Last week an inquest jury came back with the verdict in the Aaron Roberts case, acquitting both Officers Price and Neubert in the shooting death of Roberts. It was an all-white, middle class jury of Price's and Neubert's peers. But at least one of the jury members expressed frustration with the process. As Candy Hatcher reported in the Seattle P-I: "They weren't allowed to ask questions that would have gotten to the heart of the trouble in the Central District and Seattle...They had questions during the process, some of which directly addressed the race issue and were not allowed to be asked." That's the shortcoming of the inquest/jury process. Jurors are required to only review the evidence presented in court and rule only on the charges, which is why an inquest alone can't possibly quiet the tensions raised by the Roberts shooting. An inquest jury can't address racial profiling, sentencing disparities, or racism within the police department.

Judges often shut down lines of questioning or throw out evidence deemed "not relevant in the case." In the Roberts case, the jury wanted more information that the judge wouldn't allow to be heard in court--particularly information about Neubert's background. According to the juror interviewed by Hatcher: "They were comfortable with Officer Price. They found him straightforward and forthcoming in his testimony. But Officer Neubert, who testified that Roberts pulled his arm into the car and started driving off, 'made us all uneasy,' he said. 'But there wasn't anything else said by anyone else to contradict his testimony'...Jurors should be allowed to ask follow-up questions during the proceeding, he said." One demand made by the People's Coalition for Justice in the immediate aftermath of the shooting is even more important now, in the wake of the inquest ruling: we need civilian oversight of the police department. We shouldn't have to rely on an after-the-fact, hamstrung inquest process overseen by judges partial to the police department.--Maria Tomchick

Contrary to the tenor of every major media account of the decision, jurors thought the incident should have had a different outcome, and merely decided the cops were within their rights--which suggests both that their rights need to be limited and that inquest procedures need to be changed so that they're not quite so stacked in favor of killer cops. David Ortman generously forwarded to us the fascinating court documents of a 1999 case in Bothell wherein a motorist named Matthew Silva, also wanted by the law -- he'd just tried to bounce a check -- also attempted to "flee" a routine traffic stop when the cop reached in to the car, in order to turn off Silva's ignition key. Said cop grabbed the steering wheel to avoid being pulled under the accelerating car, but then managed to jump free with minor injuries. Silva was allowed to speed away, and was pulled over successfully in a few blocks; he, unlike Roberts, is still alive today. Guess that if you're gonna be stupid, it pays to get pulled over in the suburbs, or at least to have the good fortune not to be targeted by two notorious SPD thugs who remain on duty today.--Geov Parrish

In the last two issues of ETS!, I've written articles about the scanty evidence, most of it supposition, tying the hijackers to Osama bin Laden. It's almost a certainty that no more evidence will be found, because last week US Attorney General John Ashcroft issued an order to pull FBI agents off the case and abandon the effort. He's reassigned agents to the anthrax investigation and to general "anti-terrorism" protection duties. In other words, he wants them to hunt down future terrorists, instead (as if jailing immigrants indefinitely without due process and access to counsel is not enough). This reassignment is an outright admission that the whole case is a fraud; it was cobbled together just to get the US populace on board for the war effort.--MT

Reporters are beginning to hear from refugees and aid agencies about the extent of devastation from the bombing in Afghanistan. But there are still no pictures other than the occasional photo of unidentifiable ruins released by the Taliban. That's because the US military has bought exclusive rights to the photos taken by the only civilian satellite over Afghanistan. The military doesn't need these photos--military satellites over Afghanistan produce images with resolution on the order of ten times higher than the commercial satellite. And since day two of the bombing, surveillance planes have been able to fly anywhere they want to. It's a move designed strictly to keep these photos out of the hands of the press corps, off TV screens, and out of newspapers all over the world. Since US planes and troops have received no resistance from the Taliban, there can be no reason for withholding these photos except the fear that they'll show the real damage done by the bombing. If the US people could see that US planes are destroying Afghanistan, then the war would stop today. Did I say "war?" Such a one-sided act of violence can only be called a "massacre."--MT

A short footnote to the Donna Barr depiction of Dubya and Osama that appears in this issue: in Uzbekistan, our valued new ally in the War Against E-Vil, public insults of the president (a former Soviet Communist Party boss turned dictator named Islam Abduganievich Karimov) are prohibited by law. Let freedom ring.--G.P.

