Public Comment
Letters to the Editor
UC ATHLETIC FACILITY
Editors, Daily Planet:
I hope that the various lawsuits against the proposed addition of yet another athletic facility to be built where the oak trees stand will be successful. The Hayward Fault is warning us. It appears that the football coach, Jeff Tedford, an individual whose salary thus far exceeds that of distinguished professors on the faculty, has stated that his ill-conceived project would attract better football players to Berkeley. Is that what higher education is about? The University of Chicago went from being a fine school to a university of world renown when its chancellor, R.M. Hutchins, banned intercollegiate football from the campus.
Peter Selz
Professor Emeritus
UC Berkeley
•
ETHICS
Editors, Daily Planet:
Democrat leaders are so concerned about House ethics that they are going to vote on new ethics rules as one of their first priorities. What hypocrites! What about the ethics of pretending to be against a war and then consistently voting to fund that war to the tune of half-a-trillion dollars? What about the ethics or failing to even consider impeachment of the president who initiated that illegal and immoral war and who has made torture U.S. policy? Failing to end the war by cutting off funding immediately and beginning to impeach Bush is highly unethical.
To learn more about impeaching Bush see worldcantwait.org.
Kenneth J. Theisen
Oakland
•
‘STUPID LETTERS’
Editors, Daily Planet:
Dan Knapp and David Altschul had two of the stupidest letters I’ve ever read published and it was good editorial judgment to let one follow the other. Knapp’s premise that it is reactionary to oppose strong government is absurd because the state itself is the most conservative, unproductive and parasitic fossil in existence. As libertarians we do not want to conserve the New Dealish status quo. Even “conservatives” have better things to do than pick up liberals trash.
Altschul is deliberately misrepresenting Jimmy Carter’s views and is projecting when he calls the former president a liar. Carter has begun a long overdue national dialogue and the hysterical Israeli apologists are besides themselves. Frankly they are out of their minds and they have my most insincere pity.
Kris Martinsen
•
AN OPEN MIND
Editors, Daily Planet:
Message to David Altschul: Would you please open your mind and stop repeating all your prejudiced blanket statements about Arab people, and maybe look into some more unbiased sources of information?
Vivian Warkentin
•
PROMISED LAND
Editors, Daily Planet:
In his denunciation of former president Jimmy Carter, David Altschul says that Carter “ignores 80 years of homicidal Arab violence against Jews in the land promised them.” David, a quick question: Promised them by whom?
Joanna Graham
•
DEADLY LEADERS
Editors, Daily Planet:
The celebration of the murder of Saddam Hussein is understandable, but, if we consider numbers, hasn’t President Bush been responsible for far more human deaths than Hussein was, if truth be told?
Gerta Farber
•
HOUSING
EMERGENCY?
Editors, Daily Planet:
Is Berkeley having a hidden housing emergency?
During the past two Berkeley Housing Authority meetings, Berkeley City Manager Phil Kamlarz and Housing Director Steve Barton airily told a largely passive City Council that they were going to, in effect, subject people with disabilities, the elderly, disabled veterans (and politically active Section 8 advocates) to a harsh form of discriminatory treatment. Kamlarz and Barton are punishing those Section 8 tenants who live in studio and one-bedroom apartments with sudden huge HUD rent hikes. Since the Rent Stabilization law went into effect, These highly vulnerable people arguably are now the most discriminated against rental population in Berkeley’s history.
Barton admitted to the City Council that he and Kamlarz are not asking for financial rental relief for these at risk tenants, rather, they have apparently chosen to only request HUD waiver assistance with expensive units that have two or more bedrooms.
This egregious action could effectively put a significant number of disabled and elderly tenants on the streets.
Meanwhile, Barton and Kamlarz directed what Kamlarz characterized as Berkeley’s “deep pockets” to go to developer’s projects that unbelievably use HUD funds to build more expensive buildings. Wells Fargo’s representatives made sure to come down from Oregon to get their share of the booty for one of these buildings. The usual suspects on the City Council enthusiastically welcomed these HUD buildings, at the same time; there is supposedly no money to keep many long time Berkeley residents housed.
