Letters: The cocaine problem

New policies to deal with the cocaine problem are long overdue

Sir: Congratulations on your front-page story ("The real cost of cocaine", 13 April). It made clear in the most graphic way the appalling price Colombia is paying for the drugs trade.

I only hope it will make some in government think about the damage caused by the UN drugs regime we support, and lead some users to reflect on the true cost of their habit. As a former British ambassador to Colombia, I made the same case, although less eloquently, five years ago in one of your competitors.

Since then in Colombia, the drugs trade has been responsible for thousands more dead, maimed and displaced and thousands more acres of rainforest destroyed. Massive efforts by the present Colombian government have reduced violence significantly but, as long as the drugs money flows in, eliminating it is an impossible task. And there has not been the slightest sign of any consideration of new policies by the international community. That is long overdue.

SIR KEITH MORRIS

(AMBASSADOR TO COLOMBIA 1990-94) LONDON SE19

Sir: Your paper reported the horrific human and environmental cost of cocaine in Colombia. The responsibility for this humanitarian and ecological disaster lies firmly with successive governments that have persisted in a failed policy of prohibition. Prohibition doesn't just fuel violence in South America and Afghanistan. The UK has its own paramilitaries: drug dealers who work outside of the law. They have established their own system of street justice, terrorising communities and killing people in Britain every year.

The schoolgirl Mary-Ann Leneghan was one such casualty: tortured, raped and murdered by gangsters enforcing a drug vendetta, although she was neither a dealer nor involved in organised crime.

It is time to take this industry out of the hands of violent thugs at home and abroad. Drugs must be legalised, regulated and fairly taxed. Maybe one day we'll even have Fair Trade Cocaine.

JONATHAN MAY-BOWLES

WINDSOR, BERKSHIRE

An officer and a gentleman

Sir: Flight-Lieutenant Dr Malcolm Kendall-Smith is a man of honour. His accusers and judge are not, and their conduct suggests an utter indifference to that ancient concept of an officer and gentleman.

Officers have always had dual but complementary personalities. Their commissions make them servants of the Crown, and custom expects them to have the instincts of a gentleman and behave like one. Leaders of men in battle, they were the successors of the mediaeval knights and direct inheritors of the virtues of chivalry: humanity, integrity, valour, truthfulness and a sense of justice.

Men of honour have been allowed to follow their consciences. George III's government accepted Lord Amherst's refusal to serve against the American rebels on the grounds that he believed moral right was on their side. In the 1920s, Air-Commodore Lionel Charlton's moral objections to commanding punitive air raids against Iraqi villages were allowed by his superiors, who posted him elsewhere.

Obligations to the Crown never meant the suspension of an officer's sense of personal honour. Choices between duty and honour were averted by the officer's right to resign his commission. It was peremptorily denied Dr Kendall-Smith.

Thursday's shameful verdict has overturned the concept of gentlemanly honour. Officers have been warned that there is no place for it in Mr Blair's forces, just as there is not in his cabinet.

LAWRENCE JAMES

BALMERINO FIFE

Sir: The issue of whether Flt-Lt Kendall-Smith should or should not have served in Iraq has nothing to do with the fiction of whether the Royal Prerogative is "vicariously transferred to the Prime Minister" (Letters, 18 April). It's simply a matter of practicality. If you sign up to take the Queen's shilling, you forfeit the right to exercise your conscience.

You simply can't run armed forces on the basis that the members can pick and choose what orders they will obey. I'd always thought that the purpose of the training was to instill the habit of instant and unquestioning obedience. If Flt-Lt Kendall-Smith didn't like that, then he shouldn't have accepted the Queen's commission. Didn't it address him as "trusty and well-beloved"?

ANTHONY BRAMLEY-HARKER

WATFORD HERTFORDSHIRE

Sir: Flt-Lt Malcolm Kendall-Smith was sentenced to eight months in prison and £20,000 in court costs for refusing to serve in Iraq. Even if one disagrees with the stance taken by Dr Kendall-Smith, the sentence seems preposterously harsh.

