Special Olympics Athletes Forced To Sleep On A Gym Floor And Fight Over Food

Hundreds of athletes arriving for the Special Olympics received a rather uncomfortable welcome to Los Angeles. Around 1,500 Special Olympics delegates spent last night sleeping on a gym floor at Loyola Marymount University, after delayed flights and buses left them stranded. The athletes had traveled from Norway, Mexico, Venezuela, Kenya and the Cayman Islands. Esmeralda Brockhurst, a delegation liaison for Portugal, tells ABC7, "They were sleeping on the floor, they were sleeping on cardboard boxes, things like that."

The Red Cross was called in late last night and provided the athletes with 1,200 blankets, 3,000 bottles of water and snacks. Before that, the became situation a bit chaotic, as one member of the British delegation told KNX 1070, “It’s a bit like carnage in there, nobody really knows what’s going on,” he said. “Fighting over food, it’s a terrible situation.”

More at LAist

Pussy Riot whipped by Cossacks in Sochi

Pussy Riot band Members have been attacked by Cossacks with batons, pepper spray and whips, as the young women attempted to perform a song near the seaport in the Olympic host city, Sochi.

More on The Guardian

In their tall, fur hats and embellished traditional jackets, hundreds of Cossacks are patrolling the streets of Sochi, Russia, as the 2014 Winter Olympic Games approach.

These Russian soldiers, whose ancestry dates back thousands of years, are known in the West for their gravity-defying dance style. Closer to home, the Cossacks have long symbolized rebellion and military might in Western and Southern Russia and Ukraine.

After the Bolsheviks (who later became Communists) came to power, they massacred many Cossacks for their opposition to the revolution. Since the fall of the Soviet Union in the late 20th century, there has been a revival of Cossack culture and pride in Russia and the former Soviet states. Russia has been turning to the Cossacks to help bolster security, even before Sochi was named as the host city for the 2014 Winter Olympics.

Once Russia's henchmen, Cossacks now helping with Olympic security (CNN)

Elena Klimova, the journalist and creator of the " Children 404", is prosecuted under Article 6.21 of the Administrative Code

Elena Klimova, the journalist and creator of the "Children 404", is prosecuted under Article 6.21 of the Administrative Code ("Promotion of non-traditional sexual relations among minors") by the Russian Interior Ministry in Nizhny Tagil.

Elena is blamed for "the creation of the group in social Russian internet network VK , which promotes non-traditional sexual relations." In March 2013 she published a series of articles on the situation of adolescents who aware of their homosexuality. After this publication she began to receive a large number of responses from these adolescents. They talked about their experiences and the challenges they faced. Elena launched the project "Children 404", where these letters were published, and it eventually became the meeting place for LGBT teens. "If it is closed, LGBT teens lose the only place where they can talk openly about themselves and get advice to help them live. It would be a disaster," - says Elena Klimova.

Elena had her first questioning on January 17 this year. Then "propaganda" had not been seen in the Klimova’s project. What was the reason for the change of the decision remains a mystery. Last report doesnt specified, on what basis made officers decided that she had created the group "promoting unconventional sexual relationship."

Российская ЛГБТ-сеть - Olympic protests of Russian anti-gay laws (Wikipedia)

Gay Dutch snowboarder is first to protest at Olympics

A Dutch snowboarder is the first athlete to protest against Russia’s anti-gay laws, at an Olympic event in Sochi yesterday. Cheryl Maas, one of just six openly gay athletes at the Games, made the protest at the Ladies’ Slopestyle event.

After finishing her run, she approached the camera and showed off her rainbow-and-unicorn decorated gloves, before walking off defiantly.

PinkNews

Channel 4 Goes Rainbow For The Day To Wish Good Luck To Everyone At Sochi Winter Olympics

British TV station Channel 4 has made a proud statement in time for the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, beginning today.

With the world debating the rights and wrongs of the Olympics taking place in a country where a law banning gay education was recently passed, and activists opposing the ban are treated harshly by the state, the UK television station has made its feelings known.

In addition, they've produced this striking new trailer - 'Gay Mountain' - to wish good luck to ALL athletes competing at the Games – gay or straight – with the message “good luck to everyone out in Sochi”. Bravo!

Huff. Post

At Sochi, Igor Kharchenko Becomes Second Activist Jailed In 3 Days

An activist who has been monitoring environmental fallout from the Sochi Olympics has been jailed for five days for resisting police, apparently part of a continuing harassment campaign against local activists.

