During the week of Jan. 30, US federal judge G. Mallon Faircloth in Columbus, Georgia, sentenced 31 activists to prison terms of as much as six months for peacefully entering the US Army's Fort Benning on Nov. 20 as part of an annual protest against the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly the US Army School of the Americas (SOA). Judge Faircloth also imposed fines of as much as $1,000. He sentenced one additional protester to a year of probation. Some 19,000 people took part in the demonstration in 2005, the largest since the demonstrations began in 1990. The school trains Latin American soldiers, and many of its graduates are among the region's most notorious human rights violators. Some 180 people have served prison sentences for civil disobedience at the base over the years. (SOA Watch Action Alert, Feb. 2)

From Mexico's El Universal, Feb. 16, via the Miami Herald:

Fox calls for probe in Lydia Cacho case
The governor of Puebla is under fire after he is allegedly heard discussing the jailing of a journalist on a tape released to the media
The federal government on Wednesday condemned an alleged plot by a state governor and a prominent businessman to jail a journalist for libel after she wrote a book about networks of pedophiles and child pornographers.

From the Times of India, Feb. 19:

ISLAMABAD: Security forces put a cordon around the Pakistani capital and made hundreds of arrests, before using tear gas and gunfire to quash a banned protest Sunday against cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, witnesses and officials said.

The anti-cartoon protests in Pakistan seem to be mounting towards a national revolutionary movement. The government has banned the latest march in Islamabad, arrested some 200 followeres of the organization that called it, and placed its leader under house arrest. But the organizers pledge defiance, even as army troops have been called to the streets. Note that even the government spokesman feels obliged to diss the protests as part of a Jewish conspiracy to defame Islam. From Pakistan's Dawn, Feb. 19:

On Feb. 14, some 1,500 immigrants and supporters rallied at Philadelphia's Independence Mall to protest HR 4437, a harsh anti-immigrant bill passed by the House of Representatives last Dec. 16 and due to be considered by the Senate in March. (News Journal, Wilmington, DE, Feb. 15) The Philadelphia Spanish-language weekly newspaper El Dia described the rally as the largest immigrant rights mobilization in the city's history. The action was part of "A Day Without an Immigrant," a regional Valentine's Day labor strike by immigrant workers.

Immigrant rights advocates rallied in New York and Philadelphia on Feb. 14 to protest the treatment of a Chinese woman, three months pregnant, who miscarried twins while immigration authorities tried to deport her from JFK airport in New York on Feb. 7. Zhenxing Jiang has lived in Philadelphia for 11 years; she and her husband have two US-born sons, ages four and seven.

On Feb. 9, Palestinian immigrant Waheed Saleh filed a lawsuit against the city of New York in US District Court in Manhattan, charging that police reported him to immigration authorities in retaliation for his complaints about police discrimination. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages, alleging that Saleh's constitutional rights including free speech were violated and that he suffered extreme pain and hardship as a result of his improper arrest, detention and deportation proceedings. Saleh is represented by attorney Tushar Sheth of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF).

From the New York Times, emphasis added. We say it is a credit to New York's tolerant (some would say blasé) atmosphere that the city's anti-cartoon protest was peaceful and the attitude of its leaders openly humanistic—although there were, as the Times puts it, a small group of "provocateurs." In the print edition, the story was accompanied by a photo of protesters holding up printed signs. One urged "READ HISTORY TO KNOW MUHAMMAD (pbuh)," a recommendation that WW4 REPORT heartily seconds. Frustratingly, the most critical sign was cropped just above the most critical word: "RESPONSIBLE EDITORS MUST BE..." Must be what? Educated? Punished? Fired? Beheaded? If anybody was at the protest and saw this sign, please contact us and let us know!