I had jury duty this A.M. The County of L.A. in their infinite wisdom decreed I must go to the Beverly Hills court, which is 17.4 miles according to Yahoo Maps rather than Van Nuys court, a mere 4 miles drive.

Reporting time was 8:45 AM. I left Van Nuys at 7:15. By 8:15 I’d gone 9 miles. Worse, the canyon route I was starting to creep up was bumper to bumper the entire way. I called the court on my cell phone and said, hey, I can’t possibly make it on time because of traffic and rescheduled for next week.

I’ve got a home office so I’m rarely if ever in morning rush hour traffic. Sue says this kind of traffic is normal. Her 6 mile drive to work on surface streets can take an hour.

Traffic like this may be "normal" for L.A. but it’s dysfunctional. A city this traffic-clogged is approaching terminal gridlock. Oh, everyone says they’re doing something to fix it, and traffic is a top concern in voter polls. Yet, traffic continues to get constantly worse, never better.

A city can’t function this way. One day it will simply stop functioning.

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I’m off to be in the jury pool. More blogging later today…

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More on white phosphorous/napalm being used in Iraq against civilians. 

Abu Sabah knew he had witnessed something unusual. Sitting in November last year in a refugee camp in the grounds of Baghdad University, set up for the families who fled or were driven from Fallujah, this resident of the city’s Jolan district told me how he had witnessed some of the battle’s heaviest fighting.

"They used these weird bombs that put up smoke like a mushroom cloud," he said. He had seen "pieces of these bombs explode into large fires that continued to burn on the skin even after people dumped water on the burns". 

More

An examination by The Independent of the available evidence suggests the following: that WP shells were fired at insurgents, that reports from the battleground suggest troops firing these WP shells did not always know who they were hitting and that there remain widespread reports of civilians suffering extensive burn injuries.

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To protest controversial firing of popular columnist Robert Scheer
"I’ve been a punching bag for Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh for years and I think the paper finally collapsed" — Robert Scheer, Friday, Nov. 11th
Protest today, Tuesday, Nov. 15, Noon
Outside LA Times Building
First Street Entrance
202 W. 1st St. (at Spring St.)

The Times also axed a Pulitzer Prize winner, right-wing political cartoonist Michael Ramirez. Scheer thinks it was because of his anti-Iraq War stance. But that doesn’t explain firing Ramirez who was solidly pro-war. Another news outlet goes timid?

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From PBS

The world is poised on the brink of epochal changes in how water is stored, used, and valued. Will these changes provide clean water to the billions of people who need it? Or save the child who dies every eight seconds from contaminated water? Examining water conflicts on three continents, "Thirst" shows that popular opposition to the privatization of water sparks remarkable coalitions that cross partisan lines. When it comes to water, many people demand local control and fear the arrival of multinational corporations with large lobbying budgets and little local loyalty.

The battle to stop water privatization is worldwide, and is happening in US cities as well as in the third-world.

The website for the movie, ThirstTheMovie.org, sums it up in one sentence.

Is water a human right or a commodity to be bought and sold in a global marketplace?

Unless you believe multinational corporations will altruistically put the needs of water consumers before their lust for profits (in which case I have a nice bridge for sale) then it behooves us all to keep water in public hands and out of their grasping little hands.

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