(PsyOps) Music Blaring from Fort Benning Bothers Protesters Near Post

[DUreader]

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1123-08.htm


With a larger-than-expected first-day crowd at the annual protest of an institute at
Fort Benning, tensions amped up Saturday after the Army and protesters engaged
in a day of electronic and legal jousting.

As protest leaders took to the stage with speeches and music, Fort Benning blared
anthems and martial music from loudspeakers positioned just inside its gates,
about 50 yards away.

SOA Watch, which conducts the annual protest against
the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security
Cooperation, called the move a "psychological
operation," and said it planned to file suit against the
Army.

"There's a lot of ill will being caused that's not
necessary," said SOA Watch founder the Rev. Roy
Bourgeois. "The closer we get to shutting that school
down, the meaner they get. We see this as a form of
psychological violence."

[Colin Ex]

1. I've met Rev. Roy Burgeois.

He is one hell of a great guy.

I hope he keeps up his work and achieves what he's been working for.

-C

[AndyTiedye]

2. They Should Invite the Ravers to Join the Protest Next Time

We know how to do big sound systems.

(Nine Hundred Ninety Nine)

[scubadude]

3. I have met him too

Great speaker and person. I recommend that everyone see him.

[Superfly]

4. This is kind of funny

...

[DoNotRefill]

5. Well, at least they didn't play....

"puberty blues".... :evilgrin:

[Say_What]

6. Hidden in Plain Sight and Plan Colombia--not to be missed films

about the SOA.

Here's some links.
Held over in SF at the Roxie on 16th between Valencia and Guererro.

<clips>

John H. Smihula's "Hidden in Plain Sight," a documentary on the United States Army's School of the Americas, brings together material from several politically engaged films about the government's activity in Latin America, creating a sort of anthology of atrocity.
The school, founded during the cold war to train Latin American soldiers in the techniques of withstanding Marxist aggression (and, not incidentally, protecting United States interests), was shut down in 2000 under the threat of a Congressional investigation. It soon reopened as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, the name it continues to operate under today, in the hope that its cold war associations have been expunged.

The school, at Fort Benning, Ga., conducts its classes largely in Spanish and graduates 800 students a year. The Army says they are learning leadership skills; others say the school produces torturers and dictators, pointing to past graduates like Manuel Noriega of Panama and Gen. Leopoldo F. Galtieri of Argentina.

Mr. Smihula has little difficulty establishing a grave record of human rights violations by graduates of the institution. Scenes roll by of villages massacred, nuns raped and murdered, children maimed and tortured and politicians assassinated, all seemingly at the hands of soldiers trained by the School of the Americas — as almost everyone outside the bureaucracy continues to call it — or under the leadership of its graduates.

http://www.hiddeninplainsight.org/main/home.html

---

<clips>

I recently returned from a delegation to Colombia sponsored by the Colombia Support Network. The purpose of this trip was two-fold. First, to better understand and to see first-hand the effects of fumigation in the Putumayo region; second, to bear witness to the violence perpetrated by the Colombian military--of which more than 10,000 soldiers have been trained at the School of the Americas--and the paramilitary forces, which have been responsible for more than 70% of the massacres in Colombia over the past two years. The fumigations are part of the "anti-drug" campaign called "Plan Colombia," which is a multibillion dollar program purportedly developed by the government of Colombia to deal with the many conflicts of its country. To date, the US has pledged $1.3 billion in aid (which will primarily be paid to US weapons and chemical corporations) in the form of military training, helicopters, and fumigation related expenses. Additional funding has already been proposed.

During our time in Colombia, we met with community leaders, including tribal representatives from the indigenous people of the Putumayo region, religious leaders, Colombian officials, military leaders, the director of the UN High Commission on Human Rights, and the US Ambassador to Colombia.

Throughout our meetings and visits to the Putumayo it became vividly evident that due to the indiscriminate nature of the fumigation campaign not only were coca (the raw material of cocaine) crops being targeted, but food crops and medicinal plants were being eradicated, and water supplies were being contaminated. The herbicide, glyphosate (more commonly known as "Round-up"), is produced and manufactured by the US chemical corporation, Monsanto. In Colombia, this herbicide is used in a highly concentrated form and can obliterate a food crop with a single aerial application. The negligence associated with the fumigation campaign has not only had disastrous ecological and health consequences for the region, but it also has significantly increased the expansion of coca crops throughout Colombia.

