THE WALL OF SILENCE
pedro martori
By Miguel L. Talleda
The unknown is now clear. The Iraqi people want to live in freedom. The effort of the American, British, and other coalition troops against the ferocious terrorists has triumphed. President Bush, so unjustly berated, can feel proud. Yes, the price has been high in lives lost but that is the price this nation has paid from its beginning not only to create and defend the freedom and democracy we enjoy today, but also to help other peoples in danger of losing their own freedoms.
As this enormous effort that has liberated almost 50 million people in the Middle East is secured, we hope to finally see, like the Berlin Wall, the fall of the Wall of Silence – a wall that surrounds a storm that has approached in the hopes of imposing on the peoples of Latin America the failed doctrine of Communism. This is being accomplished with the same Soviet tactics of terror that made of Cuba an enslaved country.
Is this an exaggeration? No. The danger is real, as the people of Venezuela are already experiencing. In other countries of Latin America, concrete steps are already underway and work has intensified to create the dark shroud in a society where fear becomes the key factor, a society where terror will turn people into beings without will, without hope, and into zombies at the service of a cruel and bloody caste.
And what is that great media that is made up of newspapers, radio and T.V. in the United States, in Europe, and in other western countries saying? Isn’t this media supposed to watch over the rights that we enjoy today?
It is saying NOTHING. In the rare case when they analyze events related to what is happening in Latin America, this “great free press” only gives simplistic answers. They are totally ignorant and in many cases their analysis coincides with the extreme views of those embedded within the various media organizations. How many times have we heard that Castro is old and sick and does not pose a threat to the United States? Let’s not fool ourselves, the reality is very different.
The reality is that we are faced with an American public that ignores the events that can be very dangerous to our system of liberty and democracy. Let’s look at one example. Ask some of your coworkers and others around you, to tell you about the Forum of Sao Paulo. You will be surprised the number of people in the U.S. that have never heard of this forum. Yet this group of Communists and fellow travelers, created by Fidel Castro and the current president of Brazil, Lula da Silva in 1990, right after the fall of Communism in Europe, works incessantly to turn the free world into a constellation of enslaved people along the order of Cuba.
The Forum is made up not only of all the Communist and extremist groups of Latin America, but also the narco-terrorists who are not asleep on the job. On the contrary, they have already attained great successes. In addition to the presidency of Brazil, they have a president in Argentina that was part of the Montoneros guerrilla movement and a president in Uruguay that was part of the Tupamaros guerrillas. Both these groups, inspired by Castro, bloodied their respective countries during the 1960s and 1970s trying to violently overthrow their governments in order to impose Communism.
Isn’t it time that the media, the governments, and the general public wake up? Or do we wait until terror and slavery, Cuban style, are imposed in all of Latin America?
This important topic is one we will be returning to in the future. Let’s hope that the victory of the people of Iraq awakens all of us that value our way of life. We will not tire of sounding the alarm on what is happening in Latin America. There is too much to lose if we don’t knock down this Wall of Silence.
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amigo cabal
"BernardZ" <Bern...@MUSIChotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1107719815.c2e4498cee518a6acb88660ad11c5bdd@bubbanews...
> In article <knpNd.1557$UX3...@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net>,
> pinksp...@earthlink.net says...
>>
>> y: DAHR JAMAIL on: 06.02.2005 [12:20 ] (51 reads)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> (7351 bytes)
>>
>>
>>
>> Much is being made of voter turnout, but was it thanks to the stakes
>> Shias
>> and Kurds have in coming to power?
>>
>>
>> Vote's In It For Iraq?
>>
>>
>> a.. Iraq's voter turnout revised from 72 per cent to 60 per cent. This
>> isn't the final figure, and could change after the counting of votes.
>>
>>
>> a.. High voter turnout in the southern Shia and northern Kurd areas
>>
>>
>> a.. Nearly 80 per cent of Sunnis boycotted the election. Some polling
>> stations in Sunni areas didn't even open.
>>
>>
>> a.. Threats of denying monthly food rations scared many into voting
>>
>>
>> a.. At places the turnout was far in excess of registered voters
>>
>>
>> The Iraq election is over, with a major non-election right at the centre
>> of
>> the country. Up north, Kurds voted for the sake of independence, even if
>> autonomy was the more accepted word for it. Down south, the Shias did it
>> to
>> take what they saw as their long-denied right to power. Sunnis in Baghdad
>> and the region around almost did not vote at all.
>>
>> And how many did vote? US-appointed spokesman for the Independent
>> Electoral
>> Commission for Iraq (IECI) Farid Ayar initially announced an estimated
>> turnout of 72 per cent. He then backtracked to say 60 per cent?of
>> registered
>> voters?would be a closer estimate. By way of explanation, Ayar said his
>> previous figure was "just an estimate" based on "very rough,
>> word-of-mouth
>> estimates gathered informally from the field". But even 60 per cent was
>> not
>> necessarily the final figure. "Percentages and numbers come only after
>> counting and will be announced when it's over." The counting is expected
>> to
>> end next week.
>>
>> Worse, the election almost remained unobserved. The United Nations and
>> the
>> European Union formed a panel of about 20 international observers?but
>> based
>> them in Amman in Jordan because Iraq was not considered safe enough for
>> them. Instead, the administration posted about 20,000 Iraqi supporters of
>> the US occupation as 'observers' at poll centres.
