Russia 2

I agree with Timebandit's reasonable position.

Russian doping: IOC delays decision on possible blanket ban for Rio Olympics

http://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/36834090

Getting banned or  penalized games is a regular and acceptable punishment, even though not every player may have been guilty of the infraction:

http://www.reuters.com/article/soccer-olympics-equatorial-idUSL3N17E41U

And nice Godwinism, but no, it isn't Nuernberg, and they aren't hanging them or giving them life in Spandau either.

http://www.3wiresports.com/2016/07/18/purposely-door-still-wide-open-rus...

What we are dealing with here is worldclass hoodlams, thugs and criminals and possibly killers who will stop at nothing to achieve their desired results. I hope the Russians who used drugs are stripped of their medals from recent Olympics and are banned for the next 25 years at any future Olympics. 

Russian doping: Who is whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov?

Grigory Rodchenkov says he created substances to help Russian Olympic athletes perform better and switched urine samples so that they could evade detection.

The man who was director of Russia's anti-doping laboratory during the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics told the New York Times earlier this year that the Russian intelligence services had helped by devising a way of opening and resealing urine containers previously believed to be tamper-proof.

His revelations prompted an investigation by the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada), which on Monday said Russia had operated a state-sponsored doping programme for four years across the "vast majority" of summer and winter Olympic sports.

The Wada report has sparked calls for the entire Russian team to be banned from the Rio Olympics.

But Russian President Vladimir Putin said it represented a "dangerous slide towards political interference in sport" that stemmed from "one man with a scandalous reputation", the Moscow Times reports.

• Moscow press furious at allegations

• Rio 2016: 'Olympics is still worth fighting for'

'At the heart of doping'

Mr Rodchenkov was once viewed more favourably by the Russian authorities. Russia won most medals at the Sochi Games and he was awarded a medal afterwards.

Jump media playerMedia player helpOut of media player. Press enter to return or tab to continue.Media captionRussian hammer thrower Sergey Litvinov fears for future

However last November an earlier Wada report accused him of being "at the heart" of doping in Russian sport, asking for and accepting bribes and destroying more than 1,400 blood and urine samples.

He was forced to resign and in January fled to the US, fearing for his safety.

In February, two former senior officials at the previously Wada-accredited Russian anti-doping agency died unexpectedly.

In his interview with the New York Times, Mr Rodchenko said doping athletes was part of his job and his laboratory would have stopped receiving funding if he had not done it.

He had previously been investigated in Russia for trafficking in performance-enhancing drugs but said he was not jailed because the Russian authorities had earmarked him to dope their athletes at the Sochi Games.

At the time, the Kremlin dismissed his allegations as "slander by a turncoat". 

But Russia's leading sports newspaper Sport Express took a different view, saying Mr Rodchenkov knew "if not everything, then nearly everything".

He and the documentary maker Bryan Fogel - who helped him leave Russia - wrote to Wada and the International Olympic Committee with an offer of more information about a "state-mandated doping program in Russia", according to a copy of the letter posted online by German journalist Hajo Seppelt.

How it allegedly worked

Mr Rodchenko, a chemistry graduate, said he had created a cocktail of three anabolic steroids to be consumed with alcohol that helped athletes recover quickly from tough training regimes to be in peak condition for competition races.

Meanwhile, he told the New York Times, the Russian authorities appointed an intelligence officer to his laboratory to gain information about what happened to the urine samples taken from athletes, which were contained inside self-locking glass bottles produced by the Swiss company Berlinger.

One day the intelligence officer presented Mr Rodchenkov with an open bottle, a vital part of the doping that he alleges took place during the Sochi Games.

Under the plan, he says, Russian athletes took photos of the serial numbers of glass containers with their urine in and texted them to the Russian sports ministry.

At night, Mr Rodchenkov went to a room adjacent to that containing the samples. A colleague handed them through a small hole in the wall and he got rid of the urine that would have shown traces of steroid use and replaced it with clean urine taken from the athletes months earlier.

A total of about 100 urine samples were falsified in this way, he said.

