It is no coincidence why large concrete walls are being erected in both the occupied territories and Baghdad. Both are unmistakable monuments to failed societies.
Whether for protection and security or to contain and imprison, walls are a symbol of failure – a failure to revel in freedom and embrace our common humanity: that is reason enough to bring them down.
In Israel, the wall is justified on the grounds of security, while being exploited to grab even more land for Israel.
Scott Ritter put’s the implications of the walls in Baghdad very eloquently:
Walls, ideological or physical, on the ground or in space, do not, as Reagan noted, facilitate the cause of liberty and freedom. They restrict it. By walling in the Iraqi citizens of Baghdad, by walling out the immigrants who seek solace within our borders and by partitioning off Europe from Iran and Russia, the Bush administration has become that which America once renounced. All freedom-loving Americans who embrace the cause of liberty and justice for all must rally around the ideals put forward by Reagan when standing next to the Berlin Wall, and declare to the usurper currently sitting in the White House:
The occupations of the US in Iraq and Israel in the occupied territories have failed miserably and are mirrored in societies in their last throes.
Let us all hope the Turks don’t need to build a wall to keep the Islamists out! Everyone of us here must do all we can to show support for these Turk dissenters fighting back the Islamists. They have truly taken the bravest journey of all!
Yes the Turkey situation look is yet another example of blowback.
It would be interesting to find out what the public consensus in Turkey is however. If an Islamist state is what the public wants, then that is their choice. 700,000 demonstrators is not an insignificant number, but we have seen twice hat many demonstrate against the Iraq war in European cities and more than that many demonstrate against th Us occupation in Iraq and we know how successful that has been.
For the most part, the stories about Turkey’s “Islamicist” parties are beat-ups. Abdullah Gul’s party is about as “Islamicist” as the Australian Liberal party is “Christianicist”. That there is chest-beating over the matter in Turkey itself is just an indicator of how an issue can be used by an opposition political party to bash another party over the head. How very Western of them.