(15)

Yesterday afternoon, and again this afternoon, my hopes of getting a day's worth of stuff done in a day, and then another day's stuff in another day, were dashed by cricket, on the television. This was no ordinary cricket. This was not, for example, English county cricket, which has just begun again, and whose first round of matches concluded today, mostly in draws made inevitable by the gloomy, drizzly English weather. I did not get to see those two test match under-achievers but county supremos, Mark Ramprakash and Graham Hick, score their inevitable opening match centuries, in front of the usual tiny smattering of chilled spectators. No, what I saw was something quite different to all that. What I saw were two games on the first two days of something called the Indian Premier League.

On the face of it, this was not cricket of any great profundity, being twenty-overs-each-way slogfests, quite lacking in the long-drawn-out subtleties of five day test cricket or four day English county cricket or Australian Sheffield Shield matches. Nevertheless the Indian Premier League is something extremely profound. It signals the emergence of India as the superpower of cricket that it now is. Everyone in cricket agrees. It's a new era.

India is not the cricket superpower because of its players, excellent though those players are. Yes, Sachin Tendulkar will soon become the greatest run-getter in test match history, when he overtakes the West Indian Brian Lara. But Australia are still, despite the recent retirements of Warne and McGrath, what they have long been, the best international side in the world. No, what makes India special is the number of its fans. I am fond of saying that there are more cricket fans in India than there are people in Europe, and my friend and fellow Samizdatista Michael Jennings would have corrected me long ago if this was wrong. And now, these fans are starting seriously to shift the centre of gravity of cricket.

The Indian Premier League doesn't just feature Indian players. Their plan is to make the IPL have a place in cricket much like that the of the English Premier League in soccer, namely something played by the best players in the world, and watched and followed all over the world. And now, it has started. The atmosphere I got from watching these two games on my television was of a big, big country, self-confident enough not just to offer the world a compelling sporting product but to share the glory of it all with whoever in the world has the nerve and the determination to grab it.

And it so happens that the visitors are seizing their chances, so far rather better than the locals. Perhaps the Indians are weighed down a little by the burden of what they must be telling themselves is cricket history in the making, and are taking it just that much too seriously, whereas the visitors just see it as the chance of some fun and some (in some cases a lot of) highly welcome cash. Warne and McGrath have both forced their tired old bodies to have one final outing, I notice.

In the opening game, the Kolkata Knight Riders crushed the Bangalore Royal Challengers, from whom there was alas not much of a challenge, and the result was settled long before the end of the game, as often happens in these types of games. But New Zealander Brendon McCullum nevertheless got the IPL off to a suitably headline grabbing start by making the biggest individual score ever recorded in a twenty-twenty game. And today, another rapid not out century by Australian run-machine Mike Hussey was also the difference between the two sides, as the Chennai Super Kings set an even bigger target, which the Kings XI Punjab made a decent stab at but in the end couldn't match. The Punjab side would have got closer if their top scorer, another Australian, had hung around longer and hit some more boundaries.

No wonder the best of England's county cricketers are envious. They can hardly wait to get involved.

There are genuine fears that cricket is not so much being played as used up, and that spectators may in due course get bored with all this vulgar slogging, and instead of turning to more refined and antique versions of cricket, may instead switch their allegiances to other sports. But good or bad, this is certainly an event, not just in the history of cricket, but, because of the emergence-of-India-as-a-superpower angle, in the very history of the world.

I chanced upon these excitements (by coincidence immediately after posting this about the IPL at my personal blog) on something called Setanta Sports 1, channel number 34 on my digital TV, which is sometimes "encrypted" (i.e. it doesn't work), but sometimes not (i.e. it does!). Can anyone tell me what further games I might be able to watch here in England on Setanta, given that I am not a subscriber to Setanta and do not plan to be? I get very little live cricket in England to watch, unless I visit a pub. I would love to be able to watch more of this tournament in my home.

(23)

There is a very interesting story in parts of the media today. Large parts of the Middle East and (in particular) India are suffering a major internet outage. It seems that a storm in Alexandria in Egypt has led to ships going off course and their anchors damaging the SEA-ME-WE 4 and FLAG fiber optic cables connecting India with Europe and Asia, and capacity to India has thus been reduced. There are some older, lower capacity cables still in use, and there are cables to the US also, but these were the main connections to India. It seems at this point unclear whether the two cables were both ruptures near Alexandria, or whether one of the outages was off Marseilles. But in any event, two of the world's key cables were damaged within a few hours. This seems quite remarkable. The TWO main cables between Europe and India were both damaged within a matter of hours. It seems an extraordinary coincidence. It may or may not be an extraordinary coincidence, and we will find out.

However, as a science fiction fan and a reader of Wired Magazine, the mention of these two cables brings back a thought of one of the finest articles ever published in the magazine. In 1996, science fiction author Neal Stephenson (of Snow Crash fame) wrote a long and wonderful essay for Wired Magazine entitled "Mother Earth, Motherboard". This article was written as the 1990s telecoms boom was gearing up to great heights of enthusiasm, and in a period in which global telecoms at least appeared to be gaining new levels of competition. Stephenson wrote about travelling to a large number of locations around the world, watching the laying of an undersea fibre optic cable named FLAG (Fiberoptic Link Around the Globe), or more specifically the section of it connecting Europe and Asia. He discussed the technologies, and the politics, and the history of communications and other related matters that went with it, and the history of the places he saw along the way. In return for paying what must have been a very considerable expense claim, Wired Magazine got a spectacular piece of writing, but Stephenson clearly got more than they did, as many of the locations that were researched for this essay popped up again in considerable detail in his novel Cryptonomicon, and to a lesser extent in his Baroque Trilogy that followed. Many of them cropped up in sections of those novels set in various eras in the past, particularly in the second world war.

