On Nov. 16, Brazilian landless workers Vanderlei Macena Cruz and Mauro Gomes Duarte, residents of Accampamento Renascer (Rebirth Encampment), were assassinated while riding a motorcycle to work near Gleba Gama, in the Nova Guarita region of Brazil's Mato Grosso state. According to information released by the Catholic Church's Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), the two men were found dead on a road that divides the properties falsely claimed by local landowners Silmar Kessler and Sebastiao Neves de Almeida known by the nickname Chapeu Preto (Black Hat). Another rural worker heard the shots and quickly gathered other residents to find the bodies on the road; the Military Police did not arrive at the scene until late in the evening.

On Nov. 19 and 20, some 19,000 people gathered outside the gates of Fort Benning, Georgia to demand a dramatic shift in US foreign policy and the closure of the US Defense Department's Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly called the US Army School of the Americas (SOA), a combat- training school for Latin American soldiers. The protest, organized by SOA Watch, is held each November at Fort Benning to commemorate the 1989 murders in El Salvador of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter; some of the killers were SOA graduates. Last year 16,000 people attended. Organizers cited reports of torture by US soldiers and the ongoing war on Iraq as motivating factors for this year's record turnout.

All of a sudden, the right-wing blogs and pseudo-news sources (MichNews, PostChronicle) are rallying around bogus claims that WMD really were found in Iraq. One who has actually written a book arguing this transparently ridiculous case is Richard Miniter:

From the UK Guardian, Nov. 19:

The right to rule ourselves
Faced with US torture, killing and collective punishment of civilians, support for the Iraqi resistance is growing

by Haifa Zangana

The photograph of an elderly Iraqi carrying the burned body of a child at Falluja, widely shown during the chemical weapons controversy of recent days, is almost a copy of an earlier one that Iraqis remember - from Halabja in March 1988. Both children were victims of chemical weapons: the first killed by a dictator who had no respect for democracy and human rights, the second by US troops, assisted by the British, carrying the colourful banner of those principles while sprinkling Iraqis with white phosphorus and depleted uranium.

Perhaps it is a sign of the turning of the tide, evidenced by Congressional demands for a timetable on troop withdrawals this week. Or maybe it was just the magnitude of the death toll. But after weeks of burying the near-daily ethno-religious carnage in Iraq deep in the paper, the New York Times finally put the latest outrage in the front page Nov. 19.

From the LA Times, Nov. 19:

Jewish Group Demands an Exit Strategy
From Newsday

NEW YORK — The largest grass-roots Jewish organization in the United States voted overwhelmingly Friday to demand the Bush administration develop a "clear exit strategy" from the war in Iraq.

The Union for Reform Judaism, representing more than 1.5 million American Jews out of an estimated 5 million, is the first major Jewish organization to oppose the war. The group has a long history of antiwar activism.

Another leader of the Peace Community of San José de Apartado was killed by the Colombian army on Nov. 17. Arlen Salas David was working in his cornfield with his comrades when a unit of the 17th Brigade opened fire on them. One soldier threw a grenade, which exploded near Salas, apparently killing him instantly. His comrades could not come to his aid when he fell, as the soldiers continued to fire. By the time they were able to reach him, he was dead. Salas was the Peace Community's local coordinator for the hamlet of Arenas Altas, where the incident occurred.

Later that day, a delegation from San Josesito, the refugee camp where the Peace Community leadership has lived since the village of San José was occupied by the army earlier this year, visited Arenas Altas to investigate. The delegation was detained in a house in Arenas Altas, where the army accused them of being guerillas and attempted to interrogate them. The troops also shot at other houses in Arenas Altas, and at the hamlet's schoolhouse, which had children in it at the time. Troops told residents they had been fired on from the schoolhouse; this was denied by the teacher, who said only he and the pupils were in the building, and that he instructed the students to lie on the floor as the troops fired. (San José de Apartado Peace Community statement, Nov. 18, via Red de Defensores)

A Saudi secondary school teacher has been ordered imprisoned for three years for blasphemy, and sentenced to 750 lashes, to be delivered—50 a week—in the public market of the town of al-Bikeriya. Chemistry teacher Muhammad al-Harbi of Qassim province was charged with mocking Islam, favoring Jews and Christians, promoting "dubious ideologies," and studying witchcraft. The judge in the case, Abdullah Dakhil, reportedly accused the teacher of "trying to sow doubt in a student's creed." The charges were filed against him by a group of students and teachers from his school.