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Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Going for Gold: The 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi





If you're a winter sports fan I hope you're enjoying the great action from Sochi in Russia. If you missed the wonderful opening ceremony last Friday, you can watch the RT coverage of it again, above. The programme includes an interview with me starting at around 23 minutes. While here is my piece for RT.com on the history of the Winter Olympics.

11 comments:

brian said...

the russian 'anti gay' law:

http://www.infowars.com/the-truth-about-russias-anti-gay-law/

gay advocate Brisan Heiss does what not many have : analyses the law
http://static.prisonplanet.com/p/images/february2014/white_paper.pdf

http://www.globalresearch.ca/strange-color-revolution-more-gay-protests-at-russias-sochi-olympics/5368595

forget russia: http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/02/13/kansas_anti_gay_segregation_bill_is_an_abomination.html

brian said...

the war on President Vladimir Putin....
russiaphobia joins the western autocracies and islamists, the left and right in a common bond of pious outage.
=======================

'The Sochi Games have, after all, been relentlessly transformed by influential Western NGOs, campaigners and officials into a platform for criticising and ridiculing Putin’s Russia. The Games have been thoroughly politicised, by everyone from human-rights groups to gay activists, turned into what one observer calls an ‘unlikely platform [for] world condemnation’ of Russia, a condemnation which in recent months has reached ‘fever pitch’. If Islamists think Sochi represents a good opportunity for attacking Russia, maybe they’ve been influenced by powerful Western elements who for the past year have been using Sochi to precisely those ends.'
....
'The most striking thing about the Western response to the savage attacks on civilians in Volgograd is how little sympathy there has been. There’s even a powerful hint of ‘You had it coming’ in the editorialising on the bombings.'
...
'Try to imagine how we would respond if, just a few days after Christmas, a St Pancras station packed with commuters was targeted by a suicide bomber and a London bus was blown to smithereens. We’d be shocked, distressed, keen to discover who the culprits were and possibly to clamp down on their suspected associates or sponsors. Yet Russia’s similar feelings of loss and anger are subtly ridiculed by Western observers. Putin will probably ‘respond ruthlessly to yesterday’s suicide bombing’, scoffs one newspaper in a piece on the corruption and authoritarianism of modern Russia'
...
So in recent months, Greenpeace activists from the West have attacked Russian oil rigs on the basis that they are ‘destroying the Arctic’; Amnesty International has elevated the cause of Pussy Riot, Russia’s then imprisoned female punk band, above every other human-rights cause on Earth, generating a massive, celebrity-endorsed moral assault on Putin’s authoritarianism; numerous NGOs, some of them funded by American government agencies, have set up shop in Russia with the aim of exposing its democratic failings; right-leaning commentators have slammed Putin for using ‘bullying and cajolery’ to try to make modern Russia as globally powerful as the Soviet Union once was. Westerners who don’t agree on very much have become unified around the cause of Anti-Putinism.
etc
https://www.facebook.com/notes/brian-souter/the-dangers-of-demonising-russia/620138914701376

so russia is authoritartian and UKUS are not? once again media and state are aligned in the 'free' and 'demcratic' west..

brian said...


http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/02/14/russia-attack-paul-craig-roberts/

' The degradation of mainstream American press coverage of Russia, a country still vital to US national security, has been under way for many years. If the recent tsunami of shamefully unprofessional and politically inflammatory articles in leading newspapers and magazines—particularly about the Sochi Olympics, Ukraine and, unfailingly, President Vladimir Putin—is an indication, this media malpractice is now pervasive and the new norm.'
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37635.htm

brian said...

Syrian Rebel Watch
English speaking Jihadist who defected from Jabhat Al Nusra to ISIS Appears in a video in which he recounts how various insurgent groups are receiving weapons deliveries from Turkey.

The major issue and subject of the video is that he claims that Nusra Front leaders granted permission for warlord Jamal Marouf's SRF and Islamist militant group Ahrar Al Sham to collect weapons from Turkey even though both have clashed heavily with ISIS since January.

This underlines the growing divide between Jabhat Al Nusra and ISIS.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmxNreZ-Cs0

brian said...

seeking to outdo the americans in libel?
Here is how DailyMail wrote about the olympics Venemnous disgusting libelous...who has murdered more russia or UKUS? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2554410/The-gangsters-games-By-endorsing-Putins-murderous-corrupt-regime-Olympic-movement-allowed-hijacked-evil-Hitler.html

brian said...

Telegraph Sport ‏@TelegraphSport 13m
Tearful Elise Christie says she's received 'threatening messages' after being disqualified at second event #Sochi2014 http://fw.to/qdOXifc

brian said...

lots of stuff here on shoplifting photos from other places and using for venezuela! ‪#‎howtomakearevolution‬
http://drdawgsblawg.ca/2014/02/constructing-venezuela-protests-a-photo-gallery.shtml

brian said...

when it comes to Chutzpah, few can match the americans and their 1980 moscow olympics boycott: the reason was a very highminded but hypocritical one: invading nations are bad!
'Then came the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York. Just before they started, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance spoke at an event opening the Games. He said, “Let me make my government’s position clear. We will oppose the participation of an American team in any Olympic Games in the capital of an invading nation.”

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-failed-u-s-boycott-of-the-1980-moscow-summer-olympics/5369121

US would never invade another state(Vietnam cambodia laos Korea.....later Iraq and...wait for it...Afghanistan!)

brian said...

profile in courage, canadian media as dictators: canadian athlete takes selfie with gracious host President Putin, all hell breaks loose in canadian media at the temerity, bullied and cajoled by self-rightous social and other media using ther HR card to recant.

the irony is the canadians are the ones behaving like dictators or standover men, not president Putin.....
http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/blogs/thesochinetwork/canadian-athlete-deletes-selfie-vladimir-putin-backlash-225147138.html

the comments are much better rightly seeing this as bullying or real dictatorship #shamecanada

Ian said...

Brian, this blog is dead, even Neil doesn't reply on here anymore.

Probably best to spam elsewhere now.

Neil Clark said...

Ian- blog most certainly not dead (it was only resting... -surely entitled to a breather after eight years)
Brian- please keep very interesting posts and links coming in! (& Ian too, yr comments welcome).