EU treaty conspiracy
SIR - Watching Gordon Brown hobnob with his EU colleagues brought to mind the words of another Scot, the pioneer economist Adam Smith: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public."
The Lisbon summit is just the latest episode in a long-running transnational conspiracy of professional politicians - all owing their positions to the operation of national democratic systems, but all intent on stripping hard-won democratic power from their own peoples.
Muriel Parsons
Berkshire
FIRST POSTED OCTOBER 19, 2007
Chamber of horrors
SIR - I find the photographs by Tom Chambers to be disgusting and offensive to man and beast alike. What a mockery of the natural order of things. Would he only direct his talent to something appealing to normality; therein is beauty and a connectivity not seen in these photos you exhibit.
"...for in the end we will protect only what we love, love only what we understand and understand only what we are taught."
Patricia Throckmorton
Hertford, USA
FIRST POSTED SEPTEMBER 21, 2007
Capitalism crucial for the Tories
SIR - I read with interest your argument that the Conservatives must reject capitalism to win back power. But how can they reject something they have never tried? What we have in the western world is Socialism Democracy. Capitalism Democracy has never been tried anywhere to my knowledge. Hong Kong was probably the closest Capitalism Democracy ever got to having a go and it resulted in HK becoming the richest country per square metre in the world, but even there no one legally owned their own bodies.
Owning your own body and having the right to do what you want to that body does not exist in any of the western societies. In fact the opposite exists with all Socialist government actually legally owning their citizens. Ask any child who's ever been taken from their parents against their will or some one who's been busted for using illegal drugs. They all had their rights of non-ownership clearly demonstrated. Because of Socialism the majority of us are slaves to rapacious governments, but we will have the last laugh. Because of the overtaxing we are not breeding and eventually they'll have no one left to tax.
Maybe the Conservatives should be the first to give true participating Capitalism Democracy a go and make the Primary Fundamental Right of self-ownership into a reality.
Bernard Palmer
Sydney
FIRST POSTED OCTOBER 5, 2007
We must not forget the Arab refugees
SIR - The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, had recent wide-ranging contacts in Lebanon, Syria and Armenia, with not only official figures, but also visits to refugee camps.
That there are Arab refugees languishing in camps since 1948 is absolutely appalling, but the responsibility for this sad state of affairs is seldom mentioned.
In 1947, when the UK granted independence to India and Pakistan, nearly 11 times as many Muslims were displaced, some 7.5m, who moved from India to Pakistan, while some 711,000 Arabs (UN estimate) left Israel. And an equal number of Hindus and Sikhs moved in the opposite direction - exactly as happened with Jewish refugees fleeing Arab lands and Iran to Israel. No mention ever of any 'right of return' for those Muslims to India, or for nearly 1m Jews displaced from the Arab world and Iran from 1947.
The 12th Pakistani President, General Pervez Musharraf, was born in India (in Delhi in 1943), while the first Sikh to become India's 14th PM, Dr Manmohan Singh, was born in Pakistan (in the Punjab in 1932). The 15m displaced persons on the Indian sub-continent were not cynically and callously left to rot in camps, nor were the Jewish refugees who came to Israel from 1947. In addition to those who fled to Israel, many more Jews fled elsewhere, such as to the US, and in 1962 to France from Algeria. Nearly 1m Jews in the Arab world and Iran in 1947 are now reduced to 1 per cent of that level, but Israel alone has more Arabs than those in the whole of British-administerd Palestine in 1947 (1.4m against 1.2m).
These are highly relevant facts, forgotten often, and, for whatever reasons, also little used even by Israeli official spokespersons, but essential to have any perspective on this situation.
The unique creation of UNRWA, a UN agency dedicated solely to the Palestinian Arabs, may ultimately have hindered, not facilitated, their re-integration into society. The 15m refugees on the Indian sub-continent enjoyed no such dedicated agency. And Muslim oil revenues would be more than sufficient to integrate all Palestinian Arabs into their host societies, and/or into Gaza and the West Bank. This ongoing scandal surely deserves urgent but informed attention.
Tom Carew
Dublin, Ireland
FIRST POSTED OCTOBER 12, 2007
Congress versus the country
SIR - Alexander Cockburn is right mainstreet America is now dead set against the war in Iraq. The people of this country, including red-staters like myself, are opposed to this war in Iraq and I am opposed to a war with Iran, too.
Joe Lieberman reminds me of a rodent (I keep expecting his nose to twitch when I see him on TV), and he is basically an inside Washington influence peddler with the title of Senator. The voters of Connecticut will likely dump him if he runs again in 2012, but he has done his damage already.
R Phillips
Via email
FIRST POSTED OCTOBER 9, 2007
Web of doubt
SIR - Tim Berners-Lee "invented" the internet? Are you mad?
Paul Ibsch
Brighton
FIRST POSTED OCTOBER 9, 2007
Not stirred by Faulks’ Fleming
SIR - Not without trepidation does one look forward to the publication of Sebastian Faulks' new James Bond novel, as reported on your excellent People page.
Fleming's followers - Christopher Wood, John Gardner, Charlie Higson - have been a lacklustre bunch, though The First Post's claim that Kingsley Amis's Colonel Sun did less than cut the mustard is nonsense. In fact, the book is a wonderful work of mimicry on Amis's part - far better than any of the limp-wristed imitations in Faulks's book of parodies, Pistache, which he unwisely published last year.
Amis hits the Fleming tone precisely, sentence after sentence, and the torture scene is as grippingly gruesome as anything in the originals. Faulks has already proved he won't be able to do that - and anyway, he's a sensitive, bearded anti-war type, with no grasp of the imperialist desperation that impelled Fleming to fantasise so.
Fleming and Amis knew their wine. All Faulks knows is how to whine.
Shame on him, them, and you for going along with the PR line!
Bill Tanner
Via Email
My whistle- blowing husband is a patriot
SIR - I am the nurse (now health visitor) that Adam Smyth writes about in his article 'Thomas Lund-Lack should not do life'. He is generous in stating that I saved his life, I merely gave his parents some helpful advice after they had already revived him. My husband is now serving four months of an eight month prison sentence for a crime of conscience or what some might call whistle-blowing - leaking counter-terrorism documents to The Sunday Times to highlight problems within the intelligence community.
Adam has drawn absolutely the right conclusions and I am grateful to him for them. The Sunday Times has maintained a deafening silence and, to my mind, has not stood by him. He took no money for giving the information and I was fearful, after the very heavy handed way he was treated, that he would end up as another David Kelly. Ex-colleagues are unhappy at the way he has been treated. In my opinion they are looking over their shoulders and nervous of senior management.
My husband's actions have only served to confirm the inept way in which things are being handled within public organisations and government and the subsequent undermining of national security and the fuelling of further terrorism. We have had nothing but support from family, friends and ex-colleagues and I feel it is my duty to ensure that the public know that he is a man of high priniciple who gave the best part of 40 years to his country in distinguished and exemplary conduct, a fact acknowledged by the prosecution counsel at the sentencing hearing.
The judicial system nevertheless decided to make an example of him and gave him a harsher sentence than David Shayler and the two civil servants who leaked the Bush/Blair memos. This is hard when all my husband wanted to do was protect his country, promote tolerance towards the Muslim community and encourage responsible media reporting. History is littered with people who have broken laws when their consciences have driven them to it. My husband does not wish to be seen as a hero, just a genuine patriot to his country. Let's not see his actions as merely a 'futile gesture'.
AMANDA LUND-LACK
Via Email
