{"id":348147,"date":"2018-02-14T02:50:32","date_gmt":"2018-02-14T01:50:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/2018-winter-olympics-held-in-korea-under-shadow-of-war\/"},"modified":"2018-02-14T02:50:32","modified_gmt":"2018-02-14T01:50:32","slug":"2018-winter-olympics-held-in-korea-under-shadow-of-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/2018-winter-olympics-held-in-korea-under-shadow-of-war\/","title":{"rendered":"2018 Winter Olympics held in Korea under shadow of war"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"content\">\n<h3 class=\"nomargin\">\u00a0<\/h3>\n<h2>2018 Winter Olympics held in Korea under shadow of war<\/h2>\n<h5>\n<p>    13 February 2018<\/p>\n<\/h5>\n<p>The 2018 Winter Olympic Games opened in South Korea last Friday under the official theme of \u201cpeace,\u201d with a ceremony that included a choreographed candlelight depiction of a white dove and a rendition of John Lennon\u2019s \u201cImagine.\u201d Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee, declared that it would send a \u201cpowerful message of peace to the world.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bach noted, with no apparent sense of irony, that the 2016 Olympics had officially provided a \u201cmessage of hope\u201d to refugees, in a year that ended with more than 5,000 refugees drowned attempting to cross the Mediterranean, with many thousands more since.<\/p>\n<p>This year\u2019s bromides should be taken no more seriously. The reality is that not since the 1936 Olympics in Hitler\u2019s Germany have the games been held under such an immediate threat of war. Overshadowing the events in South Korea is the real possibility that the United States will launch a \u201cbloody nose\u201d strike on North Korean military facilities in the immediate aftermath of the games, which could trigger a nuclear conflagration and lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not tens of millions, on the Korean Peninsula.<\/p>\n<p>The Trump administration has made clear that it will allow no let-up in its insistence that Pyongyang unconditionally submit to US demands for an end to its nuclear weapons program or face military action. The decision for the North and South to compete on the same Olympic team\u2014though welcomed by millions throughout the region in the hope that it might signal a lessening of tensions\u2014was met with unconcealed hostility by the Trump administration.<\/p>\n<p>This was epitomized by Vice President Mike Pence\u2019s arrogant display at the opening ceremony,&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsws.org\/en\/articles\/2018\/02\/13\/pers-f13.html\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 2018 Winter Olympics held in Korea under shadow of war 13 February 2018 The 2018 Winter Olympic Games opened in South Korea last Friday under the official theme of \u201cpeace,\u201d with a ceremony that included a choreographed candlelight depiction of a white dove and a rendition of John Lennon\u2019s \u201cImagine.\u201d Thomas Bach, the president [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2526,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-348147","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2526"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348147\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}