Comings and Goings: Congratulations to long-time Prison Legal News editor, and thorn in the side of prisons everywhere, Paul Wright. After serving 17 years in Washington state's gulag, Wright gets out on parole this week and is moving to a new life in Vermont. He'll continue to edit the invaluable PLN from there. It's not easy sometimes for long-time prisoners to make the transition back to the outside world--best wishes to Paul in his new life! --Geov Parrish

And congratulations are in order to the organizers of the fabulous Jan. 24 fundraiser for Bert Sacks. The event, at University Temple United Methodist Church, was one of the most spirited and loving peace community events I've witnessed in a long time--a hall full of people taking action to help an icon of the community. Of course, that leaves a whole lot of money still to be raised. Details on how to help are at http://www.bertmedicalfund.org. --G.P.

Speaking of needy: ETS! uber-volunteer John Foss, the guy many of you have seen outside activist events with a hand-truck-full of this fine newspaper he unloads one by one, has a problem. He also distributes untold numbers of these papers to various parts of town, except that he can't at the moment, because his beater car finally died. John writes: "Do you have running or could-be-running vehicle to donate to ETS!? An, efficient, non-gas guzzling wagon would be best, but we are not choosy. And we have mechanic skills, so don't be bashful. Also, we could resurrect the GLC if anyone has an extra motor. Also, a 1979-82 Toyota Pickup with 20R motor would be appreciated, or a transmission and a distributor would aid in bringing back to life another valiant museum piece. Get ETS! and free speech back on the road!" --G.P.

A plug and giveaway: the fine Bay Area anarchist newspaper Slingshot puts out a little daily-planner-type weekly calendar each year, and they shipped us about ten of their 2004 edition. Unfortunately, they didn't get here until mid-January, meaning we've got these nice, compact little 3"x 4" (or so) 2004 calendars that are gonna go to waste unless ten of y'all want one. Send us a couple bucks to cover the envelope & postage (or just come to the Feb. ETS! meeting on Feb. 18) and one is yours! --G.P.

One more plug: now that the state legislature is in session in Olympia, there is absolutely no better way to keep track of what's going on than an e-mail subscription to Policy Watch, a weekly newsletter put out by the UW's Nancy Amidei. Policy Watch has detailed information on pending bills and their status, hearings, lobby days, who to lobby and on what, and much, much more. Highly recommended. Get it by e-mailing her at amidei@u.washington.edu. --G.P.

On the topic of the sort of military-oligarchic corruption detailed in this week's Nature & Politics, a reader writes: "Word in Olympia is that Martha Choe got a job at Boeing. This is *not* a joke. Our very own Darleen Druyun." But truth, in this case, is worse than rumor. Choe moves from a cabinet-level job for the state to a new state job created as a result of the 7E7 benefit package enacted for Boeing. The sole purpose of Choe's new, full-time, taxpayer-funded state post is to get Boeing whatever it wants from the state. It's like Darleen Druyun--if, after Druyun took her Boeing job, we were still paying her salary.--G.P.

But nothing being done by Boeing, General Dynamics, or any of the rest even begins to touch, for sheer scale of theft and corruption, the systematic Halliburton and Bechtel looting of Iraq. There's a lot of evidence afoot that the bombing and looting campaigns accompanying the US invasion were carefully calculated to maximize destruction not to the infrastructure Saddam's government needed to fight, but the infrastructure whose wholesale replacement would be most profitable. Now, with Halliburton facing scandals in its Kuwait office over kickbacks and price-gouging, not only are all us taxpayers being robbed blind, but Iraqis have it even worse--a big, big reason so many don't want any part of a government "selected" by Washington. Under international law--which global financiers respect, even if Bush et al. don't--an occupying power cannot auction off a country's assets. Only an independent government can. That, and the US elections, go a long way toward explaining the Bush haste for putting a puppet regime in place. And the staggering corruption and high-level looting Iraqis have already suffered has a lot to do with why so many are opposed to the cronyistic "selection" scheme. --G.P.

Meanwhile, while you weren't looking, US officials last week confirmed that the "temporary" 18-month military mission to the nation of Georgia will become permanent. The Americans came in during 2002, allegedly to provide limited training and equipment for the Georgian military, in order to ferret out supposed Chechen and Al-Qaeda terrorists.

The former Soviet republic is in the heart of the oil-rich Caspian Sea region and is also on Iran's northern flank, as well as on Russia's border. The new, US-supported Georgian government has given the green light for the Yanks to stay. And so we can add one more troubled place in the world where the US military becomes both a target and a menace. Meanwhile, Georgia's new president-elect has set the removal of Russian troops still based in the country as a major priority for his government. For Moscow, the Caucasus is a geopolitical backyard, rich in energy resources and crucial to the conflict in Chechnya. Among the prizes Washington covets: a multi-billion-dollar Caspian oil pipeline. --G.P.

