Al-Qaida, ETA - Gladio?: Translation Please?
Mathias Bröckers | 14.03.2004 07:52
Researching Operation Gladio. Can anyone translate this please? Some perspective on our present situation.
Al-Qaida, ETA - Gladio?
Mathias Bröckers 13.03.2004
Anmerkungen zur "Handschrift" des Madrider Terroranschlags
Über die Frage, welche "Handschrift" das Massaker in Madrid trägt, wird seit den gestrigen Bombenanschlägen gerätselt. Außer den notorisch Verdächtigen von "al-Qaida" und der baskischen ETA scheinen in den Medien aber keine anderen potentiellen Täter in Frage zu kommen. Dabei deutet die "Handschrift" auf eine sehr augenfällige Parallele: den Bombenanschlag auf den Bahnhof in Bologna, der im August 1980 mit 80 Toten und 200 Verletzten den Höhepunkt einer Anschlagserie auf zivile Ziele in Italien markierte.
Von 1969 bis 1980 kamen bei Bombenanschlägen auf Bahnhöfe, Züge und belebte Plätze in Italien 245 Menschen ums Leben, über 600 wurden verletzt - jedesmal wurden zuerst linke, anarchistische Gruppen verdächtigt und entsprechende Ermittlungen, Verhaftungen und Anklagen durchgeführt.
Nach dem ersten großen Anschlag vor einer Bank im Zentrum Mailands 1969 kam es zum "Zufälligen Tod eines Anarchisten", den der spätere Nobelpreisträger Dario Fo zu seinem gleichnamigen Theaterstück verarbeitete. Bei seiner Vernehmung fällt Giuseppe Pinelli "zufällig" aus einem Fenster im 4. Stock des Polizeipräsidiums. Dass der italienische Geheimdienst falsche Spuren gelegt und die richtigen verwischt hatte, kam erst viel später ans Licht - die daraufhin angeklagten Neofaschisten wurden 1989 in letzter Instanz freigesprochen.
Auch nach dem Anschlag in Bologna 1980 wurden falsche Spuren auf Linksterroristen gelegt. Verurteilt wurden 15 Jahre später schließlich zwei Mitglieder der faschistischen "Nuclei armati rivoluzionari" (NAR - Bewaffnete Revolutionäre Kerne), die lebenslange Haft erhielten. Zwei Mitarbeiter des italienischen Geheimdienstes, die die falsche Spuren gelegt hatten, erhielten ebenfalls langjährige Haftstrafen und zu zehn Jahren wurden die Auftraggeber des Terroranschlags verurteilt: der Anführer der P2-Loge Licio Gelli und seine rechte Hand, der CIA-Agent Francesco Pazienza.
Als ein unerschrockener Untersuchungsrichter 1990 den Fall von drei, 1972 mit einer Autobombe getöteten Carabinieri wieder aufrollte, flog der eigentliche Hintergrund dieser ganzen Bombenwelle auf. Der Sprengstoff, dessen Herkunft Geheimdienstmitarbeiter zu vertuschen versucht hatten, stammte aus einem der Depots der NATO-Geheimorganisation Gladio. Von 139 geheimen Waffendepots in Italien wurden nur 12 leer angetroffen. Regierungsangehörige wie der Ex-Präsident Andreotti, die zuvor noch behauptet hatten, die im Kalten Krieg als "stay behind"- Truppe gegründete Organisation (sie sollte sich im Falle eines Angriffs aus dem Osten überrollen lassen und den Partisanenkrieg organisieren) sei nichts als ein 1972 aufgelöster "Altherrenclub", mussten gestehen, dass Gladio weiterhin aktiv ist. Aktenkundig wurde dabei auch, wem die Gladio-Truppe maßgeblich unterstellt ist - der CIA - und dass auch in anderen europäischen Ländern Gladio-Zellen existieren. Ausgebildet wurden die vor allem aus Militär, Geheimdiensten und faschistischen Kreisen rekrutierten Mitglieder auf einem NATO-Übungsplatz auf Sardinien, wo von 1968 an 4.000 "Gladiatoren" trainiert wurden. Die Politik von "Gladio" wird in einem Statement des in diesem Prozess zu lebenslänglich Verurteilten Mitglieds Vincenzo Vinciguerra deutlich:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Die Rechten stellen sich selbst in den Dienst des Staatsapparates, in dem sie eine Strategie unterstützen, die man als Strategie der Spannung bezeichnet. Dreißig Jahre lang bis in die achtziger Jahre wurde die Bevölkerung absichtlich in Unruhe und Angst vor einem Ausnahmezustand gehalten. Bis sie bereit war, einen Teil ihrer persönlichen Rechte im Austausch für größere Sicherheit aufzugeben, für die alltägliche Sicherheit, die Straße entlang zu gehen, mit der Bahn oder dem Flugzeug zu reisen, in eine Bank zu gehen. Die Menschen in diese Haltung zu zwingen, das ist die Logik, die hinter den Verbrechen steckt. Und da der Staat dahinter steht, der sich nicht selbst belasten wird, werden diese Verbrechen unaufgeklärt bleiben.