The list of places that Stephenson visited during the laying of FLAG has a very trading empire quality about it, and mostly a British trading empire quality about it: Alexandria, Port Said, Bombay, Penang, Hong Kong, Shanghai, places that contain, as Stephenson puts it, "British imperial-era hotels fraught with romance and history, sort of like the entire J. Peterman catalogue rolled into one building". The reason for the confluence with the British Empire makes perfect sense when you think about it: the strongest parts of the British Empire were outposts to defend Britain's control of trade routes, and so they are at key points on those trade routes. If you are laying an undersea cable, then you want to lay it along the shortest route that it can safely be placed. What is required is a mixture of minimum distance and political stability. The minimum distances for cables today are the same as the minimum distances for ships in the nineteenth century (and generally for ships today, also). Between Europe and Asia, there are two key bottlenecks through which you must travel, as the alternatives are either much longer or much less politically stable. Those two bottlenecks are of course through Egypt between the Mediterranean and the red sea, and through the Straits of Malacca between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. Hence Alexandria and Penang. Of course, these places have been strategic since long before the British Empire, which is why a lighthouse and a library were built in Alexandria, but the British Empire is recent enough for its mood to linger.

As I said, Stephenson wrote the essay in the heyday of competitive cable-laying in 1996. Prior to the 1990s global telecommunications generally consisted of state owned or state favoured monopolies in virtually all countries. These companies worked together to build and own infrastructure, including undersea cables. Between Europe and Asia, a consortium named SEA-ME-WE (South East Asia - Middle East - Western Europe) had come into being as a federation of state owned and state favoured telecommunications companies. This was led by AT&T in the US, and Cable & Wireless of the UK - a curious creation that was never a major communications company in the UK but which was in many parts of the former empire. However, by the 1990s, at least competition was allowed in many markets. AT&T was split up into nine companies, and many other countries adopted a model that was initially created in Britain, in which various assets were brought together to create a single, reasonably large competitor to the incumbent. (In Britain, Cable & Wireless was given a licence to compete with BT, which it did under the brand name "Mercury", with rather mixed success for the company although with clearly positive effects for consumers).

This was an era in which fixed line phone companies were still believed to rule the world. More importantly, their banks believed this also, so capital was cheap. The companies had not yet figured out that mobile telephony would soon be everything as far as voice traffic was concerned, and the existence of the internet as a mainstream phenomenon was something they were only just noticing. They knew that there would be data services, but they thought that data services were something they could design and control.

So what we had was a group of new, highly capitalised fixed line phone companies who believed they needed to own their own infrastructure. These companies often had a legal right to build infrastructure in the same places as the incumbents - a concession made by governments to promote competition. And this is where FLAG came from. It was led by NYNEX, one of the "Baby Bells" (RBOCs) that had been spun off AT&T. It was a consortium of second telecommunications companies from various countries, that was building its own pipes to compete with the incumbents. In the US, the companies that had been spun off AT&T were very eager to expand abroad and to compete with one another and their former parent company. Plus, the same imperatives that led to the incumbents' cables tracing the routes between the grand hotels of the former British Empire meant that FLAG followed essentially the same route as SEA-ME-WE. In the real routing bottlenecks the two cables were built side by side, at times going through the same buildings and through the same tunnels. There is a good map that illuminates these details here.

Which is how what happened yesterday is possible. Apparently circumstances led to ships in Alexandria sailing in unusual locations yesterday. Anchors went down in usual places. And, apparently, both FLAG and SEA-ME-WE 4 were ruptured. One would hope that the redundancy due to the fact that there are two competing cable companies would have led to some protection against accident or sabotage, but it seems that the fact that the two cables are right next to one another simply meant that a change in shipping conditions can take out both together.

However, when we think about the consequences of this, we discover how the world has changed in the last decade. If you read Stephenson's article, you get the impression that FLAG was all about connecting the rich countries of Europe with the rich countries of Australasia and East Asia. India is mentioned a couple of times in the 40,000 words of the essay, but it is mentioned in passing, and it does not seem he visited. News stories today are all about the Middle East and particularly India losing their net access. China, Australia, Japan, and Korea are unaffected. This is not because these places do not communicate with Europe, but because there is plenty of capacity across the Pacific and across the Atlantic that there is no trouble rerouting their communications via the United States. FLAG and SEA-ME-WE have actually become the main means of communicating with India and the Middle East, places where a lot has happened economically in the last ten years.

The belief that secondary, competing fixed line phone companies were important to the future died sometime around 2001. If these companies had mobile subsidiaries, they discovered that the mobile subsidiaries were their main sources of profitability. Capital became expensive. The rates that could be charged at wholesale level for international voice services dropped to something close to zero. Ventures like FLAG did not make money for the sorts of services that their investors and builders had hoped. NYNEX is now part of Verizon, and AT&T is now part of Southwestern Bell Corporation (although, confusingly, the whole company took the AT&T name). Neither company is terribly interested in bold international ventures any more, and they instead spend their time concentrating on their US mobile networks and attempting to screw as much money out of their legacy customers as possible. Second, competing, fixed line telephone companies generally got into financial trouble and were sold to former incumbents from foreign countries or to mobile companies or both, which led to the owners of SEA-ME-WE gaining shares in FLAG as well. There is still healthy competition in some telecommunications markets (Britain is extremely competitive - I would say the US is less so), but not so much from the companies that were created by governments and regulators in the 1980s and 1990s.

And what happened to FLAG? Well, in 2000 there was an awful lot of undersea optical fibre capacity, that was not being used in the way the people had build it intended. Inevitably, it ended up carrying a great deal of internet traffic. This coincided with a huge rise in the tech sector in places like India and China. Partly because of this, it became cheap for India to provide certain kinds of services to Europe and the US, because the cost of communicating with India became negligible. FLAG itself ended up being bought by an Indian conglomerate, Reliance Industries. What goes around comes around.

(26)

Only Musharraf could have made lawyers popular. No law, no liberty.

(7)

This is some talk of bringing back the 'fairness doctrine' in the United States. This, before President Reagan got rid of it, allowed the powers-that-be to force broadcasters to have when was deemed to be 'balanced' news and current affairs coverage.

In reality, of course, 'balanced' means either leftist opinions (the establishment, produced by the universities, do not see their opinions as opinions, they see them as 'objective' or even 'scientific' journalism - even when they formally do not believe that there is any such thing as objective truth), or a pointless mess of people shouting debating points at each other.

