I must say, as disagreeable as my impression of local cops was last Friday (see front page article), the announcement of the arrest of Gary Leon Ridgway as the suspected Green River killer was the best news of any kind I've heard in quite a while, and just about the only time I can ever recall something that the police did bringing tears of joy to my eyes. It's been utterly unnerving how many people in this area, especially men, have managed to put that particular trauma out of their minds for nearly two decades. But then, at almost precisely the same time, U.S. bombers killed as many as 200 more Afghan civilians in the now-destroyed Afghan villages of Balut, Akal Khan, and Gudara. It's hard to imagine something worse than a murderer of teenage prostitutes going free for nearly 20 years. Maybe it's innocent Afghans--mostly women, children, and the elderly--whose murderers crow about it to great public acclaim. --Geov Parrish

The news this past week has shown that the war in Afghanistan is far from being over, as some smug "patriots" believe. The bombing continues, as do the hundreds--if not thousands--of civilian casualties. The English-language press (by which I mean both the US press and British newspapers, as well as the two main wire services) have turned their attention away from interviewing Afghan refugees. This proves that civilian casualties in this war are simply not newsworthy ... unless nothing else is happening. But Pakistani newspapers have been continuing to report on the civilian casualties and the massive stream of refugees caused by the US bombing of Kandahar. Last week the US military began to bomb the Tora Bora complex in Eastern Afghanistan in hopes of killing Osama bin Laden; reports of US bombs going astray and demolishing three villages within two miles of the complex have begun to leak out. The destruction of Balut, Akal Khan, and Gudara have left hundreds dead and whole families buried alive in the rubble of their destroyed homes.

Press reports of the US bombing at the Qala Jangi prison show that US precision bombs can barely kill Taliban hiding in the basement of mud-brick buildings, much less troops in deep caverns (see Media Watch this issue). Even at Qala Jangi the much-touted, Boeing-built, "precision" JDAM guidance system for bombs didn't perform up to expectations, with at least one JDAM bomb going astray and killing one American and six Northern Alliance troops.

In spite of US government assurances, the humanitarian situation is continuing to worsen. Lootings, kidnappings, execution of prisoners, and theft of humanitarian aid in and around the cities "liberated" by Northern Alliance troops are the main cause. The New York Times reported on November 30: "food deliveries have actually dropped since the Northern Alliance took Mazar-i-Sharif ... The main problem is insecurity. Towns and cities are so chaotic that relief agencies cannot safely operate. Many roads are off limits because of lawlessness and banditry ... Instead of new supply routes opening up to fleets of trucks, old routes are shutting down." Large portions of the north are cut off, including whole provinces (Ghor and Badghis) and the area from Mazar-i-Sharif to Herat, where huge numbers of refugees have come down out of the mountains to try to find food. US air drops of food are not enough and are not reaching most of these people. And last week pallets of food were dropped on a village near Heart, destroying several houses and killing a mother and her baby. Two children near Herat were killed running through a mine field to reach food packets. Meanwhile, the Northern Alliance refuses to allow UN troops in to escort aid convoys, and the US military has refused to do that job because it might take attention away from the campaign to get bin Laden. --Maria Tomchick

Also on the food crisis, anyone remember the purchase by the Pentagon's National Imagery and Mapping Agency of exclusive rights to all Afghanistan satellite images from the sole commercial source for such photos, the Ikonos satellite used by Satellite Space Imaging? When the deal was first made--and renewed in early November--activists and media groups complained that it prevented any independent verification of casualties (military or civilian). True enough. But the effective censorship turns out to have another, more ominous problem. As winter makes ground travel impossible, and food aid groups need to use precisely located food drops to reach the pockets of starving villagers and refugees scattering throughout the mountains (one report says there are 229 such pockets), aid groups don't know where the people are who most need food. And the Pentagon is now the sole proprietor of that information, and isn't sharing it. --GP

So where is bin Laden? Vice President Dick Cheney believes he's at Tora Bora, but the Northern Alliance's foreign minister says he's probably in southeastern Pakistan with thousands of Taliban troops who crossed the border weeks ago to set up guerrilla bases there. Adding credence to the reports that Pakistan is harboring the Taliban are eyewitness accounts by Northern Alliance troops that Pakistani military planes evacuated a number of Taliban from the city of Kunduz before its fall.

The war at home against Muslim immigrants expanded to political dissidents, as John Ashcroft announced he would single-handedly rewrite FBI procedures to allow the agency to spy on religious and political groups. (See article, front page.) Ashcroft's recent efforts to turn the Dept. of Justice into a US KGB have sparked a deep division within the ranks of the DOJ and the FBI. Ashcroft is too fascist even for seasoned, career FBI agents; many of them are choosing to retire now or change occupations. Some of them probably remember the COINTELPRO hearings of the 1970s. Or they may just see themselves as patriots who can't reconcile their morality with lying to the US public. One FBI agent shook his head over the government's detaining of over 1,200 immigrants without charges: "We have 10 or 12 people we think are al-Qaida people, and that's it."

