The ICC must have rocks in their heads
Dave
"Nippo" <srnip...@optushome.com.au> wrote in message
news:3e0fdd8f$0$7197$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au...
<Snip>
"The ICC must have rocks in their heads if they think it is either **smart**
> or safe to hold international matches in Mugabe's Zimbabwe," Mr Rudd said.
> "I don't believe the ICC can rely on the Mugabe regime to provide safety
and
> security."
>
> The Daily Telegraph
<Snip>
Hi
a) Safety has got very little to do with it. The ICC is in my opinion
correct to say that there are few safety concerns. The cricketers will be
fine.
I am afraid various government and media organisations are pulling the wool
over peoples eyes.
I live in SA and travel to Zim occasionally. Zim is fine safety wise unless
you are poor, a member of the opposition or a farmer losing his land.
b) The real issues are political
- What the UK seems to care about is the plight of the white farmers. They
seem to forget the plight of the black workers on those farms (except to
serve the white farmer argument)
- The real issue is the lack of respect for human rights in Zim. The MDC
(opposition party), black farm workers and black & white farmers are having
a tough time. Really bad. Tourists get treated fine.
The governments need to decide whether to take a stand or leave it. Hiding
behind safety is laughable.
c) The other question is - Does the ICC have a political responsibility?
They recognised it in the case of South Africa who had there last
international cricket in 1970 before being chucked out. I now know that this
was the correct decision.
To all other countries. Drop the safety issue. Its a boring non-issue. Speak
less of the white farmers if you want sympathy. All farmers and opposition
members are suffering in Zim. Care for them to and maybe our friends on the
sub-continent will have some sympathy.
Cheers
Dave
Nippo
"Dave" <da...@nospambigfoot.com> wrote in message
news:auostv$enb$1...@nnrp01.ops.uunet.co.za...
The Sydney paper here today spoke basically only about the white farm owners
& citizens of Zimbabwe. Black farm workers were not mentioned & the whole
angle of the story was, probably justifiably, slanted towards the violence
directed at whites their. In this case they are only telling part of the
story, but it is obviously not justification for white bashing.
The real story is the ICC's mind numbingly arrogant attitude of indifference
towards the violence. I saw Malclm Gray on the ABC's 7.30 Report state that
the ICC didn't care about anything else that took place in Zimbabwe & that
their only concerns were for the sport of cricket & the safety & security of
the players & followers.
It was one of the most astonishing & arrogant interviews I have seen in my
life. The ICC simply astound me.
>
>
Dave
"Nippo" <srnip...@optushome.com.au> wrote in message
> "Dave" <da...@nospambigfoot.com> wrote in message
> news:auostv$enb$1...@nnrp01.ops.uunet.co.za...
> >
> > <Snip>
<Snip Lots of stuff>
> The Sydney paper here today spoke basically only about the white farm
owners
> & citizens of Zimbabwe. Black farm workers were not mentioned & the whole
> angle of the story was, probably justifiably, slanted towards the violence
> directed at whites their. In this case they are only telling part of the
> story, but it is obviously not justification for white bashing.
>
> The real story is the ICC's mind numbingly arrogant attitude of
indifference
> towards the violence. I saw Malclm Gray on the ABC's 7.30 Report state
that
> the ICC didn't care about anything else that took place in Zimbabwe & that
> their only concerns were for the sport of cricket & the safety & security
of
> the players & followers.
>
> It was one of the most astonishing & arrogant interviews I have seen in my
> life. The ICC simply astound me.
Hi
The media stance does not surprise me. I watch Sky News and BBC World (and
CNN). They are not telling the whole story. Not even close
- A tourist there gets treated really well and is relatively safe. He is
bringing currency in so he would have a great time on his currency
- It is not only the white farmers that are having a tough time. Black
farmers have lost their land and black farm workers on confiscated farms are
having an even worse time. The farm-workers are kicked off farms they have
been living on for 30+ years with nothing. Furthermore the MDC (almost
entirely black party) is being tormented in many ways
- The silly (don't agree with the justified part) slant towards whites and
their problems mask the whole issue. Why would the people in the
sub-continent and the WI think anything else but that these critics are
colonialists protecting their turf. I am the grandson of a colonialist and I
see it in their reporting
It is not hell in Africa. Not for a tourist or a cricketer anyway. (for the
Mugabe Zim opposition it is hell) If you come over to watch the cricket you
will have a lovely time in SA and Zimbabwe. We hope you come over. Cape Town
is particularly beautiful
BTw - I agree with you on the ICC being pathetic. They handled the cricket
corruption equally effectively
Cheers
Dave
Thomas 'bacco007' Baxter
>A tourist there gets treated really well and is relatively safe.
