Olympia is fortunate to have an active and passionate resistance to the illegal and unjust wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan. The nation is in dire straits, as the following information attests to. Vincent Bugliosi, who has championed the successful prosecution of 21 murder suspects, has accused President Bush of no less than murder. I think articles like this are important background for community understanding behind certain protest actions including, but not limited to, the Port Militarization Resistance blockade campaigns:

DemocracyNow.org

June 13, 2008

Citing Iraq War, Renowned Attorney Vincent Bugliosi Seeks “The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder”

Colonel (ret.) Ann Wright visited Olympia yesterday for a series of presentations on Iraq, on official wrongdoing within government, and on her new book, which is published by Koa Books. Dissent, Voices of Conscience: Government Insiders Speak Out Against the War in Iraq is co-authored by Ms. Wright and Susan Dixon. It chronicles the stories of about 25 government and military whistle-blowers who have come forward to expose corruption and wrongdoing in their respective professional settings.

Colonel Wright was a career diplomat with the US State Department. When the US Government, under the dictate of the Bush Administration, launched an invasion in Iraq she resigned her post (along with two other US diplomats.) I saw and listened to Ms. Wright give a presentation (on her experience vís a vís her professional career and Iraq) at South Puget Sound Community College. Her visit was sponsored by Washington Peace Action and BRICK (the SPSCC student group Building Revolution by Increasing Community Knowledge).

Location: Temple Beth Hatfiloh 201 8th Avenue SE Olympia, WA

This event is free and open to the public.

Kenji Yoshino is the author of the award-winning book, Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Human Rights, a groundbreaking critique of current civil rights law and a vision for a new direction. A specialist in constitutional law, anti-discrimination law, and law and literature, he has published work in The Advocate, The Boston Globe, The Nation, The New York Times, Slate, The Village Voice, and The Washington Post, as well as in a wide variety of academic journals.

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The State Supreme Court just issued a decision on a dispute involving Thurston County and the payment of overtime to employees. You can read the article at the source here.
"Published February 24, 2008

The Olympian
Court rejects jail staff’s pay complaint
The state Supreme Court has rejected a claim by Thurston County jail staff members about when checks for overtime pay are issued.

Four officers — Gene Champagne, Cary Brown, Roland Knorr and Christopher Scanlon — sued the county for its practice of waiting an extra pay period to pay overtime.

This is directly related to the PMR protests against the illegal war of occupation in Iraq. For legal expert Francis Boyle, those PMR activists who organized and engaged in civil resistance toward the use of the municipal Port of Olympia to further, and to enable, an illegal military action are the true "sheriffs". You can find this article on the UFPPC website. read on:

ANALYSIS: Francis Boyle distinguishes 'civil resistance' from 'civil disobedience'
Written by Madeleine Lee
Friday, 14 December 2007

In a lecture given at Northwestern Law School on Nov. 20, 2007, Prof. Francis A. Boyle asserted, as he has many times while defending Lt. Ehren Watada's refusal to deploy to Iraq, that the Bush administration is a criminal regime:

"[I]n many instances specific components of the Bush Jr. administration's foreign policy constitute ongoing criminal activity under well recognized principles of both international law and United States domestic law."