International Olympics Committee: Games 'Mirror of Society'
"This exhibit tries to show ... this relationship between ideology, power and the Olympic Games."
"[The
exhibit's purpose is to show the historical and political significance
of the Olympics] through the life of big stars or champions like Alfred
Nakashe, who was a Jew from Algeria competing in swimming and who was
deported to Auschwitz [concentration camp during the Second World War.
Nakashe competed with the French team in Berlin in 1936 and in the first
postwar Summer Olympics in London in 1948 after surviving the
Holocaust]."
"So the Olympic Games of Paris are a huge moment, because we will see if the peace values will be respected."
"We'll see if sports can be also a way of spreading universal democratic values."
Historian Paul Dietschy, Mirror of our Societies Exhibit, show curator
"The
1936 Games are emblematic with Jesse Owens' story, because he is both
an immense champion who left his mark on the history of sport ... but
also because of his personality, his career, his close ties to German
champion Luz Long."
"Owens
embodies this struggle to confront Hitler and the Nazi ideology ... But
he himself was a victim of racism and segregation in the United
States."
Historian Caroline Francois, show curator
Emmanuel Macron has said Russia will be asked to observe a ceasefire in Ukraine during the Games.Photograph: Christophe Petit-Tesson/EPA
History
has shown the Olympics as an international forum of competitive sports
excellence, but they have also been seen, and used as a powerful
political stage used by totalitarian regimes as a tool for propaganda,
while on the other hand, athletes themselves have used their presence on
the world stage in competitive sports at its optimum level, as a driver
of change against racial inequalities and injustice.
An
exhibit is scheduled to be unveiled in Paris prior to this summer's
Paris Olympics which intends to demonstrate through its focus on past
events, that the games have been a 'mirror of society' reflecting issues
at the fore in human relations, since the beginning of the 20th
century. The exhibit is to be housed at the Shoah Memorial [Holocaust
Memorial], located in central Paris, featuring photographs, documents
and Olympic items, along with film archives from the past century.
Its
opening date was March 29, and the exhibit will be available for
viewing until mid-November. The 1936 infamous Berlin Olympics is
highlighted as the tool it was for Nazi Germany for its bleak, black
propaganda features. Also featured is the Mexico Olympics of 1968 where
Tommie Smith and John Carlos -- Black sprinters -- raised their fists to
protest racial injustice in the United States.
Two West German border police helicopters that carried armed terrorists
and their nine Israeli Olympian hostages, stand at Fuerstenfeldbruck air
force base, twenty miles west of Munich, Germany, on September 7, 1972.
(AP Photo, File)
The
scene of a brutal attack on eleven Israeli Olympic team members,
murdered by Palestinian 'Black September' terrorists at the 1972 Munich
Olympics serves as a haunting bookend to Hitler's 1936 Olympic event.
Athletes who embody Olympic values like Jesse Owens, the American Black
athlete who won four Olympic gold medals in Berlin -- to the Nazi
Regime's extreme discomfort -- are featured as athletes who embody
Olympic values.
The
issue of Olympic stadiums transformed into internment camps during the
Second World War is also addressed. In the wake of the Nazi invasion of
France in 1940, the succeeding collaborationist Vichy government has its
own place in the exhibition. Photographs of the Vel d'Hiv stadium
outside of Paris, when French police ordered13,000 French Jews to
assemble within the stadium that had been a venue for boxing, wrestling
and weightlifting during the 1924 Paris Olympics.
The
expectation is that at the Paris Olympics of 2024, international
politics will again be on the agenda. Earlier this month the
International Olympic Committee announced that Russian and Belarusian
athletes will not be permitted to be part of the traditional parade in
the French capital's opening ceremony. Both Russia and Belarus have been
barred from team sports, reflecting Moscow's war on Ukraine.
Israel,
on the other hand, faces no threat to its Olympic status, while in the
throes of the Israel-Hamas Gaza war, explained IOC President Thomas
Bach. "Since the heinous attack on the Israeli team [during the 1972 Munich
Olympics], there were always special measures being taken with Israeli
athletes."
From left to right, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler,
Reichs Sports Leader Hans von Tschammer und Osten and General Field
Marschall Werner von Blomberg observe the Olympic Games in Berlin,
Germany in August 1936. (AP Photo, File)
China's Ambitions And The Call To Boycott The 2022 Winter Olympics
"I
know how hard our athletes are training for Beijing. But we are
approaching a point where it won't be safe for Canadians, including
Olympic athletes, to travel to China."
"The
denial of Robert Schellenberg's appeals must be seen for what it is: a
foreign government planning to take the life of a Canadian for political
reasons. The use of the death penalty is abhorrent. But to impose it
for political reasons is inexcusable."
"We're
proud of our athletes we're celebrating. But we also have to recognize
the actions of a country that wants to host the Games to bring people
together. And we will have to think long and hard on whether we reward a
country like that with the Games."
Federal Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole
Since
the arrest by RCMP at the Vancouver airport in December of 2018 of Meng
Wanzhou, CFO of Huawei Communications on a U.S. extradition warrant,
relations between Canada and the People's Republic of China have
deteriorated beyond redemption. Beijing's savage reaction to the arrest
of Ms.Meng under international law is seen by the Chinese Communist
Politburo as a criminal offence against China which accuses Canada of
racism, of defying the norms of international law, and of a conspiracy
with the U.S. to hobble and harm China's technological future.
