Why don't you do a 360 degree situation room about our "National" genocidal university? Because you are too busy sucking Cheney's cock, or telling Jay Leno how many stars your rich mother dated.
Because you are scared of our government?
So admit it. Here is the official site, why don't you "go undercover" like the folks chasing pedophiles, or "embed" like your corporate press.
While priests and nuns are getting locked up for trying to shed light on atrocity and there is a media blackout on it all...
I scream YELLOW PRESS. I scream TREASON. I shout SHAME.
https://www.infantry.army.mil/whinsec/
The four are among the sixteen human rights advocates who were arrested for "trespassing" while protesting the SOA/WHINSEC during the November 17-19,2007 Vigil to Close the SOA at Fort Benning, GA.
Sister Sheila Salmon,
Michael Vosburg-Casey and
Valerie Fillenwarth were released on Tuesday, July 24 after serving 100 days in federal prison and
Julienne Oldfield was released on July 13, 2007 after completing a 90-day sentence in federal prison. The four are part of the sixteen who “crossed the line” during the November 17-19, 2007 Vigil to Close the SOA/WHINSEC at Ft. Benning.
Of the sixteen, only
Alice Gerard is still in prison while
Katherine Whitney Ray is presently serving one year probation. Please continue to show your support to the SOA 16 by writing to the prisoners and supporting the campaign to shut down the SOA/WHINSEC.
http://www.soaw.org/
Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Former logo of the School of Americas, now the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation at
Fort Benning, Georgia
The institute is a training facility operated in the Spanish language, especially for
Latin American military personnel. As of 2006 the school now offers its Command And General Staff course to United States military for whom Spanish is their primary language. The course which is formally called ILE is the same which United States military officers attend only in Spanish.
Somewhere around 60,000 people attended the facility when it was called the School Of The Americas. Presently roughly 1,000 students per year attend WHINSEC which was created as part of the National Defense Authorization Act.
The institute's remit is "to provide professional education and training" while "promoting democratic values, respect for human rights, and knowledge and understanding of United States customs and traditions".
WHISC's
$10 million budget is funded by the US Army and by tuition fees, usually paid through the
International Military Education and Training (IMET) grants, the International Narcotics Control (INC) assistance programs, or through the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program.
In 1946, the SOA was established in
Panama at
Fort Gulick, at what is now called the Melia Hotel
[2] as the
Latin American Training Center - Ground Division. It was renamed the U.S. Army School of the Americas in 1963. It relocated to Fort Benning in 1984, following the signing of the
Panama Canal Treaty.
In 2000, mounting pressure upon the
United States Congress to stop funding the SOA caused
the Pentagon to rename the school the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, abbreviated as WHISC or WHINSEC.
[3]
The school currently known as WHINSEC was first established in the Panama Canal Zone in 1946 as the Latin American Ground School (LAGS) (Bouvier 122). According to Lesley Gill, an Associate Professor of Anthropology at American University, “The establishment of the Ground School coincided with renewed U.S. expansionist ambitions in the Americas and partially filled a power vacuum created by WW II, which ruptured long-standing military ties between European imperial powers – particularly France, Italy, and Germany – and Latin America” (Gill, 62). As many European nations faced the daunting task of reconstruction following the war, the “victorious and relatively unscathed U.S. moved in to fill the void left by the Europeans and to consolidate its position as a global superpower.”
Initially, the School’s mandate was to teach nation-building skills such as bridge-building, well-digging, food preparation, and equipment maintenance and repair. However, after President Truman signed the
Rio Treaty, an extension of the Monroe Doctrine, in 1947, along with the leaders of twenty Latin American countries, the U.S. Army became increasingly involved in Latin America. The Rio Treaty provided that “any attack on an American nation will be met by collective sanctions in line with Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.”
