“My citizenship is within me. I drank it with my mother’s milk. It is my identity. It is my love for Greece, for my friends, for Greek music and art. It is my soul. And as the Russian girl says in the story, ‘My soul they cannot touch.’ – Melina Mercouri , Greek film actress and politician, from an address on the subject ‘The Artist and Politics,’ which was delivered to the Women’s Democratic Club in Washington, January 23, 1968.
I quoted the excerpt from Mercouri’s electrifying address because 2016 is a chess Olympiad year. And if Guyana is proceeding to the Olympiad, we should be proceeding with patriotic fervour, sufficient knowledge of chess theory, and the will to exit with titles. Chess and diplomacy are inseparable, and both are required if we are to sign our names in the titles ledger. For next year’s Chess Olympiad, some 170 nations are expected to participate in the tournament, the same as in 2014. The Olympiad buzz is scheduled to begin in early September, and for two subsequent weeks the focus of approximately two billion people would be on Baku, in Russia, where the competition would be held. I say two billion because if 170 countries are participants, logically, it stands to reason those participating nations would demonstrate an