[LETTERS to the editor]‘Straw man argument’ on Madagascar

Your Friday (Nov. 21) editorial, wrote about Daewoo Logistics leasing 3.2 million acres [1.3 million hectares ] of arable land in Madagascar in order to export food back to Korea.

The editorial criticized the Financial Times for suggesting such an act amounted to “neocolonialism.”

The Financial Times used this word in its critique, but it wasn’t the first to use it.

It was first used by the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, a fact mentioned in the very newspaper [that was] criticized but not in your own editorial.

By not mentioning this fact, you used a straw man argument, taking on the flyweight Financial Times and not the heavyweight United Nations.

Brett Conway, lecturer,

Hansung University