Orson Welles Would Be Appalled.

Today (25/2/18) the 2018 Winter Olympics have formally drawn to a close in PyeongChang in the Republic of Korea (RoK/South). It ended with the traditional Closing Ceremony.

I have not yet seen the Closing Ceremony. And due to a growing feud over football on a Roku box probably won't be able to see it until NBC repeat it in the US. Which for me will be in the early hours of the morning.

However I am going to hazard a guess. At some point the Closing Ceremony featured the extinguishing of the Olympic Cauldron.

That Cauldron of course resembles one of the "Martian War Machines" from the 1897 novel; "The War of the Worlds" by H.G Wells.

In 1938 Orson Welles produced and directed a radio dramatisation of The War of the Worlds. This is widely recognised as the greatest Fake News hoax in US broadcasting history.

Or at least it was going into the games. The US' place on the medal table now seems to represent where Orson Welles' broadcast now stands in the all time list of Fake News hoaxes in US broadcasting history.

At the midway point of the games the US was languishing in fifth. The US continued to languish there until Thursday (22/2/18). They were then elevated to their finishing position of fourth by the awarding of two surprise Gold Medals.

The first of these came in the Women's Ice Hockey where the US defeated Canada in a penalty shoot-out.

In 2017 the US Women's Ice Hockey team refused to participate in the World Championships unless they were paid the same as the men's team. Made up of players from the US National Hockey League (NHL). Eventually they won their equal pay dispute.

At the 2018 Winter Olympics the NHL has decided that it's too profitable to suspend its season for the Olympics. Therefore most of the World's top Ice Hockey players have been absent depriving the Olympics with a large source of revenue.

Therefore there was a lot of support for a US women's team prepared to stick it to the NHL.

Questions of where the money will come from to pay the women will have to come later.

Also while the Final between the US and Canada was taking place there was something of a background event.

The RoK is an extremely technologically advanced nation. It is a nation that is also technically still at war with its northern neighbour the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK/North).

As a result the topic of "Soft Power" in the digital age has been a major theme of the games. The hosts even staged a Cyberattack during the Opening Ceremony to promote discussion about this topic.

On Thursday (22/2/18) - Wednesday (21/2/18) in the US - the US broadcaster CNN staged its own Cyberattack on Twitter users.

This took the form of a Town Hall style debate on the topic of gun control. In was organised in the wake of the February 14th (14/2/18) shooting at the Marjory Stoneman High School in the Parkland area of Florida. It was advertised using the Twitter hashtag; "#StudentsStandUp."

I hate to break it to you but CNN's social media accounts are automated. These infamous "Bots" that have been talked about so much in the US Democrats claims of Russian interference in the 2016 US election.

During the Town Hall debate CNN's bots Tweeted out pretty much everything that was said during the debate. Not only that but they Tweeted out the same messages on both the same accounts and separate accounts such as their main account, their politics account and their breaking news account.

This was done in an effort to get the #StudentsStandUp hashtag trending on Twitter. In order to give a false impression of how popular CNN's own political bias actually was.

The effect of this network of CNN bots or "botnet" if you like on Twitter users was a sort of Cyberattack. Similar to a Denial Of Service (DOS) attack.

Essentially the effort of loading all these duplicate Tweets each with images, videos and hashtags sucked up memory causing Twitter to slow down for individual users and even causing some computers to crash.

This sort of tactic is sometimes known as a; "Twitter Bomb."

Just the day before Twitter announced that they would be cracking down in exactly this type of behaviour. Accounts and users engaging in it would find themselves banned in what has been dubbed the; "#TwitterPurge"

As always CNN were totally lacking in self-awareness as to their actions. People have learnt that when CNN are doing a Town Hall style event you just Mute the account(s) in advance.

However on this occasion someone decided to make a talking point of it. By chucking actual bombs - hand grenades - at the US Embassy in Montenegro.

These muffled rumours of a bomb attack on a US Embassy during the Women's Ice Hockey Final may well have made Canada feel overly sympathetic towards their opponents.

