China's preparations to hold the Olympic Games that August further fuelled patriotic sentiment, which welled up again in the wake of the global financial crisis.

ECONOMIST: Nationalism online

It was even better when Mr Cameron appeared to respond in kind with a slight on Salt Lake City by saying "of course it is easier if you hold an Olympic Games in the middle of nowhere".

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London has spent seven years planning to hold the Games and a spokesman from the London Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) told CNN last week that every eventuality had been accounted for.

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Then the Finnish representative at the International Olympic Committee resigned in the wake of a row over Salt Lake City's bid to hold the winter games.

ECONOMIST: Finland

To link these two issues together actually to politicize the Olympic games, does simply doesn't hold water and is ridiculous.

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