Some good news: the federal government finally recognized the Cowlitz tribe. Federal recognition allows the tribe to receive government funds to operate a tribal government, build housing, and access healthcare through the Indian Health Service. The Cowlitz can also acquire land for a reservation. And last week, a shocking revelation revived the Duwamish tribe's chances for federal recognition. An administrative court found that an unidentified Bureau of Indian Affairs staffperson illegally altered the final recognition documents by stamping "Draft" on them after they had been signed. The court threw the case back to the secretary of the Interior Department to review the decision. The Duwamish, Chief Seattle's tribe, has threatened to sue in federal court or seek a Congressional hearing. They have a good chance of winning.--Maria Tomchick

In the past month, Microsoft has suffered a number of setbacks. First, the company was forced to announce that its brand-new Windows XP software had a flaw that allowed hackers to gain complete control of a user's computer via the Internet. Ironically, the flaw was linked to a new plug-and-play feature--yet another add-on to its basic operating software. Microsoft's propensity to throw in add-ons (like Internet Explorer) to each new upgrade sparked the antitrust lawsuit in the first place. And this is the software that Jim Allchin, head of Microsoft's platform group, described in a Fortune article in November: "When I decided to come to Microsoft, I had reservations because I didn't think the company built the best software. It's been 11 years--a long time to get to something I'm really proud of." Still proud, Jim? Or is XP just another crappy Microsoft product?--MT

Just a few days ago, a federal judge ruled against Microsoft's proposed settlement of 150 private lawsuits alleging that the company charges too much for its products. Microsoft wanted to give $500 million to the nation's poorest schools so they could buy computers loaded with Microsoft software. Opposing counsel argued, and the judge agreed, that this was a trick for Microsoft to seize control over the education market; currently, Apple has nearly half of the pre-college market. In addition, $500 million is a paltry sum; Microsoft has $36.3 billion in cash and short-term investments on its books.--MT

Last week Microsoft tried to stall the penalty phase of its antitrust trial by requesting a four-month delay to prepare its argument. Near the beginning of the hearing, the judge, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, cut off the Microsoft lawyer's argument and ruled against the delay, quipping: "Certainly no one can claim that they lack resources." Uh-oh. She's starting to sound like Thomas Penfield Jackson! Indeed, it's hard to feel sympathy for Microsoft. Kollar-Kotelly understands what so many of Microsoft's competitors have been saying all along: time is on Microsoft's side. The trial is set for March 11, and nine states will push for stronger penalties.--MT

Microsoft took yet another body blow last week when Thomas Weber, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, wrote an article entitled "Time to Get Serious: A Checklist of Ways to Secure the Internet" (1/7/02, p. A13). Number one on his list: "BREAK THE MICROSOFT HABIT. He points out the obvious: "The vulnerabilities in Outlook don't need to be patched; they simply shouldn't be there in the first place ... Normally market forces would punish makers of shoddy products. But Microsoft's dominance impedes those forces." He suggests alternative software--Apple's OS X and Linux: "They both have security problems of their own, but increasing the diversity of systems online would strengthen the Net's immune system..."

And, finally, there's a new challenger to the dominant Microsoft Office suite (Word, Excel, Outlook, Powerpoint, etc.). In another Wall Street Journal article (1/10/02, p. B1), Walter Mossberg writes that a new product, gobeProductive 3.0, is cheaper, faster, and simpler for most home users. It leaves out a lot of the bells and whistles (many of them annoying clutter) of Microsoft Office, but has more capability than Microsoft's useless, dumbed-down, entry-level suite, Works. It has some faults and it doesn't have an e-mail manager like Outlook (that's a plus, in my book!), but it can open and edit Microsoft Word and Excel documents, and it beats Microsoft in managing graphics. In short, if you're a home user or do a lot of desktop publishing, you might want to check it out. The company is Gobe Software of Portland, OR, www.gobe.com or 503-228-6308, ext. 1. GobeProductive 3.0 retails at $125 vs. $470 for Microsoft Office.--MT

