"Plus ça change, plus c'est la meme chose"

Who's counting?

Here's a factoid for you: Accounting for inflation, we have spent nearly as much on Afghan reconstruction as we did on the Marshall Plan.

We're all French

I have yet to see a sensible explanation of why the United States alone among its peers was absent from the Paris march. If the Secret Service was quaking in its government-issued brogans over the prospect of losing the president in a crowd, surely they can't be worried that anyone will waste ordnance on Joe Biden. Instead of the president or the vice-president, the U.S. dispatched our ambassador to Paris, Obama fundraiser Jane Hartley, who happens to live down the street.

After 9/11, the world lined up in solidarity with us; it is at the least very poor taste for us, when our oldest ally suffers the same fate, to send as our delegate a political hack with no stature here or in Europe. But there is a bigger picture, too. The attack on Charlie Hebdo, the murders of artists exercising one of the fundamental values of American and western political thought, was a blow against all our freedoms, not just freedom of expression (and, indeed, in the west, in Britain and the United States especially, there were immediate calls to save freedom by increasing the grasp and reach of the surveillance state).

Despite all the ups and downs of the relationship between the two nations (and the downs have to do mostly with right-wing politics in the U.S., anyway), the French are our friends and our allies. The day after the attack on the World Trade Center, the headline in Le Monde was "Nous sommes tous Américains;” this week, Muslims in France risked their lives to demonstrate fraternity with their fellow citizens; American leaders couldn't be bothered to show up. Obama has revealed himself, once again, to be politically tone deaf -- he was quoted in European papers as saying something to the effect that the murders were an assault on a universal value; but free speech and liberty in general are anything but "universal" values -- not only did millions of people have to give their lives to achieve them, but they are under perpetual attack, even in the western democracies where they are rhetorically enshrined, and must be constantly and rigorously defended.

When leaders of the free world gathered in the streets of the French capital this week to link arms in defense of freedom, everyone in the world could see at a glance that we were not among them. That the president doesn't appear to know that for reasons both practical and symbolic we should have been there is not just a cause for embarrassment and sorrow; it throws into silhouette the continuing question of the quality of his leadership in the two long years remaining in his term.

Good writing.

-- Hacked traffic sign in L.A.

Moi Aussi

Eighty-seven-year-old Albert Uderzo, the creator of Asterix and France's most famous cartoonist, comes out of retirement to honor dead comrades.

Desclasifican conversación inédita entre el Ché y Fidel.

Che: Fidel, will we ever have diplomatic relations with the Yanks again?

Fidel: Yes, when the U.S. President is black and the Pope is Argentine like you.

Scutage: $738.8 billion

Buried in the Magna Carta is the forgotten word scutage, a feudal tax to pay for war. With America in decline because more than half its taxes are thrown away on military expenditures, scutage should be revived. It has the perfect onomatopoeic ring to it.

The president draws a red line in the silicon

"Obama Vows a Response to Cyberattack on Sony" -- New York Times headline

Diary

21 Democrats plus Sen. Sanders (and 18 Republicans) tried to stop the giveback to the banksters and other bad stuff in the budget bill. Here they are:

Blumenthal (D-CT)
Booker (D-NJ)
Boxer (D-CA)
Brown (D-OH)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Franken (D-MN)
Gillibrand (D-NY)
Harkin (D-IA)
Hirono (D-HI)
Klobuchar (D-MN)
Levin (D-MI)
Manchin (D-WV)
Markey (D-MA)
McCaskill (D-MO)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Merkley (D-OR)
Reed (D-RI)
Sanders (I-VT)
Tester (D-MT)
Warren (D-MA)
Whitehouse (D-RI)
Wyden (D-OR)

You will note that Feinstein and Schumer are not among them.

"Oh, what fun!"

Really, Starbucks?

That's the best you can do? You paid big bucks for that?

Every Starbucks on the planet is packed with writers.

Any one of them would have come up gladly -- merrily -- with a more compelling slogan at no more cost to you than a free cup of coffee.

