Letters

While you're worrying about the correct use of invaluable words such as "decimate" ("Will's Words," August), you might keep a closer eye on your contributors. In September's "Washington Watch," Tumbler writes of Alan Greenspan that "the chorus of accusations against him is rising to a crescendo." Presumably, Tumbler means "a climax," since "crescendo" in Italian means "increasing," as all musicians know. If anything can rise to an increasing, I'd like to see a picture of it.

Derek Robinson
Bristol

Leaving Baghdad
29th August 2007

I can only praise the courage of Nadia ("Leaving Baghdad," September) for sharing her trauma, and the more so because she has not concealed her identity. Most of us who have endured similar experiences tend to shrink away from the world in our endeavour to come to terms with our personal tragedies. There is an incredible similarity between what happened to the Hayalis and what happened to my family. The Hunting Club, the mujahedin, the computers, "collaboration" with the US, Shia, ransom, masked men—all are in my story too. I was luckier then Mohammed, however. The payment of a ransom of $250,000 secured my release.

Twelve months after being released, I and my family, now stranded outside Iraq, are trying hard to rebuild our lives. The Hayali story gives me a dose of strength.

Name and address withheld

India's new middle class 1
14th September 2007

Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad's essay (September) offers the kind of argument most observers of India would have made until May 2004. At that moment, though, assumptions about the apathetic behaviour of India's middle class were contradicted by an election which confounded the expectations of most analysts. A BJP government which had celebrated middle-class wealth without helping the poor was beaten by a Congress/centre-left alliance claiming India would only get richer if income inequalities were reduced. In 2004 Congress's victory was orchestrated by the poor-but-not-destitute whom Ram-Prasad talks about, those whose "lives are most likely to be transformed by state action." But they were aided by the middle class. In places like Delhi, the BJP was defeated where the middle classes were uncomfortable stepping over street-sleepers on their way out to spend in new malls and supermarkets; happy in their prosperity, the middle class nonetheless don't like the idea that they are rich at the expense of the poor. India's last elections prove that many of the country's middle classes still do cling to the idea of a socially just India articulated by nationalist leaders like Nehru and Gandhi in the years before independence. They also show that India's problem isn't a middle class who don't care about the poor; it's a political system which maintains a massive gap between egalitarian aspirations and unequal realities.

Jon E Wilson
Kings College, London

India's new middle class 2
2nd September 2007

Twenty years ago, my father earned 5,000 rupees a month in Mumbai—out of which we paid 2,500 on a housing loan. My choices as I entered graduation were stark—if I did not get at least 94 per cent in my exams, I would have to pay a "donation" in an engineering college, which my parents could ill afford. Jobs were hard to find. While not deprived, we gave little time to thinking about helping others. We were fairly typical of the Indian middle class at the time. Things have changed for my family—we have been beneficiaries of the recent economic boom. I and many of my colleagues are very aware of the social and economic situation in India. Most people I know donate to charities. Many of my colleagues, having achieved a certain level of financial security, have quit to work in social organisations. And we are still "middle class." Yes, many of us do indulge in "conspicuous consumption"—does one exclude the other? Do people in western countries not have parties while there are homeless people outside? I have spent seven years outside India, mostly in Europe and the US, and have no doubt that the average Indian has no less social awareness than people anywhere else.

Samir Seth
Bangalore, India

Drama without theatre
5th September 2007

Chris Wilkinson's article on site-specific theatre (September) contains a grave inaccuracy about the site-specific work of the late John McGrath, stating that "McGrath himself did not actually create site-specific work." I was the visual artist who worked with John McGrath at the Tramway Glasgow on his two great site-specific works Border Warfare (1990) and John Brown's Body (1991). John was keen to write work that exploited every possible corner of the space. In both productions, 600 spectators moved around as the playing space was constantly formed and reformed.

