Female chess players boycotting world championship in Iran

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

...because they don't want to wear hijabs.
http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/09/female-chess-players-are-being-forced-to-wear-hijabs-in-iran.html

Freedom Fighters! But whose moronic idea was it to hold the tournament in Iran to begin with?

[Stand With Israel. Crush Hamas]

Good. Besides the hijab issue, what kind of nonsense is it to hold a tournament like this in a country with a long history of hostage-taking and violation of international norms?

[Oakvale]

The answer to the "why Iran?" question is that FIDE is basically an open criminal conspiracy so presumably Iran offered the nicest bribes.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

At least this scotches any hope FIDE had of making chess an Olympic sport soon.  Theoretically, they might have to worry about being derecognized by the IOC, but we're talking about the IOC, so they won't have that worry.

[dead0man]

So FIDE is corrupt too.  Are there any international sporting organizations that are not full of corruption?  I know F1, the IOC and FIFA are always having problems....perhaps it's international sports organizations with headquarters in Europe?

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

FIDE is actually hilariously corrupt, it makes FIFA look pretty clean. This is their leader:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirsan_Ilyumzhinov

Highlights include his belief that he was abducted by aliens, his various chess related manifestos when running for political office, playing chess with Gadaffi amidst the Libyan Civil War, his belief he was creating an "extra sensory field" with his mind that he used to communicate on a subconscious level and his attempts to build an entire chess themed city.

Actually looking a the board is pretty fun. Let's see what happens when we google their names.

https://ratings.fide.com/fide_directory.phtml?content=35

One of the other board members is Sheikh Sultan Bin Khalifa Al Nehyan, son of the Abu Dhabi leader. Then there is Dr. Aguinaldo Jaime of Angola:

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etc

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Yeah, FIDE is a literal criminal conspiracy.