What the Sochi operation shows, he says in his letter to Wada, is that the entire global anti-doping system is "broken beyond repair".

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36833962

"I have enough evidence to prove that McLaren is lying.  I just won't show it."

bwa ha ha ha. Good one.

Russia doping scandal: five things we learned from Wada’s report

From the design of a potent drug cocktail to a mouse hole drilled into a Sochi laboratory wall Richard McLaren’s report was a damning one for Russian sport

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/jul/18/russia-doping-scandal-five...

contrarianna wrote:

NorthReport wrote:

Russia committed the ultimate crime, and now they must face the ultimate punishment 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/olympics/2016/07/18/russia-committed-the-ulti...

I notice you never back up your wild eyed comments with any substance Russia has been caught in an unprecidented doping scandal and all you appear to want to do is condone their corrupt behaviour The rest of the world has had enough of these cheaters and it would not surprise me to see them banned from international sports competitions maybe permanently

Let me say it then.

Russia cheated and is Guilty, Guilty as Hell and has committed, as the Telegraph says, "The Ultimate Crime".

To cheat is abuse the God of Sport, atavistic nationalism and the amphetamine of herd behaviour.
Any disgusting nation that systematically cheats at Sport provides their own populace with a stolen brain-bath of feelgood endorphins which rightly belong to the populations of other states--not to mention lucrative endorsements to deserving athletes.

What could be worse. O the humanity! Clearly, "the ultimate crime".

We know this from the Murdoch Telegraph, unrepentant propagandist publishing lie after lie in pushing the Blair/Bush Iraqi war of aggression which slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and initiated the present middle east disaster and refugee crises. 

If only Nuremberg had ruled on Sports cheating as it did on lethal propaganda.

But you are not "wild eyed" and conspiracy-minded and see things in sober proportion and know the Truth: 
Cheating at Sports is "the Ultimate Crime".

6079_Smith_W wrote:

Getting banned or  penalized games is a regular and acceptable punishment, even though not every player may have been guilty of the infraction:

http://www.reuters.com/article/soccer-olympics-equatorial-idUSL3N17E41U

And nice Godwinism, but no, it isn't Nuernberg, and they aren't hanging them or giving them life in Spandau either.

 

Why am I not  surprised Smith, an open defender of modern Nazis, is hypersensitive to any allusions to the 3rd Reich ("Godwinisms") and pretends to be oblivious to irony.

contrarianna wrote:

Why am I not  surprised Smith, an open defender of modern Nazis, is hypersensitive to any allusions to the 3rd Reich ("Godwinisms") and pretends to be oblivious to irony.

Hypersensitive to fallacious hyperbolae (which is what a Godwinism actually is), perhaps.

Not every Nazi reference is a Godwinism. "Oh the humanity," for example....

Not surpisingly, I also have a bad reaction to those who don't understand the meaning of the word "irony".

IOC humiliates Vladimir Putin with order to re-test every Sochi sample and deliberation of blanket ban for Rio

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/olympics/2016/07/19/ioc-humiliates-vladimir-p...

Russia doping scandal: Only when an exclusion is absolute might Russia begin to get the message

Russia's problems go deeper than doping - but Richard McLaren’s new report feels like something on an entirely different scale

For a real sense of how tooled-up Russian thugs beat almighty hell out British football supporters in the name of national pride at Marseilles, four weeks ago, speak to the senior British police who have just finished piecing together video footage of the attack. 

Officers told me at the weekend that their forensic investigations had revealed how one of the English on the receiving end was sitting quietly with friends – no flag of St George; no chanting about the England football team - when he saw the Russians arriving, got up from his seat and made to leave. The man had his feet kicked from underneath him and, prostrate on the pavement, was then put into a coma by repeated kicking to the head by about five Russians. This was the attack that Vladmir Putin later joked about. “I don’t know how 200 Russian fans managed to crush several thousand English,” he said to applause, at an economic forum in St Petersburg a few days after the attack.

