Japan has Bobby Fischer

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Shadow WarChief
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Japan has Bobby Fischer

Post by Shadow WarChief »

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TOKYO July 16, 2004 — Former world chess champion Bobby Fischer, wanted since 1992 for playing a tournament in Yugoslavia despite U.N. sanctions, was detained in Japan for an apparent passport violation and will be deported to the United States, media reports said.

Fischer, was stopped at Tokyo's Narita International Airport on Tuesday as he tried to go to the Philippines, an airport official said on condition of anonymity.

The Kyodo News agency said he was detained for allegedly using an invalid U.S. passport. Kyodo and the Asahi newspaper reported officials were preparing to deport him to the United States.

The U.S. Embassy in Tokyo said it knew Fischer had been detained but refused to comment further, citing privacy concerns.

Fischer became a Cold War hero in 1972 when he defeated Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union to become the first American world chess champion. But the chess prodigy, long know for his eccentric ways, stunned the chess world by refusing to play again, and had slipped mysteriously in and out of public view in the years since.

He forfeited the title in 1975, and resurfaced for a dramatic rematch against Spassky in Yugoslavia in 1992, beating him 10-5 to win $3.35 million.

U.S. authorities accused him of violating U.N. sanctions imposed against Yugoslavia by playing the match. The sanctions were imposed on Yugoslavia for provoking warfare in neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Fischer, indicted by a grand jury in 1992, managed to elude authorities and left a tantalizing trail that included radio broadcasts from the Philippines and sightings in Japan.

In radio interviews, he praised the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, saying America should be "wiped out," and described Jews as "thieving, lying bastards." His mother was Jewish.

Fischer, now 61 years old, became grandmaster at age 15. He announced that he had abandoned chess in 1996 and launched a new version, "Fischerandom," a computerized shuffler that randomly distributes chess pieces on the back row of the chess board at the start of each game.

Fischer claimed it would bring the fun back into the game and rid it of cheats
Am I the only guy in the universe who didn't know that Fischer was batshit insane? :?:
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Post by Stormbringer »

Reminds me of the episode of Arli$$ with the bat-shit insano chess player.
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Post by Galvatron »

I had no idea either. Oh well.

He'll have lots of time to play Chess in jail.
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Post by Mayabird »

Chess players do have a reputation of being...yeah, eccentric is a nice way of putting it.

I'm trying to remember the wacko ultimate conspiracy theory website that listed a chess player as one of its followers. I can't remember who the guy was (I think Russian, but definately famous) or what the site was, but it was something like "The Jews faked all of history prior to about 1300 CE and set up the pyramids, the Roman ruins, and so on in a hundred years to fool everybody!"
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Post by Howedar »

Wanted for playing a chess game where he wasn't supposed to? Jesus Christ.
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Post by Arthur_Tuxedo »

Howedar wrote:Wanted for playing a chess game where he wasn't supposed to? Jesus Christ.
That was my reaction. Holy shit! Jail time for setting foot in a particular country just to play a game of chess. That's a new one.
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Re: Japan has Bobby Fischer

Post by Bob the Gunslinger »

Shadow WarChief wrote: In radio interviews, he praised the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, saying America should be "wiped out," and described Jews as "thieving, lying bastards." His mother was Jewish.
Huh. A nerdy self-hating Jew. How original.
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Re: Japan has Bobby Fischer

Post by Einhander Sn0m4n »

Bob the Gunslinger wrote:
Shadow WarChief wrote: In radio interviews, he praised the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, saying America should be "wiped out," and described Jews as "thieving, lying bastards." His mother was Jewish.
Huh. A nerdy self-hating Jew. How original.
Now where have I seen that before? Hint, it involves Godwin's Law.
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Post by Master of Ossus »

Fisher is nuts. He once forfeited a tournament because he didn't like the shape of the table they would be playing on. My dad used to tell me stories of him after he entered retirement, and how he used to watch amateur chess matches and snicker almost every time someone made a move.
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Post by Bob the Gunslinger »

I wasn't talking about the nazis...

I just meant that he's like a living stereotype. He's Jewish, but he hates jews. He's jewish and a chess champion. He's definitely a nerd. He's a few neuroses away from a Woody Allen character.

I just don't get the prevalence of Jews who grow up to hate the jews. You don't see many Chinese people who hate Chinese people...
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Post by Sea Skimmer »

Howedar wrote:Wanted for playing a chess game where he wasn't supposed to? Jesus Christ.
Him winning several million dollars in the process is probably why US authorities care.
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Post by Patrick Degan »

So... The Japanese are holding Bobby Fischer, eh?

