On June 4, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in the US issued its ruling upholding the convictions of the five Cuban nationals being held in US jails, including the espionage and murder conspiracy convictions. The Cuban Five had infiltrated right-wing Cuban exile groups in Miami to help prevent terrorist attacks.
At the same time, the US government has refused demands from the Cuban and Venezuelan governments to extradite convicted terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, responsible for blowing up a Cuban airliner in 1976 that killed all passengers, to Venezuela where he escaped from jail.
Below, is an abridged statement at a May 20 press conference by Gloria La Riva on behalf of the US National Committee to Free the Cuban Five. For more information, visit http://freethefive.org.
United States
Twenty-six years ago, Pol Brennan was an Irish Republican Army (IRA) prisoner in the infamous H-Blocks of Long Kesh prison, watching his friends die on hunger strike. Today, he is in solitary confinement in a Texas immigration holding centre.
In an unexpected ruling, the California Supreme Court overturned a state law banning same-sex marriage on May 15, opening the door to marriage equality for gays and lesbians in the biggest US state.
Silicon Valley janitors, mostly immigrants from Central America, walked out of Cisco Systems and Yahoo buildings in the first day of a Bay Area-wide strike intended to force building service contractors to sign a new agreement with their union,
@intro = Two hundred protesters from churches, unions and community groups marched and picketed outside the office of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in downtown San Francisco on May 5.
Below is abridged from a May 13 US Socialist Worker editorial, <htpp://socialistworker.org>.
United States: Innocent Black man\'s murderers walk free and an anti-racist preacher is the problem?
On April 25, the three cops who murdered African American Sean Bell in a hail of 50 bullets in New York were acquitted of all charges.
Coordinated acts of nonviolent civil disobedience took place at six different locations across the city May 7 in a protest against the not-guilty verdict for three police officers who shot and killed unarmed African American man Sean Bell with 50 bullets on the night before his wedding.
According to the May 2 New York Times, ports on the US west coast were shut down on May 1 by dockworkers calling for an end to the US-led occupation of Iraq.
In an unannounced visit to Baghdad on April 20, US Secretary Condoleezza Rice praised Nuri al Maliki, Iraq’s Shiite prime minister, for “ordering” a military offensive last month in the Iraqi seaport city of Basra against anti-occupation Shiite cleric Moqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia.
Union members and labour activists attending the Labor Notes conference dinner on April 12 were attacked by bus loads of staff and members of the Service Employees Industrial Union (SEIU) wearing purple SEIU t-shirts who forced their way into the conference venue in Dearborn, Michigan. In the ensuing melee a number of people were injured.
Even from my bed on the opposite side of the room it was possible to see the gruesome surgical-steel staples bisecting Miguel’s head.
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