Beijing

I hear that the political circus in Beijing is being closed down this afternoon. Fortunately, it hasn't been too difficult to avoid the TV programs and the articles in the papers and magazines.

For direct and indirect political propaganda, I think the games of 2008 will rank with Hitler's 1936 games in Berlin. Seventy-two years later, we are not yet willing to call that circus a circus : we are still playing around with the long deceased Olympic spirit.

What is most important : offering the top sportsmen and women of the world an arena in which they can show their "arts", or giving an almost unlimited access to media for scores of relatively unimportant people - gathering in national and international committees - who use the games to put themselves in the spotlights and have been willing for decades to sacrifice the Oympic spirit to their short term interests and living very well of the spoils ?

The Olympic have become big business like any other big business, but hide behind a noble but totally unrealistic ideal. Honesty is not one of our world's main virtues : hypocrisy is ominpresent. And greed is never far away.