Letters to the editor

OPINION:

Broadband diversity

The story about an important new agreement between network operators and peer-to-peer companies (“Comcast to treat file-sharing equally,” Business, Friday) is a welcome example of the collective broadband industry proactively working to find a consumer-friendly response to the challenge of managing bandwidth.

Absent common sense approaches like the one just announced, P2P risks overwhelming the network, diverting resources from investments that would combat the digital divide for minority Americans.

It’s important that we encourage more industry collaboration — not pre-emptive regulation — in matters so critical to our nation’s economic future.

E. FAYE WILLIAMS

National chair

National Congress of Black Women

Washington

Barr backwards

Your coverage of Bob Barr’s possible run for the presidency as a Libertarian (“Libertarians seek Barr candidacy,” Nation, March 20) repeats some myths about voting and voters.

The Libertarian Party does not “steal” votes from John McCain. The Republican Party pushes them away by changing its fundamental philosophy year after year.

The idea that one party costs another an election only makes sense if you believe elections are zero-sum popularity contests, instead of an expression of the voters’ will.

Voters are individuals, not automatons. Most genuinely think through their options. Voting is how they communicate their wishes to their government and elected officials. When elected officials, running for re-election, speak of Libertarians “costing” votes, it generally means they are not listening to the electorate.

Individuals vote their conscience, regardless of party platforms. If Bob Barr is “taking” votes from Mr. McCain, it is only because the latter’s party no longer appeals to those voters.

In other words, it is the Republican Party’s platform that “costs” those votes.

JAMES L. ZACKRISON

Falls Church

Where is the democracy for Cypriots?

It is necessary to understand why the Greek Cypriots rejected the Annan plan (“Cypriot questions,” Letters, Sunday).

Just as the Greeks said “no,” to Mussolini’s ultimatum for Greece to surrender on Oct. 28, 1940, more than 75 percent of Greek Cypriots also said “no” on April 24, 2004, to the U.N. reunification plan brokered by Kofi Annan. They knew a bad deal when they saw it.

In 1974, Turkish troops invaded Cyprus on the pretext of protecting the 19 percent Turkish minority. As a result, the Turkish minority today occupies more than 39 percent of the island, and 30,000 Turkish troops remain not to mention an unknown number who have shed their uniforms and become Cypriot citizens. The Annan plan offers no provision for Turkish troops to return to the mainland.

The Turkish invasion of the island resulted in mass displacement, deaths and the disappearances among the Greek Cypriots. Some 200,000 Greek Cypriots were forced from their homes, and more than 1,600 civilians are still missing and presumed dead, including five Americans.

On Sept. 22, 1996, Brian James wrote in Night & Day, a British publication, “Their homes are plundered, their children banished. The Christian Greeks of north Cyprus live in fear of the Muslim Turks. And they blame the British for abandoning them.”

Because of the West’s past pro-Turkish bias, there is no doubt that the Annan plan is but another pro-Turkish attempt to favor the Turks.

Pressure applied on Greek Cypriots by the U.N. and the Bush administration into accepting the Annan plan is not democracy at work, it is arm twisting at its worst. It is the mighty against the weak.

To the contrary, it is Murat Kavlak that is “either trying to mislead or has next to no knowledge about Cyprus.”

STELLA L. JATRAS

Camp Hill, Pa.

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It is letter writer Murat Kavlak who has no knowledge about events pertaining to the Turkish invasions and occupation of Cyprus.

During the 1950s, a Turkish-sponsored terrorist organization called “Cyprus Is Turkish” engaged in a pogrom against the Greek minority of Constantinople to assert Ankara’s expansionist claims to Cyprus as a whole. Turkey had no claims to Cyprus because Ankara had formally renounced all claims to Cyprus at the Lausanne Conference of 1923.

The Turkish military invaded Cyprus twice during the summer of 1974 and ethnically cleansed more than 200,000 Greeks. The notion that these occupation forces are “peacekeepers” is a falsehood.

The offensive and expansionist nature of the Turkish occupation can be seen by the 100,000 settlers from Turkey who have been settled in homes and property that legally belong to Greek Cypriot refugees.

Legal rulings of the European Court of Human Rights and dozens of United Nations resolutions have condemned Turkey and expressed support for the Greeks, whose rights continue to be violated.

Attesting to the undemocratic nature of the Turkish occupation is the destruction of more than 150 Greek Orthodox churches and monasteries of great historic and spiritual value.

In 1996, Turkish terrorists backed by the government in Ankara slaughtered four Greek protesters. In 2004, Cypriots in the free portion of Cyprus voted democratically to reject the Annan plan. The occupied territories of Cyprus, in contrast, are a dictatorship imposed by Ankara since that referendum was decided under the pressure of the Turkish military, and by the participation of Turkish settlers who are foreigners and not native-born Cypriots. As such, it is Mr. Kavlak who is ignorant of history or who aims to mislead.

THEODORE G. KARAKOSTAS

Boston

Disproportion abortion

Gerald R. McDermott and Carol M. Swain provided an extensive list of the evils perpetrated on society by Planned Parenthood, but they implied that the clinics “perform necessary services screening for sexually transmitted disease, forestalling teen pregnancy and controlling family size” (“The abortion industry,” Op-Ed, March 26).

As the writers explain, Planned Parenthood has for decades located most of its facilities (about 75 percent) in minority neighborhoods. The abortion rate of black women is extremely high; 70 percent of black babies are born out of wedlock, and black teens have an extremely high rate of sexually transmitted diseases. These problems have beset the black population for as long as Planned Parenthood has operated facilities in black neighborhoods.

Our predominantly white Congress continues to fund and encourage this pillaging ofblack families by funding Planned Parenthood with $305 million annually. Why?

NANCY WELLS

Potomac