Perhaps we can arrange for them to keep him. 8)
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Re: Japan has Bobby Fischer

Post by CaptainChewbacca »

Shadow WarChief wrote: Am I the only guy in the universe who didn't know that Fischer was batshit insane? :?:
:lol: I saw this article and was going to title it "Bobby Fischer: Found and Batshit Insane :lol:

Great minds and I think alike, no?;)

I say leave him. Perfect punishment for a chess champion; In a country that plays Go exclusively.
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Post by The Kernel »

He may be totally fucking nuts, but for us to charge him for playing a chess game is fucking ridiculous.
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Post by Raptor 597 »

I hope they drop the charges once he gets here and get him mental help. Everyone knew he has been moving between Japan and the Phillipines to visit his mistress and child. Fischer went to Japan to avoid chess anyways he is happy to be rid of it. His father was also a Jewish scientist that abandoned his mother which may have been the reason he disliked Jews so much. He began lose it after Karpov refused to his tournament terms in 1975. Though Fischer was a gentlemen while playing thats about it. I play at the expert level and have eccentricties over the board aswell. The board must be mine and the pieces the plastic Staunton design, or I can't play aswell atleast I think that but it probably doesn't have an effect at all.
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Post by RedImperator »

The Kernel wrote:He may be totally fucking nuts, but for us to charge him for playing a chess game is fucking ridiculous.
He's not being charged for playing a chess game, he's being charged for earning free publicity for Yugoslaiva when they were in the middle of killing each other. He could have been going there to play chess, see the sights, or suck Slobodan Milosovic's dick; all that matters is that he violated the sanctions.
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Post by Arthur_Tuxedo »

RedImperator wrote:
The Kernel wrote:He may be totally fucking nuts, but for us to charge him for playing a chess game is fucking ridiculous.
He's not being charged for playing a chess game, he's being charged for earning free publicity for Yugoslaiva when they were in the middle of killing each other. He could have been going there to play chess, see the sights, or suck Slobodan Milosovic's dick; all that matters is that he violated the sanctions.
Exactly. Jail time for daring to set foot in a place under "sanction". Oh crime of crimes!
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Post by Xenophobe3691 »

Bob the Gunslinger wrote: I just don't get the prevalence of Jews who grow up to hate the jews. You don't see many Chinese people who hate Chinese people...
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Post by Stormbringer »

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:
RedImperator wrote:
The Kernel wrote:He may be totally fucking nuts, but for us to charge him for playing a chess game is fucking ridiculous.
He's not being charged for playing a chess game, he's being charged for earning free publicity for Yugoslaiva when they were in the middle of killing each other. He could have been going there to play chess, see the sights, or suck Slobodan Milosovic's dick; all that matters is that he violated the sanctions.
Exactly. Jail time for daring to set foot in a place under "sanction". Oh crime of crimes!
What's the point of sanctions if they're not enforced?
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Post by JME2 »

This whole thing reminds me of H. Roth from The Godfather: Part II.
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Post by Sarevok »

Bobby Fischer is a great chess player. So the US should forgive him for violating the sanctions. He did win which is good publicity for US.
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Post by BlkbrryTheGreat »

A relevant article... if a bit old.

BOBBY FISCHER: THE LYNCHING OF THE RETURNING HERO
by Murray N. Rothbard
October 1992



Twenty years ago, Bobby Fischer was the hero of the American media. A remarkable chess prodigy and genius, Bobby surmounted a concerted attempt by the dominant Soviet grandmasters to keep him out of the world championship. His defeat of then champion, Soviet grandmaster Boris Spassky, at the match at Rejkjavik was the toast of the world; here was the first American chess player to become the best in the world. Fischer's victory revivified chess in the U.S. and across the globe, and succeeded in making tourneys a big business.

Bobby was an eccentric, but many geniuses are eccentric, and virtually every top chess player shares that quality. As in the case of many geniuses, Bobby made many demands of officials around him, in his case tournament directors; from a distance, the demands seemed picky and a little batty. His demands not being met, Bobby retired from world chess, and has not played in public for seventeen years. Now, lured by a multi-million dollar gate guaranteed by a Yugoslav businessman, Bobby, still maintaining that he is undefeated world champion, agreed to play his old rival Spassky, the first ten-game winner to be declared the victor.

One would think that the media would hail the return of the colorful, charismatic, and memorable Bobby. Americans, after all, are sentimental and love "Comeback Kids," as Slick Willie has realized. And yet, oddly enough, Bobby's return has been greeted with a stream of frenetic and hysterical abuse by the once-admiring media, the Smear Brigade being led by such Respectable organs as the New York Times and the Washington Post, the Post being particularly vicious. The other organs of opinion duly followed the line set down by the elites.

Let us note some of the common charges.

One: Bobby is "paranoid," having charged that the Soviet grandmasters delayed his championship for a decade by conspiring to draw against each other, saving all their ammunition to turn against him. And yet, years later, defecting Soviet grandmaster Victor Korchnoi backed up Bobby's "paranoid" charges to the hilt.

