We lost another elder: Long-time local peace activist Milton Karr, most closely associated with Fellowship of Reconciliation but active over the years on a host of issues, passed away in early June. --Geov Parrish

Follow-up file: the FBI has dropped its court order demanding full records of 1.25 million Seattle Independent Media Center web site users during the Quebec FTAA protests. (ETS! #5-18) No explanation came with it as to why the feds went after the IMC in the first place; the case which allegedly inspired it, a security breach in Quebec, resulted in arrests in early May, several weeks (and lots of lawyer hours) before the order was dropped. The IMC never handed over any records, but the FBI clearly got what it wanted: intimidation of the IMC and second thoughts for anybody inclined to use it during future major protests.--G.P.

"Nowhere Man, Please Listen...:" First the WTO elected, for its Nov. 2001 huddle, to retreat to cruise ships parked off the coast of the totalitarian state of Qatar; now the World Bank has decided that nowhere is safe--so that's literally where it's going to meet. The beleaguered international agency is widely loathed in the global justice movement because it generally operates to make much worse the global poverty it says it wants to solve. And after the further escalation posed by April's street protests in Quebec, the World Bank last month canceled its upcoming Barcelona meetings and decided to meet on the Internet instead. Hackers, unite! Meanwhile, for you flesh 'n blood types, the IMF is meeting in October in Washington, DC. Book your bazooka rentals now. --G.P.

Before the Bush Administration gets too much credit for agreeing to stop bombing the Puerto Rican island of Vieques in 2003, recall that a previous agreement between Bill Clinton and Puerto Rico called for a binding November 2001 election which, if successful, would have stopped bombing at the same date. Since getting the US Navy out of Vieques is a overwhelmingly popular issue in America's largest colony, passage was assured--meaning that all Bush did was announce an already-decided-upon date five months early. Meanwhile, the island is still being bombed this week, and the struggle to get the Navy to stop shelling Vieques now. On that question, the White House has offered nothing. --G.P.

On April 25, consumer watchdog groups Public Citizen and the Safety Forum unveiled a new report about the Ford Explorer/Firestone tires debacle. The report explains that the poorly designed Ford SUV was prone to tipping, so Ford underinflated the cars' tires to prevent (well, reduce the risk of) roll-over. But when the underinflated tires started decreasing the cars' fuel efficiency (a pretty irrelevant trait with regard to SUVs), Ford asked Firestone to make the tires "lighter" (i.e. "make the tires thinner and weaker") and Firestone did. The report blames both companies for the deaths and injuries that occurred in Explorer accidents involving unraveling Firestone tires, but puts most of the blame on Ford. And although news coverage didn't focus on this aspect of the report, the two groups claim that more than 10 million unsafe Firestone tires are still on the road and have not been recalled. (We'll do you a service that the other media won't. Those tires are the 15-inch Wilderness and 16-inch Wilderness AT tires made for the Ford Explorer. If you've got 'em, you might want to swap 'em for something less deadly.)

Shortly after the release of this report, on April 30, the mainstream news brings us a new, context-less story: "Ford to Lobby for Booster Seat Laws." Yes, the Ford company has revived its "Boost America" campaign, urging parents to place their children ages 4-8 into booster seats to protect them from car injury. The Boost America website (www.boostamerica.org) gravely warns us that 498 children ages 4-8 were killed in car accidents in 1999 (no mention of how many of these kids were in Ford Explorers at the time), although the site provides no real evidence that booster seats will improve anything. But it's a chance for Ford to banish memories of its previous negligent homicide by associating themselves with such pro-social groups as the American Academy of Pediatrics and such lovable celebrities as Will Smith, and the lovable cartoon dog Blue, from the kids TV show "Blue's Clues." And non-threatening rappers and animated pooches make for much better news than mass vehicular manslaughter, don't you think? --Jake Sexton

