PUBLIC FORUM.

The last hope councils

Re ``Sun Valley pushes for a trust fund'' (Aug. 12):

Neighborhood councils seem to be the last hope for the people of Los Angeles to be heard. Our mayor has promised to allow all the people to be heard, yet he only listens to a select few that believe in what he believes in. Our City Council only wants to listen for one minute to the people who disagree with them and of course our City Council really doesn't listen to these people.

There are over 90 neighborhood councils and if these councils were to meet and work together on projects? These councils, which listen and help the people in their community, could organize a grass-roots campaign to recall every elected official in Los Angeles. This would send a statement to the rest of the country that the people can be heard and the next time someone wants to represent the people they will have to represent all the people.

-- Jeff Trovatten

Encino

Bradley dump

Re ``Sun Valley pushes for a trust fund'' (Aug. 12):

I don't live by the Bradley Landfill or have to smell what L.A. trash does to Sun Valley, but I know that my trash and carefully washed bottles and plastics in my recycle bin end up in that community. I feel responsible enough to ask why the community is not demanding funds to provide money to start up a recycling plant.

Both L.A. landfill sites and recycling facilities should have field trips for schools and citizens groups to see what we all do to the air we all breathe, to water that gets polluted and natural canyons that become methane gas fields. I'm going to mind my own business and go to my own community council meeting Tuesday night, but still I need to point out that the Theodore Payne Native Plant nursery in Sun Valley is asking for donations for a new roof over its buildings before it rains again.

-- Bette Simons

Sherman Oaks

Expropriating power

It is clear to me that the members of our City Council are driven to expropriate any political power from the citizens of our city. Their most recent action, to shelve the voice of neighborhood councils by delaying NCs' request for file consideration, is just one of a long string of their attempts to muzzle any other view.

The ballot measure to extend term limits, the skirting and denying the ethics commission any comments and their muzzling of public discussion at council meetings are mere samples of their blatant disregard of the people. This arrogance does not equate to an elected body but is more akin to the dictatorial actions of a Latin American country's junta.

-- Sid Gold

Granada Hills

Gift to developers

Re ``Condo crazed'' (Our Opinions, Aug. 14):

The city of Los Angeles gave developers increased land values when they changed zoning in 2003 to allow multifamily R3-zoned residential to be built to three times the density of the lot. I believe that gift of land-value gold has contributed to condo mania.

That zoning allows a developer to use a 800-square-foot-per-unit zoning standard to determine how many 1,200- to 1,600-square-foot condo units can be built. For example on a 100,000-square-foot lot, using 800 square feet standard allows up to 125 units versus using the actual unit square foot, which would allow only 67 to 83 units depending on the unit square feet. Where's the city's quid pro quo for the displaced renters?

-- Tom Paterson

Valley Village Resident's Association

Illegal-alien lobby

Re ``Anti-illegal immigration groups multiply'' (Aug. 13):

I know members of both the Minuteman Project and the California Coalition for Immigration Reform and have found them to be nothing less -- or more -- than loyal Americans rightly concerned about what Jim Gilchrist in his recent book ``Minutemen'' calls ``the Mexican Trojan Horse invasion.''

For the Southern Poverty Law Center to call CCIR a hate group while giving a pass to La Raza and MEChA -- two organizations that define the term ``hate groups'' -- shows how literally deranged the pro-illegal-alien lobby in this country has become.

-- Judith Lucas

Los Angeles

Can't test imagination

Re: ``Exit exam showdown'' (Our Opinion, Aug. 15)

Albert Einstein said: ``Imagination is more important than knowledge.'' But we don't test imagination. We only test knowledge. Diplomas indicate memory and test-taking capabilities, not a person's ability to think or to perform. Employers are constantly discovering this.

Imagination is what made the USA into the greatest industrial power in the world. The creative men who invented our industries didn't derive their ideas from books, or from classroom academia. Students who've borne the unbearable struggle (K-12), but may have failed ineffectual academia -- like: advanced math and science -- are not failures, and they certainly don't deserve rejection, and degradation.

-- Fred Coble 

North Hills

Hezbollah wins

Re ``Hezbollah in line to be big winner in war with Israel'' (Aug. 16):

It looks like once again everyone underestimated Hezbollah. In order to win the hearts and minds of a people, you have to do more than destroy your enemies. As we can see, Hezbollah had in place a way that will and is winning the hearts and minds of the Lebanese people; if only the Bush administration had moved as fast in the Katrina disaster.

The shortsightedness of the Israeli government is too much like the current administration here. They, like Donald Rumsfeld and company, were playing by the old rules while Hezbollah looked outside the box. Look for copycats throughout the Middle East to start playing by the new rules.

-- Paul Straughn

North Hollywood

Not even close

Re ``Peace with honor'' (Your Opinions, Aug. 16):

Don Evans isn't much of an authority on history. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's infamous phrase ``peace in our time'' was after his return from Munich, not Berlin, from the four-power conference (Germany, Britain, France and Italy) which was on Sept. 28-29, 1938. He referred to the Munich Agreement that permitted Germany to annex the Sudeten area of Czechoslovakia, which contained approximately 3 million ethnic Germans.

Hitler had already invaded Austria (the ``Anschluss'') in March of that year. Germany, with a population of 50 million, had been building up its armed forces, in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles, for years.

Evans asks, ``Does anyone see the similarity'' between Germany's intent and the war in Lebanon? The answer is absolutely none whatsoever in any way, shape or form.

-- Dick Bank

Los Angeles

We're patsies

Isn't it becoming pretty clear by now that the United States body politic is the patsy for the current administration's agenda -- an agenda of military industrialism (Third World war economy), social control (constitutional passivity), and the corporate-run state (modern fascism).

And, notice just how quickly these programs were resumed once Clinton's term was up. Notice how familiar these programs are from the administration previous to Clinton. Wasn't that administration led by the father of the leader of the current one? Of course, that couldn't be true. The West is not capable of such ``conspiracy'' -- only the sorts of al-Qaida are. We all know that.

-- Hugh Bridges

Los Angeles

Who is the betrayer?

I am sick of the Republican Party characterizing legitimate criticism of the war in Iraq as giving comfort to the enemy.

It is the Bush administration and its supporters who have betrayed this country with their incompetent and immoral warmongering and grossly wasteful spending on a war of choice in Iraq that should never have come to pass.

-- Diana Granat

Altadena