Norway Chess cancels Alexander Grischuk
marginalrevolution.com
marginalrevolution.com
Whenever the common narrative finds a way to blame something or someone, the collective dehumanizes the target in a way that's quite terrifying, actually. People love to parrot about how "dictators are bad", "hitler was bad", etc, but when they find themselves in trivial situations where they have to show what they're made of not much more comes out of it.
Without saying much about it, let me remind you that there is a Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which, among other things, it's pretty clear that no one should be discriminated because of their origin or nationality. Every single "developed" country shares a set of laws that guarantee similar rights to their citizens (and visitors!).
Whether you think that people who are in these situations are having their rights dishonored or not it's up to you, I just want to remind people that some blades cut both ways so one has to be careful about which one is being honed today.
Disclaimer: I'm not Russian, never been to Russia, no friends in Russia either. I am a human being and have empathy for all other fellow human beings.
One can either 1) sanction Russia (which impacts all Russians) 2) partially sanction (which is unavoidably subjective and abusable) or 3) not sanction Russia. This is a case of 1, based on the source link, "Norway announce that no Russian players will be able to play in the 2022 edition of the event"
It is not fair to talk about "civic and ethical values" outside of this extremely relevant moral context.
If I'm not Russian but my parents are, should I be sanctioned as well? Again, where do you draw the line?
If you happened to be at Russia, would you be okay if everyone denied their services to you?
If your country got involved into a conflict, and you don't even live there anymore, and people started treating you like a pariah, would you feel be fine with that?
Some guys thought about all these things, and wrote:
"Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the POLITICAL, JURISDICTIONAL OR INTERNATIONAL STATUS OF THE COUNTRY OR TERRITORY TO WHICH A PERSON BELONGS, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty."
I don't think that's open to interpretation but YMMV. Check it out by yourself at, https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...
I think it's made by some guys at the UN or something, they seem to know a thing or two about human rights.
Which article in the UN link that you sent would categorize participation in a chess tournament as a human right?
Where is your concern about Ukrainian human rights? If you are so passionate about Grischuk's human rights to participate in this competition, then you must be incensed the magnitude of the violation of individual rights being violated in Ukraine. Do you condemn the Russian invasion?
This isn't someone who was caught up in broader sanctions, like the innocent Russians whose life savings are being demolished. That's terrible, but in the broader context it is understandable and necessary. This is someone being specifically targeted for his nationality despite the fact - and this is the key differentiator - that doing so in no way does any damage to Russia.
You want to harm Russia? Treat anti-war Russians well. Show that the world isn't blindly taking action out of anger, but rather doing so in a targeted way to harm Putin and the Russian government. Russians who are speaking out against the war are good for Ukraine and the rest of the world, and they're bad for Putin. It makes no sense to punish them.
There's certainly a gray area for Russians who don't comment - they could be pro-war, or they could be reasonably afraid for their safety - but for Russians who say "In my view what we are doing is very wrong from both a moral view and practical view," punishment is counterproductive.
Also, it's not reasonable to compare the culpability of an American, who lives in a democracy and can choose to spend their time and effort protesting the country's leadership and trying to oust it in the next election, to someone living in a dictatorship who cannot reasonably do those things.
Japanese American imprisonment without due process or access to legal counsel during WW2 was condemnable. You advocate the opposite. I mean, nothing was written against then, was it?
Advocating for an individual's human rights and disassociation from their government's actions doesn't mean unequivocal support for the latter.
In fact it is a special and famous case of sophistry to leverage a tenuous connection between two things and declare they are comparable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence. To quote, "This fallacy is committed when one shared trait between two subjects is assumed to show equivalence, especially in order of magnitude, when equivalence is not necessarily the logical result"
You are correct - in both cases, Japanese Internment camps during WW2 and Norway Chess's banning of Russian competitors in a chess tournament are examples of cases where innocent individuals were harmed by collective punishment. I completely agree with you on that.
However, only a very silly person would think both actions are comparable. It would be extremely offensive to suggest they are. While they exist on a continuum, they are very, very far apart and any reasonable person can see that 1) the forced imprisonment of 100,000+ people for multiple years while being charged with no crime and 2) the temporary exclusion of several dozen entrants from an international chess tournament are not in the same moral universe.
The moral calculus of applying pressure to Russia to withdraw from a war of aggression that is killing thousands still isn't easy, and decent people can disagree civilly about it.
It is like Israel bulldozing random Palestine homes because someone else fired a rocket. It is like people beating up random Chinese on the streets of San Francisco because of some decision Xi Jinping made
No, this is racism and intolerance under a thin guise of outrage. We are talking about targeting individuals who bear zero responsibility for what people claim they are outraged about. The sole reason these individuals are targeted is because of their nationality. This is cancel culture at its worse - we don't even care about what people think or say anymore, and hurt them for something they can't change anything about.