Penalties
for offending China were swift and harsh, from its diplomats scathingly
accusing Canada of human rights abuses, to the shocker of two Canadians
being arrested in China and charged with espionage, and another
Canadian charged with smuggling drugs into China suddenly seeing a new
trial where his original 15 years' imprisonment sentence was changed to
the death penalty. China halted grains and hog exports from Canada as
another punishing tool. And more recently denied the appeal sought by
Robert Schellenberg of his death sentence.
On
its part, the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has tread
warily and on relations with China, continuing to invest in China,
seeking to placate Beijing, and Canadian corporations continue their
joint ventures with China. Appallingly, the Canadian government sought a
joint venture with CanSino, a Chinese pharmaceutical, on a COVID
vaccine, and the Public Health Agency of Canada continued to pursue
research collaboration with Chinese scientists. While all other members
of the Five Eyes intelligence community have shut China's communication
giant Huawei out of their 5G upgrades, Canada still has failed to do so.
That
Canadian athletes are prepared to present themselves at the 2022 Winter
Olympics to compete in their categories as though there was nothing
amiss with China, its abysmal human rights record, its threats to Hong
Kong and Taiwan, its occupation of Tibet, its vicious campaign against
the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, and its persecution of Canadian citizens on
trumped-up charges to avenge the arrest of a Chinese citizen, is
unthinkable.
"We condemn the verdict in the strongest possible terms and call on China to grant Robert (Schellenberg) clemency"
declared Canada's ambassador to China, Dominic Barton from the appeals
hearing in Shenyang. As to whether the arrest of Michael Spavor and
Michael Kovrig, both charged with espionage, and Mr. Kovrig now
sentenced to 11 years in prison, with Mr. Spavor's trial and sentence to
come at a later date, Beijing holds them as human ransom for the
release of Meng Wanzhou.
The trial of Canadian Michael Kovrig, who has been held in
China since December 2018 on espionage charges, occurred in a closed
Beijing courtroom on Monday, March 22, 2021, with the verdict to be
announced at an unspecified later date. Here, the Canadian Embassy's
chargé d'affaires Jim Nickel, centre, and U.S. Embassy Acting Deputy
Chief of Mission William Klein, left, arrive with other diplomats and
journalists at No. 2 Intermediate People's Court in Beijing to request
entry to the trial. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)
Beijing,
and above all Xi Jinping, is anxious to have the world community look
favourably on China. The Summer Olympics that took place in Beijing in
2008 pleased the Chinese Communist Party very much, allowing it to
demonstrate to the world just how friendly, how technologically
advanced, how capable and how caring China is. And the world flocked to
Beijing, admiring it for the splendid spectacle it put on for
television audiences in a full display of Chinese artistic talents and
penchant for pageantry.
Much
has happened on the world stage since then. China consolidating its
position as a trade behemoth, advancing its technological prowess,
partially on the stealth project of purloining other states' secret
advances. Since then the world has become familiar with slave labour in
Xinjiang province, of Beijing cracking down on Hong Kong democracy, and
threatening Taiwan militarily. But it didn't stop there; India has been
warned over its disputed Himalayan border, Australia for its impudence
in striving for more information about the Wuhan virus, and the
Philippines and Japan for contesting China's sovereignty claims on land
and sea.
And
the world rewards the People's Republic by preparing to send their
athletes once again to China, to add to its prestige in recognizing it
as an emergent world power that may soon surpass the status of the
United States in that and any other realm of influence and power.
Because it is such an outstanding world citizen of a nation. While China
runs amok in taking political prisoners to force other countries to its
will, and it gathers rare world resources for its singular use and
development, the Olympics is a slate-cleaning device to awe and
influence the world, alerting it to the grandeur that is China; from its
Imperial past to its Communist present.
Women Athletes Play Their Sport -- Don't Sport Bikinis
"We are athletes who just want to be playing our sport."
"I don't understand why we have to wear these kinds of clothes when it takes all the focus away from the sport that we love."
"You have to be running, doing gymnastic moves [harder when you're wearing a bikini]."
"We never get attention for our medals or how well we do. In the media, it's all about the panties."
Elisabeth Hammerstad, Norwegian women's handball team
"I'm VERY proud of the Norwegian female beach handball team FOR PROTESTING THE VERY SEXIST RULES ABOUT THEIR 'uniform'."
"The European handball federation SHOULD BE FINED FOR SEXISM."
"Good on ya, ladies I'll be happy to pay your fines for you. Keep it up."
Pink, girl group Choice, American singer, songwriter
"I can confirm that the EHF [European Handball Federation] will do all it can to ensure that a change of athlete uniform regulations can be implemented."
"Significant efforts will be made in order to further promote the sport in the best way possible for everyone, regardless of gender."
Michael Wiederer president, European Handball Federation
Norway team line up during 2018 Women's Beach Handball World Cup final against Greece on July 29, 2018 in Kazan, Russia. (Epsilon/Getty Images)
Elisabeth Hammerstad of the Norwegian women's handball team does in actual fact, know quite well why the official uniform required of women playing her sport includes a bikini bottom. Her team, after all, has been advocating for the last fifteen years for different uniforms. Male players, they have long pointed out, compete in a uniform comprised of tank tops and shorts. And it's just what the women themselves would prefer to compete in.
It's harder, she points out, to concentrate on the sport, wearing a bikini. The uniform could conceivably slip out of place when the wearer is so energetically playing the game. Leaving a photographer with a pictorial scoop, capturing an embarrassing, unflattering or revealing picture, actually a photograph encapsulating all of these inconvenient details to the chagrin of the wearer. And it is patently unfair, when the women want to be able to concentrate on their game.
