Open letter to Ken Livingstone, London Mayor

I watched with great interest this morning the video of a recent session from the London Council. In it I observed how you dismissed Alek Boyd and the people coming with him to protest Chavez's visit by meeting with Tory representatives at the London Council. It seems that you barred their entry even though they were not planning to attend your little happening with Chavez elsewhere in the building. You said two things to exculpate yourself, that Alek Boyd supported violence and that it was natural for you to ban his entry to your building during the visit of President Chavez, just as you would ban the entry to anti-Bush protestors if he were to visit London Hall.

Let me start with that last part. Can we picture you receiving Bush? No. That was a facile line that only deluded the weak. Besides, the real question there might be: does Bush wants to be seen with you?

Now that we have disposed easily of your lamest excuse let's look at the other one. Certainly Alek Boyd has said his share of stupid things. Have not we all? More than once myself and many people in this blogging business have complained about his excesses. But let 's assume for the sake of the argument that indeed Alek is some sort of terrorist. The first question of course is how do you allow him to run free in the streets of London. Are you doing your job? Are Londoners safer under your guidance?

But of course, this is not the real point. That the Mayor of London felt compelled to dismiss such a non-entity as Alek Boyd means indeed that some of the stuff Alek did, said or wrote hit home and bothered you quite a lot by revealing what you are really up to.

Unfortunately Mr. Mayor, these arguments still will not hide the fact that Chavez was as undesirable a visitor as some of your other guests who had nothing to do in the offices of a city where modern democracy was born. I refer for example to a certain sheik that thought that all gays should be executed. To establish my point that Chavez is an undemocratic pedant that looks good on stage I will simply refer you to a certain video that would be a great start to an investigation on Chavez and his cronies: La Lista. There you will find how a legal apartheid has been established in Venezuela on the basis of political beliefs of the people. In that video you will find real terrorists that are covered by Chavez such as Assemblywoman Iris Varela declaring that people that did not go out and vote for Chavez are traitors and that actions should be taken against them.

Now, you might think that Alek is a terrorist. Except that he has no power whereas Chavez and Ms. Varela do have the power to execute their threats, their terror threats on the Venezuelan people. And they do. In other words Mr. Mayor, by receiving Chavez you have shown support for real terrorists. That you barred entry to a putative terrorist cannot hide the fact that you received dozens of real ones.

Respectfully, in the hope that some common sense hits you,

Daniel Duquenal