What next? Should we make the Russians immigrants in our countries live in fear of reprisals? Should our children bully theirs in schools? How far can we take it before the outrage excuse wears out?
Outrage over the Russian invasion of Ukraine is warranted. I feel the same. It is good to see an international reaction to it, and I sincerely hope that this will pressure Putin to stop. The virtue signalling and posturing we have seen this week on social medias is not justice, however. It's a disgusting act of violence by people who feel they can get away with it. Is that violence comparable to what the Ukrainians live through at the moment? Of course not! But that doesn't make it excusable.
Isn't the simple logic that the people who should bear the cost of war crimes are those who commit these war crimes?
> It's an awful situation for everyone involved and the best situation would be for an immediate cessation of hostilities and military withdrawal so the ban can be lifted.
Not only that, but the immediate cessation of hostilities and military withdrawal would be better for everyone even if there were no ban. Aside from a few deranged hawks in the Russian government I can't see how this conflict is good for anyone, Russian or not.
> this is simply chess and nobody is dying.
And the ban does nothing that would influence Putin's decisions. The economic sanctions might change his attitude (only time will tell). A ban of Russian chess players won't. Sanctions are a tool to force Putin to the negotiation table. Pointless actions like this are only harming people with no influence or responsibility on the conflict.
> On the other hand, thousands of civilians are dead, families are divided, and there is real hardship.
This war is dreadful, and I would like (without much hope) that Putin and those responsible for it respond for their crime. I just don't see how imposing hardships (however less strong they may be) on people unrelated to the conflict has any bearing on this.
I can understand sanctions, they specifically target the country. I can understand sanctions against individuals who are supporting Putin like the oligarchs. I can understand cutting financial, business ties as they specifically target the country.
It starts to get difficult based on the criteria of nationality, there are a variety of reasons to ban people from Israel, Iran, Saudi, United States, and a bucket full of others. Many countries are involved in human rights abuses, military occupation, questionable politics etc. Should all their citizens suffer because of what their country's are involved in.
I applaud your stance, I don't discount it as being objective. But Alexander Grischuk, he is not Russia and we should think about the motives and reasons why such bans should be in place and just because their "homeland" is doing something doesn't mean they are. Imagine carte blanche banning people like Yeonmi Park from events because she is from North Korea.
Here's a bit of irony, Russian athletes are banned from competing in the Winter Paralympics which is based in a country know for it questionable human rights abuses and political stances including that against Taiwan and Hong Kong. It is a very difficult situation with Ukraine and I feel this fits into a situation where there are no correct answers.
There are reasons to ban then, but is it the right thing to do.
Clearly, Tyler Cowen has his reasons for framing this issue in an inflammatory way. I suspect he didn't seek out any 44 open letter signatories for their feelings.
I simply see no way of keeping out Karjakin in an equitable way. I am tired of repeating myself about how I hate this situation, but the victims are not Russian grandmasters, they are Ukrainian children. Some people are trying very hard to move the focus off of this (I don't believe you are, and I appreciate your conclusion.. I agree there are no right answers).
Nobody in this thread has denied that Ukrainian children are victims, and nobody has disagreed that there should be a reaction.
What people are questioning is who should be targeted by this reaction, and with what actions. Your stance, as I read it, is everyone who is Russian, because there is no other way. Even with that, people didn't argue against, at least when it comes to economic sanctions. But bans that do not affect the war criminals, but only common people (aka, civilians)? That does feel petty and unnecessary. And to be clear, unlike others in the thread I don't suggest selecting people based on their opinion -- it feels too antithetic to our democratic ideals (so that it is clear, I personally despise these opinions).
Forgive me for changing the focus a bit, but since you bring up the plight of children, it is likely that Russian children will also suffer from the consequences of economic sanctions. Some will grow up in poverty because of this mess, some will die indirectly, from the effects of poverty. I don't really have a solution to that (right now the efforts should go to stop the war in Ukraine), and that doesn't mean that sanctions can be avoided, but I do think that they are also victims.
Sorry but this is not accurate. This would be more accurate: a man is in the process of murdering hostages, so we hurt his children to make him stop.
The sanctions are not "justice", they are pressure tools to make Russia stop the invasion. There cannot be any justice until the crime (the war) is stopped.
> everyone comes out worse than before. But who is at fault and what is the equitable outcome?
There is no equitable outcome, and it is not a betrayal of the victim to feel empathy for the murderer's children.
When he plays professional chess, Grischuk _is_ representing Russia, he's not just an individual. A win for him is a win for Russia, and the chess commentators constantly say things like "I'm excited for the Hungary vs Russia final" and "looks like Russia will come out on top in this game".
