Voices in Conflict: Credibility, Conscience and the Battle for Truth

Letters to the editor

Journalism without credibility not wanted

The only possible reason Business Report continues to publish fake articles from the Presidential Climate Commission must be because it is paid to do so. The latest claptrap of February 18 is particularly disgraceful because it lacks scientific and economic evidence.

The introductory paragraph is a salad of the buzzwords so favoured by those who deny the reality that climate change is a natural phenomenon. Phrases like “just transition”, “decent work”, “sustainable economy”, “deepening democracy”, and “economic renewal” are already proven to be fake in states like Germany and the US’s Democrat-run states, like New Jersey, California and Pennsylvania.

What these false prophets avoid is reference to how, without fossil fuels, ore mining would occur, how planes would fly, and how an economy could be sustained if it were de-industrialised.

Instead of trotting out glib images of new opportunities and referencing codes of good practice (which are only of interest to lawyers to exploit), their pie-in-the-sky narrative never explains how food production will be maintained. Take petroleum products out of life and explain how mass transportation can occur, mass cultivation of crops without diesel tractors, diesel transport, plastic packaging – the list is endless.

The denialists also avoid the fact that the cost of batteries to store solar energy is hugely expensive and the terrible environmental damage caused by the mining of lithium for the batteries required for their “sustainable economy”.

Yet this is what their “just transition” entails – simply to address the concocted calculation that decarbonisation would reduce by 1.5ºC what is an historically proven, naturally occurring cycle of warming and cooling.

Another falsehood in the article is that Spain, Germany and Canada are managing their “just transition” well. Actually, employment is up, electricity costs have driven industry to China and India. Alberta, which has massive oil reserves, is up in arms over the green regulations imposed.

Where is the journalism with credibility?

DR DUNCAN DU BOIS Bluff

Rethinking global conflict attention

Sifiso Mahlangu writes an excellent opinion piece – Passion For Palestine Must Translate To Africa (Daily News, February 18).

He asks: “Why does Palestine galvanise such energy while African wars struggle for comparable attention?”

His answer is couched in geopolitical terms.

A more cogent explanation is one based on anti-semitism. Hatred for Jews is the driving force, while the ill-considered use of “genocide” and “apartheid state” fuel the fire.

Mahlangu would do well to write on the role Islam plays in the ongoing turmoil in countries where it is practiced.

C RICHARDS Craighall, Johannesburg

New scrutiny on civil rights era leadership

In 2019, serious allegations were made against the US civil rights movement. Rev Jesse Jackson (1941–February 17) was involved.

American historian David Garrow published a detailed article in 2019 titled The Troubling Legacy of Martin Luther King. In it were allegations as serious as King having been present when leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference gang-raped a lady parishioner, with King allegedly laughing.

The arrest of Rosa Parks, an African-American, in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger, was also said to have been staged, as was the 1963 March on Washington, where King gave his famous “I Have A Dream” speech.

US President John F Kennedy and his inner circle allegedly controlled the March on Washington from behind the scenes, from start to finish.

When police turned on the marches and used water hoses and dogs, King and the movement’s leaders put young Black boys and girls at the front of the marches to take the brunt of the brutality.

Was King a revolutionary? No, he was not. If he was not, it is hard to see how Jackson was.

There was nothing revolutionary about the movement as a whole, but rather something cosmetic, like a drug that gave a temporary high.

King was a womaniser. If you cannot be faithful in marriage, can you be trusted?

The night before his 1968 assassination, King reportedly spent the night in a motel with Kentucky senator Georgia Powers.

So where does this leave us today?

This is not about race. This is not a black thing, because all lives matter, not just those of black people. The struggles in society worldwide centre around stratifications created by economics. Racism is not the problem; class divides are, because there are wealthy people of all races around the world, just as there are those who are not so well off. For example, people of all races appear in the Epstein Files.

Would King have appeared in the Epstein Files were he still alive?

Let all of us around the world fix our societies because all lives matter.

MICHAEL MUNDIA KAMAU Kenya

DAILY NEWS