Thursday 6 February 2014

game-face or fortress olympiad

As the opening ceremonies for the Winter Games are about to commence the competition and camaraderie is certainly being over-shadowed by a side-show, which is graver by degrees, of official snubs, boycotts, poor labour conditions, negative civic and environmental impact, hastily built accommodations, the lockdown of the nation of Abkhazia for the duration of the event whose borders are just a few kilometres from the venue, and the rest of the security theatre.

The US has deployed two war ships to the Black Sea to serve as command-and-control stations, in case of an anticipated, anxiously awaited terrorist attack. This is a very odd display, especially when one wonders what battle ships could do to protect the athletes and spectators above and beyond what's already in place against America's random weaponised article generator, which has come up with explosives in tubes of toothpaste aboard a plane as a credible threat. It sort of sounds like the attempt (successful) to smuggle dinosaur eggs out of Jurassic Park in hollowed out cans of shaving-cream. Considering the curious case of the underpants bomber, I wonder how clever that these sort of schemes are. Despite how aggrevating such assessments and over-kill can be, I hope it's all for naught—the fortress, at least, and everyone can safely enjoy the show.