Imagine if the victims of our wars (or their partners) were more influential and were able to effectively spread global messages of arbitrary hate and intolerance against people simply for being American. And not mob mentality from extremists and radicals already predispositioned to hate, but orchestrated top-down hatred and intolerance from the "liberal" world order.
This is not going to spark some amazing revolution of frustrated chess players, disabled athletes, and cat show enthusiasts. The only thing this sort of stuff is doing is driving more hatred and division, and helping us inch that much closer to WW3. Putin invading Ukraine was a terrible decision; many Russians of all walks of lives oppose it. Yet they're at least as helpless to ever change any of it than we are to end our never-ending wars in the Mideast since we, at least in theory, could stop voting for warmongers.
Adam Smith wrote - "In great empires the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them, scarce any inconvenience from the war; but enjoy, at their ease, the amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies. To them this amusement compensates the small difference between the taxes which they pay on account of the war, and those which they had been accustomed to pay in time of peace. They are commonly dissatisfied with the return of peace, which puts an end to their amusement, and to a thousand visionary hopes of conquest and national glory from a longer continuance of the war."
In other words, war is kind of fun and exciting for a populace that doesn't feel harm from it. I remember watching stories of the invasion of Iraq, and it seemed a lot like that to me. The media and the country generally enjoying the exploits of our armies.
Well, we can balance that enjoyment by a dissatisfaction of denying other pleasures to the population. No more chess, international sports, travel, etc. The complaint here should not be that this is being done to Russia, it should be. You're justified to complain that America was not made a pariah, but that's a different kind of complaint.
So after 9/11, should we have sanctioned all Muslims? When a black man commits a crime, should we round up and sanction all blacks? We are all entirely responsible for what we do as individuals and not responsible at all for what other people do.
It's very sad and unfair that individual Russians will suffer for their leaders misdeeds. But, I think the average Russian should prefer sanctions to alternative means of solving Russian aggression.
When you look at history the one thing you will find is that things rarely work out how you want them to, and more often than not the resultant end is often nothing like you desired. We successfully worked to overthrow the democratic, secular, and relatively benign and democratic government of Iran in 1953 and replaced them with an exceptionally unpopular puppet monarchy. Then in 1979 the Iranians had a genuine revolution of their own against our puppet monarch and installed their own government. This is where the current radical Islamic government came from that, for some reason, really doesn't like the West. Today we'd give anything to have the Iran of 1953, but that's a bridge long since turned to ash.
And the other tales are endless as well. The point of this is that Machiavellianism relies on a claim that the ends justify the means. But even if one believes that, you can't really make that argument in good faith when you cannot realistically claim to have any idea of what the ends will be. All that one can be certain of is that we will live through the means. So we are turning into tyrants for what may very well be an even worse future for Russia and us alike.
I would say no. That's simply an example of doing something unpleasant in pursuit of a larger goal. Typically, when people use the term Machiavellianism they are referring to doing immoral and objectionable things in pursuit of personal goals. That's not really the case here at all.
Free people have no moral obligation to transact with one another. There is no moral obligation to permit people to your chess tournament and no moral violation in denying them. When we decide that the crimes of the Russian government, acting, at least nominally, on behalf of the Russian people reach a critical point we can decide to discontinue business and relationships with the Russian people.
Perhaps you think, as others in this thread have suggested, that this is something like a civil rights action. Indeed, in the US we have laws prohibiting businesses from denying service to people purely on skin color. In my view this is more of an ethical choice than a moral one, but even if you think it's a moral necessity not to deny service to someone based on their immutable characteristics, that is irrelevant. Russians are being denied service not because the world has suddenly become slavophobic, but as a condemnation of their country's crimes. Put another way, it would be wrong for a restaurant to turn away a customer because they are black, but completely understandable for a restaurant to turn away a customer because that customer is OJ Simpson.
I assume you would say that individuals are unlike countries, and I think that's true. Some individual Russians oppose their government's attack on Ukraine. Alas, there is no way to scope sanctions such that they hurt only people with the wrong opinions. There is a simple way to scope sanctions such that they hurt Russians though - i.e. make the sanctions apply to Russia. (And here I use a colloquial sense of the word "sanction" that I mean to extend even to non-governmental groups making decisions to refuse service to or interaction with Russians).
Finally, I agree with what I think you mean - which is that it's very possible for things to work out in ways other than what are expected. I expect that the majority of "things" work out roughly as expected throughout history but it is unremarkable when they do. If most of our choices were going awry civilization would probably unstable.
That said, I agree with the spirit - it's hard to predict the consequences of our actions. But, so what? It's hard to predict the consequences of sanctions and hard to predict the consequences of no sanctions. My own reasoning is: a war is too much, nothing is too little, and sanctions seem about right. Sanctions must hurt or they are meaningless. I would not want to see a headline like "Russian school hit by stray bomb, hundreds dead." A headline like "Russian chess player kicked out of tournament" seems about right for unintended consequences.
