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Ireland came back down to earth in their last World Cup game on Wednesday. Having shocked powerhouse Pakistan and Test team Bangladesh at this tournament, they came up against a Sri Lanka team preparing for a semifinal and saw what it takes to truly rise to the top of the game.
The Virginia campus killer paused in the two-hour gap between the first and second shootings to post a package containing a video, photographs and a multi-page statement to a United States television headquarters. NBC News received the package on Wednesday and handed it to the FBI.
Although a significant number of former white farmers and enterprises remain, the future of white land ownership remains contested. At the same time, substantial numbers of Zimbabwe’s peasants, women and labourers object that they have been excluded from the redistribution.
Is the international community awaiting an invitation from a credible alliance of rebellious Zimbabwe ministers and opposition leaders before it will come to the country’s rescue? Or has the ruling Zanu-PF propelled the country so far down the road to catastrophe that party officials are incapable of reason, and only military intervention will save the country from calamity?
According to the rhetoric of President Robert Mugabe, the appalling situation in Zimbabwe today is the fault of outside influences rather than the brutality and incompetence of his own government. So, when Britain criticises repression in Zimbabwe, Mugabe urges Zimbabweans to stand firm against "imperialist manoeuvres".
The crackdown of March 11 has been dubbed Zimbabwe’s "3/11" — as if to imply that it marks a tipping point in the country’s history. Whether this turns out to be true will depend in large part on the stance adopted by other African states ahead of elections in Zimbabwe next year. It has become clear that Mugabe is increasingly out of step with a critical mass of thinking among African leaders.
Zimbabwe is reeling under a legacy of a racially skewed pattern of land ownership and access. The injustice harks back to Cecil John Rhodes, whose British South African Company "successfully" shut blacks in "native reserves" and placed three-quarters of the land in the hands of white farmers.
Robert Mugabe is not alone in his conviction that Western policies have not helped Zimbabwe. Many African leaders are sensitive to the loud Western condemnation of Mugabe — and their calls for Africa to "do something" — as an intrusion. The pace of Africa’s democratisation, they insist, is a matter of national sovereignty.
There will be three great foreign policy issues facing a post-Mugabe Zimbabwe — its relations with the West, especially economic relations; its relationship with the Chinese; and its relationship with South Africa, writes Stephen Chan. Rebuilding links with the West, severed or damaged by Mugabe, will take time and patience.
No one should be surprised any longer to learn that South Africa is a front in the United States-led war on terror. The revelation that Khalid Rashid has been detained in Pakistan for alleged links to the London Underground bombings of July 7 2005 is only the most recent indication of the quiet battle going on in this country.