But will that extend to tourists from countries apart of the Commonwealth that have publicly commented on the goings-on in
Zimbabwe?
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
- Thomas 'bacco|007' Baxter -
* MSN: thomas_baxter007@hotmail..com *
- aDTVinfo: http://adtvinfo.deeplist.com/ -
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
Dave
"Thomas 'bacco007' Baxter" <thomas...@dropbear.id.au> wrote in message >
On Mon, 30 Dec 2002 11:23:21 +0200, "Dave" <da...@nospambigfoot.com> wrote:
>
> >A tourist there gets treated really well and is relatively safe.
>
> But will that extend to tourists from countries apart of the Commonwealth
that have publicly commented on the goings-on in
> Zimbabwe?
In my opinion -> Nothing to worry about! Your dollars are all the same and
the country needs them.
The press make it seem that all local Zimbabweans hate whites - Not true
What country specifically? UK is the most disliked by Mugabe and I would
feel happy with a British passport there. A UK political journalist is
another story but then he is not a tourist
Should Zim be allowed to host? That's another story. IMHO sanctions should
be imposed on Zimbabwe for similar reasons that they were imposed on SA (not
the same)
But you will be safe
conehead
<snip>
> The real story is the ICC's mind numbingly arrogant attitude of
indifference
> towards the violence. I saw Malclm Gray on the ABC's 7.30 Report state
that
> the ICC didn't care about anything else that took place in Zimbabwe & that
> their only concerns were for the sport of cricket & the safety & security
of
> the players & followers.
>
> It was one of the most astonishing & arrogant interviews I have seen in my
> life. The ICC simply astound me.
>
It's hardly surprising, though. Gray is an astonishingly arrogant man
working for an astonishingly arrogant organisation.
Speaking of which, the Prime Miniature has been hedging his bets, as usual.
He's probably scared that if he says the wrong thing he won't be allowed
into the dressing-room with all of his heroes.
Either that or he has been waiting for George Dubya to tell him what to
think.
--
Conehead
cha fugger loognat?
Rick Eyre
I'm rather annoyed by the hypocrisy and grandstanding being done by
pollies in the UK and Australia over this issue. I'm not by any
stretch of the imagination a supporter of Mugabe's policies in
Zimbabwe, just as I believe there are many other regimes in Africa and
elsewhere that deserve condemnation for human rights abuses. So why is
Zimbabwe being singled out?
The ICC should not be used as a political tool over the governments of
a minority of member countries, and it is nonsense for people like
Kevin Rudd - a politician who I normally respect - to say that they
have "rocks in their head". Two governments - Australia and the UK -
have expressed concern (albeit bipartisan) for their cricket teams
playing in the World Cup in Zimbabwe. What of the other countries who
have teams playing in Harare and Bulawayo: ie, Namibia, India,
Pakistan and the Netherlands? Shouldn't their views (or lack of them)
account for something?
The ICC is correct to make a decision to play in Zimbabwe based upon
the issues of safety and security, without political judgement
attached. Whether they have made the correct decision on safety and
security is something I am not in a position to comment upon.
Finally, Greg Baum's article in The Age today probably come closest to
matching my views on the whole matter:
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/12/30/1041196595558.html
Happy New Year,
Rick
Rick Eyre
www.rickeyre.com/cricket
Colin Lord
"Rick Eyre" <ri...@rickeyre.com> wrote in message
news:ed88d09a.02123...@posting.google.com...
Its a Commonwealth country which brings it more into the UK's and
Australia's sphere of international interests. If it was not, its unlikely
as much would be made of it in our medias.
> The ICC should not be used as a political tool over the governments of
> a minority of member countries, and it is nonsense for people like
> Kevin Rudd - a politician who I normally respect - to say that they
> have "rocks in their head". Two governments - Australia and the UK -
> have expressed concern (albeit bipartisan) for their cricket teams
> playing in the World Cup in Zimbabwe.
International terrorism is more likely to be a security issue in Zimbabwe
than than domestic problems. England and Aus cricket supporters would make
soft targets (ala Bali and the Kenya bombings), and the question of
Zimbabwe's quality of security comes to mind. Its very unlikely but not
outside the realms of possibility.
