If you can come down with a terminal case of polonium poisoning for getting on Putin's bad side, what does the FSB inject you with for making
your country's Olympic preparations the laughingstock of the world?
 |
| At least Sarajevo didn't start out looking this way. What's Sochi's excuse? |
That's some ugly, ugly stuff. The accommodations in Sarajevo looked like that, but only after the games were over and local Bosnian militias were using them for fighting positions in their civil war.
Not used to the Olympics being a hardship assignment, the media is in full kvetch and, to be fair, there's plenty to kvetch about. Embedded journalists at some FOB in farthest Dirkadirkastan have plusher digs than some of the pictures coming out of Sochi right now.
In theory a century of experience in top down command and control economics should develop good project management skills. In practice, the theory never seems to work out. Their attempt to emulate capitalism got stuck in their own image of gangster cronyism.
ReplyDeleteAt least the Russians seem to have found a way to keep out the Occupy Sochi hipppies.
ReplyDeleteI was just telling my wife last night that the way preps are going in Sochi that Siberia can expect an influx of new talent very, very soon.
ReplyDeleteAh, capitalism.
ReplyDeleteBecause vodka.
ReplyDeleteI have to wonder if communism still reigned in Russia and if people were as afraid of Putin as they were of Stalin, if Sochi wouldn't be the pinnacle of a white washed, fully prepped, dissident free, zone.
ReplyDeleteBut all in all this just reinforces my overwhelming desire to stay away from that portion of the world...forever.
-Rob
In soviet Russia hotel make reservation for YOU.
ReplyDeleteThough the Italian mob guys took their piece of the building projects in Jersey over the years, at least those projects usually actually ended up completed.
ReplyDeletefast richard, “In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.”
ReplyDelete-Joat
I'm sure that will buff right out Comrade!
ReplyDeleteGerry
Because corruption and top down command and control.
ReplyDeleteWe should try that here!
If only the Tsar knew!
ReplyDeleteTo reflect Rob's statement, Olympics in totalitarian countries tend to be more glossy and polished- Beijing and Berlin come to mind. In this case, the powers that be pull out all stops to show that their system is working, as if some Olympic Potemkin village makes up for the horrific daily reality.
ReplyDeleteThis seems to be more "eff it, the skim is in bank".
People are actually surprised by this? I can honestly say, judging from the pics in the link, that Detroit looks a hell of a lot safer than Sochi in many respects; at least in Detroit, they don't try to pass off the urban blight as an ideal place to house international representatives.
ReplyDeleteWait till the Media Newscasters see the Russian Winter Spetnaz Team leaping over the wooden object, upsidown wearing snow-shoes and throwing hatchets. That will impress upon them who's Boss. Isn't that the whole object of the Olympiad? Besides the European graft and corruption doled out to former royalty?
ReplyDeletehttps://mobile.twitter.com/SochiProblems This Twitter account is full of Sochi lulz.
ReplyDeleteIs that artwork? It really does look like something from post-Olympics Sarajevo after everyone realized Tito wasn't in charge anymore.
ReplyDeleteIf that isn't artwork, then what caliber are they using in the Biathlon?
I find the earlier comment mentioning a "Potemkin village" ironic. If that was the case here, the buildings' front facades would at least look great from the outside.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village
All this puts Mitt Romney's performance in Salt Lake City in a different light.
Ugly is not the word for it...
ReplyDeleteEvery time I read about Russia, I find another reason to be grateful to my grandparents for their decisions, made and executed at various points during the period 1895 and 1925, to emigrate from Russia to America. Not just because they (unlike the family that stayed) were not killed by the Nazis, but it means I get read abut Russia and not live it. And like Rob, it's a country I have no interest in visiting.
ReplyDeleteKishnevi
And all that for the bargain basement price of ONLY 50 BILLION.
ReplyDeleteNote: The Vancouver B.C. session cost 2 billion (1/25th) and people thought that was crazy expensive.
oldguy52
Anon: "Ah capitalism."
ReplyDeleteErmmmm, where is this capitalism of which you speak?
I see a bunch of government cronies squandering Russian government funds on a crap Potemkin Olympic Village.
If the Russian Federation had given, say the Ritz, or the Benson hotel chain, this contract ( and had the Russian Army shoot any mafioso that showed their faces ) there would have been a five star facility there by now.
...and yet, people talk about "post-Soviet Russia, where at least now..."
ReplyDeleteNow you can come and go and see the crap that comes from a neo-socialist system, where they are taxed to the extent that everyone cheats on their taxes, defeating capitalism.
Yet there are pictures of Putin everywhere, as if her were a super-efficient guy beloved by everyone there (buzz!), or else a mob-connected dictator, feared by everyone there. (Dingdingding!)
Windy Wilson,
ReplyDeleteThe picture is from Sarajevo, post-civil war.
Ed Snowden shoulda' warned them.
ReplyDelete