<p data-line-id="130078b99cbe44e3973d15229759af31">Mr. Buruma has written an excellent and well-researched piece. I would add that if one looks to the ancient Greece of the original Olympics, with its class of slaves and where foreigners were "barbarians," one wonders why we should expect to seek some spirit of international brotherhood in it. The emphasis on physicality, particularly on the international level rather than intra-national, often represents to show national/racial "superiority" -- the better breed of the human animal, as it were. Ego contests do not lead to peace--the best to hope for is some sublimation of aggression.</p><p data-line-id="ef538eca05be4e30bc5aca5c233eaeed">However, the issue of Gay rights in Russia is a seems whole different deal. There is a bigger picture here, and the power players are too big, too corporate, and too political, to real give a hoot about classical religious antagonism and popular prejudice towards, nor humanistic support for these rights. Simply put in coldest calculating terms, the Gay lifestyle implies a diminishing of population. Where this is advantageous there is government and media support. In the West, population decline is perceived by the elite as maintaining stability as workers become less and less needed and the calls by the half-nots for more stands as a real threat. On the other hand, Russia desperately needs population to exercise industrial and military power--and most assuredly to stave off the surrounding population threat as exemplified by the terrorists who ultimately count on a growing relative population to make use of what they hope to accomplish.</p><p data-line-id="528a1755ecbb483aae5b0996efc80bcc">But there is a common thread with the Olympics, and that is ego. The real problem is that in a globalizing world, such ego will block the flow of economic blood, overstretch the production belly while starving the leg and arm populations. In short, our true primary concern is human relations, but these will not be corrected by more egoistic displays like the Olympics, but rather the meeting of populations in round tables and the like, to try to establish some common fellowship--intelligently striving for an internalized sense of mutual responsibility. Certainly this is not accomplished at polished metal events in cities where heads are being beaten in in the back alleys out of the limelight.</p>