Various 2012 Olympic news

[d pickup]

'2012 Olympics CIO: We Will Be Attacked by Hackers '

protecting 90 locations

see
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Olympics ... 2974.shtml

[d pickup]

'Calls for Saudi Arabia to be banned from London 2012 over lack of female competitors'

see
www.insidethegames.biz/olympics/summer- ... ompetitors

[mump boy]

too right

[d pickup]

too right

mump boy
So where have you been! It's OLY yr mr mump boy, get your mind & pen rolling! Good to see you back. I'm not sure what you are saying here but there, you don't always understand my inputs either, so touche!

[d pickup]

'Time for Jacques Rogge to man up and show Saudi Arabia the red card'

'doffs it cap all too readily to the rich and the royal'

see
www.insidethegames.biz/blogs/16502

[3a]

Not to go all Dailymail on you people, but....

Marshevet Hooker is apparently pregnant and therefore out of the olympics. I really don't want to add anything else .....BUT If the father is the guy she was rumoured to be dating before christmas it could be worthy of the Jeremy Kyle show.

[SteveK26]

3a
I have no idea what your post is about'
Sounds an intriguing one though.....

[SteveK26]

'Time for Jacques Rogge to man up and show Saudi Arabia the red card'

'doffs it cap all too readily to the rich and the royal'

see
http://www.insidethegames.biz/blogs/16502

Its not up to an Olympic committee to advise a country how to run their affairs. Its up to the women of Saudi Arabia to force change. Maybe they are ok about not doing sport?
If you start banning countries from competing because you disagree with how they select their team, we'll all end up in a pickle.

[d pickup]

'Time for Jacques Rogge to man up and show Saudi Arabia the red card'

'doffs it cap all too readily to the rich and the royal'

see
http://www.insidethegames.biz/blogs/16502

Its not up to an Olympic committee to advise a country how to run their affairs. Its up to the women of Saudi Arabia to force change. Maybe they are ok about not doing sport?
If you start banning countries from competing because you disagree with how they select their team, we'll all end up in a pickle.

SteveK26
There were mass protests against going to war, invading Iraq, and some say we should never have gone into Afghanistan (my thought is that those mountain people, like the Chechnyans, will NEVER be 'conquered') so should we protest, interefer, 'protect our security' apparently, stand up for our way of living, and somebody here talked about slavery, which we abhore, but there is still plenty of it round the world one can be sure. And women should have equal rights, but should the IOC charter be changed you imply. Were they wrong over AFG, BOZ, RSA in the past? With our attitudes now would we have allowed the '36 Olympics .. Perhaps the IOC should keep issuing yellow cards, as most politics ends in compromise. As you imply we interfer in a country's ways at our peril. What a mess in Libya, and well what misery there in Syria but yes stay out. I can list you 20-30 bad dictatorships round the world but that is life, history is full of ruling monsters. Politicians and IOC Rogge have to walk a very narrow tightrope in what we conceive as the cause of good.

[d pickup]

'BOA's Lord Moynihan says 'one idiot' can ruin a London 2012 event'

A reaction to the swimmer and the Cambridge-Oxford affair.

see
www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/olympics/17650051

[mump boy]

'Time for Jacques Rogge to man up and show Saudi Arabia the red card'

'doffs it cap all too readily to the rich and the royal'

see
http://www.insidethegames.biz/blogs/16502

Its not up to an Olympic committee to advise a country how to run their affairs. Its up to the women of Saudi Arabia to force change. Maybe they are ok about not doing sport?
If you start banning countries from competing because you disagree with how they select their team, we'll all end up in a pickle.

This is a joke right ??

[d pickup]

mump boy
Your response is 'strong' but 'ellusive'. Can you expand on it a little perhaps.

[trickstat]

Its up to the women of Saudi Arabia to force change. Maybe they are ok about not doing sport?

I doubt whether anyone has asked them all (approximately 13,000,000).

I have read recently that they were considering sending women in certain sports where certain of their laws (presumably re clothing) are not infringed. I suspect this may include sports like shooting.

Personally, I think they shouldn't be allowed in the Olympics as things stand, although I am unsure whether it would be wise overall to suddenly take such a position now. This doesn't mean that I actually begrudge individual Saudi male athletes competing on a personal level. Hard to put that last bit into words tbh.

[sidelined]

I have a horrible feeling Steve wasn't being ironic. But perhaps he's unaware that as well as being unable to vote or live independently of a man, women in Saudi Arabia aren't allowed to drive and that defying this law can and does land a woman in jail? Try reading this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/ ... NTCMP=SRCH

Of course the IOC should refuse to let a male-only team compete. It's a situation without any ambiguity at all, unlike some of the complicated political situations d pickup mentions.

[Guto Nyth Bran]

The Olympic Charter.
4. An NOC shall only enter competitors upon the recommendations for entries given
by national federations. If the NOC approves thereof, it shall transmit such entries to
the OCOG. The OCOG must acknowledge their receipt. NOCs must investigate the
validity of the entries proposed by the national federations and ensure that no one has
been excluded for racial, religious or political reasons or by reason of other forms of
discrimination.

