Apologise, Straw
14th October 2002
Jack Straw (October) in his reference to Sikh fundamentalism completely distorts the events of June and November 1984 in Amritsar and Delhi. He says that Sikh fundamentalists "seized" their own shrine, and that when the Indian army was sent in by Indira Gandhi, she was assassinated by her own fundamentalist bodyguards. The reality is that Sikhs of all political persuasions were in their Sikh temple complex at the time it was "seized" and were not remotely troubled by the so-called fundamentalists. But Gandhi decided that teaching a lesson to a rebellious minority would do wonders at the ballot box. So the army was sent in and several thousand innocent, unarmed Sikhs were killed in what can only be described as genocide. Britain's 700,000 Sikhs demand an apology from Jack Straw.
Amrik Singh Sahota
President, Council of Khalistan
Was Nietzsche gay?
14th September 2002
How can AC Grayling (September) possibly find Joachim Köhler's Zarathustra's Secret "very illuminating?" It produces no evidence at all of Nietzsche's alleged homosexuality. At least in his previous book Nietzsche and Wagner: a Lesson in Subjugation, Köhler had the undeniable fact of the two men's friendship on which to base his obsessions. But with Zarathustra's Secret, he is reduced to guilt by the vaguest association. What is interesting and relevant about Nietzsche is his undoubted masochism-but in a psychological, rather than sexual, sense. Even at school his marked asceticism earned him the nickname Qu?lgeist (tortured spirit) and he continued his mortification of the flesh-cold baths, vegetarianism, poverty, teetotalism, celibacy (except when he caught syphilis)-as an adult. All typically Christian in spirit-not a point Nietzsche would have relished.
Nigel Rodgers
Address unknown
Re-enchanting politics
26th September 2002
Michael Jacobs is persuasive in his belief that idealism is a necessary component of public political persuasion (October). He is less convincing when he lists all the old arguments for the death of socialism: the USSR, the Berlin wall, Francis Fukuyama and so on. As a term, socialism-like God-is both signifier and signified. As such, it seems to be part of the evolutionary tendencies of humanity, and therefore belongs as legitimately in the future as it does in the past. As the only self-conscious and environment-controlling species, handicapped or advantaged with a substantial record of our past progresses and failures, we humans are compelled to realise, albeit cyclically, that some benefits can only be accomplished by a social (or socialist) cohesion, however much personal or self-focused interests may seem attractive. It is well known that evolutionary trends take considerable time to settle and become stable. Though claims for the demise of socialism in the last 20 years may have been entertaining (for some), they show a distinct lack of imagination when it comes down to the proper study of humankind. And the timescale on which they are judged is meaninglessly short.
Ian Flintoff
London SW6
Media incompetence
1st October 2002
Whilst not intending to enter your seven deadly media sins competition (Curiosities, October), I do know what grouse would head my list. This is the news media's deficiencies in normal, everyday reporting even when there is no partisan point at stake. On the occasions when I have had first-hand knowledge of simple news stories, I have never known the news media reportage to be other than garbled or just plain wrong in at least one or two significant respects. If you tell others of this, it usually elicits from them a flood of further examples.
One should not confuse this deficiency with mendacity. Rather it appears to be evidence of an under-skilled profession. The reporting of simple events is, one presumes, the news media's basic stock-in-trade. What other profession could, for so long and so routinely, make such a poor fist of its own core skill and yet seemingly remain immune from searching scrutiny?
Richard Stevens
London SE8
Anti-Arab prejudice
4th September 2002
Antony Lerman (August) postulates two ways whereby "the mix of antisemitism and anti-Zionism in the Arab and Muslim worlds is different from traditional European antisemitism." There is surely a third factor making for this difference-Arab antisemitisim was a reaction to the anti-Arab prejudice of some Jews, particularly in the wake of the birth of the Zionist movement. Asher Ginsberg, a leading Zionist, warned his compatriots against anti-Arab fervour in these terms in 1891: "What did the Jewish settlers do? Serfs they were in the diaspora and suddenly they find themselves in freedom, and this change in them has awakened an inclination to despotism. They treat Arabs with cruelty, deprive them of their rights, offend them without cause and even boast of these deeds."
E Adam
London NW8
God, religion and ritual
2nd October 2002
I agree with Michael Prowse (October). There must be many who, after learning about the empirical universe, have reluctantly found themselves unable to accept the existence of an intelligent design, but who wish that this need not mean a total rejection of religion.