In reality it takes several minutes to explain a point of view, and the reasons for it, about most political matters - exchanges of debating points do not achieve much. The destruction of such things as talk radio (by demanding a "right of reply") would leave the leftist shows, both serious and comic, untouched. Who wants to bet that the "fairness doctrine" would be applied in some God like "fair" way to them? As for "hard news" as opposed to "comment" (not that I fully accept this distinction).

The left often attack "Fox News" for claiming to be "Fair and Balanced" and (whilst a lot of FNC is not conservative at all) it is perfectly clear where, for example, Brit Hume's political loyalties are, which one can tell by his choice of words, tone of voice, body language and in other ways, but the left fail to see, or pretend to fail to see, that their own people (i.e. all the other news networks) are also not "fair and balanced" - because this is not in the nature of man (sorry "humanity"), and that all that the 'fairness doctrine' would do is to give their side a monopoly of news presentation.

Still, the whole thing is far from confined to the United States.

For example, in Britain we have a version of the 'fairness doctrine' - which means, in practice, that broadcasters (government owned or private) represent the 'liberal' (i.e illiberal) left. Indeed it is almost universal outside the United States. The most recent example I have came upon concerns India:

A couple weeks ago I watched a brief report on NDTV about the new 'content code'. According to this compulsory code stories that were against the Indian "national interest" would be spiked, and broadcasters would not be allowed to "highlight" (i.e. favour) certain opinions. In practice it is a safe guess that the opinions that broadcasters would not be allowed to highlight would be opinions opposed to the Congress party and to the various leftist parties who support in government. However, the NDTV report did not say that broadcasters should be allowed to favour any opinion they wished and that people should be allowed to choose between them.

No - the line was that "self regulation" should be supported. The Indian newspapers, the report said, practice this via the "Press Council of India" and broadcasters should be allowed to the same. The government will force its line into regulations - because no one is really opposing this "fairness" line as a matter of principle.

Sadly it appears that no one really stands for anything like the US First Amendment, or for freedom in general, in India. On the one side we have Congress and the various leftist parties (trying to gradually introduce more welfare spending), and on the other side we have the religious nationalist BJP (i.e the saffron fascists). The old days when the Independence party stood for freedom (yes it lost every election - but it was there) are long over.

The above is not meant as attack on India - things are much the same in Britain. No major political party really stands for freedom here either. Not only not in a strict libertarian sense - not even in a general sense.

(85)

With the 60th anniversary of the end of British rule in the sub continent, there is the normal talk of whether the vast numbers of rapes and murders during partition could have been prevented. The British will, perhaps quite rightly, get the blame for not delaying independence and for not using enough force to try and prevent the violence on partition.

However, it is almost forgotten that Nehru (the leader of the Congress party and first Prime Minister of India) was demanding that the British leave (every day we stayed was a day too many for Nehru), and even claimed that it was mainly where the British were that violence took place.

This was the exact opposite of the truth (and Nehru knew it) - as it was where British forces went in (sadly much too rarely) that the mass rapes and killings were prevented. Nehru had "form" in letting his "get the British out of India" obsession cloud his judgement.

For example, in 1942 he had gone along (whatever doubts he must have had) with the demented "Quit India" campaign. Had the British actually "quit India" the Japanese would have come in (they were at the gates of India) and the Congress party would have found out what "slavery to an Imperial power" really was.

As Prime Minister of India Nehru followed a policy of armed aggression (so much for "non violence") against such places as Portuguese Goa. But also did not bother to prepare against real threats to national security.

The classic example is relations with Red China. Nehru ordered a policy of confronting China in the border area - but did not send a decent level of troops or equipment (the Indian troops did not even axes to cut down trees and where forced into trying to use spades for the task - much to amusement of the watching People's Liberation Army). Nehru also refused to approach the United States for aid - he could handle matters.

When the Chinese invaded in 1962 the Indian force fought bravely, but was hopelessly out-numbered and out-equipped - their defeat was inevitable. The Chinese captured the entire disputed area (which they had no legal right to) and Nehru was left begging the United States for aid - in case the Chinese decided to take any more of India.

But the worst aspect of Nehru was his domestic policy:

Nehru loved talking of "five year plans" and an industrial revolution for India. However, his policies condemned the population of India to poverty, often extreme poverty. Not only was overseas competition virtually banned (for almost all goods and services), but the "permit Raj" meant that almost all domestic competition was crippled as well.

The "freedom" that the Congress party promised India turned out to be so many rules and regulations that it made the British Raj look almost libertarian by comparison (although the British Raj was bad in many ways).

I doubt that most of the above will be mentioned in many places, but people deserve to know.

(4)

In Pakistan they are having 'interesting times', in the Chinese sense of the term. Violent protests in Karachi have killed dozens of people as the authority of President Musharraf has been challenged by the Chief Justice of the Pakistani Supreme Court.

Sooner or later, the rule of General Musharraf will come to an end, regardless of how much help the Americans give to prop up his regime. It is anyone's guess who takes over when he does leave the scene - it could be a weak democratic government, another Army commander, or a more sinister Islamic style government. Whatever sort takes over, they
will have a hard time keeping the country in one piece.

These musings on the future of Pakistan would be idle chatter though except that Pakistan is right on the fault line of many of the conflicts in the world today, and it also happens to have nuclear weapons. Quietly, India must be watching with some concern as General Musharraf loses his grip on power. The fastest way for a new regime in Islamabad to gain some legitimacy is to ratchet the tension with India. Given that both are now nuclear armed, it could be interesting times all round.

(14)

Guy Herbert this morning posted a piece commenting on Australian Prime Minister John Howard's decision to "ban" the Australian cricket team from touring Zimbabwe later this year. I generally have little time for Mr Howard, but in this case I can not personally be very harsh on him. What clearly happened is that the Australian Cricket Board (which these days prefers to call itself "Cricket Australia") begged him at length the make such an announcement, and he eventually gave in despite considerable resistance, and he did this because the alternatives open to him were probably worse. I have no disagreement with Guy that the outcome is essentially a dishonourable one, but the other easy options were worse. Some background.