Washington is trying to drive down oil prices by flooding the market with crude but risks collateral damage to its own shale industry

The Long War: "U.S. powerbrokers have put the country at risk of another financial crisis to intensify their economic war on Moscow and to move ahead with their plan to 'pivot to Asia'....Washington has persuaded the Saudis to flood the market with oil to push down prices, decimate Russia’s economy, and reduce Moscow’s resistance to further NATO encirclement and the spreading of US military bases across Central Asia. The US-Saudi scheme has slashed oil prices by nearly a half since they hit their peak in June. The sharp decline in prices has burst the bubble in high-yield debt which has increased the turbulence in the credit markets while pushing global equities into a tailspin. Even so, the roiled markets and spreading contagion have not deterred Washington from pursuing its reckless plan, a plan which uses Riyadh’s stooge-regime to prosecute Washington’s global resource war."

The rest of the story:
The Oil Coup: US-Saudi Subterfuge Send Stocks and Credit Reeling by Mike Whitney (CounterPunch)
Stakes are high as US plays the oil card against Iran and Russia by Larry Elliott (Guardian)

Won't be fooled again?

According to Gallup, 60% of Americans want a third party candidate for 2016. Even so, in the fall of 2016, we will be warned once again (by The Nation, Daily Kos and their ilk) that -- once again -- we must must must vote for the Lesser-of-Two-Evils -- a Wall Street-militarist-security state Democrat -- or face Catastrophe -- a Wall Street-militarist-security state Republican.

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result isn't really the definition of insanity. But it is the definition of stupidity.

See, In U.S., Perceived Need for Third Party Reaches New High: Twenty-six percent believe Democratic and Republican parties do adequate job (Gallup).

In your face, Little Drummer Boy

The Duopoly

A provision "Congress snuck into the spending the bill will be more galling to some, because it amounts to a pay raise for the two unpopular political parties: It raises the $32,400 maximum that donors could give the Democratic National Committee or Republican National Committee to a whopping $324,000 per year, gutting what’s left of the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law. The Washington Post says this was inserted on page 1,599 of a 1,603-page bill."

The rest of the story: Sneak Attack? Congress Slips Controversial Measures Into Spending Bill (PopularResistance)

The United States of America is at moral crossroads

The CIA should be shut down.

The spy work, if there was any, can be carried on gamely by the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Air Force Intelligence, the FBI's National Security Branch, the Army Intelligence and Security Command, the Department of Energy's Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, Coast Guard Intelligence, the Treasury's Office of Intelligence and Analysis, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (sic), the National Reconnaissance Office, the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security Office of Intelligence and Analysis, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, to say nothing of all the state and local police spooks.

Military operations should have been handled by the Department of Defense all along.

But it will be a further crime if all that happens now is that a few relatively-low level functionaries, however blood-soaked their uniforms, are scape-goated, Abu Graib-style. This fish was rotting from the head. The only way that these and other crimes can be prevented from happening in the future is to hold the perpetrators accountable. If this were some failing garrison in the Third World, instead of the failing Leader of the World, the State Department would be piously scolding them to clean-house. The United States needs to be live up to its ideals. If we can't clean our house, if we can't prosecute the criminals ourselves, as domestic and international law requires, then we should turn Bush, Cheney, and their co-conspirators over to the International Criminal Court and let the world community help us out.

More:
CIA tortured, misled, U.S. report finds, drawing calls for action by Mark Hosenball (Reuters)

Return of the CIA's 'Rogue Elephants': The Senate's report on torture shows U.S. intelligence agencies need to be reined in again by Peter Fenn (US News)

There Is Something Worse Than Torture in the Senate Torture Report: It's not the torture—it's the CIA lying by David Corn (Mother Jones)

U.S. under fire over Senate's report on CIA torture by Bill Trott (Reuters UK)

The Bush administration's response to the torture report is straightforward:

The CIA's actions were fully authorized. And we didn't know anything about them.

Every important movement faces significant push-back

That doesn’t mean it won’t succeed.

One of the hardest things for activists to hold in mind is that they are not alone. Most people, however well-intentioned, will wait for what Martin Luther King called a "more convenient season" to move to action. So the activist must not only organize but represent.

'It’s worth remembering that the civil rights protesters of the 1950s and ’60s faced as much derision then as the Ferguson and New York protesters do today … probably more. In 1964, the American National Election Studies, as part of its biennial survey, began asking Americans whether they thought civil rights leaders “are trying to push too fast, are going too slowly, or are … moving about the right speed.” The responses are most telling. Among whites, 84 percent of Southerners, and 64 percent of non-Southerners, said that civil rights leaders were pushing too fast."

