/ 25 November 2005

February 17 – February 23 2006

Ethanol is not green

Kevin Davie’s article “Green fuels start now” (Feburary 10) seriously overstates the advantages of ethanol auto-fuels.

Ethanol may be 45% cheaper than petrol in Brazil, but anyone who has driven in that country will know that you get significantly fewer kilometers per litre from it than from petrol.

Brazilian E85, which is 85% ethanol, is much less efficient than the Australian E10 that Manny Singh punts in your article. South Africans expecting a 45% or greater cost advantage from high-ethanol fuel blends are going to be disappointed.

Ethanol is also not a particularly “green” fuel. Although its exhaust fumes may smell better than those generated by petrol, the expansion of sugar-cane farming for ethanol has meant environmental devastation.

Much of Brazil’s world-famous deforestation has resulted from sugarcane production. The magnificent Brazilian Atlantic Forest has been reduced to less than 10% of its original extent. Not only are many species now extinct, but the water supply to the populous coastal cities is also under threat.

Growing sugar cane on a huge scale can mean immense costs to society. Destroying natural vegetation to make croplands releases large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, contributing to global climate change. Rivers become filled with fertiliser and pesticide effluent. Rural people lose their land to mega-agribusiness. Wildlife loses its habitat. Ecosystems are totally disrupted, degrading their ability to provide valuable services to the human economy.

If we’re going to ride the ethanol bandwagon, let’s do it cautiously. Using crop waste to make it might be a good idea, but wrecking hundreds of thousands of hectares of natural veld to grow sugar cane is not.

Ethanol producers can be every bit as socially and environmentally destructive as the oilmen they replace. — Adam Welz, Cape Townw

Protest over Iraq, not cartoons

Through their protests, Muslims have given undeserved publicity to second-rate cartoonists.

A more rational approach would have gained them greater understanding. Why did they not consider challenging the cartoonists’ ignorance and stereotyping? They could have pointed out that Sri Lankan Hindus have produced far more suicide bombers than Islamic countries, and highlighted the cartoonists’ cultural ignorance in their depiction of the Prophet’s clothes.

It would have been far worthier for Muslims to protest against the presence of Danish troops in the illegal occupation of Iraq. — Gunvant Govindjee, Red Cross Nordic United World College

Editor Ferial Haffajee cannot be accused of inciting the emotions of Muslims by reporting. I was moved by her integrity in trying inform readers like me, who wanted to know what had caused offence. — Sharmla Dharamalinga, Kempton Park

A note of support from a long-time reader to your wonderful, brave and enlightened editor. More power to her! — Dawn Goodman

Haffajee was wrong to apologise for printing a cartoon. Was the unfortunate tendency of some Muslims to resort to violence behind this retreat? — Michael Brett, Hartebeeshoek

We often hear that the vast majority of moderate Muslims do not identify with extremists who resort to violence and terrorism in the name of Islam. I believe them. But when will the moderates take a real stand? — Dave Gilbert, Johannesburg

As a Muslim I have no issues with you publishing the cartoon, but the reaction of other Muslims — like calling the editor’s mother and expressing their disgust over her deviant daughter — was disconcerting. Could they not understand the context of your decision to publish? — Azad Essa, University of KwaZulu-Natal

I’m outraged at the abuse of the right to freedom of expression by the Western media to insult Muslims. As incensed as when I witnessed a rally in Kuala Lumpur by the leading Malaysian Islamic party where the participants proudly wore T-shirts emblazoned with swastikas. — Pat Hopkins

Haffajee’s analogy between her apology over the cartoons and apology to Jewish readers last year is not valid. The M&G produced the illustration that offended Jews — it merely reprinted the cartoon of the Prophet. If your apology is due to intimidation, it is no different from a statement extracted from a prisoner under torture. — MF Mahamed

Aggression against life and property shows Muslims in bad light. — Omar Luther King, Delhi

One thing that has emerged from the cartoons saga is that rights-based culture is no remedy for conflict. Rather, it fuels it, giving both the “freedom of the press'” and Islamic factions a sense of outraged moral rectitude to which neither is entitled. — John Freeman, Umzumbe

Some Muslims compare publication of the cartoons to publication of child pornography. This is ludicrous. One is illegal, and the other is not. — Mark, Johannesburg

If a close member of your family was insulted in the most foul and crude language, and her morals sullied, would you welcome this crass attack as a topic for interesting debate, or would you be provoked to an angry, even violent response? How much more hurtful is an insult to one’s religion?

