This just in: U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and Director of Homeland Security Tom Ridge have been invited to speak in Seattle in early June, as part of a June 2-6 gathering of spooks at the West Coast Grand Hotel on 5th Ave. in downtown Seattle. The event is the 48th annual such gathering, or "training seminar," for the sponsoring organization -- the Law Enforcement Intelligence Unit, an organization I had never heard of before that I would like to know more about. My understanding is that this an organization that helps local and national law enforcement agencies share intelligence information. The theme of the seminar is "Criminal Intelligence and the War Against Terrorism." Sponsors for the event include Microsoft and Starbucks. For more information about the seminar, check out the website for the event: http://www.leiu2003seattle.org.

Whether or not Ashcroft or Ridge show up for the seminar, it is an event that should be protested and organizing should begin ASAP. This is the kind of event where staging civil disobedience ought to be considered. There isn't better time to stand up for principles than when a group of people dedicated to trampling our civil liberties is gathering in town.--Rick Giombetti

The State Legislature in Olympia is in session and struggling with the budget. There's a $2.4 billion shortfall out of the $23 billion budget (and most of that $23 billion is dedicated to specific programs, so only about $10 billion from the general fund can be considered for cuts). Unfortunately, most of the $10 billion general fund is used for social service programs. Gov. Gary Locke didn't help matters when he released a budget draft that has no new sources of revenue and relies on deep social services cuts (to the delight of Republicans who've taken the governor's draft as a starting point and proposed further cuts). Among the cuts in Locke's proposal: $328 million from the Basic Health plan to eliminate healthcare coverage for 60,000 of the poorest people in the state; $60 million from community mental health programs; elimination of dental, vision, and hearing services for Medicaid recipients; and cutting the entire $81 million Medically Indigent program. In addition, he wants to cut teacher salary increases mandated by voter-approved initiative, $94 million from higher education (which will lead to yet another round of tuition increases), and eliminate 2,500 state jobs.

Now's the time to let legislators know that they need to boost revenues and fund these important programs. There are three important tax reform bills in the Senate that would make our state's tax system more equitable for the taxpayer and more stable for folks who need public services. SB 5056, SB 5057, and SJR 8200 deserve a closer look; they're currently in the Senate Ways and Means Committee. In the meantime, state senators and representatives are drafting their versions of the budget. It's up to us to let them know how we feel about Gov. Locke's draconian cuts. You can call the Legislative Hotline toll-free and find out the name of your representatives and leave a message for them: 1-800-562-6000 (TTY 1-800-635-9993). You can e-mail them by using the first 8 letters of your legislator's last name, followed by the first two letters of their first name @leg.wa.gov. Call the Hotline or visit http://dfind.leg.wa.gov/ to find out their names and contact info. At http://www.leg.wa.gov, you can click on "Legislative Info" and find a wealth of information on bills, committees, and other happenings. Another great resource--my favorite source of information on the state legislature--is Nancy Amidei's Policy Watch newsletter, which can be found at http://depts.washington.edu/sswweb/, click on Policy Watch 2003.--Maria Tomchick

Amidei's Policy Watch newsletter is my favorite Oly update source, too -- she's a UW prof who puts out a comprehensive overview, from a social service advocate perspective, of pending bills and their status, lobby days, contact info, and everything else you need to know to make informed demands upon our legislators, Beyond the web site (above), you can also subscribe to get her newsletter via e-mail. Which I do. Highly recommended. --Geov Parrish

On Monday, January 27, the two men in charge of the UN weapons inspectors in Iraq will make (as of this writing--it'll be a fait accompli by the time you read this) a presentation to the UN Security Council on what they've found so far in Iraq and whether Iraq is complying with the inspection process. Like the announcements they made in early January, both Hans Blix and Mohamed El Baradei are expected to say that they've found no chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons in Iraq. In addition, El Baradei has already said that the main piece of evidence that the US has used against Iraq--the aluminum tubes--are completely unsuited for use in a nuclear program. Nevertheless, the US has put pressure on Hans Blix to say that Iraq is not completely cooperating, and he is expected to go along with the US program. In essence, the Bush administration has given up on finding any evidence of wrongdoing by Iraq and is now arguing a negative: because the inspectors have found nothing, Iraq is therefore not cooperating.

In fact, the truth is that Iraq is cooperating more than anyone expected. After the discovery two weeks ago of 12 empty chemical weapons shells, Blix and El Baradei traveled to Baghdad to meet with the Iraqi government. Last Monday, January 20th, they hammered out a 10-point plan in which Iraq agreed to: give inspectors more documents, answer specific questions about the weapons declaration it made in December, let UN inspectors interview scientists in private, provide a longer list of names of potential interviewees, enact laws banning weapons of mass destruction (something the UN has been pushing them to do for years), and search its own weapons stockpiles for more empty chemical weapons shells. In short, they've agreed to address all the issues that the Bush administration has complained about in the past three weeks. El Baradei, who seems less susceptible to US bullying than Blix, has praised Iraq for its cooperation. Yet the US is still pushing the other members of the Security Council to vote for war. France, Russia, and China are resisting strongly. Even Tony Blair is urging the Bushies to wait, because he's under enormous public anti-war pressure in Britain. The only European nations supporting the Bush administration's drive for war are the right-wing governments of Italy and Spain and the aid-dependent Eastern European nations of Poland, Hungary and The Czech Republic--none of whom can provide many troops.