> What of the other countries who
> have teams playing in Harare and Bulawayo: ie, Namibia, India,
> Pakistan and the Netherlands? Shouldn't their views (or lack of them)
> account for something?
Have they issued press statements?
dougie
snip
>I'm rather annoyed by the hypocrisy and grandstanding being done by
>pollies in the UK and Australia over this issue. I'm not by any
>stretch of the imagination a supporter of Mugabe's policies in
>Zimbabwe, just as I believe there are many other regimes in Africa and
>elsewhere that deserve condemnation for human rights abuses. So why is
>Zimbabwe being singled out?
As you pointed out, hypocrisy.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,773596,00.html
The most evil man on earth, after Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden,
is Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe. That, at least, is the
view of most of the western world's press.
Yesterday Mugabe insisted that 2,900 white farmers will have to leave
their land. He claims to be redistributing their property to landless
peasants, but many of the farms he has seized have been handed instead
to army officers and party loyalists. Twelve white farmers have been
killed and many others beaten. He stole the elections in March through
ballot- rigging and the intimidation of his political rivals.
His assault on white-owned farms has been cited by the Daily Telegraph
as the principal reason for the current famine. Now, the paper
maintains, he is using "food aid as a political weapon". As a
candidate for the post of World's Third Most Evil Man, he appears to
possess all the right credentials.
There is no doubt that Mugabe is a ruthless man, or that his policies
are contributing to the further impoverishment of the Zimbabweans. But
to suggest that his land seizures are largely responsible for the
nation's hunger is fanciful.
Though the 4,500 white farmers there own two-thirds of of the best
land, many of them grow not food but tobacco. Seventy per cent of the
nation's maize - its primary staple crop - is grown by black peasant
farmers hacking a living from the marginal lands they were left by the
whites.
The seizure of the white farms is both brutal and illegal. But it is
merely one small scene in the tragedy now playing all over the world.
Every year, some tens of millions of peasant farmers are forced to
leave their land, with devastating consequences for food security.
For them there are no tear-stained descriptions of a last visit to the
graves of their children. If they are mentioned at all, they are
dismissed by most of the press as the necessary casualties of
development.
Ten years ago, I investigated the expropriations being funded and
organised in Africa by another member of the Commonwealth. Canada had
paid for the ploughing and planting with wheat of the Basotu Plains in
Tanzania.
Wheat was eaten in that country only by the rich, but by planting that
crop, rather than maize or beans or cassava, Canada could secure
contracts for its chemical and machinery companies, which were world
leaders in wheat technology.
The scheme required the dispossession of the 40,000 members of the
Barabaig tribe. Those who tried to return to their lands were beaten
by the project's workers, imprisoned and tortured with electric
shocks. The women were gang-raped.
For the first time in a century, the Barabaig were malnourished. When
I raised these issues with one of the people running the project, she
told me: "I won't shed a tear for anybody if it means development."
The rich world's press took much the same attitude: only the Guardian
carried the story.
Now yet another member of the Commonwealth, the United Kingdom, is
funding a much bigger scheme in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.
Some 20 million people will be dispossessed. Again this atrocity has
been ignored by most of the media.
These are dark-skinned people being expelled by whites, rather than
whites being expelled by black people. They are, as such, assuming
their rightful place, as invisible obstacles to the rich world's
projects. Mugabe is a monster because he has usurped the natural
order.
Throughout the coverage of Zimbabwe there is an undercurrent of racism
and of regret that Britain ever let Rhodesia go. Some of the articles
in the Telegraph may as well have been headlined "The plucky men and
women holding darkest Africa at bay". Readers are led to conclude that
Ian Smith was right all along: the only people who know how to run
Africa are the whites.
But, through the IMF, the World Bank and the bilateral aid programmes,
with their extraordinary conditions, the whites do run Africa, and a
right hash they are making of it.
Over the past 10 years, according to the UN's latest human development
report, the number of people in sub-Saharan Africa living on less than
a dollar a day has risen from 242 million to 300 million. The more
rigorously Africa's governments apply the policies demanded by the
whites, the poorer their people become.
Just like Mugabe, the rich world has also been using "food aid as a
political weapon". The United States has just succeeded in forcing
Zimbabwe and Zambia, both suffering from the southern African famine,
to accept GM maize as food relief.
Both nations had fiercely resisted GM crops, partly because they
feared that the technology would grant multinational companies control
over the foodchain, leaving their people still more vulnerable to
hunger. But the US, seizing the opportunity for its biotech firms,
told them that they must either accept this consignment or starve.
