Father Ray Bourgeios graced Olympia Washington with several appearances, including one at Traditions Fair Trade Café, during a visit on April 10th, 2008.

Father Bourgeois delivered a wonderful presentation. He spoke for over an hour about his work with the School of Americas Watch movement.

The School of Americas is located on Fort Benning, in Georgia. The School has been renamed and is now called WHINESEC (Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation). The school's mission and objectives have not changed, however.

The school is actively involved in providing special training to the military forces of Latin American nations. Some of the military personnel that have studied at the School of Americas are known to have committed atrocities.

From the SOA Website: On November 16, 1989, six Jesuit priests, their co-worker and her teenage daughter were massacred in El Salvador. A U.S. Congressional Task Force reported that those responsible were trained at the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA) at Ft. Benning, Georgia.

Please see www.soaw.org for more information.

The SOAW movement has grown from a tiny group of individuals into a national and international call to shut down the School of Americas.

photos on the flipside

Today is the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq by the US Government and I had the opportunity to participate in a weekly peace vigil at Sylvester Park (sponsored by the Olympia FOR). The weather was good and so was the turnout. I had some great conversations, including with a couple of conservatives, one of whom was very reasonable! A young gentleman from Spokane, who was toting a suitcase, approached me and we had a lengthy conversation about the difference between the response by the left to Clinton Administration foreign policy Aggression when compared with the response by the left to Bush Administration Aggression. It is too bad that the left was not more vocal in opposition to Clinton's Aggression, but the left was not silent. There was opposition. The reasons that a more vocal opposition to the aggressive foreign policy of the Clinton Administration didn't arise are multiple but for one, he [Clinton] acted within the auspices of the UN Security Council and for two, his behavior was not as flagrant, or belligerent, relative to the machinations and blatant aggression as evinced by members of the Bush Administration. The traveler from Spokane and I fully agreed on one thing, which is the problem of the Military Industrial Congressional Complex. It was a good conversation; we both gained in understanding.

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I thought some of you might have an interest in the next Ground Zero Nonviolent Direct Action, a commemoration of the life of MLK jr. For more information see: www.gzcenter.org

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Share the Dream of
A World Without War

Join the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action for a traditional vigil and direct action at the gates of Naval Base Kitsap, Bangor, on Saturday, January 19. Honor the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as together we resist nuclear weapons, the occupation of Iraq, and the bombing of Iran.

[via email:]

Twelve Arrested in Des Moines as Obama Campaign Hinders Press Coverage of Protest

by Michael Gillespie for publication

1/2/2008

Josh Earnest, Iowa communications director for U.S. Sen. Barak Obama (D-IL), is running scared in the final few days before the Iowa Caucuses. He must be, otherwise he would not have risked the consequences of ejecting half a dozen media workers from Obama's Iowa campaign headquarters on Wednesday, Jan. 2, and barring entry to several more.

Reporters and photojournalists representing news organizations in Japan, Germany, Great Britain, and the USA were hindered in their efforts to report on a bona fide news event when Earnest insisted they work outside in the sub-freezing single digit cold while inside a group of eight antiwar activists from Voices for Creative Nonviolence (VCNV) and the Iowa Occupation Project questioned Obama's positions on the war in Iraq, military spending, and U.S. Middle East foreign policy.

Though he knew who the protesters represented and why they had come to Obama campaign headquarters (this reporter heard an Obama staffer say, "We knew they were coming and we have a plan to deal with them"), Earnest told one Iowa newspaper, "They basically just sort of came into the front office and were talking loudly and being disruptive."