In article ,
NoMoreChess writes

So it seems like the US will pin its hopes on saying Fischer was
exporting his "services", and Yugoslavia was profiting from Fischer's
name, as the letter from the Philippines US embassy stated.

Pretty weak case if you ask me.

Nobody asked you. :-)

If playing chess in front of a paying audience, with television rights,
publication rights, etc., amounting to enough money to cover a five million
U.S. dollar prize fund is not "commerce," then what is?

BTW, the wording of the document posted makes it crystal-clear that the USCF
was also in violation, even if they never paid for the "Informants" imported
from Yugoslavia.

When authorities pick and choose who they want to prosecute for an
alleged crime, on the basis of who they like and don't like, that's
called persecution or victimisation.

The same is true when the authorities decide one moment they won't
prosecute someone, and then decide five years later that they will, when

- 1) the 'evidence' concerning the alleged crime remains exactly the
same, but

- 2) the person is on their way from a second country (Japan) to give a
radio interview in a third country (the Philippines)

- 3) the authorities don't look like they're going to get away with
persecuting another individual (Charles Jenkins) who left the US armed
forces in the 1960s, and therefore would like to make some sort of
public relations 'counter-move'

- 4) as Russell Targ rightly points out, they've got some public
relations problems regarding the economy and their invasion of (and
military enmirement in) a foreign country, and in particular, their
claimed reasons for attacking that country have been widely exposed as
false

I think the 'arbitrary' character of the American government's action is
recognised even by those chit-chatters who would like to see Fischer
deported to an American prison. That's why they go on about Al Capone.
Al Capone was a mass murderer and gangster, who ran a large organisation
and rather than being opposed to the American authorities, controlled
them in a large area. There's no similarity in what the two individuals
have done, so that's not it... The comparison people are thinking of is
something else... The usual 'story' for people who don't think for
themselves very much is simply that the authorities couldn't pin any
violent crime on Capone, therefore they got him for tax evasion. (This
is true to some extent, but what's not told to people who only want a
superficial account - although it's certainly not denied - is that
Capone owned the police and local authority in Chicago [not just
Cicero], but he didn't own the bigger-time mafia of the federal IRS).
Why some people are mentioning this is because they'd love to sit in
their armchairs and watch the US authorities dream up whatever excuse
comes to hand for 'getting' Fischer for what he has said about the US
when he's been outside of the US government's jurisdiction - they are
cheerleading the mentality of the account-settling gangster state.

--
banana "The thing I hate about you, Rowntree, is the way you
give Coca-Cola to your scum, and your best teddy-bear to
Oxfam, and expect us to lick your frigid fingers for the
rest of your frigid life." (Mick Travis, 'If...', 1968)