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Peace protesters, anthrax, and What Would Spiked Do: more spiked readers give their views.

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Topics Politics

After the attack on America: more spiked readers give their views.

What do you think? Email spiked letters. Please keep your letters succinct.

John Pilger claims that George W Bush and Tony Blair are responsible for the famine in Afghanistan (Fighting talk: Howard Jacobson and John Pilger, 11 October). Does he seriously believe that the Afghan people started starving on 11 September – or that Bush and Blair can create a three-year drought? Or that the economic incompetence and cruelty of the Taliban could be due to Islington cocktail parties? I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. James Cox, UK

So spiked is against the war on Afghanistan – that much is perfectly clear from Mick Hume’s passing comment on opposing the bombing (which he says is the ‘easy bit’) (Now it is war – but for what?, 8 October) and Brendan O’Neill’s searing indictment of the anti-war movement (More to it than anti-war, 11 October). You have rightly pointed out that Western leaders seem unsure of themselves – but maybe spiked could offer some vision of what should be done next, rather than just criticising everybody else. O’Neill’s article raises a number of useful criticisms of peace protesters, but doesn’t suggest a different way of fighting against the West’s war, or taking up either the West’s faltering nerve or the anti-war movement’s ‘confusion and dithering’. O’Neill rightly criticises the anti-war movement for being in favour of more intervention, but fails to put forward an alternative to the diplomacy or law courts offered. So what is spiked saying: hands off the Middle East – completely? I think we should be told. Steven Heywood, UK

You people are great! I am so glad I have found you. It is not easy to get critical and anti-war information in the USA. I just wish I could forward your articles. I have mentioned you to my friends and family. You are a voice in this American wilderness. Ruth Swensen, USA

Brendan O’Neill is right about the blandness of the speakers at Saturday’s CND march in London – almost all mentioned how ‘fantastic’ the crowd was just for showing up (The piece movement, 16 October 2001). However, his statements about the ‘lost syndrome’ of participants are hardly accurate. In times when UK home secretary David Blunkett is considering ‘cash prizes’ to those who vote, a many-thousands march does not exist in any politician’s wildest dream. Whether the marchers had in mind ‘intervention in Afghanistan affairs’ is O’Neill’s own conclusion – and is far from substantiated. To my mind, most people marched opposing an irrational war bringing more irrational killings. Jose Luna, UK

The anthrax scare is a tempest in a teapot (Fear and defeatism infect the West, 16 October). People will buck up after they realise that they are not going to live forever and that there are things worth fighting about. Most people have a better chance of getting hit by lightning. The post office, FedEx and UPS will probably install irradiation equipment to sterilise packages and letters at their sorting locations, and that will be the end of that. In the meantime, if you’re worried – use disposable latex gloves and a surgical mask when you open your mail in the backyard, so you don’t contaminate your house. Frank Colongallardo, USA

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Topics Politics

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