Bush Nominates Terrorist for National Intelligence Director

by Weekly News Update on the Americas

FREE TRADE PACT PROTESTED

We Kill Journalists, Don't We?

by Michael I. Niman

"There is not one of you who dare to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the street looking for another job... The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of mammon." -John Swinton (1880), Former New York Times Managing Editor

Peasant Pacifist Leader and Family Killed by Army at San Jose de Apartado

by Virginia McGlone

Less than a month away from the eighth anniversary of the founding of the
Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado, in Colombia's violence-torn
Antioquia department, a campaign of intimidation by the Colombian army in
collaboration with paramilitary forces has left several dead at the
village. The community had planned on using the occasion of the March 23
anniversary to officially declare seven more of its outlying settlements as
Peace Zones, or areas of non-cooperation in the war.

by Weekly News Update on the Americas

COCALEROS BLOCK ROADS

On Feb. 17, campesino coca growers (cocaleros) in the Peruvian district of
Tocache, in the Huallaga valley in San Martin region, began an open-ended
strike to protest the recent aerial spraying of pesticides by the Peruvian
National Police (PNP) over coca fields and other crops. Both the Interior
Ministry and the government's anti-drug office denied they had conducted
any such spraying as part of recent anti-drug operations in the zone. The
strike was called by the Committee of Struggle in Defense of the

by Weekly News Update on the Americas

by Eric Stoner

"He may be a son of a bitch," a U.S. president is said to have commented
about one brutal dictator or another, "but he's our son of a bitch." The
fact that on the worldwide web the line is attributed to no fewer than five
presidents, from Teddy Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan, speaks volumes about
20th-century U.S. foreign policy.

Over the last decade, a new dictator, Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, has
taken the "our son of a bitch" place. U.S. support for this Central Asian

Bush Charts New Generation of Warheads

by Chesley Hicks

Despite the Cold War's conclusion 15 years ago, the United States' being
party to several anti-nuclear proliferation treaties, and President Bush's
strident commands for the cessation of all nuclear weapons programs in the
Middle East and Asia, the current administration is promoting domestic
nuclear programs that could initiate another arms race.

In November 2004, anti-proliferation advocates felt a jolt of optimism when