During his current visit to Beijing, London's leftist mayor Ken Livingstone (the one known as Ken the Red) made a startling comparison when he likened the 1989 massacre in Tiananmen Square to London's poll tax riots of 1990. The mayor's is most far—fetched reasoning, indeed, given the facts. The death toll in the Tiananmen slaughter varies from several hundred to several thousand. The death toll in the Trafalgar square slaughter varies from 0 to... well, 0 (spelt zero).  Not only no one was killed, but most of the 113 injured were the police themselves. Also, there were no tanks involved.

Even though Livingstone's statement caused an outcry and shock, we should not be all that surprised by it. To leftists world over objections to taxation seem as heinous and dangerous as democratic demands are to tyrants, because taxation represent the blood of the liberal establishment. Restrict its flow and the monster will die of anemia. Is it any wonder, then, that the London poll tax protest looms as such a nightmarish memory in Livingstone's mind?

Vasko Kohlmayer   4 11 06