Kitchen update: Many thanks to the folks who turned out at our potluck/volunteer fair Nov. 9; we definitely got some holes plugged, including proofreadig. But we can always use more; voice mail operators and e-mail wizards are standing by, at 206-903-9461. (And thanks to the folks who catch our proofing errors, and yes, those include the egregious gaffes like Referendum 53...)

The same holds true--thank you and we could use more--for ETS!'s finances and donors. It runs us about $700 each time we print an issue, which is a lot of money to raise, and we rarely have enough--including now. But then, the end of the year is a fine time for donations, holiday subscription gifts (hint, hint), or ETS! merchandise like those boffo t-shirts. We also have a 2003 version of the War Resisters League peace calendar I co-edited last year--more info next time, but as a taste--literally--this year the theme is vegetarian recipes, and it's still $12 each or 4/$44 at your friendly ETS! store: PO Box 85541, Seattle WA 91845. Tips encouraged, in both senses of the word. --G.P.

Here's what you won't see in the televised version of the November 14 Victoria's Secret catwalk fashion show: a 20-minute segment of supermodel Gisele Bunchen being confronted by four PETA protesters. I highly recommend finding the Reuters photos on the Internet, if possible, because the scene is priceless: the anorexic Bunchen decked out in skimpy lingerie striking a typical fuck-me pose with legs spread and hands on hips, while four healthy-looking young women from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals march down the runway behind her with huge signs reading "Gisele: Fur Scum." Bunchen recently inked a lucrative contract to model for the fur company, Blackglama. Referring to the protesters, Bunchen simply shrugged and said some to the effect of, "A girl's got to make a living." Oh, please. Millions of us manage to make a living every day without wearing the skins of dead minks. And Bunchen may be starving (that's her choice), but she's not exactly living on a shoestring.

Three of the four women protesters--Kayla Worten, Arathi Jayaram, and Karla Waples--were yanked off the catwalk by male security guards, arrested, and charged with disorderly conduct, given summonses, and then released. The fourth protester escaped. Kudos to these women for injecting a little reality into the fashion industry. While Victoria's Secret and many mainstream retailers use only fake furs, even the use of fakes is morally questionable, as it produces demand for the real thing. On top of that, the fashion industry recently has been on a tear of animalizing women's sexuality. Leopard and tiger prints, feathers, suede and cowhide with fringe, and a jump in fur sales are all recent trends. The Victoria's Secret show featured its models wearing huge wings (and I can guarantee that it's not a comment on how little food the models actually eat).

What makes it particularly disgusting is that fashion houses are combining these looks with a "hippie" look appropriated from the '60s and '70s and "ethnic" fashions, giving a "liberal" or "free-spirited" tone to the use of cruelty clothing. In the absence of a strong women's movement that deconstructs these images, it's the animal rights movement that is leading the way. Somebody has to do it.--Maria Tomchick

On the other hand, PETA's ongoing work with Playboy and its own use of sexualized models, including models being stalked or attacked (and, as publicity stunts, public displays of caged women, an image that titillates men more than it elicits comparisons to animal treatment) are no picnic, either. (See http://www.nostatusquo.com for a sobering display of PETA's transgressions.) Such tunnel vision suggests that portions of the often disturbingly single-issue animal rights movement could use some old-fashioned consciousnss-raising of their own.--Geov Parrish

To be fair, folks ought to also check out PETA's website at http://www.peta.org for comparison. When you do, you'll notice that PETA's ads include not only nude women, but naked men and people of color, too--in short, they're equal opportunity nudists. You might also notice that some of the early photos taken for the "I'd rather go bare than wear fur" campaign have become popular art photos that can be found in shops selling framed prints. You'll also notice that the versions of the PETA ads posted on the NoStatusQuo.com website have been altered to make them look much worse than the original ads (and without links to the originals for comparison, either). While I sympathize with the women at NoStatusQuo.com in lamenting PETA's ads targeted at US soldiers and PETA's support for the war in Afghanistan, I just can't agree with a campaign that's trying to tell people when they can and can't voluntarily take off their own clothes. And the fact that PETA has placed no-fur ads in Playboy hardly makes them an endorser of Playboy's content or editorial policy. After all, people and groups on the Left have placed anti-war ads in the New York Times without being accused of endorsing corporate media, supporting the NYT's editorial policy, or helping to distort the news.--M.T.