Igor Kharchenko was grabbed on the street in the regional capital of Krasnodar late Tuesday afternoon as he left his house and found his car smashed, an associate, Olga Soldatova, said Wednesday. Police charged him with resisting police orders. Soldatova, who was with him at the police station, said Kharchenko was given a blank sheet of paper instead of a protocol sanctioning his detention.

Kharchenko was put on trial behind closed doors Wednesday and sentenced to five days in jail for disobeying police orders. "They were leading Kharchenko out, and he told us he got 5 days, without a proper trial, lawyer or witnesses," said Soldatova, who was at the courthouse.

Huffington Post

How Russia Is Censoring Reporting On Sochi Olympics Controversies

Russian state-controlled media outlets, which include the nation's largest television networks and news agencies, are unlikely to air reports questioning the country’s costly preparations for the games, the concerns of LGBT athletes, or the environmental impact of drastically changing the landscape in Sochi -- essentially, anything that doesn't help project the image Putin wants for the Olympics.

In CPJ’s report, an unnamed Sochi correspondent for a Russian news organization recalled filing three stories to editors in Moscow. The first cast doubt on authorities’ claims about a journalist arrested for narcotics possession, while two others looked at dysfunction at a newly built Sochi residential complex for the games and a major storm expected to hit Sochi. All three were rejected in Moscow.

“You may have a storm, a twister, and even a 9-Richter-scale earthquake; still, we have to write that all skies are clear over Sochi,” the correspondent recalled her editor saying. Censorship in authoritarian countries can be overt, as when negative stories are spiked, or more subtle, creating a climate where journalists self-censor out of fear of risking their livelihoods.

“Nobody calls me; nobody says to me what I should or should not write about,” Svetlana Sagradova, the editor-in-chief of a local business magazine, told CPJ. “But I know what the topics that would anger the authorities are, and I have imposed self-censorship when it comes to those. Because -- one move by the prosecutors -- and my publication could lose its license.”

Since many Sochi-based news outlets receive funding from the government, it’s expected that Olympics stories that upset the Kremlin could lead to funds getting cut off.

The World Post

Russia's Sochi Confronts Massive Problems Behind Olympics Facade

In the village of Akhshtyr, residents complain about an illegal landfill operated by an Olympics contractor that has fouled the air and a stream that feeds the Sochi water supply. Waste from another illegal dump in the village of Loo has slid into a brook that flows into the already polluted Black Sea.

In the village of Mirny, just outside the Olympic Park, rumbling trucks have damaged foundations and caused homes to sink. And right across the railroad tracks from the Akatsy building, another multi-family residence has become prone to flooding after an Olympics-related road was built nearby.

Sochi residents also complain about widespread environmental damage, including the destruction of forests and the contamination of a river running down to the sea. Near the Olympic Park, a popular sandy beach was paved over for the development of a port that was never built.

The Winter Games were intended to showcase the Russia's resurgence from the collapse of the Soviet Union two decades ago. From drab sanatoriums to gleaming ski resorts. From outdoor markets with counterfeit clothes to boutiques filled with international brands. When an AP correspondent asked the Sochi mayor last year what had changed in the city for the better, Anatoly Pakhomov started talking about a new shopping mall and a Louis Vuitton store as symbols of positive change.

huffingtonpost.com - The World Post

An Open Letter to David Cameron and the IOC by Stephen Fry

Dear Prime Minister, M Rogge, Lord Coe and Members of the International Olympic Committee,

I write in the earnest hope that all those with a love of sport and the Olympic spirit will consider the stain on the Five Rings that occurred when the 1936 Berlin Olympics proceeded under the exultant aegis of a tyrant who had passed into law, two years earlier, an act which singled out for special persecution a minority whose only crime was the accident of their birth. In his case he banned Jews from academic tenure or public office, he made sure that the police turned a blind eye to any beatings, thefts or humiliations afflicted on them, he burned and banned books written by them. He claimed they “polluted” the purity and tradition of what it was to be German, that they were a threat to the state, to the children and the future of the Reich. He blamed them simultaneously for the mutually exclusive crimes of Communism and for the controlling of international capital and banks. He blamed them for ruining the culture with their liberalism and difference. The Olympic movement at that time paid precisely no attention to this evil and proceeded with the notorious Berlin Olympiad, which provided a stage for a gleeful Führer and only increased his status at home and abroad. It gave him confidence. All historians are agreed on that. What he did with that confidence we all know.

