The 2014 Winter Olympics: Day 6(ish).

During the 2012 Summer Olympics which took place in my home city of London and where the UK's official broadcaster the BBC were responsible for bringing coverage to the entire world I was spoilt with almost 24 hour a day live feeds from every Olympic venue regardless of whether there was actually any competition taking place. With the 2014 Winter Olympics being held in Sochi, Russia I am now getting only two live feeds and one of them seems to be dedicated to Curling in the traditional indoor bowls/retired people slot while the other is dedicated to blanket coverage of UK competitors regardless of how dull and irrelevant their events are.

Sure the BBC is doing a one hour daily review show. However for reasons best known only to them they are broadcasting this live at 19:00 (GMT) one hour before the days events have actually ended. As a result the review show is often replaced by whatever event a UK athlete is competing in at the time. Also because the show goes up against the hugely popular lifestyle/soft-news "The One Show" program the producers of the review show have decided to chase viewers by replacing coverage of the games with human interest stories such as in depth interviews with the parents of a British athlete who has bravely battled their way into seventh place in some event or another. As a result I'm left with an extremely limited knowledge of what is going on at the Olympics.

Partly due to this and partly because it is still early days I'm not aware of any great political scandals so far. As I mentioned yesterday globalisation has meant that since in its inception in the late 19th century and its heyday during the Cold War the Olympics have begun to slowly move away from politics and into pure sporting excellence. However the lack of politics so far at the 2014 has been dramatic and shocking. I think that mainly this is due to the fact that in the run up to the games nations such as the US and the UK decided that the main political theme of the Sochi games would be using Russia's anti-gay propaganda laws to bash Russia for it's support for the Syrian government. The first problem has been that while I don't want to be putting words into people's mouths I don't think the UK and the US enjoy the depth of international support for this plan that they think they do. The second problem is that the opening ceremony so comprehensively and effectively dealt with the gay rights issue that many nations were struck dumb and left unsure of how to proceed.

Today (12/2/14) the Germans attempted to get things moving again by starting criminal proceedings over a fatal crowd crush at the 2010 Love Parade music festival. As this incident killed 21 people I think there needs to be a trial to examine what happened and as someone who has worked in crowd control/management if individuals have failed to do their jobs properly they deserve to be punished. In terms of the Olympics though the important thing is that long before it became a music festival the Berlin Love Parade started out as a gay rights protest - hence the name "Love Parade." The criminal trial seems likely to focus on the preparations that were made to keep the visitors safe during the event and what, if any, role the visitors played in the tragedy. Therefore the timing of the announcement seems intended to promote discussion about how the gay rights issue has been handled by both the Russian hosts and international visitors in the run up to the games. Through Saturday's (8/2/14) shock 5-1 defeat of Arsenal (Lesbians) at the hands of Liverpool (Irish Catholics) in the English football league the UK has already issued an apology of sorts for its conduct.

 

The only big man-made political issue that has surrounded the Sochi games so far seems to be the discussion about the future of the Olympic movement in terms of politics/sport that should peak on Thursday (13/2/14) with London Conference on the Illegal Wildlife Trade 2014. Helping to hype up this event the final of the (reasonably) famous Westminster Kennel Club dog of the year competition was held in New York, US on Tuesday (11/2/14). The notion of superior breeds that became the Nazi quasi-science of Eugenics and which was hugely popular during the early days of the modern Olympics was actually invented by British dog breeders who would have loved to compete in the Westminster Kennel Club show. The big prize of the competition was won by a Fox Wire Terrier named "Sky" who immediately celebrated his victory by talking his owner into being interviewed on the US FOXNews channel. The FOX network is of course owned by Rupert Murdoch and it's British and European versions are known as Sky. This seems intended to promote discussion about all those conspiracy theories about the world being secretly controlled by secret societies such as the Knights Templar, the Illuminati or the Bilderburg depending on which school of paranoia you sign up to. In the US FOXNews is extremely critical of the Democrat Party. Therefore they were chosen for this discussion because many of the authoritarian socialists who make up the Hillary Clinton led faction of the Democrat Party would like nothing more then to be part of a secret group of superior beings ruling over the world. After all it would certainly be a lot less chaotic then the current reality.

