Most Americans have probably never heard of the SOA, which was cleverly renamed a few years ago to "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC)" to try to dodge the stigma surrounding the institution's reputation. But changing the name doesn't change the fact that the school continues to use our tax dollars to train Latin American warlords and dictators in the art of torture and repression. The graduates then use their new skills to violate human rights in their home countries.

RELATED: Sign the Petition to Obama! II SOA Watch website II DN!--Vatican Threatens to Excommunicate Catholic Priest for Supporting Ordination of Women into Priesthood II CISPES:Exposing ARENA atrocities on the eve of the SOA vigil

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The main reason the US has stubbornly refused to trade with Cuba, and has used sanctions to bully other nations into refusing to trade with Cuba, while enthusiastically trading with and investing in China, Vietnam and other communist regimes, is that Cuba has had little to offer the US, either in terms of products or markets.

That’s all about to change dramatically, with word that the Communist island just 90 miles to the south of Florida may possess oil reserves equal to or greater than all the oil reserves left in the United States.

I recently got this email alert from CISPES, arguing that "El Salvador is the next in line to join the Latin American shift to the left!" Of course, intl. solidarity will be crucial for the upcoming elections in El Salvador, and particularly we in the US, have a huge role to play, since the US govt. has such a long, terrible history of malicious intervention in El Salvador to crush 1)a legitimate poor people's movement, and 2) a nationalist movement telling the US that they could not continue their imperialist influence on the country.--------Hans