The rest of the story: For most, there's never a right time to protest by Seth Masket (Pacific-Standard)

Rectal feeding and rehydration...

Something new to think about.

Oliver Laughland takes a look at some of the ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ used by the agency: How the CIA tortured its detainees: Waterboarding, confinement, sleep deprivation (The Guardian).

Supply and Demand

'Lord o Lord, not
again,' sighed
the printer who set
Henry David
Thoreau's Walden, and kept
running out
of the letter
'I'...

              -- Mark Ford

 

Just read, at Bartleby.com,

that "The Second Book of Moses, Called Exodus," in preparation for a screening tonight of the new Hollywood version, just called "Exodus" in deference to Tinseltown's love of one-word titles. I'm above all looking forward to digitally rendered plagues. I'm wondering, though, should it have happened, as is likely, that the filmmakers have taken liberties with the story and characters, whether the Writers Guild will be forced to negotiate between God and the screenwriters over credits. Also wondering, if "Exodus" the movie is a hit and there are x-rated spin-offs, will one be entitled "Aaron's Rod"?

High note

New Hampshire license plates instruct you to "Live Free or Die."

You aren't allowed to do both things at once, however: It's illegal in the Granite State to inhale bus fumes with the intent to induce euphoria.

Do your job

Challenges facing the next do-nothing Congress: “Absent congressional action, a host of business and personal tax breaks expires on Jan. 1. The government’s borrowing limit is reinstated on March 16, although the government might not actually hit the ceiling until August. On March 28, unless lawmakers act, physician reimbursements from Medicare drop off a cliff. On May 31, the highway trust fund runs out of money. In June, the Export-Import Bank, which helps finance overseas purchases of American exports, might shut in the face of conservative opposition to its mission. Then on Sept. 30, the entire Children’s Health Insurance Program faces its expiration. A few days later, across-the-board spending cuts loom once again.” -- The New York Times

The Future of Wi-Fi Could Run Through Old TV Infrastructure

Free, high-capacity Internet access using old television frequencies

"Two academics are recommending that governments develop free, public Wi-Fi networks using obsolete TV frequencies. The researchers believe this could potentially lead to 'Super Wi-Fi' systems popping up across the globe.

"Broadcasting TV via old-school frequencies received through antennas has almost entirely given way to digital services, leaving blank channels or 'white spaces' -- TV frequencies that are no longer in use. In a new study, researchers suggest transforming these abandoned frequencies into a 'wireless commons.'

"Distributing public Wi-Fi through underused TV infrastructure, they say, has many potential benefits: Wi-Fi traveling through antenna and radio frequencies can extend beyond six miles, according to a recent report. Moreover, it may have the capacity to penetrate through walls, buildings, vegetation, and other obstacles that often disrupt current Wi-Fi infrastructure. This range, coupled with public access, could result in 'unprecedented low-cost,' the new study suggests, because 3G and household wireless services would likely be less in demand.

"'Individuals, institutions, and companies would be far less dependent on expensive mobile communications networks in conducting their digital communication,' says Arnd Weber of Germany's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and a co-author of the new report."

The rest of the story: http://www.citylab.com/tech/2014/11/the-future-of-wi-fi-could-run-through-old-tv-infrastructure/383231/

Elizabeth Warren on Reagan-Clinton

Santa Monica: Roll back executive pay

The hiring of a replacement for exiting city manager Rod Gould provides Santa Monica with the chance to begin -- at the top -- the difficult but necessary task of reducing the outrageous salaries paid at upper levels of city staff.  

Gould's annual haul -- at least $352,889 -- beggars the imagination. For comparison, the compensation paid the mayor of the City of New York -- you know, with its $70 billion budget and its 325,000 employees -- is $225,000, and the People get to do the hiring! In 2012, Governor Jerry Brown took home $165,288  -- it shouldn't require a sacrifice to go from running the City of Santa Monica to governing the State of

California. Even limiting comparison to other charter cities, Santa Monica's salary schedule is out of whack: the city manager in Culver City, for example, tops out at $256,139.00 and Newport Beach's at $282,318.00. The National League of Cities latest figures (for 2009 -- five years ago, so inflation may have pushed some numbers higher; but, also, not reflecting the implosion and stagnation of the economy since) show the national average remuneration for chief administration officer/city manager as $106,408 and, by way of comparison, for chief law enforcement official as $82,015, in stark contrast to pay in Santa Monica for jobs like city attorney -- $294,878 -- and assistant city attorney -- $295,243, or assistant city manager -- $283,312 (not to mention a police sergeant racking up $293,264 with overtime). While the League of Cities averages include municipalities in areas of the country that have lower costs of living than west Los Angeles, they also include towns that are much bigger, much more problem-riddled, and much less pleasant and prestigious to work in. 

