The building of hope
Katherine Viner has reaffirmed that the Guardian Weekly’s mission is to “use clarity and imagination to build hope” (22 December). I could not have put it better and look forward to another year of the Guardian doing just that.
However, delivering on this splendid mission might just mean that the Guardian has to contemplate crossing a rather risky Rubicon. I refer to the clarity provided by Larry Elliott in the same edition when he described the reality of the last four decades as “a class war between capital and labour, which capital has won hands down”.
This insight is the starting point to cutting through the confusion of the weekly flow of events to a clarity that will allow imagination to flourish, hope to arise and change to occur.
The question remains: will the Guardian cross such a Rubicon and more fully contribute to a better clarity of understanding and mobilisation for change in the years ahead – for the people, against the few?
Stewart Sweeney
Adelaide, South Australia
• Referring to the excellent article on the Guardian’s history, position and future by Katharine Viner, I once more realised why I appreciate the Weekly so much and can’t do without it. My Dutch daily Trouw is much younger but has similar principles. Now let’s all try to practise these in life.
Niek de Vries
Tiel, the Netherlands
The problem isn’t Trump
The problem is not Trump’s use of Twitter (cover story, 8 December); it is the media’s use of Trump’s use of Twitter. Journalists have come to rely on tweets as an easy source of news: the more outrageous the better. So much easier than asking awkward questions of power.
If journalism is the relaying of information, something has gone badly wrong. Twitter is not information. It is the spontaneous expression of mood, the stuff of gossip, not democratic debate.
While the media loves to hate Trump, and Trump is always telling us how much he scorns the media, both know they are in a dysfunctional symbiotic relationship thanks to a profit-making company that has its own agenda. Twitter is a vertical, hierarchical form of communication – and mostly one-way. It facilitates diatribe, not dialogue. Journalists should not allow themselves to become the “followers” of anyone.
Social media is a fashion beloved of those who don’t know how to sit still and think for themselves. When we all wake up from up our stupor, maybe the world’s media will lead the way back to real conversation by disconnecting from all social media. We should reserve Twitter et al for banal social intercourse instead of building news stories around it.
Nick Inman
Larreule, France
The dangers of extremism
Peter Beaumont’s fine feature focused on Jerusalem makes clear the extensive costly human impact of president Donald Trump’s decision to officially recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel (15 December). As Beaumont implies, that decision means that another Palestinian intifada is now a real possibility.
My wife and I were holidaying in Syria and Jordan in 2001. That was at the time of the second Palestinian intifada. We recall how nasty and brutal it was – on all sides.
Once, as we taxied from Amman to a Dead Sea resort, the contentious West Bank town of Jericho was clearly visible some 15-20km away. At that distance there was no sign of the dreadful hostilities it was experiencing. But for local Jordanians just across the border, the trauma of that conflict seemed very close to home.
Our taxi driver told us with grim humour that at night he and his family looked across in that direction from the Dead Sea border area where they lived to experience the night flashes, explosions and gunfire as a sort of ghoulish after-dinner entertainment.
Most Jordanians and Syrians we met, while they strongly favoured the Palestinian cause, were wary of extremism on all sides. As one Jordanian said to me as we came across him watching TV reportage of a recent terrible Jerusalem restaurant bombing: “Israelis – boom, boom, boom. Palestinians – bang, bang, bang. Why?”
The Middle East got over that bout of violence. Now the stupidity of Trump threatens it with another.
Terry Hewton
Adelaide, South Australia
• With reference to your 8 December story on the final battle for Mosul: the harrowing endgame shows, as usual, how even one death in the name of religion is always one too many. A second terror is listed at the end of the article – the same politicians who led to the rise of Isis jostle for position as they loot the nation. My take on that is, in summary, the conditions are ripe for it all to happen again.
As one learned person said recently “politics is about the past; history concerns the future”. Nothing has been learned.
Stephen Banks
Birmingham, UK
Briefly
• In Romania battles over its bears (8 December), your writer decries, “Despite a national hunting ban, Transylvanians want to shoot the beasts”. That is why I have always supported the right to arm bears.
Robert Milan
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
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