"David Kane" wrote in message
. ..

wrote in message
...
PUT UP OR SHUT UP, MR. KANE!

Of course, when CL made it mandatory for every article to have a
red-
baiting angle, Evans complied with his wild, fact-free allegations --
David
Kane

The opposite of rabid anti-Soviet bias evidently is pro-Soviet bias,
largely exhibited here by bothf Jurgen and David Kane who lied
outright because no such directive was ever issued by me or
any other editor of Chess Life to any writer in this magazine..
In fact, the opposite was true. GM Evans was asked to tone down
his criticism of FIDE on several occasions..

If David Kane has any proof of his ludicrous charge, let him present
it here.

Parr continues to astound with his ridiculous arguments. First,
he raised the technicality that GM Evans' was an independent
contractor rather than a salaried employee as proof of something.

Well David, that is not entirely candid, is it? He was an independent both
as a contractor and also financially, from any need to earn a buck. To ask
if that is 'proof of something' it to ask for what every other reader
already understands - LE doesn't need to toe the line in order to pay the
mortgage. I would say that being a millionairre is not exactly 'a
technicality'.

As I understand the point; it allows a columnist an independent point of
view from whatever board pressures are put on the editor of CL.

Is that resume of the issue to this point a fair synopsis?

His new line is that only a written directive can establish policy.
The man is surely confused. If you are going to shoot down
strawmen, at least build up something worth shooting at.

I understand your point to be that on being challenged, you cannot produce
any written evidence - since there is none, and directives need not be
written. Also fair?

During the period that Chess Life was filled cover to cover
with sophomoric polemic, do you think that GM Evans
was too stupid to notice? Of course not. And it was at
this time that his own writing moved away from its somewhat
more responsible approach earlier in his life.

There is a small danger that your own writing illustrates the same fault;
any polemic is a verbal campaign about a /system/, it is a process of
activities, not a topic of itself. The level of polemic can be sophomoric,
or merely pertaining to sophomores! but that is to append an adjective to it
which is your own point of view.

But what is the subject matter? Isn't that the /system/ of Soviet-era chess?
To regularly comment on it is to necessarily engage in polemics, and the
level of public reception of such material, since it is novel to them, may
indeed be sophomoric in understanding.

Therefore you will understand the difference between the means and the
topical matter, as well as the reception by a public of material new to
them.

There are more inconsistencies in Evans' output than
any one man can document. Many of them have been
posted here repeatedly (such as his approach to
Fischer, at first reasonable, later blaming the Soviets
for Fischer's own behavior) and I'll not bother
repeating it.

But this is to gloss far a complex subject with 'sophomoric' attention, no?
Surely two things are possible here, that over time different factors were
in play in respect of Fischer and the Russians, and also the awareness of
the writer changed over time.

To speak of changing circumstances and understand as 'inconsistent' is
tautalogical, since by that definition the past is always inconsistent with
any present. As the grape becomes the wine, so does understanding mature.

The thing to remember is that there was almost no reporting on the subject
of Soviet manipulations in chess. It was literally secretive stuff, and it
took Taimanov some 10 years after the Wall came down, and the great
unfreezing of what was a vry real War, to obtain his own KGB file.

A particular favorite of mine is approach to playing
in Cuba. He portrays himself as a fearless maverick -
defying the embargo as a matter of principle. But
isn't that just aiding the same evil communists responsible
for all of the worlds ills in his other posts?

That is an open question. Is it better to engage people with antithetical
political orientations than your own, or to shun them? I see that the US
embargo and isolation of Cuba did absolutely nothing to change its system.
Whereas what brought the Wall down in Europe was not politics, but washing
machines, television, vacuum cleaners, cars... the exposure of Bloc citizens
to materials freely available in the West, which even poor people could own.

As to playing chess in a war-zone, that relies upon a philosophical
orientation. Some people are quite content with war - but war is also
described as a failure of the peace - it is the result of a process, of a
failed process. Some people understand that to be the case and do not chose
to honor the failed process in the sense of declaring it 'right' as in 'our
country right or wrong'.

Last week I reported on a guy in Somalia which has suffered horrible and
long-time civil war, introducing chess to schools and the culture, because
instead of conflict, it is a /ritual/ conflict, and an acceptable way to
express aggression.

Sports and games have always formed this function between regions, and
different peoples. For sure, Fischer didn't believe in politics, he believed
in pawns - and maybe he genuinely thought that where the politicians had
failed, he could do better as an individual? You don't have to agree with
that in order to understand the sense of what individuals may attempt.

Not only
that, but he brings out this particular little story as a
reason for why it was wrong to get upset at
Fischer for defying the worldwide embargo
on Serbia - a country, let us not forget, that
was actively engaged in genocidal repression.

I don't think the Russians were practicing an embargo. But the main point is
what to do when things are failing, and Serbians only know what their
leaders tell them? You can dislike Americans and Western values, but can you
dislike Fischer, an actual American with Western values? Doesn't the very
fact of Fischer's presence put a doubt into people's minds on how evil the
enemy actually is?

Again, you need not agree with that perspective to be able to understand it.

Consistency is not highly valued in Parr's crowd.

For the record, I do not hold Karpov responsible
for the USSR's wrongdoing any more than I
hold Keres' responsible for the Nazis' for playing
in Nazi-organized tournaments. How they
behaved politically is frankly of little interest to
me.

They are of course playing different roles. Keres and Alekhine were
propaganda pawns for the regime, but in Russia GM Karpov was part of the
regime. That is a rather different positioning.

But actually, I think as with my idea above on a maturation of GM Evans'
point of view, so I see a change in GM Karpov's orientation to chess in the
world - a factor which had to do with /exposure/ to the greater picture,
rather than official unengaged isolationism.

How they behaved as chessplaying sportsmen
has a lot more to do with my view of them.
And Karpov does deserve condemnation on
that count - there was abominable sportsmanship
on both sides and Karpov certainly does deserve
some of the blame for the behavior of his side.

But the truth is that for both Karpov and
Korchnoi it was always about the chess -
the political controversy was a manufactured
sideshow. And they did give the chess world a
memorable match.

I happen to be friends with Korchnoi's Russian publisher, have an inscribed
copy of his book, and have exchanged several thousand e-mails with him, and
those around him, on the subject of chess in the Russias.

I would add from that knowledge that the 'picture' was much more complicated
than your paragraph above presents. It is not a matter of absolutes, but of
relative differences East and West in the system of living, not in chess.
That context is the inescapable one.

Korchnoi after all, in his press conference in Holland, spoke about Soviet
corruption in chess, but he also spoke about Western corruption in chess,
which he said was not about power and positions, but about money. These days
we would say we are differently corrupted. Whether the degree of that
corruption was anything on the scale of Soviet invigilation is unlikely,
though not much investigated [!], but the principle of corruption being
present is established in both East and West; that it is systemic, and
lorded over by real politicians and chess politicians.

If individuals acted outside the scope of that corruption, then there was
real danger, East and West, of them being ostracised. If you want to know
what happened at USCF when the issue was raised of Western cheaters, then
you already write with someone here who can tell you, since he was editor of
USCF's magazine. That is a measure of how honest CL was, and how interested
people were in doing anything at all to discuss corrupted chess burocrats at
home or abroad. That's the background context which GM Evans borached.

What happened 40 years ago was indeed a crude polemic, often with no shades
in it, few gradations of thought, as is often the case in a war. Those who
broached the gap may not have written or acted as we would now like, but
neither are any pioneers the most sophisticated of people, otherwise they
would never get out the door and find out what its really like. Neither
would people interred in close societies ever discover what anything else
was like.

Phil Innes