Typically, when a city bureaucracy tries to lower its costs of doing business, it begins by cutting services, reducing staff or getting lower-level employees to accept less in pay and benefits. With the change of administration, Santa Monica has a unique opportunity: reducing the burden of staffing at the executive level is -- economically, politically, morally -- the right thing to do.

2016: Winning

The Daily News reports that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, moving ahead with his campaign for the GOP presidential nomination -- "It's Jeb's turn!" bumper stickers are already at the printers, is meeting with potential donors and lining up support in the downtown Manhattan financial community. Since Hillary Clinton has also been engaged for many months in regular seances in the offices of Goldman Sachs, it's already clear who is not going to lose the 2016 election: Wall Street.

No learning curve. None. Zip. Zero.

The New York Times reports that "people familiar with the president’s thinking say that in 2015 he might use Keystone as a bargaining chip: He would offer Republicans approval of it in exchange for approval of one of his policies."

Charades

The New York Times says that "people familiar with the president’s thinking say that in 2015 he might use Keystone as a bargaining chip: He would offer Republicans approval of it in exchange for approval of one of his policies."

No learning curve. None. Zero. Zip. 

To run or not to run, that is the question

As Sen. Bernie Sanders considers a run for president, his big concern is whether the infrastructure exists to support an independent candidacy. It seems to me that his decision to run would be favorably influenced if the Peace & Freedom Party were to endorse him now. Not only would it nudge him in the right direction, but the fact that he would be on the ballot in the nation's largest state would encourage third parties in other region's to get on board.

The Long War

In Julius Caesar, Brutus argues that "Th'abuse of greatness is when it disjoins / Remorse from power." Thus Lincoln, in whose character cohabited forcefulness, caution and morality, will be honored through generations, long after Bush and Obama, the facilitators of endless war and apologists for the slaughter of innocents, are mercifully consigned to oblivion.

Oh, the humanity

"... all the folks agree that this is terrible, this is one of the worst catastrophes in the world. It's–it's–it's the flames, oh, four- or five-hundred feet into the sky and it ... it's a terrific crash, ladies and

gentlemen. It's smoke, and it's flames now ... and the frame is crashing to the ground, not quite to the mooring-mast. Oh, the humanity and all the passengers screaming around here. I told you, I can't even talk to people whose friends are on there. Ah! It's–it's–it's–it's ... o–ohhh! I–I can't talk, ladies and gentlemen. Honest, it's just laying there, a mass of smoking wreckage. Ah! And everybody can hardly breathe and talk, and the screaming. Lady, I–I'm sorry. Honest: I–I can hardly breathe. I–I'm going to step inside where I cannot see it. Charlie, that's terrible. Ah, ah—I can't. I, listen, folks, I–I'm gonna have to stop for a minute because I've lost my voice. This is the worst thing I've ever witnessed."

Blue pencil

The Times, keeping it real:

"An earlier version of this post misidentified Boniface VIII as Boniface VII."

We're not only criminalizing poverty.

We're criminalizing compassion and generosity.

Arnold Abbott being arrested on November 2, 2014

90-year-old Florida man faces 60 days in jail for feeding the homeless by Eric W. Dolan (Raw Story)

Sen. Sanders and the Democrats

Centrist Democrats would like nothing better than to have independent socialist U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries.

But the effect of drafting the Vermont senator into the Democratic competition would be to neutralize him.

If he runs, Sen. Sanders will be forced to pledge allegiance to the party's eventual nominee and we will enter the fall of 2016 with the strongest voice on the left either silenced or looking like a hypocrite by shilling for Hillary Clinton, Andrew Cuomo or some other servant of the corporate elite.

The way to maximize Sander's influence is to give all-out support for a run as an independent so that in the fall of 2016 in the debates and in the media he can continue to educate the public on alternatives to the status quo and to reveal that the emperor's surrogates have no clothes.

Bernie Sanders will never be the Democratic nominee.

