Monday, May 16, 2016

Back to the Future

Well, if you want confirmation that a new Cold War has started, check out how Putin revived a Cold War tradition--cheating at the Olympics:

The New York Times on Thursday reported the latest, and most damning, proof yet that Russia did more than just host the 2014 Winter Olympics: it conspired to fix it. Grigory Rodchenkov, the director of Russia's anti-doping laboratory at the time, detailed to the newspaper how a state-run program was able to use being the host nation to swap out dirty urine samples with clean ones to assure the eligibility of dozens of Russian athletes.

Worst job in Russia in 2014? Assistant to the Official Urine Swapper, I imagine.

But it paid off:

Russia won the most medals, 33, and most golds, 13, besting the United States and Norway in each respective category.

Russia rode their home urinal field advantage to victory.

So yes, a despot took a competition that is supposed to extol the virtues of honest athletic competition above the struggles between nations, and made it just a pageant to prove the glories of Russia under Putin.

And then he invaded Ukraine. So there's that, too.

How long before we get new East German judges who oddly rank Russian bloc figure skaters remarkably high?

But no worries, we don't have to worry about Russia leading an international socialist movement again.

Putin is just a national socialist with his own private army who will conquer defend ethnic Russians wherever he defines finds them, so no worries!

Oh, and for bonus Sochi news, the Russians pushed their local jihadis off to Syria so they wouldn't interfere with Putin's pageant.

So Russia helped create the ISIL problem that they claim to be fighting now (but aren't).