he is not here to discuss chess openings. I would also like to delete his posts, does anyone have any objections?

Yes of course, we here know nothing about Ukraine

I've been studying Governments for 13 years - I learned a lot of things about the UK government that hardly anybody in the UK know

I also know a lot of things about the USA government that hardly anybody in the USA know

Fact is, the mainstream news simply parrot what the governments and NGOs want them to report - things that they don't want you to know get censored and deleted

Truth comes out eventually if you look in the right places for it

Putin is ex KGB - which says a lot about him, but he is also an excellent chess player - he does nothing without careful consideration

Re.
In 2014 putin annexed Crimea

Yes, he did - after the population of Crimea voted to re-join Russia in a referendum

Re.
in 2022 putin eventually sent all his army to kill us Ukrainians only because we want to live in democracy and not under fascist regimes like Russia and Belarus have.

If he had sent all his army, it would all have been over in less than a week - and Ukrain has plenty of facists - they openly march about with flags

Re.
I'm really not sure whether the freedom of speech for the pro-putin trolls is justified.

What? Only biased pro Ukrainian trolls get to write?


Conveniently, nobody is talking about the thousands of men, women, and children killed over an 8 year period by Ukrainian forces - because they chose to break away from Ukraine

There is a lot of bad stuff regarding Ukraine that is not being reported by the mainstream media - I doubt even the population of Ukraine have any idea of what has been going on there

@Mikhail_Golubev
The vast majority of us support you and your country and only wish our governments would do more to stop the suffering.

Bibs wrote on 04/06/22 at 21:56:47:


I hear you, but I did not make the original post - I was rebutting the main claim made in that post - that Ukraine was innocent, when in fact they provoked Russia, who for years warned what would happen

SteveUK wrote:
“Mainstream media is totally controlled, and the Internet is heavily censored now - post anything that is not the official narrative and its offline in about an hour“

Citation for this ‘one hour’ claim required. Or I call it for the obvious nonsense and conspiracy tosh that it is.

SteveUK - you are encouraged to post about chess theory here. Don’t just come here to post your conspiracy nonsense. That’s not welcome. It’s a chess theory site. There are plenty of other places elsewhere for conspiracy piffle. Breitbart, Reddit, FB...

Let’s keep standards up hereabouts shall we?

Stigma wrote on 04/06/22 at 13:29:02:


What? You don't think that every Western government controls the media in their country?

Mainstream media is totally controlled, and the Internet is heavily censored now - post anything that is not the official narrative and its offline in about an hour

an ordinary chessplayer wrote on 04/06/22 at 13:18:06:


I've been using Windows computers since Windows 95 - laptops and desktops - I was stunned that a $100 Android tablet can run Leela when Intel i5 on Windows 10 can't - I now think the age of Windows is over, and I don't care to get involved with Linux

Here in Europe we have 20 percent sales tax - so I had no inclination to upgrade to a high priced i7 or i9 desktop - my i5s are only 2 years old

Re. Ukraine - Putin can turn off the gas to Europe and kill European industry - he can also ban exports of computer chip making materials that can only be sourced from Russia - yet the European idiot politicians keep poking the bear - anybody would think there's a NWO agenda at play

@SteveUK - Thanks for that post. It's always helpful to know exactly with whom we are chatting. ... I was scratching my head over your statement RE the $100 Android tablet vis-a-vis the desktop computer. But you just explained it very well.

Hi.

Just to make this clear. What the three big powers (Russia, US, UK) confirmed in the Budapest accords was that they wouldn't attack or threaten Ukraine themselves. Not that they would engage in collective defense of Ukraine.

The current Russian leadership threw those accords out the window. I would personally hope smaller nations see the complete disregard for of the Budapest accords as a sign not to enter into important state to state treaties with Russia specifically at present. Or maybe if needs to happen, then at least with good layers of guarantees. In the wider international community you kinda want specifically Russia to be in a lot of international treaties though. Laws of warfare treaties, nuclear arms control, space exploration and more. That's all gonna be messy if Russia totally withdraws or is completely cut out.

The one mechanism there if Ukraine got threatened was to have some debate in the UN Security council; where a permanent member like Russia can veto any substantive action. They did in 2014 and will obviously do if anything comes up again. It's not the first time veto powers there prove to be very useful. Not only for Russia to be fair though.

When it comes to Kosovo. Those bombing operations specifically were never up (to be vetoed) before the operation asfaik. Afterwards Russia wanted it stopped and got voted down before vetoes being needed. To some extent NATO did act offensively in Kosovo. Having some kind of offensive capability and using it in some situation is far removed from being anything nearing a potent (or present even) threat to a militarily powerful country like Russia though.

Have a nice day.

Yes! (at least I remember the US and Russia did). Ukraine had 10 nukes, loaded on missiles and in the silos, IIRC. Funny how neither side is bringing that up now.

