Month: August 2008

Australian Olympic official John Coates tells British swimmers to take a bath before swimming

The Guardian is reporting the the rivalry between the UK and Australia is not exactly a ‘clean’ one.

After Rebecca Adlington’s 400m freestyle gold set the tone for Britain in the pool here, John Coates, the head of the Australian Olympic Committee and an International Olympic Committee member since 2001, was asked for his thoughts. “It’s not bad for a country that has no swimming pools and very little soap,” he said.

Well at least it wasn’t the same old ‘Big Gnarly Teeth’ comment that is leveled at most UK residents.

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Estonian network engineers rush to Georgia to help fight Russian cyberwar attacks

Computer engineers from another former Soviet republic are rushing to the aid of Georgia, armed not with weapons but with computers. Russia and Georgia are engaged in a ‘cyberwar’ of sorts attacking each others networks and websites, and now some computer networking engineers from Estonia are rushing to aid their Georgian colleagues who are dealing with hacking, Denial of Service attacks and other networking issues.

Two of the four experts that staff Estonia’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) were waiting Tuesday morning in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, seeking permission to drive into Georgia, said Katrin Pärgmäe, communication manager for the Estonian Informatics Center. The two officials are also bringing humanitarian aid, she said.

Estonia is also now hosting Georgia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Web site, which has been under sustained attack over the last few days.

Russia was accused of hacking Estonian computer systems in response to that country removing statues of former Soviet leaders.

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Olympic Boxing officials under scrutiny–shades of Seoul '88?

The Olympic boxing rounds are underway, and no one is quite sure what is going on with the scoring. British and Ukrainian judges have launched formal protests in the way the officials ’seem’ to favoring the local fighters.

“I knew they were going to give him everything he wanted,” said Murray, who trailed 4-0 after the first two minutes. “I’ve been watching the scoring here the first four days, and I knew it was bad, so I was expecting it. … I think they were giving him a score for anything, and I had to work to get all of my points.”

British coach Terry Edwards echoed his fighter’s complaints, calling the scores “absolutely stupid.”

“The judges took it away from him,” Edwards said of the early rounds, when the score deficit forced Murray to change his style. “I thought they were very generous to the Chinese. You expect a slight bias, but you come to the Olympic Games and expect a level playing field.

Because Olympic / Amateur boxing utilized points scored in somewhat random and odd ways (many boxing fanatics cannot even understand it at times) the potential for officials to have far too much of a say in the outcome of a match is always a possibility.

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Yang Peiyi, the pretty voice behind pretty-faced Lin Miaoke (who 'sang' at the Olympic Opening Ceremony, so we thought)

UPDATE Aug 23: Pretty-voice Yang Peiyi will perform in closing ceremony!

Watching the Opening ceremony it was pretty obvious that the little girl singing before the parade of ‘ethnic minority’ children wasn’t actually singing live. In the heat and the noise of 90,000 people, no voice would have been that clear or solid, so it was pretty obvious it was a taped.

However, today we learned the Mili-Vanilli truth behind the song. While Lin Miaoke had the ‘look’ of a cute Chinese girl singing, she didn’t really have the voice to be singing in front of an audience of billions. The true voice was with Yang Peiyi, who didn’t have the look and was relegated to singing in front of an audience of a few sound engineers.

Yang Peiyi had a pretty voice. Bloggers should spread the word about this to help her get the credit she is due.

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Russia ends 'punishment' of Georgia

With the whole world calling Russia a ‘big brother’ getting unfairly involved in someone elses fight, you’d think the government their would have thought of some better wording than ‘punishment’ to describe their operations in South Ossetia. President Medvedev was given permission to speak by Putin announced that Russian forces would cease operations, though under the rules of engagement if they were fired upon they would ‘destroy’ the ‘aggressors’.

