Japan detains ex-chess champ Bobby Fischer (deporting to US)

[Guaranteed]

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apasia_story.asp?category=1104&slug=Japan%20Bobby%20Fischer

TOKYO -- Immigration authorities have detained former world chess champion Bobby Fischer in Japan, an official said Friday.

Fischer, wanted in the United States for attending a 1992 chess match in Yugoslavia in violation of international sanctions, was stopped at Tokyo's Narita International Airport on Tuesday, an airport spokesman said on condition of anonymity.

Fischer, 61, was trying to leave Japan for the Philippines, the spokesman said. He refused to elaborate, citing Fischer's privacy.

Officials were preparing to deport him to the United States, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper said Friday, citing unnamed sources.

<more>
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So it looks like we're going to finally see Fischer back here in the US. He's been out of the country for about 12 years now.

I wonder what they're going to do with him. Wonder if we'll be seeing this in the news, too...Bet we will.

[rooboy]

1. This story's bigger than Fischer - he's just a pawn. :) n/t

[Guaranteed]

2. Yeah, I don't have the first clue what's behind it, though. nt

[Guaranteed]

14. LOL...I'm actually serious.

Why the hell would they bother arresting him? Since when do they give a shit about UN sanctions?

[progressivebydesign]

21. Wierd shit from Japan lately..

.. add this to the weird story about the deserter to North Korea decades ago that will face extradition to the US when he goes to Japan for crucial medical treatment. Why is Japan suddenly all hepped up to provide these people? Strange stuff..

[D-Notice]

29. This might explain it...

Xymphora

Looks quite detailed

[PATRICK]

31. Bush seeks suitable chess competitor

Tired of beating Cheney at chess and Ashcroft at checkers, George W. needs a private match with a competitor who will not go to the press bubbling with astonishment how really brilliant Bush Jr. is- thereby erasing his sole remaining alibi should criminal proceedings against his machinations be brought to bear.

These matches are to be held at Guantanamo between consultations on the final endgame to takedown Castro.

Bush is boning up on his rusty skills by reading "An Idjut's Guide to Chess" and "The Little Chessmaster who Could".

[Snazzy]

4. He needs to get help from ... The Bishop

(apologies, couldn't find the Python...)

[Marnieworld]

12. Yuck yuck yuck ;-) n/t

[allemand]

3. more information here

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53671-2004Jul15.html

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=1792

[Hekate]

5. He'll be sharing a cell with Tommy Chong...

...that other grave threat to civilization.

Or in another scenario, Ashcroft dresses as the Red Queen and shouts "Off with his head!"

Hekate

[JohnnyRingo]

9. You got it right

Another Ashcroft victory, they can run....but unless they're contributers, they can't hide.

[Elginoid]

20. tommy chong is a free man.

he was on Jay Leno earlier this week, iirc.

[Sequoia]

24. Tommy Chung free!!? When?

[Tiberius]

32. Look at the movie Chong's planning on making

I think he got out this week:

http://www.ktok.com/script/headline_newsmanager.php?id=328148&pagecontent=nationalnews&feed_id=59

[jdj]

38. Yeah, he was hilarious on Leno.

made Leno bearable for once. And Cheech came in at the end.

he said they wanted to put him under house arrest for nine months but his wife vetoed it. He was in rare form.

he said he told the cops that he had pot in the house when they stormed him but the cops couldn't find it. Said they came in in full riot gear, swat team, the whole works.

He really seemed great, but the story behind it is sickening. Even Leno made a point of saying how wrong it was they arrested him

[Jack_DeLeon]

6. Does this mean they will make a movie....

"Found Bobby Fischer."

[Sequoia]

23. Ha, ha, you're funny...Found indeed!

[Bo]

7. Why dont they return ALBERTO FUJIMORI

to Peru. He only killed 1000s and stole 1,000,000s. Idiots.

[Guaranteed]

8. Yahoo link here, rate it if you want folks to know about it:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040716/ap_en_ce/japan_bobby_fischer_4

[chelsea0011]

10. America is safer now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thank god they tracked him down. Was Osama with him?

[bigmonkey]

11. Fischer is a creep.

But he's basically in all this trouble because he pissed off George Bush Sr.

[DelawareValleyDem]

13. Plans for Fischer.

What are they going to do with him? I think the GOP plans on running him in the Illinois Senate Race.

[Drifter]

15. He is wanted for playing in a Chess tournament ? ...

Great, and I thought it was something stupid.