Two years later, in 1949, the Army renamed the Latin American Ground School to the U.S. Army Caribbean School – Spanish Instruction and began to instruct Latin American military personnel along with U.S. Army personnel. By 1956, the School began to focus its training efforts primarily on Latin Americans and has instructed its classes solely in Spanish ever since.
However, the School’s curriculum was not altered until after the Cuban revolution in 1959. The success of Fidel Castro and his ragtag band of guerrillas caused the American fear of “conspiring communists in Latin American peasant villages” to magnify in the already intense Cold War era (Gill, 73). The School became known as the U.S. Army School of the Americas in 1963 and its curriculum changed its focus from nation-building skills to counterinsurgency in order to prevent communism from spreading throughout the Western Hemisphere.
According to one SOA official, “The importance of sound, bilateral security relationships in the Western Hemisphere became very clear as Hitler and Mussolini assiduously attempted to court the nations of Latin America.”
Although preparing Latin Americans to repel an attack by a nonhemispheric power, particularly one tainted by Communism, was the highly-publicized reason for the United States’ emphasis on equipping and training Latin Americans, others assert that the United States’ main objective was to protect its economic interests in the region. Some of these economic interests included coffee in Central America (1), the Panama Canal agreements formalized in 1901, and the United Fruit Company and its subsidiary, the International Railways of Central America (IRCA).
Changes
After the legal authorization for the former
School of the Americas was repealed in 2001 and the
Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation was established, all students are now required to receive eight hours of instruction in "
human rights, the
rule of law,
due process, civilian control of the military, and the role of the military in a democratic society." In addition, courses now focus on leadership development, counter-drug operations, peace support operations,
disaster relief, or "any other matter the
Secretary [of Defense] deems appropriate" as well as requiring a Board of Visitors to review "curriculum, instruction, physical equipment, fiscal affairs, and academic methods" and evaluate whether or not it is "consistent with U.S. economic policy goals toward
Latin America and the
Caribbean." Several pages on its website describe its human rights initiatives. But, though they account for almost the entire training programme, combat and commando techniques, counter-insurgency and interrogation aren't mentioned. At the
School of the Americas Watch vigil in November 2006, invitations were given to the members of the public to visit the school.
According to the website for the
Center for International Policy [4], the Board of Visitors "must include the chairmen and ranking minority members of both houses'
Armed Services Committees (or surrogates), the senior Army officer responsible for training (or a surrogate), one person chosen by the
Secretary of State, the head of the
United States Southern Command (or a surrogate), and six people chosen by the Secretary of Defense ('including, to the extent practicable, persons from academia and the religious and human rights communities')."
Controversy
The school has been at the center of numerous allegations of state terrorism by the US military. Repeated efforts led by Representative
Jim McGovern in Congress to curtail training at WHISC have failed. In 1999, after the mysterious disappearance of
Victor Escobar (a graduate from the school) and disclosures about
torture manuals being used in the training, the
U.S. House of Representatives adopted a bill to abolish the school, but its passage was stymied in a House-Senate conference committee. As a
cosmetic gesture, in 2001 the Pentagon changed the name of the school. A bill to abolish the school with 123 co-sponsors was introduced to the House Armed Services Committee in
2005.
[5]
US Training Manual
- See also: Torture manuals
On
September 20,
1996, the Pentagon released seven training manuals prepared by the U.S. military and used between 1987 and 1991 for intelligence training courses in Latin America and at the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA). According to the
Third World Traveler,
these manuals show how U.S. agents taught repressive techniques and promoted the violation of human rights throughout Latin America and around the globe. [6] Amnesty International describes the contents of the document to contain instructions in motivation by fear, bounties for enemy dead, false imprisonment, torture, execution, and kidnapping a target's family members.
