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Saturday, March 19, 2005

Apropos of the entry below concerning the history of the Jews in Iceland - a history involving occasionally open anti-Semitism on the part of some Icelanders - a reader emails a pointer to this story on the fact that Iceland will be granting Fischer a passport and possibly citizenship. This appears designed to give the Chess Master cum lunatic an out from his Japanese exile and extradition fight.

BBC: Iceland to give Fischer passport

An Icelandic commission has agreed to give citizenship to fugitive chess champion, Bobby Fischer, which may lead to his release from detention in Japan.

Mr Fischer is fighting extradition to the US where he is wanted for violating economic sanctions on account of a game he played in former Yugoslavia in 1992.

Bjarni Benediktsson of a parliamentary board reviewing the request said the citizenship would be given next week.

Chess fans in Iceland have lobbied to have Mr Fischer granted citizenship...

I mentioned below that the Icelanders I've known were "Rastafarian dabblers" - their other joy was chess. Long, dark winters and cold days make for lots of people looking to perform serious brain exercise. "Protocolistic" conspiracy-theories never came up.

For background on Fischer, his life and his figutive status, see the links in this entry. The article in The Atlantic is now behind a pay screen, but may be found here in full.

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