Calling all Lumpen Proletariat! (Or anyone else!) It's the last (we pray) annual Lumpen etc. Talent Show, a fundraiser to help ETS!er Valerie Jean Rose offset costs associated with her breast cancer treatment, next Wednesday, March 21, 7 PM at the Speakeasy. We're asking $5 at the door, but that's cheap--give more if you can! And there's still room for performers--e-mail me at gparrish@seattleweekly.com, or call 206-324-5369, if you'd like to perform. (Hint: you don't have to be good.) See you there! --Geov Parrish

Most criticisms of Paul Schell's alarming performance during 1999's WTO protests boiled down to two things: 1) Poor decision-making in dealing with large crowds (the advance plan, and then police attacks on peaceful citizens); and 2) contempt for the Bill of Rights (the infamous "No-Protest Zone"). With the horrifying violence of Fat Tuesday, Schell reprised the first problem, eliminating all doubt that he is incapable of competent leadership in a crisis. But afterwards, he managed to reprise the second problem as well. In one of Schell's countless responses to the Fat Tuesday fallout, he managed on March 7 to pipe up that critics who blasted the Mardi Gras performance of the police and/or Schell were engaging in "the moral equivalent of throwing rocks and bottles." Well, then, gimme a rock. The comment is indeed, as the P-I characterized it in a stern editorial, chilling. It's also a reminder that Schell still doesn't understand the role of either free speech or accountability in a democratic society. Suggesting that our public employees screwed up is not a violent crime. It also suggests that Schell didn't pay attention on the playground in first grade. Let's send him back. Repeat after us, Paul: "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me." And then, since first graders can't run a large city, let's get him the hell out of public office, as soon and as completely as possible. --G.P.

In a press conference duly reported by the Washington Post a couple of weeks ago, Secretary of Defense (and Star Wars zealot) Donald Rumsfeld confirmed not only that most of the missiles fired last month at Baghdad missed their targets, but he revealed the weapon used: something called the JSOW, or Joint Stand-Off Weapon.

The Post, unfortunately, didn't bother to tell us what the JSOW is. It's a cluster bomb. That's right, the US and UK were bombing Iraq--presumably targeting military installations--with an anti-personnel weapon, the same kind used so cruelly in Kosovo. Makes you wonder what, or who, they were really aiming for--and why our media is so strikingly uncurious. --G.P.

In all the US media hoo-haw over the Taliban's destruction of ancient Buddhist temples, one thing has been notably missing: people. Reporters as well as pundits have sternly reminded us of the Taliban's additional protection of Osama bin Laden and tolerance of (actually, financing by) the drug trade, but the horrendous abuses of human rights being perpetrated against Afghanistan's women and the country's religious minorities have gone notably unmentioned. Do women simply not count? Or would digging too deeply raise questions about US support for the Taliban's rise to power? Or both? --G.P.

Direct action gets the goods, success story #6 gazillion and five: after years of occupations and nonviolent campaigns, the islanders of Vieques (off the NE coast of Puerto Rico) won a significant victory last week when the Bush Administration announced that the Navy would suspend use of the island as a bombing range, pending a permanent relocation elsewhere of the Navy's destructive training exercises. There can be no, absolutely no, doubt that the determined actions of Puerto Rican protesters made the breakthrough possible. Hooray! --G.P.