Letters to the Editor

Pay no attention to those paranoid Europeans:In Alison Pierce's article on atrazine's potential impact on frogs ("Bioscience Warfare," June 2), Dr. Hayes notes that other countries have banned the herbicide atrazine, implying they know something about it being harmful that we don't know here in the U.S.

But then we learn in the third-to-last paragraph that these countries banned atrazine simply because it appears in drinking water above an extremely low 0.1 part per billion cutoff. Instead of finding they know more, we learn they are just more fearful. Dare I say paranoid?

Dr. Hayes should stop his publicity campaign and let his science stand on its own -- good or bad. If anyone has politicized this issue, it is Hayes and his cheerleaders in the environmental movement.

Alex Avery
Hudson Institute, Ctr. for Global Food Issues

Does the Geneva Convention apply to geese?:I was thoroughly enjoying your Best of San Francisco 2004 [issue], until I saw the Best Foie Gras. Although I'm not a radical animal rights activist or even a vegetarian, I still try to follow a code of ethics by not eating meat that causes the unnatural suffering of an innocent creature. If you are unaware, these poor geese are force-fed corn meal several times a day by sticking a huge instrument down their throats. The corn meal fattens up the liver, which apparently is supposed to taste good? These animals are also given absolutely no life by being stuck in a dark crowded pen until they are ripe for slaughter. I think we need to put our taste buds aside and really think about what we are consuming. Does the temporary pleasure of eating this small delicacy equal the amount of torture we cause this animal to go through?

Jennifer Bartholomew
Orinda

Rebels without cause:[The] cover story "The Counter-Counterculture" really missed the point [May 12]. Yes, it's upsetting that any campus group at Cal would be physically harassed, spat upon, or threatened. No one should be afraid to voice their opinion, and no one should hesitate to pass out their group's newspaper for fear of being physically assaulted; this is wrong, whether it's the Berkeley College Republicans or a group of campus socialists. Differences of opinion should be settled with words, and it's important that differing parties learn to humanize and respect each other.

Unfortunately, this article focuses narrowly on the plight of the Berkeley Republicans, painting them as an "oppressed minority," a struggling voice of dissent in a dogmatic liberal stronghold. That attitude seems to be one you'd find in their own publications, not SF Weekly -- and in this article, the "victim" angle goes almost entirely uncontested. While BCR members are undoubtedly a minority group when it comes to politics in Berkeley, it is crucial to recognize that the BCR is comprised almost entirely of quite privileged, white, middle-class kids; they are not, by any standard, oppressed.

[Y]ou can't claim to be oppressed when your camp is in the White House and dominates most of the current political, economic, and social trends in the rest of the country. Sure, it's important that conservative groups have their voices heard, just like any other political organization, but how can you complain about liberals having a monopoly on political thought at Berkeley when a radical liberal would have it 10 times harder almost anywhere else in the country? Even the title of the article is misleading: Republicans in Berkeley are not a "counter-counterculture," they are the ... dominant American culture that Berkeley is known for rebelling against. You can't be a rebel when you are the status quo.

Erin Wiegand
Lower Haight

A May 26 book review of After, the debut novel by Claire Tristram, misspelled the author's name. SF Weeklyregrets the error.