Tessa Jowell has said that calls for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics are ‘counter-productive’ and ‘have no purpose’ … could it be? Of course, she’s right, ‘no purpose’ apart from focusing attention on the Chinese régime’s brutal suppression of all independent political organisation, independent trade unions and anything else the régime considers dissent–journalists who talk to the wrong people, websites it doesn’t like, etc–as well as the régime’s treatment of ethnic minorities, occupation of Tibet, and arming the ongoing genocide in Darfur. No purpose at all.