Disputed islands

SIR – Robert Wade was wrong when he asserted that China has claimed the Senkaku Islands for centuries and has always treated Japan’s annexation as illegal (Letters, February 2nd). The fact is that China didn’t claim ownership of the islands until the 1970s. Its world atlases always showed them as Japanese territories and even the People’s Daily in 1953 depicted them as belonging to the Ryukyu Islands.

Professor Wade was also wrong in stating that the Potsdam Declaration of 1945 deprived Japan of all its overseas territories, including the Senkakus. A careful reading of the declaration together with the Cairo Declaration that preceded it and the Treaty of Shimonoseki of 1895 would tell him that the islands were not on the mind of world leaders at Potsdam.

Moreover, the Chinese fishermen who trespassed on Japanese territorial seas in 2010 rammed their vessel repeatedly against a Japanese coastguard boat. It was a serious act, endangering maritime safety.

Akira Sugino

Yokohama, Japan

Guatemala’s murky politics

SIR – You ran an encouraging article on Guatemala (“Edging back from the brink”, January 26th). Yet the politics of this country remain slippery. Guatemala has suffered from decades of civil unrest aggravated by a stultifying tradition of oligarchy. Left-wing insurgents tried to overthrow the state, but although they failed miserably the guerrillas won hearts and minds across the globe, and with that came political power. Today’s government is a product of that anomalous fact: an uneasy alliance between the oligarchy and the former guerrillas, with the presidency in the hands of the oligarchy and the justice ministry in the hands of the insurgents. The arrest of soldiers at Totonicapán that you referred to was not a triumph for the rule of law, rather it was a case of the justice ministry disciplining its political opponents, to put it mildly. Claudia Paz y Paz, the attorney-general, has replaced the tradition of semi-lawlessness with something parading as constitutional law. Prosecutors who refuse to do the leftists’ bidding are punished, while violators of the law are the ministry’s off-the-record enforcers. President Otto Pérez Molina allows this situation to continue in order to protect his position. The foreign media applaud it and say things are improving, even though they are not. Armando de la Torre

Dean of the graduate school of social sciences

Francisco Marroquín University

Guatemala City

Cut the king some slack

* SIR – Jordan’s predicament defies simplistic labelling and characterisation (“Bad for the king”, January 19th). To understand the full story one has to go back to the settlement after the first world war. Since 1921 the king has had to be a political magician who conjures up rabbits continuously to satisfy an insatiable audience of Jordanians, Western donors, Arab benefactors, Israelis, and Palestinians (in Jordan, the West Bank, Gaza, Israel and the diaspora). In 1948 the king had to provide for half a million Jordanians on the East Bank. Today the number is more than six million, and rising with the influx of uprooted Syrians.

The development of nations in the Middle East, with the possible exception of Turkey and Israel, has been largely based on rentierism fuelled by oil revenues and aid. In the absence of a modern industrial base the modernisation of poverty with political and economic patronage still prevails. Pundits, former prime ministers, ministers and intelligence chiefs may pontificate about Jordan’s faults, such as the perceived inferiority of Bedouin and tribal traditions. But when the Emperor Meiji started modernising Japan in 1868 he looked to the honour-bound tribal order composed of samurai, feudal princes and merchants. Their sons donned business suits and successfully carried their codes of conduct into the world of modern technology. By all means, keep the kingdom on its toes, but give Jordan, and its king, a break. Ahmad Mango

Amman, Jordan

Oxfam’s not just about food

SIR – Your otherwise excellent report on Purpose.com, a new online public-campaigning organisation, was marred by a truly bizarre misrepresentation of Oxfam. You called us “a 70-year-old charity that delivers food to the poor” (“Profit with Purpose”, January 26th). We have indeed just turned 70, and assume that The Economist, 170 years old this year, will excuse us our extreme youth. But portraying Oxfam as a food-delivery organisation ignores a far wider role, including our campaigning. The day before the article appeared, we, along with a hundred other British organisations, launched the “If” campaign aimed at tackling global hunger by, among other things, curbing tax evasion and land grabs in poor countries. Both issues are promoted on the Purpose.com website. Barbara Stocking

Chief executive

Oxfam

Oxford

Please don’t presume

* SIR – You criticised Barack Obama for allowing Israel to “presume that its friendship with America comes so cost-free,” citing a recent instance of settlement expansion after which “Mr Obama duly chastised Israel, but was afraid to annoy Israel’s friends in Congress by penalising it” (“Don’t give up”, January 19th). Israel would do well to give up its presumption.

