With the Athens games out of way, the Boycott Beijing campaign is now in full swing, arguing that China’s lousy human rights record should disqualify it from holding the 2008 Olympics and imploring the West to repeat the snub which marred the Moscow games of 1980. Admittedly China isn’t the sort of country you would want to invite home to have tea with your mother, but then the same applies to rather a large proportion of the countries that competed in Athens.

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