Who better to recognize pathological lying than Oliver North? But, instead, North gives us a useful guide--even more so than all those family values-challenged conservatives like Hyde, Burton, and Chenoweth--to just how much hypocrisy is swirling along with the blood in the Capitol Hill water surrounding Bill Clinton's impeachment proceedings. North slammed Clinton at a recent Christian Coalition breakfast as "a man who cannot tell the truth...[who] now asks the American people and our elected representatives to ignore the rule of law....If you or I were charged with having lied under oath...we would be prosecuted....The entire premise of the rule of law is that no man can be trusted to rule over others."

Of course, North was prosecuted, and convicted. But he's somehow lionized by the hate-Clinton crowd, whose Beltway moral relativism apparently is fine with our friend Ollie, who defends his prevarications when his definition of "national security" is at stake. Linda Smith, incidentally, proudly used a North fundraising letter a few months ago in her senatorial campaign. Wonder if her view of lying is equally flexible? Meanwhile, the sheer hypocrisy of the whole spectacle makes me wanna puke purple. Both major parties would cease to exist if ever forced to tell the truth for more than a few moments at a time.--Geov Parrish

The news reports from Indonesia get stranger every week. Last month reporters gave us tiny newsbits about ethnic riots in Java that later turned out to be protests against corrupt food distributors who had hoarded grain and other food stuffs, marked up the prices, and then sold government food supplies on the black market. Now we're reading idiotic articles about mobs of villagers randomly killing "ninjas" and "sorcerers." I suppose those words are as good as any to describe the people who are being killed by these so-called "mobs": paramilitaries, criminals, and fundamentalist Muslim gang members that the government trained, paid, and armed for over thirty years in order to torture and kill government opponents (and who have recently targeted members of the NU, the largest, moderate Muslim organization in the country, which has recently entered into a political alliance with the government's arch-opponent, Megawati Sukarnoputri, the daughter of Sukarno). That people in rural Indonesia have grown sick of seeing their friends and neighbors mutilated and murdered should come as no surprise. That, in a country with a long history of repression and violence, people are now willing to use violence in self-defense can only be expected. They've also learned to cover their tracks. Predictably, the "ninja" and "sorcerer" stories have befuddled the Indonesian government so they don't know who to blame for killing their paid murderers and informants.--Maria Tomchick

Bank of America, which owns SeaFirst Bank, reported that it has lost over $100 million dollars in a deal with a "conservative" hedge fund, D.E. Shaw & Co. The Shaw fund was notable on Wall Street for claiming that it used only small amounts of debt to finance its derivative contracts. Earlier this month, however, it finally admitted that its debt-to-asset ratio was 20 to 1, similar to Long Term Capital Management's debt load when it nearly collapsed in August. Shaw owes Bank of America at least $1 billion in loans that it can't pay, and BoA took over the fund to sell some of its assets. Last week, BoA's chairman was forced to resign in disgrace for allowing the bank to get into such a bad deal. If Shaw was a "respectable, conservative" hedge fund, then what other surprises await?--M.T.

Well, two more hedge funds have taken a beating from the global economic collapse: Everest Capital Ltd., based in the tax-haven of Bermuda, and Ellington Capital Management, based in Old Greenwich, Connecticut. Both managed assets in the $1-2 billion range, but both also borrowed heavily to make investments that totaled much higher than their asset base (no figures are available, because of the secretive nature of hedge funds--see "Hedge Funds and LTCM" in ETS! 10/7/98). In just two days this month, Ellington Capital Management was forced to sell hundreds of millions of dollars in mortgage-related derivatives to cover margin calls by its creditors and redemptions by its investors. Also, rumors are circulating that Long Term Capital Management, the $90 billion hedge fund that was bailed out by 13 banks and brokerage houses last month, may have to sell an additional several billion dollars worth of investments to cover its short-term debts, thereby depressing the derivatives market further.--M.T.

Last week Congress voted to supply the IMF with $18 billion in new funding, as requested by Pres. Clinton. Republicans made a big show of trying to "reform" the agency that has been pushing neoliberal economic policy down the throats of the Third World for decades, but of course they made no progress. Moderate Republicans and Clintonite Democrats made them see the light: either fund the IMF or risk global economic catastrophe (never mind that most of the world is already in a severe depression). In the meantime, U.S. economists are trying to use Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico as the ramparts to keep the global crisis from reaching the U.S. Brazil received a $3 billion bailout package from the IMF in exchange for slashing its social spending. Argentina will become the first nation to try and sell government bonds since the global crisis hit--never mind that there are no buyers, and the bonds will have to be sold at an enormous discount, forcing Argentina to pay catastrophic interest rates. Mexico is in the middle of a banking crisis, as it becomes apparent that the debt left over from the 1994 collapse of the peso is a chain around the government's neck. Soon Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico may find themselves facing the same choice that other nations have: currency devaluation on one hand or debt default on the other...or maybe some of both, like in Russia.--M.T.

Geez, with all these news items that throw around amounts in the billions of dollars ya almost start to forget just how much money that is. In particular, all those social programs going without funding because "there isn't enough money" tend to be much smaller--a few million for lunch programs here or midnight basketball there is a small fraction of one of these fortunes. Whatever happened to progressive taxation? More bluntly: these are fortunes of money stolen from what should rightfully contribute to the common good.--G.P.

A very sick (and anonymous) mind forwarded to ETS! 200 anagrams for "Seattle City Council," all generated by web software for the gravely, delightfully disturbed, http://www.AnagramGenius.com/. It will apparently give you up to 200 anagrams for your favorite phrase, providing unlimited amusement for folks with too much time on their hands. Among the best: "Tiny, eutectic locals," "Coitally cute insect," "Icy, clean-cut toilets," "Constitute clay lice," and "Elect in lousy tactic."--G.P.

The reminders: don't miss our fantabulous ETS! Halloween birthday bash Friday night at the Speakeasy. Check out ETS! co-editor Geov Parrish's new column starting Oct. 22 in the Seattle Weekly. And check this week's calendar for info on the Nov. 1 memorial service for Irv Pollack.