For sure the OzOC botched this up from the beginning--while the Olympics is an international event, the opening festival has always been a welcome by the host country: the American bands should never have been invited in the first place. I might have actually watched the opening if it featured digeridoo bands and dancing wombats. But once the invitation was made, once these kids had been promised a place in the opening cememony and raised the money to go, it was extreme bad form to recall the invitation--again, the fault of the OzOC, not of Ozzies in general. It is, of course, also bad form for the Americans to raise as much of a public stink over the issue, inflaming passions in both countries (and, I suppose, in Japan). Surely some acceptible compromise could have been negotiated--if cooler heads with active brains and governed by feeling hearts had represented both sides. --seed