MBDA’s Alabama factory makes components for Boeing’s GBU-39 bombs used to kill civilians in Gaza. Its profits flow through Stevenage to Paris — and it is one of the British government’s favourite firms, reveals SOLOMON HUGHES
Understanding Maduro’s successful socialist economic strategy
After years of calling Venezuela's economy a dismal failure that demonstrates the dangers of socialism, Western media is now lauding its recovery for 'embracing capitalism' — but this is not accurate, argues FRANCISCO DOMINGUEZ
CHAVISTAS TO THE CORE: The 23 de Enero working-class neighbourhood in western Caracas, commemorates on July 28 2022 what would have been Hugo Chavez’s 68th birthday. January 23 1958 was the day dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez was overthrown
President Maduro mobilises the 4.5 million-strong Bolivarian National Militia in response to US ‘threats’, vowing to defend the country’s sovereignty and independence, DEVIN B MARTINEZ reports
Washington plays innocent bystander while pouring weapons and intelligence into Ukraine, just as it enables the Gaza genocide — but every US escalation leaves Ukraine weaker than the neutrality deal rejected in 2022, argue MEDEA BENJAMIN and NICOLAS JS DAVIES
For those in the West, hunger is often just the familiar feeling of a growling stomach between meals — in Gaza, it has become a strategic weapon of slow, systematic and deadly destruction, writes MARC VANDEPITTE
After almost two decades of rule by the Movement Toward Socialism, once led by Evo Morales, right-wing parties have emerged in the lead after the first round of elections on August 17 and are now in control of the legislature, reports PABLO MERIGUET
DAVID MATTHEWS looks at what a collective future for welfare might have in store for us
IN ITS intensely biased coverage of Venezuela during the hard years of 2014-21 the mainstream media wheeled in every imaginable academic pundit to “demonstrate” that the country’s economic woes were the result of President Nicolas Maduro overseeing Venezuela’s slide “into authoritarianism and economic collapse” (the Guardian, January 24 2019) and not of cruel US sanctions.
In 2019, the Economist for instance, in line with US policy, published a front cover with a clench-fisted Juan Guaido titled “the battle for Venezuela’s future,” positing “the world democracies are right to seek change.” Very rarely, if at all, the mainstream media or the activated pundits gave any significant weight to the well over 500 illegal and criminal unilateral coercive measures (aka sanctions) inflicted on Venezuela and its people by the US and its European and Latin American accomplices.
US economic warfare — the almost total blockade of its economy — led to a shrinking of 99 per cent of its revenues, with Venezuela living on 1 per cent of its pre-sanctions income.
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FRANCISCO DOMINGUEZ asks what we should read into the sudden doubling of Washington’s outrageous bounty on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s head
FRANCISCO DOMINGUEZ gets the measure of what the new administration in Washington could have in store for Latin America, where Trump’s previous government had a notorious track record of hostility
While Maduro promises more social progress from wages to housing, the right-wing opposition prepares to cry ‘rigged’ as Washington imposes new oil sanctions, reports FRANCISCO DOMINGUEZ
FRANCISCO DOMINGUEZ explains that Venezuela’s plan to absorb parts of Guyana is a dispute that dates back to the 1800s and the colonial era. Now, a peaceful solution must be found