In international cricket, there are only three countries for who the game is directly profitable. These are India, Australia, and England (in decreasing order of profitability). The other countries that regularly play international cricket make money by playing the national teams of these three countries, and then selling television rights and other sponsorship opportunities for these matches. Thus it is very important to (say) Sri Lanka for (in particular) India and Australia to regularly tour Sri Lanka and play matches.

In order to assure its members of some sort of regular cricket and regular income, the International Cricket Council (ICC) has in recent years created a mandatory tour program, requiring each of its members to play each other both home and away over a five year period. Reactions to this rule have varied, and compliance with it has been variable. The rule allows two sides to postpone a series if both are in agreement, which has allowed India and Australia to at times get their way by offering more money or more matches if the matches are played at some undefined "later". However, if a team takes a hard line, then (at least theoretically) the other side must tour, or must pay a fine to the ICC which will be then forwarded to the host team as compensation for the lost revenues from the matches that were to have been played. The ICC's rules allow for two situations in which a fine is not payable: firstly in cases where there is a genuine issue of safety - tours of both Sri Lanka and Pakistan have been called off for this reason in times of high political tension and terrorist threat - and in cases where a government forbids a tour. This second rule has come into play more in cases where Zimbabwe were potentially the touring side, most notably when Zimbabwean players were refused visas by the government of New Zealand.

Zimbabwe are a full member of the ICC. In the mid 1990s Zimbabwe had quite a decent cricket team (of mostly but certainly not entirely white players) but in the years since then Zimbabwean cricket has gone the way of most other things in Zimbabwe. At the demand of the government, white players were pushed out of the team, as were any non-white players who dared to say anything critical of the government. Officials who ran the game and actually cared about cricket were replaced with compliant government yes-men. The organisation of cricket in Zimbabwe became a shambles, and we are not sure right now to what extent the domestic cricket is even taking place. (The Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians has recently been complaining about being unable to get scorecards for the domestic Logan Cup, which it has documented with no trouble for over a century). Inevitably, the standard of the national team has dropped from "decent, but not world beating", to utterly woeful. Their performance in the recently completed World Cup was dreadful, and they have dropped to 11th in the world rankings, way behind the rapidly improving Bangladesh, and behind even Ireland, a side just consisting of part time Australian and English expatriates and who are not a full member of the ICC.

However, through all this Zimbabwe has maintained its full membership of the ICC. Zimbabwe has been "temporarily suspended" from playing test matches due to its declining standards, but it is still playing one day international cricket, and other teams are expected to tour in order to play these games. Australia was scheduled to tour Zimbabwe this year.

The obvious thing to do would be to expel Zimbabwe from the ICC, not necessarily on political grounds explicitly, but simply because cricket in Zimbabwe is no longer being administered and organised properly, that the board is no longer independent of government, and because selections are no longer taking place on the basis of merit. However, there are two reasons why this has not happened. The first is that there is a "third world" versus "first world" divide in international cricket, and some aspects of the administration of the game are a post-colonial nightmare. For many years Australia and England (and, prior to their expulsion from international cricket in the apartheid days, South Africa) had the right of veto over any decisions made in the ICC, and the other countries still have a lingering resentment of this. Once this veto was abolished, the Asian cricketing powers were eager to elevate other countries to membership of the ICC so as to gain a voting majority against the former "colonial" powers, and this is one factor that led to the elevation of Zimbabwe in the first place. Expelling Zimbabwe would increase the voting power of the "first world" bloc, and many people in India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka do not want this.

Secondly, what are the objections to Zimbabwe playing international cricket? For one thing, Zimbabwe is ruled by a dictatorship that restricts civil liberties. Well, other members of the ICC include Bangladesh and Pakistan, who are not exactly wonderful on this score either. South Africa is ruled by people who consider Robert Mugabe to be one of their old comrades in arms. If Zimbabwe were kicked out of world cricket on these grounds, then this would "set a bad example" to Pakistan and Bangladesh in particular. Did I mention that the governing body of cricket in Pakistan is traditionally a branch of the army and the head of its board is usually a general? That complicates matters further, and rules out the "We should expel Zimbabwe because the government controls cricket in the country" argument. The government of Sri Lanka appoints that nation's cricket board too (although not through the army). As for "Zimbabwe selects players on something other than merit", well, South Africa does that too. (Affirmative action with respect to black and coloured players). One would think that "Zimbabwe should be expelled because Zimbabwean cricket is a shambles" might be enough, but the organisation of cricket in a number of countries is a shambles (most notably Pakistan again, also (sadly) the West Indies). The ICC is also a shambles, having demonstrated in its organisation of the recently completed World Cup that it is an organisation that could not collectively get pissed in Porto)

Australia was scheduled to tour Zimbabwe later this year. The Australian players did not want to make the tour. The Australian government definitely did not want the tour to go ahead.

However, until recently it stated that as Cricket Australia is a private organisation, then it is not the government's job to decide. The Australian board mainly cares about making as much money as possible, but in the crunch it did not want to tour either, and really would have just preferred that the whole issue would go away. However, it did not especially want to upset the ICC, and it did not really want to pay a fine. Quite typically, the board asked the government to solve its problem for it.

When it initially got this request from Cricket Australia, the Australian government made comments about how it did want the tour to go ahead, and about how it might be willing to "indemnify" Cricket Australia against a fine from the ICC. What this means is that Cricket Australia would have cancelled the tour as this is what the government wanted and that the government would then have paid the fine on its behalf. This would have been an easy enough thing for the government to do - after all it was only taxpayers' money,. However, when the government said this, it had not comprehended the full implications, which was that the fine would be paid to the Zimbabwean board in compensation, and that as the Zimbabwean board is controlled by Robert Mugabe, paying the fine would essentially mean giving a gift of $2 million directly to Robert Mugabe.

Once the Australian government comprehended this, paying the fine was not a feasible option. The Australian government was not going to give Robert Mugabe a $2 million gift. The only other option was to take advantage of the ICC's rule that a government ban could stop a tour without a fine. In defence of John Howard, I believe he genuinely did this as a last resort. The alternative was worse.