Welcome to the twisted twilight world of Russia: a place where the desperate, perverted strivings for national honour have plunged to such decrepitude that the intelligence services worked through the night to manipulate urine samples of doped Winter Olympics competitors – just so that the country to improve on its pathetically poor showing at the 2010 Vancouver Games.

It is an eagerness to cheat across all platforms that has now been revealed: the feeding of a three-drug cocktail of banned substances, mixed with liquor, to at least 14 cross-country skiers, bobsledders, runners, jumpers, throwers, footballers – a practice subsequently obscured with the help of those same old friends from the Russian intelligence services. The story of those officers’ night-time work in a shadow laboratory - lit by a single lamp, breaking into supposedly tamper-proof bottles and passing replacements with clean urine through a hand-size hole in the wall, to be ready for testing the next day - is the most chilling illustration yet of Russia’s state-sponsored corruption. 

A modicum of appreciation is owed to Grigory Rodchenkov, director of that laboratory, for bringing this information to the wider world. Yet there is still something extremely discomfiting about him being the one who has helped throw daylight across Russia’s twilight cheating and criminality. Only after Rodchenkov had been forced to resign by Russian officials – amid the national humiliation of the World Anti-Doping Agency’s excoriating report into the Russian track and field cheats last November - did he turn informer. That still makes Rodchenkov no less than a cheat of ghastly proportions.

He left Russia for the west coast of the United States in fear of his life and we now know he was wise to do so. Two of his close colleagues from Russia’s co-called ‘anti-doping’ agency Rusada, Nikita Kamayev and Vyacheslav Sinev, died unexpectedly within weeks of each other in February.

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/athletics/russia-doping-scan...

6079_Smith_W wrote:

contrarianna wrote:

Why am I not  surprised Smith, an open defender of modern Nazis, is hypersensitive to any allusions to the 3rd Reich ("Godwinisms") and pretends to be oblivious to irony.

Hypersensitive to fallacious hyperbolae (which is what a Godwinism actually is), perhaps.

Not every Nazi reference is a Godwinism. "Oh the humanity," for example....

Not surpisingly, I also have a bad reaction to those who don't understand the meaning of the word "irony".

Lol, perhaps I was mistaken. Perhaps you were NOT in fact pretending when you show yourself ignorant of irony. 

Let me explain so even the very dim can understand:

Quote:

i·ro·ny1 

the expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect."“Don't go overboard with the gratitude,” he rejoined with heavy irony"   synonyms: sarcasm, causticity, cynicism, mockery, satire, sardonicism"that note of irony in her voice"

Thus when I said:
What could be worse. O the humanity! Clearly, "the ultimate crime".[irony]

---

If only Nuremberg had ruled on Sports cheating as it did on lethal propaganda.[irony]

---

But you are not "wild eyed" and conspiracy-minded and see things in sober proportion and know the Truth: [irony]  Cheating at Sports is "the Ultimate Crime".[irony]

---

The point is (sigh) that we have yet another media blitz with Russia as major criminal this time it's sports.

"Hyperboli" is what the Telegraph is doing in saying cheating at sports is "the ultimate crime"

"Irony" is that this is  the same moral Telegraph which promoted a criminal war of aggression, (which it still defends) costing hundreds of thousands of lives.

But forget it, its mega-sports which is surely more important. Right? [irony] 

Sure, ban Russia, and make it forever as far as I'm concerned. [not being ironic].  I don't endorse absurd state promotion in mega sports. The fewer people that attend to it the better; might as well start with Russia.

I'd like to see the whole professional (excuse me, "amateur") circus dropped. And for those who invest emotional energy in state-sponsored athletes and fervently identify with their surrogate national avatars---it's a depressing comment on human psychology.

