H. Con. Res. 362, introduced by Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y. 5th), affirms "the sense of Congress" to be a desire that the U.S. lead an effort to effect economic measures against Iran that are acts of war.   --  United for Peace and Justice (of which UFPPC is a member) has called for a phone campaign to oppose this belligerent measure.[1]  --  Ackerman's measure has received almost no media coverage.  --  Dan Fleshler pooh-poohed the notion that H. Con Res. 362 was belligerent in a piece published on Jun. 16 by Israel e News, calling it "slightly tougher" than the Senate's Iran Counterproliferation Act, but also "non-binding."[2]  --  But in more recent posts on his Realistic Dove web site, though, Fleshler acknowledged that a blockade is an act of war.  --  On Jun. 10 and 11, all three of Pierce County's congressional representatives signed on as co-sponsors of H. Con. Res. 362.  --  The National Iranian American Council posted a call for opposition to the measure.  --  In a blog entry on the Antiwar.com web site, Geoffrey V. Gray said that the Ackerman resolution "could be passed by the House as early as next week."  --  The full text of the legislation, a risible tissue of misstatements and outright falsehoods misrepresenting both the facts and the strategic situation in the Middle East, is posted below.[4]  --  BACKGROUND:  Brooklyn-born Gary Ackerman represents a district on the southern shores of Long Island Sound.  --  He was chosen in 2006 to be president of the Jerusalem-based International Council of Jewish Parliamentarians, "a project supported by the Knesset, the World Jewish Congress, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Israel Forum," according to the organization's web site.  --  On Jun. 6, 2008, Ackerman read an Iranophobic statement at a congressional hearing.  --  On the same day, Trita Parsi, recently the author of a remarkable book on U.S.-Israeli-Iranian relations, wrote in Asia Times Online that Ali Larijani's elevation to the position of speaker of Iran's Majlis may create "opportunities to pursue unprecedented parliamentarian diplomacy."[5]  --  Unfortunately, Gary Ackerman's resolution, and Pierce County's legislators, are pushing in exactly the opposite direction....

Earlier this month the 2008 National Conference on Media Reform was held in Minneapolis.  --  UFPPC's Marilyn Kimmerling was there, and wrote this report last week for the Tahoma Organizer.[1]  --  Her analysis not only describes what transpired in Minneapolis but explains why media reform is an essential sine qua non if real progressive change — which can only come if there is strong pressure on leaders from the grassroots — is to be realized in the United States....

"[N]o paperwork has been filed to date" by the U.S. Army to prevent Federal District Judge Benjamin Settle's injunction against a retrial of Lt. Ehren Watada, the Pacific Citizen said on Monday.[1]  --  The Honolulu Star-Bulletin reported Sunday that Watada attorney Ken Kagan "said he expects the case to eventually go before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals where it may take up to three years before a decision is rendered.  'Our experience has shown us that 9th Circuit matters consume somewhere between 18 months to three years,' Kagan said.  'I don't know of any reason they would put it on some fast track.'"[2]  --  "[L]egal proceedings have prevented his discharge," Gregg Kakesako noted; Lt. Watada continues to work in an administrative capacity at Fort Lewis.  --  Watada's father told the Honolulu Advertiser:  "I kind of think it's like Guantanamo — just hold him."[3] ...

On Thurs., Jun. 26, at 7:00 p.m., at King's Books in Tacoma, Conor Browne will speak about how the peace in Northern Ireland can give us hope for peace in other long-term conflicts that seem hopeless.  --  Browne, 36, is a native of Northern Ireland and is doing research for a Ph.D. at Queen's University Belfast.  --  This talk is free and open to the public....

