Bobby Fischer Arrested at Narita Airport

Discussion Open Forum
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On Tuesday, Bobby Fischer was arrested in Tokyo while trying to board a flight for the Phillippines. He was arrested for holding an invalid passport, although it appears that the US had been watching him closely recently (he’s wanted in the US on charges of violating international sanctions imposed on the former Yugoslavia; in 1992, he played an infamous rematch of their 1972 World Championship chess match against Boris Spassky in Belgrade, I believe. Fischer won the rematch 10-5 and us$3.35million.).

Someone had tipped off the US embassy in Manila that he might be travelling there sometime this week.

Anybody here ever meet Fischer in Tokyo, or elsewhere? Did anybody here ever hear about anybody who met him in Tokyo, Manila, or elsewhere? (it’s rumored that he’s lived in Tokyo since he was indicted by the US, but other rumors have him all over Asia - except the PRC, he’s rabidly anti-communist - and, less often, Europe as well)

IMO, Fischer is easily one of the most interesting personalities of recent history. He apparently denounced the US in a recent Manila radio interview, one in which he also apparently lauded the 9/11 terrorists. Famously anti-Semitic, Fischer was raised by his mother, a mercurial, highly resourceful as well as highly intelligent, Eastern European Jew (Romanian? Bulgarian? ai yo, can’t remember) who emigrated to the US in 1943, while pregnant with Bobby.

His is an amazing story, one of being schlepped from housing project to odd relative to different housing project all over America, finally to Brooklyn where he was found out as a chess prodigy, a brilliant early career, the world championship in 1972 followed by a hermitic existence, failure to defend his championship in 1975, and self-imposed exile in Europe and, lately, Asia, where he’s rumored to be an anonymous and avid online chess player (in fact, there are often rumors circulating in the world of chess, begun by somebody who, beaten badly online, tells friends that “I think I played Fischer yesterday, listen to this…”).

[quote=“NY Times”]Ex-Chess Champ Fischer Detained in Tokyo

TOKYO (AP) – After decades of evading the public eye and U.S. justice officials, former world champion Bobby Fischer – possibly the best and certainly the most eccentric chess player ever – has been taken into custody by Japanese immigration after allegedly trying to leave the country with an invalid passport.

Fischer, 61, was detained at Narita Airport outside Tokyo while trying to board a Japan Airlines flight for the Philippines on Tuesday, according to friends and airport officials. The U.S. Embassy confirmed Fischer was detained.

It was not immediately clear if Fischer would be extradited to the United States, where he is wanted for playing a 1992 chess match in the former Yugoslavia in violation of international sanctions. Japan and the United States have an extradition treaty. …

nytimes.com/aponline/interna … er.html?hp[/quote]

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In addition to being a chessplayer of undeniable genius, Fischer is a world-class wacko who has gone so far into hatred that he should no longer be regarded as just an eccentric. He is sick. I say this with great sadness, as I was once a serious chess geek. (Now I’m just a geek.)

For more on how ugly his thinking has become, see this Atlantic article from 2002 in which he is quoted, for example, as reacting to 9-11 with “This is all wonderful news. I applaud the act.”

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[quote=“flike”]On Tuesday, Bobby Fischer was arrested in Tokyo while trying to board a flight for the Phillippines. He was arrested for holding an invalid passport, although it appears that the US had been watching him closely recently (he’s wanted in the US on charges of violating international sanctions imposed on the former Yugoslavia; in 1992, he played an infamous rematch of their 1972 World Championship match against Boris Spassky in Belgrade, I believe. Fischer won the rematch 10-5 and us$3.35million.).

Someone had tipped off the US embassy in Manila that he might be travelling there sometime this week.

Anybody here ever meet Fischer in Tokyo, or elsewhere?[/quote]

Freedom of expression, of speech, of association, only exists if you are an American in the US.
Too bad, really!
If the Fischer/Boris Spassky match had been in Atlanta, Algiers or Amsterdam, The US Govt. wouldn’t have cared. Dissenters have to hide, run anway to Canada or stay sequestered in North Korea for fear of persecution.
Land of the Free, Home of the Brave…only if you are a flag-waving patriot on American soil.
The US had a similar ban against Bulgaria, and all the other communist states, but it accepted Nadia Comaneci as a citizen. The Us still has a ban/blockade against Cuba, but defector Jose Contreras is now playing for the “most American” of American baseball teams–the Yankees.
So it’s O.K. if Spassky had come to the US to test his skills against the great Fischer, but not, in this case, the opposite…Hmmmmmmm!
A bit of a double standard, don’t you think?