As for your invoking Godwin's "law", that is a recurrent trick of yours to squelch issues:

Quote:

Godwin's law itself can be abused as a distraction, diversion or even as censorship, fallaciously miscasting an opponent's argument as hyperbole when the comparisons made by the argument are actually appropriate.[9][10] Similar criticisms of the "law" (or "at least the distorted version which purports to prohibit all comparisons to German crimes") have been made by Glenn Greenwald.[11]

Greenwald's piece is here:

Quote:

....But this prohibition is even more odious than that.  A primary point of the Nuremberg Trials was to seize on the extraordinary horror of what the Germans did in order to set forth general principles to be applied not only to the individual war criminals before the tribunal, but more important, to all countries in the future.  As lead prosecutor Robert Jackson explained in his Opening Statement:

"What makes this inquest significant is that these prisoners represent sinister influences that will lurk in the world long after their bodies have returned to dust. . . . . And let me make clear that while this law is first applied against German aggressors, the law includes, and if it is to serve a useful purpose it must condemn aggression by any other nations, including those which sit here now in judgment."

'The graveyard of the Earth': inside City 40, Russia's deadly nuclear secret

Ozersk, codenamed City 40, was the birthplace of the Soviet nuclear weapons programme. Now it is one of the most contaminated places on the planet – so why do so many residents still view it as a fenced-in paradise?

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/jul/20/graveyard-earth-inside-ci...

contrarianna:

https://writerswritedaily.wordpress.com/2011/09/07/hyperbole-and-irony/

Quote:

Hyperbole
An extravagant statement; the use of exaggerated terms for the purpose of emphasis or heightened effect.

Irony
The use of words to convey the opposite of their literal meaning. A statement or situation where the meaning is contradicted by the appearance or presentation of the idea.

Look at the examples.

Your Nuernberg line (which is the one I was refering to) is hyperbolae, contrarianna. But really, they all are (except for your "wild eyed" example): exaggeration as a form of ridicule. That is different than saying the opposite of what you mean, which is what irony is.

You are trying to make it out as if those who think this is a serious issue (which it is) see it as of the same order as Nazi crimes. No one has said that. It does not mean that this is not a serious issue.

Calling out Godwinisms is pretty simple, actually. If it is gratuitious, and actually has nothing to do with the Nazis, it is a Godwinism. "Oh the humanity" passes because it is a saying that has made its way into popular culture. You calling me a Nazi defender? That is just dumb.

As for Greenwald's argument about it being used incorrectly, well just because you don't understand the meaning of the word irony does not mean that irony does not exist.

In their blubbering enthusiasm to ban all Russian athletes from pretty well everything, the US and Canadian sports administrators have undermined the credibility of WADA itself. Mind you, I don't think they get it.

I mean, the Americans are used to trying to apply US law extra-territorally, for example, and blush like teenagers and claim cherub-like innocence when confronted with their duplicity. However, this recent example in which officials from two countries, just before what is the largest sporting event in the world, before WADA even makes their report, trying to get another country's athletes banned really strongly suggests an organized campaign ...not dissimilar to US sabre-rattling on Russian borders, e.g., just prior to a large NATO summit and military contract renewals in various member states.

One amusing commentator suggested that the US simply hold all Olympics in the States and ban all other countries, except maybe one or two obedient poodles, from participating.

As A. Mercouris noted, the end result, as with global financial architecture due to the barbarism of the IMF, World Bank, etc., may be the establishment of secondary or rival centers. Parallel sporting events.

If that is the case, the US will have a very difficult time bribing/bullying the bulk of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Mercouris is of the opinion that the decision-maing bodies are already stacked, the die is cast, appeals will all be rejected or ignored, and the Russian athletes will simply be banned carte blanche. We should know on Thursday.

Political elements in Russia, tired of President Putin's endless attempts to "get along" with the US and its satellites, [sometimes called Atlanticists] may find themselves outnumbered by others who now have nothing but contempt for the West, who look to Eurasia for future links and development, and who are already looking for reasons to consider the West a cesspool of civilization.

The Friends of Détente With Russia

Events from Turkey, Washington, Moscow, and Syria to Cleveland affect the Obama-Putin attempted rapprochement.

https://www.thenation.com/article/the-friends-of-detente-with-russia/

Russian athlete branded a 'traitor' over plans to compete under neutral flag in Rio

Darya Klishina’s decision could make her the country’s only track-and-field competitor at the Olympics after doping scandal

Russian athlete Darya Klishina has been widely criticised after she agreed to compete under a neutral flag at next month’s Olympics, a move which could make her one of Russia’s only track-and-field athletes not banned due to a national doping scandal.