This follows a public statement by Bush, and likely some very private threats as well. My speculation is that Russia was given a choice, cease fire now, or face the prospect of a combined US-European ‘announcement’ that NATO peacekeepers and other military forces would be sent to the region, or a an immediate granting of NATO status to somewhere like the Ukraine, which would have been a greater long term loss to Russia (Ukraine told the Russian is may bar Russian ships from returning to port in the shared Navy base in the Crimea). Of course as I outlined yesterday military troops on the ground were not realistic, but a press release or joint statement by the West saying that peacekeepers would be dispatched with all due haste would have turned the tables on the Russians, either pull out losing face, or stay in and a) depose the government, something they claimed they were not doing or b) face the prospect of fighting the West, something neither side wanted.

Face-saving is not just a Chinese concept.

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Cheerleaders at the Beijing Olympics.


Cheerleaders! – Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics

Originally uploaded by kk+

Not all the cheerleaders at the Beijing Olympics are Chinese. Here’s some pics from Flickr user kk+ of some Eastern European Cheerleaders. They might be the ‘Red Foxes’ from Lithuania. I’ll see if I can find some more pictures. You can also find more at this blog post on the Olympic Cheerleader Trials where they had a dance off to see who would get to be at the Olympics.

Plenty more at some of the links above.

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Under cyberattack, Georgian government turns to Blogger

Many Georgian government website and newspapers are under denial of service and other forms of cyberattack originating from inside Russia. In response, the Georgian government has decided to take advantage of Google’s Blogger service and the security systems offered by Google. From now on, Georgian government official statements are being made at http://georgiamfa.blogspot.com/

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US has 1,000 troops in Georgia plus advisors for Operation Immediate Response 2008 despite the war.

The United States European Command just finished (last Thursday) Operation Immediate Response 2008, a training exercise in Georgia. These troops are in addition to the 127 military trainers that are in country more or less permanently working with the Georgian military.

In addition to the trainers, 1,000 soldiers from the Vicenza, Italy-based Southern European Task Force (Airborne) and the Kaiserslautern-based 21st Theater Sustainment Command, along with Marine reservists with the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines out of Ohio, and the state of Georgia’s Army National Guard’s 1st Battalion, 121st Infantry recently participated in “Immediate Response 2008.”

That exercise, which had the U.S. troops operating from Vaziani, concluded on Thursday. That base, near the capital of Tbilisi, was bombed by Russian aircraft over the weekend, Georgian officials said.

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US military options in Georgia

Maybe I should just leave this blank as a subtle way of saying what’s really on the table. But if you got to thinking here are some options you could consider:

1) Airlift of Georgian troops from Iraq. (Oops, done that).

2) Provide satellite and electronic intelligence on Russian troops.

3) Provide shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles like Stingers or Strellas (desperately needed)

4) Provide ammunition resupply to Georgian forces.

5) Provide Naval support via shadowing Russian navy (including using submarines)

6) Dispatch Air Force fighters & A-10 tank killers

7) Provide advisors to counsel on war operations.

8 ) Move forward pre-positioned equipment into Black Sea

9) Provide Air Cover / No Fly Zone over Georgia

10) Put boots on the ground.

As you can see, none of those really look all that exciting, and the cost politically (both and home and abroad) along with the cost in lives and the cost in dollars would be great. US forces are stretched thin as they are now and resupplying basically a ‘third’ combat zone would tax our logistics capabilities to the breaking point.

So basically, the US has little to do militarily but sit and watch.

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Mark Spitz feels snubbed by lack of Olympic invite

Mark Spitz is sitting around pondering whether Michael Phelps is going to break his record for gold medals in one Olympics and feeling a bit left out of things apparently:

“I never got invited. You don’t go to the Olympics just to say, I am going to go. Especially because of who I am,” Spitz told AFP in Hong Kong.

“I am going to sit there and watch Michael Phelps break my record anonymously? That’s almost demeaning to me. It is not almost—it is.”

Actually I think if he went on his own it would show more about his character and sportsmanship than just sitting around watching it on TV, but maybe I’m wrong.

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