TIME
100 is an annual list, compiled by Time Magazine, of the 100 most influential
people in the world. The list was first published in 1999 as a list of the 100
most influential people of the passing century. It soon became an annual feature,
listing the 100 people influencing the world most greatly every year. They are
separated into five groups: Leaders and Revolutionaries, Builders and Titans,
Artists and Entertainers, Scientists and Thinkers, and Heroes and Icons. Each
category has 20 nominees, sometimes in pairs or small groups. The magazine made
it clear that the people recognized are those who are changing the world –
for better or for worse.
Record holders for TIME 100 nominations are Oprah Winfrey, who was
listed five times, followed by Bill Gates (four times), George W. Bush, Bill
Clinton, Nelson Mandela and Condoleezza Rice (three times).
This year's list includes Queen
Elizabeth, US presidential hopefuls Hillary
Clinton and Barack
Obama, Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice, Pope
Benedict XVI, YouTube founders Steve
Chen and Chad Hurley, film director Martin
Scorsese, and supermodel Kate
Moss. Separately, Time named 14 "power givers" including Bill
and Melinda Gates, Angelina
Jolie, Queen Rania
al-Abdullah of Jordan, George
Soros.
The list includes 71 men and 29 women from 27 countries. It does
not include President Bush.
On the current TIME 100 list we find actors Leonardo
DiCaprio, Sacha
Baron Cohen (of "Borat" fame), as well as entertainment newsmakersBrad
Pitt, Justin
Timberlake, Cate
Blanchett and America
Ferrera. Politicians include California Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger, Nancy
Pelosi (writeup by Newt Gingrich!), Michael
Bloomberg, Angela
Merkel, Tzipi
Livni, Sonia
Gandhi and Ayatullah
Ali Khamenei. Amongst the Scientists and Thinkers we find Al
Gore, Neil
deGrasse Tyson and Richard
Dawkins. Builders and Titans include Richard
Branson and Steve
Jobs, while Heroes and Pioneers include (tennis star) Roger
Federer, Oprah
Winfrey, George
Clooney and Michael
J. Fox.
"The TIME 100 is not a hot list. It's a survey not of the most
powerful or the most popular, but of the most influential," writes Editor
Richard Stengel. "We look for people whose ideas, whose example, whose
talent, whose discoveries transform the world we live in. Yes, there are Presidents
and dictators who can change the world through fiat, but we're more interested
in innovators like Monty Jones, the Sierra Leone scientist who has developed
a strain of rice that can save African agriculture. Or heroes like the great
chess master Garry Kasparov, who is leading a lonely fight for greater democracy
in Russia." Here's his writeup:
Garry
Kasparov
By Michael Elliott
Garry Kasparov likes to say he has been in politics all his life. In the Soviet
Union, the nation in which he grew up, chess was a way of demonstrating the
superiority of communism over the decadent West, and a chess prodigy was inevitably
a political figure. Kasparov never dodged that fate; when he took on and eventually
defeated Anatoly Karpov, the darling of the Soviet chess establishment, in 1985,
his image as a prominent outsider – Kasparov is half Jewish, half Armenian
– was fixed.
Kasparov's status has been maintained in post-Soviet Russia. His organization,
the Other Russia, a coalition of those opposed to the rule of President Vladimir
Putin, has held a series of demonstrations, often broken up by the police. For
Kasparov, Russia today, dominated by a combination of huge energy enterprises
and former security apparatchiks (such as Putin), is a betrayal of those who
dreamed of democracy in the early 1990s.
Putin's foes are fragmented and run from old-fashioned nationalists to modern
liberals; Kasparov, 44, insists he is just a moderator, not a leader, of the
movement. But by giving a voice to those who believe that Russia can develop
in a way different from the authoritarianism that seems always to have been
its fate, the retired grand master shows that he has not yet made his last move.
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