Two: Bobby makes excessive, trivial, and loony demands of tournament directors. And yet, virtually all of these supposedly wacko demands have now been adopted, and chess experts have begun to see their merits. For example: It was Bobby's correct charges of Soviet conspiracy that forced the international chess authorities to change the way they pick championship contenders, turning from tournaments (where deliberate draws can be concocted) to one-on-one matches, where such conspiracies cannot take place. Bobby has also pioneered in changing tournament time clocks, to guard against being rushed to beat the time clock. This innovation showed a principled regard for the good of the game, since one of Bobby's attributes as a chess player is that he himself was virtually never in time trouble.

Three: Bobby, now 50, is older and fatter and balder than he was as a gangling youth twenty and more years ago. Well, gee, that's a helluva charge: tell me, guys, who isn't older and fatter and balder twenty years later?

Four: Bobby must be a nut, since he lived as a "recluse" for these lapsed seventeen years. Well, being a "recluse" is often in the eye of the beholder. In Bobby's case, it seems to mean guarding his privacy against the prying of the barracuda press. Is it really nutty, for a celebrity to want the press to leave him alone?

Five: The writer in the Washington Post, who reached the acme of frenzy in denouncing poor Bobby, noted that since Bobby is in violation of the absurd UN "sanctions" against Yugoslavia, his "dealing with the enemy" Serbs by playing chess could subject Bobby to a large fine and ten years in jail. For playing chess?! The Post writer declared that prison for Bobby wouldn't be bad, since it would compare favorably with the residential motels in Pasadena where Bobby has been living for the past two decades. I'm sure this writer is one of these guys bleeding with compassion for the "homeless." How would his fans like it if he said that jail is fine for the homeless, since jail is better than living on the streets? If the Post guy would never make such an "insensitive" statement, does he really think that living in cheap motels is worse than being homeless?

Six: Bobby is now accompanied by an 18-year-old Hungarian girlfriend, a fellow tournament chess player who thinks Bobby is the greatest. Fischer has actually been denounced for having a young girlfriend, by people who liken this fact to the Woody Allen case of quasi-incest!

So why the unfair and out-of-line hysteria about Bobby? Well, it turns out that Bobby, an independent thinker in other fields than chess is definitely not Politically Correct. Apparently, even chess players are not allowed to stray beyond the narrow bounds of PC without being severely punished. When asked about the "sanctions" against him, Bobby heroically pulled out a letter from the U.S. Treasury, warning him that if he went through with the match, he would be violating UN sanctions and subject to fine and imprisonment. Bobby met this challenge by heroically spitting on the Treasury letter, and declaring that he doesn't recognize the sovereignty of the United Nations in fact, that the world would be a lot better without the UN. Bobby then magnified his deviation from the accepted norm by denouncing Zionism as racism, and declaring that "Bolshevism is a mask for Judaism." The stunned journalist pointed out that, as a lad born in Brooklyn of Jewish descent, Fischer is himself a Jew under "Jewish law" because his mother is Jewish. One wonders why the supposedly secular American press treats "Jewish law" as if it were the law of the land; would they accord the same reverence to, say, Muslim law?


So we are faced with the important question: are we going to insist that successful people in every walk of life, in order to maintain their positions, will have to sign on to the entire barrage of political correctness? Before we honor or consult a dentist, an actor, an astronomer, a baseball pitcher, a composer, are we going to run them through the gauntlet of p.c., quiz them unmercifully, and make sure that every one of them is sound on the Jewish, black, gay, Hispanic, disabled, animal rights, and dozens of other issues of the day? Are we going to fit everyone, regardless of occupation, to the Procrustean bed? How far are we going to forge the chains of totalitarianism in our society?

Are we going to have say, metaphorically, and even literally if he is nabbed for "violation of sanctions": Free Bobby Fischer and All Political Prisoners?!
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Post by Andrew J. »

BlkbrryTheGreat wrote: So we are faced with the important question: are we going to insist that successful people in every walk of life, in order to maintain their positions, will have to sign on to the entire barrage of political correctness? Before we honor or consult a dentist, an actor, an astronomer, a baseball pitcher, a composer, are we going to run them through the gauntlet of p.c., quiz them unmercifully, and make sure that every one of them is sound on the Jewish, black, gay, Hispanic, disabled, animal rights, and dozens of other issues of the day? Are we going to fit everyone, regardless of occupation, to the Procrustean bed? How far are we going to forge the chains of totalitarianism in our society?
Saying America should be wiped out is way beyond mere political incorrectness.
Are we going to have say, metaphorically, and even literally if he is nabbed for "violation of sanctions": Free Bobby Fischer and All Political Prisoners?!
I would be somewhat disappointed if he was sent to jail instead of a mental hospital.
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