Monday, November 19, 2001

• Ten Thousand Demand the Closing of the U.S. Army School of the Americas in Fort Benning,Georgia, Saying the Main Threat of Terror Comes From Military Officers Trained at the School

  
  

  Yesterday in Columbus, GA ten thousand people from every state gathered to demand the closing of the U.S. Army Schoolof the Americas at Fort Benning. The school has trained thousands of officers from Central and Latin Americancountries, and its alumni association reads like a who’s who of the hemisphere’s worst state terrorists: FormerPanamanian dictator General Noriega; Roberto d-Aubuisson, the founder of El Salvador’s death squads, Guatemala’sColonel Roberto Alpirez, responsible for the torture and execution of Jennifer Harbury’s husband Efrain BamacaVelasquez; and the officers involved in the murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero.

• Filipino Activists Say "U.S. Out of the Philippines!" As the Philippine President Meets Withbush This Week

  
  

  Philippine president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo will meet with President George W. Bush and key US Cabinet officials inWashington tomorrow. Elected as vice president, Arroyo was swept into power in January in a popular revolt againstformer President Joseph Estrada.

• Indigenous People Seeking to Reclaim Their Land Are Murdered in the Philippines &shy a New U.S.Ally in the "War On Terrorism"

  
  

  Here on Democracy Now! we’ve been taking a look at just who the new U.S. allies are. We’ve looked at Uzbekistan,Russia, China, and now the Philippines. There has been very little coverage of the Philippines in the U.S. media.Since September 11, the little coverage there has been has focused on the Muslim insurgency in the southern islands.

• Pacifica Board Says It Will Resign, Begin Process of Democratizing the Pacifica Network

  
  

  The Pacifica National Board agreed yesterday to voluntarily dissolve, reconstitute itself as an interim board withnew members, and then to implement a democratization process for the five-station network.

• The U.S., Islam, and Terrorism

  
  

  This weekend the City University of New York held a conference, "Globalization and Resistance," addressing theintersections of policies of globalization with US foreign policy in the Middle East, and grassroots resistance toboth. The conference took place as thousands of activists converged in Ottawa, Canada to protest the meetings of theIMF, World Bank and G20 finance ministers.

• War Is On the Global Agenda: Globalization and Resistance

  
  

  Several thousand protesters brought downtown Ottawa traffic to a standstill this weekend during top-level financeministers’ meetings, challenging globalization, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. This weekend atthe combined meetings of the Group of 20, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Ottawa, terrorism wasa major issue: the G20 resolution calls for implementing relevant UN Security Council resolutions, freezing theassets of terrorists and their associates, and denying them access to the international financial system.

• Pacifica Board Says It Will Resign, Begin Process of Democratizing the Pacifica Network

  
  

  The Pacifica National Board agreed yesterday to voluntarily dissolve, reconstitute itself as an interim board withnew members, and then to implement a democratization process for the five-station network.