According to a recent GBA Strategies poll, 80% of America’s Jewish voters support a two-state solution, and 69% want America to play an active role in the conflict even if it means “publicly stating its disagreements with both the Israelis and the Arabs.”

Automatic, knee-jerk congressional support for any and all Israeli actions comes largely from misperceptions of American-Jewish sentiment perpetrated by hard-line organisations like AIPAC and the Anti-Defamation League. Once congressional leaders realise the true nature of their constituents’ views, America is likely to take a more active role in pushing Israel towards peace.

Ron Vogl

New York

Britain’s zombie economy

SIR – It is indeed concerning that labour is increasingly concentrated in unproductive parts of the British economy (“The job-rich depression”, January 26th). But it is cheap credit from banks that is keeping companies alive that would otherwise fail. If credit conditions were tighter the banks would be forced to raise interest rates on loans to these zombie companies, causing them to go bust and either reorganise or close down. Capital and labour would reallocate to more productive sectors. It is low interest rates that are prolonging the agony.

Paul Goodson

Plaxtol, Kent

Abortion in Ireland

SIR – Ireland is in the thrall of an abortion debate that should have been resolved 20 years ago (“Still restrictive”, February 2nd). Tolerating the open secret that thousands of women must travel abroad for abortions is unconscionable. The majority of the electorate support some loosening of the abortion law and many are willing to go much further in affirming women’s autonomy than any legislative option offered so far. The bitterness of a vocal minority, many of them in the Catholic hierarchy, should not be allowed to override the people’s will. After the A, B and C ruling and the X Case, do we have to go through the entire alphabet before Ireland is able to muster up a workable abortion law? Irish women who need abortions deserve more than being designated a letter in a lawsuit; they should be respected as individuals with full names and full rights, who can get safe reproductive health care in their own country. Jon O’Brien

President

Catholics for Choice

Washington, DC SIR – Passions run deep on both sides of the abortion debate (“Roe turns 40”, January 26th). The life of Norma McCorvey, the Jane Roe in Roe v Wade, is a perfect example. Having started out as the plaintiff for abortion rights in the 1973 case she later had a change of heart and became actively pro-life.

The same woman who had spent the first two decades of the Roe era campaigning energetically in favour of abortion rights has spent the past two decades speaking out with equal fervour against the court’s decision.

Carol Trebes

Livermore, California

Carbon fashion

SIR – I enjoyed your article detailing the last bastions of carbon paper, though you left out one other business where it is still used (“Fade to black”, January 26th). The fashion industry uses carbon paper, most often in yellow, white and blue, to transfer sewing guidelines to fabric by tracing. The lines wind up on the inside of a garment and disappear when sewn over. Nicholas Paganelli

New York Where’s the referee? SIR – Laurent Fabius chastised David Cameron for promising to hold a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union by griping that when you join a football club you can’t just turn around and say “let’s play rugby” instead (“The Cameron is coming”, January 26th). The old saying that football is a gentleman’s game played by barbarians and rugby is a barbarians’ game played by gentlemen comes to mind. Mr Cameron has discovered that the EU’s bureaucrats are no gentlemen. Many other members of the “club” would leave too if voters were given a choice.

Mr Fabius would do well to read George Orwell, who once said that football is “a game in which everyone gets hurt and every nation has its own style of play which seems unfair to foreigners.”

Daniel Whitmore

Paris

*Letter appears online only