With its cover and an article by Luciano Lanza, issue 309 returns to a subject often discussed but never resolved, the bomb massacre in Piazza Fontana in Milan on 12 December 1969. In a seemingly endless sequence of sentences and appeals, involving first anarchist Pietro Valpreda and later Delfo Zorzi and other neonazis, the judiciary has finally decided that there is insufficient evidence for a conviction. Considering the shadowy role of Italian state security forces in the episode, it is not surprising that, as Lanzi writes, “the State cannot sentence itself”. In “fatti & misfatti”, a report on the mysterious pink “flaw” on the commemorative stamp of Giuseppe Pinelli, “defenestrated” from an upper floor of police HQ during an interrogation following that very Piazza Fontana massacre. “F&m” also reports on Agent Orange, still killing after all these years.
Also in this issue, Maria Matteo reports on the controversial high-speed Val di Susa railway, as well as other major projects that go ahead despite strong opposition, endangering the lives of workers and doing untold environmental damage. Carlo Oliva tells us that new pontiff Ratzinger should not be judged on the basis of his time spent in Hitler Youth.
Climate change, war, famine: Andrea Papi asks who the true producers of chaos are, anarchists or free-market capitalists. Another theoretical discussion comes from Antonio Cardella, on the relationship between politics and economics. And in a series of reflections first presented and discussed within the Alessandriacolori Collective, Giorgio Barberis affirms that the political paradigm based on the use of force is discredited, and a new one needed.
In October 1973 Manuel Tarquias Vergara was murdered by Carabineros in Pinochet's Chile; his brother Vicente (known as Urbano), who lives in Paderno Dugnano, near Milan, relates to the editors of “A” the complicated story of his denouncing two journalists of local newspaper “Il Giornale Nuovo del Piemonte” for an article in which he was accused of planning reprisals for the violent acts associated with G8 at what was in fact a fund-raising dinner for “Umanità Nuova”.
From Cuba, the Movimiento Libertario Cubano give their view of the possibilities of a left-wing future post-Fidel.
In “Musica & Idee”, Marco Pandin looks at the group Mercantinfiera and solo artists Carlo Ghirardato, both associated (the latter with a recently released CD) with interpretations of the music of Fabrizio De André. Musically speaking, there are also a number of CDs spotlighted by Stefano Giaccone. In “...e compagnia cantante”, Alessio Lega continues his introduction to the music of Renaud (first part last month).
Computer detectives are the unusual subject of Felice Accame’s column.
In “Ritratti in piedi”, Massimo Ortalli presents “La prima volta”, a novel by Franco Bernini about events on 8 May 1898, when there was rioting over food shortages in Milan and an aristocratic football match in Turin, and the links between the two apparently unrelated events.
“Libertarian review” has two poems, one by Jules Elysard called “Eutenasia” and another (from 1920) by German anarchist poet Erich Mühsam, as part of Ugo Tramontano’s review of the book by various authors, “Piegarsi vuol dire mentire, on the libertarian resistance to Nazism in the Ruhr and Rhineland in 1933-1945; also reviews by Lorenzo Guadagnucci of Francuccio Gesualdi's book on consumerism, “Sobrietà. Dallo spreco di pochi ai diritti di tutti” and by Paolo Finzi of the autobiography of an extraordinary priest, Don Andrea Gallo, entitled “angelicamente anarchico”.
The letters page has a response by Cristiano Draghi to Carlo Oliva's criticism of journalists' spectacularisation of news by being camped outside the hospital where the Pope was interned, and Oliva replies. Stefano Pilotto tells of his visit to Barcelona, and Roberto Caria attacks the “disrespectful” response of “A” to the Pope’s death, to which Paolo Finzi responds.

by Leslie Ray