Species deserve protection
In her piece on the latest must-have accessory for the rich, Elle Hunt describes those who covet sharks as “rich plonkers” (10 August). She is far too kind. It is time we called them what they are: criminals. Those who would build tanks and cages to imprison apex predators such as sharks and tigers deserve to be sanctioned in the only way they might begin to understand: with immense fines, which would be funnelled directly to those organisations trying to protect the species.
Nor is it acceptable to implicitly excuse such conceit and barbarism as simply an extension of what we’ve always done, for cultural, entertainment or any other reason. That is no less feeble than dumb acceptance of the notion that wealth gives one license to buy what one likes. If we haven’t achieved a significant level of enlightenment that takes us beyond the games of ancient Rome, we are truly doomed and deservedly so. The responsibility of the majority, who must abhor the twats that Hunt describes, is to enforce the laws that protect those creatures that cannot protect themselves. If we are not prepared to do that, then we are complicit.
Greg Billington
Auckland, New Zealand
• We underestimate nature’s ability to do away with whomever seeks to damage it. Humans are but one species among millions of different animals, insects, microorganisms and plants, and we are becoming a real nuisance to all the others. Nature is quietly preparing its defence and it is in no hurry. Like the dinosaur, humans will one day be gotten rid of and nature will still be there.
Wars has been an effective way of keeping humans in check. Pandemics are another and nature is helping germs turn resistant to our pharmaceuticals. Nature holds the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat and, biding its time, nature is watching us to spoil or deplete them. We forget that we are but a part of nature.
Martin Skogsbeck
Mougins, France
Jews do not all agree
Toby Helm’s otherwise perceptive analysis of Jeremy Corbyn was flawed by its repeated references to the “Jewish community”, with the implication that this is a group of people sharing a unified approach to the problem of antisemitism (10 August). In reality, Jewish people both inside and outside the Labour party differ widely in their attitudes.
Whereas all Jews (and Labour party members in good standing) abhor antisemitism in any form, the current dispute concerns the adoption of the IHRA definition. If adopted, this would make it impossible, for instance, to refer to the nation-state law passed last month as racially biased, with the paradoxical result that it would then be easier for people in Israel to criticise this law than people in the UK. Is this really what we are aiming for?
Rory Allen
York, UK
War is an abomination
Your account of the death of Lance Corporal Frederick Palmer in the first world war sits well with the recent ceremony to commemorate the Battle of Amiens in which this man died (Battle of Amiens centenary: A family’s last farewell, 10 August).
However, with many wars since 1918, and more wars occurring and pending, it is imperative to go beyond polite ceremonial gesture to remind ourselves more strongly that this war was an abomination that saw horrendous loss of life for little or no gain. We now best honour our war dead by facing up more squarely to this broader reality.
For one thing, we owe it to the young people we continue to send into battle. If we do not factor into our understanding of modern warfare what the first world war poet, Wilfred Owen, referred to as the “truth untold” of the “pity of war”, we are letting down the young men and women we send off to fight by failing to acknowledge the inherent brutality and inhumanity of the conflict we commit them to.
Terry Hewton
Adelaide, South Australia
Paul Evans is a poet
The prose of Paul Evans is always alive to the earth (10 August). Although I am thousands of miles away in Asia, I can feel through his words the garden he visits at Powis Castle in Wales: the fallow deer bucks, “with antlers like hands in velvet socks”; young squirrels “scattered under rhododendrons”; butterflies that “tripped through psychedelic meadows”; “mating damselflies [that] levitated over the pond”; bumblebees that “rattled in hollyhocks”; “hoverflies docked on golden plates of yarrow”.
Also, so surprising, he describes the local crows as so “common and dark they are almost invisible”. Who sees so clearly that they can notice the invisible? Britain – like elsewhere – may be losing its biodiversity, but not artists who can describe it with such poetic sensitivity.
J L Sievert
Ikoma, Japan
Briefly
• It is disappointing you chose to use the sexist language Cradle of man claim opposed in your 20 July World roundup item about human origins. The use of male terms as generic is insensitive and illogical, and should be a thing of the past, especially in such a progressive newspaper.
Betty-Ann Buss
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
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