Good to talk?
1
The article on mobile phones being a good thing in Africa as they are reinforcing oral traditions and creating new opportunities ('Good to talk', Currents, NI 365) must be read in the context of the human cost of using such technologies. This cost is connected to mobile phone masts being sited near residential areas or on the roof of a place of work or near a school. Research has recently revealed the dangers of non-thermal radiation to which those close to mobile phone mast base stations are exposing themselves. Such radiation poses serious health risks ranging from headaches and nausea to cancer. People's health and profits are clashing and corporate profits are winning. Mobile phone technology may be seen as assisting traditional ways but at its heart is a very new health hazard.

Stuart Ullathorne
London, England

2
Cellphones operate using microwaves which can prevent cells from processing waste material effectively and this is believed by many to be a significant cause of malignant tumours. Alarmingly, one of the first uses to which microwaves were put was as a form of biological warfare.

While the British Government is keen to publicize research that suggests microwave technology is harmless, one must balance this against the £100 billion ($180 billion) annual revenue generated by the mobile phone industry in the UK alone. With a dramatic increase in the incidence of tumours and other illnesses in areas where microwaves are in use, we must admit a note of extreme caution when discussing the undoubted benefits that greater access to communication via cellphones can bring. We must also wonder how people ever managed to live in societies before the advent of this marvellous innovation.

Ian Morris
Kingsbridge, England

Treatment and abuse
Thank you for printing an article on intersex medical treatment and its effects ('The self I will never know', Equality, NI 364). As an intersex person myself, I think there are some strong parallels between intersex medical treatment and child sexual abuse. If an intersex child has her vagina enlarged by surgery, someone has to insert a large phallic-shaped object into it each day for a few weeks after surgery, to stop it shrinking again. Normally this is done by nurses or junior doctors while the child is in hospital, but it is quite common for the patient's mother to have to insert the object into her daughter's vagina once a day for a week or so after she leaves hospital. In any other context this would be considered sexual abuse. I'm not convinced that it is less psychologically harmful just because the adult isn't doing it for fun.

Even if an intersex child does not have this treatment, they can come to associate their genitals with medical treatment and pain due to recent surgery, and think of them as a part of the body that lots of people in white coats look at under cold fluorescent lights, while pointing out interesting features to one another. This must affect one's sexuality.

Caroline Glass
Wellington, New Zealand/Aotearoa

Cruellest cut
Esther Morris (NI 364) raises important questions about the ethics of genital surgery on babies born with ambiguous genitalia. However, does anyone have the right to reshape the genitals of underage children because of religion or custom?

If it is OK to reshape underage children's genitals, why do we object to genital surgery on little girls, call it mutilation and try to eradicate it? If it is wrong to reshape underage children's genitals, why do we allow genital surgery on little boys, call it circumcision and take a 'handsoff' approach to its regulation? We call genital surgery 'mutilation', 'circumcision', 'corrective surgery' or 'repair' depending on the shape of the child's genitals. How justifiable are these distinctions?

One thing is clear: if we are to protect the rights of women and intersex people, we need to confront and clarify our thinking about all genital cutting of all children, regardless of gender, regardless of religion and regardless of local custom.

Michael Glass
Ashbury, Australia

Hands on
I read the Equality issue (NI 364) from cover to cover, heartened by the progress made in places like Rwanda and Somaliland and sobered by the huge amount of work yet to do in the world to achieve gender equality.

But the 'Equality Watch: Women and Men' box's last line, 'Women still have much work to do', begs a simple question. Wouldn't the work of gender equality go twice as fast if it were shared equally by women and men? Gender equality is every bit as much men's work as it is women's. After all, it is rare to find a man without a mother, wife, sister or daughter, and it is rarer still to find a feminist, male or female, who wouldn't welcome the extra help.

Dorothy Sauber
Minneapolis, US

Right libertarianism
While it is true that laissez-faire liberal Robert Nozick defines himself as a Libertarian ('A few thoughts on equality', NI 364), the Right is notorious for hijacking popular left-wing language and philosophies. Peter Marshall notes in Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism that the usage of the term 'Libertarian' encompasses many diverse, yet loosely associated ideals. These range from a personal title of those who work to severely restrict State power in their lives, to groups such as the Fabians, who want radical socialization of the economy but still wish to retain a State skeleton, to those who desire the abolition of the State altogether (Anarchists). I would suggest that your definition of Libertarianism is misleading, giving as it does the impression that Nozick's particular adaptation is characteristic of all Libertarian thought. It should have been more specifically labelled as Right Libertarianism.

Kirsty Seidel
Adelaide, Australia

The human race has a long, long way to go before it grows up

Oh, do grow up!
I enjoyed reading the Equality issue (NI 364). Many people seem to need to 'hate' another group of people. If they cannot publicly hate someone because of their race, then they will find an easier target to project their hate onto, such as homosexuals or the disabled.

I have been subjected to hate and violence because of my gender. I have not been given employment opportunities because of my punk looks and the way I dress. I have had to put up with stares, verbal abuse and dirty looks because of my sexuality. The human race has a long, long way to go before it grows up.

M Rodriguez
Modbury, Australia

Free for all
I read with interest your articles about the IMF and World Bank and how their policies have been such a dismal failure (More World, Less Bank, NI 365). On the contrary, their policies have succeeded brilliantly in doing what they set out to achieve: namely, the economic ruin of nations everywhere in order to hold the entire world in the icy grip of the free market. An entity which could more aptly be called the free-for-all market, where the law of the jungle rules and only the richest, most ruthless and well-connected survive at the expense of everyone and everything else.

Barbara A Jackson
Gold Coast, Australia

Howard’s army
According to Rowan Callick ('Ballots, guns and money', The Unreported Year 2003, NI 364): 'Australian military deployments to Iraq and East Timor are responses to its concern about regional security after 11 September, the 2002 Bali bombing and the Marriott Hotel bombing in Jakarta in August 2003 which killed 12 people.' This is nonsense.

Australian soldiers are in East Timor because, in 1999, hundreds of thousands of people could not just stand by while the Timorese were slaughtered by the Indonesian army (TNI) and its goon squads. PM John Howard, an apologist for the US- and UK-supplied Indonesian military, was pushed into it. That provided a break in 24 years of Australian Government complicity in TNI terrorizing of illegally occupied East Timor.

And Iraq? The 850 military personnel are there because of Howard's knee-jerk obsequiousness to the Great Hegemon, George W Bush and his thugs. They were sent despite public pressure, and with a great deal of his retailing of Bush and Blair lies. How could the invasion of a mainly Muslim country a world away, have anything to do with 'regional security'? Our two largest neighbours, predominantly Muslim, and with deep popular resentments of US machinations, were seriously opposed to the wretched invasion. And what Howard did will not buy US protection. Perhaps it was for the 'Free Trade Agreement' with the US that Howard is now crowing about.

Stephen Langford
Paddington, Australia

Just desserts
I thought I should defend the NI's placing of 'Cannibals apologize to the eaten' (NI 363) in the Seriously column. Although I agree with Belinda Burnside's statement (Letters, NI 365) that Australian politicians (and other colonial governments too, I think) should apologize for the genocide played out on the native and aboriginal populations (and pay reparations too for that matter), I don't think the native Fijians had anything to apologize for in the butchering and eating of Reverend Thomas Baker. Baker was engaged in trying to colonize Fiji, and in doing so he had what was coming to him. Even if it meant that all that was left of him was his boot!

Spencer Herbert
Vancouver, Canada