Die Strategie der Spannung
Die hier beschriebene Strategie der Spannung weist so viele Parallelen zur aktuellen Situation im "War on Terror" auf, dass dem Verdacht "Gladio" nur eines blühen kann: nicht dem Bereich der Öffentlichkeit und Aufklärung, sondern dem der "obskuren Verschwörungstheorie" zugeschlagen zu werden. Reale Verschwörungen finden einfach nicht statt - selbst wenn sie, wie im Falle P2 und Gladio, gerichts- und aktenkundig belegt sind und die Unterwanderung des Terrors durch staatliche Dienste.html keine wilde Theorie ist , sondern Fakt. Ein Faktum freilich, das offenbar nur in der Vergangenheitsform zumutbar ist . Womit wir wieder bei dem Rätsel um die "Handschrift" des Madrider Anschlags angelangt wären und der Prognose, dass es lange unaufgeklärt bleiben wird - trotz der "Spuren" zu al-Qaida oder zur ETA, die im Zuge der Ermittlungen möglicherweise noch auftauchen.
Mathias Bröckers 13.03.2004
Anmerkungen zur "Handschrift" des Madrider Terroranschlags
Über die Frage, welche "Handschrift" das Massaker in Madrid trägt, wird seit den gestrigen Bombenanschlägen gerätselt. Außer den notorisch Verdächtigen von "al-Qaida" und der baskischen ETA scheinen in den Medien aber keine anderen potentiellen Täter in Frage zu kommen. Dabei deutet die "Handschrift" auf eine sehr augenfällige Parallele: den Bombenanschlag auf den Bahnhof in Bologna, der im August 1980 mit 80 Toten und 200 Verletzten den Höhepunkt einer Anschlagserie auf zivile Ziele in Italien markierte.
Von 1969 bis 1980 kamen bei Bombenanschlägen auf Bahnhöfe, Züge und belebte Plätze in Italien 245 Menschen ums Leben, über 600 wurden verletzt - jedesmal wurden zuerst linke, anarchistische Gruppen verdächtigt und entsprechende Ermittlungen, Verhaftungen und Anklagen durchgeführt.
Nach dem ersten großen Anschlag vor einer Bank im Zentrum Mailands 1969 kam es zum "Zufälligen Tod eines Anarchisten", den der spätere Nobelpreisträger Dario Fo zu seinem gleichnamigen Theaterstück verarbeitete. Bei seiner Vernehmung fällt Giuseppe Pinelli "zufällig" aus einem Fenster im 4. Stock des Polizeipräsidiums. Dass der italienische Geheimdienst falsche Spuren gelegt und die richtigen verwischt hatte, kam erst viel später ans Licht - die daraufhin angeklagten Neofaschisten wurden 1989 in letzter Instanz freigesprochen.
Auch nach dem Anschlag in Bologna 1980 wurden falsche Spuren auf Linksterroristen gelegt. Verurteilt wurden 15 Jahre später schließlich zwei Mitglieder der faschistischen "Nuclei armati rivoluzionari" (NAR - Bewaffnete Revolutionäre Kerne), die lebenslange Haft erhielten. Zwei Mitarbeiter des italienischen Geheimdienstes, die die falsche Spuren gelegt hatten, erhielten ebenfalls langjährige Haftstrafen und zu zehn Jahren wurden die Auftraggeber des Terroranschlags verurteilt: der Anführer der P2-Loge Licio Gelli und seine rechte Hand, der CIA-Agent Francesco Pazienza.
