The 2018 Winter Olympics: Closing Ceremony Pt.3

A continuation of Part 2; https://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/the-2018-winter-olympics-closing_27.html

Video Highlights:

As has become tradition this Closing Ceremony featured a short video presentation showing the highlights of the games that had just taken place.

These games have really been dominated by events in America.

On technically the RoK's Thursday (15/2/18) - Wednesday (14/2/18) local - there was a mass shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in the Parkland area of Florida, US. This resulted in the deaths of 17 people.

Having suffered under the long dictatorship of Park Chung-hee and the much shorter dictatorship of his daughter Park Guen-hye the RoK can certainly consider itself a Park land.

At the 2012 Presidential Election South Korea's equivalent of the FBI certainly tried turning it into the Land of Eternal Parks.

The response to this mass shooting saw the usual calls to ban the Armalite Rifle model 15 (AR-15). Amongst nationalist liberation movements such as the Irish Republican Army (IRA) the Armalite Rifle model 18 (AR-18) has a near iconic status.

On technically the RoK's Saturday (17/2/18) - Friday (16/2/18) US Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller announced he was indicting 13 Russians. Over their work with what has been called the; "Internet Research Agency (IRA)."

These two events seemed intended to sabotage US Secretary of State (Senior Foreign Minister) Rex Tillerson's Thursday (15/2/18) through Saturday (17/2/17) vital diplomatic trip to Turkey.

This made it abundantly clear that there is an element of the US intelligence community - including the FBI - which is trying to conduct a shadow US foreign policy. In direct conflict with the US' democratically established foreign policy.

Not only that this section of the US intelligence community is prepared to kill US citizens within the borders of the US in order to pursue its wholly illegal shadow foreign policy.

Technically this means that the US is in a state of Civil War.

Many spent the weekend of Saturday the 17th (17/2/18) anxiously waiting to see if this limited civil war would spread more widely.

The situation became so shocking that even organisations like CNN leaned in to stop events escalating.

How they did this is almost imperceptible. It is one of those things that requires specialised knowledge and experience to pick up on.

The only way I can think to describe it is that the usual words were there. It's just there was no longer usual intensity behind them.

The best example I can point to illustrate this is that of shooting survivor and protest leader David Hogg.

Almost immediately information began to circulate on social media that David Hogg's father - Kevin Hogg - is a retired FBI Agent. The same FBI which had the Parkland shooter on speed dial.

One of these social media messages was "liked" by Donald Trump Jr. Son of the US President Trump.

This allowed CNN to run their usual programming about what a monster President Trump is.

However in doing so they were able to confirm to their viewers that this is not a conspiracy theory.

Kevin Hogg is a former FBI Agent and through their pension scheme the Parkland protesters are at least in part being funded by the FBI.

As the week progressed the fallout from events in America allowed the US Olympic team to pick up two extra Gold Medals. In the Women's Ice Hockey and Men's Curling events.

I covered this in more detail on Sunday; https://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/orson-welles-would-be-appalled.html

Needless to say the sport of Curling and the US Women's Ice Hockey team featured heavily in the video highlights.

The video highlights also heavily featured the sport of Biathlon.

The Biathlon is essentially what happens if you try to conduct a marauding terror attack in the snow.

Competitors have to cross country ski to a rifle range where they have to target shoot. They then have to ski to another rifle range before skiing some more to complete the course.

Their success is determined by how long it takes them to ski the course minus any time penalties they may have incurred for misses on the shooting range.

Needless to say Olympic Biathletes really know their firearms.

People calling for increased gun control in the US and in particular in response to the Parkland shooting really don't know their firearms.

They immediately demanded that the AR-15 rifle should be banned because it was used in the Parkland shooting. This in part at least is correct. An AR-15 was used in that shooting.

However US "Scared of Guns Club" then went on to claim an AR-15 rifle was used in the June 12th 2016 (12/6/16) Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, US.

