by Clint Burelson

The Postal Rate Commission has scheduled hearings beginning on Thursday, June 15, 2006, regarding the United States Postal Service plans to reduce mail service nationwide in conjunction with the closing and/or consolidating of facilities across the country. The decision by Postal Rate Commissioners following the hearings will influence mail service in Olympia. Individuals, organizations, and small businesses are encouraged to write or contact the Postal Rate Commission and express their opposition to any reduction in mail service.

Nationwide Consolidation of Mail Sorting

In December, the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation that would make felons of the country's 11 million undocumented immigrants and anyone who helps them. Equally racist "guest worker" bills in the Senate promise to control the immigration "threat" through new bracero

programs that amount to indentured servitude.

interview by Emma Hendrickson

Rich CorporateSon, Inc. is a corporation running in this year's gubernatorial race in Oregon. This unusual candidacy, the creation of the Oregon-based End Corporate Personhood (see sidebar, "Behind the Rich CorporateSon, Inc. Candidacy"), highlights the absurdity and dangers of current laws regarding corporate personhood. The campaign website is at http://www.VoteCorporate.org . The following interview is with Rich CorporateSon, Inc.'s campaign manager, Hal Burton.

What is Rich CorporateSon, Inc. and why is it running?

by Lailia El-Haddad

[In the two-and-a-half weeks preceding the Tel Aviv suicide bombing of April 17 that killed nine Israeli civilians, the Israeli military killed 26 Palestinians -- at least five of them children -- and injured 161 more. At the time of this article, Israel had been continuously pounding Palestinians in the Gaza Strip with hundreds of artillery shells per day. Israel has also severely limited the flow of goods to and from the Gaza Strip, in a move designed to freeze the Gazan economy and, as senior Israeli advisor Dov Weissglas joked, put the Palestinians on a diet.

by Norman Solomon

Weeks after a British magazine published a long article by two American professors titled "The Israel Lobby," the outrage continued to howl through mainstream U.S. media.

A Los Angeles Times op-ed article by Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Max Boot helped to set a common tone. He condemned a working paper by professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt that was excerpted last month in the London Review of Books.

by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

Hawaii, Cuba, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Nicaragua, Honduras, Iran, Guatemala, South Vietnam, Chile, Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan, Iraq

What do these 14 governments have in common?

You got it. The United States overthrew them. And in almost in every case, the overthrow can be traced to corporate interests.

by Dave Lindorff

What do you call a nation that provides medical aid to desperately poor people in Mexico, heating assistance to low-income families in the U.S., crucial project financing to some of the poorest countries in Africa, and aid to impoverished Caribbean island nations?

If you're the New York Times, you call it "provocative," and you call the leader of that country "the next Fidel Castro."

by Sandy Mayes

What a great year it has been for Works In Progress! It was one year ago this month -- our 15-year anniversary -- that we put out a call to renew the sense of mission and the collective sense of ownership, responsibility, and community collaboration that gave birth to this newspaper. And the community came through.