And, on the topic of foreign policy outrages gone down the memory hole: The New York Times and others reported last week that a secret grand jury has apparently been convened to look into allegations surrounding the White House leaking of the identity of Joseph Wilson's wife as a CIA agent. Wilson, you'll recall, is the ex-ambassador the CIA and White House sent to Africa two years ago to check out a report that Saddam Hussein's government had purchased yellow-cake uranium for possible use in a nuclear program.

Wilson reported back that the report was a hoax, but that didn't stop Pres. Bush and other administration officials from claiming the report as evidence of Iraq's WMD programs months afterwards, most famously in last year's State of the Union speech.

With the invasion in the balance, Wilson went public with the results of his trip, which were reported to the highest levels of the Bush Administration. Now, a year later, The Times, in describing the grand jury investigation--which could see the subpoenaing of Karl Rove and other senior aides, if not Dubya himself--we're being told that the outing of Wilson's wife was apparent revenge for "Wilson's criticism of Bush's Iraq policy."

No. No, no, no, no. Wilson did not criticize Bush's Iraq policy. What he did was to state baldly that the President and his pack of wolves were lying through their teeth, first when they claimed the uranium sale as fact, and again when they claimed they were unaware the report was a badly forged fraud. It's one thing to disagree with a policy. It's another to provide irrefutable proof that the Commander-in-Chief intentionally, repeatedly lied to the American public so as to justify an unprovoked, illegal invasion. Let's not forget what happened, and let's call it what it was. --G.P.

This year, of course, the State of the Union was instead more notable for what wasn't in it. Reality, for example, as when Dubya claimed enormous success for the Iraq occupation, in bald contradiction of each and every report out of that grim, violent, troubled land. Even more amazingly, the previous week's White House gambit for bold leadership was entirely absent: Bush's promise of manned space flights to Mars with absolutely no concept attached of the untold and nonexistent hundreds of billions of dollars such a project would require. Bush's trial space capsule didn't do well in the polls - presto! Vanished.

That's a sign of two things: first, that Bush does, in fact, care very much about poll numbers, contrary to his insistence. Second, that such gambits are a sign of worry, if not desperation, in the Bush camp. The increasing sharpness of Democratic attacks and especially the record turnout for Iowa's caucuses suggest that a lot of people, far more than normal, are gonna be paying attention this year. That can't be good for a presidency built on corruption, lies, and greed. --G.P.

In the wake of those Iowa results, will someone please explain to me: 1) Why polls that clearly state they're of the moment and have large margins of error, so that their results are no better than a vague measure of trends, are taken as gospel truth? And, when polling or caucus results differ, the disparity somehow becomes proof of pollings' lack of validity? 2) In a culture that obsesses over winning and hates losing, what's so strange about Howard Dean, in Iowa, being pissed off that he lost? Do we really think our political leaders don't have tempers? More to the point, what does that possibly have to do with the policies they'd enact as leaders? (If anything, it's more significant that Dean then turned around and attacked Kerry this past week once Kerry was the anointed front-runner--something Dean promised never to do.) And, 3) Where do media pundits get off reading a country's worth of results out of a cockeyed process in one--with New Hampshire, make it two--of the most rural, white, unrepresentative states in the country? As yet, we know very little. Iowa didn't change much. By the time you read this, New Hampshire won't have, either. Take those daily headlines of abruptly shifting trends with a huge helping of salt. --G.P.

Over four years after the horse has left the barn, protesters arrested in 1999's anti-WTO demonstrations claim vindication over this month's $250,000 settlement of their lawsuit against the city of Seattle. The 157 plaintiffs were among over 500 activists arrested without cause, mostly on Dec. 1, 1999, the second day of the week-long protests.

For the plaintiffs, the cash award certainly doesn't hurt. But this is no victory. The city, in this case, got exactly what it wanted: a bunch of those vile protesters swept up and kept off the street until the WTO safely left town. At that point, it mattered not in the least that charges were dropped and the pretext for arrest (a "no-protest" zone where only people carrying items with political content were arrested) was transparently illegal. Seattle accomplished its goal, and the eventual cost--the days of imprisonment and the costs of a four-year-long civil suit--were a drop in the bucket of a security operation that cost well over $10 million. This has become a common tactic, replayed endlessly in places like Washington, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and most recently in November in Miami. Until cities that illegally arrest large numbers of people intentionally pay a serious price for it--say, $25 million instead of $250,000--it'll keep right on happening, free speech and the Bill of Rights be damned. --G.P.