Social media denounced the long jumper as a “traitor” after she thanked her sponsors and coaches for their support and expressed gratitude to the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) for allowing her to compete.

The IAAF reportedly rejected bids from 67 Russian athletes who applied for individual dispensation to bypass the blanket ban imposed on Russia’s athletics team for massive “state-sponsored” doping, but found that the US-based Klishina could demonstrate she was clean.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/13/russian-athlete-competing-...

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/jul/21/cas-upholds-ban-olympics-r...

"State-sponsored doping" is the distinction being made here.

Rev Pesky wrote:

6079_Smith_W wrote:

"State-sponsored doping" is the distinction being made here. 

If the various states are supposed to stop doping, and have the means to do so, but don't, that is state sponsored doping.

No. It isn't.

State sponsored means that they are the ones who organized it, and have been caught for it.

You can call it whatever you want. What is significant is that in this case it involved not just an athlete or coach, but the Russian sport ministry, security services, and drug-testing laboratories covering up positive drug tests by substituting clean samples for tainted ones.

NorthReport wrote:

Russian cheating is wholesale, unprecedented, and state sponsored. Yes other countries' athletes cheat, but never to this extent. And it is all documented in previous posts if you would just take the time to read them.

Geoff wrote:

No one is asking what other countries have been involved in doping. I find it hard to believe that Russia is the only country to engage in "cheating".

I'm not questioning whether or not Russia is involved in doping. There is plenty of evidence here and elsewhere to that effect. However, I still find it hard to believe the Russian government is the sole culprit. Perhaps there should be one standard means of testing all countries.

6079_Smith_W wrote:

State sponsored means that they are the ones who organized it, and have been caught for it.

You can call it whatever you want. What is significant is that in this case it involved not just an athlete or coach, but the Russian sport ministry, security services, and drug-testing laboratories covering up positive drug tests by substituting clean samples for tainted ones.

... based on the claims of a [single] convicted trader in anabolic steroids, who has fled prosecution to the safety of the US, who have graciously provided him with a free lab; furthermore, by claiming state sponsorship, none of the "evidence" is subject to examination, no witnesses examined, the whole concept of innocent until proven guilty is jettisoned for the entire Russian team, and so  on.

Russophobia from start to finish. And this frothing phobia is well represented on babble.

Russia should have thought about the consequences before they decided to cheat. Fortunately they were caught.

Russia faces total Rio Olympics ban after losing appeal

Arbitration court rejects appeal of 68 Russian track athletes seeking to overturn ban imposed by IAAF following allegations of state-sponsored doping.

A Canadian law professor heading an independent investigation says he found widespread, state-sponsored doping across many Russian sports from 2011 to 2015.  

“Today’s judgment has created a level playing field for athletes,” the IAAF said in a statement. “The CAS award upholds the rights of the IAAF to use its rules for the protection of the sport, to protect clean athletes and support the credibility and integrity of competition.”

IAAF President Sebastian Coe said it was “not a day for triumphant statements.”

“I didn’t come into this sport to stop athletes from competing,” he said. “It is our federation’s instinctive desire to include, not exclude.”

Thursday’s ruling is likely to weigh heavily on whether the IOC could bar the entire Russian team — across all sports, not just track — following new allegations of a vast government-organized doping program.

https://www.thestar.com/sports/amateur/2016/07/21/russia-loses-appeal-ag...

HOW RUSSIA GOT AWAY WITH DOPING, UNTIL IT DIDN'T

CASTThe Whistleblowers

Yuliya Stepanova: Russian 800-meter runner, wife of Vitaly Stepanov

Vitaly Stepanov: Employee at Russian anti-doping agency, Yuliya’s husband

Grigory Rodchenkov: Ph.D. in analytical chemistry, director of Russia’s anti-doping lab

http://www.newsweek.com/how-russia-got-away-doping-until-it-didnt-482709