We can Mail Paper Copies to Persons Without Internet Access.

This entire newsletter and the articles within it will be posted on the Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation’s website, www.olyfor.org. In addition, we’ll also post some timely and informative articles from other sources. Listed below are summaries of some articles we’ll post. If you don’t have internet access, call the Olympia FOR at (360) 491-9093 to request a paper copy of any article you want. Do you like this new feature of our newsletter?  Let us know whether we should continue, modify, or stop this new feature?

Death Penalty:  “The Worst of the Worst?”
www.olyfor.org
Many people say they want the death penalty to be used only for “the worst of the worst.”  But in practice the death penalty is not – and cannot – be reserved only for “the worst of the worst.”  A great number of “filters” (geography, race, income, other factors in social status, personalities of officials in the criminal justice system, etc.) strongly influence how cases are investigated, prosecuted, tried and sentenced. These filters reflect our society’s many biases and inequities at every step of the process, as well as random factors such as geography. The people who end up being sentenced to death are not “the worst of the worst.”  Glen Anderson from Olympia FOR’s Committee for Alternatives to the Death Penalty wrote the article. You can see it and other death penalty information at the Olympia For’s website.

“Beyond Afghanistan:  Choosing Nonviolence”
http://www.warresisters.org/node/663
The War Resisters League, which was founded in 1923, works on many peace and justice issues through active, principled nonviolence. On April 1, 2009, WRL released a statement about Afghanistan, which also appears in WRL’s Spring 2009 WIN Magazine. WRL’s statement recounts the US’s violent behavior in the world and how it hurts the poor. The article points out how Martin Luther King’s 1967 “Beyond Vietnam” speech still pertains to US militarism and wars today. The article calls for nonviolent solutions to Afghanistan’s injustices and turmoil – and for nonviolent action in the US to stop this violent foreign policy.

“UFPJ Afghanistan Fact Sheet: Surge Peaceful Alternatives, Not Troops!”
http://www.unitedforpeace.org   www.olyfor.org
United for Peace & Justice, a large coalition of many organizations, offers a one-page flyer listing constructive steps the US should take for real peace and real solutions in Afghanistan. The Olympia FOR has modified it slightly and posted it on our website. See the original at the first link and our modified version at the second link.

On Memorial Day, Veterans For Peace Asks, “Who Dies in War?”
http://www.veteransforpeace.org/files/pdf/News%20Advisory%20-%20Memorial%20Day%202009.pdf
Mike Ferner, national president of Veterans For Peace, says, “many more innocent civilians die in war than soldiers. That is the message that Veterans For Peace would like people to think about on Memorial Day.”  He continues, "We have been taught that the purpose of Memorial Day is to remember fallen service members. Veterans For Peace is here to tell the nation that the number of innocent civilians who die in war far outnumbers the combatants. It would be immoral to only remember those who fought and died in war and not pay respect to those who are victims.”  He says that the best way to remember both would be to abolish war. Thanks to VFP for another bold and generous effort for peace!

New U.S. Military Base in Colombia Would Let U.S. Attack Anywhere in Latin America.
The national FOR issued this press release on May 18, 2009. It can be found at http://tinyurl.com/usmilitarybaseincolombia or on FOR's blog, www.forpeace.net
The U.S. wants to build a new military base in Colombia that would make it easier for the U.S. to attack almost anywhere in Latin America. This is especially threatening, now that so many Latin American voters are electing leaders who want to end U.S. domination of their region. The reported “mission creed” goes beyond the U.S.’s militarized “drug war” and is continuing now during the Obama administration.

Trade Agreements Enflame the Financial Crisis
http://www.thealliancefordemocracy.org/pdf/AfDJR4305.pdf
The global “free trade” agreements that the U.S. and some of the other capitalist countries have been promoting are making the world’s economic crisis worse, according to Ruth Caplan’s article in the Spring 2009 “Justice Rising” magazine of the Alliance for Democracy. The “free trade” assumption is that “if money is allowed to flow without restriction, then it will go to the most economically efficient use,” she writes. However, the money goes instead to wherever it will make the most profits – and without restrictions that would prevent this money from hurting people and the environment. A succession of “free trade’ agreements and deregulations (e.g., the U.S.’s repeal in 1999 of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, let giant banks and other financial companies get themselves into trouble worldwide.

New Efforts to Reduce Nuclear Weapons to “Zero” – and Other Articles for Peace
www.cdi.org
The Center for Defense information is a highly credible longtime organization of experts, including high-level retired military persons, who believe U.S. militarism has gone too far at too much cost and with too much risk for world peace. They publish The Defense Monitor, which is full of authoritative articles on these topics. The April-May-June 2009 issue, for example, has an article urging the abolition of nuclear weapons through the “Global Zero” campaign, another article on the same topic(“The Moment for Eliminating Nuclear Weapons is Now”), an article opposing the Pentagon’s pork-barrel spending, and an article arguing that we could help the U.S. economy by reducing military spending.