Not so complicated

Thank you so much for the letters from real people in the real Palestine ["Letters from Palestine," 8/06/03]. The only thing politically "complicated" about the Israel-Palestine conflict is that the truth must be filtered through a heavy bias in support of all things pro-Israel here in the U.S. For those of us who have been there it is obviously a question of colonization, apartheid, and abusive militarization against an indigenous people.

Tim Shipe,
San Francisco

Not so simple

I appreciate the sincerity of the six "Bay Area residents" who reported on the conditions they experienced among the Palestinians, and respect their point of view. On the other hand, I found their reporting simplistic, in a situation that is anything but simple.

The first writer sums up the actions of the Israeli government as "designed to inflict the maximum economic suffering on the entire population." To what end? To fuel and prolong the intifada? To keep Israel in a permanent state of war, with its living standards falling too? Ariel Sharon and his right-wing operatives may be hard-nosed, but they aren't irrational.

The second writer worries about her "privilege" as an obvious non-Arab in contested land. She worries about exercising that privilege here at home, too. As a self-described attractive woman, she would discover in most cultures that she is "privileged," in an objective way, so long as she sticks to womanly activities. Israeli culture may be sexist and may harbor elements of racism, but that hardly differentiates Israelis from their neighbors, including the Palestinians.

Surprisingly, all of the writers, though otherwise sophisticated, are unexpressive of the sad history behind the tortured situation that exists today. As recently as a few years ago, Israel was led by a peace-oriented coalition. When the Oslo Accords were rejected by Arafat (on what appeared to many observers to be self-serving political grounds), the intifada reignited, the peace coalition was driven out of office, the right wing came into power (and remained so in Palestine), and Sharon and his gang imposed their harsh policies while Arafat's bombers replied. Who was responsible?

Everyone.

Bob Jacobsen,
San Mateo

The city's power plants

In response to the Bay Guardian's recent coverage about the possibility for new city-owned power plants, I would like to clarify a few points [Editorial, 8/6/03].

Last December, the Board of Supervisors openly approved an agreement with the California Department of Water Resources that allows the City and County of San Francisco to finance and develop four clean-burning power plants at very low risk. That agreement assures that the cost of building the facilities to house the power plants and to hook them up to the grid will be recovered by the city over 10 years regardless of how many hours the plants actually operate.

These power plants and that agreement actually create the possibility for San Francisco to move much more aggressively to develop solar and wind power. The new power plants can be quickly turned on when wind energy or solar energy is not available and then turned off when these resources are producing electricity. They will serve as backup electrical capacity, used only when needed for local and regional reliability. As more renewable resources are developed, they will be used less and less until they are not needed at all. And if they were to become obsolete after 10 years (not likely in my opinion), they could be decommissioned without any economic loss to the City and County of San Francisco.

Naturally there are a number of questions about where the plants will be located and how they fit into the city's 10-year Electricity Resource Plan. We will be holding a series of four public meetings in late August and early September to answer these questions and others the Bay Guardian and others may have. There will be an announcement about the meeting dates shortly and they will be posted on the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission's Web site www.sfwater.org.

Ed Smeloff
Assistant General Manager
Power Policy
San Francisco Public Utilities Commission

Ezra's band

As an artist, I was delighted to hear that my name was mentioned in Best of the Bay [7/30/03], in reference to Punch Gallery, where I recently showed some collaborative work with my friend and longtime cohort in art antics, Mr. Christopher Reuss. I also happen to be in a band that won Best of the Bay electronic band last year. In that issue, we were incorrectly billed as being from Cleveland, Ohio. That may be water under the bridge, but with two corrections I couldn't help but write in. The correct spelling of my name is Ezra Li Eismont, that is an S, not an F, and my band Cat Five is from Oakland, not Cleveland. Rock on, Chicago. Rock on, Chickenfish. Rock on, San Francisco.