However, from the point of view of Cricket Australia, there was another alternative, which was to simply withdraw from the ICC. The ICC is very culpable concerning Zimbabwe. The participating teams in the recent World Cup and other ICC tournaments have been given a share of the profits of the tournament. This includes Zimbabwe. The ICC is already partly funding Robert Mugabe, and Australia is partly implicated simply by participating in the ICC's tournaments. The recent World Cup was such an organisational debacle that there is no great loss in not participating in future such events. If Australia were to leave, the ICC certainly could not stop Australia playing its traditional series against England, and if they tried then the national boards of England, New Zealand and probably other nations as well would follow Australia out of the ICC. Australian cricket is also based on expectations of receiving money from playing India frequently (next January's series between Australia and India is anticipated to be extremely lucrative), but it is hard to imagine that India would not find a way to continue playing Australia - they need the revenues they receive from playing such games

What Australia should have done was called the ICC's bluff. It may have suffered some short term financial insecurity as a consequence, but it would have regained control over its own destiny and would have at least fixed these kinds of problems for good.

This would have been good, because there is another cricketing crisis in the background. When Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer was murdered in March after Pakistan's elimination from the World Cup. most of us speculated that the murder was in some way connected with subcontinental bookmakers, as cricket's problems with match fixing and betting were well known. I expected that this would confirm and the details would leak out relatively quickly, but it did not happen. One thing I did not take adequate notice of was a series of strange articles that were published about the religious devotion of certain members of the Pakistan team, in particular captain Imzamam-al-Haq. Apparently a significant portion of the Pakistan team were devotees of the Islamic Tablighi Jamaat movement, which stresses living a pure and authentic Islamic lifestyle and which is aggressively evangelical. Apparently the team was factionalised between devotees of this movement and non-devotees, and there were prayer rooms set up in team hotels and Tablighi Jamaat clerics mingled with the team and were present in the dressing room. Allegedly Bob Woolmer saw this as divisive and detracting from the team performance.

There have been various leaks and observations since Woolmer's death suggesting that he must have been murdered by someone he knew and who was connected to the team. The possibility is very real that he was murdered by someone in or closely connected to the team, and the reason that he was murdered was mixed in with fundamentalist Islam rather than bookmaking. There are now doubts that the final e-mail sent by Woolmer (resigning his position as coach) before he died was written by him (it does not sound like it was written by a native English speaker). which again suggest that the murderer may have been some what connected to the team, and somehow had access to his laptop. (Of course, this story has already long passed six impossible things happening before breakfast, so perhaps it was some bizarre combination of the two). The fact that we still do not know who killed Woolmer after two months does make me wonder if some sort of cover-up has gone in within the Pakistan team, and if so the "Islam" explanation becomes more likely and the bookmaking explanation less so, I think

I do not know what happened, obviously. The story gets stranger and stranger. It may be that the state of the Pakistan cricket team is symptomatic of the decay and radicalisation of the country of Pakistan every bit as much as the decay of the Zimbabwean cricket team is as symptomatic of the decay of that country. If so, countries such as Australia and England should not be playing Pakistan either. However great the rivalry between Pakistan and India, one cannot imagine some of these revelations increasing the eagerness of India to play Pakistan regularly either. If the ICC mandates regular tours of Pakistan, then this may well be another reason why the ICC is not an organisation that it is advantageous for cricketing authorities in Australia, England, or elsewhere to be connected to any more.

(11)

Yesterday, I came across this story, about the late and much lamented former England international cricketer and cricket coach for Pakistan, Bob Woolmer:

Speculations are rife about foul play being involved in Pakistan coach Bob Woolmers death. Reports indicate that some current senior Pakistan team members might have fixed both matches, against West Indies and Ireland.

It is being debated in cricketing circles that he could have been killed to cover up match-fixing by the Pakistani team. The Pakistan team would not be allowed to fly back home till the investigations are over.

And, although I never blogged about this yesterday, I did talk about this yesterday, while surrounding by Iain Dale who at least pretended to be interested, and by three young Conservative ladies who almost went to sleep with excitement. This was on DoughtyStreetTV last night, by way of mere introduction to saying how very much I had enjoyed reading this short but sweet recollection by Peter Briffa, about how Woolmer was one of his teachers at prep school. We have not, I said, heard the last of this story. I also said there would be a tax cut, although I cannot recall if I actually said it might be income tax. So, I had a pretty good night of it.

Because, the Woolmer story has now erupted from the recesses of the internet and gone global:

NEW DELHI: Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer, found dead a day after Pakistan's shock defeat at the hands of Ireland, was murdered, police have confirmed. Although the Pakistan Cricket Board has been claiming that the autopsy conducted on Woolmer was inconclusive, sources, according to Times Now, have confirmed that investigators have indeed said the coach was murdered.

In fact, the Jamaican Police is said to be already ascertaining the whereabouts of some of the Pakistan players at the time the murder could have taken place. Sources confirmed to Times Now that further questioning of Pakistan players is on the cards as well.

The confirmation comes soon after allegations by former Pakistan pacer Sarfaraz [wrong spelling – should be "Sarfraz"] Nawaz that Woolmer was murdered by the betting syndicate. The outspoken Nawaz has said that almost everybody in control of the game is involved in betting and Woolmer was perhaps about to reveal all in a book.

Since they spell Sarfraz Nawaz wrongly, I cannot help wondering if they have any other of their facts wrong, such as little details like: "police have confirmed".

For, on the other hand, there is this, from Woolmer's wife:

"No I don't see any conspiracy in his death. I am aware that his death is being viewed as a suspicious death. He had nothing to do with the match fixing controversy and any such person being involved is highly unlikely. We never got any threats as far as I know."

I await developments with extreme interest. Not least because, whatever the truth of these now very noisy rumours, they do rather put this ruckus in a somewhat different light, do they not?

As for the mere cricket, try reading this.

UPDATE: The BBC now confirms that Woolmer's death is being treated as "suspicious".