I sure hope we are pulling all of our troops out of Afghanistan to catch this crook. Beside who's more important Osama, or Bobby Fisher.

</sarcasm off>

Don't these people have better things to do ?

Cheers
Drifter

[UpInArms]

16. related article: Former World Chess Champ Bobby Fischer Detained in Japan

http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?objectID=D7431F55-69B2-4468-99B977C076659AD6

excerpt:

Copies of Japanese and U.S. government documents posted on Mr. Fischer's Internet web site in Japan show he faces deportation because he illegally re-entered Japan in April on a revoked U.S. passport.

Mr. Fischer's legal troubles date back to 1992 when he emerged from hiding to play a highly publicized match against Russian Boris Spassky in Yugoslavia, then at war with Bosnia- Herzegovina.

Mr. Fischer won the competition, earning a prize of more than $3 million, but he was indicted by a U.S. federal grand jury for violating United Nations sanctions against Yugoslavia by playing the match there.

<snip>

The reclusive chess prodigy, who became a grandmaster at the age of 15, is now 61. He has occasionally been heard from, if not seen. He makes repeated phone calls to radio stations in the Philippines, making anti-American and anti-Semitic statements.

"I think the U.S. is not going to exist much longer," Mr. Fischer said. "I think everybody is going to be surprised at just how soon the U.S. collapses and the U.S. becomes history."

In other such interviews, Mr. Fischer has praised the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.

...more...

[UpInArms]

17. kick

:kick:

[Jack Rabbit]

18. Kick -- this is the thread to go with

Rather than this one.

Fischer-Spassky, Match for the World Title (10th Game), Reykjavik 1972 (Spanish Opening)

[allemand]

19. Fischer's long history with the FBI

was revealed in an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2002:

"Files reveal how FBI hounded chess king"

http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/4535883.htm?1c

"But Fischer's own government once believed his mother might be a Soviet spy, and that Moscow might have tried to enlist young Bobby as well.

FBI records obtained by The Inquirer under the Freedom of Information Act show that intermittently, from the 1940s to the 1970s, the Fischers were being watched.

The FBI worried that the Russians had tried to recruit the young chess prodigy on a trip he made to Moscow in 1958.

FBI agents checked birth records, posed as student journalists, and considered cultivating other chess players. They hounded Fischer's mother, reading her mail, quizzing her neighbors, studying her canceled checks."

<...>

"Regina Fischer spoke eight languages. She was brilliant but paranoid, a psychiatrist determined in 1943.

Then again, she really was being followed.

The FBI went so far as to read case notes compiled by the social workers Regina Fischer visited as a struggling single mother who moved from state to state. During her pregnancy, she considered putting her baby up for adoption.

Did she hear FBI footsteps? "Absolutely," said her son-in-law Russell Targ, now a physicist in Palo Alto, Calif. "They made it hard for her to keep a job." "

<...>

"The FBI seemed to pay more attention to Regina Fischer's Hungarian friend, Paul Nemenyi.

Nemenyi came to the United States in the 1930s, taught college mathematics, and met Regina Fischer in 1942, according to the files. An informant told the bureau that in 1947, Nemenyi opined that the Soviet system was "superior to that of the U.S."

Nemenyi also took a deep interest in Bobby Fischer. He paid child support and complained to social workers about the way Regina was raising the boy."

The article goes on to suggest that Paul Nemenyi was Bobbies real father.

Today, Fischer is clearly paranoid, but at the root of his persecution complex there once was real persecution.

[bhairava]

22. Fascinating

You can be SURE that what we know is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what the US gov't did to him and his family. The seeds for the behaviour we are seeing now with the current blackguard bastards in power were sown long ago; we even have gulags now(!): some known (Camp X-Ray) and many more unknown dotted scross landscape of the US and and its clients.

[Moderator]

allemand

Per DU copyright rules
please post only four
paragraphs from the
copyrighted news source.


Thank you.

DU Moderator

[Name removed]

25. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Jack Rabbit]

26. BBC (Friday): Demise of a chess legend

From the BBC Online
Dated Friday July 16

Bobby Fischer: Demise of a chess legend
By Robert Plummer

Bobby Fischer's paranoia, obsessive behaviour and outrageous public statements have all but overshadowed his undoubted brilliance as a grandmaster.
In his heyday, Bobby Fischer was an American icon
The man who once said that "all I want to do, ever, is play chess" has played precious little of it at international level since he became world champion in 1972.
His remarkable defeat of Boris Spassky in the "chess match of the century" should have cemented his position at the very summit of the game, after a run of 20 consecutive tournament victories that is still hailed as the longest winning streak in world chess.
But instead of capitalising on his achievement, Fischer withdrew from competition. Three years later, the World Chess Federation stripped him of his title for failing to defend it against Anatoly Karpov.

