Letters
I n d i a ’ s ‘private’ city Europe welcomes killers
Sensual Egypt Winning rights for Dali t s
NewInternatio n alist Thepeople,theideas,theactioninthefightforglobaljustice ● www.newint.org
I raqIraqIraq Seven years later – the legacy of invasion Seven years later – the legacy of invasion Seven years later – the legacy of invasion
NI432 MAY 2010 UK£3.95 IRELAND€5.00 AUSTRALIA$9.50(incGST) NEWZEALAND/AOTEAROA$7.50
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16/4/10 09:36:11
A rare combination Your co-editor, Hadani Ditmars, has produced a rare combination of intensely humane, unsentimental and objective pieces that helped me to identify with the terrible situation experienced by ordinary Iraqis (Iraq seven years later – the legacy of invasion, NI 432). Congratulations on a most thought-provoking issue. Pratima Mitchell Oxford, England
Take time One need not be airborne to be out of the office (Editor’s Letter, Bloody oil, NI 431). If it takes more than a day to get there by train, there will be thinking time, time to meet travellers, time to observe the change in landscapes both physical and cultural.
Giving up flying should not be seen as an act to ameliorate guilt, but to facilitate the creativity of your journalists to maintain the integrity of what they do for themselves as sensitive people. Steve Anderson Mytholmroyd, England Do not as others I am glad to hear that the New Internationalist Co-operative thinks seriously about flying and its contribution to its carbon footprint (NI 431).
The New Internationalist welcomes your letters. But please keep them short. They may be edited for purposes of space or clarity. Letters should be sent to letters@newint.org or to your local NI office. Please remember to include a town and country for your address.
The views expressed on the letters page are not necessarily those of the New Internationalist.
I have always thought it rather absurd that, in an age when communication has never been easier, whether by phone, videoconferencing or email, that we still attach such importance to faceto-face meetings. Of course, faceto-face meetings are preferable, but are they really necessary given the ease of other means of communication?
I note with a little alarm that you consider an ‘average of seven flights a year’ not excessive, because it is much ‘lower than most similar operations’. There is a danger here of using the (bad) example of others to justify one’s own actions! Trevor Rigg Edinburgh, Scotland
Talking gonads ‘The fall of King Tuna’ (NI 431) by Sara Holden and Greg McNevin touches on the fact that many fish species are in danger from overexploitation.
But there is an easy way of preventing these extinctions. An international law should be passed which ensures that the gonads of all fish caught are liquidized; the fish are usually gutted anyway so this would not be a great hardship for the fishers. Once liquidized, artificial fertilization takes place, and after 24 hours the fertilized fish eggs can be released into the sea. It does not matter where the eggs are put back because the fry of each species find their way back to the environment they originally come from. In this way, the sea can be repopulated, and fishing can even become sustainable. Andrew Kadir-Buxton Hatfield, England
Dr Paul Johnston, Chief Scientist, Greenpeace International replies:
This assumes that all the eggs and sperm are present, and functional, ie that all gonads are mature. It might just work for fish just at the point of spawning, but for those whose eggs and sperm were still developing you would do no more than create a fish-roe smoothie. By far a better method would be to allow populations to rebuild to levels that allowed natural reproduction to take place.
Deadly trio The world currently faces three major problems: global warming, peak oil, and capitalism (NI 430). But capitalism is the most crucial. If we cannot convince our political leaders to control the capitalists and force them to deal with global warming and to prepare for the end of the oil era, then our civilization is doomed.
We won’t make any significant impact on global warming by late; and that a transport system that doesn’t require oil fuels is operating before the aviation and heavy road-transport industries come to a halt because of the oilfuel crisis. Only when civilization has been saved – if it is saved! – will it be appropriate to allow the return of a form of managed capitalism so that we can seek a balance between the need for individual incentives and the competing need for social equity and justice.
The next depression – and there will be another one if capitalism does not submit to being managed for the common good, even if climate change and peak oil do not exacerbate matters – will make the Great Depression of the 1930s look like a minor recession. It won’t just affect the lower and middle classes and enable the
When the structures of civilization are gone and real individual self-sufficiency is necessary for mere survival, I’d rather be an African farmer than a wealthy capitalist changing to energy-efficient light bulbs or by switching things off instead of leaving them on standby, or even by growing our own food. We should do all of these things, but on their own they are far from enough. The top end of town needs to get on board also, to sacrifice its profits and accumulated wealth for the common good instead of continuing to expect the underprivileged masses to carry the whole burden. Our political leaders should manage the economy so that renewable energy infrastructure is commissioned before it is too extremely wealthy to buy up their assets at give-away prices; it will bring the whole economy to a complete standstill and will put even the very wealthiest into the same ship – spaceship Earth – as the poorest African farmer. And when the structures of civilization are gone and real individual self-sufficiency is necessary for mere survival, I’d rather be an African farmer than a wealthy capitalist.
The most privileged beneficiaries of capitalism seem to believe that their wealth will isolate them from the effects of climate change and peak oil, but it won’t
Separation wall 1 Your correspondent Barry Spivack (Letters, NI 430) says Israel’s separation wall ‘was built as a nonviolent method of reducing suicide attacks on Israeli citizens’. This is an unusual notion of nonviolence.
Israeli activists campaigning against this apartheid structure have been wounded demonstrating against it, some of them seriously, while 18 Palestinians have been killed and thousands wounded.
The wall’s true function, along with the hundreds of military checkpoints all over the West Bank and East Jerusalem, is to annex Palestinian land, to imprison the people in ghettos and crush resistance to Israel’s illegal 42-year occupation.
This is why there is a growing campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel until it grants justice for the Palestinians. Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods ( J-BIG)
2 I quote from Jeff Halper’s book, An Israeli in Palestine (page 170): ‘From the start, many of us in the Israeli peace movement argued that the primary purpose of the Barrier was not security, the rubric under which it was sold to the public, but rather the demarcation of a political border. Its official name, the “Separation Barrier”, underlines its essentially political character... The political-versus-security nature of the Barrier is clear to anyone looking at a map... Only 20 per cent of it actually follows the Green Line, the obvious route if it was indeed defensive. The rest intrudes far into the Palestinian areas... The almost exact overlap between the Barrier’s route, the cantons as defined by Sharon and the settlement blocs as defined by Barak belie the claim that it is essentially a security apparatus.’ Anne Lanham Brisbane, Australia
See Palestine Country Profile, page 36.
2 New I nter nat io nal ist JUN E 2010
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