Ricardo Galindez wears the marks of his support for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on his hands, neck and chest. Broken bones and bullet holes are the right-wing opposition's imprints on the body of a man who happily declares that, apart from that and some headaches, the presidency of Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution have brought hope and happiness to his life. Free article

THE sun shone on Sinn Féin last Friday when the party president, Gerry Adams, toured the North Antrim constituency with Philip McGuigan, candidate in the upcoming Westminster election, and the party's hopefuls for Moyle, Ballymena and Ballymoney Councils. Free article

It came as a surprise. From the outset, the presence of the Communist Party of the Basque Lands (EHAK) in last weekend's Basque Parliament elections was unexpected, as was the result it obtained in the Sunday 17 April poll. Free article

When Philip McGuigan won Sinn Féin's first Assembly seat in North Antrim in November 2003, not only did his election mark a major breakthrough for the party, it saw Sinn Féin supplant the SDLP as the biggest nationalist party in North Antrim. Free article

Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams expressed deep concern at the continued exclusion of political parties from contesting regional elections in the Basque Country. "Following the Good Friday Agreement I travelled to the Basque Country and the message that I brought was the need for a peace process to be established and that it was essential that it be on the basis of equality, not criminalisation and exclusion," he said. Free article

As part of his tour through North Antrim, Gerry Adams visited Carnlough, where he met up with the party's candidate for East Antrim, James McKeown. There, the Sinn Féin President endorsed the local campaign to keep Carnlough's library open. Free article

East Antrim Sinn Féin representative James McKeown says unionist politicians in Larne should be ashamed after local SDLP representative Danny O'Connor announced that he was leaving his home in the town after years of attacks and harassment. Free article

Carrying out some research last week, I was struck by the following article from the Republican newspaper, Poblacht na hÉireann, of 15 June 1922, less than a fortnight before the outbreak of the Civil War. Headlined 'England's Mutinous Eastern Empire' it was a roundup of British repression from India to Palestine, Syria and Egypt. And most striking in light of today's events is this piece on the British bombing of civilians in Iraq. Free article

Mid-Ulster MP and Sinn Féin Chief Negotiator Martin McGuinness has just completed an extremely busy schedule in the United States, where he met with the main Irish-American lobby groups as well as influential political figures from both the Republican and Democratic parties. Free article

Athlone people last Saturday demonstrated outrage at the deportation last month of two local mothers of Irish born children, who were taken away, without even seeing their children, and put on a night plane back to Nigeria. Free article