A Fort Lewis soldier from Zachary, Louisiana, who "used to come down to Ruston Way to watch the sunset, take pictures, and horse around with his fellow scouts from Arrow Troop, 1st Platoon" was remembered at "a come-as-you-are memorial just for him at the north end of Ruston Way" on Jun. 7, one year and five days after he died at the age of 21 in Iraq, the News Tribune (Tacoma, WA) reported Saturday.[1]  --  "[A] mix of [his] old civilian friends and his Army buddies just home from 15 months of combat" recalled Cpl. Jared Crouch's generosity and good humor.  --  Cpl. Crouch "was driving the lead vehicle on a mission south of Baqouba when a roadside bomb blew up beneath the truck, barely a month into his deployment.  He was the only one killed that day, although a total of 37 soldiers from the 4th Brigade would die during their tour.  --  Mike Gilbert had announced the 6:00 p.m. memorial on his blog, FOB Tacoma.[2]  --  In an April blog entry, Scott Fontaine of the News Tribune mentioned that Crouch ate "his last meal before deploying to Iraq" at Galloping Gerties in Lakewood.[3]  --  BACKGROUND:  Cpl. Jared Crouch was killed near Baqubah, an historic city of some 300,000 that lies on the Silk Road from Baghdad to Khorasan Province in Iran.  --  His death was apparently part of the so-called "Battle of Baqubah," from March to August 2007; al-Hadid is a western neighborhood of Baqubah.  --  According to Wikipedia, "The offensive's forward progression was . . . slowed by the use of deep-buried IEDs, one such attack killing six American soldiers.  The house-to-house fighting seen in eastern Baqubah during this offensive was the fiercest fighting in Iraq at the time.  Al-Qaida in Iraq was pitching a last effort to retain control of their capital.  While clearing of eastern Baqubah was being completed the 5th Battalion 20th Infantry was able to successfully isolate and contain the western half of the city.  In early June they called for the assistance of the Brigade command and their sister Battalion the 1-23rd Tomahawks in clearing western Baqubah."  --  A year later, Baqubah continues to be afflicted with violence.  --  On Monday, Reuters reported that "Three mortar bombs killed one person and wounded two others in a town east of Baquba" and "[a] roadside bomb killed a man driving a tractor just north of Baquba."  --  And on Jun. 4, 2008, "[i]n Baquba, 60 kilometers north-east of Baghdad, a bomb went off on a highway as an Iraqi army patrol drove by, killing two soldiers and injuring eight, medical sources told Deutsche Presse-Agentur.  --  Two days after he died, the web site USWarWatch.org said:  "Crouch enlisted right out of high school in 2004.  When his four-year tour was up, he planned to transfer to the National Guard and study history with an eye toward government service.  As it happens, Crouch's younger brother, a reservist, is also stationed in Iraq . . . and will try to accompany his brother's body home." ...

On Monday, Inter Press Service reported on the Winter Soldier hearings last weekend at Seattle Town Hall.[1]  --  As his lead Dahr Jamail used testimony from Seth Manzel, a Pierce County IVAW member who has attended UFPPC meetings.  --  The Seattle Post-Intelligencer also published an account.[2]  --  The University of Washington’s daily paper also reported on the event.[3] ...

Olympia PMR activist Pham Nguyen is appealing for supporters to attend the arraignment on Wed., May 28, in Olympia Municipal Court, of three nonviolent civil resisters arrested during the November 2007 port militarization resistance actions in Olympia.[1]  --  He reviews the considerable body of evidence indicating that the these cases are being pursued because of political pressure from the Olympian, which has taken a hard line toward nonviolent antiwar activists while turning a blind eye to outrageous violence inflicted by militarized police.  --  The Olympian claims to demand “zero tolerance for vandalism and lawlessness,” but in neo-Orwellian fashion obstinately refuse to recognize that it is the protesters, and not the police, who are standing for the rule of law in this case.  --  Uniforms, batons, and pepper spray are not what legality is made of....