Meanwhile my Jewish wife has been keeping herself busy. Over the last couple of weeks Natalie Portman has returned to the country of her birth - Israel - to film her directorial debut. This allows Israel to point out the UK that through her role in the film "Your Highness" Natalie Portman rather then anyone in Britain was responsible for the creative vision for 'epic and ward winning' 2012 para-Olympic closing ceremony. In turn that helps to explain why the US and Israel have had such a large falling out of the US' treatment of Rihanna. Mainly though the way that Portman entered into a relationship and became pregnant at around the time of her physically and emotionally demanding role in the Sochi relevant movie "Black Swan" promotes discussion about the way that people can be manipulated into thinking they're in love when they're not and even be caused to fall pregnant. After all as Lusia Zissman's mysterious lactation in the recent UK season of Celebrity Big Brother demonstrated the human endocrine system can be manipulated by psychological stimuli. In what seems to be an attempt to draw attention to the production Ms Portman and her crew have apparently been harassed by Jewish settlers who view the production as "a foreign invasion." This expresses Israel's displeasure at and the problems with the US' interference in the Israel/Palestine peace process. After all while Israel will grant sanctuary to any Jew being born Jewish does not automatically make you an expert on everyday life within Israel.  

As with the appearance of Super Storm Sandy in the run-up to the 2012 US Presidential election the environment seems intent on forcing itself onto the agenda for the Olympics. Australia is still in the grips of an extremely long and intense wild fire season that started long before Rihanna's arrival, there was an earthquake in China this morning and there has been severe flooding causing landslips in Burundi and other parts of Africa. The two events that I find the most interesting though are the ones that have been going on in the US and the UK.
In the US a severe winter storm made up of sleet and ice has been affecting the usually warm southern states. The worst affected area has been the state of Georgia where some 3000 flights have been cancelled and around 350,000 people have been left without power. The nation of Georgia is very relevant to the Sochi Olympics where people can't help but be reminded of the death of Georgian Luger Nodar Kumaritashvili at the 2010 Vancouver games. Also in 2008 Georgia fought a very short war with Russia. The Georgian excuse for starting that war was an allegation that Russia had breached the agreement that saw Georgia break away from the Soviet Union. That agreement was signed in 1992 in the Russian city of Sochi. Following that war Georgia fell dramatically out of favour with the west and has been trying to lose it pariah status ever since. So apart from causing economic damage within the US it looks like the storm is going to treat us to a couple of days of talk all about how the US is having to battle the prevailing climate in an effort to restore power to Georgia.
Across the south and west of Britain it has been raining pretty much since the end on the COP19/CMP9 Summit in November 2013 with lots of people having their Christmas' ruined by flooding and gale force winds. In the run up to the Sochi games the UK has really stepped up its coverage of this flooding in order to start a discussion about Russia's about face on arctic shipping routes during the COP19/CMP9 Summit. So for example a lot of the UK's rescue efforts and therefore media coverage have focused on the town of Dachet because it's pronounced a bit like "Dacha" with is a type of traditional Russian summer home. Also a lot of focus has been given to the type movable flood barricades that the UK has spent years insisting will save us all from the climate change which at the same time insisting that there is no such thing as climate change. Basically these flood barricades involve building a giant metal wall type structure between the sectors of a city that are flooded and the sectors of a city that are not yet flooded. As such it is not difficult to draw comparisons between the UK's flood barricades and the Berlin Wall.
It seems the weather is going to have the last laugh though because it has been raining in the UK for so long now that in sections of the country the ground water table has reached the point where it is now higher the level of the ground itself. As a result a lot of the flooding is coming not from the sea or rivers that have burst their banks but up through the earth itself. This makes the UK's flood barricades pretty much useless and in turn highlights just how stupid this approach to climate change actually is. Mind you it seems that no-one in the UK is allowed to use the term "Climate Change" anymore.

(Originally Posted) 20:45 on 12/2/14 (UK date).