(18)

I have no idea whether the journalists at the Daily Telegraph make it their business to read this blog (although they most certainly should do so, naturally) but this article nicely backed up my point the other day about the economic upsurge of India.

In my posting here, a number of commenters scoffed with disbelief that some jumped up rating agency should be so daft as to proclaim that India's debt rating has improved, and that the country'[s economy is improving. "My dear boy, this is India!" you can hear them cry. And one commenter, bless him, even suggested that India is still far behind most of Latin America, a comment sure to provoke hollow laughs from any entrepreneural type hoping to prosper in Chavez's Venezuela. Of course, as I said at the time, India is still moving up from a relatively low base. During the immediate post-war years, the East Asian economies in places like South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan powered ahead while India, influenced by those dreadful Fabians and London School of Economics types who stuffed the old colonial service, embraced socialism, planning and progressive taxes. But the fact, that cannot be denied, is that this country, with its vast, English-speaking population, relatively stable system of property rights and its admirable enthusiasm for the world's greatest sport, is shooting the economic lights out.

There is just no pleasing some people, it seems.

(16)

The good news from India keeps coming. This week, the international credit rating agency, Standard & Poors pronounced that the "Third World" nation had become so prosperous that the risk of lending money to the country had fallen significantly.

New York-based Standard & Poor's said it upgraded India's sovereign rating to BBB-, the lowest investment grade rating, from BB+, the highest junk rating.

The rating revision could help reduce India's borrowing costs on the global market.

As anyone who has taken out a personal loan or mortgage will know, getting a stronger credit rating is a big deal. India is now ahead of economic basket-cases such as Argentina or Venezuela, and has got there by a programme of economic liberalisation. I keep banging on about the vigour of the Indian economy - notwithstanding the still-grinding poverty in parts of the country - because it is probably the most positive economic story of our times. It shouts, loud and clear, that markets work. Market economics is doubly potent when combined with a relatively robust civil society, protection of property rights and the priceless asset of an international language like English.

Meanwhile, India-based Tata Steel has sealed its purchase of UK steelmaker Corus.

(19)

The Times reports that Rickshaw pullers reach end of 'inhuman' road

Rickshaw pullers ... could soon be out of work after the Indian city of Calcutta banned the trade as inhuman.

The vote was boycotted by the Opposition, but Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the West Bengal Chief Minister, told the state legislature: “In the 21st century it is not right for a human being to pull another human being.

It certainly would be inhuman if the rickshaw pullers were forced to this labour - but they are not. The only force involved is that Mr Bhattacharjee is forcing the rickshaw pullers to give up their livelihood. Compensation is promised but the plan for that seems haphazard and uncertain. In any case compensation diminishes but does not annul the wrong done to people who were making an honest living.

What is so bad about human muscle rather than batteries or internal combustion engines being used to power a conveyance? There are plenty of dirtier jobs, plenty more dangerous, plenty (if it were any business of Mr Bhattacharjee's, which it is not) in which the generally perceived difference of class between the person paying for a service and the person providing it is greater than it is between a rickshaw puller and the person riding on the rickshaw. (Though if the class aspect is what bothers you, bear in mind that according to the leader of the Opposition in the state Assembly, quoted in Kolkata Newsline, many of the users of rickshaws are "school goers and senior citizens". Not that it matters. If every rickshaw user were a sneering rich businessman with a villain's moustache, it would still be a private matter between the sneering rich businessmen and the rickshaw pullers whether and at what price the latter sold transportation to the former.)

Such has been the strength of the idea of socialism for a century or more that even those who explicitly reject it often adopt its assumptions.

Socialists have always claimed to defend the dignity of labour, and have always been lying. If they really believed that the man who labours with his body was fully equal to the man who labours with his brain they would not have presumed to deny him the right to direct his own life and sell his own labour in the way he thought best. Rickshaw pullers are only one example of people whose dignity has been violated in this way, and India is far from being the only place where it happens. Readers will be able to think of many other examples closer to home.

Incidentally, pound to a rupee the twenty first century will not have run its course by the time the city of Calcutta bans everything but human-powered rickshaws on evironmental grounds.

(14)

If this deal goes ahead, it will be the largest example yet of an Indian firm buying a British one. How the world has turned, 60 years on from the end of the British Empire in India.

Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus Group Plc is set to recommend a 4.1 billion pound takeover by India's Tata Steel Ltd as soon as Friday, sources close to the matter said.

Corus' board met on Wednesday evening to rubber stamp the deal but is waiting until Tata's board meets, which is expected on Thursday or Friday, before making an official announcement to its shareholders, the sources said.

It will be interesting to see how those anti-globalisation campaigners, who in the past were the same sort of folk to demand that the rich West gives aid to "Third World" nations like India, respond to Indian business purchases of British and other European firms. That is the trouble with fighting evil capitalists - one minute they are wearing pin-striped suits and speak in posh English accents, the next, something quite different. It must be very annoying.

(5)

Earlier today, Tim Blair laughingly reported on a senior Pakistani shi'ite cleric falling victim to a suicide bomber - presumably fielded by his sectarian rivals. The manner of this man's demise carries a strong element of poetic justice, considering he allegedly supported Hamas and Hezbollah - both terrorist groups not unfamiliar with "martyrdom operations". However, I do not feel as jolly about this cleric's death as many of the commenters on the linked Blair thread. Certainly, when a prominent Hamas and Hezbollah supporter gets his comeuppance in the so-very-appropriate form of a zealot with a bomb strapped to his gut, one could be forgiven for revelling in schadenfreude. Trouble is, such an event is precisely the sort of thing that could trigger a large-scale Islamist movement that overthrows Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf, or adds further impetus to ongoing efforts to assassinate him.

The Economist's recent article on Pakistan is a timely reminder that the West's current alliance with that nation is conditional in the extreme - and almost wholly reliant on Musharraf - whose death could not come soon enough for a large number of people he rules over. If he is assassinated, the General's successor might well be cut from a far more fundamentalist cloth. If this circumstance arises, a nuclear-armed Pakistan becomes an even more alarming prospect; raising the stakes over Kashmir and making nuclear weapons proliferation more likely. The risk of a nuclear weapon being detonated in a Western city is proportionate to the greenness of Musharraf's replacement.