Pamela Howard
Selsey, West Sussex

Afro-pessimism
5th September 2007

I was disappointed by Alan Philps's review (August) of Tim Butcher's Blood River. My bookshelves groan under the weight of foreigners' accounts of exotic Africa. Too few such visitors learn about Africa; instead they use snapshots as a basis for risky generalisations. I do not doubt Butcher's courage or sincerity, but there is little to learn about the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) or Africa from either his book or Philps's review.

Philps suggests that the government of Sudan used chemical weapons in the civil war in the south. No one has produced any evidence for this. Assault rifles, rocket propelled grenades, burning of food stores, destroyed health centres, mines and displacement caused plenty of suffering without the need for chemical weapons. Also, the war in the DRC did not exactly "kill four million people since its start in 1996." The American NGO IRC very carefully extrapolated the "excess mortality" it measured in a sample of Congolese citizens: what it found was an extraordinarily high death rate, mostly caused by the almost complete lack of services available. It may be correct that 4m people have died—no one knows—but their deaths are a result less of fighting than of displacement, destroyed infrastructure and failed governance, a tale that starts with the arrival of King Leopold's men at the end of the 19th century.

International operations to end the war in the DRC have been relatively successful. The international humanitarian effort, on the other hand, has failed to respond adequately to the enormity of its needs, with per capita humanitarian expenditure far below that in other comparable crises. In Darfur, by contrast, the international humanitarian effort has kept many millions of victims alive, and has fed and taught and treated them to the extent possible in an unforgiving terrain. Yet the international political response to Sudan's political and military fractures has been disappointing, while disappointing is too mild a term for the military response of the outside world to the violence in Darfur.

These failings are more important than quibbles about a review. Africa has risen up the international agenda and deserves better than this.

Philip Winter
Rift Valley Institute, Kenya

Skidelsky on Mosley
16th September 2007

Edward Skidelsky reviews the work of author Nicholas Mosley (September) with such approving sentiments as: "the style that has stamped his work… is a rejection of all the contrivances by which novelists have traditionally drawn readers into their worlds. His characters have no personality (and) they speak in flat, jerky sentences." A little later, by way of contrast, Skidelsky deplores writers such as Beryl Bainbridge and Ian McEwan for "taking pains to get every period detail, every nuance of class and culture right. The results are deathly in their exactitude." We also learn that Mosley "is not interested in stylistic experiment… For him, style is important only as a vehicle for moral truth." So—Mosley can't do dialogue, writes unengaging stories and unconvincing characters, won't do research or deploy realistic detail, doesn't care about the quality of his prose, and is concerned only to deliver a weighty moral message. In genre fiction, where I earn my living, we have a technical term for this kind of writing: we call it shit.

Richard Morgan
Glasgow

The sacred and the human
24th August 2007

Roger Scruton's "The sacred and the human" (August) claims that the "alleged mimetic nature of desire is underjustified." In fact, recent developments in neuroscience are bringing confirmation of Girard's theory. "Mirror neurons" were discovered by Italian scientists in macaque monkeys in the 1990s, and provide a neurobiological foundation for mimetic desire. These cells fire both when the subject watches an action being performed, and when he or she performs this action. Researchers, including Girard, have already convened to discuss the convergence of mimetic theory and neuroscience.

Trevor Merrill
Los Angeles

Boycotting Israel
16th September 2007

Is there a double standard, as Josef Joffe claims (Letters, September), in focusing on Israel more than other illegal land-grabbers such as China (Tibet) or Turkey (Cyprus)? Israel upsets more people for three good reasons.
First, in the 1947-48 civil war, the Jewish European settler minority won 78 per cent of Palestine, hardly a fair share, from the indigenous majority. Other 20th-century land grabbers have at least started from a fairer border. Second, there is the danger to the west created by Israel's land hunger. If the Palestinians were not supported by 1.3bn Muslims, Israel's expansionism would be less dangerous. Third, Israel is part of western Judeo-Christian civilisation, and Israel has let our side down. This is a double standard. But, like the principle that we don't torture even if the other side does, it is a commendable one.

Joseph Palley
Richmond, Surrey