The west’s responsibility
I liked your balanced editorial on the Paris attacks (20 November). I have been shocked, like most other westerners, by the senseless murder of innocent French civilians.
I have also been shocked by the senseless murder of civilians in the Middle East.
Westerners are not responsible for all these casualties, but the pictures of the ruins of Kobani and the recent bombing of a hospital in Afghanistan suggest that the casualties caused by the west, and dismissed as collateral, are much larger than suggested by our leaders.
Violence brings violence in return, hence the terrorists’ attacks, and now the response of France and Russia. Experience has shown that western intervention in the Middle East has not only been useless, but also harmful. Aerial intervention has its limits and is not very useful to fight ideology.
While there are no excuses for the terrorists’ actions, there may be an explanation. The Russian plane attack was the direct result of Russian intervention. France has been quite active in the Middle East, partly because its president may have been eager to improve his image with military adventures. At the same time, countries that do not get involved in war hysteria, such as Germany and Italy, seem to avoid serious attacks.
Hopefully, western countries still eager for military adventures may learn that the result may not only be a loss of their values but also casualties at home; they may be more cautious before using military means to solve complex problems abroad.
François P Jeanjean
Ottawa, Canada
• Thank you for the excellent, thoughtful articles on Islamic State. I especially liked Jonathan Freedland’s piece (27 November, Let’s deny Isis its binary struggle); it was very perceptive and sensitive. And the cartoon was also spot on.
The Syrian, Turkish and Iraqi Kurds have been fighting a bitter war against Isis for years. In resolving the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, the Kurds and other local militias are vital. The only way to deal with Isis is to give support to these groups.
The present situation is a result of western military intervention in Iraq to protect oil interests. While the US and other western countries are reluctant to get involved in another foreign policy disaster, the US cannot disregard its responsibility for the mess in the region. It was the US that armed the Iraqi army, which later gave up huge areas to Isis without a fight, and left behind masses of advanced weapons.
The west and the world community cannot abandon the peoples of the region, but have a duty to do more to help these people resist.
Steven Katsineris
Hurstbridge, Victoria, Australia
Embracing menopause
Before any female Guardian reader runs off to a gynaecologist as a result of reading Mariella Frostrup’s article (20 November), I would like to offer an alternative response to menopause.
Yes, it does come with hot flushes, thinning skin and hair etc, and that is because an enormous change is happening in the human body. It is a change that is unique to the developed world, where our living conditions have allowed us to reach this advanced age.
Is menopause “one of the most feared [words] in the English language”? Try death, cancer, bushfires, war ... I say embrace menopause, allow the changes and be glad to be free of the worry of pregnancy – another feared word to most women for most of their productive life.
We post-menopausal women who have shunned HRT are still out there working, playing, caring, loving, travelling and, in many cases, enjoying an energetic retirement.
Gaynor McGrath
Armidale, NSW, Australia
Listen to the visitor
Regarding your 20 November story Crowdfunding plan to tackle ‘Great Pacific garbage patch’: we need to look at our world as a visitor might.
A visitor to our planet might see the plastic crisis we have created and ask, “What are you going to do about the plastic that is endangering life in your oceans?” We might respond, “Well, we are thinking of trapping it and then recycling it back into more consumer products.”
Our puzzled visitor shakes his head and asks, “Have you considered banning it completely where there are alternative materials?” To this we might respond, “Just how you would propose we do that?”
The visitor continues: “Considering that it is the people of the entire planet who will bear the consequences of inaction, my advice is to ask the people from all your 190-plus nations to formulate the plan. Together, list everything made of plastic, and have the people decide just what they can live without. Start simply while you gain public support and then tackle whole groups of things such as toys, building materials and packaging. Be determined and ignore those with a monetary interest in the status quo.”
To which we might reply, “Seriously, what should we really do?”
Matthew R Foster
Cambridge, Ontario, Canada
Avoid animal slavery
George Monbiot’s concern for the environment tries to show how the ever-growing human population will be harder to feed and so he advocates reducing our need for a meat diet (27 November). But we human beings need to show that we deserve to be saved as a species. We recognise that we have abused parts of our life-sustaining eco-system but we don’t give a second thought to the unnatural and shortened lives animals lead under our so-called care. We don’t think about the way in which we dictate how their lives will be lived and will end. This is animal slavery.
Reducing the quantity of slavery is not the answer, because it is still indulging our over-inflated egos in being the boss over all other life forms. It is as if our higher intelligence absolves us from acting respectfully towards other species, even though we are able to access lots of other sources of food.
The moral challenge is to treat all living creatures with respect but, for this to happen, we must accept the responsibility our higher intelligence brings and embrace the knowledge that humans are not the only worthy species.
If we are to deserve our continued existence, animal slavery must be recognised as yet another form of eco-abuse and it too must cease.
Reuben Cohen
Edgecumbe, New Zealand
Briefly
• I cannot understand how Jonathan Freedland comes to the conclusion that Germans would be more wary of state control and surveillance than the British (13 November). Germany has identity cards (vs a deep-seated English aversion against the idea, not just the cost); there is a legal obligation to register a residential address based on a tenancy agreement or similar (vs the UK’s loose and voluntary system of voter registration and proof of address by utility bill etc); and so on and so on.
Karin Jaschke
Brighton, UK
• I enjoyed the lovely piece of writing on the professional carer and the dying (20 November). She speaks of the enlightened patient going “through his old address book, determined to catch up with people he’d neglected ... wished he’d cherished his relationships rather than let them slide”.
That’s terrific, but in trying to catch up, he may sadly find that people known for decades in the past will not want to reconnect: that is my experience: at 76 I define “old” as no longer interested in other people or ideas, and I feel younger than many.
Edward Black
Pauanui Beach, New Zealand
• Your letter writer (Reply, November 13) complains, regarding the Chicago interrogations and detentions, that “corporate-dominated” media don’t investigate wrongdoing. Elsewhere in that issue, however, we learn that the Wall Street Journal uncovers flaws in a presidential candidate’s story; the New York Times catches China fudging pollution figures; the Los Angeles Times discovers a controversial plan to develop the Los Angeles river.
Closer to his home, your correspondent could have remembered newspaper investigations into military suicides, solitary confinement in prisons and the antics of Toronto’s mayor.
Case closed.
Patricia Clarke
Toronto, Canada
• Oh, you have confirmed my worst fears (Strong legs, fit brain, 20 November). A sudden concomitance of an arthritic knee and heel stress fracture had me wondering whether in fact my physical capability would overcome the mind.
But your piece provides me with the challenge to put this handicap behind me and I will fight it. My subscription renewal is assured.
E Slack
L’Isle Jourdain, France
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