Cindy Sheehan is running for Congress in California and will appear at at a campaign fund-raiser at Kenneth J. Minnaert Center for the Arts at SPSCC in Olympia on Sun. evening, Jun. 8.  --  She will be accompanied by Linda Boyd of Washington for Impeachment and Gary Murrell, the Green Party candidate running against Norm Dicks in Washington's 6th Congressional District.  --  The title of the campaign fund-raiser:  "A Revolution of Values: Moving from a War Economy to a Peace Economy."  --  Details below.[1] ...

On Sat., May 31, from noon to 4:15 p.m., Seattle Town Hall will be the site of "Northwest Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan," featuring panels addressing eyewitness accounts and personal stories from veterans and military families, veterans' issues, military recruitment, war resistance, racism and the "war on terror," and bridges to labor & students.  --  Tickets cost $5 at the door, first-come-first served.  --  Details below.[1] ...

On May 16, more than six months after sixty-one antiwar activist were arrested in the course of thirteen days of port militarization resistance protests in Olympia on Nov. 5-17, 2007, the Prosecutor's Office of the City of Olympia announced Friday that it had filed misdemeanor charges against three of them.  --  Only two weeks earlier Olympia's city manager said the city believed it had nine "good" cases against protestors, but "City Prosecutor Kalo Wilcox declined to discuss Thursday why none of the others who were arrested has been charged."[1]  --  Those charged:  Shyam Khanna, arrested Nov. 8, 2007, and Kathleen Hutchison and Patricia Hutchison, arrested on Nov. 10, 2007.   --  BACKGROUND:  As usual, the article in the Olympian reports nothing on the reasons for protesters' actions last November.  --  For one version of that rationale, see UFPPC's statement of Dec. 20, 2007, entitled "The Failure of Democrats to Stop the War Is a Crisis of the Republic Legitimating Civil Resistance," and which notes international law expert Francis Boyle's argument that "American citizens possess the basic right under international law and the United States domestic law, including the U.S. Constitution, to engage in acts of civil resistance designed to prevent, impede, thwart, or terminate ongoing criminal activities perpetrated by Bush administration officials in their conduct of foreign affairs policies and military operations purported to relate to defense and counter-terrorism."  --  Such action, Boyle points out, constitutes not civil disobedience but "civil resistance."  --  The Olympian effects a neo-Orwellian role-reversing mystification:  those defending the rule of law appear as lawbreakers, and those defending illegality appear as officers of the law.  --  For more on the November PMR protests, see UFPPC's statement of Nov. 15, 2007, on the outrageously excessive force that Olympia police used against the demonstrators, which also goes unmentioned in the Olympian's article.  --  UFPPC commented in a statement "On War and the Corruption of Language" on Jul. 8, 2004:  "Those in power are unable to accept that their deeds be described accurately.  Instead, they insist on descriptive terms that justify their actions, while finding the means to suppress, censure, or marginalize true descriptions. Some of the people who do this are self-deceived.  Some of them are scoundrels.  The self-deceivers and scoundrels have different motives, but they have a common interest in finding ways to deal with those who use language accurately." ...

