It's the first I've seen of him in a while after he ruined the opening ceremonies for me:
"Fish said that despite reports of dilapidated hotel rooms and crackdowns on protesters, he has been encouraged by what he has heard of the experience in Sochi. Fish said he has not sent any representatives to Russia, but has been in contact with US Olympic Committee officials there. “If you put politics aside, I think Russia has done a very commendable job organizing the Olympics and managing the process to date,” he said. “I realize everything to date has not gone perfectly but, not being there myself, it’s very hard to ascertain what’s real, and what’s fiction.”
He doesn't read the Boston Globe?
"Expect no protests in Sochi’s protest park" by David Filipov | Globe Staff, February 12, 2014
SOCHI, Russia — A solo demonstration — in support of Putin.
This was the official Winter Olympics protest park, the only place in Sochi to hold a legal demonstration during the Games.
Much like the "Free Speech" zones AmeriKan authorities use during such events.
The Kremlin made a big deal of Putin’s decision in January to overrule a ban on rallies, and given all the gripes locals and activists have regarding Russia’s preparation for the Olympics, this figured to be a lively place.
And no controlled-opposition AmeriKan assets showed, huh?
Instead, the park provides a concise example of how Russia’s authoritarian system tamps down dissent.
How quickly Occupy Wall Street vanishes from the brain. Must be the Russian vodka.
In a departure from the Soviet era, when the Communist Party could declare anyone who bucked the system an enemy of the state, the new Russia has all the trappings of democracy — elections, protections, the right to protest. But elections are suspect, protections are routinely ignored, laws are used to harass and detain people who try to speak up.
In other words, 21st-century Russia has become AmeriKa!!!
As a result, most people keep their gripes to themselves....
And I'm going to do you a favor and keep them to myself today, readers.
I'm also not going to read any more of this agenda-pushing invective from a whoreporate a$$hole.
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Fed it to the dogs, I did, where it will become what it is when it comes out the other end.
"Boston panel hears details on hosting Summer Olympics" by Michael Levenson | Globe Staff, February 12, 2014
Related: Bringing the Olympics to Boston
I don't want them here. They come with terrorists.
Gleaming new sports venues. Better public transit. Thousands of smiling volunteers.
This was the picture of a city alive with possibility that a British diplomat presented Tuesday as she described London’s experience hosting the 2012 Olympics to a special commission that is looking at bringing the Summer Games to Boston in 2024.
But under questioning from a few skeptical commission members, the diplomat, Susie Kitchens, acknowledged that the London Games were not all gilded in gold.
Yeah, what we found out in London in 2012 was that local, everyday, mom-and-pop businesses get hammered. The Olympics were not an economic benefit, they were a burden and net loss.
But why let that spoil a party for the elite?
Costs ballooned about 300 percent over initial estimates and the Olympics may not have resulted in a net economic gain for the city, she said.
But who cares in this age of au$terity and social service cuts, right?
“I can’t honestly say we’ve made a profit out of the Olympics,” Kitchens said. “But with the economic benefits that we brought into London as a result, we think we have covered the costs.”
With the world’s attention now focused on the Winter Games in Sochi, the commission finds itself in the public eye as it prepares to report by March 1 on the feasibility of bringing the Olympics to Boston, a city that panel members acknowledged can be slow to embrace, if not outright hostile to, sweeping new undertakings.
Though the threat of cost overruns concerned some members of the commission, it did not dampen the enthusiasm of the chairman, Suffolk Construction chief executive John Fish, who said he is bullish about the potential benefits of hosting the Olympics, if Boston is ultimately selected in 2017.
At the commission meeting, Fish mused about using a public-private partnership to build an Olympic village, which he said could then be turned into housing for middle-income workers after the Games end. He also said facilities at the 100 colleges and universities in the area could be upgraded to host athletes and events.
“It really opens up a breadth of conversation we haven’t had in the Commonwealth,” he said.
Fish’s firm could benefit from all the construction projects that would have to be built to host the Olympics. But Fish insisted his role as a construction company executive would not influence his role as panel chairman.
Still $melly, Fish.
*****************************
The 11-member commission was created by the Legislature and includes state lawmakers, the chief executive of Boston Duck Tours, and the Suffolk County sheriff. It has met five times over the last several months, hearing testimony about security concerns, economic benefits, transit needs, and other issues.
