Russian sportsmanship sadly lacking in loss to 'Georgian' volleyball team

Russia and ‘Georgia’ took to the imitation ‘beach’ in Beijing and played a rather close match which saw the Georgians win and the Russians get knocked out of the tournament. Despite the pleasantries on the sand with hugs and handshakes, when the Russians got to the microphones they let lose a tirade that can only be described as ’sore losers’

“They are not even Georgians,” said Shiryaeva.

“Sore losers,” said the president of the Georgian Volleyball Federation, Levan Akhvlediani. “The Russians should go home.”

“It is very stupid for Georgia to start a war with Russia because we are very big and they are very small, but that is always the way in history with Georgia,” said Uryadova.

“They probably don’t even know the name of the Georgian president,”
snapped Shiryaeva.

“Mikhael Saakashvili,” said Santanna who — for the record — was born in Brazil, lives in Brazil, has a Georgian passport and has been there twice. “I met his wife at the athletes’ village the other day. She was lovely.”

“They are Brazilians,” repeated Shiryaeva.

Wherever they are from, they won.

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Russian tanks and looting Ossetians in Georgian town despite cease-fire

Reports are coming in about Gori, Georgia and the presence of Russian tanks and South Ossetians who are looting and sacking all that they can find.

Violence has flared up in Georgia, where Russian tanks have been seen patrolling the town of Gori, says the BBC’s Gavin Hewitt near the scene.

People leaving the town say there is looting going on involving South Ossetian separatists.

There are reports of residents being stripped of everything at gunpoint on the entrances to the city.

Western journalists reported 10 Russian tanks attacking parts of the city despite the cease fire.

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Obama's weakness apparent in response to Russia-Georgia war

Commentators are starting to pick on Barrack Obama’s missteps in his statements regarding the Russian / Georgian war. Obama has issued three statements while on vacation in Hawaii, with the first one being a wishy-washy calling for restraint on all sides, but then taking a grade-school level jab at McCain’s policy because one of his advisors once lobbied on behalf of Georgia (please…). Then he issued another statement blaming Russia for most of the violence, and then he caught up to McCain’s level of rhetoric a few days later.

It took first-term Sen. Barack Obama three tries to get it right. Headed for a vacation in Hawaii, the presumed Democratic candidate for commander in chief issued an even-handed statement, urging restraint by both sides. Later Friday, he again called for mutual restraint but blamed Russia for the fighting. The next day his language finally caught up with toughness of McCain’s.

Obama had a free shot to ‘act’ like a President. Say the right things, advocate a strong position and go forward pushing that position. This was a total free throw–not a single thing he said had to become policy or enforced or, to be honest, have any impact on the situation on the ground in Moscow and Tiblisi. It was a chance for him to, at the very least, act Presidential. He could have said anything–A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G–to show how he stood out on matters of foreign affairs. And when he had this chance, he frittered it away with blandness and petty politics. A policy as sharp as a dull crayon.

Leaders in the Ukraine told the Russians the Black Sea fleet would not be welcome to return to Ukranian waters if they participated in the Georgian operations. Yea, the Ukraine took a tough stance, despite Russian FSB contacts trying to kill their President a few years ago and the same sort of sabre-rattling going on with Soviet Russian armored divisions at their door step. The leaders of the Lithuania, Ukraine, Poland, Estonia and Latvia flew to Tiblisi at the same time it was being bombed after they called on NATO to “stand up against the spread of imperialist and revisionist policy” by Russia.

And Obama just told everyone to play nice together and one of his aides did a moron trying to drag lobbying into the issue of Georgians, Russians and South Ossetians dying en masse.

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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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