[mump boy]

mump boy
Your response is 'strong' but 'ellusive'. Can you expand on it a little perhaps.

it wasn't ellusive, i thought SteveK26 must be joking to write something so ridiculous but then i realised it wasn't even funny, just offensive

[SteveK26]

Mump
If you disagree with a post there is no real reason for you to be rude or offensive. Sometimes you might just try to understand the underlying point.
In this case the viewpoint I am expressing is that sport is surely not the vehicle to promote change in regimes. Thats up to the people themselves and/or politicians.
Whether you approve of the Saudi culture is irrelevant.

[trickstat]

Mump
If you disagree with a post there is no real reason for you to be rude or offensive. Sometimes you might just try to understand the underlying point.
In this case the viewpoint I am expressing is that sport is surely not the vehicle to promote change in regimes. Thats up to the people themselves and/or politicians.
Whether you approve of the Saudi culture is irrelevant.

Steve

I don't think the issue people have with Saudi Arabia is actually about regime change as such. If that was the case then we should also be talking about excluding several other countries. The issue is whether a country should be allowed into the Olympics that appears to deny access to sport to 50% of it's people purely on the grounds of their gender. As Guto Nyth Bran has pointed out, SA appears to be clearly in breach of the Olympic charter.

[SteveK26]

Trickstat
Thankyou for that rational response.
I will develop my point further for you.
If it is the Saudi culture that for (religious?) reasons women do not take part in sport that is surely for them only to change, is it not?
If women are not raised to do sport in Saudi Arabia then it would be very unlikely for them to be able to reach Olympic standards anyway. It is likely to be for cultural and reigious reasons that this is the case. How can we , or anyone else, critisize them, or ostrasize them, for their beliefs?
You may not agree with them in their views on women and sport, but should you ban them as a nation from the Olympics?
Lobby for change by all means (via politics), but banishing Saudi Arabia from the Olympics is surely not the way to go.
That is my point. Is it offensive to anyone?
I haven't even expressed a personal view on whether I agree with their views on women in sport, I'm just making a generic point.

[SteveK26]

As a rider, I would ask Mump, DPickup and Sidelined whether or not they think Saudi Arabia should be allowed to compete in World Cup soccer? Or should their Sheiks be allowed access to our horseracing in GB? (horse racing would suffer badly, if not collapse, if the Saudi's were banned from patronage.)
In fact lets expand it further; are you saying that Saudi Arabia should be banned from all International sport because of their cultural/religious beliefs on woman's participation?
In my opinion you cannot start comparing Saudi Arabia to the corrupt and evil regimes that have flourished in our modern day history.
For what its worth, of course I don't believe that its right Saudi women are denied access to sport; I just don't think banning their country from the Olympics would help at all.

[d pickup]

As a rider, I would ask Mump, DPickup and Sidelined whether or not they think Saudi Arabia should be allowed to compete in World Cup soccer? Or should their Sheiks be allowed access to our horseracing in GB? (horse racing would suffer badly, if not collapse, if the Saudi's were banned from patronage.)
In fact lets expand it further; are you saying that Saudi Arabia should be banned from all International sport because of their cultural/religious beliefs on woman's participation?
In my opinion you cannot start comparing Saudi Arabia to the corrupt and evil regimes that have flourished in our modern day history.
For what its worth, of course I don't believe that its right Saudi women are denied access to sport; I just don't think banning their country from the Olympics would help at all.

SteveK26
How evil is Saudi Arabia? Will we, do we hear much of any evil there with it 'valued' round the world for its oil? Perhaps an indication of how non-evil a nation is, is to see the toleration given to peaceful street protests. They got short shrift in Syrla, I don't advice you to protest in Uzbekistan for instance, and well in N Korea if they tell you to walk the streets with strides of 85cm then you make sure you do it, and that is just to go a buy something at the green grocers. So how do we think the S Arabia women athletes would fare if they performed a little quiet peaceful protest in their country?

[trickstat]

If it is the Saudi culture that for (religious?) reasons women do not take part in sport that is surely for them only to change, is it not?

I agree that only the Saudis themselves can actually make this change but the rest of the world can do its bit to encourage them to do so.

If women are not raised to do sport in Saudi Arabia then it would be very unlikely for them to be able to reach Olympic standards anyway.

What about the Olympic standards of Eddie the Eagle and Eric the Eel? On a less flippant note, there must be dozens of young women in the country with the potential to reach a fairly decent standard in a few months at certain disciplines e.g. sub 12 for 100m. Obviously, it would too much to ask for equivalent performances in such a short time in, for example, pole vault, swimming and fencing.

It is likely to be for cultural and reigious reasons that this is the case. How can we , or anyone else, critisize them, or ostrasize them, for their beliefs?