Last week brought a breakthrough in the lawsuits revolving around the California energy crisis. Energy broker Williams Cos. admitted it had manipulated the newly-privatized California power market and agreed to pay a total of $417 million in damages to the state of California. In addition, Williams Cos. will pay the states of Oregon and Washington $15 million each in damages for driving up power prices. This settlement, in which Williams Cos. employees testified about how they worked the market and gave evidence that other power producers were doing it, too, opens the door for settlements with the other four major power companies involved: Duke Energy, Dynegy, Reliant Resources, and Mirant Corp. The evidence provided by Williams Cos. is very damaging to the other four power companies and makes a settlement much more likely. In addition, a closer look at the evidence proves that the problem can't be blamed on the state of California; it was the power companies themselves that designed the program, manipulated it, then ignored the regulators when they tried to enforce the rules. The problem was the privatization process itself. Period.--M.T.

Last week, Kabul saw two days of rioting in and around Kabul University, including, on Monday night, two deaths when police opened fire on a crowd of about a thousand student protesters. Such deaths, according to Interior Minister Taj Mohammed Wardak, "have never happened before in the history of Kabul"--a remarkable statement considering even the last quarter-century.

Ostensibly, the students were protesting their wretched living conditions; according to one student quoted in a BBC report, "We have no water. We have no bread. Everything is expensive." The cost of living has soared in Kabul since the Taliban's departure, but beyond that, an unevenly distributed influx of foreign aid, the absence of whip and stick-wielding religious police, the return of music, and a few more opportunities for women in Kabul itself, not much has changed for Afghans in the last year. Religious laws for women--written and unwritten--frequently remained, and those that were dropped a year ago are starting to come back. Abject poverty, of course, continues. But most importantly, the war is not over, and the warlords that once terrorized Afghanistan have picked up where the Taliban left off. The US-backed Karzai government has virtually no power beyond Kabul itself.

One year after the Americans promised a return to democracy, most of Afghanistan remains carved up among a collection of opulently thuggish warlords, many of them the same commanders of armies of mass rape, torture, and murder from whom the country fled to the Taliban as an antidote six years ago. When Northern Alliance troops entered Kabul, it meant the ensconcement of men like Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim, whose reluctance to withdraw his Northern Alliance troops from Kabul colored the Bonn talks that eventually appointed Karzai himself and that set up last spring's loya jurga. The loya jurga was then misused by the Americans as a rubber stamp to coronate Karzai. Bloodstained warlords who were to be excluded sat instead in the front rows as honored guests, and Karzai put many of them either in his cabinet or in effective control of one or another part of the country. In Fahim's case, reluctance to cooperate with formation of a new national army has also allowed many of the warlords to reestablish themselves, battle each other, and steal at will from food and relief agencies and hapless civilians.

Note to Iraqis: This is American democracy, one year later.--G.P.

As yet another ominous warning of the powder keg that prepares itself even as the Pentagon lays plans to light it, the Jordanian government last week sealed off and sent the military into the southern city of Maan, where "radicals" are said to have amassed a cache of weapons to be deployed should the Americans invade neighboring Iraq.

Jordanian officials insist the move, while intended to "get things in order before a possible war on Iraq," was strictly criminal in nature and had nothing to do with the threatened war itself. As with Karzai government claims that the Kabul protests weren't political, nobody believes them. Such weapon collections are being gathered, and their use planned, in nearly every teeming slum in the Middle East, and probably throughout much of the Islamic world. --G.P.