One of the major failings of the Bush administration that Democrats will ignore: the Bushites' enthusiasm for all of the various non-renewable energy industries. Alone among the developed world, the US is refusing to curb carbon emissions and is, instead, worsening its emissions output. The US is the world's biggest energy consumer and the world's biggest polluter. And that was before Dubya took office, trashed emission standard goals, stuffed regulatory agencies with industry cronies, and pledged to build a new coal power plant every week until not just the World Trade Center but all of Manhattan is gone, somewhere under the North Atlantic. And imagine what this country's security would be like at the moment if it had spent the last half-century writing blank checks not to the Pentagon, but for ever-more-sophisticated (and clean) domestic energy sources. US policies all over the world have consistently stomped on aspirations for democracy and freedom, preferring to put trust in tyrants and thugs who can keep our gas spigots on. This has come to be seen as such a normal state of affairs ("it may be in Saudi Arabian territory, but it's our oil!") that the US now pursues all sorts of energy policies that seem clinically insane: giving up on energy conservation, pulling the plug on research into renewables, and even selling off Alaskan oil overseas under Clinton. The US government has a greater capacity than any other entity, anywhere in the world, to pour money into renewable energy research. Now that taking energy policy dictation from Kenneth Lay has been properly disgraced, it's way, way past time. --Geov Parrish

But it won't happen, and that's the second germane issue raised by the Enron fiasco: greed. In his first year, George Bush, and hundreds of his appointees from the Cabinet on down, have had at least as radical an impact on how federal government makes policy as Ronald Reagan did 20 years ago. Reagan, and the incoherent Democratic response to him, sent the country on a long-term rightward lurch politically. But the Dubya Revolution is very different. Reagan, however confused he got on the specifics, genuinely seemed to believe in smaller government. Bush couldn't care less; instead, his policy yardstick is pure greed. Government should be larger, and spend more, when it benefits Bush's friends, allies, and business supporters (or damages anyone else); it should be smaller, and stingier, when it doesn't help those in George's Rolodex. The politics of the US have been moving in this direction for some time. Bill Clinton was the best president Wall Street ever had, precisely for his genius in handing out favors to big business, while making everyone else feel better about it. Dubya's innovation is to focus entirely on handing out favors to allies, and dispense entirely with the empathy and apologies. The sheer brazenness of Dubya's raid on the public trust seems to have floored the Democrats. It also leaves their protestations over Enron somewhat hollow--because somewhere, Bill Clinton is kicking himself for not having thought of it first, and Al Gore is wondering how he could do it better.--GP

Another year, another sanitized, white supremacist version of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. Lots of children and soft focus photos and dream references; no mentions of the radical King, the forgotten King--the real man in history, not the icon. The real man gave us powerful indictments of poverty, the Vietnam War, and the military-industrial complex. We see Bull Connor in Birmingham; we don't see arrests for fighting segregated housing in Chicago, or the generations of beatings and busts before he won the Nobel Peace Prize. We don't hear about the mainstream American contempt at the time for King, even after that Peace Prize, or his reputation among conservatives as a Commie dupe. We don't see retrospectives on his linkage of civil rights with Third World liberation. We forget that he died in Memphis lending support for a union (the garbage workers' strike), while organizing a multi-racial Poor Peoples' Campaign that demanded affordable housing and decent-paying jobs as basic civil rights transcending skin color. Opponents of affirmative action and racial equality can now claim King's mantle and "if he were alive today" approval only because in 2002, TVland's MLK has no politics. And, for that matter, no faith. If the King of 1955 or 1965 were alive today, he would be accused of treason for his pacifism, as he was reviled for "Communism" then. Instead of the FBI trying to bring him down, he (and most of his associates) would be prosecutable today under new anti-terrorism statutes. And wiretapped, now as then. And what about the moral outrage of Americans, that made his work so effective? We don't do that any more. It'd take a whole lot more than police dogs to make the news today. Ask any global justice demonstrator. They, as well as the rest of our community's truly dedicated successors to the King dream, will be far away from politicians and podiums and platitudes: at Garfield High School next Monday morning, sharing workshops and then marching downtown for peace, jobs, and freedom. Join them. --GP

Oh, and ETS! will have a table there, too, with papers, t-shirts, discounted calendars, and info on refusing to pay war taxes (just like the big corporations). See you there.--GP