Feature Archives

On May 8th, a US judge dropped immigration charges against right-wing Cuban militant Luis Posada Carriles.

On April 19th, Carriles was released by U.S. authorities and returned to his home in Miami. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans found in favor of Carriles' release on bail for an immigration charge, even though he is wanted in several countries for terrorist attacks, which include the 1976 bombing of a civilian airliner that killed 73 people.

On April 6th, Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani, said that Turkey must not interfere in the Kurds' bid to attach northern Iraq's oil-rich city of Kirkuk to the Kurdish semiautonomous zone, otherwise Iraq's Kurds will retaliate by intervening in Turkey's southeast. On April 12th, the head of Turkey's army, called for a military operation in northern Iraq to target Kurdish rebels. On April 13th, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, the speaker of Iraq's parliament spoke out in support of Barzani, warning Ankara that "the hand that will be extended to interfere in our internal affairs will be cut."

On April 9th, up to one million Iraqi Shias marched from Kufa to Najaf in a mass demonstration calling for US-led troops to leave Iraq. The protest was called by Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr for the four year anniversary of when US troops entered Baghdad.

In June of 2005, in a village called Rossport in Northwest Ireland, residents began to notice an unusual number of trucks carrying pipeline on their roads. There were so many trucks, in fact, that it was sometimes impossible to travel anywhere as these giant lorries could fully eclipse the narrow country lanes.

While the passage of the Central American Free Trade Area (CAFTA in English, TLC in Spanish) is a distant memory in the public political debate, implementation of the treaty continues to meet organized, spirited opposition in Costa Rica. In the US, activists are standing in solidarity with continued opposition and resistance.

In the frigid Copenhagen morning of December 14, hundreds of squatters stand unflinchingly beneath visible wisps of breath. Europe’s “The Final Countdown” resonates within the historic walls of the brick building at 69 Jagtvej. Masked activists shoot fireworks from the roof as the Danish media ogle from the street below. Twenty-four years after its inception, Ungdomshuset has officially become an illegal squat.

On January 20th the Iraqi resistance shot down a Blackhawk helicopter killing thirteen American soldiers. Three days later, just hours before Bush would give his State of the Union address, a Little Bird helicopter was shot down, killing five more Americans—but this incident didn’t make nearly the amount of news as the former. While the five men died in combat, they were not members of the US military. They were employees of Blackwater USA, the shining star in a new breed of corporation specializing in private soldiers—also known as mercenaries.