Also, Berkeley hired an outside consulting firm that came up with the astounding conclusion that a person living in a one-bedroom unit only pays $10 on utilities per month. The council was aghast. The council asked Barton if his staff could come up with the correct numbers. Barton declared that it might be expensive to have city staff figure out the correct utilities amount, even though the correct utilities amount might help Section 8 tenants stay in their homes.
Housing advocates are beginning to see no other choice than to begin building the foundation for a massive class Action discrimination lawsuit against the City of Berkeley and its officials.
Vita Viola
Save BHA and Section 8@yahoo.com
•
TIMBER!
Editors, Daily Planet:
Does anybody besides Richard Brenneman and Judith Scherr write for this paper? Didn’t Mr. Brenneman write for the Berkeley Barb? Sure sounds like it. Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, NLF Is Going to Win. TIMBER! Go Bears!
Matthew Shoemaker
•
BIGOTED EDITORIAL
Editors, Daily Planet:
What a bigoted sounding editorial (Dec. 22)! Many acts of personal charity don’t require membership in a formal organization, and if you do want to join one there are lots of secular humanitarian organizations which don’t ask about your religious beliefs (or lack thereof). There is no particular benefit in organizing a humanitarian group that is only open to atheists. In fact, I suspect that most atheists are still pretty much in the closet. Historically it has been, and in some places still is, a dangerous philosophy to profess.
I am an atheist, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t want my life to have meaning. If there is no god to provide meaning, then you have to provide your own. For me, and I suspect for many other atheists, that means striving to make the world a better place.
A burden of atheism is that there is no revealed source for what makes the world a better place, or what actions are ethical. You have to figure it out. The risk associated with theism is that what is ethical or correct is often taken as given, and not subject to debate. Unfortunately, it sometimes can be, as Dawkins noted, dangerously lethal nonsense.
Robert Clear
•
‘WORDS OF MY
PERFECT TEACHER’
Editors, Daily Planet:
It’s always interesting to see what a critic has to say about a film, what perspective one takes. “Words of My Perfect Teacher” (reviewed in the Daily Planet, Dec. 22) was second best in the 2004 Himalaya Film Festival. So far we have screened more than 200 film and documentaries. Below is the comment of the jury of three Himalayan-oriented filmmakers/anthropologists:
Jury Comment: Words of My Perfect Teacher is a fantastic, warm and humoristic film. It is inventive in the sense that it has a new way of telling a story. I have seen many ethnographic-documentary films on the Himalayan region. Some are very good and some are very bad. Some repeat a genre and never invent a new language in the way of telling a story. Words of My Perfect Teacher has in my opinion a beautiful and very lively freshness and the filmmaker has been able to create a deep relation with the people involved in the film. This is Varan principle number one, and it has personal rhythm which is rarely found in ethnographic filmmaking and yet it reveals a lot of ethnographic knowledge about what is actually going on between master and pupils. I think many anthropologista will think this film is too smart —and in a way it is true, but smart in a warm and kind way. There is a lot of humor, and a lot of reflection upon what Tibetan Buddhism does with Westerners! And that is an interesting angle to look upon that relation.
Glenn Mitrasing
Himalayan Festival Director
•
BUS PASSES
Editors, Daily Planet:
The Alameda-Contra Costa District shold fight the pliticians in both Sacramento and Washington, D.C. for more funding so they can lower the price of the bus pass for both seniors and the disabled. It is a shame that both groups had to pay $20 a month for a bus pass.Using the bus is their only transportation. The majority of them don’t own cars and do not drive.
Because of the price of the bus pass, both the seniors and the disabled had to make some choices on whether to buy a bus pass every month or buy food. I don’t think that the transit district understands that their decision can have terrible impacts on these groups. I understand that they had to balance the budget with less money. But they shouldn’t balance it on the backs of these two groups.
Both the majority of the seniors and the disabled have been dedicated passengers. Beause of their use of the bus instead of cars, they are doing both Alameda and Contra Costa counties a favor by sparing the air. For their help in sparing the air, I would hope that the Alameda-Contra Costa Transit District show some balance by lowering the price of the bus pass for both seniors and the disabled.
Billy Trice, Jr.
Oakland