On Tuesday, commission members heard a largely upbeat presentation from Barry Nearhos of PricewaterhouseCoopers, the consulting firm that is advising organizers of the Sochi Games and that worked with the planners of the London Olympics.
Oh, no, you don't want them! Globe has a guy on the spot, and from what he tells me the Games suck!
Nearhos, speaking about the new airport and high-speed rail line built for the Games in Sochi, told the panel that not all the costs for the projects were borne by the Russian public. For example, a private company built one of the ski venues in Sochi, he said, and will operate it as a private resort after the Games.
Fish said that despite reports of dilapidated hotel rooms and crackdowns on protesters, he has been encouraged by what he has heard of the experience in Sochi. Fish said he has not sent any representatives to Russia, but has been in contact with US Olympic Committee officials there.
“If you put politics aside, I think Russia has done a very commendable job organizing the Olympics and managing the process to date,” he said. “I realize everything to date has not gone perfectly but, not being there myself, it’s very hard to ascertain what’s real, and what’s fiction.”
Oh, no!
Filipov is FULL of FICTION, along with SOMETHING ELSE!
Fish has enlisted the help of Northwind Strategies, the politically connected consulting firm whose clients have also included Mayor Martin J. Walsh, Governor Deval Patrick, Senator Elizabeth Warren, and the gubernatorial campaign of Attorney General Martha Coakley.
Costs overruns were clearly an issue for some on the panel. Pressed by a Republican appointee, Jonah Beckley, to discuss budget problems at past Olympics, Nearhos said forecasting costs is difficult because cities bid on Games years before they are held.
“It is so far in the future to really project what costs would be 12 years out,” he said. “We struggle with what costs would be next year.”
And yet Social Security taxes must be raised because of solvency que$tions years out (of course, if has already been stolen with bankrupt government IOUs sitting there now) and the Post Office must be destroyed because postal pensions must be fully funded for the next 75 years.
Taxpayers or private companies can be held responsible for overruns, depending on the structure of the bid, he said.
In this $tate, taxpayers are ultimately on the hook for everything.
London’s successes were spotlighted in a glossy promotional video that the commission members watched that featured triumphant athletes and proud city leaders, and highlighted the thousands of jobs created and parks and transit lines upgraded for the Games.
Didn't Mitt Romney have something to say about that?
Kitchens, who is Britain’s consul general in Boston, said the London Olympics created 30,000 jobs and attracted 70,000 volunteers who received only a T-shirt and a public transit ticket for their work. “They were the smiling face of London,” she said, “and that’s hard for Londoners sometimes.”
OMG!
Also see: Flood of Stories From the U.K.
Let a smile be your umbrella.
Fish cautioned those who may be skeptical about bringing the Olympics to Boston that his panel is only exploring the idea, which would take years to develop.
The United States Olympic Committee has indicated it plans to narrow the list of American cities by the end of the year and then select a nominee sometime after that. The International Olympic Committee has said it plans to announce the winning city in 2017.
“This is like eating an elephant,” Fish said. “You have to break it down into little pieces and digest it.”
Oh, no!
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Looks like the Globe is playing hide-and-seek with the Ukraine today, along with trying to bury other things.
Sorry about the White out regarding the actual games, folks, but I've pretty much stopped watching them. Sorry.
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"An environmentalist and critic of Russia’s preparations to host the 2014 Winter Olympics who was sentenced to 15 days in jail last week, ostensibly for swearing in public, was sentenced to three years in a penal colony on Wednesday....
Oh, the prison is now a penal colony.
Honestly, I have in fact had it with the $hit journali$m of AmeriKa's pos pre$$.
What's Gitmo, a$$hole?
Yevgeny Vitishko is a researcher with the Environmental Watch of the North Caucasus, a group that has studied the environmental consequences of the preparations for the Olympics. He was detained last week before traveling to Sochi, where he had intended to present a report on environmental damage.
“The case against Vitishko has been politically motivated from the start,” Yulia Gorbunova, a researcher with Human Rights Watch, said in a statement Wednesday....
So is the trashing and demonization of Russia in my propaganda pre$$.
Who is Human Rights Watch anyway?
Now I understand why they are so prominent in my jewspaper.
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Related(?):
Judge rejects long wait, sets Nov. 3 start for Tsarnaev trial
Ceremony announced for Marathon victims
Once again, the Globe is silent on the Ukraine and I'm going silent on the Games. Sorry.
