Does said young woman receive funds from Russia to train? Does her coach receive Russian funding? Is the Russian anti-doping agency responsible for drug testing her, since she is presumably living in Russia? HOW do you think she could possibly be "neutral?!"
At some point, Russia is coming back. Should they come back next season? Absolutely not. Should their doping agencies and fundamentals of sport be heavily reworked before they come back? Yes. Are they going to be reworked whether it takes 1 year or 10 years to come back? Probably not.
Not if the country that is holding the event refuses entry to Russians! I am seeing news articles that if the IOC insists on allowing Russia into the 2024 summer Olympics that France is considering refusing visas to the Russians. If they cannot get into France, they obviously cannot compete. The ISU/IOC do not have as much power as they think they have.
You didn't answer the question, which was - How do you think she could possibly be neutral?
It does have to do with booing when someone replied that Canadian fans can be boisterous. I don't want Russia back in competition-- but if they are permitted, it's the fault of the ISU and the ISU alone, right?
I mean, every time these instances are brought up and there are comparisons to the USA and their attacks in the last few decades, it's called whataboutism. Almost 400,000 civilians have died from post-9/11 US wars from what I see. I get where you're going with it regarding South Africa, but I still think it's a difficult gray area (and as far as I know, South Africa was not funding sports via the government like Russia does).
Well then the problem sounds like it needs to be taken up with the ISU then like I said above, no? I, unlike many here, still do find sympathy for people in Russia who spent the better part of their lives training a talent such as sports, for it to be put on hold internationally because of the actions of the Government. It's so easy for people to say 'well they can just get out of the country' -- even on FSU, people have typed paragraphs about how easy it is. But I can still think Russia's war is ridiculous and stupid while feeling for people who are in that system.
I'd be very surprised if that happened. I don't think I've ever heard a skater being booed. Speedy, yes. Mars, yes. Skaters, no.
Yeah, I know. I don't mean it literally anyway. At least not at a competition. I guess I'd like to see it now - enough pressure on both organizations so that they get the message that they have to uphold the ban.
As someone who was there at the time, let me shed some light on this. The international community's sports boycott of South Africa was incredibly successful. Many believe that it was the single most important factor in the demise of apartheid and it certainly looked that way at the time. More effective than economic sanctions even. South Africans are sports-crazy, and white South Africans were very frustrated at the inability of their sports teams to compete internationally. This was evident in the Zola Budd situation, although it was more common with rugby and cricket.
And there were people who, at the time, whined about the boycotts and tried to get around them. (The sanctions too.) But it didn't work as there was pretty widespread support for the boycott and the sanctions.
I don't recall that type of behaviour either. In general, many white South Africans feel they are at the margins globally, distant from Europe and North America, and the sports boycott exacerbated this sense of isolation, and was felt quite intensely. In my experience, there were no efforts to try and undermine the boycott nor expectations of being able to do so. The Zola Budd situation was the exception.
Thank you so much for all of this.
Much more difficult to organize than scattered booing...
My whole position is this - life is unfair in so many ways. Society itself can find ways to mitigate this, but it's always taking the best of a few bad options.
Tonya Harding was booed at the 1994 Olympics.
The Olympics are an exception because most of the audience are not skating fans. We have seen a lot of bad behavior by Olympic audiences over the years and not just by the ones watching skating.
ITA
Neutrality is a well defined concept in international law. It is best described as "you two fight and I'll make money".
Sorry, but I think it's ludicrous to suggest that Bush is the best or primary example of the idea that "if you're not for us, you're against us." The concept goes back millennia, and has been used in many contexts historically, both ethically laudable, such as resistance to Hitler's expansionism in WW2, and ethically dubious, such as Bush's actions in the Gulf. It is not, in an of itself, an oppressive concept. Rather, it is the context within which it is mobilized, that makes it oppressive or liberatory in effect.
Disagree. History offers a mere perspective from a biased lens.
I don't think she was using Bush as the primary or best. Only one of the more recent ones, and one where the country did hypocritically get away with it.
If you stripped it of its context within the current timeframe, it will not be inherently oppressive or liberating. Within the current timeframe, there very much is the context of whether or not countries are allowed to make their own free choices, especially countries and peoples which, for example, served in the World Wars simply because their colonizers were part of those wars, and suffered heavy losses as a result.
Unimpeded relativism serves no one well, but we're not talking about acknowledging that the genocide of Jewish people as in the holocaust is morally bad. Most would agree genocidal killing is morally bad. It is the ethics behind supporting certain sides in the war we are talking about, in which case, yes, ethics of supporting the "right" side or the "wrong" side are much, much, much more subject to relativism, and much more subject to the conditions of the countries who are tasked with it, coming off a pandemic which didn't treat all countries equally.
Right, and as I say in the edited post, I do think Nadya isn't making a logically faulty assertion. If you place it within the current political context, it's not as faulty as you're making it out to be, because I don't think she was talking about it within the sense of "millennia" to begin, rather a much more recent interpretation of the phrase, where what she says holds much truer.
The only point I am making is that, in my opinion, over time, the polarities evident in approaches to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, will change and we will see more of a consensus emerge in which Russian actions are more widely condemned. Even Russians will eventually accept this view, in my opinion. (Also, while not synonymous with the Holocaust, I do believe there is an element of genocide in the Russians invasion of Ukraine, and that this view too will become more widely embraced over time, including by those who currently support Russia.)
I think we need to leave it to future historians to weigh in on the ethics of self-interest in the face of territorial aggression. Historians have certainly weighed in on Swiss "neutrality" during WW2. I think it's unrealistic and undesirable to ask historians, or any academics for that matter, to leave ethics at the door when they embark on their inquiries. Of course, that does not mean you need to agree with their analyses.
So you agree with Nadya that, at least since Bush, the saying that "if you are not for them, you are against them" is intrinsically oppressive? I use it in relation to Ukrainians subject to Russian aggression. I don't see it as oppressive.
And that, of course, is simply your perspective, as you acknowledge.
