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Richard Gladwell View Drop Down
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Posts: 20 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Richard Gladwell Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: ISAF Youth Worlds
    Posted: 27 Jan 16 at 12:14pm
Except that two wrongs don't make a right.

Further the Malaysians and ISAF issued a Notice of Race on December 8, 2014 - over a year from the start of the regatta, saying that it was open to all countries in good standing with ISAF. Israel is in good standing with the ISAF/World Sailing.

Then they started playing the political games. It is not acceptable, and the ISAF should not and will not be allocating world championships to countries that want to do this sort of thing.
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Chris 249 View Drop Down
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Posts: 2041 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Chris 249 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 27 Jan 16 at 1:31pm
Originally posted by Rupert

The Irish never banned the English from anything?

Good point.  What about Lichtenstien? Do they have a lake?

Oh dear, it looks like the entire European Community is out; they banned Nigerian teams in 1995.  And why should the nations that are part of the EC be allowed to escape the consequences of banning nationals teams, when members of organisations of Muslim nations cannot?

The Malaysian attitude, to their own nationals of Chinese origin and to the Israelis, is deplorable.  However, history is pretty simple - if ISAF can't hold world titles in nations that do that sort of thing, there can no longer any world titles in the European Community; any of the Arab League; any of the Commonwealth; China; or the USA.

So where do we go now for ISAF world titles?  What about Russia or North Korea?   





Edited by Chris 249 - 27 Jan 16 at 1:36pm
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Posts: 2041 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Chris 249 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 27 Jan 16 at 1:53pm
Originally posted by Richard Gladwell

Except that two wrongs don't make a right.


So ISAF and the Commonwealth should have allowed South African teams chosen on race to sail in ISAF world titles?  Our sport should effectively welcome such base conduct?

A few years back I was sitting in a lonely farmhouse in South Africa.  A relative by marriage was there.  He had been the subject of a feature story in Outside or one of those big American outdoors mags for his work in bringing down racist barriers in his sport.  He was reaching up into the rafter to read the stored diaries of people who stayed in the farmhouse when they were banned for their anti-apartheid work. Some of their friends suffered more simple punishments - one of my wife's friends had her father die in her arms when she was about 14, after he was shot in the hallway at home.  Another of the family was a national level sailor, who lost his chance to do world titles because of the Gleneagles Agreement and later UN action.  No one in the family would doubt that the loss of the chance to sail in a world titles under your own flag was a minor issue, if it helped bring about the end of such barbarity.

Whether the Malaysians had the right to take the high moral ground seems doubtful, but the issue is that this is not a simple question. Either sailing accepts that some countries will sometimes suffer action from some host nations, OR sailing risks becoming an international pariah sport as would happen if it ignored boycotts such as those organised by the Commonwealth or the European Community.  And the moral issues of allowing kids to sail against other kids who were not the best in their country, but only the best with the "right" coloured skin or the right ethnicity, is hard to overlook.

While two wrongs may not make a right, saying "OUR boycotts were fine, YOUR boycotts are not" doesn't look all that great either.  The other alternative, which is to say "we should have welcomed and cheered athletes who were chosen for their skin colour as they march under the flag of a nation that oppresses its own citizens" doesn't look crash hot either.  

I don't agree with the Malaysian stand (although I wonder whether the compromise was a reasonable one in the real world of politics) but this does appear to be a very vexed, multi-sided and complex issue rather than a simple case of ISAF being whackers.

Maybe ISAF and the Commonwealth should also issue an official apology to the apartheid regime of South Africa for banning their sailors? After all, if it was wrong to do so isn't it immoral not to apologise for the past sins?  And at least if the sport apologises to the apartheid regime ISAF will get lots and lots of press coverage.





Edited by Chris 249 - 27 Jan 16 at 2:06pm
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Presuming Ed View Drop Down
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Posts: 641 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Presuming Ed Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 27 Jan 16 at 2:43pm
Originally posted by Chris 249

 So where do we go now for ISAF world titles?  What about Russia or North Korea? 

Switzerland? Sweden? 
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Chris 249 View Drop Down
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Posts: 2041 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Chris 249 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 28 Jan 16 at 9:34am
Hmm, this is making for interesting reading.

Sweden?  Nope - they had an anti-apartheid boycott as early as 1968.

It looks as if the Swiss sporting bodies went very close to boycotting South Africa; not sure if they went all the way, and the Swiss played part in rejecting the WW1 Central Powers from the post ww1 games.

The Norwegian sports bodies boycotted the German authorities when their country was occupied - jeezers, how could they let politics (in the form of their own country being overtaken by Nazis) get in the way of sport?   

Brazil, Luxembourg and Portugal have all played their part in preventing nations from doing Olympic Games in the past, namely the Central Powers after WW1.

North Korea is looking good!
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Posts: 8956 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Rupert Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 28 Jan 16 at 4:25pm
Originally posted by Chris 249

North Korea is looking good!


