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Subject: Re: Where's Hydra?

Author: Omid David Tabibi

Date: 11:43:04 05/19/04

Go up one level in this thread


On May 19, 2004 at 14:31:41, Omid David Tabibi wrote:

>On May 19, 2004 at 13:29:38, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On May 19, 2004 at 06:14:12, Omid David Tabibi wrote:
>>
>>>On May 19, 2004 at 06:07:45, Bryan Hofmann wrote:
>>>
>>>>On May 19, 2004 at 05:33:50, Richard Pijl wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On May 19, 2004 at 05:05:54, Jouni Uski wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>Number 1 favourite is missing, why?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Jouni
>>>>>
>>>>>Hydra is officially from the UAE. As I understood the sponsors do not allow
>>>>>Hydra to participate in an event in Israel.
>>>>>Richard.
>>>>
>>>>Someone please tell me that this is a rumor or missunderstanding. They banned a
>>>>chess engine from participation due to the country of its creator?
>>>
>>>Exactly the opposite. We (organizers) told the Hydra team that they are welcomed
>>>to play in Israel under the UAE flag. But apparently their sponsors decided that
>>>they don't want to play in Israel.
>>>
>>>Last time an engine was banned from participation due to the country of its
>>>creator was in Jakarta WMCCC 1996. The Junior team was not allowed to play there
>>>because Junior is an Israeli program.
>>
>>I was under the impression that was not exactly the truth, the whold truth and
>>nothing but the truth.  In fact, Junior was expected there.  I received a phone
>>call in the wee hours of the morning from Bruce Moreland, asking me to help him
>>contact Amir since they had not shown up.
>>
>>I believe this was a case of "they didn't feel welcome and chose not to attend
>>for that reason."  IE I can't really fault someone for not wanting to fly a UAE
>>flag in the middle of Israel either.
>>
>>So, IMHO it was more a matter of they didn't participate for many good reasons,
>>but I don't think they were _prevented_ from participating...
>
>Based on what I have read and heard, it was made clear to them that they cannot
>play under the Israeli flag in Jakarta. In other words, they were prevented from
>participation. Of course Amir or Shay can correct me if I'm wrong.
>

Quoting Shay Bushinsky's post in RGCC:


========
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=323D39B0.1532%40spl.co.il&prev=/groups%3Fq%3D%2522shay%2Bbushinsky%2522%2Bjakarta%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26selm%3D323D39B0.1532%2540spl.co.il%26rnum%3D2%26filter%3D0

From: Shay Bushinsky <shayb@spl.co.il>
Subject: Re: World Micro Championship - Jakarta
Date: 1996/09/16
Message-ID: <323D39B0.1532@spl.co.il>#1/1
references: <50q0jd$gba@darkstar.ucsc.edu> <323467DE.5B27@nwlink.com>
<511qup$eg5@darkstar.ucsc.edu> <32350BEE.50C6@nwlink.com>
<32366771.41C6@theochem.uni-stuttgart.de> <842650785.4814.0@cpsoft.demon.co.uk>
<323A6A01.50D3@nwlink.com> <842731477.29964.0@cpsoft.demon.co.uk>
<323d52c8.0@news.cranfield.ac.uk> <842885656.25414.0@cpsoft.demon.co.uk>
cc: amirban@msys.co.il, shayb@spl.co.il
content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
organization: SPL
mime-version: 1.0
reply-to: shayb@spl.co.il
newsgroups: rec.games.chess.computer
x-mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (Win95; I)



Hi,


1. We have great respect to the people in the ICCA namely David Levy and
Dr. Tony Marsland.

2. We did not/do not urge anyone not to go to Jakarta because of our
incident
or for any other reason.

3. The details given in the ICCA recent statement are pretty accurate
yet our
point of view is different:

We learned about "the government would not issue visas" in the very
early stages
of our contact with ICCA. We were also told at the same time that the
ICCA can do
very little about it - and we were led to understand that it is really
up to us
to change things. At that stage we could of just given up but we wanted
still to
explore the matter deeper and try to resolve the situation ourselves.
Some of our own efforts such as aproaching local travel agents are
mentioned in
the ICCA statement.

Unfortunetely, from our own contacts including turning to our foreign
ministry, it
was clear that their is no way we can enter officially as participants
from Israel.
In fact we were told by our own foreign ministry that the essence of the
problem is with
any sort of official representation of Israel. This ruled out the other
option
mentioned to apply for a visa via a third country as we learned from our
embassy in Singapore.
"As turists - yes as representatives - no."

It is also true that Shay has an American passport and using it was an
idea we thought of
as a last resort reluctantly. We stress that this was not "the very
least" but the
very "best" we could have done to play in Indonesia.

We think it is quite reasonable to understand that still under these
circumstances we did
not feel comfortable to hide behind an American passport. For their is
not only the question of participating but also how does one
participate.

In summary:

1. Indonsia would not allow Junior to participate under the Israeli
flag.
(You can use any terminology that you want to portray this - we think
"banning" is
quite a reasonable description.)

2. ICCA indicated that this situation is unfortunate yet a reality that
they can live
with.  This is consistent with the latest ICCA statement.

3. We can't accept the ICCA Indonesian "only offer" argument as a valid
one as it was not
accepted in the case of the Baghdad FIDE championships venue.

4. Many teams are not participating in this tournament for various
reasons. It
demotes the event and calls for a better world micro computer
championships.


Best wishes,

-- Amir & Shay
========

So they were clearly *prevented* from participation.
















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