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Colombia paramilitary leaders extradited to face stiff US drug charges will dodge accountability for their atrocities. Rights watchers say their victims now have little chance for justice.

As the eighteenth annual demonstration against the Army's School of the Americas nears, we quiz Democratic hopefuls on whether they would shut it down. Their answers are not encouraging.

As peace activists converge on Fort Benning for the annual demonstration to shut down the School of the Americas, companion protests are taking place across Latin America, as revulsion grows over US policies on torture.

LES JEUNES--UNE VICTOIRE!

Uruguay and Argentina are cutting ties with the US Army's School of the Americas, paving the way for other Latin American countries to end a destabilizing force that only perpetuates human rights atrocities.

Does it lessen the horror to admit that this is not the first time the
US government has used torture to wipe out political opponents? The
exclusion of the impact of the School of the Americas on war crimes in El
Salvador, Argentina and Panama from our current debate on torture is
evidence of our collective amnesia.

As demonstrators gather at Fort Benning, Georgia, this weekend for an
annual protest against the School of the Americas, the spotlight will
be on increasing dismay in Congress and among the American public
over the Bush Administration's policies on torture.

A federal magistrate in Georgia sentenced eleven people to prison for up to six months last week for crossing the line onto a military base in an act of nonviolent civil disobedience last fall.

FREE SPEECH WINS ONE

These are dismal times for civil liberties, so it's nice to have a positive story to tell. In a previous item we reported that the city of Columbus, Georgia, citing "security concerns," sought an injunction forbidding SOA Watch from holding a march to the gate of Fort Benning, home of the School of the Americas, the alma mater of some of the most infamous state terrorists in Central America. Magistrate G. Mallon Faircloth denied the injunction, saying, "It's a question of First Amendment rights, and you can't play with that. I am sworn to uphold the US Constitution. I think I did that today."

NEWS OF THE WEAK IN REVIEW

The Rev. Franklin Graham (Billy's boy) reveals his Two-God Policy: "The God of Islam is not the same God. It's a different God, and I believe it is a very evil and wicked religion."

GIVING WITH ONE HAND...

US airdrops of food packages for the Afghans have run into a problem: fears that unexploded bomblets from cluster bombs, small cylinders with yellow jackets, could be confused with the yellow food packets. US psychological operations has broadcast warnings in Dari and Pashto not to touch the bomblets. Unexploded cluster bomblets caused numerous casualties during the Gulf War and in Kosovo, when soldiers and civilians, particularly children, touched them.

THERE ARE TERRORISTS AND TERRORISTS

Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg writes: In a climate when dissent is silenced and immigrants lose basic rights in the name of national security, School of the Americas Watch, dedicated to closing the US Army training program that has produced some of Latin America's most violent human rights abusers, is feeling the chill. On October 10, when Eric LeCompte, SOA Watch outreach director, and Hendrik Voss, an SOA Watch volunteer, tried to enter Canada to conduct nonviolence training, they were detained by Canadian immigration services. Canadian and US officers searched their belongings and car, paying particular attention to SOA Watch materials. After checking the FBI database, Canadian immigration officers informed LeCompte that he would not be allowed into Canada because of his arrest in 1995 (in a protest against the fingerprinting of welfare recipients). "We were told we would not be allowed into Canada because they thought we were going to encourage Canadians to protest," LeCompte said. After the two were ordered to leave Canada, Voss, a German citizen, was threatened with deportation and detained for one night by US immigration. Voss's journal, which contained information on SOA Watch events and other demonstrations, was photocopied by US officers and later returned to him. SOA Watch has been told by Columbus, Georgia, city officials that it will be denied a permit to protest peacefully outside the Fort Benning gate in November, a protest held legally for the past ten years. The organization has been asked to protest elsewhere in the city. "This year security concerns must outweigh the location," reads a letter from Bobby Peters, the mayor of Columbus, to SOA Watch program director Jeff Winder. SOA Watch has retained the ACLU of Georgia and is engaged in discussions with the mayor.

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NEWS OF THE WEAK IN REVIEW

* Nobel Prize winner V.S. Naipaul says Islam has "had a calamitous effect on converted peoples. To be converted you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say my ancestral culture does not exist, it doesn't matter.... this abolition of the self demanded by Muslims was worse than the similar colonial abolition of identity." Clearly he didn't win the Nobel Peace Prize. * CNN chairman Walter Isaacson issued orders to correspondents that in reports with footage of civilian deaths and devastation in Afghanistan they should remind viewers that the Taliban harbors terrorists who killed 5,000 Americans in the September 11 attacks. Isaacson said it seemed "perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan," and he doesn't want CNN to become a platform for Taliban propaganda. Why not a crawl under the pictures saying, "Those people got what was coming to them"?