Here, of course, as Bill Maher has learned, we let market forces decide.--G.P.

By the time you read this, the so-called "USA Act of 2001" (brief pause for the sound of mass retching) will probably be law. That's the terrifying package of assaults on constitutional freedoms disguised as "protection" against future terrorism. (Guess the "Anti-Terrorism Act of 1996," which also trashed the Bill of Rights and bashed immigrants, didn't work so good.) Said USA Act was passed 96-1 by the Senate (the very honorable Russ Feingold being the lone dissenter). It doesn't just, as has been widely reported, expand phone and e-mail surveillance authority. It also allows covert "Sneak and Peak" searches for any criminal investigation, in apparently egregious violation of the 4th Amendment; allows law enforcement authorities to shop around for warrants from different courts, until they get one they like; creates a new crime of "Domestic Terrorism" which could be applied to almost any political crime, big or small; and allows non-citizens (like many of the 700 friends of friends of suspected acquaintances of possible terrorists detained so far) to be held indefinitely, without any meaningful judicial review.

Naturally, these steps would not have prevented either September 11's hijackings or the current spate of anthrax mail. But that doesn't stop our bipartisan "leaders" from reserving yet more power to themselves, a condition that, sooner or later, folks are hopefully gonna start resenting.

Amidst the din of noise about preventing terrorism and profiling people who might look like terrorists, you can just barely hear the sound of portions of the Bill of Rights being gleefully shredded.--GP

I can do without individuals avowing their patriotism and waving flags, but at least it's usually heartfelt. What really inspires revulsion are the commercials. The corporate flagwaving started instantly: companies you've never heard of taking out full-page newspaper ads to proclaim their unique sorrow and empathy for the families of the victims, and oh, by the way, come visit our web site. At that same moment, many of those same corporations were dispatching lobbyists to Capitol Hill, pronto, to see if they could get in on the gravy train of economic stimulus packages and corporate handouts in the name of uniting behind the president.

How come it's always the rich who need stimulating at times like these? Now, a new wave of red-white-and-blue advertising is polluting the airwaves and pages and screens of America, from companies that proclaim their patriotism -- not their employees' patriotism, but that of the companies themselves. Implicit is the idea that for us consumers, the most patriotic thing we can do is to shop, so as to help the real patriots, the uber-patriots who make our economy roar. As though the folks who threw the Boston Tea Party did so not because of freedom, not because of taxation without representation, but because they lacked the capacity to buy a full range of designer teas at one convenient online location. ("...and today, Globalteacorp.com is making our Founding Fathers' vision a reality...") If you go through the Fortune 500, you'll be hard pressed to find any corporations that aren't shipping jobs overseas with one hand, and demanding government handouts with the other. A patriotic company would forego the bottom line, pass the government loot it receives on to the effort to end terrorism, and ship its jobs home. Find one. --G.P. Corporate lackeys in Congress are using the "War Effort" to ram through legislation for their benefactors, attacking any doubters as "un-patriotic." The demolition of Afghanistan somehow necessitates other atrocities, like drilling for oil in the Arctic Wildlife National Refuge (see http://actionnetwork.org/ct/o11TAVF1uqDd/), and the push to pass "Trade Promotion Authority" or HR 3005. Formerly known as Fast Track, the House of Representatives is currently considering this measure, which would allow the President to negotiate trade pacts such as the Free Trade Area of the Americas (NAFTA on steroids for the western hemisphere) without any input from Congress. There may be good news--some labor activists feel that if Fast Track fails, we have a good chance of stopping the FTAA. But legislators representing agribusiness donors are using Fast Track to push their pro-GMO (genetically-modified organisms) agenda, by adding language to HR 3005 making it illegal to mark food products with labels revealing GMO ingredients--the Democratic "alternative" to this bill, though better in some aspects, has the exact same language regarding GMOs. The AFL-CIO is fighting against passage of Fast Track with a toll-free number for calls to Congress: 1-800-393-1082, connecting callers to their legislators in DC, or use http://action.citizen.org/pc/issues/alert/?alertid=57813&type=CO & enter your zip code in the Take Action Now field. Info on Fast Track: www.citizen.org/hot_issues/issue.cfm?ID=138; info on the FTAA: www.purefood.org/corp/ftaaresources.cfm. --Valerie Jean Rose