Sunday Humor

It's been a heavy few weeks. Russia and Georgia come to blows and stir up Cold War fears for everyone watching, America's signs the missile defense deal with Poland, Afghanistan heats up and Sarkozy pledges his commitment, Maliki lays out plans to disarm the Sons of Iraq, and the Olympics nears a close.

So, here's a humorous look at British diplomacy courtesy of a wonderful British political comedy, Yes Prime Minister:

From the Digg: Hack the Olympics!

It borders on being off-topic, but nobody can claim that the Olympics isn't an international event. Both the athletic prestige for the athletes, and national recognition of hosting the Olympics in one's country, have a powerful sway in international affairs.

As such, it's ridiculous that China, after making impressive strides of development (and air-clearing) to host the games this year, has endangered it all by using underage gymnasts. They denied it. The IOC gave them the all-clear.

And now, it's in the open:

"There's been some widely publicized controversy regarding the competition age of the Chinese women's gymnastics team recently. I have an Internet connection, that means I should be able to verify the age of the gymnasts in question with primary state-issued documents and find out for myself if someone's cheating, right? Right. Let's go to work." read more | digg story

Follow these links to the relevant Baidu cached pages (scroll down, look for the yellow-highlighted characters), and keep this story going. Digg it, repost it, do something to get the message out that China can't get away with editing the truth.

Thanks to the blog Stryde Hax for pulling this out of the net.

Georgia and Russia - A Path to War?

As news of Russia's military incursion into South Ossetia today spreads, mixed reports are already coming in.

Expect more written on this later, when I've time to sit down and look at the pieces. Until then, here's a collection of news links to read:

Cleveland Leader - Russia invades Georgia
Telegraph - Georgia invades Russian Region
Ballgunner.freedomblogging - doesn't hate to say 'I told you so.'

and Sky News has a good overview article up on the history of the Georgia- Russia issue, although it's lacking for links.

Here's a Google newsfeed for general Georgia-related news

and the AP posted some powerful raw video footage:



EDIT:
Here's a video from a few months ago, of RFE/RL's Georgian Services Director talking about Russia-Georgia tensions in the Abkhazia region, where fighting has yet to break out (a Georgian drone was shot down there by a Russian fighter jet earlier this year)