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
Red Brigades and dark forces: the open wounds of the Moro affair
Barbara Balzerani’s passing revives the controversy around the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro, the man who dared ‘compromise’ with the then-mighty Italian Communist Party, writes NICK WRIGHT
CONSPIRACIES: The exact role of the Italian and US states in death of Aldo Moro, seen here as a captive of the Red Brigades, was never established
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
“LA tua compagna e morta” — your comrade is dead — said Fabio in wind-up mode. Fabio’s vinoteca doubles as a coffee shop until noon and is conveniently situated on the route of my morning passeggiata.
“Quale compagno?” I asked. “Barbara Balzerani,” he said knowing it would get a rise from me.
The novelist Barbara Balzerani died last week, March 4. In her younger years, she was head of the Rome column of the Brigate Rosse (Red Brigades) and was in the team that, on March 16 1978, along with her then-partner Mario Morretti, kidnapped the Christian Democrat president Aldo Moro, killing five police and carabinieri bodyguards in the process.
The Moro affair is, to this day, the subject of much speculation as to the motives of the main actors, the shadowy forces behind each of the protagonists and the role of foreign and domestic intelligence services.
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From Gaza complicity to welfare cuts chaos, Starmer’s baggage accumulates, and voters will indeed find ‘somewhere else’ to go — to the Greens, nationalists, Lib Dems, Reform UK or a new, working-class left party, writes NICK WRIGHT
