generalspeaking

Olympics Venue Suitability

On the world stage since 1896, resurrecting the ancient Greek celebration of the human body and its athletic capabilities, the Olympics' modern intent was to aid in the promotion of a peaceful and better world, aided through the education of youth in the value of sports and excellence. The world now awaits with bated breath the opening on February 7 of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. It will most certainly be an extravaganza. But will it also be the venue for some atrocity mesmerizing the world to aghast attention?

Sochi 2014        ✔ @Sochi2014 Follow The 1st Welcoming Ceremony in the Mountain Village! Welcome New Zealand and Mongolia to #Sochi2014 #seeyouinsochi

The cost to Russia for the production of this world event has been gargantuan, coming in over $50-billion spent to host the event. It is an open secret that massive corruption was involved in grossly inflating the cost of the infrastructure to benefit President Vladimir Putin's inner circle of confreres and supporters. Massive corruption on such an absurd scale is amazing, but not particularly ennobling, most would agree.

It is clear enough, despite the huge popularity of these events on the world stage when sports excellence comes up hard against national pride that it is not high-minded ideals and the embrace of athletic perfection in competitive skills that dominates. While that function is there on proud display on the exterior, the Olympic Games themselves represent firstly, but discreetly, what has become increasingly obvious; it is a media-fed industry with an economic focus, first and foremost.


It has also become -- particularly in this Black Sea resort town so close to the Caucasus and Chechen jihadist conspirators to disrupt, destroy, terrorize, a splendid opportunity to demonstrate that, despite the presence of tens of thousands of Russian security personnel, and the most sophisticated technological security apparatus on display -- obvious that terrorists are capable of penetrating the armour of defence. If that penetration is not actual and physical, it has been demonstrated to be effectively potential.

As such the blight of intimidation, hatred and violence has succeeded in its elemental goal; to spread terror. At the very least, the very real and yet-to-be-realized prospect of terror in action, claiming victims whose innocence was no protection against the ferocious fanatical Islamist paranoia of overcoming obstacles placed in its way of achieving world domination as the single most formidable vector of religious intolerance.

Canada and the United states have both alerted their populations of the dangers inherent in attending the Games, stressing that the utmost caution must be observed at all times. Go if you wish, but be aware. And both countries will be sending security components along with their teams for protection. That security is illusory since visiting foreign security personnel must have permission of the host security authorities to be proactive, and Russia has not extended that permission.

And while it is understood that there will be about 100,000 people involved in Sochi Games security, slip-ups are always possible. Security personnel can proceed through the most rigorous training but human fallibility will always present unforeseen opportunities for penetration. Which may, or may not, as the occasion will prove, occur. For not all the venues render themselves to protection; even if Sochi itself may seem impregnable to attack, outlying areas hosting events may not be.

That, aside from the fact that the very choice of Russia as host to these Games seems most peculiar. Back in 1980 The Olympic Committee selected Russia as well, most awkward when the USSR under President Brezhnev's Politburo embarked on the invasion of Afghanistan the year before. In 2014 the Olympics come to Russia again at the very time that Vladimir Putin is interfering in Ukraine, following his rescue of both Iran and Syria from intervention that might have had the effect of forestalling or entirely saving the world from a nuclear-weapons Iran, and a mass-murdering Syria.





On the other hand, there were even more egregious precedents. The Summer Olympics, the greater of the two seasonal events, took place in Berlin in 1936, under Nazi Germany's monstrous Hitler regime. Three years later fascist Germany embarked on its self-appointed mission to rescue the world from democracy and install universal fascism with Germany the world's overseer in the Thousand-Year Reich.

My, how history enjoys repeating itself.

Labels: Controversy, Olympic Games, Russia, Security, Sport, Terrorism

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, February 05, 2014