Islam contains its own seeds of change
It is not true to claim, as Milton Viorst has done (Opinion, 17/6), that "the Islamic world never had a Renaissance". It did - and, what is more, earlier than the Christian Europeans.
Supported by the Abbasid caliphate of Baghdad, the Mutazilite school of Muslim philosophy introduced what Viorst correctly describes as a "golden age" of the Muslim world. Unfortunately, the Mutazilites were eventually defeated by religious fundamentalists and the politics of power just at the time Christian Europe was beginning to embrace their philosophical foundations and scientific and technological advantages.
This history serves as a guide today, not only with respect to what is happening in Iraq, but to the West's relationship to the Islamic world. If the democratic and secular nations of this world wish to change the Islamic world, then rather than seeking to depose it, which only breeds terrorism, they must support the many and various Muslim secularists who have an orientation towards individual rights and social democracy.
Ultimately the people of Iraq are not unlike ourselves. They want human rights and they want to rule their own country. Only through granting these rights will we transcend the dangerous claim that the world is facing a "clash of civilisations" and the inevitable trajectory it entails.
Lev Lafayette,
Santa Cruz, East Timor
Published, The Age, 18th June, 2003
A dumb deal must not kill a good tax
Are we really supposed to have sympathy for the leaseholders of the Whitehorse Hotel (The Age, 16/2)? They signed a lease that meant the owners accrued the benefits of rising land values, and yet the leaseholder was to pay the tax bill.
This is like a worker agreeing to pay the company tax of their employer. Simply put, it is a very foolish contract to agree to.
People are often unable to admit their own errors, and the case of the Whitehorse Hotel is a particular example. Rather than the leaseholder admitting that they made a mistake, they seek to blame the most efficient and fair methods of taxation.
We don't need less land tax, we need more. At the same time, we need to reduce taxes on all productive activity. In fact, we can, and should, seek to abolish all taxes except for land tax and other resource rentals. That is what almost every economist in the world recommends. Why don't we listen to them?
Lev Lafayette, St Kilda
Published, Feb 18, 2005
Whitewashing US aid to Saddam
DANIEL Mandel (Letters, 11/11), in opposing claims that the US supported the Saddam Hussein regime in the 1980s, seems to have completely forgotten that after the use of chemical weapons in Halabja, the US tried to provide cover for Iraq by initially blaming Iran for the attack.
The support provided by the west for Saddam's regime was both practical and diplomatic. Who provided the Iraqi regime with the blueprints for their first chemical warfare plant? Pfaulder Corporation of Rochester, New York. Who established their mobile communications network? The Karkar Corporation of San Francisco. Who licensed the export of biological material, including pathogenic agents and plans for chemical and biological warfare production facilities after the Halabja atrocity? The US Department of Commerce � that's who.
Numerous books have been written by those whose memories are intact on how the Western world was compliant and supportive of Saddam's regime. Dr Mandel might care to read Kenneth Timmerman's The Death Lobby: How The West Armed Iraq, Mark Phythian's Arming Iraq or Said K. Aburish's Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge.
Lev Lafayette, Ripponlea
Published, November 13, 2006
The national interest JOHN Howard's declaration that he'll put the "national interest first" when challenged on a commitment to cut greenhouse gases by 60 per cent by 2050 indicates that he still doesn't quite understand the problem. Greenhouse gas emissions don't remain within national borders and likewise global warming does not respect sovereignty. Rising sea levels do not just affect a single nation's beaches. Some aspects of the environmental damage can be localised and have largely local effects. But not greenhouse gases and global warming. Put the international interest first, Mr Howard? We're all in this together. Lev Lafayette, Ripponlea Published March 29, 2008
Life on earth MATT Whelan, promoting an outreach sermon of the Frankston Presbyterian Church (Letters, 18/7), believes that an eternal creator God ensures a resolution of the suggestion "from nothing, nothing comes", allegedly espoused by Richard Dawkins and other atheists. Unfortunately for Mr Whelan, neither Dawkins (in any of his books), nor any person with even a modicum of knowledge of the space-time continuum, makes such a claim. The concepts represent the limits of human ken, and certainly the issues are enticing for mystics, but as far as we can tell there is no "nothing", there is no "before" the beginning of time and there is no space "outside" it. In contrast to the claims of those who have to know everything and more, thanks to sublime divine revelation, and those who deny all said speculations, there is fortunately another body of opinion from those who have the intellectual humility to admit what they do not know and concern themselves instead, as a matter of priority, with the conditions of life on this pale blue dot in the vast universe. Lev Lafayette, Ripponlea Published July 18
Dream Team PUTIN, Hu, Bush and Howard all in Australia at the same time? Just imagine the good that could be done. But these are people who evidently worship power, not commonwealth. If only the people present were Leo Tolstoy, Sun Yat-Sen, Thomas Jefferson and John Curtin. Lev Lafayette, Ripponlea Published Sept 7th, 2007
Wrong on drugs THE Prime Minister has announced that those convicted of offences involving heroin, cocaine or amphetamines will have their welfare payments quarantined. This policy will not reduce the use of such drugs one iota. One can only assume it is being proposed for punitive purposes, rather than rehabilitation. However, such petty criminals will turn to other sources for their necessary income; if not more drug dealing, then certainly theft. Is the Prime Minister also going to dovetail this policy with a home and belongings insurance subsidy? Because it certainly will be needed. Lev Lafayette, Ripponlea Published November 19, 2007