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[quote=“cranky laowai”]In addition to being a chessplayer of undeniable genius, Fischer is a world-class wacko who has gone so far into hatred that he should no longer be regarded as just an eccentric. He is sick. I say this with great sadness, as I was once a serious chess geek. (Now I’m just a geek.)

For more on how ugly his thinking has become, see this Atlantic article from 2002 in which he is quoted, for example, as reacting to 9-11 with “This is all wonderful news. I applaud the act.”[/quote]

Oh there’s no doubt that he’s damaged goods. Even in 1972 many, many people thought that he was actually frightened to death of playing chess, at least in front of others. His eccentricities are legend, and it could easily be argued that the only reason he won the world championship in 1972 is that he was a jerk, a world-class bad sport.

He is likely sick, but he’s also reportedly kept his chess game largely intact (given he’s 61, fer pete’s sake). Not to make excuses for his behavior, not at all.

IMO, one reason his story is so interesting is that…well, it has to do with the current state of American politics, I’m sorry to say. Let me leave it at this. IMO, Fischer’s anti-communism and paranoia sound extraordinarily familiar in these times.

Plus the chess.

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[quote=“Wookiee”]…Hmmmmmmm!
A bit of a double standard, don’t you think?[/quote]

Maybe, but Milosovic was using the Belgrade tournament, the rematch, as a way to validate his ethnic cleansing campaign against the Bosnian Serbs. So there was some reason behind the US ban on commerce there.

Listen, Fischer was a great, great chess player, but neither he nor his politics are worthy of emulation, imo.

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HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH !!!

Fuck me I’m still laughing after five minutes !

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[quote=“flike”]
Listen, Fischer was a great, great chess player, but neither he nor his politics are worthy of emulation, imo.[/quote]

Geniuses are often misunderstood.
So are madmen, as you would, no doubt point out, but Fischer seems to be more of the eccentric (see-harmless) type.
I would be laughing, like Hexuan, if it wasn’t so tragic.

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HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH !!!

Fuck me I’m still laughing after five minutes ![/quote]

I know, I know. Like I’ve said elsewhere, the current lot occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in DC simply can’t see how their objectivity isn’t.

International sanctions are merely tools, nothing more, use 'em or discard 'em in favor of a better fit wherever you find it. We’re working on it.

[quote=“Wookie”]Geniuses are often misunderstood.
So are madmen, as you would, no doubt point out, but Fischer seems to be more of the eccentric (see-harmless) type.
I would be laughing, like Hexuan, if it wasn’t so tragic.[/quote]

Yes, I agree that Fischer’s crime is more existential than otherwise, especially in the minds of the lot I referred to above. To them existential crimes are often the very worst kind, you know. Still, Milosovic was oily enough that he didn’t need any help from Americans earning a buck or three million while trumpeting the virtues of ethnic cleansing, imo. Fischer and Spassky chose Belgrade partly because it was Spassky’s first choice in 1972, partly because Fischer apparently wanted to defy Bush41’s prohibitive executive order.

Actually, Fischer’s “harmless eccentricities” likely find their roots in his upbringing, and it’s a fairly straighforward Sinclair Lewis kind of story, it seems. Dirt poor and intensely aware of it, curious about only chess, the father-less son of a flaky, brilliant yet powerless woman who fought tooth and nail for survival in the US, Fischer somehow could never rise above being a big smart kid to his friends, a wacko bully to many who are not.

A completely fascinating deranged person, Fischer is a man whose close friends still love him, apparently, despite the not-insignificant harm he can do them (he still has loyal friends he completely screwed over while in Iceland, in 1972, and despite what happened there Spassky speaks fondly of him in public - but Spassky was and is a very classy man, imo). It’s actually more low comedy than tragedy, imo, because all Fischer did was play chess and crush those feelings that were silly enough to get in his way - brilliantly when he could manage it.

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Very good, thanks for the link.

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Poor guy. A political target just for having a loud mouth and a few interesting moves in chess. Sad state of world affairs.

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The guy is a pathetic loser who pissed away his incredible talent.
“Genius misunderstood” is BS. Not all geniuses are babbling paranoiacs who spew hatred any chance they get.

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There is, imo, no doubt that Fischer is a loser despite his talent: by nearly any definition, I agree with you that Fischer is a loser. Certainly by a few meaningful American definitions of “loser” he is at most that.

Not always. My interest in Fischer exists because there are many, many Americans who walked in these same, or very similar, footsteps yet did not react this way. Of course, not many, if any, had the same talent at any one thing, much less chess, that Fischser had.

