It won't make much difference my saying this.

[fpb]

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.

Comments

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

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.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

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.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

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

[fpb.livejournal.com]

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.