We seem to have no concept right now that there is a level of suffering and alienation we can impose on the average Russian that will cause a large chunk to become highly radicalized going forward. Who are those people going to want as a leader then? It seems like so many right now are living in a fantasy world that the Russian people will have some kind of French Revolution because of sanctions, get rid of Putin and by magic some Western friendly Russian government will emerge.
It is like that same thinking that went into hitting Germans with crippling reparations for WW1. In retrospect, maybe that wasn't the best idea..
Even if they were under a neutral flag everyone would think of the person as Russian.
There's no way around it, we all already know where they are from, regardless of what they think of the war.
Yeah because they're from Russia. I just don't see how "people will think" is enough of a reason to ban them from playing an event.
(1) Some deranged person running Russia decided to invade Ukraine, kill innocent people and ruin millions of lives.
(2) A chess organization in Norway bans a player because they were born in the same country as the deranged person from above.
I don't get how (2) is an appropriate response to (1) or how it helps anyone. It's not a deterrent, it's not any kind of response - nobody in the Russian government will feel the tiniest bit of pressure because of it, it's such a token act that it's laughable to think about in the context of what's happening in Ukraine. At the same time it's a big deal to the handful of players it affects.
All this does is create publicity and make the careers of a few people significantly worse just because they happened to be born in the wrong country.
Citation needed. If I see someone playing chess, or any game for that matter, then I assume they represent the flag that they're playing under is what the represent. If I see someone playing under a non-Russian flag, it doesn't matter how Russian their name sounds - I don't consider them to be representing Russia in any capacity - they could have been born in India, a French citizen, ethnically Ethiopian, and just given that name by their parents, for all I know.
(and, if I look into them further, and discover that they're a Russian citizen and they're intentionally not playing under a Russian flag, there's no way I'll think that they're representing Russia)
Please find me examples of people who do not believe this, because the idea that "Everyone still thinks of them as representing Russia though" is both deeply weird and completely illogical to me, and I've never met someone who agrees with it.
In the Olympics -- yes then I understand, then it's one player per country. So disallow, then. But there's so many other chess competitions.
Comparing with ice hockey doesn't make sense to me.
not really, in chess at least. Playing under the FIDE flag is pretty common when geopolitical tensions are involved, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIDE_flag_player
Israeli players playing under the FIDE flag at UAE tournaments has happened as well. There's plenty of precedent for it.
Alireza Firouzja (world #2) for instance originally played under the Iranian flag, played under no flag for a year and a half, and now plays under the French flag.
Though I’m curious - how much time in your opinion has to pass before Russians are allowed to participate again? If actions have to be taken, which ones?
If actions can be taken to allow them to participate then in a sense is that saying the actions are sufficient to compensate for the senseless killing of Ukrainians? If no time or actions can be taken then are we ok with indefinitely ostracizing a group of people? What of their children?
Earth has already been down that road, it’s not really great. Best to just punish those who directly contributed to the things with disagree with.
I think the idea in this case is that since many Ukranians can't play, Russians shouldn't be able to either. So I would think the sanctions would end when Ukraine isn't fighting anymore, and can participate again. That's at least the IOC's stance. [0]
[0] https://olympics.com/ioc/news/ioc-eb-recommends-no-participa...
Why is the standard an imaginary Ukrainian grandmaster currently trapped or engaged in fighting?
Perhaps they should cancel it for everyone because this imaginary person can't make it. After all it is also unfair that people can travel from Germany and the US while the imaginary Ukrainian can't.
Having said that, I could see it resulting in a small increase of harassment of Russians in other countries.
Mostly not, but there’s the Chess Olympiad (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_Olympiad) and the World Team Championship (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Team_Chess_Championship)
Most events, and the general culture, is in a grey area. Outside of the Olympiad which features literal national teams, flags still feature prominently. There's of course wild variance in how nationalistic players feel; some like Karjakin are deeply nationalistic while the average probably feels loosely tied. Some even change associations after conflicts with their country of origin, see young prodigy Firouzja moving from Iran to France recently. I can't think of a comparable international sport to compare it to since I mostly know about American sports. Somebody else that follows chess and i.e. football may be able to make that comparison - AFAIK most players play for national teams during nationalized events but don't wear their country's flag prominently when they play for private clubs.
Each country has its own federation and playing for one's federation is so deeply ingrained in the culture that the solution "well, just play as yourself, not a national" that seems obvious outsiders is something that organizers and players are hesitant to reach for. I think *a* reason for this is that dipping out of a federation prevents you from playing in that country's championship or representing them in the Olympiad, each of which are a big deal to the top players. There are also almost surely other complications in FIDE rules that I'm not aware of. Suffice it to say that playing under the FIDE or ROC flags is not the sort of thing you'd see until recently.