Games that women excel at leave the impression that they're less exciting, less skill involved; while endurance, strength and competence is required equal to men's games. Injecting a little more photogenic interest by having women wear a uniform that exposes and features women in revealing, skimpy outfits adds a special zing appreciated by male onlookers, not necessarily the women who tune in to view women excelling at physical endeavours.
The Olympic Games remain a man's world to command, even as women compete at a level comparable to men given the differences in their physical endowments. The German women's gymnastics team cut out bikini-cut leotards favouring instead full-body versions stretching to the ankles, with the German Gymnastics Federation stating the outfits represent a statement rejecting "sexualization in gymnastics".
Sport codes in athletic sports like beach volleyball, beach handball and gymnastics reflect men's preferences not women's. "It's about patriarchy and sexism. Let's be real here", stated Cheryl Cooky, a professor of American studies at Purdue University, specializing in gender and athletics. It has "a very strong foothold".
Current rules mandate that female athletes must don bikini bottoms "with a close fit and cut on an upper angle toward the top of the leg", while men are allowed to wear shorts as long as 10 centimetres above their knees, as long as they aren't "too baggy". The women determined it was time for a a rebellion. And for doing just that, setting aside the bikini bottoms for shorts, the Norwegian women's team was fined 1,400 euros each player by the International Handball Federation.
The rejected outfits are a measure forcing athletes to "better align with our cultural expectations for women". Women playing on national athletic teams are "powerful and dominant, strong and competitive", explained Cheryl Cooky, qualities that defy traditional norms of femininity. Forcing women to play handball while wearing bikinis is symbolic of the view that women and men are fundamentally at variance even at the highest levels of athletic competition.
Norway's beach handball players were each fined 150 euros for wearing shorts rather than t he required bikini bottoms. The team wore thigh-length elastic shorts in their bronze-medal match Sunday to protest the regulation bikini-bottom design. Norwegian Handball Federation via ABACAPress.com
"Many [international] sporting events are held in Europe or in a place that is relatively developed." "Although
Brazil is developed, we're now talking about people going into endemic
areas with diseases that are potentially life-threatening." "You're not going to New York. You have to think of health issues." Dr. Jay Keystone, travel-medicine expert, Toronto
The official match ball for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. PHOTO: REUTERS
Dr. Keystone is speaking with the authority of one
who knows, with data on past visitors to Brazil giving more than
adequate warning that the flood of World Cup enthusiasts who will enter
the country will bring back with them more than fond memories of the
sporting events they witnessed. According to a new multi-national study.
In the past, such travellers have brought back with them cases of
malaria, dengue fever, wretched skin conditions and allied maladies from
a geography with its unfortunate share of infectious disease.
In
Canada alone, travelling Canadians bring back with them annually
similar maladies from their jaunts in southeast Asia and India, with
infectious-disease reputations similar to that of Brazil. Fans who
migrate to Brazil over the next two months for the World Cup, or later
on into 2016 for the Olympics, would do well to give deep thought to
guarding themselves against malarial mosquitoes, tainted water, and
allied threats to human health.
While Brazil itself is
mobilizing 157,000 soldiers and police to ensure against violence
breaking out in its capital an various sport venues, and security is of
immense importance during the event, those travelling from abroad,
anticipating fun and games, entertainment and the time of their lives,
may find themselves facing the health challenges of their lives if
they're not sufficiently attuned to the potential health dangers they
will face on their arrival.
Within Brazil, mass
demonstrations, strikes and protests have brought out as many as a
million people, angry and outraged that their government is hosting such
world events.The protests have become violent at times.
"Our feeling is that (the protests) will be smaller than the ones last
June [over the Confederations Cup, a dress rehearsal for the World Cup].
But, sincerely speaking, we are prepared for any situation", journalists were told by Justice Minister Jose Eduardo Cardozo.
The
protesters are angry over the more than $11 billion being spent
to host the World Cup in a country with glaring social and wealth
inequality and pressing
needs in education, unaddressed issues in health care, housing and
transport. Brazil boasts one of the world's worst crime rates. And, as
the World Cup event comes ever nearer, there is a threat of a nationwide
strike by federal police. At a time when 3-million Brazilians and
600,000 foreign tourists will be attending the events.
Infection
rates are largely preventable if people exercise due diligence and
become vaccinated where appropriate, advised Dr. Keystone. Slated to
begin next month, concerns have been raised about the high rate of
violent crime, the potential for political unrest, and the prevalence of
malaria and yellow fever endemic to parts of the country. Dengue fever
has caused massive outbreaks recently. While about 40% of people
returning from Brazil over a 16-year-period were bedevilled by skin
conditions.
AP Photo/Andre Penner A
man shops for World Cup regalia at a store in San Paulo, Brazil.
The recently published study on the issues involved of which Dr. Keystone played a part, appearing in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, launched research headed by Mary Wilson of Harvard University's School of Public Health, examining data from the GeoSentinel Surveillance Network which samples travel-medicine clinics on six continents.
The most common skin condition brought back from Brazil is cutaneous larva migrans;
tiny roundworms penetrating the upper layer of the epidermis,
occasionally moving under the surface. Next was diarrhea, triggered by
various pathogens, and following that in incidence was fever-causing
illnesses like dengue and malaria. Dengue, spread by mosquitoes is
present throughout Brazil.
Yellow fever, with the same
type of mosquitoes as dengue being responsible for infection, kills
about 7% of patients, yet presenting less of a threat in Brazil's main
coastal cities, but rather inland. But Malaria and Dengue are present in
two cities hosting World Cup matches. And Yellow fever venues take in
five World Cup and two Olympic sites.