Putin is eerily repeating this insane crime, only this time against LGBT Russians. Beatings, murders and humiliations are ignored by the police. Any defence or sane discussion of homosexuality is against the law. Any statement, for example, that Tchaikovsky was gay and that his art and life reflects this sexuality and are an inspiration to other gay artists would be punishable by imprisonment. It is simply not enough to say that gay Olympians may or may not be safe in their village. The IOC absolutely must take a firm stance on behalf of the shared humanity it is supposed to represent against the barbaric, fascist law that Putin has pushed through the Duma. Let us not forget that Olympic events used not only to be athletic, they used to include cultural competitions. Let us realise that in fact, sport is cultural. It does not exist in a bubble outside society or politics. The idea that sport and politics don’t connect is worse than disingenuous, worse than stupid. It is wickedly, wilfully wrong. Everyone knows politics interconnects with everything for “politics” is simply the Greek for “to do with the people”.

An absolute ban on the Russian Winter Olympics of 2014 on Sochi is simply essential. Stage them elsewhere in Utah, Lillyhammer, anywhere you like. At all costs Putin cannot be seen to have the approval of the civilised world.

He is making scapegoats of gay people, just as Hitler did Jews. He cannot be allowed to get away with it. I know whereof I speak. I have visited Russia, stood up to the political deputy who introduced the first of these laws, in his city of St Petersburg. I looked into the face of the man and, on camera, tried to reason with him, counter him, make him understand what he was doing. All I saw reflected back at me was what Hannah Arendt called, so memorably, “the banality of evil.” A stupid man, but like so many tyrants, one with an instinct of how to exploit a disaffected people by finding scapegoats. Putin may not be quite as oafish and stupid as Deputy Milonov but his instincts are the same. He may claim that the “values” of Russia are not the “values” of the West, but this is absolutely in opposition to Peter the Great’s philosophy, and against the hopes of millions of Russians, those not in the grip of that toxic mix of shaven headed thuggery and bigoted religion, those who are agonised by the rolling back of democracy and the formation of a new autocracy in the motherland that has suffered so much (and whose music, literature and drama, incidentally I love so passionately).

Full letter on The New Adventures of Stephen Fry

Russia Promises To Prosecute Gays During 2014 Olympics

"Russia will enforce a new law cracking down on gay rights activism when it hosts international athletes and fans during the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, the country's sports minister said Thursday, appearing to contradict assurances to the contrary from the International Olympic Committee.

TheYoungTurks

Gay Athletes & Tourists Could Face Arrest During Russia's Olympic Games

Gay athletes and supporters at Russia’s 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games could face arrest under the country’s newly approved anti-gay legislation. That's according to politician Vitaly Milonov, who says the law cannot be selectively enforced nor suspended, despite claims from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that the Russian government has given assurances as to the safety of athletes and supporters, regardless of their sexual orientation.

In an interview with Interfax news agency, Milonov said: “I haven’t heard any comments from the government of the Russian Federation, but I know that it is acting in accordance with Russian law. “And if a law has been approved by the federal legislature and signed by the president, then the government has no right to suspend it. It doesn’t have the authority.”

Milonov, who co-sponsored the bill against “non-traditional relationships”, added he had “spoken with many American politicians” and that they “support the stance I’ve taken on this issue.”

Huff. Post

Dark side of Russian bid to host winter games

UPDATE: Vladimir Putin has fired a top Russian Olympic official after publicly ridiculing him on a visit to facilities being built for a winter Olympics dogged by reports of corruption and construction delays. (The Guardian)

illegal House Demolition for Olympics in Russia

The Russian authorities’ illegal bulldozing on a property in Sochi is a stain on the 2014 Winter Olympic Games preparations, Human Rights Watch said today.  The International Olympic Committee (IOC) should urgently intervene with the Russian government to respect the rights of the family, including by providing reasonable compensation, such as relocation to a home in a different neighborhood, Human Rights Watch said.

Sergei Khlistov has been living in a modest two-story house in the Adler section of Sochi for 16 years. His wife, daughter, son-in-law, and two grandchildren, ages 3 and 8, also live in the home. On September 14, 2012, at 11 a.m., without warning, local authorities brought in a demolition excavator and knocked down the storage shed next to the Khlistovs’ home. The authorities threatened to destroy the house and forcibly evict the family early next week.
“The Russian authorities are proceeding with this demolition and eviction in an utterly reckless manner that completely flies in the face of the Olympic principles of human dignity and respect,” said Jane Buchanan, senior researcher for Europe and Central Asia at Human Rights Watch. “The IOC needs to get the federal and Sochi authorities to stop this immediately or this family will be made homeless in the name of the Olympics.”