That is incorrect.

The Pulse nightclub shooting was an Islamist terror attack. It used a Sig Sauer 516 rifle. Specifically to convey a threat to the British police's newly formed Counter Terror Force (CTSFO) who mainly use Sig Sauer 516 rifles.

The US scared of guns club also claimed the October 1st 2017 Las Vegas shooting was carried out using an AR-15.

The Las Vegas shooter was in possession of 24 separate firearms including AR-15's. However the weapons he actually used were Sig Sauer manufactured rifles based on the AR-10 design.

The AR-15 uses 5.56mm (.223) ammunition. This is accurate to around 550 metres/yards. The AR-10 uses 7.62mm (.308) ammunition. This is accurate to around 650 metres/yards.

If you don't think that is an important distinction you should really try standing around 600 metres/yards away from the gunman.

Generally when the US anti-gun lobby refer to AR-15's they are using it as a blanket term for any sort of; "Assault weapon." This is defined in law as any sort of semi-automatic rifle featuring a pistol-grip an a detachable magazine of more then 10 round capacity.

The Parkland shooting was inspired by an episode of the US TV Show; "The Unit." Specifically an episode entitled; "In Loco Parentis."

That revolved around the Special Operations Force (SOF) unit attempting to rescue students from an elite school in Virginia attended by children of many of America's business and political elite.

Although the story unfolded throughout the episode the school had been attacked by Chechen Islamist terrorists on the anniversary of the September 2004 Beslan School Massacre in Beslan, Russia. They were targeting the son of the Russian Ambassador to the US.

Aside from Asian inspired architecture and a Korean American SWAT team leader the episode featured lines of dialogue such as;

"I can't tell if it's Columbine (April 1999 school shooting) or Beslan (September 2004 school massacre) in there!"

As the characters launched "June Bug" sized camera drones to investigate.

Rather like the bird like drones that were supposed to be featured in the Opening Ceremony but were cancelled amid rumours of a Russian Cyberattack.

Within the episode the Islamist terrorists use Simonov SKS rifles.

A precursor to the Kalashnikov AK-47 this is a Soviet assault rifle firing 7.62mm (.308) ammunition at a range of 400 metres/yards. However it lacks a pistol-grip and has only a 10 round internal magazine.

It highlights that banning legally defined "Assault Weapons" the US would not be able to prevent mass shootings like the June 2017 "Congressional Baseball Shooting" which took place in Virginia. In order to prevent that the US would also have to ban most types of hunting and sporting rifles.

After having that pointed out to them the FBI backed Parkland protests then demanded the banning of all types of semi-automatic rifles. Weapons which use the energy of a bullet being fired to load a fresh bullet into the chamber and reset the firing mechanism.

The type of rifles used by Olympic Biathletes are bolt action rifles. They require the user to manually load a fresh bullet into the chamber and reset the firing mechanism.

You only need to look at the video highlights to see that this can be achieved with a simple flick of the thumb.

Although it is not the objective of Olympic target shooting even bolt action weapons can produce a devastatingly high rate of fire.

The Simonov SKS was actually introduced with a view to allowing Soviet conscripts to compete with the high rate of fire produced by well trained British soldiers using Lee Enfield bolt action rifles.

Then of course the US anti-gun lobby has the problem that the April 1999 Columbine shooting was carried out using manually operated shotguns.

Following the August 1987 Hungerford massacre the UK banned all rifles except 5.6mm (.22) rimfire manually bolt action rifles. The Hungerford massacre killed 17 people. The same number as the Parkland shooting.

However that ban on rifles did not stop the March 1996 Dunblane massacre. Perpetrated using lever action revolver pistols that claimed the lives of 18 people. One more then the Parkland shooting. This led to the UK banning all handguns.

The UK's gun laws are so strict that when it hosted the 2012 Summer Olympics competitors in the shooting events had to obtain special exemptions from the highest level of government to bring their weapons into the country.