Dr. Keystone
advises that fans whose plans are to attend either of these events
should visit a travel-medicine clinic to obtain vaccinations or
anti-malarial drugs. Once within Brazil, travellers should be alert to
the use of mosquito repellent, pass on drinking tap water and appealing
as it might seem, give an additional pass to consuming street-stall
food.
And then, he added the most common way to heaven
for foreign travellers -- 40% of fatalities -- is represented in
motor-vehicle accidents. Avoid travelling on rural roads during the
nighttime.
"They'll never be a super-power. They can't, they don't have the population, they don't have the innovation. Russia could be a very successful, advanced, industrialized state of about 140 million people. But Putin doesn't see that. He bought into the imperial ambitions that when he came to power he was dismissive of. So he began to be seduced by power.... He has bought into the fantasy." "That's what's going to happen to Russia. It will be Greece on the Black Sea." [For Russia, hosting Sochi -- a Winter Games in a sub-tropical climate is] "one exorbitant, costly, unaffordable Putin party that, no matter how good it will look at the time, will leave a terrible economic and political smell afterward for which Russia is ill-equipped to pay." Aurel Brain, Canadian visiting professor of international relations, Harvard University
"They lost that in the Soviet collapse, and then in the Russian collapse, and he has been trying to get back on the pedestal." "What he's done is to create a very tempting target for people in the North Caucasus who don't like him." "The one that's really going to get him, I bet, is he says the Olympics cost $14-billion. Others say it cost $51-billion. So where is the $37-billion? I can surmise that a lot of it has been stolen. By whom? People with access. Friends of Putin. That's not going to go well." "In Russia, of course, nothing is what it seems. We don't realize what a pathetic remnant Russia is, and how a lot of this is smoke and mirrors.... Sochi's basically a fantasy. It is a fantasy of a Russia that is a superpower It is a fantasy of a Russia that is a technologically advanced state." "The Olympics might be the trigger for that tipping point where he starts to go down. Then the question is: What does he do then?" Neil MacFarlane, Lester B. Pearson professor of international relations, University of Oxford
Vladimir Putin in his presidential suite during the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics opening ceremonyPhoto: AP
Depends. Depends on whether the Russian population can be depended upon to reject the absurd fantasy of power that Vladimir Putin exudes. They have, after all, seen their president gull, entrap, and out-play the man who is recognized as the most powerful in the world, U.S. President Barack Obama. Mr. Obama, like Mr. Putin is a man of words; in Mr. Obama's instance, those words are soaring ones of fantasy, but he also issues words of warning, and makes no effort to back them up.
Famously as well, Mr. Putin, while being a man of words, those words are usually gruffly intimidating, since that's his style, and he does tend to back up his words with action; he is not averse to military action following warnings and threats of action. For Mr. Obama, who has turned out to be a shrinking violet on the world stage, the magical effect of reassuring words are meant to control events, but they do not when they are merely empty rhetoric.
As for Mr. Putin's delusions of power, and his reversion to venerating the Soviet Union and its master criminal Joseph Stalin, it is a symptom of nostalgic regret. And Mr. Putin feels, as the powerful figure he feels he is, if Joseph Stalin could be such a successful dictator as to absorb Russia's hegemonic multi-state union, powerfully increasing the population numbers swift to obey his orders, why not he, equally charismatic and given to displays of his physical prowess?
Hasn't he demonstrated his foreign relations credentials more than amply? By deft diplomatic actions ushering President Obama toward forgiveness of the damnably atrocity-loving regime of Bashar al Assad, enabling him, for the small price of appearing to surrender his chemical arsenal, to continue his mutilation of a country, persecuting its majority, arresting, torturing, murdering, bombing, assaulting and finally starving Syrian civilians to death?
From there it was a simple process to similarly disarm the intentions of the world's most powerful figure -- simple because he really had no heart in his threats to prevent Iran, by all and any means available, from acquiring nuclear warheads -- to agree to a simple-minded process that would significantly offer the Republic more time it needs to proceed uninterrupted by rude interventions by a concerned West, to complete the process it set about in refining ballistics and purifying weapons-grade uranium.
The triumphant third of the series of gallant intervention to secure another victory, was to appear to save the hide of a colleague. Coercing an already-convinced President of Ukraine that the country would be better off aligning itself with its old mentoring state of Russia than taking a rescue package from the European Union which obviously has an underhanded plan in mind, which pure-minded Russia obviously does not, willing to bail out its old satellite-dependent out of the goodness of Putin's heart.
Set in 74 hectares of prime land near the Black Sea coast, the palace is reported to be almost eight million square feet Photo: AFP/GETTY
Hegemonic power is a heady aphrodisiac. Little wonder that this man, who loves the Black Sea coast so much that he built himself an impressively costly manor not far from Sochi, felt he could use a semi-tropical setting for a Winter Olympics setting, for like God, he too can make snow. And God, favouring him mightily, could be counted upon to smite any terrorist jihadis from the Caucasus who dare think they can make their own fireworks at Putin's party.
Russian special forces are engaged in a relentless
offensive to pin down known Islamist terrorists on their home ground or
hideouts in Dagestan, Chechnya, Kirgizstan and Kabardino Balkaria,
casting a wide safety net around the Winter Olympic Games which opened
in Sochi Friday, Feb. 7. debkafile’s counter-terror sources report this safety net has been spread across three European countries.