How is that relevant? I think no matter what the answer, no one is going to draw the line sooner than "during the actual invasion".
If it's going to just be countries still in ongoing war or occupation, then I suppose China, India, Turkey, France, Israel, and the US will be next on the list to be uninvited from the tournament. I'm sure we could think of more too.
People playing under the Iranian flag aren't allowed to play people under the Israeli flag. Because they represent Iran, and the player under the Israeli flag represents Israel.
Not only is this not a new issue, it's an issue where lines are already drawn. This is just a tournament choosing sides where the previous instance that I'm aware of was an entire chess federation...
Not until the government has changed or reparations have been paid.
It's not a team sport. One would think chess players represent themselves.
Invitations are based on personal performance, not allocated based on national identity like the Olympics.
Should us companies fire workers with Russian citizenship or ties?
How much more critical have you been of your own country invading other nations?
The purpose of the cultural sanctions is not to punish the individual sportsmen or artist or change their opinions, the purpose is to undermine the popular support for the war and the Putin-regime.
The Putin regime have used sports as a point of national pride in order to strengthen popular support. So it stands to reason that excluding Russia from sports would weaken the regime in some degree.
Apparently many Russians are not even aware they are involved in a war due to the massive propaganda and censorship. Maybe Russia getting excluded from all sports event might at least get them to ask some questions about what is going on?
As a Russian immigrant in US, i support kicking out from US or any other country any Russian who wouldn't condemn in straight clear words Putin's fascist regime and the genocide it conducts in Ukraine. Anything less is just a support of what is going on.
For any public figure it is doubly so. Grischuk didn't even use the word "war" in order to not have issues with Russian government. Well, it is a war and one can't be on good terms with all the sides simultaneously, and there is no neutrality when it comes to genocide and ethnic cleansing. Ukrainian civilians get killed being intentionally bombed in their homes just for being Ukrainians (it is called genocide), Ukrainian women and children are running for their lives to Poland (as their lives are in danger just for them being Ukrainians, and such ethnicity based forced displacement constitutes ethnic cleansing), with some walking tens of kilometers in cold winter, and even some women giving birth in-route. If you don't take their side then you really should be kicked out of the civilized world.
He said he didn’t use the word “war” to avoid being censored, so that the Russian media can quote him directly.
you are right, this is sending a message, but its a deeply philosophical message.
Will it work? We don't know. Sanctions does not have a good track record of being effective, but on the other hand such a massive package of sanctions have been tried before.
Of course the effect of any single sanction seem negligible. Does it stop the war to cancel a chess match? Of course not. Does it stop the war to seize some billionaires Yacht? Probably not. But the combined force of all the sanctions hopefully have an effect.
Some say that popular support does not matter because Putin is a dictator. However Putin himself clearly believe popular support is important, otherwise why the need for the massive propaganda and silencing dissenting voices?
When taking about the fairness of the sanctions, realize that a "fair and proportional response" according to international law would be to literally bomb and shell Russians cities.
A problem is, these things can also make him stronger? And increase pubic support.
If people start getting "bullied" because they happened to be born in Russia, then maybe some of them will start disliking Europe, and think "Putin not so bad after all".
What if you threw stones through someone's window, because they were born in Russia? Do you think that makes Putin weaker or stronger
Not saying I know what to do, or that I have the answers.
If I say, "this animal looks cute but it might bite", then, I'm not saying that all animals will bite you.
One sanction seems maybe-bad. But I'm not saying all sanctions are bad. On the contrary, most are good I think, eg SWIFT.
I want more sanctions: stop the gas.
Pretty brave of him.
Does that mean if say, Garry Kasparov was to play against another chess player, he should be banned even though he also condemned the invasion? Quite ridiculous tbh.
Even Russian cats are banned [0], they don't have a view of the Russian governments actions on the invasion either and have nothing to do with it, except 'being from Russia'.
Of course from them, there's no redemption. Anything Russian thrown into the lost and banned.
To Downvoters: You do realise you can be Russian and be against the Russian government and condemn the whole invasion right?
Are you at all aware of the history of chess?!?
For example, they would try harder to beat strong non-Soviet players than to beat strong Soviet players, would throw away games to give a Soviet player more points, would offer a draw very soon to give a Soviet player time to rest/prepare for theirnext matig, etc.
There’s also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship_1948#...
It’s sad how humanity just keeps doing the same thing over and over…
Even if the invasion had never happened boycotting Chechnya would have been acceptable given their previous actions.
They did elect him (with 76.69% of the vote).
