The Chinese have been brutalizing the Tibetans since the 1950s and continue to do so. In the last few years they've begun to destroy Tibetan Culture by building a tram to Tibet - making it a Chinese Disneyworld - and populating it with Chinese businesses. What the Chinese could not fully destroy in the past, they'll surely accomplish now.

To hell with the Chinese and their showcasing of the Olympics. Hold them somewhere else.

Refusing to award the Olympics to countries that don't have excellent human-rights records is political. But it's a better way of doing politics than the way the IOC has chosen.

So I guess we'd then have to retroactively remove the Olympics from Athens, Sydney, Atlanta, Barcelona, Seoul, L.A., Moscow ..... stop me when I get to the name of a city that is in a country with an "excellent human-rights record".

I'm old enough to have clear memories of all of those games. I'm old enough to remember the political palaver that went on in advance of all of them. And I'm old enough to remember that when the athletes started walking in all of that nonsense disappeared, even if only for a moment.

I was lucky enough to be in the stadium in Sydney -- in Australia, with its appalling record of Aboriginal human rights -- when the Korean teams walked in (as they do) together; when the tiny East Timor team enjoyed its very first games.

We clapped our hands red. There wasn't a dry eye in the house. Midnight Oil wore their "Sorry" suits, and a murmuring became a national dialogue.

So here's my prediction: there'll be lots of chatter, ranging from the excellent (Parag Khanna, today, in the Guardian) to the idiotic (Ted Kerasote, yesterday, on Salon), but the games will go ahead, and they'll be pretty good, and for a brief moment we'll forget about all the stupid politics and marvel at what could be, rather than what is.

Is the strongest memory of 1936 Hitler, or Jesse Owens?

I'm as cynical about the triumphalism of the Olympics as the next guy, but there is absolutely no doubt that it succeeds in having us see the "other guys" as just human beings, and makes us squirm about our own failings of humanity.

And that goes double for the host country.

The Beijing smog is likely to shorten any athlete's career anyway.

No country has a perfect human rights record, but China is really "over the top."

I would hope that individual athletes would reflect on the situation in China and decide for themselves whether they want to be associated with that. I think that many would not.

China boycotted the 1980 Olympic Summer Games in Moscow after the Soviet Union invaded Afganistan.

--"Huh?" Who are them places? Wha boycott?"--GeeDubya

Yeah, Rogge doesn't think China's internal political affairs need to be addressed. Reminds one of how Germany's internal political affairs didn't need addressing in 36. Until they did.

Now, how does that relates to W? Well, W. makes ol' Chamberlain look like Stalin. It damn near makes one wish old dumb-ass W. knew how brilliant a last minute boycott would be--both strategically, and economically. If he did, he might not go down as being the worstest "decider" of em all. Fucking shame, really.

If enough spectators chose to boycott the Olympics, it could be a moderate financial blow to the Chinese.

If enough countries chose to boycott the Olympics, it could be a minor short-term embarrassment for the Chinese.

But the people who would be punished the worst would be the athletes. Some of these young men and women will not get another chance to go to the Olympics. It would be a heartbreak that would last a lifetime to many of them.

Remember when we boycotted in 1980? The scramble for athletes to get citizenship in other countries, so they would get a chance to compete? Do we really want to punish the athletes again?

One of the things King points out over and over is how NCAA sanctions punish the athletes more than the coach or the institution. And those athletes aren't, as a rule, having their only chance eliminated by circumstances beyond their control. I, for one, would prefer to avoid that.

Yes, China has horrible pollution and a horrible human rights record. But the time to address this issue was during selection, not less than six months out from the games. Don't make the athletes pay the biggest penalty for a decision made seven years ago. Let them compete.

The IOC is responsible for putting up the Olympic games, as it contractually promised the games for the hosts and for the participants. Actually the IOC is responsible to have awarded the games to China in the first place and it would have no credibility in claiming it did not know China was being run by a brutal and repressive totalitarian regime. So the games should go on.

The participants and spectators, on the other hand, are free to chose. It is not an easy choice, still easier than being a Tibetan.

Would not it be great if the game halls were empty in the glittering cities that had been wiped clean of stray dogs and undesirable humans because scores of individuals, both sportspersons and spectators, would have stayed home as a result of conscientious decisions to object, and not because it was easy to hide behind the shadow of a large organization that would make the decision for them?

Yes, it would. Something's telling me though, this is to the kind of world we live in.

Jesse Owens in Nazi Berlin? The American hockey team beating the Soviets? Dare I mention Munich?

A couple I know (curiously also surnamed Farnsworth) were in Atlanta during the bombing incident; fortunately their event ended long before the bomb went off. Although that wasn't international politics, it was sociological anti-abortion politics to Americans. If they'd not been sleepy, they might have been dead.

The oddest factor is that the IOC has been whistling past this particular graveyard ever since I've seen these events occurring. They mouth the same platitudes, they pretend that the outside world doesn't exist when the Olympics occur, and isn't our new mascot cute? (To answer the last, I've never seen a cute Olympic mascot. They all look like mutant Muppets drawn by Dali on a bad day.)

Until these supposedly esteemed authorities sit down and think long and hard about politics, these ugly incidents will continue. They didn't take time to think for this Olympics, so I'll sit back and wait for the dead bodies, the interruptions and protests, and (perhaps unique for China) a sudden, unexplained, total blackout of satellite and internet signals from China. The Chinese may think that "taking black" will prevent the bad news from being seen; they won't realize that we'll probably imagine far worse than the disasters they are hiding. I'm just lucky that MY Farnsworths are not going to China this year.