Als ein unerschrockener Untersuchungsrichter 1990 den Fall von drei, 1972 mit einer Autobombe getöteten Carabinieri wieder aufrollte, flog der eigentliche Hintergrund dieser ganzen Bombenwelle auf. Der Sprengstoff, dessen Herkunft Geheimdienstmitarbeiter zu vertuschen versucht hatten, stammte aus einem der Depots der NATO-Geheimorganisation Gladio. Von 139 geheimen Waffendepots in Italien wurden nur 12 leer angetroffen. Regierungsangehörige wie der Ex-Präsident Andreotti, die zuvor noch behauptet hatten, die im Kalten Krieg als "stay behind"- Truppe gegründete Organisation (sie sollte sich im Falle eines Angriffs aus dem Osten überrollen lassen und den Partisanenkrieg organisieren) sei nichts als ein 1972 aufgelöster "Altherrenclub", mussten gestehen, dass Gladio weiterhin aktiv ist. Aktenkundig wurde dabei auch, wem die Gladio-Truppe maßgeblich unterstellt ist - der CIA - und dass auch in anderen europäischen Ländern Gladio-Zellen existieren. Ausgebildet wurden die vor allem aus Militär, Geheimdiensten und faschistischen Kreisen rekrutierten Mitglieder auf einem NATO-Übungsplatz auf Sardinien, wo von 1968 an 4.000 "Gladiatoren" trainiert wurden. Die Politik von "Gladio" wird in einem Statement des in diesem Prozess zu lebenslänglich Verurteilten Mitglieds Vincenzo Vinciguerra deutlich:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Die Rechten stellen sich selbst in den Dienst des Staatsapparates, in dem sie eine Strategie unterstützen, die man als Strategie der Spannung bezeichnet. Dreißig Jahre lang bis in die achtziger Jahre wurde die Bevölkerung absichtlich in Unruhe und Angst vor einem Ausnahmezustand gehalten. Bis sie bereit war, einen Teil ihrer persönlichen Rechte im Austausch für größere Sicherheit aufzugeben, für die alltägliche Sicherheit, die Straße entlang zu gehen, mit der Bahn oder dem Flugzeug zu reisen, in eine Bank zu gehen. Die Menschen in diese Haltung zu zwingen, das ist die Logik, die hinter den Verbrechen steckt. Und da der Staat dahinter steht, der sich nicht selbst belasten wird, werden diese Verbrechen unaufgeklärt bleiben.
Die Strategie der Spannung
Die hier beschriebene Strategie der Spannung weist so viele Parallelen zur aktuellen Situation im "War on Terror" auf, dass dem Verdacht "Gladio" nur eines blühen kann: nicht dem Bereich der Öffentlichkeit und Aufklärung, sondern dem der "obskuren Verschwörungstheorie" zugeschlagen zu werden. Reale Verschwörungen finden einfach nicht statt - selbst wenn sie, wie im Falle P2 und Gladio, gerichts- und aktenkundig belegt sind und die Unterwanderung des Terrors durch staatliche Dienste.html keine wilde Theorie ist , sondern Fakt. Ein Faktum freilich, das offenbar nur in der Vergangenheitsform zumutbar ist . Womit wir wieder bei dem Rätsel um die "Handschrift" des Madrider Anschlags angelangt wären und der Prognose, dass es lange unaufgeklärt bleiben wird - trotz der "Spuren" zu al-Qaida oder zur ETA, die im Zuge der Ermittlungen möglicherweise noch auftauchen.
Mathias Bröckers
Comments
Hide the following 4 comments
see if this link works
14.03.2004 10:42
click translate page link here:
for my commentary
Blair vows to fight terror menace
"This is the new menace of our time. My father's generation were in the last conventional war to be fought on the soil of Europe, to defeat the Nazis. Our generation grew up with the Cold War, that ended with the defeat of totalitarian communism. This generation faces a war of a different nature from anything before." Spain and Britain had known terrorism before, but Mr Blair said: "This terrorism is terrorism waged without limit, without any care for the grief of the innocent and it is terrorism designed to strike at the very heart of our way of life, our democracy, our freedom and the rule of law." This generation faces a war of a different nature from anything before ... To defeat terrorism "we will do what is necessary to defend our way of life," he said
Bush = Skull & Bones
Allan Dulles [see: Sullivan & Cromwell]
helped Prescott Bush + friends cover secret WWII funding of the Nazi war machine ,
later, as head of OSS/CIA started Operation 'stay behind' with Reinhard Gehlens
spy network of ex-nazis, see also: Operation Paperclip, MKultra etc...
the excuse used to form this organisation was to stop the spread of communism
this has been the premise for every coup and assassintations/attempts from Castro, Kennedy, Aldo Moro, De Gaulle, Harold Wilson...etc.
