New research reveals that monkey cops help keep social groups in line.

Not having guns or nightsticks, they leverage their group seniority, craft intimidating reputations and count on good voter turnout.

Take the primate police out of a group, as researchers did, and the rest get more violent and aggressive. Interaction between cliques drops significantly.

Continued

Take from this article what you like. I think it is interesting and could certainly be used in the debate of how necessary government is needed to control society.

Olympians Stand Up to Nazis

On Sunday, January 22, 150 to 200 people rallied at Noon by the Texaco gas station on the Eastside of Olympia, near where the National Socialist Movement, an openly Nazi organization was supposed to rally. When they didn't appear, we left at 12:45 to head to Sylvester Park where an anti-racist, anti-Nazi rally had been planned.

More...

WASHINGTON - Most military reservists who left their civilian jobs to fight in Iraq or Afghanistan made more money there than in their regular jobs, according to a study that contradicts the notion that citizen soldiers lose money when they go to war.

Continued

NEW YORK -- President Bush is offering no encouragement to any U.S. automobile companies that might be thinking about turning to the federal government for a financial bailout.

"I think it's very important for the market to function," he said in an interview in the Thursday editions of The Wall Street Journal.

He said companies need to manufacture "a product that's relevant" and that his administration has discussed new fuel technologies with the nation's top two auto makers.

At least there's someone willing to take a stand for the market. The company which I feel the most sympathy, though, is Boeing. Their main (and really only) competition, Airbus, is far from being a part of the free market.

The entire article can be found here

At least I think he does. I'm skimming through an active white supremacist discussion board that includes info and conversation about the Oly rally. A member states that he was one of the public members on display and that he wore black jeans and held a WPWW (White Power World Wide) flag.

One man was indeed dressed in such a manner with such a flag, and was photographed, so we can probably put a forum nickname to a face. His other posts seem to state that he lives and works in Olympia.

Good reminder that there are a wide variety of people, believing and doing a wide variety of things,  everywhere.

(This is an in depth response to some criticisms of recent events and strategies chosen, originally posted on the OMJP list. With Peter's permission I'm posting this here also to make available for further discussion. All formatting oddities are my own.)

From: Peter Bohmer 

Dear Carrie and readers of the OMJP list-serv,

Here is my response to your email, much of my response deals with answering criticisms of me. In general, I believe it is better for differences to be dealt in face to face discussion like at meetings as differences get magnified on emails. Carrie, I appreciate the excellent work you do maintaining the OMJP website and I respect your strong commitment to economic justice for all. This open letter is written to you and others in the spirit of acknowledging real differences in world view, strategy and tactics—differences that are healthy and should coexist within OMJP and within the larger Olympia left community.

More...

Bob Holman
Doug Nufer

Monday, January 30th, 7PM, Com 107 , The Evergreen State College

From Slam to Hiphop, from performance poetry to spoken word, Bob Holman has been a central figure in the reemergence of poetry in our culture. Recently dubbed a member of the "Poetry Pantheon" by the New York Times Magazine and featured in a Henry Louis Gates, Jr. profile in The New Yorker, Holman has previously been crowned "Ringmaster of the Spoken Word" (New York Daily News), "Poetry Czar" (Village Voice), "Dean of the Scene" (Seventeen), and "this generation's Ezra Pound," (San Francisco's Poetry Flash), his latest collection of poems, a collaboration with Chuck Close, A Couple of Ways of Doing Something, was first exhibited at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum during the Venice Biennale and will be published by Aperture in winter 06. In 2003 Tinfish published his translations from Chinese(with the author) of Zhang Er's carved water. The TV series he produced for PBS, "The United States of Poetry," won the INPUT, International Public Television Award; he founded Mouth Almighty/Mercury Records, the first ever major spoken word label, in 1995; and ran the infamous poetry slams at the Nuyorican Poets Café from 1988-1996. He is currently Visiting Professor of Writing at the Columbia School of the Arts, Founder/Proprietor of the Bowery Poetry Club, and Artistic Director of Study Abroad on the Bowery, a certificate program in applied poetics.

Doug Nufer is the author of the novels Negativeland (Autonomedia), Never Again (Four Walls Eight Windows/ Black Square), and On the Roast(Chiasmus), all of which appeared in 2004. His fiction and poetry appear or have been in the magazines Monkey Puzzle. Monkey Bicycle, Chain, Fence, and Bird Dog, and in the Northwest Edge anthologies. He performs (recites) with a dance troupe led by Erin Mitchell, and is one of the editors of American Book Review. Most of his work is based on formal constraints, although the rule governing his forthcoming novels, The River Boys/ The Mudflat Man (soultheft), may seem to derive from nothing more formal than the double-sided book format that was made infamous by Ace Publishing inthe 1950s.

RAMALLAH, West Bank (CNN) -- The Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas, which has said it favors the destruction of Israel, won a landslide victory in Palestinian legislative elections, securing 76 seats in the 132-member legislature, officials said Thursday.

Continued

So now we have Iran pressing for nuclear capabilities being led by a president who has made overt threats against Israel and Hamas appearing to step in and take charge of the Palestinian leadership. I would say the ball is in Israel's court now, though Iran is still in control of much of the situation. Lovely.

Patients who rented or bought wheelchairs, walkers or other medical equipment from the Olympia Providence Home Services store are at risk for identity theft after the confidential medical records were stolen.

Most of the records included Social Security numbers; a few contained financial information.