Or even by moving the mine site further up the coast where there are similar deposits but no such precious ecosystems survive.Yours sincerely, CHARLES SECRETT Director PAUL HELLYER Colleague of Andrew Lees in Madagascar Friends of the Earth London, N127 January. RTZ has never publicly explained how these will be protected, or restored when the company packs its bags and leaves for another part of the world.Conflicts between environmental, economic and social needs can be resolved by appropriate development schemes, such as eco-tourism. In fact, only 350 low-paid, mostly menial labouring jobs will result. These bear no comparison to the economic independence and significantly higher incomesavailable to a far higher number of local people who could be involved in developing eco-tourism – an industry dependent on preserving the irreplaceable forests and preventing mine pollution of nearby beautiful lagoons and marine environment.It is finally worth remembering that the forests to be destroyed by the proposed mine contain ancestral tombs and sacred sites of the local Malagasy.

Even if, by some still to be explained ecological miracle, native species could take root, the forest would need many centuries to re-establish its diverse wildlife.Work for 500 people from the mine sounds a reasonable injection of wealth into the local economy. Consequently, fungi and microflora, essential for forest plant growth in the inherently nutrient-poor substrata, are also rinsed away – no microbugs, no regeneration. Planting trials in the region, on typical mining land residues, have been extremely disappointing, producing sparse and stunted growth of little productive value.As to restoration of the original forest, titanium mining involves washing all organic matter from the soil. Sadly, this is impossible.
RTZ proposes to replant with commercial non-native species such as eucalyptus or pine. While plantations can meet timber needs, and thus relieve cutting by destitute local people, such barren monocultures cannot support the rare plant and animal life only supported by the original ecosystem.There are also real doubts if plantations can even be established. Mr Dowden states that the threatened forests can be “replanted” or “restored”: the implication being that what is unique can easily be replaced. Sir: Richard Dowden spoils his careful exploration of the difficulties of protecting unique tropical forests while encouraging economic development in a deprived region (“Madagascar must choose between trees and titanium”, 25 January), with the conclusion that “with the right mandate”, the company concerned, Rio Tinto Zinc, can “have its mine, restore the forest and reverse the spiral of the people’s poverty …and still make a profit” If only it were true.

He is not what we had in mind at all.Thus Cantonanism: the specious and hypocritical frenzy of moral outrage, displayed by spectators of a violent contact sport on learning that its finest practitioners have no more moral sense than themselves.. No amount of footballing prowess, roared the tabloids, can excuse him Kick him out Ban him for life. When he socked an insulting fan and reverted to type – the sportsman as blindly violent self-seeker – their revenge was terrible. Their idolatry of Eric Cantona was a displacement activity – he did not care for the rules, true, but he was a “Renaissance man”, a “philosopher” who talked about the beauty of goals, quoted Rimbaud, admired Brando and came on like Isaiah Berlin (“I value truth, honesty, respect for one another, compassion and understanding”). In the late 20th century the tendency is everywhere, from arguing with the umpire and substance abuse to violence on and off the pitch: George Best, John McEnroe, Vinnie Jones, Paul Gascoigne, Alex Higgins, Ian Botham, Tonya Harding, Diego Maradona, Tony Adams, Paul Merson, OJ Simpson …An anthropologist could see that homo sportiens has evolved into a self-interested warrior to whom rules are an obstacle and moral absolutes an irrelevance; any empiricist could tell that the fancied connection between being good at games and being goodwas fatally flawed.But British commentators clung to the threadbare heresy of Sportsmanship. Where has it come from?

Once there was Sportsmanship: the belief, based on a simple confusion of categories, that a superior skill in competitive physical activity implies the possession of a comparable moral superiority; and, by extension, the belief that sporting excellence is dependent upon moral excellence – that people win games because they are good people.
Derived from Greek athletics and the Olympian ideal, Sportsmanship took root in English culture by way of Matthew Arnold, Baden-Powell, Sir Henry Newbolt, Kipling, etc. Its examplars this century – Stanley Matthews, Billy Wright, Bobby Charlton, Henry Cooper – merely by exhibiting professional competence without apparent strain or undue show of emotion suggested to British commentators the moral rigour of Arthurian knights.An awkward counter-tendency was apparent early on – the “bodyline” bowlers of the late Twenties, for instance, seemed prepared to risk killing opponents by bowling straight at the heart – but was viewed as an aberration.

The chamber will witness an outbreak of Cantonanism – equal parts sanctimonious flannel and auto-erotic self-righteousness a bout sport. The suicides of their sons offer them nothing but bloodstained delusion And the Middle East has had enough of that.. This afternoon, the House of Commons will debate the merits and otherwise of football in a motion brought by Kate Hoey MP. Only hard negotiation will go some way towards righting the wrongs that were visited upon the Palestinian people and help them to rebuild an old but fractured society. But if south Lebanon was the testing ground for suicide bombers, suburban Israel is now their hunting ground. That alone should give Israeli leaders cause to push forward with the peace negotiations.The continued presence of Israeli troops on occupied Arab land allows Islamic Jihad to justify, in many Palestinian eyes, the slaughter of Israelis within and outside Israel’s 1967 borders.Of course, there are many Arabs who will never accept the existence of a Jewish state, and who will regard last week’s commemoration of Auschwitz as just another reminder that the Arab people of Mandate Palestine should not have paid with the loss of their land for the crimes of modern Europe.That is why the British government and its European partners should continue to support Israel’s painful progress towards coexistence with its neighbours.