Even that hasn't stopped mass shootings and gun crime.

In June 2010 a lone gunman used a bolt-action 5.6mm (.22) rimfire rifle to kill 12 people in a shooting spree in Cumbria. In 2017 there were more then 2,500 shootings in the capital city of London alone.

At around 22:05 on 27/2/18 (UK date) I'm going to pick this up tomorrow.

Edited at around 14:20 on 28/2/18 (UK date) to tidy up a bit and add;

The highlights video also featured the 17 year old American Snowboarder Chloe Kim.

She was a popular figure at the games because she is a KOREAN American.

She was also popular because she served as a cipher for the; "Mostly Asian, Always Hungry" US actress Chloe Benet. During the Opening Ceremony Chloe Benet was a major talking point about cultural appropriation and just how crazy America became under former President Obama.

Following Chloe Kim's success US radio host Patrick O'Conner referred to her as; "A hot piece of Asian ass" amid some other pretty graphic sexual comments. He then reminded listeners that it will be legal to have sex with her on April 23rd 2018 (23/4/18). Her 18th birthday.

Patrick O'Conner was then fired from both of his radio jobs.

His comments feed into the Asian sexual fetish and if/how it overlaps with paedophilia which was featured in the Flag & Anthem portion of this ceremony.

Another sport which featured heavily in the video highlights was Speed Skating.

This was in reference to Britain's Elise Christie. Hers was one of the big stories going in to the games.

At the 2014 Winter Olympics Elise Christie was one of Britain's best hopes for a Gold Medal. Unfortunately she made a mistake and was disqualified.

However Britain decided that as 2012 Summer Olympics hosts Elise Christie should be granted Gold regardless of her actual performance or the rules. So they started this really ugly campaign to get her disqualification overturned. It had the opposite effect and she ended up being disqualified from all of her events.

So Elise Christie went to the 2018 Winter Olympics hoping to win gold. Everyone else went hoping for the opportunity to kick Elise Christie.

It seems that everyone except Elise Christie was in on the joke. However I gather at one point the judges had to tell the Chinese to tone it down just a little bit.

The Speed Skating montage also featured a female skater - I think Japanese - pulling down the zip at the front of her race suit. This exposed the thermal underwear she was wearing underneath.

This seemed to be a reference to something that happened at the 2014 games.

The Russian Speed Skater Olga Graf finished her race and pulled down the zip at the front of her race suit. However she wasn't wearing any underwear at all exposing the global audience to not only her breasts but also I think her genital area.

There was a similar incident during this years games featuring French Figure Skater Gabriella Papadakis. During her routine her breast popped out forcing her to complete her routine in that state of undress.

Unlike Olga Graf this seemed to be on purpose. In protest at the US broadcast regulator - the FCC's - absurd; "No Nipples" rule.

The irony is that because the FCC's rule has been adopted by many social media companies I didn't realise we were talking about a Janet Jackson style "Nipplegate" until several days later.

The video highlights ended with the screen being divided into 49 mini-screens each showing a different sport/athlete.

One thing there is not at an Olympics is a shortage of things going on.

However viewers only get to see the things their national broadcaster shows them. Britain in particular has in the past taken the aggressive position of only showing British athletes rather than taking an overview of the games as a whole.

The use of multi-screens seemed to be a suggestion that broadcasters add channels to show all available feeds. Possibly using Internet streaming services.

The IOC is already attempting this with its Internet; "Olympic Channel" which was launched following the 2016 Summer Games.

I would have been interested in seeing how that was progressing. I just plain forgot though.

I spent the first week of the games writing up the Opening Ceremony. I then spent the second week of the games catching up on all the work I'd missed because I'd spent a week writing up the Opening Ceremony.

So I didn't really get to watch any of the sport until the highlights of the Men's Ice Hockey Final. Shown about an hour before the Closing Ceremony.

15:10 on 28/2/18 (UK date).