West must help fight evil
The slaughter of tourists in Tunisia was as depraved and horrific as any other act perpetrated by Islamic State (Isis) on a daily basis (We should not be afraid to call evil by its name, 3 July). The reaction from the survivors was similarly typical of a western populace that sees itself entitled to a right to carefree and escapist leisure while others on the same planet are brutalised and exterminated at the hands of these same murderous groups.
Perhaps the most summary of shots was a TV image of a young woman in a bikini laying a wreath with a note atop that asked “Why?” She had only to look at herself. Isis enslaves prepubescent girls as sex slaves and kills those who transgress the misogynist rules of sharia. If the tragedy of Sousse can at least achieve one thing, it is to open the eyes of so many self-deceiving westerners that think they are morally immune to the same horrors faced by women and men not as lucky as them to be born in Europe.
As Jonathan Freedland’s essay so deftly says, it is a battle now for civilisation. Perhaps the energies and spare cash of those in the west could be better used to help in supporting the fight against IS that the west has for the most part managed to deftly avoid.
Chris Brausch
Katikati, New Zealand
• An Isis video showed five Muslims as they drowned. Nobody filmed the people subjected to waterboarding, officially sanctioned by the US government. Thirty-eight people were killed by a Muslim extremist at Sousse in Tunisia. A suicide bomber blew himself up in a mosque packed with 2,000 in Kuwait City. Around 500 children were killed last year in Gaza. According to the human-rights group Reprieve, Barack Obama’s “targeted killing” attempts to kill 41 men resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1,147 people.
During the cold war there was an arms race where the two sides tried to outperform the other. It looks as if now we have a brutality race where, again, each side tries to outperform the other with a greater degree of savagery.
Lucila Makin
Cambridge, UK
• I was grateful to Jonathan Freedland for his excellent comment piece on the naming of evil. But evil always has two sides. In the case of Islamic State offences, it seems that this sheer sadism, or complete denial of the individual, has arisen in response to the west’s hubris of the individual. A capitalism that has allowed the accumulation of untold wealth and power in the hands of a few. A philosophy of greed; endless growth in the markets; mountains of waste; endless armaments sold to stir up war. Surely, anything that grows without limits becomes a monster?
There is no question that Isis is a scourge, a terrible illness in the human psyche. But so is this greed, destruction of the Earth and evasion of the truth, such as the lies used to start the war in Iraq. Being human is a matter of balance.
Auriol de Smidt
Findhorn, UK
Lack of logic about migrants
I was shocked by the poverty of arguments presented by Simon Jenkins in his article (26 June) about the tidal wave of refugees and migrants hoping to reach Europe, and more specifically Great Britain. Self-contentment and lack of self-criticism are, indeed, part of the British identity, but I believe fear is not. Globalisation is here to stay and it is a two-lane track – though the lane occupied by developed countries for their own benefit is undoubtedly much wider.
Should we fear facing a challenge that is already knocking at our doors or should we manage the situation in an orderly fashion? I cannot imagine Britons panicking at anything. And what is the identity of any country if it is not built on the basis of the universal values of human rights?
I hope for my country that our identity does not remain unchanged for ever, and, who knows, maybe one day we may even be able to embrace the values of animal rights too.
Laura Serrano
Seville, Spain
• With the statement “Europe’s latest tyrant is not economics, it is geography”, Simon Jenkins reveals a major misunderstanding of the concept of the European Union. The naturally giving geography of the southern European countries is not to be blamed for the dramatical rise of immigrants heading for a save haven and a better life. No, ongoing wars and conflicts, often inflicted by active or passive involvement of western nations and driven by mere economic interests and religious fanaticism, are the main contributers to migration movements worldwide.
Furthermore, Jenkins’s relativisation of Britain’s crude asylum regime by referring to the even worse visa regulations of the US and Australia and the appeal to avoid the South African model to be applied to Australia regarding a south-east Asia mass migration south is the cynical climax of a neoliberal, inhumane, sealing-off-from-the-third-world attitude unworthy of the Guardian Weekly’s open-minded and renowned worldview.
The prospect cannot be the one of more closed borders and more rigid internal borders. Dividing Europe into Mediterranean and northern enclaves or persisting in nationalistic states cannot be a prospective solution. Europe - where is your visionary leadership?
Jan Schaarschmidt
Leipzig, Germany
Modi’s yoga misnomer
How could it ever occur to the Indian prime minister, Rajendra Modi, to arrange a mass yoga session on the Rajpath in New Delhi, when, as Jason Burke writes (3 July), Delhi’s air pollution is a health timebomb that poses threat to millions of children? Reading that according to the WHO, 13 of the 20 dirtiest cities in the world are in India, and Delhi itself the most polluted city in the world, I find Modi’s message – the start of a “new era of peace and harmony” – choking, for which even a mask gives no protection.
I find plenty of pop versions of yoga in the west: physical exercise robbed of its original purpose as a way of life. But the idea of a Global Yoga Day, coming from the prime minister of India, and launched outdoors in the most polluted city in the world, I find appalling.
Sashana Askjellerud
Hamar, Norway
How to help Burkina Faso
The struggle that farmers are facing in Burkina Faso is one that is being duplicated in many parts of the developing world (10 July). We need strategies for intensifying crop production, while at the same time conserving our resource base.
The Sahel needs climate-smart agricultural practices such as protecting the soil from the degradation caused by tillage, and keeping the soil surface covered so that rainfall energy is dissipated. At the same time carbon is sequestered in the soil, mitigating, to some extent, the greenhouse gas emissions that created the situation in the first place.
Continuing with damaging soil cultivation practices will exacerbate the problems of natural resource degradation and inevitably lead to the worsening situation witnessed in Burkina Faso.
Brian Sims
Bedford, UK
Briefly
• For decades we have heard how the IMF, World Bank, European community and the European Central Bank are the promoters, guardians and guarantors of democracy, with their policies geared to serve democracy (3 July). The Greek referendum put these institutions to the ultimate test: put your money where you mouth is.
Imre Bokor
Armidale, NSW, Australia
• I agree with Lyn Gardner about children being exposed to Shakespeare when they’re young (26 June). Unfortunately, the way Shakespeare is sometimes taught in school – with more of a focus on the language rather than the story – puts many children off. I know several young people who think Shakespeare is impossible to understand and irrelevant to their lives. But the stories are so universal that they can easily survive being “dumbed down” or even transposed into other cultures. If younger children were exposed to Shakespeare in other forms – simplified graphic novels or a retelling of the stories in more accessible language – they would be ready for the plays when they’re older.
Suroor Alikhan
Geneva, Switzerland
• Is the Chinese economic rise truly the stuff of nightmares? (3 July). Not for all. Your writer’s suggestion that Chinese military bases will face California (presumably from Mexico) is phantasmagoric, but such a base facing Marseille from north Africa is more thinkable. For a squabbling Europe of identity-crisis nations has all but lost its chance to become an united, independent world power, able to deal geopolitically with dangers from east and south. Nato will not always be there in its current configuration. Better hang together than hang separately.
Douglas Porteous
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
• In relation to Rob MacLeod’s letter about America not being a country (Reply, 26 June), I lived in the States during the Iran-Contra scandal, and it was at times funny, or ridiculous trying to explain that Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras were not between Kansas and Ohio. This entitlement is active among the lazy, sophisticated writers who write The Times instead of The New York Times.
Alberto Grieve
Lima, Peru
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