Northern omission
How can the NI run 20 pages on slavery (The Burden of Slavery, NI 337) yet not find room to name and shame a single Northern perpetrator, other than a few cursory references?

Recent full-length articles in the Spanish press have highlighted ‘the story of EU-supported slavery’ within its own borders – where apartheid conditions (no legal protection, below-subsistence wages, restrictions on movement, corrupt police, coercion by local politicians) are underpinning the economies of more than a few Mercedes-strewn, brothel-filled Mediterranean agricultural towns. A stroll into Barcelona’s more affluent suburbs reveals a sea of Chilean, Peruvian and Filipino faces, slave women forced to work as domestic servants and child carers to middle-class residents.

Andrew Millar
Barcelona, Spain

Quest for truth
Congratulations to Maggie Black for bringing out the poignant story of the people of Narmada Valley (NI 336).

I write this to bring to your notice the misinterpretation of the word Satyagraha. Satyagraha is not ‘sit-in’ (Article: They only 'Hold pen'). Mahatma Gandhi who first coined the term and used it so beautifully and powerfully has said ‘Satya means truth and Satyagraha is literally holding on to truth and therefore is truth-force. Since truth is soul or spirit, satyagraha is also soul-force. Satyagraha is a relentless search for truth and a determination to reach truth. Satyagraha excludes the use of violence in any shape or form, whether in thought, speech or deed. There can be no satyagraha in an unjust cause. Satyagraha is utter self-effacement, greatest humility, greatest patience and brightest faith. It is its own reward. Satyagraha is gentle, it never wounds. It is the direct opposite of compulsion and conceived as a complete substitute for violence.’

Anltha Sharma
Trivandrum, India

Symbolic persuasion
As an ex-Fiji MP where the environment is being ravaged even as I write, I was deeply touched by the courage and simplicity of Medha Patkar (Do or die: Narmada, NI 336).

I suggest her followers name her Dam-Mata Medha. Mata is Hindi for Mother. To dissuade her from her threat to take her own life by drowning, her followers should symbolically drown her effigy with mass attendance, speeches, flowers, prayers etc, very much like bathing the holy statues, and pray that she accepts this symbolism, and continues the unfinished struggle. Such actions repeated in rivers and streams all over India would send a powerful message to the rest of the country.

Karam Chand Ramrakha
Sydney, Australia

Disruptive dams
Maggie Black, introducing the Narmada issue (NI 336) claims not to have a general opinion about dams, only opinions relating to the relative merits of specific areas and projects. I would be interested to know if she can name one dam in which vast areas have not been flooded, displacing human communities and/or thousands of species of wildlife already threatened by modernization and development, and disrupting natural water systems above and below the dam. There are many other less wasteful methods of storing water and generating electricity.

Many of the current floods passed off in the press as natural disasters are the direct result of dams further up bursting or being deliberately opened after heavy rain, causing the sudden and catastrophic devastation we now see regularly. Mozambique and, as I write, Orissa in India are just two examples where global warming has caused heavy rains, and the breach of dams has caused floods hundreds of miles away in low-lying areas.

K Goaman
London, England

Only connect
The damming of Narmada (NI 336) epitomizes the conflicting development paradigms that presently divide humanity – those who believe that a healthy social and physical environment is dependent on a growing economy, and those who believe a healthy economy is dependent on diverse social and physical environments. Short-term operators, including governments, lean toward the former. They fail to appreciate that the economy is a subset of society, which is a subset of the environment.

Australia’s Fitzroy Basin, in Central Queensland, has also been embroiled in a debate about big dams. In 1999 the Queensland Environment and Natural Resources Minister ignored the advice given by government-appointed scientific and community advisory panels, when he and his cabinet colleagues gave the green light to let a foreign company build Nathan Dam and control public water. The proposed Nathan Dam would degrade water quality by reducing environmental flows and greatly increase the likelihood of salinity problems. Yet despite broad opposition across the Fitzroy Basin to the proposed Nathan Dam, the Deputy Prime Minister now wants to subsidize its development, making a farce of his Federal Government’s $1.4-billion National Action Plan on Salinity and Water Quality.

The purpose of our public institutions is to serve our collective interests; yet many, including myself, would argue that the institutions themselves have become part of the problem. By reinventing our public institutions we could help to bridge the divide between a healthy economy and a healthy social and physical environment. Governments need to stop saying ‘we are listening’ and begin to act with integrity and vision.

Bood Hickson
Rolleston, Australia

GM stir
1
Nick Collet’s letter about Genetic Modification (NI 337) displays the ignorance typical of those who argue blindly in its favour. Genetic modification should not be confused with the selective breeding that humans have practised since the earliest development of agriculture – a process in which nature is always the final arbiter. GM takes genes from entirely different species and forces their conjunction, using viruses to carry genetic materials between them (eg genes from flounders implanted in tomatoes), and then employing antibiotics to track their progress. Nature has no say here and monsters are created. The evidence of allergic reaction to newly created proteins – there have been many deaths – the accidental creation of potentially fatal new viruses and other GM failures over the last 20 years is overwhelming. The only geneticists who argue in favour of GM are either employed by the industry or receive their funding directly or indirectly from it.

Peter May
St Céré, France

2
It was disturbing to read Mr Collet’s comments about the wonders of GM food, quoting the need for vitamin-A-enhanced rice to prevent blindness in the populations of developing countries. We really must get back to the question of why these people are so poor as to be malnourished in the first place. Biotech ‘consumables’ – in line with most Western problem-solving strategies – only tackle symptoms rather than causes.

As for GM being a more precise form of selective breeding – well! Crossing two breeds of potato to yield a better spud is not quite the same as splicing human/fish/rat/primate DNA into fruit, vegetables, rice etc and then marketing the results as an economic cure for blindness caused by poverty. Or am I missing the point?

Steve Hutton (Green Party)
Todmorden, England

3
The use of genetic modification commercially – for example, sterile cereals being sold to the poorest farmers, requiring repeated purchase – I find completely immoral. Mr Collet is not disagreeing that ‘nasty corporations (are) making money’ but I contend that there are readily available cheap foods providing vitamin A without the need for genetic modification to provide this.

Diane Collins
Bracknell, England