But our choice to pursue this division of global labour means we are inextricably linked to the environmental disasters in China.Greenpeace of all organisations should be grappling with the root cause of global environmental deterioration, which is the excessive consumption level of modern lifestyles built on the twin towers of consumer greed and profligate waste.JAMES FARNHAMMERRIDGE, SOMERSETSir: The UK timber trade wholly condemns illegal logging and the practices that support it. Wood provides the world's only sustainable building material; it its therefore vital that we protect and manage this resource and do all we can to stop the illegal trade.Working with suppliers in producer countries is central to success. The hypocrisy is made even more ironic by the fact that in many cases the goods we are importing are the least sustainable because of the extra carbon emitted by travelling half way round the world.Apparently progress for the west is that we no longer dirty our hands with the messy business of manufacturing and can luxuriate in a world built on hedge funds and aromatherapy. On the one hand the UK can self righteously proclaim its own environmental credentials through its commitments to the likes of Kyoto, while at the same time keeping the high street full of ever cheaper goods.This miracle can only be achieved by exporting our carbon emissions and corporate social responsibility to countries such as China and India. With only the unheeded courthouse ramblings of the former dictator himself, living up to his allotted role of entirely unreliable witness, to challenge the official narrative, US Perception Management Inc will score a much needed victory in the information war that remains essential to its Iraq mission.The Saddam trial, configured as pantomime for western audiences, will thus only prolong the utter disaster of the US's fifty-year history of covert and overt meddling in Iraq.DANBERT NOBACONLEEDSSir: Is it too much to hope that Saddam will call Donald Rumsfeld as a good character witness?STEVE POOLEBRISTOL Carbon emissions exported to China Sir: The reason so many western politicians "queue up" to sing China's praises ("The China Crisis", 19 October) is because that country's economic boom conveniently allows them to keep voters happy by performing an apparent miracle.
It is also paying dividends in this case, in keeping "interfering" liberal European lawyers off the pitch, and thus the more unsavoury aspects of US foreign policy out of the full glare of the western media. On the surface a local trial for local people, it is taking place in the Green Zone under a US military occupation of Iraq.The last thing the neo-conservatives want is Donald Rumsfeld's "loans and weapons" meetings with Saddam Hussein (when in 1983-84 as Reagan's special envoy, his job was to reintegrate Iraq into the US fold for policing the Middle East region) open to new scrutiny.The smart lie of Bush junior's war on Iraq, that America the brave altruistically took on Saddam the evil, remains intact as long as western complicity in aiding and abetting Saddam during the years of his worst crimes remains off record. I'd probably end up with the worst of both worlds - semiliterate in an art form the central value of which (as far as I'm selfishly concerned) is its illiteracy So, I'll be protecting my philistinism. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but even less can be quite thrilling More from Thomas Sutcliffe. Saddam trial designed not to bring out the whole truth Sir: The trial of Saddam Hussein by an Iraqi court, on highly specific charges of relating to mass murder in 1982 (and thus prior to the full scale western re-engagement with Iraq, which predominated for the rest of the 1980s) is from the US point of view a carefully constructed exercise in damage limitation. The Bush administration's rejection of the International Criminal Court has been portrayed as a means of preventing US soldiers facing war crimes charges.
If you try to repeat it too often, you start to accumulate knowledge like an artery accumulates plaque. You would, insidiously, start to know whether a particular movement is crassly derivative, or that a certain arrangement of dancers is a witty allusion to Balanchine. And while I know that there will almost certainly be a whole set of pleasures associated with that (smart fun is usually more fun than dumb fun), I also know that I just don't have the time and patience. All that matters is the present sensation.There's an obvious Catch-22 about this naive pleasure, though. If they didn't have to mime everything, I find myself thinking, we could all be out and having a drink a lot quicker.Language is at the heart of my problems with modern dance, too - which, whatever its merits (I'm not denying it has them) seems to me a poor medium for sophisticated communication. If you want a visual image of my prejudice, just recall one of those Jules Feiffer cartoons in which a Martha Graham-style woman in a black leotard subtitles her own movements - "In this dance I celebrate corporate mergers".The trouble is, I don't find it easy to switch off the translation chip that is a central component in a critical response to other cultural forms. To read a novel intelligently is (in part, anyway) to identify the discrepancies between what it is saying and the way it is saying it.