Read more.

Bobby Fischer v. Boris Spassky, Match for the World Title (Sixth Game), Reykjavik 1972 (Queen's Gambit Declined)

[regnaD kciN]

27. Both sad and outrageous

First off, there's no question that Fischer is at least an utter jerk, and far more likely suffering from an advanced case of paranoia (signs of which were visible long before he became world champion 32 years ago) and mental delusions. Given that, I don't think he could have been considered a danger to anyone, just a harmless nutcase, much like some types who will accost you on the street, claiming to have proof that the Queen of England is in league with the Venusians.

When he played his self-proclaimed world championship rematch against Spassky in Belgrade, he was warned that he faced arrest if he returned to the U.S. (although, strangely, the same threat was not made against the many other grandmasters and columnists who also went there to cover the match). Fair enough, though, since Fischer had expressed no desire to return to the U.S. anyway. The logical outcome of all this would be that Fischer would spend the rest of his life as an exile from his native country.

Instead, we find that this was not enough for the U.S. government. Unwilling to let the former "America's Chess Hero," the man who symbolically conquered the Soviet "Evil Empire" on behalf of the U.S., exist as a reclusive expatriate, it appears that our government was expending considerable effort (any effort at all would qualify as "excessive," IMHO) over a number of years to track down and apprehend this harmless nutcase so that they could haul him back to a country he had renounced, facing a possible sentence of ten years.

Now, this effort has paid off. We may have let Osama slip our grasp, but we've nabbed Bobby Fischer! And, by God, he'll pay for his crimes! God Bless America.

:puke:

[IndianaGreen]

28. Prosecuting someone for breaking UN sanctions?

Bawahahahahahahahaha!

What a fucking JOKE!

A country and a people that have never given a shit about the UN are now making a big fuzz about one disgruntled American expatriate breaking UN sanctions?

If you want to really get serious, how about getting some of our political leaders prosecuted for war crimes by the International Crimes Court, starting with Clinton and Bush.

How about enforcing all of the UN resolutions, starting with 242?

[Jack Rabbit]

33. It is a bit ironic, isn't it?

By now, one should realize that the Bush administration never, never makes an argument on principle. They have no principles, only their own narrow self-interests. To them,an argument is merely a tool for advancing self-interests. Consequently, they think nothing of making, as they often do, one argument one day and making the opposite argument the next as long as both positions advance their cause.

Such is the mark of tyranny.

I harbor no suspicion that the attempt to prosecute Mr. Fischer is part of a wider conspiracy to advance the neoconservative agenda. It is simply an attempt to resolve an long outstanding legal matter that means nothing to the Bushies one way or the other. If it did matter to them, some high ranking DoJ prosecutor would certainly be talking out of both ends of his mouth explaining why Fischer should or should not be returned to the US for trial, depending on what benefits the high and almighty Frat Boy.

My own interest in this matter is out of my admiration for Fischer the the chess genius, my pity for Fischer the lunatic and my contempt for Fischer the racist.

Robert Byrne v. Bobby Fischer, US Championship, New York 1963 (King's Indian Defense)

[bemildred]

35. I think you have Bobby pegged.

Best Chess player of his generation, and a complete loon.
Among great chess players this combination is not that rare.

Here is a wild one for you:

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1008403

[Jack Rabbit]

36. You want wild?

Bobby Fischer v. Tigran Petrosian, Zagreb 1959 (Caro-Kann Defense)

[bemildred]

37. I resign.

{I can't believe he got Petrosian to do that out of a Caro-Kann.}
:-)

[missile_bender]

30. Free Bobby Fisher!

Stupid, stupid U.S. is arresting someone who actually has contributed something to society (you know, art, as in the art of chess, as in setting the bar for a pastime that challenges the human brain to its uppermost limits). He did good for humanity. I guess unless you torture children you don't contribute.

FREE BOBBY FISHER!

[Jack Rabbit]

34. Another Fischer gem

Bobby Fischer v. Bent Larsen, Portoroz 1958 (Sicilian Defense)

[Jack Rabbit]

39. One last good Fischer classic

Dr. Anthony Saidy v. Bobby Fischer, Blitz Tournament, New York 1969 (English Opening)