Eat The WTO! is out, and it looks awesome! Our special 16-page photo-laden commemorative issue details last year's WTO protests and what's happened since, with some ETS! reprints and lots of new material that includes the opening chapter from Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair's soon-to-be-published book on the protests and the movement it has sparked. I think it's the best thing ETS! has ever put out. It's intended as a modest fundraiser (or at least a non-money-loser), so we're asking $3 (more if you can) for mail orders. Discounts are available for bulk orders, and it looks like it will be available in the University Bookstore and other local independent outlets (but they get a discount; we recoup more of the $ if you get your copy at an event or through the mail). Get yours today! --Geov Parrish

As if trampling the Constitution wasn't enough revenge. The puffed-up threats from Mayor Schell and SPD to heavily arm the cops and arrest anyone demonstrating without a permit on Nov. 30, 2000 are unprecedented in recent city history. They are nothing more nor less than another attempt to exact revenge for city officials' humiliation on the global stage one year ago. The normal, sensible SPD procedure for unpermitted marches, including post-WTO, is to accommodate them: form an escort, block traffic, and keep a watchful eye. Nobody is any the worse for some momentarily blocked traffic (a normal Seattle condition) and a few hundred people expressing their beliefs.

But this time, Schell and friends--while acknowledging that the anniversary celebrations are similar to the usual small Seattle demos, and nothing like last year's WTO protest that was planned for months and drew thousands from around the world--want to crack heads and arrest en masse. They're having an impact; the King County Labor Council already has decided to cancel its march and have a demure Happy Hour party at the Labor Temple instead. Once again, people are being singled out by the city because of the content (anti-WTO, anti-police, anti-Schell) of their political speech. This is pure, petty, unconstitutional bullshit. One more example of why Paul Schell is not fit to hold any elected office, anytime, anywhere. --G.P.

One of the more wonderful after-effects of last year's anti-WTO protests in Seattle was the formation of a new non-aligned movement among Third World delegates to the WTO ministerial. In the bad old days of the Cold War, "non-aligned" referred to those Third World nations that attempted to exist outside of the sphere of influence of both of the two main superpowers: the U.S. and the Soviet Union. This new movement, while still fledgling, seems to be composed of nations seeking to exist outside of the influence of the two main economic superpowers: the U.S. and the European Union. This bloc of delegates blind-sided the WTO apparatus, which has functioned mainly to smooth over arguments between the U.S. and the E.U.

Happily, this new group of nations, which seems to consist of several African and Middle Eastern countries, Malaysia, Venezuela, Cuba, and possibly India and Thailand, has begun to exercise its power. For example, breaking the U.N. sanctions against Iraq should have been done long ago. But only this year has it become a real movement, with several nations deciding that they can go ahead and thumb their noses at the U.S.-dominated U.N. Security Council. More power to them.

Also in the news of late has been Fidel Castro's visit to Venezuela to meet President Hugo Chavez. Fidel was accepted like a brother and was happy to appear on Chavez's weekly radio program "Hello, Mr. President," where the two of them answered listeners' questions for four hours and broke into song. At one point, Castro warned Chavez to step up his security measures to head off potential assassins (Castro has survived a number of such attempts, not a few of them directed by the CIA). For his part, Chavez denied that he was trying to impose a Castro-style revolution in Venezuela, and also vehemently denied that he could be the inspiration for recent attempts at military coups in Peru and Ecuador. Hhmm. At any rate, both touted the benefits of a market economy. But the juiciest part of the broadcast was both men agreeing that Latin America needed to set up a "pole of power" against the U.S. to fight "neoliberal capitalism." As a farewell gesture, Chavez agreed to give Cuba, which is suffering severely from high oil prices, 53,000 barrels of oil per day at a cut rate. Talk about ignoring the WTO!