People in the West who live in (relatively) democratic countries just go around saying "Russians elected him" without actually understanding what living under an autocratic rule is like. Putin never won a free and fair election. He persecuted his opponents, denied them access to media (and as of today, there's no independent media left) installed dummy ones that play into his hand and falsified the elections.
It's like seeing hunger in a 3rd world country and saying "why don't they just learn how to program and get an actual job?"
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Russian_presidential_elec...
And what people also don’t understand is that they falsify on all levels. First, they persecute their opponents and deny them access to media. If they think an opponent has a chance and isn’t sufficiently toothless, they just don’t register them. Then they cast fake ballots during actual voting. There are reports of fraud during counting: police is known to remove independent observers from the room. If the results at this point are not satisfactory enough, they rewrite the numbers in counting protocols. And even if that’s not sufficient (like in Lukashenko’s case), they can just declare any result they want and beat/jail anyone who disagrees.
I think western commentators on Russian elections/popular opinions just can’t wrap their heads around how corrupt the system is.
Most people in Russia aren’t pro-Putin. They’re indifferent, don’t think about these things much and mind their own business.
End result, some people here for real believing that the people in Russia supports Putin.
It's depressing that the newspapers let themselves be used by him as a tool for manipulation
It's also annoying, I think, that the newspapers keep calling him the "president".
The only relevant issue is the question as to whether all Russian citizens (regardless of ethnicity) should be banned from these kinds of events (more generally: have sanctions and sanction-adjacent actions taken against them), or just those who have directly contributed to the invasion (Putin, his military advisors, some Russian oligarchs maybe?) - which is a good topic for discussion. Claiming "discrimination", on the other hand, is factually incorrect, blatant emotional manipulation & unnecessary flamewar-bait, and does not belong on HN.
Discriminating on nationality is still discrimination.
I assume Giri for example still has citizenship - I wonder if he will be banned despite not representing Russia.
Or at least, it doesn't "advance the game of chess", which is what organizers should care more about.
There is probably some creative middle ground to be found here, such as awarding them without recognizing Russia, etc.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship_202...
and of course the same thing happened in the Olympics a few weeks ago!
I feel the same way about Ukranian citizens who are being forced to flee their homes.
By your logic, Ukrainian individuals aren't being harmed because Russia is invading a country, not the individuals.
You are looking at removing Putin, who will, if democratically voted for, be replaced by someone even more extremist. Stop giving the working Russian people a reason to have the west. Give them hope, show them what life can be like, dont beat them down and scream at them.
1. Don't ban anyone.
2. Ban only players who have publicly supported Putin and the invasion of Ukraine (like Karjakin has).
3. Ban all Russian because they were born in the wrong country.
You're saying that 3 is better than 2, and I can't agree because in option 3 you're banning innocent people for reasons completely out of their control.
This is an absolutely stupid decision, and an injustice.
Two wrong don't make a right and two million wrongs most certainly don't.
If Ukrainians can’t play, then neither should Russians.
These people are actually your allies and a very valuable resource (intellectual, economic, political). Some of them risked their lives supporting opposition, cried for sanctions for years while your politicians benefitted from the regime's corruption and you did nothing. And now you're persecuting them like they're accomplices.
It is intrinsically biased to vet individuals based on their personal political beliefs, that seems like it would be worse. So the alternatives are to allow Russian nationals / national teams or to not allow them. These are extraordinary circumstances so I reluctantly support exclusions, and am deeply saddened by them.
It would be so beneficial to everyone if this horrible invasion ceased and the Russian army withdrew from Ukraine. They should stop killing innocent people for the goal of territorial expansion, and then the world can renormalize as quickly as possible.
It was under the usual meaning of that phrase, which doesn't merely refer to anything that bugs the invader, but something rising to the level of a legal casus belli such that the invasion is not the crime of aggression. (It also occurred in 2014; the current crisis is an escalation of the invasion, not the initiation of the crime against peace.)
Surely this is not going to look good at the end of this war, and it’ll just be more propaganda for the Russian gov’t to use - “look, the west doesn’t care about you”.
Is this just “cancel culture” exposed in a different area?
Israel isn't "bombing Palestinies for decades". They're fighting back when Palestinians attack them (why did you gloss over Palestinians bombing Israel?), then there's quiet for a while, and then more fighting.
The Israeli/Palestinian relationship is very complicated with enormous history, and claims by both sides. Just because you can't distinguish it from Russia/Ukraine doesn't mean others can't.
The 1990s called, they want their hasbara back.
[0] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/02/israels-apart...
