Views in brief

Don't blame AFTRA for actors' talks

CINDY KAFFEN is mistaken when she states that the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) convinced the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) to break off joint bargaining with the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and bargain alone in our negotiations with the AMPTP ("Are actors headed for a strike?").

I am on the national board of AFTRA, and so I know that to be untrue. It was SAG who first tried to change the over 20-year bargaining agreement we had with SAG called "Phase One of Merger." The changes they wanted would have made AFTRA a minor partner in the negotiations. We said "no," but they hounded us in the press and online until they made us realize that they hate AFTRA.

Then they finally, after months of trying to get us to agree to weakening our position at the bargaining table, agreed to continue bargaining jointly under the original Phase One agreement. The day before we were to start bargaining, we found out that SAG had met with the major cast members of the AFTRA show, The Bold and the Beautiful (all TV soap operas are in our jurisdiction) and coached them on how to change their jurisdiction to SAG.

That being the last straw for us at AFTRA, we decided to stop the joint process and bargain alone. This decision was painful, but was approved by a huge majority of the national board of AFTRA. We felt SAG had shown itself as an untrustworthy bargaining partner.

The AMPTP was as surprised by our move as anyone else. We are not in cahoots with the AMPTP, and I would not describe us as "conservative." I personally have never voted for a conservative and will never, and most of the board members are liberal.

We do consider ourselves more rational than the current board of SAG, which is controlled by Membership First, an outside group who I would describe as radical.
Mitchell McGuire, from the Internet

U.S. hand in Colombia's hostage crisis

WHEN I saw the claim of "rescuing" the hostages in Colombia, I immediately knew that what I was seeing was a government propaganda campaign ("Behind the Colombia hostage rescue").

Consider: Hugo Chávez has been for months working for the hostages' release, the FARC has been willing to cooperate in communications and releases--and suddenly the U.S. is the "rescuer"? Talk about having someone steal your thunder--like a grad student who did all the research and developed the theory then having their name deleted from the published paper!

This is just another "weapons of mass destruction" reason to create ill will. It would seem that the U.S. needed a reason to go it alone in the Iraq invasion, so we worked to create one. The same thing is going on here.

Since things aren't going so well with the permanent occupation in Iraq based on "protecting U.S. property" (i.e., the oil wells), we've launched immediately into another war. The immediacy being that the next president might have a harder time initiating military invasions.

But, as with the name-calling that went on before the actual invasion, this is to create some mad-dog response that would justify the actual invasion. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tabled the trade agreement with Colombia that would have allowed U.S. businesses to own businesses in Columbia--businesses that would have needed military protection once they put Colombian flower growers out of business and the resulting drug trade picked up, requiring Colombian President Alvaro Utribe to beg the U.S. for military assistance--see where all this is going?

What isn't so clear is why the long-struggled for United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage site in Costa Rica should be in danger with this kind of delusional thinking. As it stands now, over 70 percent of Costa Rica's habitat is gone, with barely the rest classified as a World Heritage site. A nation with no standing army is once again in danger of being forced into play between militarized players.

I suggest that we insist our lackadaisical representatives of government impeach the current president and revoke the plenitude of executive excesses he has lavished on his office with the help of the scurrilous, lobby-ridden U.S. House and Senate. No one is above the law, the current U.S. president included.
Kate Sisco, Duluth, Minn.

Baiting the homeless in New Orleans

ALMOST THREE years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans faces a homelessness crisis. Nearly 5 percent of the population is thought to be homeless.

The New Orleans Police Department has been baiting the homeless, setting them up for arrests. The police parked an unmarked car next to a camp of about 200 homeless people and left the windows down and the doors unlocked. In the car, they left a can of food, a pack of cigarettes and a can of beer.

The police arrested eight men, most of whom were homeless. Right now, they are all in jail, being charged with felonies that could carry sentences of up to 12 years in prison. Days after the arrests, the camp of homeless people was cleared out and the area fenced off.

This coincides with ongoing demolitions of public housing units throughout the city. Jail is New Orleans' substitute for affordable housing.
Gimena Gordillo and Alden Eagle, New Orleans

Israel's apartheid continues

REGARDING "Israel's apartheid at 60": Israel has nothing to fear from a "fatal demographic plague" of becoming a minority. They are killing off the Palestinians with disease, hunger and bullets with the tacit approval of the U.S., Europe and, indeed, the rest of the world. They will end up by doing to the Palestinians what the Nazis could not do to them.
Tissa Pilimatalauwe, from the Internet

Is "inspiration" really what's important?

I WATCHED with interest the featured video of Laura Flanders' GRITtv interview with public schoolteachers. I was struck by the fact that she began by asking each one of them to name a teacher who had "inspired" him or her.

After watching the video, I tried to think of a grade school teacher who had inspired me, but no one came to mind. Some of my teachers were better than others, but I can't say that any of them "inspired" me in any way. What is interesting is that the teachers I remember the most vividly are the bad ones.

For example, I will never forget this geometry teacher I had in high school. He wore white shoes and a V-neck sweater every day. He talked about golf much of the time. He told my classmates and me that there wasn't much point in him teaching us geometry, because we weren't smart enough to understand it. (This was an honors-level course, by the way). I will also never forget a fifth-grade teacher I had who once yelled at me for putting loops in my "d's".

Experiences such as these instilled in me a healthy skepticism toward authority figures. Some of the most important lessons we take away from school are negative ones.

What I'm trying to say is that all this talk about "inspirational" teachers is beside the point. This sort of talk plays into the hands of the right-wingers, who want us to believe that the problems of our schools are due to schoolteachers. The problems are actually due to economics and to class. The latter is, I think, an extremely important factor in education.

I attended public schools in an upper-middle class community. The high school I went to was well funded. It had a large library, and it offered art and music classes. Although most of my classmates were indifferent students, it was understood that we would all go to college. And we did. Class background is the main determinant of how well someone will do in life, not the quality of education that he or she receives.
Evan Kornfeldt, Eugene, Ore.