If the Pakistani leadership was to fall into fundamentalist hands, this would represent a massive setback in the global struggle against international Islamic terrorism. The mission in Afghanistan would be deeply complicated, for a start. Then there's the problem of Pakistan becoming an even greater hub for Islamofascists. I will stop there; the list of conceivable heinous consequences could fill many pages. Unfortunately, "our boy" in Islamabad has made a lot of bitter enemies during his rule, and - according to the Economist article linked above - has also governed in a way that makes a post-Musharraf Pakistan a very ugly prospect indeed. Musharraf's removal or death would likely be catastrophic to the interests of those nations struggling against Islamofascism.

Certainly, the Pakistani cleric copped it most aptly. However, any gloating at the nature of his death may well be overshadowed by wider consequences relating to it.

(19)

It now looks like the death toll in the sickening atrocity in Bombay will probably top two hundred innocent civilians, with hundred more injured, many of them horribly maimed. But then as any Indian could have told you years ago, evil horrors like this perpetrated by Islamist psychopaths do not just happen in New York, London and Tel Aviv.

So tell me, how long before the good folks at Democratic Underground find some way to blame BushMacHitler for this? This is a truly ghastly attack and we all know that America-centric buffoons infected with Bush Derangement Syndrome cannot even conceive of something bad happening which does not somehow involve the United States.

I invite the commentariat to find the articles somehow blaming the US administration for this. You know it is going to happen.

(3)

European steel giant Arcelor looks as if it is going to be bought by the Indian Mittal family company. If the ink is allowed to dry on this deal, it will create the world's biggest steelmaker and do so at a time when metal prices have been rising strongly, as have pretty much most other commodities.

That India's economy has been on the rise is pretty much a part of the received economic wisdom these days. What is clear, though, is that country is a lot more than about lots of call centres. It is becoming a breeding ground for a whole crop of entrepreneurs able and willing to take on the biggest businesses in the established industrial world and where necessary, put a few noses out of joint in the process.

(1)

It has been a while since my last visit to the excellent India Uncut blog - too long.

First laugh - Amit's latest post links to a chef dispensing advice concerning prawns. As an Aussie, I was rather amused to discover some poor Seppo writing in, wondering what to do with that whole 'vein thing' running down the back of a prawn. Kiss it goodbye or let it lie? Basically, if you bought your prawns to impress - as a stand-out ingredient in some culinary masterpiece you've had up your sleeve for months - then you should clean them. Even if the prawns are merely a somewhat important ingredient amongst a few others, you should clean them. If you are using those bland tiddlers from Thailand - to add an interesting texture to your gruel or something along those lines - then don't bother cleaning them.

I swear, I was born with that innate knowledge. Bewdy, mate. Throw another... oh, never mind.

Now, if you bought your prawns to impress, and in doing so you selected those aforementioned bland Thai tiddlers - then you should clean them, because that's your punishment for being a tightarse. Apologies, the one minute I spent looking through idiotic online Strine dictionaries did not yield the definition of "tightarse". Note to the confused; if you are a tightarse, you are cheap. And you know who you are.

Second laugh - some politically incorrect Indian astrologer has decided that "Mumbai" is somewhat unlucky, and "Bombay" is rather more auspicious. Whatever. All the terribly clever weathermen on Australia's two publicly-funded television broadcasters take great pride in saying "Moom-Bye", like it is a signifier of one's magnificent cultural adjustment. A decisive strike in your valiant quest to bash down those imperialist Anglosized verbal imposts, comrade! When I was in Bombay, I did not meet a single Indian who termed their fair city 'Mumbai' - although a lot of Western tourists did. Having said that, perhaps the Indians did too, because I believe the correct pronounciation is "Mum (like your non-American, Pommy/Aussie mother) - Bay", and - if you say it quickly (which is invariably the case, because Indians are the greatest communicators in the world) - that sounds rather similar to "Bombay". Then again, I do not know, because I do not speak Hindi, and am basically a stupid Westerner.

(74)

Some authoritarian asses in India who are enraged that a work of fiction called the Da Vinci Code will be shown in cinemas to anyone who wishes to see it, have threatened to starve themselves to death in protest if the movie is not banned by the state.

If these particular Christian protesters are as good as their word and are so keen to snuff it and thereby put their theories to the test, namely that there is a God and their actions (i.e. attempting to use the force of law to prevent freedom of expression followed by suicide if they are unsuccessful) would be viewed favourably by their deity, well why should anyone want to stop them?

(62)

I am just as keen on universal civil liberties as the next Samizdatista, however I must concede that the case of India vis-à-vis the Danish cartoons made me briefly question my blanket commitment to the freedom of the press. I yearn for a major Australian newspaper to have the stones to print these cartoons in self defence and defiance, however I would argue that any editor of an Indian publication who allows them to be published is astonishingly irresponsible, given India's history and continuing record of bloody communal violence. If these cartoons found their way into a publication with a moderate degree of circulation, the question would not be "will there be deaths?", but "how many?" Upon reflection, I certainly do not believe that government censorship is the answer, however it is marginally more justifiable there than in any other nation I can think of. Because of this, it is crucial that Indian editors exercise their judgement wisely - and not publish the cartoons. Hopefully there will come a time when India is not the exception (regarding this issue) amongst countries governed by the rule of law.

I should mention that I have huge faith in the wisdom of Indians.

(50)

One of the advantages of having a comments section is providing me with new ideas to write about, even when the comment in question is so flat-out wrong that it makes me gape with amazement at the screen. In my recent post about the economic fallacies surrounding immigration, a commenter opined that Indian immigrants into the UK were leeching money out of this country by not re-investing it in new businesses but merely writing cheques to "inactive" folks back in the old homeland.