In a case that seems destined to inspire more than one murder mystery in the future, a U.S. citizen who had served as director of the Southeast Asian Ceramics Museum at Bangkok University died on Wednesday at the Federal Detention Center in SeaTac, the Associated Press reported later that day.  --  Arrested on May 9 upon her arrival in Seattle for an academic speaking engagement, Dr. Roxanna Brown, 62, was a somewhat exotic figure.  --  She had a gained a Ph.D. in art history at UCLA and lost a leg in an accident in Bangkok more than twenty-five years ago, and federal authorities had just arranged for her grand jury indictment for allegedly "allowing art collectors to use her electronic signature to overstate the value of items they donated to several Southern California museums."  --  Roxanna Brown's brother, who lived in Chicago and who maintains that she was innocent, said that "his sister became interested in Southeast Asian art after visiting him in 1968 in Australia, where he was recovering from a Vietnam War wound."  --  The Los Angeles Times said Thursday that Brown "was a focal point of a widening federal probe that was launched with highly publicized raids on four Southern California museums in January."[2]  --  Brown died about 2:30 a.m. Wednesday as preparations for her extradition to L.A. were underway.  --  Her death was initially believed to have been due to a heart attack, but the Seattle Times reported on Friday that the King County Medical Examiner's Office said she had died "from infection and inflammation caused by a perforated gastric ulcer."[3]  --  Coming on the heels of a Washington Post series on the neglect suffered by detainees in the post-9/11 immigrant detention centers around the nation, there was sure to be interest in the fact that "the detention center does not have any medical staff on duty overnight."  --  The talk that Dr. Brown was prevented from giving on May 10 at a "China in Asia Workshop" at the U. of Wash. on "Maritime Asia in the Early Modern World" was entitled "The Sea Trade from China to Southeast Asia."[4]  --  Roxanna Brown was the author of the erudite Ceramics of Southeast Asia: Their Dating and Identification, 2nd ed. (Oxford UP, 1989; orig. ed. 1977), which treated of Vietnamese ceramics, Go-Sank kilns, Khmer wares, Sukhothai and Sawankhalok kilns, Northern and other Thai kilns, celadon wares, and Burmese ceramics.  --  For more on Roxanna Brown's scholarly work, see this 2004 article from UCLA's Center for Southeast Asian Studies....

On Thursday the House voted down an Iraq and Afghansitan war funding proposal in what the Washington Post called a "surprise action left antiwar activists on and off Capitol Hill exultant, Republicans gloating, and Democratic leaders baffled."[1]  --  "Recriminations from all sides quickly followed," Johathan Weisman said.  --  Among those exulting were the Progressive Democrats of America, who described the action this way:  "The appropriations amendment granting 162.5 billion dollars more for operations in Iraq failed to pass the House today.  Eighty-five Democrats voted with fifty-six Republicans for a total of 141 votes for the amendment.  The congressional Progressive Caucus hung together and with other Democrats and two Republicans cast 147 votes to defeat the amendment.  Whether 132 House Republicans abstained in today's vote in a protest against Pelosi's parliamentary procedures or to distance themselves from the president is yet to be determined.  Either way, it worked to allow the House to finally vote against funding for the occupation of Iraq."[2]  --  Unfortunately, all of Pierce County representatives (Norm Dicks, Adam Smith, and Dave Reichert) were on the wrong side of the 149-141 vote.  --  Paul Richmond, an attorney who is mounting a challenge to Norm Dick in Washington's 6th Congressional district, issued a statement proclaiming that Dicks's vote "shows that the Congressman is at odds with the majority of citizens, the majority of Democrats, and his constituency."[3]  --  Richmond also called attention to Washington State Congressional District Caucuses which will be held tomorrow, and urged supporters to "show your support for my campaign, please consider a visit to Shelton, (on the Peninsula, North of Tacoma) early Saturday morning."[4]  --  See also here for details of the process; the nominating convention will be held from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m....