But he can play an important and honorable role in building support for progressive policies in state and local elections, in congressional contests, and for a serious try for the White House from the left in the future by someone else. All a Democratic primary challenge by Sen. Sanders will achieve this round is to help the presidential Democrats maintain the illusion that they are an instrument of change.

Voting made simple

The midterms are not about whether or not the president is a doing a good job.

They're about whether or not you want a legislature made up of people who think that facts are stupid; that Obamacare caused Ebola; that Al Qaeda has camps on the Mexican border; that George Washington authorized wide-scale electronic surveillance; that there is such a thing as legitimate rape; that taxing tanning salons is racist discrimination against pale Americans; that something isn't necessarily constitutional just because the Supreme Court says it is; that Roe v. Wade led to gun massacres; that equal rights for women is a socialist, anti-family plot to get women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians; that Tinky Winky is gay; that marriage equality will result in people having sex with their dogs; that Democrats want everyone dependent on crack cocaine; that the biblical Great Flood is proof that global warming is a natural phenomenon; that wind farms are using up the wind; that Christopher Columbus was a great American; and that immigrants should be forced to learn English, just like Jesus.*

*All opinions above expressed by Republicans, not Democrats.

What about Santa Monica?

Okay, since you asked:

Although the campaign against Pam O'Connor has been so extreme and unfair as to almost make you want to vote for her in protest, I intend to cast ballots tomorrow for Frank Gruber, Mike Feinstein and Richard McKinnon. I decided against a protest vote for O'Connor for the same reason I wouldn't vote for Kevin McKeown: I think the council will benefit from some new blood. Gruber and McKinnon in their service on the planning commission -- and Gruber in his writing -- have demonstrated they can bring both experience and reasonableness to the council chamber. While Feinstein is not exactly new blood, during his previous council tenancy he showed a capacity to learn from experience, and his time away from city government has given him the opportunity to reflect on policy decisions past and future.

As far as the local measures, my votes will be no, no, no, no and no.

With all the spending for and against measures D and LC, you'd think they actually mean something. They don't. Santa Monica's agreement with the FAA expires at the end of June. When the smoke clears from the current battle, the City will still need to negotiate with the FAA and it is the federal agency that will have the final say in what changes there will be at the airport. While both measures are pointless, D has the added negative of challenging the idea of representative government; elected officials and city staff negotiating with the Feds have disadvantages enough without having their authority undermined further. The likelihood that the FAA will agree to close Santa Monica Airport is close to nil. (As an aside, current FAA rules have two interesting side effects: the presence of the airport forces planes flying to LAX to approach at a higher altitude, cutting noise; and take-off and landing regulations near Clover Field limit building heights.)

Measures H and HH would raise the city’s real estate transfer tax for commercial and non-commercial parcels selling for $1 million or more -- that's pretty much everything in Santa Monica -- from $3 per $1,000 of sales price to $9 per $1,000. We need more affordable housing in Santa Monica, but we need to find a less regressive way to pay for it. Meanwhile, measure FS would take the local rent control department's current maximum annual registration fee of $174.96 per controlled rental unit to $288 (reality check: Los Angeles' rent control stabilization fee is $67.83 per unit), 50% of which a landlord can (and any rational landlord will) pass on to tenants. The effect of all three measures would be to make Santa Monica an even more expensive place to live.

See no evil

"The U.S. government agreed to a police request to restrict more than 37 square miles of airspace surrounding Ferguson, Missouri, for 12 days in August for safety, but audio recordings show that local authorities privately acknowledged the purpose was to keep away news helicopters during violent street protests." -- AP news report

Where have you gone, Herbert Hoover?

"It is inconceivable that we should allow so great a possibility for service, for news, for entertainment, and for vital commercial purposes to be drowned in advertising chatter." -- Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, in 1922, commenting on Radio, um, Neutrality.

Asking for a friend

How are laws against impersonating a police officer affected by Halloween?

Man Bites Dog

 A homeless guy came into Pitfire Pizza at L.A.'s Main & Second about 10 p.m. tonight looking for water. It's probably sufficiently noteworthy to be worth reporting that he was treated by the staff with the respect.

Regressive Tax

I am in downtown L.A. On the block I'm visiting, there are several restaurants and at least four clubs with live performances. The parking meters went off duty at 8 p.m. and, yet, there appears to be no parking shortage, as compared to downtown Santa Monica where nothing much happens and the punitive parking tax devices are not deactivated until 2 a.m.

