IN Mark Parton’s article, “Keep the faith, stay alert” (CN, September 25), he makes an unfortunate slip-up: “They think there was no threat and that, as a nation, we were being racist to these poor, defenceless, peaceful Muslims.”

In the context, he is directly linking Islam to an alleged terrorist plot. Does Mark genuinely not understand that Daesh does not represent Islam, in the same way that the Ku Klux Klan does not represent Christianity?

I hope it’s only a naive error, and not a symptom of a deeper underlying fear of people who believe different gods to himself. A more suitable wording to emphasise the sarcasm could be, “… poor, defenceless, peaceful activists” (or “mercenaries”, “militants”, etc).

Could you perhaps have a gentle word to Mark about the perils of inciting xenophobia by directly linking terrorists and Islam? There are a great many Muslims in the country who are not seeking to kill their neighbours. I’m sure Mark doesn’t mean to incite violence against peaceful citizens minding their own business?

I can see that Mark was trying to misrepresent the opinion of certain people on social media as being thoroughly misguided, but in his misguided attempt to snark at people such as myself who are extremely cynical of massive police activities that involve 800 members to bring two charges and a single arrest, he has made an inflammatory and apparently bigoted statement.

I don’t mind Mark having the terribly misguided opinion that the police would never, ever be commissioned to undertake operations intended to fulfil a political goal of the Government of the day, but could he please take some care to avoid inciting hatred and animosity towards members of society who don’t believe the same god as him?

Alex Satrapa, Isabella Plains

Yes but not Labor, Brianna

I WAS disappointed to hear that “Mrs Fluffy”, Brianna Heseltine, is thinking of running for Labor in the next ACT elections.

The Labor Party should have moved quickly on the asbestos problem immediately after my friend and Canberra Citizen of the Year, Peter Leonard, died of mesothelioma in January 2008.

I am quite impressed with what I have seen so far of Ms Heseltine, but would have hoped that if she were interested in becoming a MLA, she would run as an independent or as a candidate of a community-based party rather than being subject to the whims and demands of faceless, party machinery men/women in a major party organisational structure.

Ric Hingee, Duffy

Robert is right on prison needles

ROBERT Macklin summed up succinctly the Shane Rattenbury push for needles in our jail – “madness” (Seven Days, CN, September 25).

Mike Crowther was a Community Alliance Party candidate at the 2008 ACT Assembly elections and a prison officer for 19 years during which time he suffered two needlestick injuries. He gave his telling reasons for strongly opposing a needle exchange program in the Alexander Maconochie Centre in City News, August 5, 2010.

Today, intravenous injection of contaminated blood is virtually the only way to contract hep C. With this in mind, if as little as half a per cent of an alleged health-oriented product was known to spread serious disease upon sharing, it would be banned immediately. Can it be imagined that any authority would release transmission devices into an enclosed community where the disease already existed?

Colliss Parrett, Fellow, Drug Free Australia, Barton