Registration Deadline Date is 10/27/2015
Garry Kasparov spent twenty years as the world’s number one ranked chess player, and is considered to be the greatest chess player of all time. IBM designed their greatest computer, Deep Blue, that was able to examine and calculate 200 million (200,000,000) positions a second to challenge Kasparov in chess; Kasparov still won! This incredible feat was captured in the famous film The Man vs. The Machine.
In 2005, he retired from professional chess to lead the pro-democracy opposition against Vladimir Putin, and ran for the presidency of Russia in 2008. In 2012, he was named chairman of the Human Rights Foundation, succeeding Václav Havel. He has been a contributing editor to The Wall Street Journal since 1991, and his 2007 book, How Life Imitates Chess, has been published in twenty-six languages. In 2012 he was arrested and beaten in Moscow as he lead a demonstration. Kasparov lives in exile.
The ascension of Vladimir Putin, a former lieutenant colonel of the KGB, to the presidency of Russia in 1999 should have been a signal that the country was headed away from democracy. Yet in the intervening years, as America and the world’s other leading powers have continued to appease him, Putin has grown not only into a dictator but a global threat. With his vast resources and nuclear weapons, Putin is at the center of a worldwide assault on political liberty.
Kasparov has been a vocal critic of Putin for over a decade, even leading the pro-democracy opposition to him in the farcical 2008 Presidential election. Yet years of seeing his Cassandra-like prophecies about Putin’s intentions fulfilled have left Kasparov with the realization of a darker truth: Putin’s Russia, like ISIS or Al Qaeda, defines itself in opposition to the free countries of the world. He is still fighting the Cold War, even as Americans have first moved beyond it, and over time, forgotten its lessons.
Argued with the force of Kasparov’s world-class intelligence, conviction, and hopes for his home country, Winter Is Coming is an unmistakable call to action against a threat we’ve ignored for too long. Kasparov said that Putin is playing chess and Obama is playing checkers.
Each paid attendee will receive Winter is Coming. This will be a fascinating evening with Kasparov, who some call most intelligent person in the world. Early RSVPs are suggested as the event will reach capacity.
