I wish the Winter Olympics never went to Russia. My reason being that all we ever hear about is how oppressed a certain group of people are. Meanwhile 130,000 have died thus far in Syria and those same people are subsisting on weeds. There are far more important things in the world than the “horrible, horrible” rainbow crushing Russians. The Russian political system and it’s leader are what they are and there are many, many others that are oppressed in Russia. I suspect that if the communists were still in power that things would be much worse. Someday things may improve in Russia for “all” oppressed people, or they could get much worse. Meanwhile people are dying in Syria. —Whistling past the cemetary
This article appears in Feb 6-12, 2014.
You may not be able to wash your face with their water…. but at least we haven’t had that tiny cross-section of the Ven Diagram you’re painting that Georgia felt in Whistler.
I’d also like to point out that not a week goes by without hearing about syria.
We get it… there are horrible things a brewing. Should we constantly be fear-mongering?
Only if you want the populace to revolt.
oh shut up about Syria. you have no right to feel the way you do. the media has no right to feature any news items about Syria.
because…because…because… what if 199,999 people were killed in Syria and 200,000 were killed in Madagascar? does that automatically knock Syria off the board because madagasgar’s number was higher by 1? just because something horrible is happening in one place does not automatically wipe out all other injustices taking place in the world.
there are a lot more little kids being beaten or raped across this planet than the Syrian death toll, so should I tell you to shut up about Syria? no! one picks what one feels most strongly about for whatever reason. it is what it is. would you drop Syria like a hot potato if Madagascar took the lead? could you embrace more than one cause? eh?
of course you can tell other people what they can or cannot find important. but surely you don’t expect anyone to take you seriously.
OB , I wish they’d hold the winter olympics on the sun …now that I would watch …hopefully that’d be the end of it for a lot longer than 4 more years !
…and the Central African Republic is about explode into a bloody civil war. There’s human tragedy somewhere 24/7 it’s the nature of the beast.
Well, I wish I never had to worry about sitting on a ball by mistake. I fuckin hate that, that shit hurts!!!
Shit… I knew venn had 2 n’s
rookie move z, stay on your game…
I got bag-tagged every year as a kid playing baseball.
Never failed… and if that’s what sitting on em feels like, then ya.
That shit will put you ‘fetal position’ out of commission.
We in “The West” (for lack of a better collective term) like to think that Russia is something like a First World country, because they look like us, are industrialized , play winter sports and, quite frankly, because the thought of a Third World country with a nuclear arsenal scares the shit out of us.
So based on this misconception, we think we can use the tactics of the civilized world, public shaming, economic leverage to effect changes in the internal policies of sovereign state. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but we are trying to explain the notion of individual human rights to a nation that has NO history of such a concept. And, if we are perhaps a bit self-righteous, it’s because we have the zealotry of the newly converted – it wasn’t that long ago that we had written laws proscribing homosexuality and the provision of equal rights to gays is still a contentious issue in some quarters.
It has, however, been some time since a Western nation made savage and brutal war upon it’s own populace, so it becomes rather easy to say, “Oh such a tragedy, time for Corrie” And the last decade has taught us that things like regime change and nation building are a lot more complex when you have put actual boots on the ground.
So, being the creatures that we are, once the Olympics are done, Russia’s anti-gay stance will be forgotten by all but a few dedicated activists, as the world turns it’s attention to some new atrocity. Syria’s own Via Dolorosa is far from complete. The secular thug will eventually fall to be replaced by a shambholic coalition that will itself dissolve into further civil war as theocratic thugs make their grab for absolute power. The Syrians will continue to suffer.
I’m not saying that it’s right, or fair, or proportionate. It simply is.
As GDM said, choose your battles carefully and allow others the same privilege
They can build a wicked Submarine