Paradoxically, as coca was being eradicated in regions such as Peru and Bolivia, there was a nearly instantaneous surge in production and control in Colombia by the newly formed Medellin Cartel. Basic economics, and our own history, tell us that where there is a demand, especially of an illicit drug, there will always be those who find a way of not only providing the product, but of making a tremendous profit on it.

http://www.soawne.org/Pccrops.html

[shanti]

7. the cons did this to gore and his family too!

apparently, they think it works. maybe we should try it on THEM.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

8. Better psychological violence than real violence

It's starting to look like the old days:




James Rector shot and killed by police, May 15, 1969

[Say_What]

10. I remember when they shot that kid on the roof. I lived in SF and

California under RayGun was a f*ck'n police state. I was a student and I remember the tactical pigs in full riot gear in front of SF State. Somehow when they killed this guy a lot of us ducked for cover, which is exactly what they intended. Now though is much worse. Whistle-Ass is worse than RayGun and time are scarier.

[Pastiche423]

9. Send in the general!

clark, that is.

He likes the SOA. He liked them so much, that in 1996 he made a speech to the graduating class, praising them!

They'll listen to him, right?

[roguevalley]

11. This sort of thing is a two edged sword. They have to hear it too. :)

[DUreader]

12. Not if they have the latest equipment, highly directional

focused sound

[Superfly]

13. They were using loud speakers....

not very "focused"

[Superfly]

14. Yeah, but to some, like me, that is music to our ears

After all the "Army Song" as it is now called, was originally the Song of the Field Artillery, a member of which I am

[goforit]

15. You gotta do better than that SOA.........Need to be smarter.

You're too naive. Under Bush, the rules have been broken , so all your whining ain't gonna do a thing.

Get smarter!

The Fort Benning base isn't gonna do a damn thing.
They don't make decisions under fascism, someone else does.

[Judi Lynn]

16. They are doing good, even though it takes so long.

By their showing up there year after year, the occassional story gets printed, almost by accident, you'd think, and a few more Americans, if they are intellectually active, start trying to find out more about this subject.

It's only because of groups like theirs that MANY of us have even learned there IS a School of the Americas, and what its place is in the grisly history of Latin America.

The entire subject needs to be publicized widely, and often, rather than covered up, hidden, and perhaps denied altogether.

[LeftHander]

17. Fire with Fire

Get a bigger PA and blast them right back...

[DUreader]

18. I'm sure it would be illegal if the protesters did it

[Say_What]

19. I heard some of the speeches today on Democracy Now and the music

was played only through one speech it seemed. Maybe the threat of suing them was effective and they stopped.

You can listen or read the transcript at this link:

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/11/24/1458247

[Judi Lynn]

21. People really should know this has been happening

From the article, a portion of the remarks by Jennifer Harbury, whose husband was tortured and murdered by School of the Americas graduates in Guatemala:

(snip) But actual torture session, did someone survive to escape from Guatemala and tell us about, involved having my husband stripped, strapped down to a hospital bed with a doctor standing by to make sure he didn't accidentally die during his torture session, blindfolded him, injected him with a toxic substance that caused him to swell grotesquely and apparently one arm and leg to hemorrhage because they were heavily bandaged and left him raving. We know that he survived that session. I just want to give that as one example of what use our tax dollars are put to by people who graduate from this school and then continue to work as partners with the United States government.

We know that he survived that session and was kept alive for quite a bit longer because C.I.A. files showed that people became very frustrated when they wouldn't tell him the truth and because he was so intelligent he almost managed to escape several times, forcing him to be held until a full body cast.

The files also show there were nearly 300 other prisoners who were alive and under the same horrible conditions that he was under and being clandestinely detained. The C.I.A. knew about all of this within six days of my husband's capture and relayed that information to the Department of State and the U.S. embassy. I wasn't told. Congress wasn't told. In fact, congress was told in writing, including members of the intelligence oversight board for two years that is was no information. During the two years of hunger strikes, campaigns, O.A.S. cases, etc., etc., all 300 of those prisoners were murdered. They were either stuffed down wells, thrown out of helicopters, or beaten to death and buried under the military base.

Like I say, when we speak for one, please remember all of them from Chile northward to our borders, including the people right now that we need to be worrying about in the Middle East. Thank you very much. (snip)

Once you know this is going on, you never are able to forget it. It's time people awakened to what is being done in their names.

[Postman]

20. See the documentary "Hidden in Plain Sight" and know that terrorism is

Uncle Sam's middle name.

[noonwitch]

22. At least they didn't blast them with the music of Toby Keith!

I can handle Sousa marches, even like a couple of them.