>>
>> Many Iraqis at polling booths said their names were recently 'marked' off
>> on
>> the list of a government agency that provides monthly food rations?this
>> subtle threat, circulating for a while, proved a major goad. "I'll vote
>> as I
>> can't afford to have my food ration cut," said Amin Hajar, 52, owner of a
>> small auto garage in Baghdad. "There's a rumour that if we don't vote,
>> our
>> ration will be stopped. And if that happens, I and my family would starve
>> to
>> death." When he picked up his monthly ration before the election, Hajar
>> said
>> he was forced to sign a form stating he had collected his voter
>> registration. He believed the government would use this to track whether
>> he
>> votes or not. While the connection between the voting list and the ration
>> list may just have been rumour, it clearly got people worried.
>>
>> In Shia-dominated areas in the south, the ballot papers were distributed
>> at
>> stores that hand out the monthly food ration. Several of these ration
>> stores
>> were attacked by resistance militants opposed to the elections. Some were
>> burnt down, and several people handing out ballot papers were kidnapped
>> or
>> threatened.
>>
>> But large numbers of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's followers came out
>> to
>> vote despite threats of violence. Because here it was a contest for a way
>> of
>> being religious or secular. If Shias come to power as expected, inner
>> tensions among them are certain to surface. The secular Shia group headed
>> by
>> US-appointed interim prime minister Iyad Allawi would have to work with
>> the
>> religious Shias of al-Sistani.
>>
>> The United Iraqi Alliance list backed by al-Sistani is likely to have
>> received the majority of votes from the predominantly southern Shia
>> region
>> of Iraq, which had a relatively strong turnout on election day. But this
>> group's desire to bring the rule of Islamic law to Iraq worries both
>> Sunnis
>> and secular Shias. The large turnout was not in any case a newfound zeal
>> for
>> the democratic principle.
>>
>> Nor did that seem the case in the Kurdish areas up north, which too saw a
>> massive turnout.
>>
>> The two main Kurdish parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of
>> Masoud
>> Barzani and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) led by Jalal Talabani,
>> both fought together on a single slate for the National Assembly and
>> contested against one another in simultaneous elections for an autonomous
>> regional government.
>>
>> The local Kurdish parties plan to hold a referendum on the inclusion of
>> oil-rich Kirkuk under the authority of Iraqi Kurdistan post-poll. This is
>> an
>> explosive move. Most of the current populace of Kirkuk are Iraqis of Arab
>> origin, or Turkomens of Turkish origin. The Arabs were brought in to
>> settle
>> in Kirkuk in what Kurds see as a process of ethnic swamping they now want
>> to
>> reverse with a campaign of their own.
>>
>> Here the rush to vote seemed driven more by demographic than by
>> democratic
>> zeal. In Pir Dawud village about 40 km from the northern city Arbil, the
>> informal Kurdish police, the Peshmerga, had to fire shots in the air to
>> stop
>> people rushing up to vote. The polling station here was set up to handle
>> 1,500 voters, but more than 9,000 turned up, and they all voted. There
>> was
>> no voter list, because the presence of resistance elements made it too
>> risky
>> to collect names. So anyone with an ID card of any kind could produce a
>> card
>> and cast a vote?or maybe more, because no one was keeping track.
>>
>> With almost all the votes behind them, the two Kurdish parties will push
>> to
>> establish autonomy that could, at a later date, lead to an independent
>> federalist state. Already reports from the north indicate that autonomy
>> here
>> means independence. Kurd party officials began touring towns after the
>> election with a petition asking Kurds whether they support Kurdish
>> independence. The answer was an overwhelming yes. An independent
>> Kurdistan
>> will have geopolitical ramifications in Iraq?and beyond.
>>
>> With an estimated 80 per cent of the Sunni population boycotting the
>> election, many Iraqis remain sceptical of the upcoming governmental
>> process.
>> The new National Assembly will produce a constitution that will then be
>> held
>> to a referendum by October 15 this year. By December 15, elections will
>> again be held to select a new government. "You have democracy and then
>> you
>> have an election," said Khalid, an unemployed engineer in central
>> Baghdad.
>> "You cannot hold an election like this and then say this is democracy."
>>
>> Yet what this forced election has done is reverse decades of political
>> dominance by the Sunni Arabs. Due to their boycotts and the strong Shia
>> and
>> Kurd turnout, the latter will most likely win the most seats in the
>> National
>> Assembly, and to that extent have the power to pursue their separate
>> agendas.
>>
>> Living amidst a shattered state, untenable unemployment, dismal
>> infrastructure and a security scenario that still reeks of war, many
>> Iraqis
>> have still voted, despite ethnic and sectarian influences, in the hope
>> the
>> election will lead to a better future. Yet the violence continues. On
>> election day itself nine suicide-bombers and frequent mortar attacks left
>> at
>> least 40 Iraqis dead and hundreds wounded by the time polling stations
>> shut
>> down at 5 pm. The election has not provided answers, it has only raised
>> more
>> questions. And none bigger than this: is this the beginning of democracy
>> or
>> the beginning of the end of Iraq as we know it?
>>
>> link
END OF ISRAEL IS EVEN CLOSER!
BernardZ
pinksp...@earthlink.net says...
I hope you put a bet on it. You will lose.
--
Nothing is important to you unless you think it is!
Observations of Bernard - No 71