"Armed Forces Day" was first observed in 1949 as a consolidation of what had previously been Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard Days (though observance of these separate commemorations continues).  --  Congress had passed the National Security Act unifying the armed services in 1947, which also created the Central Intelligence Agency.  --  This year, the Bremerton Chamber of Commerce has organized a number of events, one of them being the "60th Annual American Financial Solutions Armed Forces Day Parade" in downtown Bremerton, featuring "[m]ore than 150 marching units including nearly two dozen bands and the Pearl Harbor Survivors [who] will parade through the streets of downtown Bremerton to celebrate Armed Forces Day."[1]  --  (Incidentally, Bremerton has miscounted: since Armed Forces Day was first observed on May 20, 1950, this 2008 events are the 59th, not the 60th annual observance.)  --  Admiral Gary Roughead, Chief of Naval Operations, is serving this year as the parade's Grand Marshal.  --  The parade will be broadcast live on Bremerton Kitsap Access Television, and will feature among its entries the National Guard's M1A1 Abrams tank ("a huge crowd favorite"), the Combat Veterans International's motorcycles "offering a moving tribute to service members."  --  But the application of North Olympic Peninsula Veterans For Peace (Chapter 139, based in Sequim) to join in Saturday's parade has been rejected, David Jenkins informed VFP members on Monday.[2]  --  The board of directors of North Olympic Peninsula VFP has decided to challenge this rejection by "form[ing] up at the tail end of the parade procession," and is asking supporters to join them.  --  "Now is the time to commit words and beliefs to action," Jenkins wrote.  --  "Now is the time to be unified in our effort and demonstrate that our belief in our constitutional right to speech and free expression is real. . . . We appear to have a great deal of support."  --  Jenkins said that the "Bremerton Armed Forces Day Festival and Parade is a week-long celebration of the false and fatal misleading culture of war.  It generates the excitement and energy that sucks in the future of our country, our youth, to become fodder.  --  It has little to do with defending the freedoms guaranteed by our constitution and much to do with defending the interests of wealth and the oligarchs of America."  --  Jenkins invites supporters to join them to "demonstrate that our belief in our constitutional right to speech and free expression is real."  --  Thanks to David Jenkins for permission to post his message here....

A 42-year-old man died in 2006 at the Northwest Detention Center in what is believed to have been one of some thirty preventable deaths of persons in the custody of the Dept. of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the web site of the Seattle Weekly reported today.  --  "We never heard about it" at the time, Rick Anderson noted.  --  But recently released documents showing how many detainees have died in U.S. immigration prisons were described last week by the New York Times and the Washington Post.  --  On May 5, the Times published news of 66 names "on a government list of deaths that occurred in immigration custody from January 2004 to November 2007 . . . compiled by Immigration and Customs Enforcement after Congress demanded the information, and obtained by the New York Times under the Freedom of Information Act."[2]  --  Nina Bernstein called the list "the fullest accounting to date of deaths in immigration detention, a patchwork of federal centers, county jails and privately run prisons that has become the nation’s fastest-growing form of incarceration."  --  In the case of one death, Bernstein described how the Corrections Corporation of America (which built Tacoma's Northwest Detention Center and then sold it to Geo, the present operator) labeled as "proprietary information — not for distribution” a report that described how a detainee who "fell" and injured his head was "shackled and pinned to the floor of the medical unit as he moaned and vomited, then left in a disciplinary cell for more than 13 hours, despite repeated notations that he was unresponsive and intermittently foaming at the mouth."  --  He later died.  --  At present, "[n]o government body is required to keep track of deaths and publicly report them.   No independent inquiry is mandated.  And often relatives who try to investigate the treatment of those who died say they are stymied by fear of immigration authorities, lack of access to lawyers, or sheer distance."  --  On Tuesday, the chair of a congressional subcommittee said she was introducing legislation "to set mandatory standards for care and to require that all deaths be reported to the Justice Department and Congress."[3]  --  “This is about whether the government is conducting itself according to the basic minimum standards of civilization,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California.  --  Without the Freedom of Information Act this story would never have come to light, but the "public editor" of the New York Times, Clark Hoyt, wrote on Sunday that "it is increasingly difficult to pry records that should be open out of federal agencies."[4] ...

