Letter of the week: A ‘special relationship’ with the US is now a fantasy

The normalisation of the presence of an armed paramilitary force, ICE, in Democratic cities is clearly paving the way for an intervention if voters make the “wrong” choice – or even to dissuade them from voting at all. We had all better hope enough Americans are already developing a strategy to pre-empt this plan.
Tom Burke

Donald Trump owns several properties outside the US. We should build massive windmills on them all.
Keith Hobbs

Perhaps the UK can now finally ditch the “special relationship” fantasy? The British media could also stop referring to POTUS – preposterously – as ‘“the leader of the free world”. On current evidence, only Mark Carney is worthy of that moniker.
Will Goble

Mark Carney’s speech at Davos was so eloquent, so honest and so true. I do hope that all our politicians read it over and over and take its fundamental message on board. It really is time for the EU and Britain to join forces with countries like Canada and set up a new alliance to protect our sovereignty from the global overreach, cupidity and crass stupidity of imperialists like Trump.
Liz Court

All this to avoid Trump having to publish the Epstein files!
Simon Pocock

Re: “Should we boycott Trump’s World Cup?” by Simon Barnes (TNW #468)

Trump will politicise this event in the same way that Hitler politicised the 1936 Olympics. It is time to move on from a corrupt Fifa under the sycophant Gianni Infantino and return football to its grass roots.
Colin Macken

Re: “My trans friends: in their own words” by Marie Le Conte (TNW #468)

Thank you, Marie, for writing this. I’ve met people who have been trans for decades and have quietly lived their life, with minimal harassment, using the bathroom of their choice, who are suddenly being questioned about their biological sex. I know trans men (yes! they exist!) who feel they are ignored in the debate.
Angela Rosin

That the women in Marie’s article felt the need to remain anonymous speaks to the toxicity of the debates and the lack of safety for trans people in the UK today. Please continue to speak to and include the voices of trans people in TNW.
Tessa Godfrey

Suggested Reading

This is what trans people really think

Marie Le Conte

As a trans woman, I find myself asking why the loudest voices of objection and vilification of the trans community almost always seems to come from men, men who have little understanding of how difficult it is to navigate a world shaped by toxic male behaviour from a small but obnoxiously entitled group. 
Belinda Mifsud

I write as a long-standing defender of the 2010 Equality Act, which specifically defends trans rights under the protected characteristic of gender reassignment. The Supreme Court ruling sadly left some people shocked. This was largely because certain organisations wrongly advised the trans community that the UK had a policy of self-ID and that anyone could have access to single-sex spaces. This was never the law, nor the intention behind it. 

Women’s rights, as sex-based rights, have been fought for over centuries, in particular the right to single-sex spaces for reasons of safety, dignity and privacy. As a society, we are capable of providing separate unisex spaces to accommodate trans people.
Carole Tongue

We didn’t have to be here. Trans rights activists could have campaigned for accommodations that did not impinge on women’s rights. They could have engaged in respectful debate that enabled women’s needs to be taken into account. But this didn’t happen. 

Behind closed doors, they insisted that men had to be allowed in every women-only space. And there was to be “no debate” – so anyone who objects is labelled a bigot; women have lost livelihoods, been bullied, harassed, put through the stress of drawn-out legal proceedings, had critical medical care cancelled.   

Sex realists don’t want trans people to feel uncomfortable or unsafe – we want everyone to be comfortable and safe, but with trans activism, making women uncomfortable and unsafe looks like the point.
Chris Russell

Re: “Don’t forget about Gaza” by Paul Mason
(TNW #468)

Comparing Palestine Action to the Suffragettes may or may not be appropriate, but dismissing such comparisons outright by narrowing their struggle to just the vote is both historically incomplete and politically convenient.

The Suffragettes smashed windows, set fire to property, and attacked symbols of the state – not for some technocratic tweak to law, but for fundamental human recognition. Their methods were controversial then, as Palestine Action’s are now.

The outrage directed at PA often seems less about the damage caused and more about the discomfort of having uncomfortable truths forced into public view. We may have “the vote” today – but what does that mean when successive governments continue to supply arms to states accused by credible international bodies of committing war crimes?

Condemning criminal damage is fair. But doing so without interrogating the moral context of that damage – of British complicity in arming an occupation – is intellectually dishonest. We should be asking why nonviolent protests are so often dismissed, why international law is applied selectively, and why those demanding justice for the Palestinian people are labelled “anti-democratic”, while those defending the indefinite occupation of Gaza are not. If this movement has drifted from its centre, maybe it’s because the centre refuses to listen.
Seán Hogan OBE
Ireland 

As someone who has supported the right of the Palestinians to have a homeland for over 50 years, I am depressed by the number of far left supporters who don’t understand that we need compromise in order for Palestine to exist. We need the same compromise from Israel, too.

I absolutely agree that PA’s actions have become about the freedom to protest. That said, it is also frustrating that a majority of the population is concerned about Gaza, but our government seems to have decided to just let it drop now that there is a nominal “ceasefire”.
Ann Harries

BELOW THE LINE

Re: “Germansplaining: Will AI kill us all?” by Tanit Koch (TNW #468)

I highly recommend the podcast documentary series The Last Invention. It should be the top issue for the world right now. A one in 10 risk of human extinction because of AI is actually understating it; many AI professionals put the risk higher, including some of the guys leading the big AI companies.
Simon Riley

Re: “The terrible power of Industry” by Ros Taylor (TNW #468)

Why is this series about immoral investment bankers called Industry? I was expecting smoking chimneys, big, noisy machinery and people sweaty from work, not from bonking.

Is it because people in the City like to add the term to every form of human activity, now that Britain has lost most of its real industries? I found it boring, superficial and utterly self-indulgent.
Thomas Blomberg

Re: “The press that thinks it’s the opposition” by Tom Baldwin (TNW #467)

My first wife’s father was the left-leaning Oxford historian AJP Taylor. When he threatened to sue the Daily Express for libel, the case was settled by their offering him a weekly column. That’s unimaginable now,
isn’t it?
Tim Fell