Is anyone watching this ghastly OLYMPICS Opening Ceremony display on NBC?

[MADem]

153. Pity that didn't happen.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/07/putin-s-sochi-and-hitler-s-berlin-the-love-affair-between-dictators-and-the-olympic-games.html

The 2014 Winter Games officially open in Sochi today, seven long years after the winning bid so strongly and personally supported by Russian president Vladimir Putin. Most Russians were ambivalent about this accomplishment despite our natural devotion to winter sports. What was a country with no remaining sports infrastructure for its children doing offering to spend twelve billion dollars to host foreign athletes? The official budget has since grown to over $50 billion, more than the combined cost of every previous Winter Games combined, according to a Dutch newspaper. It would be a surprise if more than 25% of those billions did more than pass through Sochi on their way from the Russian treasury to Swiss bank accounts and the London real estate market.

Social media has already turned Sochi into an international laughingstock as foreign reporters arrived to find unfinished and damaged hotels with toxic water and stray dogs in the rooms. One can only pray that the venues and courses will prove safer for the athletes and fans and that the security cordon is run more professionally. Hosting the Olympics a half-day’s journey from an active terrorist hotspot was absurd to begin with, and the incompetence demonstrated by the organizers thus far is not reassuring.

Do not mistake the epic graft in Sochi as unusual or incidental. Corruption is the overriding principle of Putin’s 14 years in power and looting the Russian treasury and the Russian people is itself the goal. For all the foolish attempts to interpret Putin’s geopolitical strategy and personal ideology, the common denominator is always whether or not an action helps him maintain the cash flow that in turn enables him and his clique to stay in power.

Putin also wanted the Sochi Olympics to be his Peter the Great moment, the beloved Soviet summer resort town turned into an international jewel the way Saint Petersburg was built into an Imperial capital practically from scratch. It can even be said that, like Peter’s endeavor, Putin’s transformation of Sochi relied on a serf labor force. Foreign leaders coming to cheer by Putin’s side at the opening ceremony, photos with all the Russian medal winners, it is easy to see the attraction. Putin also hoped to drum up some patriotic pride with a big circus to serve with thick black bread. This is the sort of delusion that sets in when a despot confuses himself with the state after too long in power. Absent the feedback mechanisms of a free media and real elections, he begins to believe his glory is the country’s glory, that what makes him happy also makes the people happy.....The International Olympic Committee is an eager partner in all of this and also has a long and dark history. After the triumph of Berlin, for example, the next Games were planned for Tokyo and Rome. New IOC President Thomas Bach’s strained protests about how foreign leaders protesting Sochi are “inserting politics into sport” ignore that fact that selling a huge platform for propaganda and corruption to a dictatorship is also “playing politics.” By Bach’s dubious rationale, the IOC would award the Games to North Korea as long as the venues were adequate and the fees were paid promptly.

A "Peter the Great" moment, precisely. The whole article is worth a read.