Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Russia's president fidgeted, looked awkward and moved his neck oddly, his body language screaming that he would be rather be anywhere else than at this summit - BBC | The Ring and the Rings: Vladimir Putin's Mafia Olympics | Sport - Guardian.Co.Uk

18 June 2013 Last updated at 07:34 ET
Mark Mardell, North America editorArticle written byMark MardellNorth America editor

Finding common ground with Russia

President Obama grinned broadly and nodded encouragingly towards President Putin.

 Russia's president fidgeted, looked awkward and moved his neck oddly, his body language screaming that he would be rather be anywhere else than at this summit.President Obama grinned broadly and nodded encouragingly towards President Putin.
That's not surprising. He is the odd man out in this curious club. The G8 is really the biggest of what used to be called the Western powers, plus Russia.

The old enemy was allowed club membership in 1997, in a burst of post-Cold War magnanimity. Now it's all a bit of a nonsense.
Without China, or India and Brazil for that matter, this is not a group of the most powerful economies in the world. Nor, because of Mr Putin's presence, is it a gathering of like-minded allies.
But his resolution over Syria only highlights the lack of a plan from the US and its friends.
The Russian president has made it clear that as far as he is concerned his country is behaving perfectly normally, within the ordinary rules of international behaviour, backing, and arming what he sees as the legitimate government of Syria.
He is willing to sell them the most up-to-date and hi-tech kit. On the other hand America, the UK and France want a particular subset of rebels to win, and believes morally it should be allowed to arm them. But, for fear of the rebels they don't like, they are queasy about providing anything too advanced.
It is likely that rather than be isolated, President Putin will sign up to some sort of plan.
From what I have heard of the five point agreement that's on the table, it is so bland that it risks being dismissed as worthless.
But perhaps it is not quite without merit. Any international agreement that makes a Syrian peace conference more likely has some value.
But the big sticking point remains - is this peace conference post-Assad, as the rebels and the US demand, or is Assad part of the solution as Russia and the Syrian government insist?
President Obama, in a late night interview, has broken his five-day silence on his shift towards giving military help to the rebels.
He said that the US had a legitimate interest and could not allow chaos in Syria, but it was "very easy to slip-slide your way into deeper and deeper commitments", adding: "If it's not working immediately, then what ends up happening is six months from now people say, 'Well, you gave the heavy artillery; now what we really need is X, and now what we really need is Y.' Because until Assad is defeated, in this view, it's never going to be enough, right?"
Right. That is the dilemma of those in the West who want President Assad to go. They have to decide which is worse - living with chaos and potentially the outcome they don't want, or greater entanglement in a region which teaches that such interventions have unexpected and unwelcome consequences.
Mark Mardell, North America editorArticle written by Mark MardellMark MardellNorth America editor

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The Ring and the Rings: Vladimir Putin's Mafia Olympics | Sport
Tuesday June 18th, 2013 at 12:36 PM

Sport News, Comment And Results | Guardian.Co.Uk
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Putin Super Bowl ring
In this 2005 photograph, Russian president Vladimir Putin holds a diamond-encrusted 2005 Super Bowl ring belonging to New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft. Photograph: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP
Josef Stalin famously uttered the demonically cynical maxim that "the death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic". In other words, he believed that when faced with the choice of focusing on horrors small and tangible or vast and incomprehensible, humanity goes small. It is the political spawn of Stalin's feared security apparatus, Vladimir Putin, who is proving that this applies to scandals in the world of sport. One small theft is the sports story of the moment in the United States, while a heist of epic proportions, is emitting nary a peep.
The sports press is agog with the revelation by New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft that in 2005, Putin stole his Super Bowl ring. At the time, Putin's sticky fingers were caught on camera and the scene generated some laughs. There was the leader of Russia trying it on at a press event and then walking out of the room, as a bovine, slack-jawed Kraft looked on. The Patriots organization played it off as an intentional gift. But Kraft revealed this week that it was more of a mugging with the parodically alpha-male Putin icily looking at Kraft and saying, "I can kill someone with this ring," then in Kraft's words, "I put my hand out and he put it in his pocket, and three KGB guys got around him and walked out."
It's a pulpy, punchy story and it's understandable why sports reporters are flocking to it like a seagull to carrion. It also fits a narrative that has served Vladimir Putin well. He's the Tony Soprano of world leaders: the man who gets what he wants and wants what he gets.
But Putin – not unlike the decaying Mafia itself – isn't nearly as ruthlessly efficient as his legend suggests. For evidence of this, we don't even have to leave the world of sports. I'm referring to the billions in disappeared "spending" for the 2014 Winter Olympics, to be held – for reasons that boggle the mind – in the humid, subtropical Russian resort city of Sochi.
Putin has staked his reputation on the smooth hosting of the winter games. Based on the planning, it either speaks to how little he values his reputation, or more likely, that beneath the steely glare and martial arts muscles, he's being exposed as little more than a thuggish front man for a kleptocracy.
According to a detailed report issued by Russian opposition leaders in May, businessmen and various consiglieres of Putin have stolen up to $30bn from funds intended for Olympic preparations. This has pushed the cost of the winter games, historically far less expensive than their summer counterpart to over $50bn, more than four times the original estimate. That $50bn price tag would make them the most expensive games in history, more costly than the previous twenty-one winter games combined. It's a price tag higher than even than the 2008 pre-global recession summer spectacle in Beijing.
As Andrew Jennings, author of Lords of the Rings and the most important Olympic investigative reporter we have, said to me, "The games have always been a money-spinner for the cheerleaders in the shadows. Beijing remains impenetrable but is likely to have been little less corrupt than Putin's mafia state."
"Mafia state" may sound extreme, but these winter games will go down in history as perhaps the most audacious act of embezzlement in human history. As Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov and Leonid Martynyuk wrote, "Only oligarchs and companies close to Putin got rich. The absence of fair competition, cronyism … have led to a sharp increase in the costs and to the poor quality of the work to prepare for the Games … The fact is that almost everything that is related to the cost problems and abuses in preparation for the Olympic Games was carefully concealed and continues to be covered up by the authorities."
One of those officials was Akhmed Bilalov, who was forced to flee Russia, fearing for his life, after Putin blamed him for the ballooning costs. Now Bilalov has gone public with news that he is undergoing medical treatment for being poisoned, allegedly by agents of the Russian state.
Even more nauseating, if not surprising, than the alleged theft/attempted murder is the shrug of the shoulders from the International Olympic Committee. Jean-Claude Killy, the French skiing superstar from the 1970s, is now in charge of the International Olympic Committee's coordination commission for the Sochi games.
"I don't recall an Olympics without corruption," Killy said. "It's not an excuse, obviously, and I'm very sorry about it, but there might be corruption in this country, there was corruption before. I hope we find ways around that."
If $30bn is too much of an incomprehensible "statistic" to get our heads around, even in a country with poverty and hunger rates that spiked...
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