2Gary Gordon and Paul Lyons

It's turned out to be a dark and stormy night.

How about that?

Ted Cruz staffer:

'Before Obamacare, there had never been a confirmed case of Ebola in U.S.'

These people can say anything that pops into their heads, however idiotic.

It must be really easy to get a GOP staff job, though.

I could listen to Fats Waller all day.

Oh, wait. That's what I'm doing.

quote unquote James Baldwin

“Americans are the youngest country, the largest country, and the strongest country, we like to say, and yet the very notion of change, real change, throws Americans into a panic.” -- James Baldwin (November 1963)

Give 'em hell, Harry!

The Republicans … will try to make people believe that everything the Government has done for the country is socialism. They will go to the people and say: "Did you see that social security check

you received the other day—you thought that was good for you, didn't you? That's just too bad! That's nothing in the world but socialism. Did you see that new flood control dam the Government is building over there for the protection of your property? Sorry—that's awful socialism! That new hospital that they are building is socialism. Price supports, more socialism for the farmers! Minimum wage laws? Socialism for labor! Socialism is bad for you, my friend. Everybody knows that." And here you are, with your new car, and your home, and better opportunities for the kids, and a television set -- you are just surrounded by socialism! Now the Republicans say, "That's a terrible thing, my friend, and the only way out of this sinkhole of socialism is to vote for the Republican ticket." -- Harry S Truman, 1948

Universitäten wollen frei sein

At the same time that the U.S. government is raking in huge profits from usurious loans to America's young people, all German universities are now free to Americans and all other international students.

The last German state to charge tuition at its universities struck down the fees this week. In explaining why Germany made this move, Dorothee Stapelfeldt, a Hamburg senator, called tuition fees "unjust," adding that "they discourage young people who do not have a traditional academic family background from taking up study. It is a core task of politics to ensure that young women and men can study with a high quality standard free of charge in Germany."

You Can Now Go to College in Germany for Free, No Matter Where You’re From By Rebecca Schuman (Slate)
How US students get a university degree for free in Germany by Franz Strasser (BBC)

Those Randy conservatives

Conservatives employ Ayn Rand the way they do Jesus. You take any damn-fool position you want and then say, "because, you know, Ayn Rand." Nobody over 15 actually reads her stuff.

Where is Big Bill Haywood when you need him?

The Wobblies were right.

Workers of the world, and nearly everyone else, must unite against the predator class that will otherwise enslave and finally destroy the planet.

From the American Exceptionalism Desk:

“America leads. We are the indispensable nation. We have capacity no one else has. Our military is the best in the history of the world. And when trouble comes up anywhere in the world, they don't call Beijing. They don't call Moscow. They call us.” -- Barack Obama, last Sunday

"If that statement were a vehicle, it would be a Hummer with chrome-plated bumper nuts. It’s belligerent. It’s remarkably tone-deaf, coming from a man whose words are typically finely crafted. And it is, yes, stupid. There is a truth in it – no denying that. Given the amount of money we pour into our military, it certainly has the capacity to bomb, shoot, and generally wreck vast swathes of the world. We have enough nuclear weapons to ignite the Earth’s atmosphere. Our capacity is huge. We are freaking awesome." -- Akira Watts

Mantra

There are no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue,
no body, mind; no color, sound, or smell;
no taste, no touch, no thing; no realm of sight,
no realm of thoughts; no ignorance, no end
to ignorance; no old age and no death;
no end to age and death; no suffering,
nor any cause of suffering, nor end
to suffering, no path, no wisdom and no fulfillment.
                                    -- The Heart Sutra

The Heart Sutra: A Comprehensive Guide to the Classic of Mahayana Buddhism by Kazuaki Tanahashi

Thinking about Ferguson:

Tear gases are not merely irritating, they are nerve agents that, except for the objections of the US, would have been outlawed when the Chemical Weapons Convention was adopted in 1993. Legal or not, their use against protesting citizens is evidence of moral bankruptcy.

Good news:

LAUSD is giving up its grenade launchers. Bloomberg.

Labor Day!

“Never forget, people DIED for the eight hour workday.” — Rebecca Gordon

This poster is from the fabulous Ricardo Levins Morales Art Studio.