Then of course NATO member Canada had it pointed out to them that Montenegro has been a NATO member since June 2017.

Canada then swiftly apologised.

They allowed the US men's team to beat them in the Curling semi-final. Curling was introduced to the Olympics in 2006. Since then pretty much every Curling Olympic Gold Medal has been won by Canada.

Curling is a sport centred around trying to slide things called; "Stones" into something called a; "House." There is even an Olympic themed episode of the US TV Show; "The Simpsons" where Marjorie discovers she's very good at Curling.

So I think we all know what the US' main "Stoneman" John Schuster's new nickname is going to be.

Curling is a painfully dull sport. So dull in fact it actually has a rule called; "Shaking" which allows a team to concede because they've suddenly realised just how dull it is.

So by allowing the US into the Curling final Canada was providing a very big stage on which Marjorie Stoneman could concede the futility of it all.

However in that final the US faced Sweden who allowed them to win. Giving the US a further Gold Medal.

Recently US President Trump suggested holding a military parade to mark the centenary of the First World War on November 11th 2018 (11/11/18). This was met with consternation by certain sections of the US media.

Therefore I think it is fair to assume that a lot of Americans don't know that the history making First World War ended on November 11th 1918 (11/11/18).

Those people aside though I think it is widely known that the Second World War began in 1939. When Nazi Germany invaded Poland.

What I think though is less well known is that while Nazi Germany was invading Poland Nazi Sweden was invading Finland. This became known as the; "Winter War."

Sweden lost that war and adopted a position of neutrality from then on. This meant that it has not been forced to face up with its shameful past in the same way that Germany and Japan have been forced to do.

It also means that Sweden have seethed over their defeat by the Russians and have been looking for revenge ever since.

Throughout the Cold War and beyond this has taken the form of Sweden's intelligence services mounting Soft Power operations against Russia. Specifically through a network of 'Human Rights' 'Charities' known collectively as; "Human Rights House."

So when the US overthrows Ukraine's government during the 2014 Winter Olympics. Well then Human Rights House are on hand to start rumours of Russian soldiers being killed in Ukraine.

When Georgia starts a war with Russia during the 2008 Summer Olympics. Well then Human Rights House are on hand to claim Russia started the war by committing Human Rights abuses.

When Islamist terrorists attack a school in Beslan murdering at least 334 people. Well then Human Rights House are there to claim the Islamist terrorists are entirely innocent. The deaths are simply Putin's fault.

Probably Sweden's intelligence services biggest operation to date occurred during the Balkan Wars of the 1990's which saw the break up of Yugoslavia. Eventually creating the nation of Montenegro.

This is really too big a topic for me to get into on a Sunday afternoon.

However Croatia and Yugoslavia were on course to repeat Czechoslovakia's famous; "Velvet Divorce." This peaceful solution though would have left Yugoslavia largely intact and still allied with Russia.

So the NATO nations started the Balkan Wars to tear Yugoslavia apart in order to make sure their rather than Russia influence dominated the region.

Sweden's contribution to this effort was to accuse Russia of Islamaphobia backing Serb forces in things like the Srebrenica massacre. Then they recruited Russian Muslims to carry out things like the Beslan massacre and the Chechen War.

This strategy forced Sweden to put its money where its mouth was. In order to sustain allegations of Russian Islamaphobia Sweden was forced to take in tens of thousands of Balkan Muslim refugees.

Over the ensuing 20 years those Balkan Muslim refugees have created ghettos in Swedish cities. These have created extremely violent so-called; "No Go Zones"

People talk about the US' levels of gun crime. In Sweden's No Go Zones the weapons of choice are hand grenades and Improvised Explosive Devices (IED's).

US President Trump of course has been condemned by certain sections of the media and Twitter users with the hashtag; "#LastNightInSweden" for acknowledging that Sweden's ghettos exist.

So no. I don't think Men's Curling Gold was a medal the US' Marjorie Stoneman really wanted to win.

A point reinforced when at the medal ceremony the US team were actually handed the wrong medals.

16:25 on 25/2/18 (UK date).