I've been shaking my head at the IOC's decision to cave in to China on Internet censorship.
Only two weeks ago IOC president Jacques Rogge said in an interview, "There will be no censorship on the Internet," during the Games.
But yesterday an embarrassed IOC press chair Kevan Gosper acknowledged he had learned through a Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee press conference that the Chinese would censor the Internet and – on further inquiry – he discovered his own organization was complicit in the plan.
"I regret that it now appears that BOCOG has announced that there will be limitations on website access during Games' time," he told reporters.
"I also now understand that some IOC officials negotiated with the Chinese that some sensitive sites would be blocked on the basis that they were not considered Games related," he said.
"Sensitive" websites – and stories – relating to the Falun Gong spiritual movement, the movement for an independent Tibet, and virtually all human rights, free speech and pro-democracy groups are expected to be primary targets.
"The IOC will definitely lose face over this," Vincent Brossel of Reporters Without Borders said in a telephone interview from Paris.
"It's just one more example that shows how the Chinese government's commitment in 2001 to allow free media was just a weak promise and in some ways, they had no real intention to provide normal working conditions for journalists covering the Games."
In New York, Bob Dietz, of the Committee to Protect Journalists, was astonished.
"China and IOC promised that this would not happen," he said.
"If journalists' access to the Internet is restricted in any way, it's a failure of both parties to meet the promises they made to the world.
"I don't think the IOC knew who they were getting into bed with," he added.
Either that, or they did and didn't care.
Here's the Olympic Charter.
There's nothing in the principles of Olympism that says the IOC shouldn't cave into the censorious dictates of authoritarian host nations, so party on.