The games

To me it is not a choice of whether or not to speak out, it is a matter of dignity of life.

-- Ai Weiwei.

Trapped by its grandiose goal of embracing the entire “human family” at whatever cost, the IOC has repeatedly caved in and awarded the games to police states bent on staging spectacular festivals that serve only to reinforce their own authority. Of course, the most notorious example is the 1936 Berlin Games...Pierre de Coubertin, the French nobleman who founded the modern Olympic movement, called Hitler’s games the fulfillment of his life's work.

-- from Think Again: The Olympics by John Hoberman.

See also Isabel Hilton, The Economist and George Packer.