April 9, 2003: Editorial Ambito Iberoamericano, Madrid. April 10, 2003: Libertad Digital, Madrid (translation from original in Spanish).

ROME / SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA (AI) - "Those flags are red because they are stained by the blood of 100 million innocent victims. I think that putting them together with the flags of peace is a real blasphemy against peace", stated the Italian Prime-Minister Silvio Berlusconi in Rome, as he denounced the contradiction of having the Communist participate, with their flags red-dyed with the blood of the victims of Communism, in the marches for peace.

In Santiago de Compostela, the president of the Spanish government, Jose María Aznar, accused the Spanish Socialist Labor Party and its leader Rodríguez Zapatero of "chaining themselves to the Communist" in the war issue. According to Aznar, the Spanish Socialist Labor Party armed itself with an "extremist radicalism" and "irresponsibility" - the opposite of the dignified attitude of countries such as Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Rumania which, because of "having been under the Communist yoke, know what it takes to fight for freedom".

Another criticism of the bias stand taken by the so-called "pacifists", along with the mass-media's complicity, regarding the war, came from the Catholic news-agency Fides. In its recently published dossier, The 100 Silenced Wars, it asks "why does this 'movement for peace' come out so intermittently" as "it is NOT true that the Iraqi conflict is the only one on the face of the earth that is supposedly upsetting an idyllic atmosphere of world peace". In fact, adds Fides, there are "at least 100 official and unofficial wars" with "millions of victims, including women and children, and millions of wounded and crippled". Those innocent victims, however, "do not make it to the headlines, do not impress the media, do not stir any rally, do not even deserve a few lines on the newspapers nor on any news agency".

The exiled-Cuban writer and journalist, Zoé Valdés, who is living in Europe, as she denounced the rash trials being made against independent poets and journalists in Communist Cuba with the almost unanimous connivance of Latin American governments, asked: "Where are the ‘no war’ protesters? Where are the justice-loving Spanish celebrities who should be shouting 'no' to Castro's abuses? Shouldn't we expect this from leftist militants? Why don't newspapers get scandalized? Where are the defenders of the humble and the representatives of global victims? Where are Ignacio Ramonet and Bernard Cassen (directors of Le Monde Diplomatique)? Why don't they come out to the streets to demand freedom for all Cuban political prisoners? That's the least they could do on behalf of peace and human rights. If the whole world had come out against Saddan Hussein, today we wouldn't be experiencing this horrible war".

Communist-"pacifist" networks are being accused of having organized the simultaneous ‘no war’ rallies, during the recent World Social Forum of Porto Alegre, an event that gave new strength to the surviving revolutionary forces of Communism.

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