Nick Cohen condemns Hamas, but ignores the besetting sins of Israel

While agreeing with Nick Cohen on many issues, I am always baffled by his pro-Israeli stance (“Sympathise with Israel, but not the blockade” Comment). He goes on about Ba’athists or Iran or Islamists, as if their existence justifies any action of Israel’s. He decries Hamas, but Israel caused Hamas’s rise to power by her refusal to reach any compromise with Fatah. Now, Hamas can conveniently be used as an excuse for crimes like Operation Cast Lead, when one of the world’s most heavily populated cities was mercilessly bombed. In his eyes, Muslims/Arabs are to blame for everything and Israel can do no wrong. It’s time to face the truth, Nick: the total oppression of the Palestinians, appropriation of their land, ceaseless building of illegal settle-ments and intimidation or murder of its opponents make Israel a rogue state.

James Dixon

Manchester

Lend an ear to rabbit wisdom

“There is never any way to be sure if your rabbit will be tender,” says Nigel Slater (Magazine). But there is, Nigel, if you start your relationship with your rabbit far enough back. May I quote from the memoir of my 1930s childhood that I am writing for my family? “Rabbits were plentiful in season and boys would sell them at the door for sixpence each. You looked at your rabbit’s ears. If the fur on them was still soft and downy, the rabbit would be tender enough to roast with sage and onion stuffing but, if the fur was bristly, you had best make your rabbit into a pie or stew it with dumplings.”

Betty Birch

London SW6

Play fair with sports figures

It is incorrect to suggest (“Olympic legacy in doubt as sports cash fails to attract women and minorities“, News) that Sport England’s investment has failed to get people playing sport. The number of youngsters taking part has risen substantially since 2005, while adult participation has increased by more than 700,000. With just over two years to go until the Games, we are focused on delivering a lasting, mass-participation sports legacy. This will be the jewel in the crown of this country’s golden decade of sport.

Jennie Price

Chief executive, Sport England

Copy Canada at your peril

Nick Clegg has claimed that his government can learn from the “progressive” experience of Canada, Sweden and the US with budget cutting. (“No return to savage cuts of the Thatcher years“, News). I can assure him, despite my being a long-time member of the Canadian Liberal party, that the Canadian experience is a very bad guide for Britain. In addition to damaging healthcare, the cuts imperilled higher education, increased child poverty, damaged our infrastructure and prolonged higher unemployment.

Harold Chorney, professor of political economy

Concordia University, Montreal

Making sense of Cumbria

There’s been an awful lot of half-baked analysis about Derrick Bird. The articles by Euan Ferguson and Henry Porter (“A tragic old coast that will forever be haunted by the words ‘what if‘”, Focus, and “In the midst of horror, be amazed at the goodness of the survivors“, News) are the reason why the Guardian and the Observer are better equipped to deal with important events than any other news medium; good writers have been allowed space to reflect and have the talent to communicate their thoughts remarkably well. You helped me make some sort of sense of these terrible events.

Chris Lilly

London E14

Hats off to Jessica and Kate

Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson can presumably defend themselves from Barbara Ellen’s attack (“Actresses should stand up against violence in films“), but let me suggest a reason for their appearances in The Killer Inside Me. When you’ve appeared in endless adolescent Hollywood films, any star wanting to demonstrate talent is going to leap at an intelligent film based on a well-regarded writer with a respected director and a fine cast. I am grateful that lending their names to a serious film presumably helped get the project financed and provides a welcome alternative to TV spin-offs and blockbusters.

William Reiss,

London SW19

Don’t swallow pro GM guff

Professor Colin Blakemore claims the Food Standards Agency is not biased in favour of GM food (“GM food deserves better than this witch-hunt“, Comment). Prof Blakemore shows exactly this bias in contrasting the “scientific assessment of the risks and potential benefits of GM” with what he claims are the “unsubstantiated horror stories about GM and uncritical praise for organic farming”. Only one major international scientific assessment of farming systems has been carried out and the conclusions, which supported agri-ecological farming, have been backed by 40 governments, including ours. Prof Blakemore and the FSA are the ones guilty of ideological and unsubstantiated support for GM and unscientific and unjustified opposition to organic farming.

Peter Melchett

Policy director, the Soil Association

Bristol

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]]> http://london-2012-olympics.net/News/israels-abuse-of-palestinians-makes-it-a-rogue-state-letters/feed/ 0 http://london-2012-olympics.net/News/firearms-laws-could-cause-chaos-at-2012-olympics/ http://london-2012-olympics.net/News/firearms-laws-could-cause-chaos-at-2012-olympics/#comments Thu, 20 May 2010 07:15:55 +0000 admin http://www.london-2012-olympics.net/2012-olympic-news/firearms-laws-could-cause-chaos-at-2012-olympics/ • Europeans miss Dorset clay pigeon event over permits • London organisers want accreditation to double as permit London 2012′s shooting event is heading for chaos because of Britain’s draconian firearms legislation for athletes from European countries. Some European teams have been unable to compete at a clay pigeon World Cup event in Dorset this week after failing to lodge original …

Nick Cohen’s article (“The IRA’s culture of silence extended to child abuse“, Comment) would have been more powerful had he included the fact that sexual violence against children does not have political allegiances. Surely you cannot be so naive as to imagine the Protestants and their armies have no paedophiles? Nor the police? And that neither covers this up? That the Catholic priesthood seems riddled with paedophiles is actually rather different. As no one seems willing to mention, they are required to practise celibacy with its obvious repercussions. Catholic the IRA may be but celibate, hardly.