In fact, Prowse does not specifically reject teleology, but he has difficulty with the concept of a supernatural God. He has come to terms with this by embracing one of the other roles of religion, that of providing an ethical code for humanity. My own reluctance to abandon religion draws strength from that insight, but also from what I see as a third component of religion. This is its role as a provider of the ritual which seems to meet a need of mankind. In the case of Christianity, there are ceremonies to mark our birth, growing up, marriage, and, of course, death. It furthermore enhances such national occasions as the recent jubilee and the annual remembrance day ceremonies. It is hard to escape all feeling of hypocrisy when one is denying the central points of religious belief, but is it not desirable that convinced materialists should feel included by organised religion? Stephen Jay Gould recognised this in typically engaging style in his essay "Non-overlapping Magisteria," to which Prowse's article is a welcome addition.
Neil Munro
London SW19
House the aged
19th September 2002
Shrinking household sizes contribute to urban housing pressures and urban flight, says Nicholas Schoon (September). The fact that these households' profile is likely to be single and old is vital to how we address regeneration of our cities.
Older people will rise to a third of the British population by 2020. Seventy per cent are owner-occupiers, many living alone in homes which are too big because their children have left or they have lost a partner. Large numbers are on low incomes and so constitute many of the people trapped in deprived urban centres. We must consider how older people can sell their homes to social landlords in return for housing which suits their circumstances better. City dwellers of all generations would be winners.
Gordon Lishman
Director-general, Age Concern
Israel lobby part 4
11th October 2002
Michael Lind (October) contends that I did not address the major points in his original essay (April) on the Israel lobby, but he is wrong. I made two generic points in my response: first, that Lind was so out of his depth in discussing these issues that he made several mistakes, so serious that they disqualify much of his argument; and second, that he avoids real engagement on substantive matters of disagreement by caricaturing the other point of view as having been captured by some conspiracy-in this case the Israel lobby.
In his original essay Lind claimed that were it not for the Israel lobby, Congress would have long since tied its aid to Israel's unilaterally retreating to the June 1967 armistice lines in the West Bank (which Lind wrongly characterised as an international border). But as I showed, Israel's understanding of UNSCR 242, as requiring genuine peace partners to negotiate secure and recognised boundaries, is not and has never been at variance with the view of the US government; so Congress would have done no such thing, lobby or no lobby. Now Lind claims that the Bush administration would not be approaching Israeli-Palestinian troubles the way it is were it not for the supposedly insidious influence of Messrs Wolfowitz, Feith, Perle et al who, Lind asserts, hold Israeli interests higher than American ones, even in the inner sanctum of the American government.
This is just nonsense. It somehow does not occur to Lind that the administration refuses as a matter of principle and sound tactics to reward terrorism, or to press allies to do so, for reasons that ought to be obvious; that Arafat's leadership is what really stands in the way of progress in the peace process; that the refusal of Israel's current national unity government to reward terror with political concession has produced promising signs of a Palestinian change of heart about both Chairman Arafat and the wisdom of the present so-called intifada; or that US support for Israel has not affected in the least the willingness of our Arab and European friends to support the gist of US policy toward Iraq, now that these allies are persuaded of US determination in that regard. (So much for Lind's worry, then, that US alliance systems are being eroded by the lobby's "distortion" of US foreign policy.)
The president, the vice-president, the secretaries of state and defence, and the director of the CIA-none of whom are Jewish-share these views and assessments on their merits. Lind cannot imagine such a thing, so he mystifies this evident truth by conflating individuals with "lobbies," by confusing tactical considerations with strategic ones, and, worse, by refusing to acknowledge that any understanding of the substance of these matters that differs from his own even exists. As Lind apparently sees it, those who express different views have, to put it bluntly, been duped by the Jews.
Finally, Lind accuses me of introducing extraneous points in my essay. But Lind himself excels at extrania, and ungracious extrania at that. Why point out my scepticism about the wisdom of a Palestinian state in 1989, but not mention my defence of Oslo (in the National Interest) in 2000? For no other reason I can see except to associate my views falsely with perspectives I do not share. What does it matter to the purposes at hand that Hollinger International now supports the National Interest, or that I became editor near the inception of that support? It matters not at all, unless Lind is trying to insinuate that Conrad Black and the National Interest have now become integral parts of the Israel lobby. (Just for the record, I became editor when the magazine was still part of National Affairs, Inc, as it was when Lind was executive editor.)
Let me repeat what I wrote before: I have the utmost respect for Lind's skills and have never had reason to suspect his motives; in this case I just think his analysis is wrong. I regret that he has not seen fit to say the same of me, but rather to imply something considerably less generous.
Adam Garfinkle
Editor, National Interest