It is a lousy argument on a number of levels, and I am not even going to dwell long on the obvious dangers of inciting distrust and hostility towards economically successful immigrant groups and accusing them of not being sufficiently "patriotic" by not spending all their profits in Britain. The argument also fails because it ignores the subjectivity of economic value. If a businessman earns a million pounds in profit from a drycleaning business in Birmingham and sends the odd cheque back to his aged relatives in Bombay, then how is economic value being destroyed? In the eyes of the businessman, helping his loved ones is worth more to him than investing that money in something else, even though other people might disagree with that decision and think him to be deluded. It is none of my business to force a change in that decision.

Also, that businessman is doing something that supporters of a liberal civil society have traditionally supported: philanthropy. How can it be wrong for a man to steer a portion of his wealth to his dependants, educate them, feed and house them? Who gives any entity the right, least of all the State, the power to say yay or nay to that decision? The argument that such transfers are wrong is an echo of the old Bethamite notion that the State is entitled to seize wealth if that maximises the "greatest happiness of the greatest number".

A final point. No doubt large sums of money are paid by immigrants and migrant workers back to the points of origin all the time. This has happened for centuries. These transfer often sustained people in great hardship.

I have come across some dubious economic arguments in my time, but the idea that immigrants paying money to their folks is some sort of parasitical waste has to be one of the weakest.

(5)

On the anniversary of last year's tsunami, is it time to revisit the damage that this natural disaster may have caused in Myanmar? The secretive and totalitarian government is not known for providing welfare to its citizens. The official death toll was finalised at 86, although sources from within the country placed the number of deaths in the hundreds.

The official death toll was established by the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC) in co-operation with the Myanmar Red Cross. The Myanmar Red Cross (pdf file) works closely with the Myanmar state and 23 members of the 37 member governing council are appointed by the government or act as representatives of its ministries. The IFRC, the Myanmar Red Cross, the United Nations Development Programme, UNICEF and World Vision were already working within the country and inspected the affected islands in January 2005. Their conclusions were in line with the government's assessment:

The group concluded that Myanmar has been largely spared from the destructive forces of the earthquake and subsequent Tsunami, and that the initial emergency needs have been met by the Government and by the aid community. The group’s assessment of the scale of impact is in line with the Government’s own findings. The group confirms a death toll of 60-80, and estimates the longer-term affected population at 10-15,000, of whom 5-7,000 are directly affected......

Over the course of the last 10 days a series of assessment and verification missions were undertaken by one or more of the partners already working in Myanmar - to the Rakhine Coast, the Ayeyarwady Delta and the southern coast including the most populated islands of the Myeik archipelago and the islands off Kawthaung around Lampi Island.

Moreover, Kerry Howley, assistant editor at Reason, questioned these statistics on January 7th 2005. All of the organisations that carried out the assessments were unlikely to disagree with the government's figures since they wished to continue their own work.

I spent last year working with a weekly newspaper in Myanmar, where I attempted to cover some of the worst floods to hit the country in 30 years. Getting people to talk about the flooding, which left thousands homeless last August, was tantamount to asking them to denounce the dictatorship. Government officials hung up when my translator asked for specifics (except for one who helpfully explained, "it's not our culture to talk to the public.") The government's Department of Meteorology and Hydrology would not reveal the water levels or would simply lie. The local Red Cross representatives claimed they couldn't tell me about the floods because the branch office in that area was, in fact, flooded. Major International NGOs like WorldVision were afraid their operations would be halted if they so much as revealed how many blankets they were distributing. After much hand-wringing, WorldVision representatives gave me the story, at which point a government censor perused the piece and expunged all reference to death and destruction.

One Year on: when will we know how many died in Myanmar? A United Nations report that 'agrees' with the Myanmar government's own figures should be treated with grave suspicion. The final damage and death toll remains hostage to the murderers of Yangon.

(8)

Once 1989 had passed, the West assumed that communism had lost its power and would trouble vast areas of the globe. Its effects were confined to a few reactionary holdouts such as Cuba or Corin Redgrave and within a few years Soviet symbols had moved from shock to chic. Even the last of the totalitarian movements, the Sendero Luminoso of Peru, had been smashed.

Yet, despite this process of forgetting, it appears that the twenty-first century may witness self-styled revolutionary movements establishing dictatorships of the proletariat and peasants. The most vulnerable country is Nepal and it is disheartening to read of peasants rising up against their communist oppressors.

However, the Maoists have also received several setbacks in recent weeks. People living in 12 village development committee areas in the Dullu region - a heavily Maoist affected villages 600 kilometers west of capital - revolted against the rebels. The uprising began after the Maoists started forcibly recruiting full-time cadres. More than 20,000 people spontaneously organized a rally in the areas denouncing Maoist atrocities.

The Nepalese Maoists, masking their plans behind a demand for a constituent assembly, pose as would-be democrats whilst terrorising the areas of the country that they control. Recalling the fate of the Socialist Revolutionaries in 1918, one would hold out little hope of a Nepalese 'Constituent Assembly' holding power.

Yet even graver is the rapid spread of the Maoist 'Naxalite' insurgency in India which has spread to nearly half of the country under the apathetic eyes of the government. These Maoists are linked to the Nepalese party and, by employing the same tactics, hope to enjoy similar success. This increase in political risk threatens the future of India since investment shies away from countries threatened by war or terrorism.

(16)

There is an interesting article on Reuters about how the vast Indian film industry, or 'Bollywood' as it is widely known, is reflecting something of an improvement in relations between India and its neighbour, Pakistan. The article says that Pakistanis, once badly portrayed in Indian films, now get a more rounded image.

It is always unwise to make big conclusions about a few examples of popular culture, but bear in mind that in nations like India, the movie industry has enormous influence, particularly over the young. And if millions of young Indian people increasingly come to look at their Pakistani peers as regular, ordinary folk, then something very positive is happening in one of the fastest-growing movie and entertainment businesses in the world. It is all the more heartening given that only a few years ago the airwaves were thick with fears about a major military clash between India and Pakistan over the disputed territory of Kashmir.

Globalisation in action, perhaps?

(7)

Recently the IEA sent me a flier about this book in praise of globalisation, and I went round there and bought a copy from them (at an enticingly reduced price – thank you Adam). That second link is to an IEA review of the b