Is the Blair / Straw assertion actually an admission that Gladio
[the secret 60 year war]
has become the War Against Terror
as Terror becomes the new 'totalitarian threat'
justifying a worldwide coup in the name of globalisation
Look again at the unmarked riot police present at world forums, G8 summits, Bilderberg meetings etc.
This is the secret army of the secret war...
Captain Wardrobe
gladio research
14.03.2004 10:58
keep digging... this is MASSIVE
Captain Wardrobe
translation
14.03.2004 13:02
NB: This article is translated from Telepolis. The original, by Mathias Broeckers, can be found here:
Remarks on the 'signature' of the Madrid terror attack
The question of who perpretated the massacre in Madrid, whose 'signature' it carries, has been puzzling commentators since last Thursday's attack. But the media don't seem to be taking any possible perpretrators apart from the usual suspects 'Al Qaida' and the Basque ETA into consideration. This, despite the fact that the 'signature' is remarkably similar to the bomb attack on the train station in Bologna in August 1980, when 80 people were killed and 200 injured, and which marked the climax of a series of attacks on civilian targets in Italy.
From 1969 to 1980 a total of 245 people were killed and more than 600 injured in bomb attacks at train stations, on trains and on crowded squares in Italy. Each time leftwing anarchist groups were initially blamed and investigations, arrests and charges were made against them.
After the first big attack in front of a bank in the centre of Milan in 1969 an anarchist was arrested but 'accidentally' died when he fell out of the fourth floor window of the police headquarters during questioning - an event that became the inspiration for Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo's stage play 'Accidental Death of an Anarchist'. The fact that the Italian secret service had laid false trails and covered up the right ones only transpired much later. The neofascists who were eventually charged with the attacks were cleared in the final instance in 1989.
A false trail pointing to extreme left terrorists was also laid after the attack in Bologna in 1980. Fifteen years later two members of the fascist 'Nuclei armati rivoluzionari' (NAR - Armed Revolutionary Core) received life sentences for the attacks. Two members of the Italian secret service who had laid the false trails also received long-term jail sentences, and the men who ordered the attacks, the leader of the masonic P2 lodge Licio Gelli and his right-hand man CIA agent Francesco Pazienza, were sentenced to ten years in prison.
In 1990 a fearless judge investigated the case of three Carabinieri killed with a car bomb in 1972. He uncovered the real reason for this series of attacks: the explosives, the source of which secret service agents had tried to conceal, came from the depots of a secret NATO organisation called 'Gladio'. Of the 139 secret weapons depots in Italy 12 were found to be empty. Members of the government, including former president Andreotti, had previously claimed that Gladio was merely "a club for old men" which had been dissolved in 1972; following the investigation they were forced to admit that the organisation, which had been created as a 'stay behind' unit which would fall behind enemy (i.e. Soviet) lines and organise a partisan war, was still active. It was also revealed whom Gladio was largely subordinated to (the CIA) and that other European countries also had Gladio cells. Their members, who were largely recruited from the military, the secret services and from fascist groups, were trained at a NATO training base in Sardinia. A total of 4,000 'gladiators' were trained there from 1968 onwards. The political thinking behind Gladio was revealed in a statement by its member Vincenzo Vinciguerra when he was sentenced to life imprisonment:
"The Right put itself in the service of the state by supporting the strategy known as the 'strategy of tension'. For thirty years until the 1980s the population was consciously kept in a state of turmoil and fearing a state of emergency. It was prepared to give up a part of its personal rights in exchange for the everyday safety of being able to walk down the road, travel by train or plane, go to the bank. The aim of this crime was to force people into this way of thinking. And since the state is behind all this and doesn't want to put itself unders suspicion, these crimes will remain unsolved."
mt
THE ITALIAN ‘STRATEGY OF TENSION’ AND NATO’S ‘STAY BEHIND’ NETWORKS
15.03.2004 18:18
Some notes on the Gladio Networks and the political uses of 'terrorism' in light of recent events...