What concerns me most about that is that it sends a clear message to all 3rd world countries to NEVER trust the major powers. This in turn also guarantees that if any other country ever manages to obtain nukes they should NEVER give them up since promises of security are useless. So, the very action designed to guard against nuclear proliferation will now assure the absolute opposite should any other nation ever have the same chance.

In the news: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/03/airline-software-giant-sabre-ends-service-with-r...

This won't stop Russian tanks but will cripple Aeroflot.

Ken Neat wrote on 03/02/22 at 16:22:02:

On the sole topic of FIDE taking sanctions against Russia and Belarus, you can check the board (especially president's pedigree) and sponsors (remember Nigel Short praising that phosphate firm?) to see this isn't going to happen soon. Or rather, the other way round.

OK, well if my always-helpful friend AOC is jumping in then so will I! Though my words are not what most media is talking about and may disturb some.

What the West is doing is forgetting history. In the late 90's NATO, without any UN mandate, unilaterally decided that they had the right to go in and bomb over the problem of Kosovo. NATO painted (truthfully or not) Slobodan Milosovic  as a War Criminal committing acts of "genocide" (remember that term!). And this meant Nato could declare, without UN or Russian OK that they could effectively wage war and had to answer to no one but themselves for it. IIRC, a Russian official or ambassador was bluntly told they could attend the conference deciding this but they had literally no say. This was a HUGE humiliation to Russia (staunch ally of the Serbs) at a time when they had no choice but to choke it down.

But Putin did NOT forget. And now, after years of testing the West he is going to do exactly to the West as (he feels) the West did to him. Notice how he has plainly claimed reports of genocide against Russian heritage peoples in Luhansk.etc. Notice how he has declared Ukraine to be a "non-state" and effectively possessing no sovereign legitimacy. Notice how, reading all this, you may be thinking, "Oh! I had forgotten all that Serbian stuff." Putin, however, has not forgotten.

What we're seeing is an attempt by Russia (which Trump seems to agree with) to transform geo-politics from one of "values" to a "transactional" basis instead. Consider the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. It was a Horror of the worst kind since we evaluate it by things like human rights. But considered as a transactional operation designed to use superior technology and weaponry to enrich some and enhance imperialistic power it was a smashing (if nightmarish) success. Hence, why Trump said of Putin's bold moves, "This is genius."

Now we are hearing reports of Russian conscripts beginning to surrender and the Ukrainians have not just run away. Already, Putin and his cronies are beginning to slip in threats of nuclear war. If things worsen I wouldn't put it past Putin to set off an above-ground small-yield nuke, say in far-northern Siberia to make his threat more real. He does not believe the West is willing to die for this and Georgia, Crimea, Syria, and East Uk. are pretty good evidence of that.  But perhaps there is hope in the fighting spirit of Ukraine since, even if they loose, the insurgency they can unleash on their Occupiers will (I hope) make the price too high - even for Putin. What is chess to all this? In a world of values, Spassky/Fischer was a fight of Ours vs. Theirs (as encouraged by Nixon and Kissinger). But today? ErictheRed is merely telling the truth in that that is the calculus of Real-Politik.

@cathexis - Roll with it.

ErictheRed wrote on 03/02/22 at 18:55:47:

Your short statement packs a lot of meaning, some of which I agree with and some of which I don't.

RE: "I don't think that this is really the place for this kind of discussion"

I guess I agree since I don't want to talk about Russia and Ukraine here, but I can also appreciate that others might want to.

RE: "no-one of importance is going to care in the least if Russian chess players are allowed to compete or not"

I don't want other people to tell me what to care about, and that makes me reluctant to say what other people should or should not care about. So I'm a little uncomfortable with this phrasing. By logical implication, if someone cares about whether Russian chess players are allowed to compete or not, then that someone is unimportant. I guess we can infer at a minimum the following are unimportant: Russian chess players, Ukrainian chess players, Russian organizers, Ukrainian organizers, etc., etc. Now maybe in the context of "military action" (to use a current euphemism) they actually are unimportant, but that's not something I want to come out and say.

RE: "Chess is inconsequential and barring players from competing won't change what's happening in the world"

Chess is not of zero consequence. Let's say it is of infinitesimal consequence, which is almost but not quite the same thing. Again, barring players from competing is not of zero effectiveness for creating change. Let's say it is of infinitesimal effectiveness. I say it would be hasty to conclude that we should abandon things of infinitesimal consequence, or that we should not do things of infinitesimal effectiveness. There are 8 billion individuals on the planet, and 8 billion times an infinitesimal quantity is of indeterminate size. Finally, if our only choices are between (A) things of infinitesimal value or effectiveness, and (B) nothing at all, then I might choose (A) even if it's likely nothing will come of it, because it's certain nothing will come from choosing (B).

I don't think that this is really the place for this kind of discussion, but no-one of importance is going to care in the least if Russian chess players are allowed to compete or not.  Chess is inconsequential and barring players from competing won't change what's happening in the world, though some will feel that it's the symbolically right thing to do.