Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"A senior detective described it as 'another senseless incident in which a young life has been taken away by a knife' [emphasis added [by original poster]]]. No, it wasn't. It was taken by a group of subhuman predators who set this kid up and killed him. The tool(s) is a detail for the newspapers, but it doesn't matter to the victim.

"I'm not being flippant. People who refuse to recognize the problem are unlikely to ever find a solution. Before it was called 'gun violence'. Now it's called 'knife violence'. At the rate they're going, they'll be talking about 'jawbone of an ass' violence without ever trying to address the root causes."

-- dantheserene, 2008-07-06

[To one of my brothers: happy birthday!]

There was a quote similar to this that I'd planned to use for this morning's QotD entry, but I couldn't find it again in time. Fortunately, jonquil just provided this that I can quote instead, as an extra holiday QotD:

Happy Labor Day ... ...and thank you to all the radicals, socialists, and progressives who fought -- and sometimes died -- for the idea that workers should have an 8-hour day, time off, decent working conditions, and a living wage. Thank you to the unions who gave the workers the ability to negotiate in a form that the business owners could not ignore.

If only somebody powerful were speaking out for those things today.

Yes, socialists. (I may be misremembering the history, but weren't there communists involved as well?)

And then down in the comments:

I still have complicated feelings about the American unions. People gripe that the larger airlines are hamstrung by "ancient union contracts", but then we read about the situation at the non-union commuter airlines, with people getting less than four hours sleep and flying anyway, and nobody ever makes the connection.