The U'Wa people of Colombia's Amazonian cloud forests are trying to stop Occidental Petroleum from invading their homeland in search of oil. The U'Wa have threatened collective suicide if the project moves forward; their threats are only making dramatic the genocide that has followed other such mining and prospecting projects in the Amazon Basin over the past 20 years--projects that have been every bit as deadly to indigenous peoples as the buffalo slaughters of the American West 130 years ago. Occidental's track record is already poor; the Ca-o pipeline, which runs just north of U'Wa territory, has spilled an estimated 1.7 million barrels of crude oil into nearby soil, rivers, and lakes since it was completed in 1986.

Al Gore's senator father made his fortune through Occidental Petroleum, and Gore junior, your next (gag) president, owns up to $500,000 in Occidental stock. He stands to reap large financial rewards if Occidental finds the 1.5 billion barrels of oil that the company estimates is under U'Wa land. Gore has been conspicuously silent on the issue. Some environmentalist.--Geov Parrish

The Boeing contract that settled a 40-day SPEEA walkout was a breakthrough for white collar labor representation. One worker was quoted in a 3-18-00 front page Seattle Times article as saying that "If they [Boeing] had offered this back in November, we would have been very happy with the Boeing Company." Another: "The package as a whole can be viewed as a victory for the union." Another: "I think we beat the hell out of Boeing."

Yet somehow, the front page headline was that workers felt "Some relief, little triumph." The phrase was repeated in the first paragraph and again on the jump page headline, with a reinforcing sidebar headline that "One thing is clear: Strike has taken a toll on workers."

The lesson, according to the Times' clumsy editorializing, is presumably that strikes are nasty things that are never a good idea. But the quotes in the Times' own stories--let alone virtually every other media outlet--yield a different conclusion: that worker solidarity in the face of one of the world's largest corporations pays off. It's too bad that after 40 days of reasonably balanced coverage, the Times took that opportunity to get its pro-corporate licks in.--G.P.

And speaking of the new morning Times: a ridiculous, page A-1 story on 3-16-00 and an editorial the following day pushed the findings of L.A. County Sheriff's Department consultant Richard Odenthal, who in a report to the Seattle P.D. blasted the local police for their lack of preparation and forcefulness during the WTO protests.

Fair enough. But Odenthal got patently absurd with his contrasting praise for the preparations of protesters--preparations which were entirely mythical. According to Odenthal, monolithic, all-seeing protesters videotaped cops to probe for weaknesses in their lines (that was the sole purpose of the Jubilee 2000 protest on Nov. 29, you see); took over the 9th and Virginia building so as to track police activity at the nearby West Precinct station; and had a better communications system than officers(!). This is a very good example of someone in a hierarchy not understanding a non-hierarchical opponent--and someone who screwed up now compensating by overestimating the opponent. It'd be hilarious--if he weren't getting paid good tax dollars to spew this garbage.--G.P.

The sports world is occasionally redeemed by moments that are utterly transcendent. Such a moment came in San Antonio on March 14, when Sean Elliott of the San Antonio Spurs basketball team checked back onto the court seven months after receiving a kidney transplant--the first, and probably only, athlete ever to recover from a transplant to play again in his pro sport.

Not years. Seven months. It's an accomplishment somewhere beyond amazing. Kidneys are the safest and least dangerous of organ transplants; docs have been doing them for 50 years now. But they're still a very big deal to go through. Elliott's example could save lives among seriously ill people facing life-threatening transplants, people unsure as to whether they will have the ability to lead a quality life after surgery. Elliott has returned to something 99.99% of the population can only dream of--to perform at the most elite physical conditioning level imaginable, in pro basketball. Sean scored 2 points in 12 minutes in his first game back.--G.P.

The U.S. press maintains the fiction that President Clinton is visiting India and Pakistan to talk about nuclear weapons. The truth is that Clinton is visiting India and Pakistan to make sure both countries stay on the IMF/World Bank "structural adjustment" program. After several, massive labor strikes in India, the government was in danger of giving up on some IMF dictates: raising fuel prices, firing government workers, and cutting social spending. Notably, Clinton quietly brought with him a $25 million aid package to help "reorganize" India's ailing financial market, and he promised to lift economic sanctions imposed after India's nuclear tests in May 1998. Also, the U.S. Export-Import Bank will open for business in India, loaning money to Indian businesses (thereby hooking them on debt, with the interest payments flowing to the U.S.). In Pakistan, where Clinton will drop in for a five-hour visit, the worry is that the military government (which took over via a coup last year) may lean too far towards nationalism and close the economy to outside investment. In the meantime, Clinton is having a hard time trying to avoid talking about some of the major issues in the region: the fighting in Kashmir, tensions between India and China, muslim and Sikh conflicts, deep class disparities in both countries, and India's disillusionment with having left its position of "non-alignment" to become a U.S. economic colony.--Maria Tomchick

Clinton's one-day side trip to Bangladesh, which would have taken him out to a poor village to make a mealy-mouthed speech about how much he cares for the poor, was a bust. The CIA scuttled the plan because they thought that Osama Bin Laden might be lurking in the jungle ready to shoot down Clinton's plane. How easy it is to forget that Bin Laden used to be on the CIA payroll. Of course, the CIA has a long history of paranoia regarding its former employees. Back in the real world: the foreign press reports that Osama Bin Laden has been living in Afghanistan and is in such ill health that he's in imminent danger of kidney and liver failure. His supporters are busy running around to various middle eastern nations in search of a dialysis machine.--M.T.