In the last few days, seven armed jihadis were killed in Russian
operations; another three civilians died in terrorist action; and many
arrests were carried out, targeting suspected female suicide killers in
the Caucasian, as well as in France, Austria and Germany.
Saturday, Feb. 8, Russian special forces stormed a third-floor
apartment in Makhachkala, Dagestan on information that a gang was
preparing to strike sporting events. Five Islamist fighters were killed
resisting arrest and a sixth turned himself in.
A second Russian force surrounded a building in the Dagestan town of
Derbent, known as a jihadist stronghold, in which an armed Islamist
terrorist suspect was holed up in a ninth floor apartment. He was killed
after a woman and three children were allowed to leave.
Thursday, Feb. 6, the day before the Games’ opening, Russian troops
waged a six-hour firefight with a terrorist hiding in a building before
he was killed. Seven months ago, a member of the same group ambushed the
Derbent Habad Rabbi Ovadia Iskov in Debrent, gravely wounding him.
In another Muslim Republic within reach of Sochi, Kabardino-Balkaria,
a terrorist “accomplice” was killed Thursday at a security roadblock
set up in the town of Nalchik. Instead of stopping for a document check,
the driver opened fire and was shot dead. His Volkswagen was found
packed with weapons.
Our sources report that relentless Russian preventive operations have
managed to keep armed terrorists at bay from the Olympic town and the
wide surrounding areas of the winter sports events. They need to keep
the offensive up at top pitch for another two weeks until the Winter
Olympics closing ceremony on Feb. 23.
That ceremony may be a special target for terrorists.
Our sources report that the people responsible for security at the
Sochi Games are most concerned about female suicide killers from one of
the jihadists strongholds in the Caucasus or from a western European
country slipping in on European passports with tickets of entry, to bide
their time until the closing ceremony. The day the games opened Friday,
Nadina Dzhamalutdinova was arrested at Kirgizstan UItash airport,
suspected of heading out to serve as accomplice and guide for female
suicide killers awaiting their moment to enter Sochi. She was held on a
two-month detention warrant issued by the local court.
The Russians are believed to have been pointed in her direction by one
of the French, German or Austrian intelligence agencies which last week
began rounding up and interrogating women of Caucasian origin on watch
lists. Some were sighted already on their way to Sochi.
French police last week detained an unknown number of Chechen women
at La Roche-sur-Yon and Strasbourg. In Austria and Germany, our sources
report at least 10 terror suspects taken into custody, most of them
females. The authorities there are keeping this operation closely
secret.
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?
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.
In
the Olympic Stadium, German spectators salute Adolf Hitler during the
Games of the 11th Olympiad. Berlin, Germany, August 1936. — National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Md.
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.
"Every subsequent city has a desire to outdo the previous one. It's a runaway train. "There's a lot of civic pride at stake. So civic leaders -- so-called fathers and mothers in the business community -- they take a lot of pride in their city hosting the Games and welcoming the world to their doorsteps. They just want to put on a great show and they're going to do whatever it takes to impress not just the spectators, but also the global media who come. They have to make a big splash and they have to spend money." Curt Hamakawa, former director, international relations, U.S. Olympic committee
PHOTO: Alexey Nikolsky/AFP/Getty Images Russian President Vladimir Putin arrives at Moscow's Red Square on Oct. 6, 2013, to start the Olympic Flame relay across Russia.Montreal, Quebec in 1976 was proud host to the Summer Games. It took Quebecers until 2006 to pay off their $1.5-billion Olympic debt. "After 1976, hosting the Games was not so attractive anymore", he observed. They became virtual white elephants", he remarked of even a megalopolis like Beijing struggling to find a use for its magnificent stadia once the Olympic torch moved onward. The city's 100,000-seat Bird's Nest National Stadium built for the 2008 Games became impossible to fill.
What rescued the games eventually from bankruptcy was the advent of corporate sponsorships and, said Mr. Hamakawa, "This is the model that has been in place ever since."
"The facilities we built were not going to be Taj Mahals", then chief of staff for the 1988 Calgary Winter Games said. "We looked around at Montreal and the 'Big Owe', and now the nonsense that is going on in Russia ... We were never out to build monuments. We set out to create good, functional facilities that could host the Olympics. If they remained and could be part of that legacy, that was great, but if they changed into something afterward, that was fine, too." Departments that went over budget, said Mr. Love were "sent to the woodshed".
"Money has driven awarding the rights to the Games. Who in their right mind would have put the Games in Sochi, otherwise? It makes no sense. I'm convinced that what drives them is money. The sponsorships get bigger and bigger. The entertainment packages get bigger and bigger. The TV rights get bigger and bigger. Everything gets bigger and bigger and it's just gotten out of hand", sputtered Bill Rathburn, a veteran security consultant involved in preparations for the 2006 Atlantic Games.
For the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, $1-billion was spent for security costs, and it was paid for by the federal government. Sochi's proximity to Chechen extremists make that venue a far more attractive target for terrorists than any other previous Games site. "You can't find a better opportunity to embarrass Russia or Putin than if they commit a terrorist act [in Sochi]. It would have an incredible impact around the world", Mr. Rathburn said.
"I think it would horrify people around the world. I think it would cause a lot of people to realize the exposure that's created every few years. There would be a tremendous process of re-thinking the feasibility and desirability of having the Olympic Games", he concluded, if a terrorist act turned out to be successful from the viewpoint of Islamists' jihadist agenda.
