In Harper’s vandaag, onder de titel “How Low Can Jacques Rogge Sink? Beijing and the spirit of ‘36”:

In an editorial last week the New York Times suggested that the International Olympic Committee, in its ceaseless shilling for China in the run-up to the games, had proven itself “beyond redemption”:

To win the coveted right to hold the Olympics, China promised to expand press freedoms for foreign journalists and dangled the prospect that, more broadly, human rights might also be improved. Instead, authorities have harassed and locked up critics, intimidated journalists, selectively denied visas, silenced grieving parents who lost children in the May 12 earthquake and relocated thousands of Chinese whose homes or businesses were seen as marring Beijing’s image.

Yet as the Times noted, the IOC “has enabled China at every step” Indeed, IOC president Jacques Rogge have been so embarrassingly craven to Chinese wishes that he looks to be playing roughly the role in 2008 that Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels played at the 1936 Olympics.

[…]

Is Rogge the head of the IOC or is he China’s propaganda czar? At this point, it’s impossible to know the difference.

Ahem.