Keene, FIDE, political shit & other sexy nonsense
Follow the Money
We all instinctively play the whore role when it is convenient to do so. It is our nature as social animals. Being drunk playfully mutes any lingering inhibitions. And the ‘Dirty’-part? Well, breaking tabus can be kinky fun…
A whore’s raison d’être is always money. We don’t care if the money is dirty like us, only that we get paid when the deed is done.
A whore knows that it is wise not to ask too many questions…experience has taught us that partial atonement can often be found in the grey areas between reality, selective ambiguity and unscrupulous myopia.
Ray Keene’s Words have lost their Magic?
It was earth shattering news when Chess & Bridge withdrew from sale Ray Keene’s latest book, the one on the recently completed Carlsen vs Caruana World Championship match in London, and apologized for anyone who had already bought it, arguing that their customers deserved better.
For years now, while Raymond Keene’s authorship has been the target of much ridicule amid accusations of shameless plagiarism, this is the first time that anyone has decided to do something about it.
No doubt this story will likely snowball out of Keene’s control, and many of his ‘140 books on chess’ will come under renewed scrutiny. Perhaps some will be pulled from the shelves of book stores and public libraries.
This would indeed be a sad day for British Chess if this were ever came to pass. When a young man, Keene wrote some of the most brilliant chess works ever published in the English language, and in my own library I am proud to include a half dozen of Keene’s early works.
But starting in the mid 1980’s I began to hear rumours that not only Keene but several other well known English authors were having their books 100% ghost written or worse. Since then I have seriously cut down on buying from any British publishing house.
I suppose that the lure of brokering one’s good name for easy money has been a very strong temptation. We will just have to wait and see of what comes of all of this…
Blood Money?
I don’t want to bore my readers any more than I have to by returning to the theme of FIDE’s controversial involvement in 2017 with Saudi Arabia when it negotiated a 3-year contract with the Kingdom for the World Blitz and Rapid Championships.
This contract was clearly in contradiction of FIDE’s stated anti-discrimination regulations and statutes, but the then acting FIDE president, Makropoulos could not resist the million dollar-plus benefits to FIDE.
Of course, very few in the chess world minded that Israel as well as Iran (and initially Qatar) would be excluded from these championships, and complaints were mute.
But in 2018 FIDE actually did something about this, though it did not nearly go far enough. Dvorkovich deserves some praise for deftly handling the politics of the given circumstances, ensuring that FIDE would not lose its shirt in the process.
But he also deserves some criticism for ignoring FIDE’s own anti-discrimination regulations and statues. I think that there was a complete lack of transparency on how FIDE moved the championship to Russia, as I wrote HERE on this blog.
I also think that making public the above letter to King Salman is in bad taste and is an insult to anyone who understands why the IOC would never allow Saudi Arabia to organize a world class sporting event.
On doing one’s duty
Too clever for his Teachers
Insight into cool stuff
Wise words, but there are always exceptions. Donald Trump holds the same beliefs that he had some 40 years ago, and they have not evolved. Rather than ‘defining’ himself to the world leaders, he seeks to impose his old ideas as the new world order.
Trump the racist.
Lessons from the Paris Spring of 1968
When I was a young boy in school back in Montreal in the 1960’s, every year a representative of the Police Department would come to my school on a goodwill mission. The police are our friends, was the message.
But in France in 1968 Sartre saw that this was not really the truth. Today every police force is weaponized. Scary stuff.
Washrooms in France
Meanwhile, back at the condo…
Has this every happened to you? You pass one of your neighbours in the hallway and completely ignore one another. Not even a ‘Good day!’. This is one of the reasons why I have come to dislike big cities…
To be continued later today…