What has the U.S.'s response been to Castro's visit? Well, the U.S. has taken a "wait and see" attitude toward Hugo Chavez, who has us literally by the balls. Because the bulk of Venezuela's oil goes into U.S. gas tanks and oil heaters, what can the U.S. government do? Maybe Castro's warnings about CIA assassination attempts weren't just paranoia.--Maria Tomchick

I've always suspected that genetically modified (GM) food may be unsafe. It took a study by a giant agribusiness conglomerate to confirm my fears. In Britain, the company Aventis has developed a GM corn to feed to cows. Independent scientists, however, have reviewed the company's safety trials of the corn and confirmed that the corn has a "suspicious" trend of killing the chickens that ate it. The scientists scolded Aventis for trying to pass off high death rates among the research fowl as "normal for this fast-growing strain of bird." The death rates among the GM corn-fed chickens was double that of the ones eating conventional corn. Furthermore, the scientists helpfully pointed out that the corn was meant for cows, not chickens, so the Aventis safety trials were a farce. At least Britain allows the public to review these trials. Imagine what goes on in U.S. laboratories under the protection of "trade secrets."--M.T.

Well, it took thirty years, but the mainstream media has--upon the arrival in Vietnam of representatives from 50 major corporations (and, oh yeah, President Clinton)--acknowledged that we did indeed murder three million Vietnamese people. Alas, we haven't completely owned up to the depredations of empire in Indochina.

The three million figure underestimates the body count by 40%: we generated an additional million corpses in Laos and Cambodia; and the French (with significant U.S. financial backing) slaughtered a million more. Moreover, the suggestion that we owe the Vietnamese an apology is laughed off as ridiculous (and, one presumes, the notion that we owe massive reparations would decode as outright gibberish on the Sunday morning talk shows). Ah well, one small step at a time, we suppose.

On the other hand, the emanations from Washington are as Orwellian as they ever were. Just as Jimmy Carter was able to, a quarter-century ago, claim that "the destruction was mutual"; so has Clinton (in a "sorrowful speech" given before university students in Hanoi last week) "lamented the 'shared suffering' caused by the Vietnam War."

One could scarcely dream of a more textbook example of Doublethink. Additionally, Clinton in the same speech "exhorted the Vietnam National students to embrace more modern economic changes." "Modern economic changes" is, as we know, Newspeak for "I.M.F.-mandated subsumption of rights (nominally) guaranteed by the U.N. Charter, to Western business interests." ("Changes" about as "modern" as the voyage of Columbus itself, incidentally.) [Quotes from "Clinton Tries To Rally The Youth", Seattle Times, November 18.]--Eddie Tews

We spend a lot of time criticizing elected officials, so it's only fair that we tip our headwear when one does something right. Hurrah for Peter Steinbrueck, who has often been criticized during his first two years on the Seattle City Council for playing it safe and for his failure to consistently work with the grassroots activists who helped elect him. He's bucked both tendencies, however, with his long-needed and seriously welcome proposal to allocate $12 million of the city's budget for providing social services for the city's burgeoning homeless population. It's a crisis, and Steinbrueck deserves a lot of credit for being willing to go to bat for a population that doesn't donate to campaigns, doesn't vote, and is generally feared and despised by John and Jane Yupdum. His whole package won't pass--it's only got three sure votes out of the nine needed, and it's pricey at a time of tax reform-induced rollbacks--but elements of it may well be incorporated into other schemes and, at the very minimum, Steinbrueck has helped legitimize one of the city's most pressing social issues. Thanks, Peter.--G.P.

Media flash! On the verge of a possible strike by Times and P-I employees, the Puget Sound Business Journal reports that the union-busting McNewspaper chain Knight-Ridder, which owns 49% of the Seattle Times, marched into a recent Times board meeting and tendered an offer for the other 51% totalling about a billion dollars (over $600 million in cash, plus assumption of the Times' extensive debts for its new printing plant). What does Knight-Ridder know? That Seattle is about to become a highly profitable one-newspaper town. The Blethen family, which holds the 51%, turned down the offer. They know they're about to make shitloads of money, too. They just can't admit it in the middle of contract negotiations.--G.P.