Did the CIA poison England’s legendary goalkeeper Gordon Banks to hand Brazil the 1970 World Cup? A new investigation, three years in the making, suggests this once-dismissed conspiracy theory may not be so far-fetched after all and points to a much larger story about the Agency’s hidden hand in international sport.

With Sinn Féin declaring the imminent end of the United Kingdom and unionists eagerly hitching their wagon to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, Northern Ireland’s political class seems to have lost all grip on reality. W. Owl cuts through the wishful thinking on both sides, exposing how Brexit obsession and constitutional fantasies have blinded commentators to what’s really at stake for Ireland.

With Labour haemorrhaging councillors, losing northern strongholds, and trailing Reform in the polls despite a 170-seat majority, whispers of a leadership challenge from Andy Burnham are growing louder. Mike Morrissey dissects how Starmer’s hyper-cautious revival of New Labour has left the party trapped between fiscal orthodoxy and public fury and asks whether the Manchester mayor can offer a way out before Farage buries social democracy for good.

By Mike Morrissey

Behind the glossy Premier League sleeves and pristine Kigali streets lies a $4 billion debt bubble, a 30-year war of plunder in the Congo, and a regime that trades sovereignty for Western applause. This investigation pulls back the curtain on Paul Kagame’s “sportswashing” empire, exposing how “Visit Rwanda” functions as a diplomatic shield for autocracy, mercenary geopolitics, and the quiet machinery of neoliberal imperialism.

By Mohamed Hilali

With the Left sweeping 61.5% of the vote in Dublin Central while far-right and racist candidates pulled in a worrying 20%, Eoin Ó Murchú argues that working-class anger is being channelled in dangerous different directions across Ireland. He makes the case that only a united Left front, driven by trade unions and community organisations, can turn that frustration into real change and stop figures like Gerry Hutch from filling the vacuum.

By Eoin Ó Murchú

From burning-car decoys in Stockholm to speedboat getaways in Bergen, a string of audacious museum heists across Europe has targeted one thing alone: Chinese antiquities looted during the Opium Wars. Is this organized crime, a James Bond–worthy state operation, or the long-overdue reclamation of a stolen heritage?

By Raymond O’Connell

Dianne Kirby examines how Palestine has become the flashpoint exposing a deeper crisis: the rise of a transnational ruling class in which assertive Zionist elements wield disproportionate power, while AI surveillance giants like Palantir replace finance as capitalism’s new ideological spearhead. Drawing on Kees van der Pijl’s class analysis, the article connects Gaza’s genocide, criminalised protest, and “technofascist” data empires to reveal who really benefits from the collapse of sovereign equality between states.