COME JOIN US DEC 10th : TO OPPOSE TORTURE & ABUSE OF PRISONERS IN US CUSTODY

Start: Dec 10th starting in front of the Olympian Newspaper @ 12 pm. Finish: The Capital Mall @ 2:00 pm

On August 8th 2005 prisoners being held, most of which without charge, at the Guantanamo Bay Navy Base prison, began to demand their basic rights under the Geneva convention by beginning a three month hunger strike.

This peaceful action taken by the prisoners resulted in force feeding and an increase in brutal treatment through physical and psychological abuse and the religious persecution of the Guantanamo prisoners.

A recent report issued by the U.S government has stated that torture and brutal treatment of people under the custody of U.S personnel, should be legal as long as it does not take place on U.S soil.

The U.S government has repeatedly refused to report information on accounts of major violations against prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere in Iraq and Afghanistan.

OlyBlog is now #1 result on google search using words Olympia and caiman, or caimans. I believe we all should be very proud of ourselves.

On the occasional insomniac front, I recently drifted into slumber land cataloguing all the possible uses of caimans for OlyBlog. My favorite is the realization that they are convenient scapegoats/scapegators.

No indoor smoking evidently means no indoor smoking. From kgw.com:

By RACHEL LA CORTE / Associated Press: Cary Wilson studies for his astronomy class while taking a drag from the hose extending from his hookah water pipe, slowly inhaling the fragrant shisha — a mixture of tobacco, molasses and fruit flavors.

Joined by his friends on a plush maroon couch at Fire & Earth, a hookah lounge and tobacco merchant in downtown Olympia, Wilson said the newly passed statewide ban on indoor public smoking — including hookah bars — is unfair.

"You have a place to go that's not centered around drinking," said Wilson, an 18-year-old year student at South Puget Sound Community College in Olympia. "It's just a nice place to come and hang out."

Wilson and his friends will now have to smoke their hookahs at home, as the citizen-passed initiative takes effect at 12:01 a.m. Thursday. Fire & Earth will be closing its hookah bar, and several hookah lounges around the state are wondering how they'll be able to stay in business under the ban, the strictest in the country.

It just hit me. These smoking prohibitions will affect me also. Not just in the -I hate smoke- fashion. In a -my life as I knew it is changed forever- fashion.

I've always hung out with smokers. As a child, I liked tromping through the woods near school, so did the smokers. The older I got, the more likely my friends were smokers. Maybe I cultivated them because of our mutual affinity for breaks. Breaks from class, work, lectures, seminars, events...you name it. Smokers needed breaks to prevent nic fits, I needed breaks to prevent exhaustion and overwhelm fits. Smokers tend to have a natural timing, they know when it is time to take a break, more accurately than any clock.

More on the flip...

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Wednesday that the government can seize a person’s Social Security benefits to pay old student loans.

Retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote the decision that went against a disabled man, James Lockhart, who had sued claiming he needed all of his $874 monthly check to pay for food and medication.

Continued: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10366440/

Seattle Times:

"Medina Elementary School's phone lines were lighting up Tuesday with calls from people upset or pleased that the school had removed a metal 'giving tree' after a parent complained about its religious connotations."

I would think people have more to complain about the public education system than whether or not a tree is on display.

Continued: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/eastsidenews/2002669194_givingtree07e.html

On my walk home, I was thinking about it. For the first time in several years, I feel proud to be an American!

The gist of the whole matter is that the Port signed a lease with Weyerhauser without obtaining any public input and without conducting a proper environmental review of the impacts.

We need to be asking ourselves a few questions:

• Do we want an estimated 125 more logging trucks travelling through our Downtown Olympia on a daily basis?
• What effect will the $500,000 worth of lights they plan to install on the peninsula have on our cityscape?
• Are we comfortable, as citizens of Thurston County, subsidizing (at an estimated cost of nearly $4 million dollars - for several "improvements" agreed to as part of the lease) a major new logging operation for an already wealthy corporation, i.e. Weyerhauser? What I mean is, can't they afford to make these improvements on their own?

To support the legal defense fund:

Contributions should be by check made out to SPEECH and sent to:

SPEECH
209 East 4th Avenue
Suite 205
Olympia, 98501

Please note on the check that it is for the Citizens for Public Accountability or CPA fund.

From the Tacoma News Tribune:

OLYMPIA, Wash. — Thurston County is getting a state bailout as its District Court combats the state’s worst misdemeanor caseload.

The state Bar Association says the two attorneys who handle District Court misdemeanor cases in the state’s capital county have to deal with up to 900 cases per year — three times the maximum the bar recommends. The American Civil Liberties Union terms it a crisis and has warned of a lawsuit.

The state Office of Public Defense has decided to provide between $400,000 and $450,000, enough to hire at least two public defenders and a paralegal, The Olympian reported Tuesday.