One, officers have a duty to disobey commands that they believe to be illegal; two, the war is not obviously legal; three, it is reasonable for someone to come to the conclusion that the war is illegal, and four, as officers are not lawyers, it is unreasonable to penalise the serviceman for not coming to the same conclusion as the judge about the legality of the war.

I notice Military Families Against The War (http:// www.mfaw.org.uk) are now taking donations to help pay Dr Kendall-Smith's court costs.

BRYAN CHALMERS

WESTHILL, ABERDEENSHIRE

Sir: When I was in the RAF (left in 1984), anybody trying to leave before the full term of their enlistment had to pay up to three times monthly pay, and wait 18 months before release (we used to say that you'd get less for armed robbery).

This meant anybody finding themselves unable to continue their service, due to matters of conscience, had no legal way of getting themselves out in a reasonable timescale.

It would appear that things have gotten no better with the passing years. Isn't it time that the minister responsible for the armed forces worked out some way forward for such people, a legal way out for members of the armed forces (volunteers all), who find that they can no longer, in all conscience, serve.

A PATTISON

DARLINGTON, CO DURHAM

Sir: Contrary to the report "Prisoner of conscience: RAF doctor who refused Iraq service is jailed" (14 April), I pleaded "not guilty" to organising an unauthorised demonstration in the vicinity of Parliament. During this demonstration, my colleague, Maya Evans, read the names of British soldiers who had died during the invasion and occupation of Iraq; I read the names of Iraqi civilians who had died during the same period.

In response to the imposition of a £350 fine, I told the District Judge that I would not be paying, and I expect this to result in a brief prison term at some point. I cannot pay a fine that might imply that it is wrong to remember the dead without police permission.

MILAN RAI

ST LEONARDS, EAST SUSSEX

Israel's attacks on Palestinians

Sir: Suicide bombings are an abomination and Hamas (not responsible for Monday's outrage) should use whatever authority it has over militant groups to clamp down on them. Besides being repugnant they are counterproductive to the Palestinian cause. But the bombing attack on the café in Tel Aviv comes as no surprise. Israel has continued its attacks on Palestinians throughout Hamas's year-long truce.

It has recently escalated these attacks by bombarding Gaza with an estimated 300 shells a day. According to Amnesty International, from 7 to 12 April, at least 15 Palestinians were killed.

The UN's Permanent Observer for Palestine commented on the background to the suicide bombing that "Israel had continued and intensified its military campaign, committing flagrant and grave violations of international law".

He added that although Israel "tried to portray its latest military escalation simply as a response to violence emanating from the Occupied Palestinian Territory, its actions were, in fact, clearly intended to inflict maximum pain, suffering and loss on the Palestinian people while entrenching the occupation and continuing the theft and colonisation of Palestinian land, especially through its illegal settlement campaign and construction of its expansionist wall."

As usual, our political leaders and most of the British media are silent about these atrocities and land grabs, while heaping condemnation on the Palestinians.

DR ROD WALTERS

ABERGAVENNY, MONMOUTHSHIRE

Sir: Robert Cowan (Letters, 13 April) could have mentioned many other similarities between the US and Israel, at least at government level. For example they share a history of pre-emptive strikes against enemies; "extraordinary rendition", covert assassinations and a self-proclaimed respect for all UN resolutions, save the ones they don't like.

But above all, they have an implacable belief in their 100 per cent righteousness. I don't wonder that they are "real friends". But I am horrified that we are well on the way to qualifying for membership of that elite club.

EDDIE DOUGALL

BURY ST EDMUNDS, SUFFOLK

A clearer view of modern Christianity

Sir: In your interesting summary of the beliefs of the major world faiths (14 April) two points in the Christian section seem to be misleading and ill-informed.

First: "God created the universe from nothing in six days and six nights, according to the book of Genesis". Mainstream Christianity has long regarded the Genesis story as a myth to explain, in the words of The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (1997): "The notion that the Universe was brought into being out of nothing by the free act of God ... but developments in modern physics ... make it difficult to see what could be meant by creation other than an affirmation of the dependence of the created order on God's sustaining and preserving power."