The English, who set up the whole mess of Northern Ireland in the first place, and tolerated a situation where the sizable minority got the worst housing, jobs, education and so on because of their religion, are always happy to demonise Gerry Adams, whereas he is just another prominent figure who inspires fierce loyalty or hatred, both of which distract from the need to expose this tendency to cover up, wherever it hides.

Mora McIntyre

Hove, Sussex

■ Proving that no one is all bad, Nick Cohen has it right: no one in the Irish Republic has really wanted Northern Ireland for as long as almost anyone alive can now remember, and that state could not begin to assimilate a cultural minority a million strong. No wonder the Republic’s voters so massively renounced any claim to the Six Counties.

What Cohen does not add is that, if anything, the Republic would find it even harder to assimilate Northern Irish nationalists, who would be rather like hopelessly unrealistic third-, fourth- or fifth-generation colonial returnees to Britain from Africa or India, only far more numerous and far more concentrated geographically. Who on earth would want that? No one in the Irish Republic, that is for sure.

David Lindsay

Lanchester, Co Durham

Major parties deserve disdain

Andrew Rawnsley is right to fear a low turn-out at the general election (“See the records tumble at next year’s election epic“, Comment), but the expenses issue is not the only thing that may put off the public. What major difference is there between the two major parties? Both refuse to set dates for withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, neither promises anything substantial on affordable housing, better public transport, pensions or jobs for all that want to work.

C Hopper

Swansea

A gold medal for waste

So Steve Redgrave (“Real test for sport is after 2012“, News) is concerned about the poor forward planning for the “sporting legacy” of the Olympics. I’m worried, too, as this “legacy” seems to be the chief justification for this ridiculous, overblown money sponge that is the scourge and ruin of some hapless world city for two wretched weeks every four years. Unfortunately, it’s our turn. Extra interest in sport will soon wane and we’ll be left with several huge stadiums standing empty and useless. If the money is there, spend it countrywide on hundreds of small sports clubs, playgroups and youth centres which are desperately needed and would be a true and lasting “legacy” at a fraction of the cost.

David Bauckham

London SE7

Why the UK is a Muslim target

You devote your first three pages to the attempt, apparently by a Muslim extremist, to blow up an American aeroplane, and in your first leader you call for aid to the Palestinians in Gaza, (“One year on, we need progress in Gaza“, Comment) but surprisingly you fail to make any connection between the two issues.

On terrorism and violence, the most important question for any politician should be “Why?” rather than “How?” or “What?”, but it is the question that is studiously avoided by virtually everyone. Unless we deal with the reasons why young Muslims can be seduced into blowing themselves and their fellow passengers into oblivion on flights or on the London underground, we are doomed to ever more intensive and tedious security at airports and elsewhere. Long-term security can only come by removing the reasons why the USA and the UK are regarded as legitimate targets by certain groups of Muslim extremists.

Anyone who takes the trouble to watch the Al Jazeera channel will see a very different but well-documented slant on the news which makes it clear that the Muslim world is, understandably, deeply affected by the continuing plight of and the violence against the Palestinians, by the continued American presence in Iraq and by Nato propping up a corrupt regime in Afghanistan.

Michael Meadowcroft

Leeds

Let there be justice in Israel

My heart goes out to the Israeli human-rights campaigners whose plight was highlighted by Rachel Shabi (“Fatah ceasefire in jeopardy“, World). It is one thing for Israel’s propaganda machine to “shoot the messenger” as all of us in the west who are seeking justice for the Palestinians have found to our cost. It is quite another when internal critics face the same treatment. “We lost our empathy skills,” says activist Naomi Zion, “and when you lose that you lose your humanity.” Critics of Israeli policies will say with some justification that the state lost its objective view of humanity long ago, along with human compassion in its treatment of the Palestinians, not only in Gaza but also in the West Bank, shredded to pieces by settlements and settler-only roads, checkpoints and the hated wall.

It is one of the most human of characteristics to stand up for justice in the face of tyranny, and Israel’s human-rights groups need our support for their bravery. Let us remember that “shoot the messenger” has on more than one occasion – think Rachel Corrie, Tom Hurndall and countless Palestinians – been taken literally by the Israeli occupation forces.

Ibrahim Hewitt, senior editor, Middle East Monitor

London NW10

Farewell the probation officer

As an ex-probation officer who refused to become an “offender manager”, I was interested to read your article “Civil servants ‘interfering’ over court sentences” (News). The public should understand that there is no longer any such person as a probation officer working in this country today.

