There has been a good deal of criticism surrounding the Winter Olympics in Vancouver both at home and abroad - some of it legitimate. Criticism has been aimed at the corporate nature of the games, safety and organizational issues, the use of unceded Indigenous land for venues and the cynical way the Harper conservatives have attempted to use the event for political spin-off benefits.

There have also been attacks in which criticism is undermined by knee-jerk anti-Canadian attitudes. A good example of this is a rant on the Russian news site Pravda. It contains disparaging references to Canadians as "retentive" and "cowardly". The attack seems motivated in part by displeasure at the way some Russian athletes have allegedly been handled, perhaps also by the less-than-stellar showing by Russia on the podium.

The article makes points worth considering but the jingoistic tone and cheap shots makes it hard to take it seriously as a piece of journalism apart from anything else.

We all know Canada has problems with the future lines drawn on Arctic maps and we all know Canada lives in the shadow of its larger neighbour to the south. The abject cruelty shown by Canadian soldiers in international conflicts is scantily referred to, as indeed is the utter incapacity of this county to host a major international event, due to its inferiority complex, born of a trauma being the skinny and weakling bro to a beefy United States and a colonial outpost to the United Kingdom, whose Queen smiles happily from Canadian postage stamps.

Maybe it is this which makes the Canadians so…retentive, or cowardly. So it is not exactly a huge surprise to have international skating experts from the four corners of the Earth criticising the decision to award the Men’s figure skating Gold medal to the US athlete Evan Lysacekv over the reigning Olympic Champion Evgeny Plushenko, whose superior performance was inexplicably ignored.

Everybody who knows anything about Olympic skating, Winter Olympic sports and international politics will infer from the pitiful and dangerous conditions provided by the Canadian authorities, which already caused one death, that Vancouver is mutton dressed as lamb. Take off the outer veneer and the stench is horrific.

It is a surprise that any Russian athlete would wish to remain in that sort of environment for a second longer.

Read the rant in full - here. Also be sure to check out the accompanying comment thread.