Fifteen years ago, American chess champion Bobby Fisher went to Yugoslavia to play chess. This was a violation of sanctions against that country, and Fisher has been a wanted man ever since. If he comes home, he faces arrest and fines up to $10,000 and imprisonment up to ten years. That’s right, just for going in peace and playing chess.

This is the most absurd, moronic travesty of justice to cross my attention in weeks. And things have been busy in the absurd and moronic department. For crying out loud, this isn’t a matter that deserves a second thought by the government, let alone legal scrutiny. He didn’t hurt anybody, didn’t take anything, didn’t even compromise American foreign policy.

Who cares? Drop it, you idiots. I swear, what some people will pretend matters, just for busywork to justify their jobs, is mind-boggling.

[Link]

The only good that comes from even hearing about this vapid waste of human will, this violation of human freedoms, is that you get to go read A Game of Chess, in The Waste Land, by TS Eliot.

In vials of ivory and coloured glass
Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,
Unguent, powdered, or liquid—troubled, confused
And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air
That freshened from the window, these ascended
In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,
Flung their smoke into the laquearia,
Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.