2022 Winter Olympics in Zimbabwe?

Putin showed the world how to use the Sochi Olympic Games to whitewash Russia and make it look like a civilized and proud nation, just as China did before.

You just do what it takes, take land away from local people and flood the process with never-seen-before pageantry plus pour obscene amounts of money into the process, and... voila! Your country and politics are cleansed by the Oympic Detergent and following that, you have Carte Blanche to invade Ukraine by proxy.

Today's after the defection of democracies like Sweden and Poland and the vacilation of Norway as well as Ukraine, there's only contemporary tyrannies like China and Kazakhstan in the running. Okay, I've made clear that the motive behind an Olympic candidacy have got to be suspect.

So what's next? Perhaps Zimbabwe or North Korea might step in, unless Salt Lake City that has indicated some interest in picking up the pieces - if called upon - could once more use the IOC expensive washing machine to make its weird local culture look a bit more acceptable to the rest of the world...