(CORRECTION:  Whoops!  Like most Americans, we're geography-challenged, it appears... upon studying the map more carefully, we take back our original assertion that this material is probably passing through Tacoma... that doesn't appear to be the most likely route.  --  We hope no one was unduly alarmed. --M.N.)  --   In 1991, military vehicles and munitions caught fire during the first Iraq war and contaminated sand in Kuwait, AP reported on May 2.[1]  --  "The Kuwait Ministry of Defense contracted MKM Engineers Inc. of Stafford, Texas, to package the waste and transport it to the United States," Jessie Bonner wrote.  --  "MKM then subcontracted with American Ecology [Corp.] for disposal," but American Ecology, which operates a 1,100-acre hazardous waste disposal site in Idaho's Owyhee Desert, refused to disclose the size of the contract.  --  Photographs of the American Ecology site, in Grand View, ID, which the company calls an "isolated desert location with excellent geology," can be seen here.  --  The 6,700 tons of 10 picurie-per-gram contaminated sand arrived by ship at one of the Port of Longview's eight marine terminals, and is being transported by rail over a period of two months, presumably on a Northwest Division BNSF Railway line.  --  KBCI-TV 2 in Boise reported that the Snake River Alliance, an energy industry watchdog, opposed the shipment:  "There's no room for nuclear waste in Idaho,” a spokesperson said.[2]  --  On Monday, New West (Missoula, MT) reported that a Republican candidate for Sen. Larry Craig's seat called on the governor of Idaho and lieutenant governor of Idaho (the latter is also running for the Senate seat) to "stop this dangerous shipment of radioactive material bound for Idaho, for the sake of a clean environment, for the sake of precedent and for the safety of our children," and said that "Accepting this waste in the United States is poor public policy and environmentally unsound for Idaho."[3]  --  New West said the ammunition fire that produced the contaminated sand involved spent ammunition.  --  Columnist Jill Kuraitis reported that American Ecology is an important contributor to the campaign funds of many Idaho politicians, and that the company's spokesperson had persistently refused to speak with her.  --  On Tuesday, also in New West columnist Joan McCarter proclaimed "the insanity of actually shipping 6,700 tons of contaminated anything the thousands of miles from its current home in Kuwait to Owyhee County, Idaho."[4]  --  On Thursday, an AP piece on American Ecology said that the Boise-based company "brought in 800,000 tons of industrial hazardous waste from 37 states for disposal in southwest Idaho last year.  The company also owns hazardous waste disposal sites in Nevada, Texas, and Washington.  Last year it reported $165.5 million in revenue and a gross profit of $45.5 million."  --  The Daily News (Longview, WA) broke the story on Apr. 15.  --  In an Apr. 25 follow-up, the Daily News reported that the ship carrying the contaminated sand, the BBC Alabama, was "held up outside the Columbia River while American Ecology, the disposal company, obtains approval to enter the river from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency."[5]  --  "[R]ecently discovered" lead deposits in the sand were responsible for the need for a new permit.  --  The discovery should have required require a four-week delay in entry of the material, but it didn't (perhaps because keeping depleted uranium-contaminated sand sitting off the coast for several weeks didn't seem like a bright idea).  --  The sand was packaged in bags and filled some 306 containers that took two and a half days to unload.  --  An update from the nuclear watchdog organization Snake River Alliance on Thursday misspelled "leaching" and gave the name of the company involved as "U.S. Ecology."[6]  --  BACKGROUND:  Unmentioned in these articles:  the nature of depleted uranium munitions and the argument that they are illegal under international law, and the likelihood that the reason that the number of veterans from conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan who are seeking medical attention is several multiples of what the Dept. of Defense anticipated....

Why are both national and local media censoring the involvement of the Washington Joint Analytical Center (WAJAC) from reports about the resolution of the Seattle ferry 'mystery men' case?  --  UFPPC's Jim O. Madison continues his exploration of the little-known system of "fusion centers" that are sprouting around the country like mushrooms after a heavy rain.[1]  --  He also appends the FBI press release[2] and local media reports[3,4] about the resolution of the Seattle ferry case....

