Letters - Letter to the Editor

New Internationalist, March, 2003

The New internationalist welcomes your letters. But please keep them short. They may be edited for purposes of space or clarity. Letters should be sent to letters@newint.org or to your local NI office. Please remember to include a town and country for your address.

Taking wing

My mother recently called me a bird. I took it as it was meant -- a reference to my wilful independence and love of freedom. However, the more I've thought about it the greater the compliment has become. Birdsong awakens us to the art of nature, birds' variety to nature's skill and imagination. To watch their effortless flight is a source of serene joy and the 'oneness' of a flock of migrants holds a lesson for us all.

I want to thank you at the New Internationalist for the hope. the issue Get it Right! (NI 352) revived in me. May it be the thermal on which we can all soar to greater heights just like those you mentioned have already done. It is time to be brave, quit the nest of ignorant comfort and plenty that we in the Minority World are all too prone to dwell in. Jump... it's time to learn to fly!

Harula Ladd (VSO Volunteer) Rwanda

Rational with it

I read your magazine and was amazed to find at last someone who can criticize free trade and globalization without being irrational.

I'm far from being a 'progressive' by modern standards -- I'm really more stuck in the Middle Ages or late antiquity somewhere -- but it does seem rather obvious that 'free trade' as currently contemplated and practised is utterly unjust. The world in its current sorry state seems divided into three camps: those who cannot or will not recognize this injustice (despite it being blatant); those who, having recognized it, have immediate recourse to some idiotic utopia or other; and you.

Jim Albrecht Alaska, US

Missing people

Your articles on The Other America (NI 351) were excellent, although I would have liked to have seen at least one focused on the struggles of Native Americans. I would suggest adding Leslie Marmon Silko's Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit to the book list for NI staffers and readers, for points of view often overlooked.

Bob Paulson Isemhagen, Germany

Catch 22

The US is the only global, mega-rich superpower which possesses overwhelming military might plus the overwhelming desire to flaunt and/or use it in order to impose the Pax Americana via the American Imperium on Planet Earth.

Small, relatively poor nations and governments which do not agree with the American unilateral view of everything seek insurance against American hegemonic aspirations and ambitions and consequential vassaldom for themselves by the possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WOMaD).

The possession of WOMaD by small nations and governments then acts as a trigger mechanism for the application ('clinical' to use the latest horrific euphemism of the warlike times!) of the overwhelming military might of the US.

Catch 22 -- it's timeless, as is the individual and collective inability of political leaders to learn the lessons of history.

Tony Hosking Darwin, Australia

Corporate cowboys and the corrosion of democracy

The shocking thing about American society is not that it is unequal but the degree of inequality (NI 351). Since the 197os, the US administration has been steadily pushing towards this wealth disparity. Its 'budget cuts' have always been part of the political landscape. President Bush's cuts in public expenditure have included $700 million from public-housing repairs and $2do million from training programmes for dislocated workers.

Public funds have been increasingly sucked from the public sector into the heavily militarized private sector. The concentration of wealth and power is a great deterrent to democracy. Civil and political rights are being eroded as the consequence of the implications of the Patriot Act.

Both King Bush the First and Second had big oil getting in bed with big politics. Since then, the corporate cowboys have never had it any better.

The current decline in the American Dream can only be distracted by terrorism scares, pretentious patriotism and warmongering. The real weapons of mass destruction will be dropped on the already devastated people of Iraq. Bush will time his war to mark the start of the American presidential campaign, to make sure there's certainly no 'regime change' at the White House. The Patriot Act will be further employed for more racist detentions and to suppress more dissent. The military adventure will temporarily alleviate the economic decline and bring much more wealth to the oil and arms corporations.

The question is, for how long will the American people be hushed up, toned down and laid low? And for how long will they compromise their constitution and democratic rights? There are already signs that not all American people can be cowed into following the rule of corporations without any regard for others or the environment. There are surely many who are realizing that the myth of being affluent and free which they are fed daily is Big Brother vocabulary for being insatiable consumers, unimaginative and ignorant of other people and their cultures.