Why Is Pakistani Cricket Corrupt?

There is an idea that international sports stars get paid vast amounts for very little work. In the case of the Pakistani cricket team it really is not true- the basic salary for international cricketers is £22000. While that is a considerable sum in Pakistan, it probably goes fast if you are travelling the world almost non stop in countries where the cost of living is much more that in Pakistan.

With millions of pounds being made through betting on cricket and so little being paid to the players it is not difficult to see why so many of their players were corrupt.

So the next question is why are they paid so little and the answer to that seems to be that their is no competitive market for cricket players- the money is largely in international cricket (the IPL is a positive step in the other direction.and players cannot simply offer their services to the highest bidder.

Despite football having teams from nations even more corrupt than Pakistan there are few credible reports of match fixing in international football because the clubs will pay players from poor countries what they are worth.

Pakistan- 2 Options

Bin Laden's compound was almost next door to a military bases. So either

1. Pakistan's military is so unconcerned about security, despite being a frequent target of massive suicide bombings, that they wouldn't think to investigate a mysterious high walled  compound right next to their military academy.
2. They were protecting him.

Great Moments In Sportsmanship

Here:

After Pakistan’s defeat at the hands of India on Wednesday, Pakistan’s captain, Shahid Afridi, garnered praise from the Indian media for his graciousness in defeat.

That bolstered an aura of camaraderie created by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s decision to invite his Pakistani counterpart, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, to watch the game.

By Monday, that atmosphere had evaporated after Mr. Afridi returned home and made comments of a much different tenor.

Asked by a chat show host on Pakistan’s Samaa TV station about what it was like playing in India and the feeling he got from the Indian public, Mr. Afridi had this to say:

“If I speak truthfully, they just can’t have the kind of heart a Muslim has or a Pakistani has. I think they don’t have the sort of big hearts, pure hearts, Allah has given us.”

The comments elicited applause from a studio audience.

Makes our athletes look like Socrates in comparison.

Root Causes Update

India looks likely to execute the surviving culprit of the Bombay massacre, Priyamvada Gopal is upset:

Questions must be asked about the unwillingness of both the Indian and Pakistani states to address the root problems of poverty, expropriation and disaffection that propel mere boys like Kasab into the arms of militias against their own interests.

The root causes that drove the highly educated and well off terrorists to attack the World Trade Center are unspecified. Coincidentally the root causes of terrorism appear to be things that women like Gopal didn't like anyway- Americans, multinationals etc- what a surprise.

A Post Unrelated To Jacqui Smith's Ravenous Consumption Of Pornography.

Is it me or are the new Police Academy films just not that funny?

They've Found A Way To Make Cricket Exciting!

Apparently the attack on the Sri Lanka cricket team in Pakistan proves:

• The war on terror is a bad thing because it has destabilised Pakistan.
• Pushing Pakistan to restore democracy was a bad thing because it has weakened control of the country. (I heard this argument being put by someone or other on Newsnight last night)
  

Neither of these arguments are convincing, Pakistan found itself involved in the Afghanistan war because it had supported the Taliban in the 1990s, who in turn gave Al Qaeda a free hand to run terrorist training camps which ultimately resulted in the 9/11 attacks (not to mention dozens of other attacks prior to that). Pakistan's involvement with terrorism caused the war in Afghanistan not the other wat round.

Similarly it doesn't make much sense to blame the instability on the return of civilian rule (even if the Pakistani leader is a thief of epic proportions), seeing as these terrorists appear to have been trained in camps set up by the Pakistani army to train terrorists to attack India in Kashmir.

Ultimately Pakistan's problems are caused largely by the Pakistani army and intelligence services trying to meddle in its neighbouring countries.

Are Assassinations 'Successful'?

When a political leader is assassinated, such as Benazir Bhutto yesterday, the assassins usually hope to influence the future direction of the society they reside in. There is an argument to say that almost all assassinations fail to achieve the intended result, with the results often being exactly the opposite of what the killers intended. A recent example of that tendency would include the assassination of Pim Fortuyn, after which having demonised him so thoroughly in life by making out that he was some kind of Jorg Haider or Jean Marie Le Pen figure the main Dutch political parties have all adopted significant aspects of his platform. This kind of result is quite common in stable countries where assassins tend to simply make martyrs of the victims whose successors can pursue the same policies with greater vigour as a result of the ensuing public sympathies.

The problem with the Bhutto killing though is that she did not run her party as a constitutional organisation with defined rules of succession, rather it is a dynastic organisation where the power was far too dependent on one person whose death has the potential to create a power struggle that will negate any sympathy votes the party will receive.

Still the list of assassinations that were successful in changing history to the murderers liking is rather short, the assassinations of Admiral Carrero Blanco and Leon Trotsky spring to mind as isolated examples but those are very much the exceptions.

An Ominous Precedent.

Al Qeada are claiming responsibility for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, although they would probably do so even if they weren't responsible. Individual murders as opposed to general mass murder are not a hallmark of that organisation , in fact the only previous targeted assassination that they have carried out, as far as I'm aware, was the killing of the anti Taliban military leader Ahmed Shah Massoud. The date of his killing is notable, the ninth of September 2001, as it appears that it was a prelude to the World Trade Center & Pentagon attacks that occurred two days later.