For me it is more a cultural thing than religious, as Islam is also the majority religion of countries such as Morocco, Turkey, Malaysia and Indonesia who have each produced a number of top-class sportswomen in certain sports. Within certain parameters, I think it is perfectly acceptable to challenge and criticise people's beliefs when you feel that they cause unacceptable harm to others. Examples of other topics where I think this applies include attitudes to homosexuality, female circumcision and animal welfare

You may not agree with them in their views on women and sport, but should you ban them as a nation from the Olympics?

As they are clearly in breach of the Olympic charter, the grounds for doing so are clearly there. Whether it should happen is open to debate.

Lobby for change by all means (via politics), but banishing Saudi Arabia from the Olympics is surely not the way to go.

I am not sure what kind of lobbying would have the desired affect? Perhaps "we want to see clear signs of progress by 2016/2020 or out you go"?

[Guto Nyth Bran]

One thing that makes Saudi unique is that they actually ban women from competing in international competition.
They don't even send a team to the Women's Islamic Games in Iran.
If the IOC banned South Africa for 30 years because of aparthied then Saudi Arabia should be sanctioned in the same way.

Before anyone defends the Saudi regime you might want to consider this;
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-upda ... 11-09-27-0

[SteveK26]

Guto
Is there an argument that in S Africa's case the people who suffered the most as a result of the ban were the athletes themselves?

As regards the article you post,I would agree totally that they have some barbaric laws and punishments.And I would love to see the male domination of their society be relaxed. But will that happen because you ban them from the Olympics?
I am against the use of sport as a battering ram. Change should be brought about through the politicians. But unfortunately most of the time they have agenda's very much influenced by other factors.

[sidelined]

How can we , or anyone else, critisize them, or ostrasize them, for their beliefs?

Would you have said the same about Nazi Germany? Don't you think there are any moral absolutes at all?

Luckily I don't think we have to debate this thorny moral issue. It's not a question of the Olympic movement trying to bring about political change. It's simply that if the Saudis want to play the Olympic game, they have to abide by the rules. What puzzles me is that I think in previous Games, the Saudis entered a couple of women in the shooting, so all they have to do to avoid controversy is find a woman with a gun. It shouldn't be too difficult.

[jjimbojames]

How can we , or anyone else, critisize them, or ostrasize them, for their beliefs?

Would you have said the same about Nazi Germany? Don't you think there are any moral absolutes at all?

Luckily I don't think we have to debate this thorny moral issue. It's not a question of the Olympic movement trying to bring about political change. It's simply that if the Saudis want to play the Olympic game, they have to abide by the rules. What puzzles me is that I think in previous Games, the Saudis entered a couple of women in the shooting, so all they have to do to avoid controversy is find a woman with a gun. It shouldn't be too difficult.

I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that they will; my take on it is that their issue is not with women doing sport per se, but competing in events where the dress code is deemed as inappropriate or offensive to their culture. I could be wrong though...!

[BigGut]

I think the issue here is getting blurred. Under the Olympic Charter it isn't for Saudi Arabia to decide that it is inappropriate for women to take part in a sport because of it's dress code. If a woman wanted to participate then she should be permitted to do so, regardless of the code of dress. It should be their decision to take part and their decision over what they wear to do so. The state deciding that they can't is gender discrimination and should result in them being barred.

You cannot argue that it is about dress code and not gender when the men wear shorts and vests. It is clearly gender descrimination. It is clearly the same as aparthied, where women are subjugated and separated and denied the same rights as men. As a result I cannot see how they can be part of the Olympic movement.

[Geoff]

I think the issue here is getting blurred. Under the Olympic Charter it isn't for Saudi Arabia to decide that it is inappropriate for women to take part in a sport because of it's dress code. If a woman wanted to participate then she should be permitted to do so, regardless of the code of dress. It should be their decision to take part and their decision over what they wear to do so. The state deciding that they can't is gender discrimination and should result in them being barred.

You cannot argue that it is about dress code and not gender when the men wear shorts and vests. It is clearly gender descrimination. It is clearly the same as aparthied, where women are subjugated and separated and denied the same rights as men. As a result I cannot see how they can be part of the Olympic movement.

For a change I agree 100% with BigGut!!!

The only thing I will add is an answer to the last part of your post 'As a result I cannot see how they can be part of the Olympic movement.' They might because of money, power and influence.

[Guto Nyth Bran]

To touch on two points from the above.
A Saudi woman has never competed in the Olympics in any sport (and as far as i know in any event outside Saudi).
Since they refuse to take part in the Women's Islamic Games I'm pretty sure the issue is not to do with dress code. That event is held in Iran in front of a female only audience.

[Geoff]

To touch on two points from the above.
A Saudi woman has never competed in the Olympics in any sport (and as far as i know in any event outside Saudi).
Since they refuse to take part in the Women's Islamic Games I'm pretty sure the issue is not to do with dress code. That event is held in Iran in front of a female only audience.

There were Saudi women/girls at the Youth Olympic Games but not as part of the Saudi Arabian team. They were invited by the IOC.