Wednesday, August 1, 2007

White pawn better watch his ass

Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal article, Don Putin, by Garry Kasparov, says that if you really want to understand Vladimir Putin's Russia, you should immerse yourself in The Godfather series by Mario Puzo.

First, the background: Kasparov is a former world chess champion, a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal, and chairman of the United Civil Front of Russia, a pro-democracy opposition organization.

That aside, however, Kasparov draws a very realistic analogy between Putin's government and the mafia:
the strict hierarchy, the extortion, the intimidation, the code of secrecy and, above all, the mandate to keep the revenue flowing.
Those who have run afoul of Putin have found themselves in Siberian prisons or, more commonly, dead.

To date, Kasparov has only been beaten on the head with a chess board. Given the fates of those who have gone before him, I wouldn't be surprised to hear that Kasparov might awake on morning to find the knight to a chess set lodged in some orifice -- or worse.

1 comment:

MountainLaurel said...

If you'd like a film refresher, try tuning in to Bravo or AMC. For some reason, they have both been running weekend-long The Godfather epics back to back, both theater releases and director's cuts. Sicne I have no idea why this trend started in the first place (at first I thought Mario Puzo might have died), keep trying to catch them if you're still interested.

sorry for the hiatus; I've been on vacation immersing myself in history.