Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society, Los Angeles
Sign up now and be a part of Against the Stream's Second Annual Sit-a-Thon. Join them for a lovely day of mindful practice dedicated to helping others. Commemorating a fateful day, this fundraiser for ATS's scholarship program is targeted specifically for the October retreat at Joshua Tree. Sitters are encouraged to raise funds by having friends and family sponsor them. They can support practitioners via an online donation, or sitters can bring cash, checks, or credit cards to the sit. All are welcome to come sit just for the sake of good practice -- allowing this to be a day of remembrance. Read about ATS's intention for the weekend.
9/11 FEMA search filmed underground (cbsnews.com)
The Decades' Biggest Scam
Glenn Greenwald (Salon.com)
The Los Angeles Times examines the staggering sums of money expended on patently absurd domestic "homeland security" projects: $75 billion per year for things such as a Zodiac boat with side-scan sonar to respond to a potential attack on a lake in tiny Keith County, Nebraska, and hundreds of "9-ton BearCat armored vehicles, complete with turret" to guard against things like an attack on DreamWorks in Los Angeles. All of that -- which is independent of the exponentially greater sums spent on foreign wars, occupations, bombings, and the vast array of weaponry and private contractors to support it all -- is in response to this mammoth, existential, the-single-greatest-challenge-of-our-generation threat:- "The number of people worldwide who are killed by Muslim-type terrorists, Al Qaeda wannabes, is maybe a few hundred outside of war zones. It's basically the same number of people who die drowning in the bathtub each year," said John Mueller, an Ohio State University professor who has written extensively about the balance between threat and expenditures in fighting terrorism. More