08-12-2015, 01:49 PM
Hmm...
If Kirsan has been caught by the same or some similar prohibition against simply having 'links with an enemy' as the US controversially slapped on Bobby Fischer when he turned up to play Spassky in war-torn former Yugoslavia in 1992, I wonder whether the US stance is at all helpful.
Fischer was caught by an arcane move by Congress to resurrect an old law against US citizens consorting (economically) with an enemy. But its application only really led (even if unintended) to his disastrous exile and, in my view, greatly exacerbated his (already clearly longstanding) mental instability and chances of a return to his homeland.
No other country in the world passed such a law. Even the US didn't use it against any other US citizen (if my memory is correct). Spassky, not to speak of a raft of international journalists from all over the world, 'profited' greatly by the 1992 match. What was the point of it all? Fischer's subsequent life fell into total freefall.
If Kirsan has done something actually criminally corrupt in Syria (or elsewhere for that matter), the US should surely simply be handing the evidence over to the appropriate international police authorities for action. It strikes me that the US may in fact simply have taken a step that does little more than suggest that it should be added to Alastair's baleful list of countries and individuals that are primarily propagandising or at best posturing ... primarily for partisan interests.
If Kirsan has been caught by the same or some similar prohibition against simply having 'links with an enemy' as the US controversially slapped on Bobby Fischer when he turned up to play Spassky in war-torn former Yugoslavia in 1992, I wonder whether the US stance is at all helpful.
Fischer was caught by an arcane move by Congress to resurrect an old law against US citizens consorting (economically) with an enemy. But its application only really led (even if unintended) to his disastrous exile and, in my view, greatly exacerbated his (already clearly longstanding) mental instability and chances of a return to his homeland.
No other country in the world passed such a law. Even the US didn't use it against any other US citizen (if my memory is correct). Spassky, not to speak of a raft of international journalists from all over the world, 'profited' greatly by the 1992 match. What was the point of it all? Fischer's subsequent life fell into total freefall.
If Kirsan has done something actually criminally corrupt in Syria (or elsewhere for that matter), the US should surely simply be handing the evidence over to the appropriate international police authorities for action. It strikes me that the US may in fact simply have taken a step that does little more than suggest that it should be added to Alastair's baleful list of countries and individuals that are primarily propagandising or at best posturing ... primarily for partisan interests.