Recent events in Italy have led certain people to ask if we are witnessing the implementation a new ‘strategy of tension’ by Italy’s bourgeoisie. Unfortunately, many seem either completely unaware of the history of state manipulation of terrorism in Italy, or only vaguely so. The obfuscators in the bourgeois media of course encourage this unfortunate ignorance, for by rewriting recent history they hope nobody will be able to put more recent events into historical context in order to understand the present spectacle of terrorism.
From the late 1960’s through to the early 1980’s, Italy witnessed waves of social upheaval and class conflict. Alongside these conflicts, Italy also witnessed the phenomenon of ‘terrorism’, ostensibly carried out by extra-parliamentary groups of the far left and far right. However, the spectacle of Italian terrorism concealed powerful interests, both domestic and international.
In addition to the more ‘mundane’ terror that Italy’s various neo-fascist groups dished out on the streets to their enemies, far right organisations were involved in the most spectacular and devastating episodes that frame the ‘years of lead’ (as the period in question came to be known): the bombing of a bank in Milan’s Piazza Fontana in 1969, and the blowing up of Bologna railway station in 1980. However, the neo-fascist groups that were ostensibly behind these attacks were well integrated into the state apparatus, via the so-called Gladio Networks. Beyond this, the fact that the objectives of far right organisations are broadly identical to those leading the state, and that many of their supporters and activists were drawn from the states apparatus of repression, makes it very easy for them to be infiltrated and manipulated by the state. As always, there have been various attempts to explain state involvement in far right terrorism in terms of ‘infiltration’ of the state by the far right, the actions so-called ‘rouge elements’, etc. Liberals and leftists are particularly keen on this sort of apologetic obfuscation. A more accurate picture of events would been provided by the neo-fascist terrorist Vincenzo Vinciguerra: “every bombing in Italy after 1969 was linked to one group…The orders are given by an apparatus belonging to the state, specifically by a secret parallel structure of the Interior Ministry.”
The Gladio Network was set up during the 1950’s as part of a wider “stay behind” network established throughout European countries aligned to NATO at the end of WWII, to go into action in the event of an Eastern Bloc invasion or domestic Communist ‘subversion’, using secret arms caches. They were under the overall control of US intelligence, involving domestic intelligence groups and committed ‘anti-communists’. The latter group inevitably contained a large number of neo-fascists. Lucio Gelli, Grandmaster of P2 – the establishment Masonic lodge and at times effective parallel government of Italy – confirmed this, reporting that many Gladio members in Italy were drawn form the ranks of fascist veterans of Mussolini’s last stand, the Salo Republic. The US also pumped huge amounts of money into the coffers of far right organisations, supposedly as a bulwark against the left, especially the large Italian Communist Party (PCI).
The Gladio networks, and the extra-parliamentary far right in general, were utilise by ruling class elements to carry out actions as part of what became known as the “Strategy of Tension”. The general aim of this strategy, developed in the face of working class militancy, was to create a heightened sense of disorientation, fear and atomisation amongst the general population, leading to an increased identification with authority. While some initially hoped that this would lead to a military take over, this strategy became a more general response in periods of social unrest and political crisis. The Pizza Fontana bombing illustrates this perfectly, taking place as it did at the height of the social upheavals of the ‘Hot Autumn’ of 1969. As the Situationist Gianfranco Sanguinetti observed, writing in the late 1970’s about the spectacle of state manipulated terrorism, the aim of such events as the Piazza Fontana bombing was to “make the whole population…believe that it has at least one enemy in common with this state, and from which the state defends it on condition that it is no longer called into question by anyone.” In other words, the ‘war against terrorism’ – the bourgeoisie has been running this racket for quite some time now! – was meant to inject a sense of common national interest into the population (particularly the working class) at times of social crisis. Immediately after the Piazza Fontana bombing in 1969, Sanguinetti, in a short flyer entitled ‘Is the Reichstag Burning?’ denounced the bombings as state provocations, unlike the vast majority of the left at the time, who generally took police and media lies at face value: ‘THE BOMB IN MILAN EXPLODED AGAINST THE PROLETARIAT, it was intended to wound the least radicalised categories in order to ally them with power, and to tighten the ranks of the bourgeoisie for the witch hunt…’
Partly in response to the grim spectacle of state organised ‘far right’ terrorism, along with more general attacks on the working class by the ruling class and its state apparatus, 1970 witnessed the formation of the Red Brigades (R.B.’s). While the main impetus for their creation largely came from genuine workers and Leftist intellectuals, inspired by the PCI dominated anti-fascist partisans of WWII, the organisation was based on a rigid Leninist ideology and structure, and a militaristic conception of the class struggle. During 1974, the original leadership of the R.B.’s, including Renato Curcio and Alberto Franceshini, were arrested, which paved the way for Mario Moretti and his strategy of constant military escalation. There were suggestions at the time, and subsequently, that Moretti was an agent provocateur. Marco Pisetta and Silvano Girotto also infiltrated the group, along with the ex-Franciscan friar Salvano Girotto (known as “Brother Machine Gun”), amongst many others.