Second: "Christians will undergo bodily resurrection and enter God's kingdom. Everyone else will go to Hell". The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought (2000) notes: "Vatican II authoritatively rejected the traditional understanding of 'outside the church no salvation' when it affirmed that those who know neither the gospel nor the church but who seek God with a sincere heart 'may achieve eternal salvation'."

In 1953, the American Jesuit Leonard Feeney was excommunicated for insisting one had to be Catholic to be saved. Christians, get to heaven only if they repents. Baptism is not an automatic right-of-entry ticket.

Christians continue to develop their understanding of their faith.

KEVIN DEN

BLACKBURN, LANCASHIRE

CND and the Committee of 100

Sir: For some reason that has always escaped me, the media has never been able to differentiate between CND and the Committee of 100. Joan Bakewell did it again (Comment, 7 April).

CND and the Committee of 100 were wholly separate associations with fundamentally different methods. CND, led by Canon Collins, was committed to the Labour Party and conventional Westminster politics. Bertrand Russell, who had been president of CND since 1958, decided in 1960 that the gravity of the situation over nuclear weapons was such that only large-scale civil disobedience would meet the case. He broke away to create the Committee of 100 and the sit-down.

The movement then had two parallel histories until the Committee of 100 wound up in the autumn of 1968. Its tradition did not perish, as we later saw at Greenham Common and now see in Parliament Square and Menwith Hill, as reported by Joan Bakewell.

PETER CADOGAN

SECRETARY, NATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE OF 100 LONDON NW6

Replace stamp duty

Sir: Louis Armstrong does not go far enough (Letters, 18 April); stamp duty on houses should be replaced by a property gains tax. There is no reason to tax the transaction when a house changes hands, but there are good reasons for taxing any increase in the capital value, beyond a modest annual real rate of return during ownership.

DR D R COOPER

MAIDENHEAD, BERKSHIRE

No martyrs

Sir: The "water martyrs" Paul Dyer refers to ("Gardener calls for grass-roots rebellion", 17 April) would not be the brave souls who oppose the tyranny of the water companies by flouting the hosepipe ban. They would be the marshland birds, fish and water voles whose habitats would dry out as a result. Rivers and groundwater are not just giant water butts for our use. The water companies could do more, but we need to take our share of responsibility. People who continue to sprinkle lawns and hose cars are not heroes: they are selfish and irresponsible.

RIKI THERIVEL

OXFORD

Blame wild birds

Sir: Caroline Lucas has a point ("Wild birds are not to blame for spreading avian flu", Opinion, 18 April). The first scientifically studied outbreak of highly pathogenic bird flu started in Italy in 1901 and was spread to Austria by bird fanciers exhibiting at a show. The return home of the fanciers after its panic closure helped even more. But to say that intensively farmed flocks are the explosive charge is rhetoric, not science. The evidence that these viruses evolve in wild birds and are spread by them is overwhelmingly strong. They were killing birds long before the giants of the global industry were heard of.

HUGH PENNINGTON

PRESIDENT, SOCIETY FOR GENERAL MICROBIOLOGY, READING

Cancelling out carbon

Sir: Chris Huhne is wrong when he says that the Government is failing to make its flights carbon-neutral ("Minister for air miles", 13 April). Since last year, all flights taken by the Prime Minister, Environment Secretary and their officials have been made carbon-neutral. Since 1 April 2006, this has applied to all Government ministers and civil servants' flights. Last year, the UK's G8 Presidency was the first to be carbon-offset across the board.

LORD BACH

MINISTER FOR SUSTAINABLE FARMING AND FOOD, DEPARTMENT FOR ENVIRONMENT, FOOD AND RURAL AFFAIRS, LONDON SW1

Staying abreast

Sir: Peter Lewis has missed a trick. Far from Male Nipple Mystery (Letters, 13 April) being a rebuttal to intelligent design theory, does it not rather support the thesis that the Intelligent Designer might, in fact, be female? Let the creationists get out of that one.

KEVIN SMITH

LONDON SE23