Regarding bombings & war crimes, they have indeed been done by both sides. The crimes of Palestinian terrorists are obvious, but there is widespread denial & attempted justification of the IDF's crimes, hence the topic generates a lot of writing & debate. Examples of IDF crimes are the bombing of houses with many children in assassination missions (these are obviously not preceded by warning phone-calls) [0], and the shooting of Palestinian protestors at the Gaza fence who do not pose a risk to the lives of IDF soldiers.[1] The data ([2]) also speaks for itself.
[0]: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/gaza-israel-wiping-entir...
[1]: https://theintercept.com/2018/04/10/gaza-protests-palestine-...
[2]: https://statistics.btselem.org/en/all-fatalities/by-date-of-...
Yes, it would be clear if you define "Russian". Do you mean everyone who currently holds a Russian passport? Everyone who has at some point held a Russian passport? What about someone who used to have a Soviet passport with their nationality recorded in it as "Russian" but who didn't live in Russia? What about people who used to have a Soviet passport and lived in Russia but with a different nationality in their documents?
(Apparently Russian passports up until around 1997 had a "nationality" field, like the old Soviet passports, so you could have a Russian passport with your nationality recorded as something other than Russian. Presumably you could officially be a Ukrainian citizen of Russia, for example. It wouldn't surprise me if some of the other former Soviet states also record nationality so you might be able to have a passport from Kazakhstan or Latvia that says "Russian" in it. I would hope, however, that nobody is seriously thinking of banning "Russians" while defining "Russians" to include people who have never had either a Soviet or a Russian passport.)
EDIT: I would guess that you'd probably want to define "Russian" for these purposes as someone who currently has a Russian passport, but perhaps it's not totally obvious that that's the right answer?
(You might think of having a rule that you can only change your "sports" nationality if you "renounce" your previous citizenship, but it many cases it's not possible to "renounce" citizenship: you can let your passport expire, but whatever condition, such as place of birth, allowed you to apply for that passport in the first place would still exist so you would continue to have the option of receiving a passport for the previous country if you ever wanted to apply for one. Moreover, it would be impossible for you to prove you hadn't done that because countries do not, as a rule, issue documents to certify that a given person does not have a valid passport!)
The next time an Islamic terrorist attacks the US, let's use this as precedent for denying random Muslims access to civic culture across the globe. Lovely world we're building.
If anyone knows a good alternative (other than LanguageTool), let me know
It's understandable when the lines between state and individual are blurred - like with state sponsored doping of Olympic athletes, who are competing as part of a national organisation.
But when it's an individual whose nationality just happens to be Russian?
Seems more unfair, than just.
This is only going to create more conflict and tension, and generate hatred in people that would otherwise be neutral.
If they get to kick people out for their nationality (when that person is not "representing" a nation) then I get to think they're foolish.
It is discrimination. And it's entirely justified. The same way when, if your friend stars a bar brawl, you all get kicked out. Only he should get e.g. arrested. But there's a big difference between not being able to compete for your country and getting shelled.
It’s heavy handed, imo.
People are dying, heavy handed measures are needed.
It'd be kinda weird to single out chess masters to save from the pain, while a grandma on a fixed income is facing shortages and watching her already-meager buying power drop by the day, the low-level staff at various businesses are put on half-time or cut altogether and they'll be skipping meals to make rent, et c.
I agree with you, and i sympathize for all working folk, everywhere, always, and forever. I was only meaning to point out that people who play chess for a living are technically working folk too, that’s all.
The people of Russia must seize their nation back somehow, whether by means of diplomacy or other means, if necessary.
Sorry, you're right. My reading wasn't as good as it could have been.
Source: https://www.tv2.no/a/14615113/
The last paragraph is incredibly revealing:
> if those individuals are found guilty, and the process generates yacht seizure as the appropriate remedy, bring it on. But just taking the yachts without true due process? Nein, Danke.
This is a criticism of the overall sanctions regime disguised as something else entirely. This person believes that Putins buddies assets should be left untouched.
The article is an opinion piece that's inaccurately framed in that it's not the specific canceling of an individual (and cats), but solidarity with sanctions placed on Russia.
This is quite age old tactic that usually doesn't work, punishing civilians in the war usually does not demoralize them, but works against the aggressor. Same can be said about these sanctions. Why would they trust the west if we want to punish them and their only hope is their current administration?
They have only one enemy, the Russian government.
Do you think layman thinks the friend is the person who punishes them without them doing anything wrong? I find that seriously difficult to believe.
Think about it yourself. You go to a nightclub and then the doorman says only you're not allowed, because your friends who just went in said you're not wanted. Do you still consider them as your friends and just think it's for your best?
That's a very odd logic there.
The better example is you go to a nightclub and the doorman won't let you in because he says your friends were there being dicks earlier. Do you go and chew out your friends or get angry with the man stopping your night for something you didn't even do?
To always be associated with one's nationality (which we generally do not get to choose) seems exhausting and rude.