Is this on the theory that allowing nobody into your country isn't discriminating against any particular race or religion? Sounds like a plan to me. I predict a medal glut for the home nation.
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Posts: 20 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Richard Gladwell Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 28 Jan 16 at 10:02pm
So at what point do you guys think we should stop perpetuating this "it's OK to discriminate because it has been going on for the past 100 years" .

Or do you think it is about time to put a circuit breaker across this sort of nonsense and may stop passing this behaviour on our kids and their kids etc etc?

Or have we learned something from the last 80 years - Apartheid in South Africa, Olympic boycott of Afghanistan, 1936 Olympics etc.

And decide that we don't really have to infect Youth Sailing with these attitudes or allow them to be the tools of politicians who are quite happy to ban Israeli kids from a sport, but will turn a blind eye to serious trade with Israel to provide components for the Malaysian IT industry.

And don't forget of course that just over a year before the Youth Worlds the world body as a co-organiser put out a Notice of Race inviting all countries in good standing with the ISAF to send teams to the Youth Worlds. Then the same body sits by or is caught napping when a situation they saw coming in November 2011 eventuates. Wouldn't it have been a little more honest to say all countries except Israel are allowed to compete when they sent out their Notice of Race?

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Posts: 6649 		Post Options Post Options   Quote JimC Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 29 Jan 16 at 12:07am
Well, if we say it has to stop now because right now there are no nations we want to boycott, then that looks suspiciously like hypocrisy. Especially as I'm damn sure that if a South Africa like scenario was to turn up again our politicos would cheerfully embarrass our sporting bodies without turning a hair if they thought there were a few votes in it. Best just to accept that its not a perfect world, and that, hard as it may be to believe, politicos have been known to give guarantees and break them, and there's not a damn thing a world sporting body can do about it. Which is probably a good thing. Would you want FIFA over-ruling the NZ government?
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Posts: 20 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Richard Gladwell Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 29 Jan 16 at 3:19am
Weird as it may seem, in NZ at least people are sick and tired of sport being used as a cheap option by politicians. But having been through the Apartheid era 1948-1994, and then the 1980 Olympic boycott because of Afghanistan some of us at least have learned that they achieve absolutely nothing. The bans that have worked have been trade and economic sanctions.

Sorry to hear that elsewhere there are people who are keen to keep repeating history in the hope of a different outcome. 

It is not about a sports body over-ruling the NZ Govt or any other government. If the MAS and ISAF say a year out from the event that it is open at all member nations in good standing, then that is what it has to be. If host countries are going to use sport to ban athletes from Israel or anywhere else for political reasons, then at least have the guts to say so, and then see if they get allocated the event by the world body.

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Posts: 2041 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Chris 249 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 29 Jan 16 at 9:22am
"At least some of us have learned that they achieve absolutely nothing."

Have you told Niel Barnard, one of the main enforcers of apartheid?  To quote him, a boycott "turned out to be a hugely successful lever of political influence".

Have you told the University of Otago's Douglas Booth, who writes that " the deracialization of sport in the mid-1970s (under the impetus of the boycott) may have had a greater impact on the discarding of racial ideology in South Africa than commentators have thus far admitted."

Have you told South African sports administrator Arnold Stofile? He said that the "(Sporting boycott) affected all of them, every male, every household in a sports-mad country whose main source of pride regarding the rest of the world was its sports prowess"

Have you told Anthony Payne of Uni of Sheffield, who says  "Gleneagles was part of a broader movement which unquestionably had an effect on the political outlook of the Afrikaner political elite."

Have you told David Black, author of "Rugby and the South Africa nation", who says that economic sanctions did NOT do the trick in South Africa (the whites were too wealthy to be really affected) but that "the impact of sports sanctions in general, and rugby sanctions in particular, were important".

Have you told Peter Hain, recognised in two countries for his anti-apartheid work, who was one of those pushing for a boycott.

Have you told Peter Sommerville, formerly of the BBC, who notes that "on trips as a BBC journalist to South Africa between 1990 and 1995 I spoke to politicians and sportsmen from the white community, visited rugby clubs and saw the near desperation of the white, sports-mad community to be part of world sport.  Under apartheid, especially after the mid-80s, white South Africans felt isolated and knew in their hearts that apartheid was responsible......The sports boycott had its effect."

Re "If the MAS and ISAF say a year out from the event that it is open at all member nations in good standing, then that is what it has to be."

May one ask exactly how that is to be achieved, if the government decides otherwise? 

Not all of us are keen to repeat history in the hope of a different outcome.  Some see that in an imperfect world it may be OK at times to repeat the history of the South African boycott in the hope of the SAME outcome - a change in racist policies. 

Sport IS political, from the local councils giving favourable rent to local clubs, to the vast taxpayer funding of TNZ, to claims that we should sail against racist nations.  And with due respect, surely it is reasonable to listen to those who were there in the epicentre of the change in South Africa when they say that sports boycotts CAN make a difference in ending vile, racist regimes.







Edited by Chris 249 - 29 Jan 16 at 11:07am
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