Don’t blame Obama
Barack Obama can be justly criticised for drones, deportations, the TPP trade deal and more, but it is absurd to accuse him of inciting conflict and failing to consult with a Republican Congress which has been explicitly committed to obstructing him since day one of his presidency (How Obama’s presidency gave us Donald Trump, Matt Laslo, 4 March). Obama has made executive orders on desperately urgent matters such as gun control only after years of trying to work with Congress on these issues. Over and over again the Republicans have refused to engage in reasonable discussion, defying common sense, responsibility, and their own electorates in their hatred of Obama. Their attitude now culminates in their extraordinary refusal to consider any supreme court nominee.
Trump is the toxic product of decades of deepening inequality set in motion by Reagan, along with corruption, ignorance, intransigent racism, and other noxious ingredients. Don’t blame Obama.
Jo Salas
New Paltz, New York, US
• Matt Laslo implies that Barack Obama is responsible for the bitter and petty politics of the past seven years. Is it any wonder that those of us who were delighted to see Obama inaugurated as president now see that however respectful or bipartisan he might try to be, if he attempted to fulfil any of his election promises, he would unleash a sea of hate which lets us know of the seething racism just under the surface? I think we can thank him for trying to work with the Republicans, but now as he attempts to fulfil his constitutional duty to choose a successor for Judge Scalia, I think we can see in the Republicans’ refusal to even interview a nominee, who is really to thank for the rise of Donald Trump.
Deirdre Terry
Alpine, Texas, US
Corruption and cash in China
The Guardian Weekly cover story How Xi Jinping is bringing China’s media to heel (4 March) is less shocking in historical context. China was ruled by emperors for more than 3,000 years, and today the emperor is the party apparatus, not a natural person or bloodline. All modern nations have gone this path in some form, but no leader in our era has said “the media must love the party, protect the party, and closely align themselves with the party leadership in thought, politics and action”.
The unseen driver of publicly demanding media allegiance in China is not its own history so much as the history of the Soviet Union. In that country, highly touted “democratic market reforms” turned into a Hobbesian nightmare almost overnight. The former superpower collapsed into oligarchs looting public assets, great depression-like mass unemployment, millions of penniless pensioners, the world-leading sciences and public arts de-funded into shadow existence, and extortion at all levels. Male life expectancy dropped to 57 years, and attempts to regain Russian independence and historic territory have since met a war-ready Nato on its borders.
Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist party command are exquisitely aware of this collapse next door with no let-up of externally destabilising forces. They are as surely aware of the power of the mass media to form public opinion. Corruption is the No 1 problem for China’s public policy, and who cannot be bribed if the rules are not clear on whose side media managers are working? The question thus arises. What is China to do as the anarchy of private money calling itself freedom becomes ever more powerful even within China? It may be a case of shutting the door too late.
John McMurtry
Guelph, Ontario, Canada
Belief systems questioned
In the article Ireland on brink of change as church power wanes (26 February), Mike McKillen was less than pleased to be told by his five-year-old granddaughter Cara: “God made this worm.” McKillen teaches biochemistry and apparently doesn’t adhere to the belief system (Catholicism) propagated at his granddaughter’s school.
Another grandfather heard his granddaughter, older than Cara, say the butterfly she saw was the result of the Big Bang and natural selection. This grandfather also wasn’t very happy with this statement.
Both statements are based on a belief system: one on a form of organised Christian belief; the second on a form of “scientific materialism”, ie the belief that the world as we experience it is the result of material processes.
Just as members of organised (Christian, Jewish or Islamic) institutions believe that “God” created the world in all its wondrous manifestations, so too many members of the scientific community believe the Big Bang and natural selection were the cause of our world, including us. Both should know that belief comes before knowledge and determines how we interpret our observations. Both the belief in an entity, or in the Big Bang/natural selection are opinions to which anybody may subscribe or modify.
That all phenomena of life are accompanied by physiological/biochemical reactions does not imply that all such phenomena are causally related to these processes; “correlation equates causation” is a wrong premise, as scientists could know.
Diederic Ruarus
Lyttelton, New Zealand
Real estate, real problem
• The article on Vancouver real estate prices (26 February) could easily apply to Auckland with the same concerns about the citizenship of home buyers. Our government now requires house buyers to have a NZ bank account and a tax (inland revenue) number. A withholding tax (generally 10% of the purchase price) applies at the time of settlement on resales within two years. This has resulted in a cooling of the market. The Reserve Bank also helped by reducing the loan to value ratio for bank mortgages and noted in a recent bulletin that Auckland’s house price rises have been unprecedented, up 52% in the last four years.
David Chandler
Auckland, New Zealand
Fight back against Zika
Time to bite back against our deadliest enemy? (26 February) failed to mention a method which avoids both genetic manipulation and extinction. Australian scientists have successfully infected Aedes aegypti mosquitoes with wolbachia bacteria, which render them incapable of developing and transmitting the dengue virus. Wolbachia bacteria are present naturally in 60% of insects. Infected mosquitoes do not die but successfully pass the bacteria on to subsequent generations, thus spreading them throughout Aedes aegypti populations. The viruses that cause dengue and Zika are closely related (belonging to the same Flavivirus family as do yellow fever and West Nile viruses); experimental work shows that wolbachia also blocks Zika.
The mosquito net, illustrating the article, while useful in protecting against malaria, is of limited use against Aedes aegypti mosquitoes since they are a day-flying species.
Stella Martin
Cairns, Queensland, Australia
Briefly
• Matthew Teague’s dispatch from Harper Lee’s hometown of Monroeville, Alabama (26 February), read like a eulogy from the centre of a person’s heart. Somehow, without beating us over the head, he conveyed respect for all players. This prickly, solitary little old lady, a seer of global or at least national proportions, put her truth in words on paper. She rocked the boat with the likes of Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, Bob Dylan and Rosa Parks.
Alongside, there was Kevin Rawlinson on Umberto Eco. Reading is like my drug. That’s the connection there. I’m an avid reader reading the words of skilful writers mourning the loss/celebrating the life of even greater writers. Thank you, Matthew and Kevin, for sharing your take on these events.
Jonathan Vanderels
Shaftsbury, Vermont, US
• My warmest congratulations to Claire Harman for her review of the book The Button Box (4 March). How admirable the ingenious evocation of time past, the multifarious examples of personal life in sometimes difficult situations, all told with the simplicity, humanity and humour that make us realise the truth of the old Latin adage Humani nihil a me alienum puto (Nothing that is human is alien to me).
Armand Goulipian
Joinville-Le-Pont, France
• Calling a pet Hachi (Shortcuts, 4 March) can lead to problems. A Swiss couple I know acquired a puppy which was always sneezing, so they called it Hatschi. They went to work for the World Peace Council and took the dog with them. Some of their Muslim colleagues were not amused when they found out that the dog’s name was Hadji.
Felicity Oliver
Ostermundigen, Switzerland
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