Letters To Editor: Dictators ready to use weakness

Dictators ready to use weakness
Now that the US has resolved its problem with Osama bin Laden, Phil Goff is gifted with another reason for withdrawing our SAS from Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, ironically bin Laden's family members are indignant an unarmed man was executed.
Looking at the wider picture, a recent survey on the quality of motherhood placed Afghanistan at the bottom of the 160 countries surveyed. If everyone withdraws their forces, that's not going to change.
A recent TV3, The Nation programme revealed Phil Goff's interest in foreign matters developed at university where he raised the Viet Cong flag following communism's successful invasion of South Vietnam.
They reinvented the war after agreeing to its official end at the Paris peace conference two years earlier.
Communists have a history of treachery before the ink was dry on a 1962 agreement signed in Geneva. They started a campaign to take over Laos, something they promised never to do. On a subsequent state visit to Australia, neutralist premier of Laos, Prince Souvanna Phouma, said North Vietnam had 40,000 troops deployed in his country endeavouring to put local communists in power.
Currently, Vietnam has troops deployed in their Dien Bien Province in order to contain a rare protest by ethnical Hmong Christians, some of whom are calling for non independent kingdom.
It's doubtful we'll hear much from this hard-to-reach area.
The tragedy of all this is bin Laden had a ringside seat in assessing how dumb the west could be.
Dictators are expert at subversion as Hitler said, "I did not enter this planet to make men strong, I came to use their weaknesses."
Lindsay Schroder, Hastings
Turned herself in
 On Thursday, May 12, you felt it worthy to publish a case of a woman who turned herself into the police station and admitted abusing her children. She was surely asking for help and she owned up to what she had been doing. As a thank you for this she had her name published on the front page, along with what she had done.
I realise that we are concerned with the number of children who are being abused, but here is a woman who turned herself in.
Now that her name has been published it identifies her children which results in more upsets for them.
What message does this give us? It tells us that if you have an anger problem and abuse your children do not turn yourself in.
The other cases that you mention are cases that have been brought to our attention as a result of a child being taken to hospital with serious injuries and the police have investigated.
J Bell, Waipukurau
Ducks are pests
Re the article by Liz Earth on May 7 regarding the start of duck shooting season. I wish to add the following: from the beginning, Liz's comments and statements, which I thought were extreme - such as using the big bad wolf in a piggery image and comparing it to hunters in their shooting areas, and the use of "impending death and wounding of thousands of defenceless and beautiful birds" - are crazy.
It outrages the people who have a major problem with these "defenceless" birds. I cannot see how they are defenceless as all birds have wings and can fly.
The ducks that get away from the shooting areas either fly to a park, sanctuary or reserves. This is where the ducks usually breed as it is a safe area. No hunters are allowed to shoot until the season starts they also are not allowed to shoot on any of these landmarks.
Some ducks are beautiful but let's face it the Department of conservation (DOC) has named paradise ducks, swans, canada geese, grey ducks and mallard ducks as pests in New Zealand.
These ducks or birds are damaging our land by eating the grass and contaminating waterways with their faecal matter.
A paradise duck consumes the same amount of grass as a cow in one year and canada geese carry bad diseases that cause waterways to be damaged.
Shooters have to have a licence to shoot lead.
Lead is strictly to be used over land while 200m away from waterways and all hunters follow this rule and understand the concept of it.
I don't understand when "much of it will end up in rivers and remain there forever ... and threatens the well-being of fish, birds and humans". This is extreme and ridiculous as it will not threaten fish, birds or even humans for that matter.
If an accident happened and a shot landed in the river, it will certainly not affect the waterways and would only degrade away.
There is certainly no big bad wolf in the piggery.
Jack Dever, Wairoa