Malawi has also been obliged to take GM maize from the US, partly
because of the loss of its own strategic grain reserve. In 1999, the
IMF and the European Union instructed Malawi to privatise the reserve.
The private body was not capitalised, so it had to borrow from
commercial banks to buy grain. Predictably enough, by 2001 it found
that it couldn't service its debt. The IMF told it to sell most of the
reserve.
The private body sold it all, and Malawi ran out of stored grain just
as its crops failed. The IMF, having learnt nothing from this
catastrophe, continues to prevent that country from helping its
farmers, subsidising food or stabilising prices.
The same agency also forces weak nations to open their borders to
subsidised food from abroad, destroying their own farming industries.
Perhaps most importantly, it prevents state spending on land reform.
Land distribution is the key determinant of food security. Small farms
are up to 10 times as productive as large ones, as they tend to be
cultivated more intensively. Small farmers are more likely to supply
local people with staple crops than western supermarkets with
mangetout.
The governments of the rich world don't like land reform. It requires
state intervention, which offends the god of free markets, and it
hurts big farmers and the companies that supply them. Indeed, it was
Britain's refusal either to permit or to fund an adequate reform
programme in Zimbabwe that created the political opportunities Mugabe
has so ruthlessly exploited. The Lancaster House agreement gave the
state to the black population but the nation to the whites. Mugabe
manipulates the genuine frustrations of a dispossessed people.
The president of Zimbabwe is a very minor devil in the hellish
politics of land and food. The sainted Nelson Mandela has arguably
done just as much harm to the people of Africa, by surrendering his
powers to the IMF as soon as he had wrested them from apartheid.
Let us condemn Mugabe's attacks upon Zimbabwe's whites by all means,
but only if we are also prepared to condemn the far bloodier war that
the rich world wages against the poor.
Dave
"Colin Lord" <cl...@metz.une.edu.au> wrote in message
news:Vu6Q9.13323$aV5....@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
<Snip>
> What of the other countries who
> > have teams playing in Harare and Bulawayo: ie, Namibia, India,
> > Pakistan and the Netherlands? Shouldn't their views (or lack of them)
> > account for something?
>
> Have they issued press statements?
India and Pakistan have both said that they will go to Zim. Don't know about
the others
SA govt said last night that it would support Zim in this process - fair
enough they have to now
One issue largely missed
- The games in Zim are not new. Announced a long time ago
- The troubles in Zim are not new either
So why did it take the UK and Oz govts so long to get moving. How can they
expect action at this late stage. This is politics at this late stage where
they can be 'seen' to be doing the right thing but really doing and
achieving nothing.
That way
a) If it goes fine they can say that they did not interfere with an
independent body
b) If it goes wrong then they can say "Well we warned you"
IMHO -
a) Pressure should have been a year ago and not on behalf of the white
farmers who make up a minority of the oppressed. Yes more blacks are
oppressed than whites
b) It is govt responsibility to take action
c)Too late to change it now
Disillusioned with actions of many governments
Cheers
Dave
Mike
"dougie" <noe...@hotmail.scum> wrote in message
news:hau11vg3kpn509um6...@4ax.com...
<much relevent info snipped>
> Let us condemn Mugabe's attacks upon Zimbabwe's whites by all means,
> but only if we are also prepared to condemn the far bloodier war that
> the rich world wages against the poor.
Well said, this sums up very nicely how hypocritical the west is at jumping
on evil when it suits them, and happily being just as evil in the search for
profit.
Cheers
Mike
Rick Eyre
> "Colin Lord" <cl...@metz.une.edu.au> wrote in message
> news:Vu6Q9.13323$aV5....@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
> <Snip>
>
> > What of the other countries who
> > > have teams playing in Harare and Bulawayo: ie, Namibia, India,
> > > Pakistan and the Netherlands? Shouldn't their views (or lack of them)
> > > account for something?
> >
> > Have they issued press statements?
>
> India and Pakistan have both said that they will go to Zim. Don't know about
> the others
I'd be surprised if the Dutch government even knew they had a cricket
team, let alone one in the World Cup. I'm not sure what stance (if
any) they would take, but they don't carry the same colonial baggage
with regards to Zimbabwe as does the UK...
I haven't seen any comment from Namibia either, though they do have
similar issues with land ownership. Their president Sam Nujoma has
been comparatively sympathetic towards Mugabe - I recall him giving
Blair a serve at Johannesburg's World Summit on Sustainable
Development in September on the subject.
Happy New Year,
Rick
www.rickeyre.com/cricket