| Eustace 2005-03-26, 9:53 pm |
| Below are two articles from a Greek leftist paper that I translated. I
think you will find them interesting because they view Fischer from a
progressive perspective. Fortunately, Bobby is no longer a "wondering
Don Quixote". He has 300,000 brave Icelanders behind him!
Eustace
======================================================
Rizospastis, 4/26/2003
http://www.rizospastis.gr/wwwengine...2375&page=story
....
The film "Searching for Bobby Fischer"... presents the talented American
chessplayer from the age of 7 years old until he gained the world title.
It is worth reminding that the screenplay of this film was written in
1993... That is, a year after Bobby Fischer reappeared in Belgrade
against Boris Spassky (1992), breaking the embargo. More films followed,
like the one with the famous "Match of the century", distorting reality,
and additionally presenting the American chessplayer with a different
face.
About twenty years after he conquered the world title, the totality of
the western media never mentioned anything about Bobby Fischer having
some psychological problem. Quite the contrary, all were praising him in
chorus and presented him - although he didn't play a single official
game for twenty years - as the best chessplayer of all time, whose games
were incomparable specimens of beauty and artistic perfection.
After 1992, when Fischer did not obey and criticized the US foreign
policy through the Internet - since no paper or radio and television
station would accept an interview from him - since then, the above
mentioned "Media" indicate, sometimes indirectly, sometimes with
insinuations, that Bobby Fischer had and still has psychological
problems, in other words that he is mad... and hence that's the reason
why he accuses the US. At the same time, they meticulously hide his real
grievances and his biting pronouncements against the American
establishment in his personal webpage on the Internet. They hide the
fact that they have confiscated his personal property, have seized the
trophies he had won, they have taken the intellectual rights from his
books, they hide his pronouncements after the "terrorist strike" of
9/11, that it was the result of the wrong US foreign policy. They even
hide of ignore under what conditions Robert J. Fischer, born in Chicago
on 3/9/1943, lives today!
======================================================
Rizospastis, 8/6/2004
http://www.rizospastis.gr/wwwengine...1&subpubid=4784
Personal commentary
US against Bobby Fischer...
The so called "high state policy" can't be trusted. It does not restrict
itself in official proclamations, nor in government buildings. It can
manage to get into any place. Even the most improbable one. Like, for
example, a chessboard... And if you happen to find yourself entangled in
its gears, either because you decided to go against the current, or
because one thing brought another, than you will find it difficult to
manage to checkmate your opponent alone. Especially if you have decided
to wage the battle like a wondering Don Quixote...
You see, on this wider chessboard, the wonderful moves of an inspired
master of the board with the black-and-white squares are not enough...
Maybe because in the chessboard of real life there are multiple sets of
"rules". Multiple plains of confrontation and rules of engagement, that
sometimes seem mixed up in the webs of the hypocritical class laws that
"should" benefit the established system.
What a contrast with what happens in chess! Where everything obeys the
hierarchical order of the king, the queen, the bishop, the knight, the
rook... On the chessboard, victory or defeat do not depend upon the
dirty hand of the hypocrisy of authority, but upon one's abilities...
Similar thoughts may be passing through the fast-working mind of the
former American world chess champion, of the 61 year old Bobby Fischer.
Who in the middle of July was arrested and is still detained from the
authorities at Tokyo's Narita airport because, they say, he was
traveling with an invalid american passport. A few days ago he requested
political asylum from Japan, since he is threatened with deportation to
the US and ten years of incarceration! Why? Because the harsh critic
(for a long time now) of the US imperialist policy and of Zionism broke
the embargo against Yugoslavia twelve years ago, in order to play a
match with his "eternal opponent", Boris Spassky. Whom Bobby Fischer
defeated for the first time for the world championship in Iceland in
1972, providing fuel to the propagandistic machinery of the so-called
"free" America against the USSR...
Since then, Bobby Fischer has fought different battles. He was
considered one of the most eccentric world champions, and this explains
why he disappeared from the chessboard. Today it seems he is choking
under the pressure of the hypocrisy of the power of the imperialist
superpower. That decided to punish him, not because he once defied her,
but because he continues to defy her. After all, all the reports of the
mass networks of control of public opinion, when reporting on his
predicament, never omit to remind - jeering him... - that "this man
characterized the 9/11 strikes wonderful news".
If follows that the breaking of the embargo against Yugoslavia is only
the pretext. The boards of imperialism do not like - in spite of the
appearances... - to be challenged. Not in actions, nor in words. Not
because they are vindictive, but because they know that challenging the
violence of the bourgeois state is like an "infectious disease". One
individual is enough to infect others...
Despina Orphanaki
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