Whatever they call themselves, those civil servants who supervise offenders in the community are obliged by their employers, the National Offender Management Service, to supervise offen
ders in a harsh, negative, overly strict prison-oriented fashion. There is no longer any civil servant paid by the state to rehabilitate offenders, even if the offender is on the mildest community order, which is allegedly for the rehabilitation of the offender. The probation service has lost all independence.

The National Offender Management Service should “reinvent” the role of probation officer as social worker, particularly for those offenders on community rehabilitation orders.

Will Watson

London N10

Let me lend Hands a hand

Your article on multimillionaire Guy Hands (Mammon, Business) mentions the “possibly apocryphal” story that he initiated a strike on the set of Heaven’s Gate at Oxford. As his fellow strike-leader (we negotiated victoriously with Michael Cimino in person), I am happy to confirm the tale – and, having never laid eyes on him since while amassing net assets of approximately zero, would be delighted to retell it at his “estate and vineyard in Tuscany”.

James Hawes Cardiff

]]> http://london-2012-olympics.net/News/letters-child-abuse-is-not-the-sole-province-of-the-ira/feed/ 0 http://london-2012-olympics.net/News/walton-hopes-for-success-in-2012-2/ http://london-2012-olympics.net/News/walton-hopes-for-success-in-2012-2/#comments Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:38:46 +0000 admin http://www.london-2012-olympics.net/2012-olympic-news/walton-hopes-for-success-in-2012-2/ Redditch based shooter Stevan Walton remains determined to get to London 2012 despite an uncertain future ahead for GB shooting.

There’s been a flurry of Olympics-related unrest over the weekend. Leabank Square blog is unhappy with the way the Media Centre is shaping up:

[The ODA] have decided that we must see grey all along this massive building – and as we go into winter – this should make us the happiest bunnies in town. Can they honestly say that they are being a good neighbour anymore?

On Sunday at Greenwich Park, the determined campaigners of NOGOE, who don’t want equestrian events in their local, historic urban “lung”, organised like-minded residents into a protest ring around the park (lots more on that controversy from Londonist and 853.

Meanwhile, there’s a separate row about moving the shooting events to Barking – or not as the case may be.

This blog is planning to up its game where Olympics coverage is concerned, hopefully starting from next week. I’l be particularly concentrating on the effects of Games preparations on local people and on Legacy issues. The Assembly is taking a close interest in those too. More on that from Paul Norman at Estates Gazette.

]]> http://london-2012-olympics.net/News/theres-a-lot-of-olympics-rows-and-unrest-around-just-now/feed/ 0 http://london-2012-olympics.net/News/boris-johnsons-mayoralty-is-embroiled-in-many-rows/ http://london-2012-olympics.net/News/boris-johnsons-mayoralty-is-embroiled-in-many-rows/#comments Mon, 21 Sep 2009 10:25:21 +0000 admin http://www.london-2012-olympics.net/2012-olympic-news/boris-johnsons-mayoralty-is-embroiled-in-many-rows/

There are frictions in all families, of course. But those that have lately surfacein the GLA “family” and linked institutions are striking nonetheless. Appointments that seemed sure to foster blood loyalties are marked by fractiousness instead. Relationships that looked to have harmony in their DNA are under strain. Perhaps I’m reading too much into recent tiffs. Perhaps the tensions will prove creative. Yet they have the potential to grow into distracting rivalries and damaging rifts – maybe even the expunging of names from Christmas card lists. As Mayor Johnson’ administration enters a potentially tricky midterm week, let’s inspect the areas of inflammation.

Malthouse, Boris and The Met
I’m told that Deputy Kit seems “largely unrepentant” for his “hand on the tiller” remark to the Guardian that moved Sir Paul Stephenson to post a clarifying letter and then to send out a similarly sharp message from the Superintendents’ Conference. I’m sticking to my view that the row was really about Boris’s man daring to say out loud something that everyone knows is true – that police chiefs take politicians’ cues – but are frightened to acknowledge publicly. That said, City Hall doesn’t want to be on bad terms with the Commissioner whose appointment it supported and desired. There’s a full MPA meeting on Thursday. Will Boris’s political opponents exploit mayoral embarrassment? Will Sir Paul? How will Kit and Mayor Johnson behave?
Anthony Browne and LDA
The explosive criticisms aimed at Boris’s LDA bosses by Boris’s economics aide last week do not bode well for relationships between the two wings of the “family”. Paul Norman at Estates Gazette has pointed out the possible knock-on effects on making up the Olympics land acquisition “over-run” and handing on responsibility for the park to the new Olympic Legacy Company. Those LDA exchanges also hinted at possible quarrels among mayoral advisers over where the agency should make economies.
Boris and the Olympics Board
Mayor Johnson reckons £20 million can be saved by moving shooting from Woolwich to Barking and badminton and rhythmic gymnastics from Greenwich to Wembley Arena. The British Olympics Association, which has a power of veto over decisions taken by the Olympics Board, isn’t keen. Boris indicated to the BBC that he is cross. This might have been slick positioning. It might also be a hostage to fortune if, as guardian of value-for-money, he fails to get his way.

Lively times. Stay tuned.

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