I don’t know much about the Georgian war itself, so I won’t try to attack and ramble about how the US government and the rest of the world is taking it, but apparently the country is attacking South Ossentia separatists after they claimed Ossentians attacked their people. Russia intervenes and forces the Georgians to retreat because they support South Ossentia, and they see the Georgian invasion as a sign of hostility towards the motherland and a possibility of a genocide (since Georgians were supposed to have killed about a thousand people before the Russians came in).

And then the article goes on to describe how McCain and Obama has been at each other’s backs over the war. Obama is going for halting the violence peacefully, I guess, with peacekeeping forces and the like, while McCain thinks that’s a stupid idea and wants a more aggressive approach, like kicking Russia out of the G-8 or whatever. McCain and Obama are both going for a halt to Russian intervention, because it’s tearing up Georgian cities (Wait, wasn’t it Georgia trying to shatter South Ossentia in the first place?), although McCain’s views are putting him at an advantage against Obama:

War in Georgia, Politics in D.C.

By MASSIMO CALABRESI, Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2008

… Obama’s campaign made two early missteps. First, in its initial statement, it called for restraint from both Russia and Georgia. “Generally, when a country is being invaded you don’t call on it to show restraint,” a senior McCain foreign policy adviser responded. (The adviser declined to be identified, aware that the criticism could also apply to the Administration, which also called for restraint.) Then Obama’s campaign released a statement questioning McCain’s objectivity in the crisis because a top McCain aide, Randy Scheunemann, had lobbied for the Georgians. When the Kremlin’s own lobbyists made the same point, McCain’s campaign fired back. “The reaction of the Obama campaign to this crisis, so at odds with our democratic allies and yet so bizarrely in sync with Moscow, doesn’t merely raise questions about Senator Obama’s judgment — it answers them,” McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said in a statement Saturday.

Article from www.time.com

Wahoo. While all of the world’s leaders are watching the Olympic opening ceremony, we’ve got a brand new war to deal with. This planet just gets better and better.

Speaking of the Olympics, did you see that 4×100m men’s swimming relay on Sunday?! Holy crap was Jason Lesak good! I can’t believe he managed to clear that gap between him and Bernard in like, the last ten meters of the race! And then Michael Phelps went Tarzan afterwards, and he was grinning like crazy all throughout the medal ceremonies. I pity the Frenchies. Ha, but it was their fault for bash-talking the Americans.

And it was even funnier in yesterday’s events. Michael swam in the 200m freestyle (I think), won gold, and was stretching during the medal ceremonies because he had a 200m fly semifinal to attend in twenty minutes. And he made it into the top spot, too! That guy is crazy.

Oh, and I love how the Japanese gymnasts, even though they were favorites, completely failed yesterday. They were tumbling and falling all morning (in China), and if you ask me, it looked like they didn’t care much whether or not they placed. Once they began to suck, they just quit altogether.

The American team, however, were awesome. Well, so were the Chinese, but none of the guys on the US gymnastic team had ever been to the Olympics before, and they ROCKED. I guess to them, the loss of the Hamm brothers meant that it was their time to shine.

I got my learner’s permit yesterday. All my friends are scared of me, because I’m not only a female, which apparently makes me driving-impaired, I’m also an Asian, and thanks to the traffic legends in China and India, I REALLY can’t drive.

In Beijing alone, it takes about an hour to drive three or four miles because the streets are so clogged up with cars and taxis. And at every intersection, there’s about a million bikers waiting to cross because not all Beijingers can afford motor vehicles. And some of the bikers may be toting a second person on the uncomfortable seats hovering directly over the back wheel. I’ve had to ride on those secondary seats before, and they hurt my tush like heck. I don’t see how other people can sit for two or more hours on them. They were intended to carry books and backpacks, not people’s butts.

In India, as my friend Apurva would say, “It’s every driver, pedestrian, cow, and animal for himself.” You can find on YouTube countless videos of cars going the wrong way on streets, and even pedestrians filming themselves crossing the roads where drivers are doing the minimal to avoid running over something.

Okay, back to summer homework. *cries*