A Chilean Judge, Juan Guzman, presiding over lawsuits charging former dictator Augusto Pinochet with crimes against humanity, has sent written inquiries to Henry Kissinger. The former advisor to Richard Nixon, architect of various US war crimes in the 1970s and eminent elder statesmen, is a person of interest in an investigation into the death of Charles Horman. Horman, a US citizen, was murdered by Pinochet's forces days after the violent coup that brought the general to power. His disappearance and death were dramatized in the Costa Gavra film "Missing," which depicts Horman being killed with the complicity of US government officials after finding out too much about US involvement in the coup. While "Missing," was a movie, it's a good bet that a Chilean judge is going on a bit more than dramatization.

Previously, Kissinger had ignored a subpoena by a French judge conducting his own investigation into the deaths of French citizens at the hands of Pinochet's forces. The judge is interested in Kissinger's knowledge of "Operation Condor," the US backed dirty-war against leftists, progressives, and poets in South America in the 1970s, of which the Pinochet coup was an integral part. Since Kissinger is the reputed genius that invented Operation Condor, the judge had good reason to solicit his testimony. While Kissinger isn't in imminent danger of extradition to face his own charges, with the current interest in his associates, it may be only a matter of time before some judge somewhere levels his own charges and requests Kissinger's extradition. Then things can be expected to get really interesting.--Troy Skeels

Sound Transit has come up with a new scheme to run a mere 8 miles of light rail, from convention place to Henderson street, for no other apparent purpose than to screw up the bus tunnel, which actually works rather well. Sound Transit touts this latest stupid idea as providing a possible "backbone," to an eventual functioning rail line. The backbone we really need around here is among our elected and "buddy system" appointed officials. Since that doesn't seem likely to happen, I have an idea of my own I'd like to throw out for further "study." Instead of an eight mile backbone, how about an eight meter backbone. Rather than clog up the bus tunnel with trains to nowhere, we can simply build a pavilion near the EMP and outfit it with model trains enacting all of the proposed light rail routes. It won't do anything to alleviate our transit problems, but at least it won't make things worse. --T.S.

Bloodstock--the execution last week of Timothy McVeigh--was a loving media embrace of state murder, with pool correspondents rushing out to waiting cameras to describe the scene; survivors and victims' family members praising the process on cue; and the mixture of deadly chemicals described in endless repetitive detail. But when, in the same chamber, Juan Raul Garza became federal taxpayers' second execution victim in modern times, the media treatment was: there wasn't any.

McVeigh's execution was a freak show. Garza's was business as usual. Old news. Blessedly invisible. Garza is far more representative of who gets executed in this country. He's poor, he's non-white, he does not want to die, and he didn't engage in the premeditated murder of 168 people for a warped political cause. Almost nobody except the "justice" system--and, perhaps, relatives of Garza's victims--clamors for his death. Interestingly, Garza was originally set to die last December. The outgoing Bill Clinton ordered a six-month stay of execution, supposedly to give the Justice Department time to prepare a report examining possible geographic and racial bias in applying the federal death penalty. (Sixteen of 19 people on the federal death row--16 of 20 until McVeigh's death--are non-white, as are 80% of death row occupants nationally. Most come from a few Southern states.) The report, of course, has vanished; but it gave the feds time to ensure that a suicidal Timothy McVeigh could become the much more appealing poster boy for federal executions.

In addition to his race, there are other serious problems with Garza's case--problems that prompted an international outcry as his December death date approached, though nobody is bothering now with the murderous Dubya in office. The most important problem is Garza's sentencing hearing. Sentenced under the federal "drug kingpin" statutes, Garza, 44, participated in three dealer-related murders near Brownsville, Texas. However, when it came time to consider death, federal prosecutors, feeling they needed something more, claimed that Garza was responsible for four other unsolved murders in Mexico--murders for which he has never been charged by Mexico or the US, let alone tried and convicted. On the basis of these unproven government claims, Garza will die. McVeigh he's not. And that's why you heard nothing. --G.P.