"Everyone was looking forward to the Olympics. We just never thought they would leave us bang in the middle of a federal highway!" Alexandra Krivchenko, resident of Akatsy street
"It's a parallel universe that locals to a great extent have no access to. It has very little to do with how Sochi lives every day So far, city streets are all dug up, residents have a lot of problems and it's hard to see a happy ending after all of this construction." Olga Beskova, editor, Sochinskiye Novosti website (Sochi News)
That $634-million highway just outside Sochi right next to a crumbling apartment block with a red "SOS!" banner on its roof assaults the sensibilities of residents of 5a Akatsy street who have lived for years without running water or sewage systems. Their lives have not improved in quality with the construction for the 2014 Winter Games. The highway in particular has cut them away from the city centre. Their communal outhouse was torn down as an eyesore, too close to the new road.
This is definitely not the gleaming Sochi prepared to welcome the world by genial host Russian President Vladimir Putin, eager to show his international guests just how modern and technically acute Russia is, on this lovely tourist-attracting site on the Black Sea. Somehow the fact that a slum sits adjacent the expensive new highway was overlooked. State TV boasts luxury malls, exciting new stadiums and high-speed train links.
In Sochi thousands of people live in squalor and environmental waste with villagers living next to an illegal dump full of Olympic construction waste. And families concerned that their homes are sinking into the earth, while city dwellers suffer ongoing power cuts. Mr. Putin boasted that the Sochi Games would bring investment to this resort city, improving living conditions for its 350,000 residents. Most people have yet to see improvement of any kind in their lives.
In the village of Akhshtyr there are complaints about an illegal landfill used by an Olympics contractor. Their air has been fouled by its presence. A stream feeding the Sochi water supply has also been fouled. Waste from another illegal dump in the village of Loo has slid into a brook flowing into the Black Sea, adding to its pollution.
Just outside the Olympic Park, rumbling trucks have damaged house foundations in the village of Mirny, causing homes to sink. Across the rail tracks from the Akatsy building, a multi-family residence keeps flooding since another Olympics road was built nearby. Sochi residents are anything but thrilled at the destruction of forests and contamination of a river running down to the sea. A sandy beach popular with residents was paved over.
Sochi's mayor is utterly thrilled with all the changes. The gleaming ski resorts are amazing, he boutiques full of international brands, the new shopping malls with a Louis Vuitton store, are all symbolic, he exults, of positive change. Two huge power stations were commissioned for the provision of electricity for the Olympic venues, but power shortages across the city continue.
Thousands of people whose homes were demolished in favour of Olympic construction have been relocated, others remain waiting for new homes. Sochi's slum dwellings appear there to say; Sochi city government issued a written edict that over 100 apartment buildings and private homes have been classified as uninhabitable. But though the people on Akatsy street have petitioned for decades for that uninhabitable classification so new housing could be provided, they've been unsuccessful.
Therefore, the red "SOS!" sign over top of a crumbling building sitting about three kilometres from the Olympic Park. The property is not connected to city water or sewage systems. Residents drill wells and build outhouses. Welcome to Sochi.
In this photo taken on November 27, 2013, a new highway is seen on the fringes of the Olympic park in Sochi.
The female of the human species is seldom thought of as capable of committing horrendously brutal acts; that reputation falls squarely in the lap of men. Women are shy, retiring, not given to violence. And perhaps most are, but in every human being there exists the potential for behaving in ways never suspected under normal circumstances. The world is experiencing circumstances not to be confused with normalcy -- unless one is of the opinion that it is normal for whole swathes of populations to be beset by the raging hatred of others among them.
The Black Widows have become notorious for their gruesomely successful forays into mass violence. Said to be the grieving wives or sisters of male Islamists who have been killed by security forces while committing atrocities against civilian populations, these women, mostly young and in mourning have either volunteered themselves or have been inspired to volunteer themselves at the urging of Islamist factions, to become suicide bombers.
There is a wide-ranging and desperate search now within the Sochi region and beyond for the apprehension of a possible three women jihadis who fall under the rubric of Black Widows. One at least seems to be well known to the Russian security apparatus which has issued a leaflet to Sochi hotels with the visage, front and profile of a woman identified as Ruzanna Ibragimova, thought to be at large within Sochi itself, host city for the winter Olympics.
A photo of a police leaflet seen in a Sochi hotel shows Ruzanna Ibragimova and says that she is at large in the city of Sochi.Photo: AP
The recent history of these female suicidist-mass-murderers is a litany of success in mass blood-letting. In 2002, a Moscow theatre hostage-taking by Chechen militants was hugely successful when 118 of the 850 hostages taken by 41 attackers of whom 19 were women, were all killed when Russian forces pumped narcotic gas into the theatre before assaulting it with gunfire.
A year later two women blew themselves up at the gate of a Moscow outdoor rock concert, killing 14. A year later still, two Russian airliners were bombed on the same night resulting in 79 meeting their untimely deaths. That was followed by a female suicide bomber blowing herself up at a Moscow subway station, killing ten innocent people.
Perhaps the most infamous and dreadful of all the attacks was that of the 2004 Beslan school massacre when 1,100 hostages, mostly young children and their teachers, were taken hostage by jihadis among whom was the sister of one of the plane bombers. When Russian forces finally besieged the school 380 people were killed. And there were other successful attacks taking the lives of other unfortunate victims.
Ruzanna Ibragimova, the 22-year-old widow of an Islamic militant, appears to have been seen in Sochi. The steel net around the city doesn't appear to have been of sufficient vigilance to have prevented her appearance there. Alternately, it has been suggested, she entered Sochi before the full protective net was in place.
The "ring of steel" does also not guarantee despite the costs involved and the tens of thousands of security police installed, that official sport venues well outside Sochi will be safe from organized stealth attacks.
