When is force justified?
One of the reasons why we are floundering in our efforts to cope with simmering tensions over Kim Jong-un’s nuclear programme is that we still lack a workable definition of military force that is legitimate in the international context and force that is not (The UN actually does work, Mary Dejevsky, 11 August).
The Tokyo trials that followed the Pacific war against Japan attempted, and failed, to give clear legal expression to the distinction between aggression and defence in international conflict. Since then we are still no closer to a universally accepted statement on when force is aggressive and when it is defensive in such conflict.
With nations once again flexing their muscles and a new bellicosity entering international relations focused on North Korea and the South China Sea, it is now urgent that we clarify our thinking on whether and when military force is ever justified in the international arena.
And especially so if nuclear weapons are involved.
Terry Hewton
Adelaide, South Australia
We just carry on consuming
Thank you for the umpteenth in-depth article about extractivism in Brazil, the Philippines, India, Mexico, Colombia and elsewhere (28 July). We need to be reminded regularly about extractivism, modern slavery and colonialism.
But I wonder how many westerners are sufficiently aware of where the hardwood for our furniture and flooring, the silver and gold for our jewellery and the petrol for our cars really comes from; and more importantly, how the raw materials for these luxury consumer goods are extracted.
We are now starting to scratch the surface of the question of where our food comes from and how and where it is grown and transformed, and how food-growers try and eke out a living to provide us with what keeps us alive and in good health.
Now, we must make the same effort to ensure that we know where our wood and metals come from and perhaps make the right choices there too. After all, it is we consumers who are responsible for buying – or hopefully not buying – certain goods. If there is no market for hardwood in the west, maybe the poor indigenous peoples in Brazil will stop being murdered simply because they are trying to preserve the environment they live in. If we stop thinking gold, silver and diamonds will bring us unending happiness, maybe miners who protest against their abysmal working conditions will also stop being shot.
Have a respectful thought for the many defenceless activists who have been murdered, so that we can carry on consuming thoughtlessly.
Lea Yauner
Pessac, France
The hype is the culprit
Being cynical towards much of what is reported in the media has become a rational response (The chasm on climate change, 4 August). The hype is the culprit rather than nonsense about now being a “post-truth” era, whatever that might be.
Medical research certainly isn’t immune: reports that sitting is the new smoking, processed red meat being put in the same carcinogenic category as tobacco, even recommendations that we should eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day (why five, not six or four?). What are we to do? Stand up while eating bacon sandwiches, but sit down when eating fruit and vegetables?
But that raises something that is rarely mentioned: interactions between many factors. The truth is rarely plain and never simple.
Malcolm Faddy
Maleny, Queensland, Australia
Machines and emotion
John Mullan’s back-page column (28 July) on attempts by scientists “to teach artificial intelligences to think and act morally” by teaching them classic fiction is foolhardy. Given our already well-documented incapacity to always behave flawlessly, however many novels we read, how can we expect a computer derived from binary numbers to be an improvement?
Programming robots to express beliefs and their accompanying emotions, which can manifest themselves unpredictably if not deviously, would certainly complicate matters. As Marvin Minsky, the late cognitive scientist, says: “The question is not whether intelligent machines can have any emotions, but whether machines can be intelligent without any emotions.”
Richard Orlando
Westmount, Quebec, Canada
Some sanity on longevity
Congratulations to Stewart Dakers for his attempt to bring some sanity back to the discussion on longevity (7 July). The utter nonsense of trying to extend the lives of the “crumbly generation” to 120-plus years, when we are denied “purpose, meaning and dignity” even at the ripe old age of 75, is beyond belief.
If government cannot show interest and genuine concern for the ageing population today, what hope is there that they will be able to do so in the future, for still larger numbers of “crumblies”?
Replacing a worn-out hip or knee is one thing; replacing a dementia-ridden brain might be a tad more complex.
George Hanna
Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand
Briefly
• Reading Stuart Heritage’s piece Buy yourself some time. Hire a cleaner (4 August), I couldn’t help wondering what advice the learned academics at the University of British Columbia could offer to those who work as cleaners.
Mike Kearney
La Mouche, France
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