Sochi Problems.

Although the official opening ceremony doesn't take place until tomorrow (7/2/14) the 2014 Winter Olympics opened today in Sochi, Russia. As always hosting an Olympics gives a nation an opportunity to showcase itself on the world stage. This is particularly important for the Russians who want to exercise the demons of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow that were controversially boycotted by the United States. The Sochi games are also important personally for Vladimir Putin who as overseen them first as President then as Prime Minister and now as President again. Apart from showcasing Russia on the world stage Putin is also keen to use the games domestically to demonstrate the success of his "Strong Russia" policies which have allowed him to stay in power for so long.

The first threat to the success of the Sochi games has been Russia's controversial anti-gay propaganda law. As I've said before I personally think that the passing of this law in time for the Winter Olympics was an attempt to do something positive for gay rights in Russia by giving the world the opportunity to constructively demonstrate just how ridiculous this type of law is. For example the official slogan of the games; "Sochi: Hot. Cool. Yours." actually sounds a little bit gay and playful enough to give the impression that visitors who are gay enough to get the joke will be more then welcome in what is effectively Russia's gay capital. However partly as an excuse to criticise Russia over Syria and partly due to the world's gay community being a little bit hysterical and reactionary this largely seems to have been an opportunity missed. It does though give Putin the opportunity to endear himself to a largely homophobic electorate by being seen to stand up to the gays who - by the looks of things - must all be crazy. Unfortunately though for the Russian hosts it does mean that there are now an awful of people now queueing up to find fault with the way these Olympics are being run.

It has to be said though that the Russian hosts haven't done themselves any favours by providing these critics with plenty of ammunition. The main problem is that the facilities for guests are simply not up to scratch with the hotels for the visiting media simply not being finished in time. As a result roughly one third of the hotel rooms that had been set aside for visiting media are simply not available leaving many journalists with nowhere to rest their heads. For example US broadcaster CNN apparently booked 11 rooms and arrived to discover that only one room was available. Others have told stories of being told their booked room was not available and being offered alternatives that were either dirty or already occupied by the stray dogs that are roaming the Olympic village.

Although generally visiting journalists whose job it is to tell the world what is going on at the games are the last people you want to annoy the accommodation for the athletes seems to have fared much better with all the rooms at least being habitable. However as with the journalists accommodation the quality of the workmanship is apparently very poor. That means there are toilets that cannot handle toilet paper and are placed together without dividing cubicles, urinals that don't appear to be plumbed into anything and radiators that have been placed at ceiling height meaning they're useless at heating the room below. Working light bulbs, shower curtains and curtain rails are apparently becoming a highly valued commodity to be traded amongst guests and the most popular souvenir of the games looks likely to become hotel door handles to come off in the guests hands.

Obviously these facilities problems would not be acceptable at any Olympic games but seem almost impossible to justify at Sochi. That is because the Russians have had the best part of 7 years to prepare for the games and have spent in excess of USD51billion getting ready. This makes the Sochi Olympics the most most expensive Olympic games ever staged. The main reason why this great expense has not yielded results is the epic corruption that has plagued almost every aspect of Russian life since the fall of the Soviet Union. Basically the same group of rich cronies get awarded fat public contracts regardless of whether they have any ability to do the job. Even those who are remotely capable of doing the job they're tasked with instead put most of the money straight into their pockets leaving only the barest minimum to actually carry out the work. As a result a lot of the workers building the Olympic facilities haven't been paid what they were promised or haven't been paid anything at all and are putting in the quality of workmanship that sort of treatment deserves. Also there has been a chronic shortage of materials and equipment so the main decorative feature of  many of the buildings is pencil marks on the wall where workers were going to install something but the part simply didn't turn up.

I actually think that part of the 'Olympic Ideal' that saw these games awarded to Russia was to highlight its problems with corruption in order to help Russia overcome those problems. Unfortunately the small group of very rich cronies who do very well out of this sort of corruption have been very resistant to change and the situation in Syria has meant that this is already on course for being a very bad tempered games with certain visiting nations intent on making life difficult for the Russians rather then offering them advice has meant that little progress has been made. Already this week the US supported by the UK have been trying to confuse the issue of corruption in the awarding of government contracts with the corruption in Russia's legal system.

So on Monday (3/2/14) our old friend Chris Brown once again appeared before Judge Brandlin Gluber in a Los Angeles Courtroom. Once again Brandlin failed to see how Brown's continued series of temper tantrums, assaults and damage to property means he presents a threat to public safety and should be jailed and instead decided to take no action whatsoever. Obviously we're still meant to believe that it is Brown's wealth and fame rather then more government sponsored protections that are keeping him out of prison so yesterday (5/2/14) a Texas Court sent rich teenager Ethan Couch to a rehab facility for treatment for 'affluenza' rather then prison for killing four people and seriously injuring two whilst driving drunk. Today the UK followed that up with the acquittal of William Roache over child sex offences. Just before Rihanna's trips to Australia and New Zealand Roache - a star of popular soap opera "Coronation Street" - gave a bizarre TV interview in which he basically argued that it is right and just for adults to sexually abuse children. Therefore the conclusion we're all supposed to reach is that Roache is in fact guilty but his fame and expensive legal team meant that the Jury decided to acquit him because he plays such a nice man on television. These sort of issues - especially wealth - have an obvious resonance within Russia opaque legal system but little to do with the awarding of government contracts.

One area where Russia's preparations for the Olympics appear to have been excellent has been in security. Unlike previous Olympics the Sochi games have come under a very real threat of large scale terrorist attack backed by Saudi Arabia - a very wealthy nation state. Rather then sending in special forces teams what Saudi Arabia appear to have done is follow the Al Qaeda model of identifying local groups who are already motivated to carry out an attack and then boost their capabilities through funding, training and the supply of equipment. Once these local groups have been selected they are often then sorted with the most capable group receiving the most support while the least capable only receiving limited support acting as sort of understudies. Following the Volgograd bombings the Russian security forces appear to have been very effective in identifying and eliminating the understudy groups. In the past week and probably with a bit of help from everybody in the international community the Russians also appear to have identified and seriously disrupted the prime group that was responsible for the Volgograd bombings.

As a result the threat of a terror attack at the games has dropped dramatically to the point where everybody now seems comfortable to have a bit of fun with. For example I'd be very interested to know if yesterday's warning from about explosives disguised as toothpaste came before or after the US team started having problems getting hold of some special yogurt they'd requested.


17:15 on 6/2/14 (UK date).