The police posters distributed also included photographs of another two women wearing veils: Zaira Aliyeva, 26, and Dzhannet Tsakhyeva, 34, both of whom were said to have been trained "to perpetrate acts of terrorism." The two women, warned the police "are probably among us", without specifying that they believe them to be present in Sochi itself.
The Olympics will no doubt be a spectacular event of multi-assorted and ongoing sports competitions and accomplishments to the acclaim of all those courageous enough to make their attendance, certainly including the sport contestants and their retinues. It will also, without doubt, go down as one of the most tense venues that the Olympics has ever been held at, despite the dreadful events of Munich in 1972 where there was no advance warning.
White Widow - most wanted as would-be suicide bomber
Russian security services were pulling out all the
stops Tuesday, Jan. 21 in the hunt for the suspected Islamist bomber
Ruzana Ibragimova, 22, known also as Salima or the White Widow, who was
last seen on a street in Sochi ahead of the Feb. 7-23 Winter Olympic
Games.
According to some Russian security sources, they are looking not for
one but for three female suicide bombers, all known as “Black Widows,”
who are used by terrorists because female bombers blend in with their
targets more easily than males.
The United States military has offered to make available air and
naval assets, including two ships in the Black Sea, to support Russia’s
efforts to foil the plans of armed Islamist groups from just over the
Caucasian mountains to disrupt the Games. American warships and planes
will be on standby to evacuate citizens from Sochi in the event of a
major terrorist attack.
This US-Russian counter-terror collaboration is unprecedented. After the
bombings at last year’s Boston Marathon by Caucasian Islamists, the
counterterrorism agencies of the two governments agreed to work together
against the common Islamist terror threat, especially for protecting large-scale sporting events which are hard to secure.
US forces are also working with Russian security units within a vast
2,400-kilometer security zone thrown up around the sporting sites of
Sochi. This “ring of steel” is manned by 40,000 Russian police and
security personnel and is the broadest security area ever provided for
an Olympic event.
However, some malefactors may have already taken up forward positions inside the ring - like “Salima.”
The statistics on incidents debkafile’s
counterterrorism sources have compiled for December, 2013 are not
reassuring, in view of their frequency and the preponderance of civilians
and security officers killed compared with the terrorists.
Security forces clashed with terrorists in 11 local firefights.
Shooting attacks accounted for the deaths of 10 Russian officials and
security officers and 19 civilians. Fifteen terrorists were killed in
security forces' raids and clashes.
Altogether 14 explosive devices were disarmed in time.
The death toll shot up to 79 with the suicide bombings in Volgograd at the end of December which killed 34 people.
Then, on Jan. 8, six bodies shot in the head were found in parked cars
in Stavropol, a town 300 km east of Sochi. Bomb traps surrounding the
four vehicles holding the bodies exploded as security officers
approached, but their caution saved them from harm.
This incident was treated by Russia’s Counter-terror operations regime
as a warning of the violence awaiting the Games. All the divisions
responsible for ensuring the safety of guests and participants were put
on combat alert.
Last month, International Olympic Committee members consulted Western
and Middle Eastern terror experts for an independent, professional
assessment of the risks the Sochi games faced of exposure to terrorist
action.
Their assessments came in three parts:
1) The armed attacks thus far may be the first shots of a
comprehensive Caucasian al Qaeda-related campaign of terror against
Russian cities still to come.
2) Whereas the town of Sochi is fairly secure in view of the tight
security ring enclosing it, transport routes between the town and the
sporting events in the mountains are not sufficiently protected against
terrorist attack. This is not due to Russian incompetence, but the great
distances the sportsmen must travel between their lodgings and hotels
in the town of Sochi and the sporting facilities. Bus and train routes
wind through valleys and mountains which are extremely difficult to
safeguard.
3) The experts reckon that the sportsmen and women taking part in
the Games face the greatest threat, because the long snow-covered slopes
on which they perform are exposed. Indigenous Caucasian terrorists are
practiced in moving around at great speed on snow-clad slopes and are
very hard to locate - even from the air.
"I would like to draw your attention to the fact that in Russia, unlike in one third of the world's countries, being gay is not a crime. So there is no danger for people of this non-traditional sexual orientation to come to the Games." "We have not seen any big instances of corruption in terms of the Sochi Games. There have been attempts by executives, contractors to drive up the price. But this goes on in every country in the world. "If anyone has such information, give these findings to us, please. But besides talk, no one has given us anything." Russian President Vladimir Putin
President Vladimir Putin prepares to ski in Krasnaya Polyana, near Sochi. Photograph: Alexei Nikolsky/AP
How that for a couple of big whoppers. So, don't fret you LBGTS types, all is forgiven. Even the non-traditional among you. Actually, nothing to forgive, you're loved and admired in Russia. You just didn't know it. Change your name to Elton John and nothing matters but the performance. You have it on the topmost authority. And don't take offence just because it's assumed you're all child predators. That wasn't the intent; just that Russia has an obligation to itself to protect its vulnerable young from 'gay propaganda' targeting youth.
"The problem with that law is that it sends a signal that says gays are people you can fine, who you can insult, who you can maybe even beat up. Effectively, we don't even have the right to fight discrimination", countered Dmitry Isakov, a gay rights activists whose life the new law impacted on. He lost his job at a state-owned bank once it became known he was the first person charged under the new law.
He carried a placard with the legend: "Freedom to the Gays and Lesbians of Russia. Down with Fascists and Homophobes" last June in Kazan city centre. He was also just incidentally fined $144 for good measure.
