FIDE women world championship 2-17

[IM Jack Rudd]

My initial searches have found this, which has a Middle Eastern language as the fourth most used, but Farsi is not the language in question.

[Matthew Turner]

... I believe Farsi is the fourth most used language on the Internet.

Really? That’s interesting. Do you have a source?

It came from from a bbc production by/with Jim al-Khalili on Science and Islam

[Gary Kenworthy]

Depends on how you split the Indian languages and Indonesia.
But something like English, Spanish, Mandarin, Russian, Arabic, Japanese, French (with Hindi somewhere) is more likely.

But Iran is changing, that is true.

However, FIDE backed by some of the BCF officials wanted Baghdad, as the venue for the World Championship, with Uday Hussein making the opening move.--- it was already known that - Uday oversaw the imprisonment and torture of Iraqi athletes who were deemed not to have performed to expectations. ----so it rather split the BCF Board. Saddam had a bit of a reputation as well.

((I now see some more posts have come in - from Jack and Matthew))- but I leave my original post.

Plus this in the Daily Telegraph some years later ---Under the Title Baghdad Gambit ""
by Malcolm Pein12:01AM GMT 27 Mar 2003
The Fide President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov was in Baghdad last Monday and met Uday Saddam Hussein the notorious son of the Iraqi leader. Uday Hussein is head of the Iraqi National Olympic Committee and is accused amongst other things of abusing athletes and footballers when they fail to achieve the desired results. It appears that President Ilyumzhinov's visit, timed shortly after President Bush delivered his 48 hour ultimatum, may have been made to offer leading figures in the regime asylum in Kalmykia....."""

[Andrew Martin]

http://www.kingpinchess.net/2016/10/wor ... criticism/

[NickFaulks]

My initial searches have found this, which has a Middle Eastern language as the fourth most used, but Farsi is not the language in question.

That's percentage of internet users, where Farsi would clearly have no chance. I assume the claim is that Farsi speakers use the internet much more than average.

[soheil_hooshdaran]

What is important is that Persian is a wide-spread language. don't look at the current population of around 80M people in Iran. Until 200 years ago, Afganistan, Bahrein, and Caucasus were part of Iran and you still see traces of Iranian culture there. Farsi was a major language in Othoman court, and was therefore a widely spoken language in the ancient world.

[Jonathan Bryant]

My initial searches have found this, which has a Middle Eastern language as the fourth most used, but Farsi is not the language in question.

That's percentage of internet users, where Farsi would clearly have no chance. I assume the claim is that Farsi speakers use the internet much more than average.

Curiously, it seems that the British film industry might be about to get an Oscar nomination in the "Foreign Language" (Oscar speak for non-English) section for something in which the characters speak Farsi,


https://youtu.be/HRh2d4EwRNc

[Chris Rice]

It's quite an event when Wikipedia seems better informed than most of the chess world.... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%2 ... nship_2017

[Kevin Thurlow]

BBC has noticed

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-37560768

[Chris Rice]

Nice article by a couple of female Iranian GMs. The underlying message to the other women players is don't boycott the event, they can defeat the Iranian authorities using.. um.. some form of girl power I think. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... iran-hijab

[Nigel Short]

Nice article by a couple of female Iranian GMs. The underlying message to the other women players is don't boycott the event, they can defeat the Iranian authorities using.. um.. some form of girl power I think. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... iran-hijab

And do you really imagine that the quotes of the female Iranian GMs represent their actual views on the subject?

[Chris Rice]

Nice article by a couple of female Iranian GMs. The underlying message to the other women players is don't boycott the event, they can defeat the Iranian authorities using.. um.. some form of girl power I think. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... iran-hijab

And do you really imagine that the quotes of the female Iranian GMs represent their actual views on the subject?

Not even for a second.