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Posts published in “Issue: January 2024

RE/MAX Profits From Israeli Apartheid

The Action On Friday December 15, 2023, there was an action at the Eastside Olympia, WA RE/MAX office to protest ReMax’s business dealings in Israel. This action was organized old-school style. Kept off social media, word of mouth and distribution of printed flyers got the word out. On the day…

Creating Permanently Fertile Ground

What can we do to enhance the resilience of our community and the long-term productivity of our land? Permaculture is a system that answers that question with general principles that are adapted to each bioregion. Permaculture has been practiced under that name since the 1970’s, and for thousands of years…

A Jewish anti-Zionist Perspective on Palestine

My background causes me to support the Palestinian struggle against the Israeli occupation of Palestine including Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Since 1967, I have actively opposed the U.S. military aid and ideological support for Israel, and in solidarity with Palestine. I mourn the deaths of 26,000 people…

Rural Revival

This is part one of a two-part series on this issue. Click here to view part two. This article was submitted to Thurston County for consideration in the land use chapter of its Comprehensive Plan update, Thurston 2045. Just about everyone deplores and bemoans the sad state of rural America.…

Preserving Thurston County’s Farms And Rural Character

This is part two of a two-part series on this issue. Click here to view part one. Thurston County is in the process of updating its Comprehensive Plan, known as Thurston 2045. The comprehensive plan is the 20-year growth plan and policy document for unincorporated Thurston County that guides future…

Thurston County Prosecutor Harasses Elderly Infirm Widow

The District Court set a November 2, 2023 date for a case brought by the Thurston County Prosecutor charging the abuse and neglect of 2 horses, and he was doubtless confident it was an easy win to boost the Office’s conviction rates. It didn’t turn out that way. Here are…

Organize Grassroots Movements for Issues You Care About

It is not enough to lobby elected officials. We must build a big grassroots movement to make elected officials do what we want. When we talk to elected officials, they think there are only a few of us, so it’s safe to simply listen politely and then ignore what we…

What is the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons?

In 1945 the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on two cities in Japan.  Since then eight other nations, (Russia, United Kingdom France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea) – fearing for their own “national security” – developed nuclear weapons.  Since the 1940s the U.S. has led each step in escalating…

Warehouses or Farms in Our County?

Thurston County has begun the Comprehensive Plan Update, called Thurston 2045. As the name implies, the update will determine codes for the next twenty years. One important question will depend on citizens’ values – do we want industrial development, including mega-warehouse complexes, on land currently zoned for agriculture? Or do…

2024 Legislative Session Opportunities for Important Issues and Great Non-Profit Orgs

The Washington State Legislature will convene on Monday January 8, 2024, for the short even-year session (into early March). Sessions in odd-numbered years (after the even-year November elections) are longer. Important issues are dealt with every year. A great number and variety of excellent non-profit organizations work on legislation every…

Yearning for Peace in the Middle East

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” -Buckminster Fuller Just as the US was founded on the ideas of equality and democracy, with diverse people united by that common ideal, the original Jewish people were…

Book Review – “Elon Musk” by Walter Isaacson

I love electric vehicles. And until I read this book about Elon Musk, I had a fairly good opinion of Elon Musk, the owner of the biggest electric vehicle company in the world. But now my opinion of Musk has changed. Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Elon Musk, published in…

Beaver Creek Farm Targeted for Warehouse Development

Citizens’ Voices Must Be Raised Again In 2021 the owners of Beaver Creek Dairy Farm requested that the 365-acre property be rezoned from Rural Resources/Residential to Rural Resources Industrial. In 2021 over 150 people, including many biologists and hydrologists, wrote comments to the county opposing this rezone because of the…

Keeping the City of Olympia Honest

The Local Good Governance Coalition, which consists of several Thurston County civic groups focusing on housing and environmental issues, recently voted to send a letter to the City of Olympia to urge them to adopt a code of ethics, which it does not currently have. Several other Washington cities, including…

Nightfall in Amerika

This Trump design is taken directly from the Nazi Party’s 1932 election poster showing Hitler standing behind a speaker’s podium wrapping himself in the Nazi Party flag, his pose identical to my Trump/Republican Party’s figure. The original Nazi poster featured the Nazi’s election slogan in the upper left corner “Ein…