[7]
Human rights abuses
The SOA has been accused of training members of governments guilty of serious human rights abuses and of advocating techniques that violate accepted international standards, particularly the Geneva Conventions. Graduates of the SOA include men such as
Hugo Banzer Suárez,
Leopoldo Galtieri,
Manuel Noriega,
Efraín Ríos Montt,
Fulgencio Batista,
Augusto Pinochet,
Robert Mugabe,
Vladimiro Montesinos,
Guillermo Rodríguez,
Omar Torrijos,
Roberto Viola,
Roberto D'Aubuisson,
Victor Escobar and
Juan Velasco Alvarado.
[8] Because many of its students have been associated with death squads, and coups in Latin American countries, the school's acronym is reparsed by its detractors as the "School of the Assassins".
WHINSEC in recent years has put into place a
vetting system aimed as preventing human rights abusers from gaining a seat at the school. This system prevents any student from having a seat at the school if there are human rights abuse accusations against them or against any unit they were a member of. There was an attempt made in 2006 by the Board Of Visitors to work cooperatively with the
SOA Watch to prevent human rights abusers from getting seats at the school. The attempt was unsuccessful as of the end of 2006.
Demonstrations
There is usually a demonstration at the main entrance to Ft. Benning in late November each year. In 2005, the demonstration drew 19,000 people. [9] The date for the annual demonstration commemorates a Latin American massacre linked to the SOA, which was on November 16, 1989. Six Salvadoran Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her teenage daughter were murdered at the University of Central America (UCA). Of the 27 soldiers cited for that massacre by a 1993 United Nations Truth Commission, 19 were SOA graduates. The School itself officially denies that its curriculum teaches tactics contrary to human rights standards.
South Americans refuse to send soldiers
In 2004, Venezuela ceased all training of Venezuelan soldiers at the School of the Americas.
[10] On
March 28,
2006, the
government of Argentina, headed by left-wing President
Nestor Kirschner, decided to stop sending soldiers to train at the School of the Americas, and the government of
Uruguay affirmed that it will continue its current policy of not sending soldiers to the SOA/WHINSEC.
[11][12] In
2007,
Oscar Arias, president of
Costa Rica, decided to stop sending Costa Rican police to the SOA/WHINSEC. Costa Rica has no military, but had sent some 2,600 police officers to the school.
[13]
SOA Watch
-
Citing the call of slain Archbishop
Óscar Romero, that "we who have a voice must speak for the voiceless",
Maryknoll Fr.
Roy Bourgeois and a small group of supporters formed
School of the Americas Watch in 1990.
[14][15] They began to research the SOA, educate the public, lobby Congress, and practice
nonviolent resistance at Ft. Benning. Each year a number of protesters are arrested and prosecuted for acts of
civil disobedience including trespassing onto federal property in an attempt to create more awareness for the
School of the Americas Watch.
The November anniversary of the UCA massacre continues to be an important focus for the growing
grassroots movement to close the SOA/WHISC. Indeed, the original band of ten resisters who gathered at the main gate of Ft. Benning in 1990, to commemorate the first anniversary of the UCA massacre, has grown in recent years to an attendance of thousands. People attend to honor victims of SOA graduates – as well as their survivors – with music, words, educational workshops, puppets and theatre.
Estimates for the 2004 vigil attendance was 16,000 and for the 2005 vigil, nearly 20,000.
WHY HAS THERE NEVER BEEN ONE FUCKING INVESTIGATIVE NEWS ARTICLE ABOUT THIS?
Traditionally, the legal vigil and memorial service concludes with a mock funeral procession, using the
Presente litany, onto Ft. Benning, with all who choose to march onto the post technically at risk for arrest.
Subsequent to the September 11, 2001 attacks and the erecting of a security fence at the main gate of Ft. Benning in 2001, protesters who wish to take their mourning onto the post need to go over, under, or around that fence, as opposed to the simple marching of the past. Over the years, hundreds and even thousands have chosen to risk arrest for criminal trespassing.
At the 2002 protest, the city of Columbus began requiring all attending the event to submit to a metal detector search at the designated entrance. After a lengthy legal battle, however, in October, 2004, the
Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that the forced search was unconstitutional.
Notable graduates