Meanwhile, in Germany, the talks over a new government in Afghanistan are at an impasse. One sticking point is Pashtun representation. Haji Abdul Qadir, head of the Pashtun delegation, walked out of the meetings on November 29 protesting the lack of representation for the majority of Afghanis. The talks have continued anyway, but the remaining Pashtun delegates are exiles and don't represent Pashtuns within Afghanistan. In addition, Burhanuddin Rabbani, the head of the Northern Alliance and the man the UN recognizes as the leader of Afghanistan, said on November 30 that he doesn't like the proposal drawn up by the other delegates, including representatives of the former King, Zahir Shah. And so the squabbling has begun. The chances of the Bonn talks producing a stabilizing government for Afghanistan are nil.--MT

Change one letter in "nil" and you get "oil." You most certainly haven't seen, because nobody reported, the text of a boilerplate "Statement by the President," released last Wednesday by the White House, the sort of very ordinary, National Florist Day-type pronouncement that generally gets zero attention. It runs two paragraphs, the most germane parts of which read:

"I congratulate Russia, Kazakhstan, and Oman, and their consortium partners, for the commissioning of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC). U.S. firms, notably ChevronTexaco and ExxonMobil, have played leading roles in this project. These facilities represent the culmination of years of effort. They are examples to the world that the United States, Russia, and Kazakhstan are cooperating to build prosperity and stability in this part of the world...

"The CPC highlights the important progress by countries in the Caspian region in building a transparent and stable environment for international trade and investment. The CPC project also advances my Administration's National Energy Policy by developing a network of multiple Caspian pipelines..."

Just in case you were wondering why the U.S. is still attacking Afghanistan when bin Laden probably isn't even there... --G.P.

James Phillips was one of my heroes. He was an environmentalist before the word was widely used, inspiring generations of activists both in his public role as a junior high school science teacher in suburban Chicago, and as an anonymous activist challenging corporate terrorists (a.k.a. polluters.) Last week, his ashes were scattered on his beloved Fox River in Illinois--a river he helped rescue from industrial ruin. I wasn't a student in his class, but as a teenager, I was delighted by tales of his brilliant actions in the Chicago daily papers.

Phillips began his activism as "The Fox" in 1969 by blocking a sewer system at Armour-Dial Co., which was dumping toxic waste into a stream flowing into the already-poisoned Fox River. He left a note demanding a cleanup, and signed it with the drawing of a fox. The media was delighted by Phillips' creative, direct actions, and dubbed the anonymous activist "The Fox." In 1970, The Fox infiltrated the corporate offices of US Steel, dumping polluted water on an executive's desk along with a small wooden coffin holding wildlife killed by industrial pollution. He anonymously alerted reporters, who were at the office the next day to record the executive's shock at facing the shadow side of his enormous income.

These days the media would label The Fox an eco-terrorist. In the early 1970s, they used his spectacles to launch effective investigations. Far from being destructive, The Fox's actions focused public outrage against arrogant corporations, opening the way for legal and technological reform. Years before the theatrical tactics of Greenpeace or Earth First!, Phillips' outrageous actions held corporate terrorists accountable for their global poisoning. His memoir, "Raising Kane, The Fox Chronicles," is a powerful model of environmental action. The Fox and his progeny root the dialogue in deep ecology, calling for total healing of environmental destruction. His example reminds us that environmentalism is more than writing an annual membership check and putting a "Think Green" bumpersticker on the new Subaru.--Valerie Rose

Radio newsrooms are becoming less diverse, not more. A new Radio/TV News Directors Association study shows that there's been a small drop in the number of such news jobs for African-Americans--5.7% of the total in 1994, 5.2% now. But for Latinos, 7.5% in 1994, 5.5% now. Blame media consolidation (meaning shrinking newsrooms and retention of the most senior employees); deregulation (licensees not caring about the minor penalties they supposedly risk for discrimination); and, um, racism.--G.P.

On the other hand, here's some good radio news: The first Low Power FM radio stations are on the air. The first known sign-on: KEFC, a Christian station in Turlock, California, on Oct. 14. After Congress eviscerated LPFM--taking out 80% of the eligible allotments, including almost all medium and large cities where community service is most desperately needed. Nationally, religious groups have dominated the applications for the new legal, low power stations; however, several progressive groups in Washington state do have applications in, and at least a couple appear to be sure bets. --G.P.