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Monday, 23 June, 2008

Brian Thornton | 18:09 UK time, Monday, 23 June 2008

mugabe203.jpgZimbabwe
Is this the endgame for Robert Mugabe or is he set to survive, defiant as ever?
Following Morgan Tsvangirai's decision not to contest the presidential run-offs for fear of "genocide," - on Newsnight tonight Archbishop Desmond Tutu, urges African leaders not to recognise Mugabe as the legitimate leader of Zimbabwe. He also says that tougher sanctions would mean greater hardship - but the short term pain would be worth it to get Mugabe out. Here, the Foreign Secretary David Miliband emphasised that Britain no longer recognises the regime of Robert Mugabe as the legitimate government of Zimbabwe. We'll be speaking to South Africa's Ambassador to the UN.
Can we expect a long wave of public sector strikes this summer? Council workers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have voted to strike, after rejecting a 2.45% pay offer. The government are desperate to keep pay settlements below the inflation rate - but will they stand up to the workers?

Match fixing
On the opening day of Wimbledon, we investigate allegations that eight of the 45 tennis matches worldwide being investigated for match fixing may have taken place at the tournament since 2002 - but what are the facts, and what can tennis authorities do about it?

US politics
rally1968.jpgBarack Obama has been making overtures to Hillary Clinton in the hope of consolidating the Democratic vote - and securing substantial funds - increasing the likelihood of a harmonious Democrat convention this summer. That would be a far cry from the scenes 40 years ago at the convention in Chicago. As part of our series on 1968, Peter Marshall has been in Chicago, scene of riots and protests over Vietnam - when the party was riven in two by the war and eight anti-war protestors including Abbie Hoffman and Tom Hayden were charged with conspiracy in connection with violence in and around the Convention - and his film contains some terrific archive and interviews with long ago protesters and police..

Comments

  • Comment number 1.

    UNDERHAND OVERHAND GAMBLING FREE

    Britain is home to the 'national' lottery, big-money wheeler-dealers, casino-mad government with long snouted MPs and the sort of personal debt that makes gamblers of all of us. Is it not fitting that quintessentially British 'Wimbledon' should be rife with the same rot? If, as is claimed, it is thus far free of gambling taint, I guess Gordon, even now, is appointing a 'Fix Tsar' to ensure it is soon brought into line.

  • Comment number 2.

    Yes unfortunately I think we will have public sector strikes.
    I remember it was due to the public sector strikes that the last Labour government was brought down, when Dennis Healey was Chancellor and Jim Callerhan was PM, "the winter of discontent"
    This lead to the Margaret Thatcher government, they didn't strike then.

  • Comment number 3.

    We have a Labour government and the Unions are once again on the rise. Add to this the fact that Labour is effectively bust and we have a recipe for chaos. The Unions know that they are now in a position to literally write government policy and if they don't get their way they will shut Britain down, just like they did in the 70's. Where's Maggie?

  • Comment number 4.

    The handwringing and posturing from all sides is utterly absurd and decidedly gutless! As so often in the past, the lack of action is directly proportionate to the lack of convictionabout what to do. As with Amin and Smith the British Government, if so minded, could have niped a cancer in the bud by taking out the individual responsible (and their orginization) by (elite) force of arms. A covert force directed to do whatsoever is necesary to put the Country back on a genuinely free and democratic footing is what is really needed now. Just as in the past in those other scenarios, unlimited cliches are uttered and nothing effective is done. The UN is impotent and so are all the other institutions. But they do not really lack the capacity to act, they merely lack the will to do so. Hain and his tawdry political shambles in disarray have nothing useful to add. Their competance is plainly insufficient.

  • Comment number 5.

    When are the ten bob fat cat union barons going to realize that what the low paid and others on low fixed incomes need is a cost of living cut, not a potentially inflationary pay rise. They could probably command more public support if they campaigned for a cut in road fuel duty and Council tax. By demanding above inflation pay rises they are playing straight into the hands of the Corporate Nazi stock market parasites who would love to see the public sector privatized. 55% is hardly a strong mandate for industrial action, perhaps 66% support for strike action needs to be made mandatory.

  • Comment number 6.

    ZIMBABWE:
    It is sad the Morgan Tsvangirai has decided to withdraw from the race...But at least, he did it in grace.

    MATCH FIXING:
    Why you this happend on tennis.

    US POLITICS:
    November is coming.

  • Comment number 7.

    I didn't hear any uproar when the seeds of all of this choas in Zimbabwe were being sown. I remember quite distinctly it was reported that many of the Zimwageans supported Mugabe when his gangs of armed thugs and their dupes ran the white farmers off the land or killed them if they stayed, looted the homes, ran the employees off, and basically destroyed the entire economy. This to give the land to the so called "war veterans" who wouldn't know a tractor from a tree house. Now the population has reaped what was sown, famine, violence, dispair and they expect the whole world to drop what it is doing and come resuce them. Perhaps Europeans are inclined to do more for Zimbabwe than the did for Sudan or Burma but as an American, I'm more interested in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq where American security is at issue. After all, America is not the world's policeman. Let China, Russia, France and Germany handle it. The US and UK have had enough activity for awhile.

  • Comment number 8.

    previous comments about 'greedy unions' and winter of discontents make me sick. What about the City of London and estate agents ripping us off for years and helping to fuel price escalation in house prices. This government has stood idly by whilst unfettered free market madness has prevailed with no thought of restraint or control and yet they expect unions who, after all are only 'people' not to put in legitimate wage demands. The days of beer and sandwiches are long gone and union memebership has fallen from a high of twelve million to just over six and a half now.Be fair.

  • Comment number 9.

    MOVEMENTS FOR DEMOCRATIC CHANGE ARE NOT ALWAYS WHAT THEY SEEM (WOLVES IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING)

    Imagine a small, relatively homogeneous group where endogamy is made easier by tribal law/tradition but which discourages the same practices in the larger exclave where it extols the alleged merits of anti-racism, liberalism and equality.

    That group's mean cognitive ability will, over time, be preserved, if not increase.

    Now consider the outgroup (or exclave). Here, the enclave (colonists) encourage equalitarianism, universal suffrage, education for all, even immigration and over time, the larger exclave will deteriorate in cognitive ability through dysgenesis.

    Democracy via universal suffrage (a relatively recent right in the developed world), can be a means whereby one privileged, well connected, group abuses a
    cognitive ability differential (between themselves and the exclave) exploiting the much larger number of voters in the exclave with verbal lures, playing to their impulsivity (think sub-prime), in order to preserve or secure hegemonic advantage for themselves.

    Campaigning and winning universal suffrage isn't, therefore, always the benevolent, humanistic panacea, which many assume (or portray) it to be. Instead, it can just be a cynical means of waging demographic warfare whereby an enclave (an 'alien' elite), disproportionately secures power/wealth for itself at the expense of an exclave.

    Encouragement of differential fertility through expanding education for the brighter half of the exclave is even more cynicall, as it lowers the birth-rate in the exclave in that sector whilst inflating it at the lower end, reducing the future competition fastest in the upper band of ability. This is a stealthy strategy which cleverly offsets the smaller size of the enclave given that their higher mean ability specifically increases their advantage in the upper tail of the distribution.

    One should look to Zimbabwe and sub-Saharan Africa in general merely as an illustration of a past colonisation elsewhere (foreign and domestic). One should always ask whether any one, privileged group promotes 'liberal-democratic' values more fanatically than another, whilst also securing uniquely protective privileges for itself.

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