As for Mr. Putin's proud legacy project, to show off to the world how modern and economically progressive Russia is, and look at this wonderful Black Sea resort town, aren't we quite wonderful? That some world leaders, like President Obama have made it known they intend to pass on the Winter Olympics this time around, thank you very much, is surely an inglorious snub to Russia and Mr. Putin. Gee whiz, what's a fellow got to do?
Well, this fella has got to secure the venue challenged like no other country has yet been to defend against the very real threats that have been surfacing, meant to disturb the calm and serenity and pride-without-gay involved in staging such an extravaganza. Some venue that is, coming in at a projected cost of $56-billion over its seven-year construction period. Complicated and partially delayed by reports of kickbacks and price fixing.
Mr. Putin, and who can blame him, felt like showing off a little. Hey, if Beijing could do it, why not Sochi, Russia's summer-time resort, hosting a winter-time slate of sport activities. Danger lurks perhaps, but not of the air pollution variety. Everyone needs a little recreation and down-time, and Sochi's hosting of the Olympics was to be Mr. Putin's.
After all, he's a very busy fella, coming up from behind to take the helm of world affairs from the very reluctant-to-perform Mr. Obama. Pulling out all the stops to use his magician's cape and top hat to prove that Iran threatens no one, that Syria's President Assad is a pussycat, that Ukraine is perfectly right to return to the fold, and America's time as the sole superpower has passed.
It is not a situation, those new revelations, guaranteed to infuse trust in the ability of the Kremlin, despite its enormous expenditures and security preparations with the use of advanced technology and tens of thousands of military and security police personnel to secure the venue of the Winter Olympics in Sochi. It is downright sinister. Further violently destructive hate-filled evidence that jihadis in the Caucasus are determined to wreak as much fear and damage as they can.
No motive has yet been discovered for a series of killings on the outskirts of Pyatigorsk, the very centre of an administrative district meant to coordinate efforts to combat the Islamist insurgency around the Caucasus Mountains region, according to Vladimir Markin, spokesman for the Federal Security Service. The killings unexplained, terror-inducing in itself, since those murdered were ordinary citizens and there appears no reason they should meet death.
FILE - In this Tuesday,
Aug. 17, 2010 file photo police officers guard the site of an explosion
after a parked car exploded outside a cafe in downtown Pyatigorsk, a
city in southern Russia. A series of unexplained killings in southern
Russia involving booby-trapped bombs has further heightened security
fears ahead of next month's Winter Olympics in Sochi. A spokesman for
Russia's main investigative agency, said in a statement that no motive
had yet been found for the killings on Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2014 on the
outskirts of Pyatigorsk, which is the center of an administrative
district created in 2010 to coordinate efforts to combat the insurgency.
(AP Photo/Viktor Korotayev, File)
- See more at: http://www.timescolonist.com/mysterious-killings-heighten-russia-s-security-fears-1.783277#sthash.Ke1nWECQ.dpuf
FILE - In this Tuesday,
Aug. 17, 2010 file photo police officers guard the site of an explosion
after a parked car exploded outside a cafe in downtown Pyatigorsk, a
city in southern Russia. A series of unexplained killings in southern
Russia involving booby-trapped bombs has further heightened security
fears ahead of next month's Winter Olympics in Sochi. A spokesman for
Russia's main investigative agency, said in a statement that no motive
had yet been found for the killings on Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2014 on the
outskirts of Pyatigorsk, which is the center of an administrative
district created in 2010 to coordinate efforts to combat the insurgency.
(AP Photo/Viktor Korotayev, File)
- See more at: http://www.timescolonist.com/mysterious-killings-heighten-russia-s-security-fears-1.783277#sthash.Ke1nWECQ.dpuf
But in those regions and that intemperate political-religious climate the unexpected is expected, without doubt. Militant insurgents declare themselves the enemy of a state that imposes its ruling will upon them. Their aspiration is to achieve total sovereignty in reflection of their own heritage, stringently fundamentalist religious devotion and tribal and clan cultures.
Pyatigorsk is in the Stavropol region, just north of predominantly Muslim republics in the Caucasus region of Russia. The Federal Security Service, the successor to the KGB, had joined the local investigation, now classified as a counter-terrorist operation. Sochi is located to the east of the region on the Black Sea, about 300 kilometres by air, and almost twice as far by road from Pyatigorsk; too close for comfort, despite the seemingly impenetrable security encircling Sochi.
Was it symbolic, to demonstrate that the terrorists could strike anywhere, anytime, at will? That what they could accomplish in a city not too distant from Sochi they could also arrange for Sochi itself, despite security? How secure, after all, can any site be that invites participation from abroad, knowing that an internationally enthusiastic audience will travel to the site of the Olympics, to be there and witness champion sporting activities with the added frisson of danger?
In a Dec. 30, 2013 photo, an ambulance leaves the site of a trolleybus bombing in the city of Volgograd.
(Photo: Denis Tyrin, AP)
There are always oversights, because human nature cannot always be vigilant, particularly under stress. No claims of responsibility have been made yet for the Volgograd bombings. The use of explosives along with the six men shot to death and discovered in vehicles with explosives alongside in two separate venues appear to clearly mark the events as having been staged not by 'common' criminals but by criminal minds belonging to the psychotic disorder of terrorists.
This represents a general opinion site for its author. It also offers a space for the author to record her experiences and perceptions,both personal and public. This is rendered obvious by the content contained in the blog, but the space is here inviting me to write. And so I do.