University of Puget Sound student Peter Ryan was tear-gassed by police while protesting peacefully against the Iraq war on the evening of Mar. 9-10, 2007.   --  For a video of what occurred that evening at the Port of Tacoma on Mar. 9-10, 2007, which involved police responding to a peaceful group singing "Give Peace a Chance" with tear gas and rubber bullets and which has been described as a "police riot" by one observer, see here.  --  Here's another view of the action that night.  --  Peter Ryan's "crime" was to respond to this unprovoked violence by refusing to move.  --  But instead of the police being prosecuted for using needless and dangerous violence against protesters acting in response to the illegal aggression of the United States in Iraq so as to avoid their own participation in the crime of complicity under the Nuremberg Principles (Principle VI: "The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law: (a) Crimes against peace: (i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances; (ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i). . . . Principle VII: Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law"), it was Peter Ryan who more than a year, on Apr. 17, 2008, was convicted by a jury Tacoma Municipal Court.  --  His crime:  "failing to disperse."  --  (It's true that Ryan was sitting in a roadway at the time of his arrest, but the roadway had been blocked by a police barricade, so he was not interfering with any vehicular traffic.)  --  After his conviction, Peter Ryan put in writing some of his impressions of his trial, and has given his permission to reproduce them here.[1]  --  A Tacoma SDS piece posted on Apr. 13 gave more information on the case.[2] ...

On May 2, the News Tribune (Tacoma, WA) reported on a Lakewood forum that saw local government leaders and Army representatives sign "a document called the Army Community Covenant with the goal of making life better for the post’s soldiers and their families."[1]  --  Reporter Brent Champaco explained that the Army already has a "community connector" progam that links Army units to particular city or local governments.  --  Lakewood, for example, is the connector to the 4th Stryker Brigade now in Iraq.  --  "Mayors, city council members, and representatives of other South Sound communities — from as far south as Tumwater, and as far north as Auburn — signed the covenant," Champaco said.  --  "Lakewood Mayor Doug Richardson, a brigadier general in the Army Reserve, spoke about how proud and honored the communities outside Fort Lewis are to help soldiers and their families.  'They live among us as friends and neighbors,' he said.  --  Washington Lt. Gov. Brad Owen and Congressman Adam Smith also spoke."  --  The Suburban Times of Lakewood and surrounding communities touted the event,[2] taking its tone from an official news release from the Army in which the word "soldier" is always capitalized on the initial Apr. 17 ceremony in Columbus, Georgia, with "the Fort Benning community."[3]  --  COMMENT:  Militarism has been defined by Alfred Vagts in his classic A History of Militarism: Civilian and Military (1959) as "a vast array of customs, interests, prestige, actions and thought associated with armies and war and yet transcending true military purposes."  --  The "interests" underlying the "prestige, actions, and thought" apparent in the Army Community Covenant program are not far to seek.  --  On Sat., Apr. 26, the News Tribune (Tacoma, WA) reported that the annual payroll at Fort Lewis topped $1bn in 2006, according the Census Bureau's Combined Federal Funds Report.[4]  --  That's almost twice what it was ten years ago, Mike Gilbert said, and was up $64m (or 6.6%) from 2005.  --  The growth is attributed by a spokesperson for the Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber of Commerce entirely to "the continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."  --  "Fort Lewis has grown by some 10,000 soldiers since the late 1990s, with 28,924 stationed there now," Gilbert reported.  --  "Another 3,000 or so will arrive in the next couple of years."  --  "A total of 43,964 family members — spouses, children, and others — live on and off post with those soldiers, post spokeswoman Catherine Caruso said."  --  The U.S. Navy payroll in Washington State for that year was $1.06bn, and the Air Force payroll in Pierce County was $195m." ...

This six-minute video from Raindagger Productions captures with music by Bruce Springsteen and Pete Seeger the spirit of the May Day march in Seattle on May 1, 2008, on the occasion of the ILWU antiwar action that shut down all the ports of the Western United States.[1] ...

This week's terror-preparedness drill in the Pacific Northwest involves a lot more than what South Sound papers are reporting, and so far the papers in Seattle are ignoring the exercise altogether.  --  An investigation by UFPPC's Jim O. Madison[1] has turned up quite a bit of information about Washington State's little-known "fusion center," WAJAC — a developing national security facility that (unless we're mistaken) has never been been described by the media....