fpb | It won't make much difference my saying this.

But I might as well. The Olympics have some kind of quarter-century murderous tyranny drive. 1936, Berlin. 1968, Mexico City (with hundreds of students slaughtered on the main square for extra entertainment). 1980, Moscow. 2008, Beijing. And the Seoul Olympics were awarded before the military tyranny in South Korea was overthrown. And the 1972 Munich Olympics were stained by the blood of Jewish athletes and should have been abandoned. I was ten at the time and I was furious that they continued, and I haven't changed my mind since; only I did not realize then that this massacre of Jews took place within a few miles of Dachau concentration camp. The fact alone that Jews were once again butchered in Germany ought to have raised ugly echoes everywhere; the fact that this was only one Olympic after the Massacre Olympics of Mexico City made it even worse. But I am afraid that the Olympic movement and shame are two altogether separate and alien concepts.

I love sports. And other games have had their shameful moments - the World Cup was held in Fascist Italy in 1934, in Mexico City in 1970 two years after the Massacre Olympics, and in Jorge "20,000 desaparecidos" Videla's Argentina in 1978. But the Olympics seem especially reckless with their supposed moral authority.

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I agree. I've been thinking about this all morning.

I was just thinking the other day (and felt bad about thinking it) that there was a little part of me that hopes this Olympics doesn't go that well. I definitely don't mean injuries or violence or anything like that, just that the bureaucracy behind it is revealed to be a big Charlie Foxtrot--computers fail, reporters get sent to the wrong place or something. Just to make it obvious that China shouldn't have had this Olympics. (I hope I don't get flamed for this ;p)

One of my hopes is to see outdoor events canceled due to pollution problems. It cheered me up a bit to watch footage of Team USA arriving wearing surgical masks. Don't know how likely that is, however.

I'm torn. On the one hand, the Chinese government does not deserve for them to go well; on the other, if they go badly, it's only ordinary Chinese people who will suffer--and they've frankly suffered enough because of the Olympics.

The decision to grant China the Olympics was simply wrong. Ignoring the politics, from a sporting perspective the idea of holding games in a city where air pollution is as bad as it is for these games is preposterous. But handing a propaganda tool to the Chinese Government is unforgivable.

All that being said, the Olympics should be about the athletes so i'll be watching the sport and admiring the dedication of people who have trained for four years to be the best they can be.

And that is why I don't agree with you about Munich. I've always believed that the best response to an act of terrorism is defiance. Terrorists try to ruin an event, make it run the best way you can. Now if either the government of Israel or that nations' olympic team had said that the games should be postponed, that might have been a different matter, but both endorsed the decision that the games should go on.

I quite understand that individuals may hold a different view, and a number of athletes did return home. But, as a 12 year old,I was glad the Games went on. They were different, more sombre than they had been but somehow it seemed to me to be in the best traditions of the Games to dust themselves off and go on after an attack like this. Terrorists should not be allowed to dictate what events can and cannot take place.

I would say that changes to the closing ceremony would have been appropriate and i would have preferred that no flags were flown - all athletes competing under the Olympic flag - but then I think that about all games.

Still too much of the wooly liberial idealist in me I think.

And that is why I don't agree with you about Munich. I've always believed that the best response to an act of terrorism is defiance. Terrorists try to ruin an event, make it run the best way you can. Now if either the government of Israel or that nations' olympic team had said that the games should be postponed, that might have been a different matter, but both endorsed the decision that the games should go on.

The problem I see is that, in later Olympics, the Palestinian Authority was allowed to field a team. I think that killing the other athletes should be grounds for permanent disqualification from the games!

How many murderers have sent representatives to the Olympics, beginning with the Soviet Union? Saddam Hussein sent them regularly, and so did every other murderous Muslim governmnet. Indeed, according to a very specific Olympic rule, the Olympic teams are official representatives of sovereign governments. That is why Great Britain sends one team instead of - as in soccer, rugby and cricket - three or four; that is why - unlike in rugby and cricket - there are two Irish teams instead of one; and that is why the Chinese had to swallow the presence of "Chinese Taipei".

How many murderers have sent representatives to the Olympics, beginning with the Soviet Union?

Very many, but the PA is unique as far as I know in having murdered other country's athletes at the Games.

They were not the PA at the time. The PA begins, and so far as I can see its Olympics appearances begin, with the Oslo Agreement. Before that, the Arab bloc and the Communist countries treated the PLO as a sovereign government, but the CIO did not.

The PA is the clear lineal descendant of the PLO, and most of those leading the PA right now approved of the Munich massacre.

I don't like it either, but the PA as a sovereign authority begins in 1994. It has the legal requirements to present an Olympic team (although it is a slight relief that they never seem to have turned out anyone of note) and cannot be outlawed for something its leaders did when they were not even resident in the territories they now pretend to administer.

Of course there aren't "two Irish teams instead of one" at the Olympics. What I meant was that the Northern Irish athletes, who, in rugby and (I think) in cricket, would represent Ireland, represent Great Britain.

Quite right, although the situation in Cricket is more complex. Any Irish player, who was good enough, could represent England as Ireland do not have Test Match Status.

It has always puzzled me why the GB team (who I think go by the official name of GB and Northern Ireland) do not use the catch-all term of UK.

It won't make much difference my saying this.

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