They're not. They're preventing the yacht from being moved or sold or serviced. It remains his property, and he's free to spend time on it.
Grischuk doesn't own Russia, Putin does.
If allowed to play will be exposed to a myriad of blood-thirsty journalists asking a chess player to talk about war. Would be asked, required and pressed thousands of times to speak against it or to clarity their position about it.
Anything that he says will be politicized.
1) Can choose to talk against the war and Putin, be cheered for a few days and return to Russia, where will be immediately put in jail and silenced, or end in the ever increasing list of people assassinated in this last decades. Or face retaliation against their families... Losing option.
2) Or can choose to say that Putin is a genius and the war is necessary. Will alienate their fan-base, friends and sponsors and end this international career. The championship could be boycotted by furious people. So. Losing option again. Everybody loses (except Putin). At least will not root in a jail.
3) Trying to remain neutral wouldn't work. Remaining silent in the middle of a genocide is the same as supporting it. And their words will be most probably cherry-picked by journalists to make it appear as supporting one or the other option.
So the only wining situation is not being allowed to play. Losing a championship or two and keeping a low profile for a while. Low price to pay for keeping his career and life relatively unscathed.
Is not his fault if he can't be used as living advertising for the politics of Putin. Will not earn the contempt of other chess masters or the hate of the fans for an parallel event that can't control and wasn't looking for.
Russian ban: good
However, consider that if Russians can't do what they want to do, maybe they'll focus more efforts on fixing their country so it stops the invasion and doesn't do something like this ever again. It may not work, but every Russian needs to be thinking about that, with priority over their jobs and hobbies. Making things painful for them is one way to do that. It's terrible for people whose jobs are directly affected, but the situation is even worse for Ukrainians.
This tells to Russians that the world doesn't care about them, individually, risking their lives to stop the actions of their Government as they like to claim.
If there was ever a man you want with a voice and face in the media at a time like now, it would be somebody like Grischuk. This is somebody that, especially in times like now, that should be elevated. Instead he's going to be effectively depersoned on the international stage and effectively silenced, seemingly like every single Russian regardless of their wrongthink or lack thereof. What a world we're creating.
Didn't the USA carpet bomb many places in the Middle East with drones?
Again, not to create a false equivalency but I believe the OPs point is that shouldn’t Americans be ostracized?
The drone war's been horrible, but "carpet bomb" means a specific thing, so, no, the USA did not do that
[EDIT] To be clear, this isn't pedantry—that doesn't even figuratively describe what's gone on.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-ir...
2) I assume you brought up drones in particular because the drone war has raged, as you wrote, "all over" the Middle East, which is part of what's alarming about it. Iraq and maybe Syria have experienced US-led saturation bombing during the drone war (but not by drones). Countries subject primarily to the drone part of the war have not.
And yeah your interpretation of my point is correct.
The drone war has caused plenty of collateral damage regardless, of course. I'm just not sure characterizing it as carpet bombing is either accurate or helpful in pinpointing exactly what's uniquely bad about the drone war. In fact, I don't even think the people in charge of it are trying to cause widespread damage beyond their typically-very-limited targets—though lack of accountability ultimately is one of the bad things about it, along with normalizing that kind of extraterritorial violence in the first place, the everything-looks-like-a-nail factor (when all you've got is a Predator drone...), and so on.
- Panama - US invaded it in 1989 and overthrew their leader - Iran - US staged a coup in 1953
Not to mention how the US is actively helping Saudi Arabia's dictators suppress dissent in both Saudi Arabia itself and neighboring Yemen
More fun reading: https://www.quora.com/How-many-countries-has-the-USA-invaded...
It’s important to have a friend who will tell you when you’re being an asshole.
Putin's main support base will start to feel anything only in a few weeks, when the economy crashes and inflation starts reflecting on the base needs. Most of the "deep nation" have only internal passports (never travel abroad), work in a government-funded spheres of economy, use mostly state-sponsored sources of information. Sanctions will probably just reinforce the narrative of "the ruthless enemies are encircling the motherland and can't wait to rip it apart".
The problem with this sentiment is that you're assuming that Russians are anything like your people.
We'll endure being deprived of Lego toys and Disney cartoons just fine.
Thats okay Russians. We didn't put on the sanctions. Our governments did -- so that argument is a two way street if you want to engage in bad faith arguments.
If you want to be taken seriously as a nuanced thinker, rather than a sketchy what-abouter trying to yank people around, I wouldn't use that word.
Prediction: https://twitter.com/GeorgeTakei/status/1498441260499017733
Outcome 1: https://twitter.com/travisakers/status/1499041366696992772
Outcome 2: https://twitter.com/PaulSonne/status/1499421918629404681
Don't help propagandists.