NO TIME FOR LOSERS

This morning I have received an e-mail from the Russian Amazon.com analogue, inventively named Ozon.ru, informing me that “we Russians have yet another reason to be proud of our country and yet more confident in the future of our children”. I did not know there had been any room for improvement in those areas, really. “Hurray!” read the message, “Hurray to the 2014 Olympics in Sochi !” On this happy occasion the internet shop suggested that I purchase anything in their stock with a 20 percent discount.

I was also congratulated upon the Russian victory at the International Olympic Committee gathering by a few unsuspecting Dutch relatives. Until today they had only known of Sochi thanks to the oversized documentary film by Russian filmmaker Vitaly Mansky called Tender Heat. Wild Wild Beach shown at the Amsterdam International Documentary Festival last year . Which basically means that they had only known it as a crowded low-budget sea-side hive where drunken women surrender to more than one man at a time and underfed dying camels are exploited as photographic props till they drop, a place where swarms of not quite aristocratic-looking tourists eat, sleep, copulate and die on the beach.

Naturally, that is only one angle of Sochi .

Another one of the whole area's characteristics is that it is surrounded by gorgeous serene natural reserve parks and sanctuaries, some of them inhabited by species found nowhere else on the planet. Sanctuaries forbidden for human trespassing.

According to the grand architectural plan transforming the surroundings of Sochi into a winter sports playground, the natural reserves and sanctuaries will be trespassed. By biathlon and cross-country tracks (which, by the way, in some evil twist of the designer's mind, intersect with each other). By construction sites. By hundreds of thousands of interested parties. At least seven of the Olympic sites will be located in the protected areas featuring fragile ecosystems.

Of course, Sochi and the nearby villages will get something out of the Olympics. The new buildings, the new infrastructure, that, as one official recently put it, should last us at least 60 years. But the fragile ecosystems will not come back in 60 years. Or ever.

The lucrative grounds difficult to get hold of because up to now they have remained protected will eventually become commercialized. And filmmaker Mansky's vulgar characters will inhabit what is now the remaining nature parks. Or, better yet, their much richer compatriots will.

But that will be after the Olympics. Now we are receiving congratulations and slowly becoming concerned about our safety. Sochi is situated at the border with the recently war-torn and now no man's land of Abhasia, where both Russia and Georgia have their own interests. Even more importantly, Sochi lies right next to the boiling pan of the Caucasus . Those guys will definitely think up a massive terror attack during the big games. Should not we triple our defense budget and strangle anything that can be remotely characterized as extremism in the region? In the whole of the country? Strengthen the total control. We have a reputable reason now.

Hurray.