So the first war deadline, Monday, will probably pass without incident. The second deadline is mid-February. That's the Pentagon's deadline to get all the troops into place for a military assault. To that end, George W. Bush is expected to make a case for war against Saddam in his State of Union address on Tuesday, in which he'll argue that nothing is really evidence of something. He'll talk about "hidden weapons" and Iraqi resistance to the inspections. And he'll be lying. The manufacture of chemical weapons produces chemical by-products and chemical contamination. Nuclear plants, fuel repositories, and enrichment facilities produce lots of radiation. Bioweapons facilities use enormous quantities of water and need large warehouse-type buildings for bio-containment. Testing bio-weapons produces traces of bio-contamination in the environment. None of that's been found in Iraq. If only the US media would call Bush on his bullshit and remind the American people that the UN inspectors have already visited all the main sites the Bush administration claimed were being used for building weapons of mass destruction, including so-called "hidden sites." And so far they've found nothing. Nothing.--M.T.

Handbasket Report, Part 1: Now that the world has gone here, thanks to our travel agents in the Bush Administration, it's time for a friendly report on what the locals are up to as they work overtime to make our experience the Living Hell they all promised in the travel brochures. Yes, the Bush Administration is hard at work behind the scenes, rewriting or gutting regulations to put more of their friends in power, in unimaginable wealth, or both. And the rest of us can go to you-know-where.

Every week brings new, quietly unfolding horrors, My (sort of) favorite so far this month: a quiet proposal, whisked through the Department of Housing and Urban Development with public comment due by March, that would dramatically expand the Faith-Based Initiative by allowing churches, synagogues, mosques, and other congregations to receive federal funding to build their houses of worship. So long as said brand spanking-new, taxpayer-funded house of worship was even partly used for a non-religious social program -- and virtually every religious group does some sort -- Dubya would have us pay for chapels and altars across the country. Who needs no stinkin' separation of Church and State? Pew is right.--G.P.

Handbasket Report, Part 2: In late December, Medicare officials sent out letters to contractors across the country, instructing them to immediately discontinue proactive Medicare programs that educated patients as to what benefits they were eligible for and how to get them. Contractors are still allowed to answer patient inquiries, but the days of public education are over, presumably to screw patients out of their, er, save money, and get clients in the habit of expecting the same sort of contemptuous treatment they'll get when Dubya succeeds in throwing Medicare patients into the private health insurance market. That's a big priority in the next year for the Bushies, and he'll have pushed hard for it in this week's State of the Ninth Circle address.--G.P.

Handbasket Report, Part 3: Last Thursday, at Bush Administration urging, the newly Republican-controlled Senate voted to lift existing restrictions on selling American weaponry to the Indonesian military. That military, whose execution of one-third of the population of East Timor is only one of the genocides in its proud and unrepentant history, is still populated by many of the same people, never punished, who carried out those crimes. Now, with East Timor newly independent and "terrorist" resistance to Indonesian brutality sparking nasty ongoing wars in Aceh, Irian Jaya, and other densely populated ends of the archipelago, those same Indonesia thugs will get brand new, state-of-the-Dark-Arts kill toys. Bet they're Kissinger Associates clients, too. --G.P.

Handbasket Report, Part 4: Among Satan's tools are the Bush Administration's placement in positions of power appointees implacably opposed to the people they're supposed to help or represent (or, alternatively, wedded at the hip to the people they're supposedly regulating). This week brought a doozy: the selection of Jerry Thacker, a Pennsylvania marketing consultant who has characterized AIDS as the "gay plague," to serve on the Presidential Advisory Commission on HIV and AIDS. That panel serves under the same HUD that's proposing to build churches, the one run by ex-Wisconsin governor and "welfare reform" celebrity Tommy Thompson. Thacker, a former Bob Jones University employee, is himself HIV-positive. He says he got the virus when his wife was infected through a blood transfusion. Repulsive as the man sounds, and as tragic as his personal circumstance may be, it does smack just a wee bit of a Divine Sense of Humor--sort of like a Klansman contracting sickle cell anemia.--G.P.

Among the items in our ever-overflowing ETS! e-mail inbox, one in particular bears sharing. To wit: "The No War Against Iraq Coalition, Not in our Name, Green Party of Washington State, Sound Non-Violent Opponents of War (SNOW) and Church Council of Greater Seattle are sponsoring a call for emergency Anti-War rallies on the day of and day after an escalation of war against Iraq.

"The demonstrations will be activated whenever one of the following three things happens: (1) A declaration of war is made; (2) U.S. bombing of Iraq increases significantly; or (3) U.S. troops are deployed in Iraq.

The day this happens, gather at the Federal Building at 915 Second Avenue at 5 PM, with a march to Westlake at 7 PM.

The day after, gather at the Federal Building starting at noon, and march to Westlake Park for a rally at 4:30 PM. Several independent feeder marches will be organized by students & different groups to meet at Westlake for the rally. Plans are also under way for day-time vigils at the Federal Building for the first seven days of war."

While a "formal" invasion is, at best, probably weeks away, casual "no-fly zone" bombings and sanctions harassment continue, and so does the organizing. Our back page calendar captures the astonishing rise of grassroots, neighborhood-based opposition to war. It's diverse, huge, and growing. And it just might work. Get involved. And if they do start invading, shut the country down.--G.P.