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
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.