I’m not asking you to extend him sympathy because of his circumstances. Many, many African Americans pass by this path every day and end up better people than Fischer - among others, including more whites than blacks, in absolute numbers.

IMO, his is an undeniably interesting - nay, fascinating story.

Yes, I agree, but not many paranoics - of any nationality - win the chess world championship, either.

By the way, has anyone every met or seen Fischer?

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He used to hold a certain fascination, but in the past ten years he has just become a stuck record, and not a very articulate one at that. He’s fond of saying things like, “America is sh*t. Jews are scum” in radio interviews in Manila, for example.

A genius at chess, yes, but a complete idiot in everything else he has ever done in his life.

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I myself wouldn’t get on Fischer’s case too much, even with all of the outlandish things he says. I assume (from my own experience) that he has some level of mental disorder (bipolar, schyzofrenia, etc.). These can make one do all kinds of crazy things (trust me I know :blush: ). That combined with little to no support from friends and family (because of him more then them I assume) and the time he was born (peoples knowledge of mental health still IMO has a long way to go) created a zany guy that overly excelled at playing chess. Such is life.

Being really smart and young causes problems for most people unless they have an good network of people to guide them. From what I remember reading from other articles Bobby wasn’t only smart, he was like a machine.

I had a teacher that told me “A lot of geniues are on the streets”, I don’t know if it’s true, but I understood his point after some time.

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From the group of academic geniuses I have met in my life. Many burn out quickly, because of the intense pressure put on them on an early age. Some of them don’t even go to special programs where other talent kids of their age attend, so they become even more socially awkard.

I once knew of a classmate who was a brillant mathematician. All the professors that met him all though he was the next “one” that would contribute the most to the field. But he burnt out in one semster and when to local community college. “Less pressure” he said. He did not even want to be officially ranked in Chess and enjoyed playing casual matches with local masters.

Whenever he had free time and between class all he wanted to do was play chess. He’d everyone and anyone that wanted to play. He play against himself when we were not available to play with him. All of us who were ranked players knew that he was very good and much better than us. Even the our top student player begrudging admitted he was good, and never played him again.

One of my fondest memories of this guy was one day we got out of class and as were heading back to the common area he start talking about chess. I mention the chess set was missing from the common area and he started drawing on a piece of paper. When we get to the common area he rips the paper to tiny pieces and makes a temporary chess set for a game.

So for that one sememster the math undergraduate students clique had a daily chess tournaments. As our chess savant cut classes, slept in, and challenge us to chess in the common area when we were studying.

Not to mention pissing off all the math professors for not attending class, yet still acing the exams. All the professors I knew gave him a gentleman C for non-attendence.

Well I hope the person I knew did not end up like Ficsher. Although I can easily see how a person like him could crack when face with realities of the real word.

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oops, quick edit…just posted a link to the Atlantic article. I missed cranky’s post. :blush:

Anyway, here’s an excerpt from that article regarding Bobby’s mental health.

[quote]Many Fischer apologists argue that Bobby Fischer is in fact deranged, and that as such he deserves not public castigation but psychiatric help. They are quick to point out that he was raised in a Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn, has had close friends who were Jewish, and in fact had a Jewish mother (information he has gone to great lengths to deny). It seems hard to imagine that his hate-filled rhetoric isn’t an unfortunate manifestation of some underlying illness.

But even the Fischer apologists had to throw up their hands when he took to the Philippine airwaves on September 11, 2001. In [a radio] interview Fischer revealed views so loathsome that it was impossible to indulge him any longer. Just hours after the most devastating attack on the United States in history, in which thousands had died, Fischer could barely contain his delight. “This is all wonderful news,” he announced. “I applaud the act. The U.S. and Israel have been slaughtering the Palestinians, just slaughtering them for years. Robbing them and slaughtering them. Nobody gave a shit. Now it’s coming back to the U.S. Fuck the U.S. I want to see the U.S. wiped out.”

Fischer added that the events of September 11 provided the ideal opportunity to stage a long-overdue coup d’

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Anybody here who wants to test their chess skills can come and play me at www.chessclub.com

I’m blackcrusader there…

lets see how really good you are

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Challenge accepted…PM me and we’ll set up a time to play.

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What exactly was Fischer’s crime?

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He engaged in a chess tournament in Yugoslavia at a time when the Serbs were slaughtering and raping Kosovars. The U.S. Congress had voted sanctions against Yugoslavia. Fischer’s activities provided an economic benefit to Yugoslavia, and as such were prohibited by U.S. law.

Look at it this way, if the U.S. can go after pedophiles for raping six-year-old Cambodian children, they can go after Bobby Fischer for giving millions of dollars in economic benefits to a regime which is murdering people.