(Above ground on Market St. & the Long March down to the Embarcadero on August 15, 2011)

Lessons from the UK and a political conservative: "Social problems that have been festering for decades have exploded in our face." -- David Cameron, British Prime Minister, commenting on the looting and rioting in London and the rest of his country (Examiner quote in Sound Bites, Tuesday August 16, 2011).

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." -- George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Vol. 1 (1905)

"If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience." -- George Bernard Shaw, Irish dramatist/socialist

Wake up, people! These are your sons and daughters out there on the streets of San Francisco and the platforms of BART. They are not just outside agitators from LA. That statement is a cop-out. A weak, arbitrary and knee-jerk reactionary statement made by authoritarian posers who have no explanation or possess bad intelligence. These people, these demonstrators are mere kids and family units working to make right the events that went wrong. And what's that, you say? Those are not your sons and daughters out there? Well, if they are not out there now, they soon will be if things do not change. History has again and again repeated itself and we have not learned a damn thing. Is there any hope for us at all? Or are we doomed and condemned to repeat our mistakes as George Santayana predicted.