So the “small-minded, vacuum-brained anti-American commentators” have been identified by your reader John Valentine as taking up position in your paper (September 21).
One of those “morons” happens to be Noam Chomsky, based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
From 1972 to 1992 he was cited 7449 times in the Social Science Citation Index.
His book, The New Military Humanism, analyses the consequences of actions carried out by people such as the Bill Clinton-Tony Blair pair.
With other small-minded intellectuals he wants to know why the New Humanists would rush to prop up grisly stooges in various parts of the world, while ignoring the plight of their victims.
The response of the “independent” media he calls “intentional ignorance”: if it doesn’t fit the picture, it can’t be happening.
At a glance, this condition also plagues your reader John Valentine. BH Rust, Cape Town
Many of the best, most rational and soft-spoken people throughout democratic society are Muslims.
The Muslim world was an example of civilised tolerance toward Christians and Jews within it, while Christendom during its Dark and Middle Ages was the very opposite.
The perfect Christian knights who went on crusade behaved like sadists and psychopaths.
I think Muslims have always been amazed at how Christians tortured and burnt each other for theological deviation.
What role did Turkish occupation and then European pre-eminence play in the loss of Arab selfconfidence and growth of bitterness?
How is it that, while Christianity and its theologies have adjusted to scientific modernity almost to the point of disappearance, a streak of medieval orthodoxy and hatred of modernity persists within Islam? Does it aim to purify the whole world, just as local groups aim to purify South Africa? Please! Andre Schulman, Cape Town
Zapiro’s cartoon depicting the bombs of Western civilization raining down on Afghanistan is an egregious example of playing to the crowd.
The “bombs”, let us remember, came down upon New York, not Afghanistan, courtesy of a group of Islamic fundamentalists.
Naturally you wouldn’t want to offend any Muslims by depicting planes crashing into the World Trade Centre, say with planes inscribed with “Islamic Civilisation”, “Theocracy”, “Tolerance”, would you? A lot safer to lampoon the people of the US, who are a lot more tolerant and further away than Pagad.
But hey, cartoonists are not required to be brave, are they? Or fair. Ross Duncan-Brown, via e-mail