Most decent people were brought up to honour other people’s religious beliefs. Free speech is not absolute and is not what our Constitution intended. — Thabo Grant

If the argument you give for publishing the cartoon is correct, as I am sure it is, there would appear to be no need for an apology. Unless you simply mean it as a public relations exercise … — Nicholas Smith, Massey University, New Zealand

I cannot understand why the worldwide Muslim community has become so obsessed with the trivial matter of some silly cartoons published by a fringe newspaper in Denmark while Bush, Blair et al are busy cooking up plans for attacking Iran. — Ken Burke, Johannesburg

We need mossies and flamingos

Good opinion is meant to provoke, not insult. Khadija Magardie’s “Where are all the seriously smart chicks?” (February 10) borders on the latter.

If Magardie got off her perch and did some homework, she would know of the soul-searching on how to sustain the Sixteen Day Campaign that has so bored her.

Currently, the government, civil society and business are joining hands in developing a national plan under the banner “365 days to end gender violence”. That may not be sexy enough for flamingos like Magardie, but along with the glamour comes the hard slog. To sow division between the “missing” brilliant academics and “boring” activists is not useful; you need both.

Like the birds she is so enamoured with, feminism comes in many glorious forms. The Commission on Gender Equality chairperson may be like “anyone’s gogo”, but that is a large segment of the population madam writes off with a swish of her pen.

Rather than snipe from the sidelines, Magardie should help us think through why, 11 years into our democracy, women are still subjected to the most flagrant rights violations. — Colleen Lowe Morna, Gender and Media Southern Africa Network

Power of consistency

The African National Congress is going to wipe the floor with the opposition in the local elections. And it’s going to be for the same reason that George W Bush got a second term even though he started the United States’s second Vietnam on a lie, and that Zimbabweans showed no confidence in Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change.

The reason is a strong psychological pull called consistency. Human beings have a strong need to be consistent. Few of us can swallow being called inconsistent, flighty and unreliable.

Marketers, sales people, politicians and religious leaders hook us with consistency every time. First, they get us to agree to a small demand, making it easier to agree to bigger, more extravagant demands later. Then they get us to commit publicly to a cause that makes it difficult to pull out of midstream without looking inconsistent, flighty and untrustworthy.

In South Africa, the realpolitik of service delivery, crime, land reform, corruption and HIV/Aids will not affect us fundamentally in the upcoming elections. Most voters will be consistent with their past voting behaviour.

The strategy of consistency is full-blown in Zimbabwe. Take press freedom. First, the people accepted there would be some media censorship; then the authorities ratcheted up to deporting foreign journalists; then to arresting journalists; then arresting editors; then to banning opposition newspapers. See how easy it is to agree to a small thing and then agree to bigger, more draconian steps.

The US has mastered this strategy. Let’s hold prisoners at Guantanamo Bay indefinitely without trial in the interests of national security; let’s monitor phone calls to see if anyone threatens the president and the country by using trigger words like “president” and “bomb”; now let’s forget about privacy altogether … anyone in the US can now be spied on. What will we agree to next? The invasion of Iran?

We need to be on guard so that we are not duped into doing things we really don’t want to do.

Think before acceding to any request. As Leonardo da Vinci said: “It’s easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.” — Jacques de Villiers, Motivators International

Zionist myths rooted in racism

Joel Pollak, in “More Palestinian than the Palestinians” (February 3), is correct that every nation has its own myths. But Zionist myth, like apartheid myth, is particularly exclusivist and racist, which is why it requires the scrutiny it has received.

Rabbi David Hoffman (Letters, February 3) and Pollak predictably espouse the mythology that my article identifies. Hoffman equates objections to Zionism and Israel as “invariably containing anti-Semitic nuance”, and claims I have fallen into it. The smear is typical of the Zionist movement’s attempts to rubbish any objective criticism of Israel’s apartheid policies or the fallacies at the core of Zionism.

Similarly, Pollak quotes Amos Oz’s definition of Zionism as “the idea that those Jews who regard themselves as people, not just as a religion, are entitled to have a homeland in their home country”.

This claim to Palestine as the home country of the Jewish people ignores the fact that numerous kingdoms cohabited the Holy Land over the centuries, and before the creation of the State of Israel, Jews owned a mere 6,5% of historic Palestine.

In the case of Israel, myths have not been a positive binding force, as Pollak believes, but the basis on which a nation has been built at the expense of an existing nation, which has since been subjected to severe repression, human rights abuses, and the continued confiscation of land and natural resources. — Ronnie Kasrils

Dilemma

After reading “From Gear to Asgisa” (February 10), I was reminded of South Africa’s past economic policies.

The governments of BJ Vorster and PW Botha were caught in a policy dilemma. The economic prosperity of whites heavily depended on a large, sustainable supply of skilled labour, while apartheid labour legislation prevented this from happening.

Three decades later the Mbeki government wants to achieve an economic growth rate of 6% and above, while democratic labour laws are restricting economic growth. Will South Africa have to experience a second round of Wiehahn and Riekert commissions before labour laws are reviewed? — A Hokwana, Bloemfontein