Human Rights Watch

The Military Olympics

London Mayor Boris Johnson gets to grips with the Olympic rowing, struggling to distinguish between the half way and the finish line.

Chinese Olympics training or child cruelty?

You be the judge. All for the glory of the motherland with gold medals. The rigid chinese sports system has produced successes in this Olympics but at what costs? How many hurted or killed for these chinese gold medals?

Olympic Banksy

Banksy’s satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine dark humour with graffiti are done in a distinctive stencilling technique. Such artistic works of political and social commentary have been featured on streets, walls, and bridges of cities throughout the world.

Wikipedia - banksy.co.uk

Torch relay's Nazi origins aren't widely known

Most people have little idea that the origins of the Olympic flame do not lie in ancient Greece, and was instead formulated as a major part of the Nazis’ plot to shift international opinion in their favor.
"There had been no such torch relays in the ancient Games or, for that matter, in any of the 10 modern Summer Olympics preceding the Berlin Games," wrote renowned author David Clay Large in his outstanding book, "Nazi Games: The Olympics of 1936," which was published in 2007. "The torch relay was one of but many ways in which the Nazi Games helped define the modern Olympic experience as we know it today."

The torch relay would play a major role in the propaganda offensive backed by Hitler and orchestrated by Dr. Joseph Goebbels. In the lead-up to the Games, the Nazi Propaganda Ministry supported a relay of the Olympic flame that would not only provide spectacular footage for Olympia, the 1938 film that was used to promote the Nazi ideal ahead of World War II, but could also be used for significant political and public relations benefit.
The ancient Greeks had run relay races that involved flames as part of their worship to the Gods, but there had been no such symbolism in the modern Games. There had been a flame at Amsterdam in 1928 and Los Angeles in 1932, but it did not come from Olympia and there was no relay.
Yet ahead of Berlin, the Nazis wasted no opportunity to ensure the flame’s journey was used to promote the party ethos. At the lighting ceremony in Greece, a German ambassador dedicated the torch to Hitler himself, while a band played the marching song of the Sturmabteilung, the Nazi Party army, according to Large.

"The Nazis used the Olympics to give the German public an exaggerated sense of national superiority that later was used in the service of military aggression," said Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of Holocaust Studies at the David S. Wyman Institute in Washington D.C. "The games also gave Hitler a way to soften his public image in order to allay the international community’s concerns about his bigotry, violence and militarism."

Yahoo - The Olympic torch's shadowy past  (BBC)

Protesters hold ‘anti-Games’ near Olympic stadium

While the eyes of the world were on the first full day of competition at the London Olympics, a far smaller group was marking the “anti-Games” near the stadium on Saturday. A few hundred protesters gathered in a party atmosphere to express their opposition to everything from corporate sponsorship of the Olympics to anger about missiles positioned on the roofs of nearby apartment blocks for the Games.

At the protest in Mile End, one subway stop from the stadium in east London, many demonstrators looked a little stunned by the sudden media attention after months of being largely ignored. “There seem to be more cameras than protesters!” said Jean Videler, 60, equipped with a rucksack and tennis shoes, her grey hair falling to her shoulders.

The protest brought together around 40 activist groups under the banner of the “CounterOlympics Network” – groups that had hitherto struggled to be heard above the din of the London 2012 media machine. Some protesters were from the “Occupy London” anti-capitalist movement, or from far-left parties, united by their opposition to the multi-million dollar sponsorship of the Games by multinationals like McDonald’s and Dow Chemical.

Raw Story

Olympics firm, G4S, in Israeli Security Controversy

London braces for Israeli strike on Iran during 2012 Games

Taking into account the possibility of an Israeli attack on Iran during the 2012 Summer Games, the Olympic committee in charge of the London event has formed a special team to prepare for the contingency.

According to the Hebrew daily Yedioth Ahronoth on Wednesday., the team — consisting of politicians, diplomats, security officials and organizing committee personnel — wrote in a report that such a strike was entirely possible.

Yedioth reported that the team was also preparing for the possibility of an earthquake or volcanic eruption. England is thought to be within the range of Iranian missiles and UK officials believe that a military confrontation between Jerusalem and Tehran could involve the country against its will.

The special team listed a number of steps that would need to be taken in the event of such a conflict, among them: opening a special command center, providing secret safe houses for foreign leaders wishing to meet for diplomatic purposes, and preparing for emergency evacuations of dignitaries.

The Times of Israel