On the 16 March, 1978 Christian Democratic Party leader Aldo Moro was kidnapped by the Red Brigades, in an operation notable for its brutality and military precision. Moro was an advocate of a ‘history compromise’ in Italian politics. This would involve the opening up of the state to the Communist Party (PCI). Moro correctly perceived the completely reformist nature of the PCI. He hoped that this policy would diminish the radicalism of the working class. Powerful factions of the Italian ruling class, as well as American ruling class, were totally opposed to PCI participation in government. Moro became increasingly preoccupied with US opposition to his policy of historic compromise with the PCI. During a 1974 visit to America as Italian foreign minister, Henry Kissinger warned Moro off his policy of compromise with the PCI. After he was kidnapped, the CIA refused to co-operate in the hunt for Moro. On the 9 May, Moro’s body was found in the trunk of a car on Rome’s Via Caetani, symbolically halfway between the headquarters of the Christian Democratic and Communist Parties’. Significantly, during the 1960’s a secret coup plot called “Piano Solo”(Plan Solo) organised by fascist-sympathiser, intelligence chief and carabinieri leader General De Lorenzo called for the assassination of Moro, who had promised an “opening to the left” - i.e., letting the Italian Communist Party (PCI) into government, a precursor of his “Historic Compromise”. The planned coup was called off at the last minute due to a compromise between the Socialist Party and right-wing Christian Democrats. De Lorenzo went on to create a secret organisation named “La Rosa Dei Venti” (Rose of the Winds), aimed at grouping together those sympathetic to De Lorenzo and his plan. This conspiracy was a direct precursor to the strategy of tension and P2.
On 2 August, 1980 a powerful bomb exploded in the second class waiting room at Bologna railway station, resulting in 85 deaths and 200 injuries. Fascists ostensibly carried out the bombing, a series of right-wingers later being convicted and then acquitted for carrying out the attack. However, it soon became clear that more powerful interests lay behind the attack. It is established that the explosives used were from a NATO Gladio arsenal, and subsequent investigations implicate Gelli and P2 as being those behind the massacre. (When interviewed by British television upon his release from prison and asked if he had any part in the bombing, P2 boss Gelli simply smiled and stated that ‘the Communists had to be kept out of the government’!) In January of the following year, Gelli attends Ronald Reagan’s inauguration. He would later spend a whole week with George H.W. Bush, the ex-CIA director (1970’s), vice-president (1981-88), and future president (1989-93) (also the father of the present cretin inhabiting the White House, in case anyone didn’t know). In 1990, Dick Brenneke, who claims to have been a CIA operative, makes a series of allegations concerning American involvement with P2 and the strategy of tension. Amongst these was that George Bush not only had knowledge of CIA involvement with P2 and the strategy of tension, but that the one time director of the CIA was one of the masterminds of these events.
In December 1981 the US General James Lee Dozier is kidnapped by the Red Brigades, sparking the largest manhunt in Italian history. The Mafia aids the manhunt, which is far larger than that for Moro. The successful location and release of Dozier by the authorities spells the ‘beginning of the end’ for the Red Brigades. However, during the late 1990’s, the organisation re-emerged with the assassination of Massimo D’Antona, a government advisor on labour law. In a 28-page document, the killing is claimed by the R.B.’s (full name now ‘Red Brigades for the construction of the fighting Communist Party’!). D’Antona’s widow – amongst others – voices doubts about the motives of her late husbands supposed killers, suggesting that he may have been killed at the behest of “conservative forces”. The supposed re-formation of the R.B.’s takes place in the wake of the upsurge of the Italian Right, and the emergence of the billionaire media magnet and football club owner Silvio Berlusconi and his ‘party’ Forza Italia (a football slogan) as a political force in Italy – Berlusconi is a onetime member of the P2. During the early 1990’s, at the time of the entry of Berlusconi's Forza Italia into Italian political life, a series of bizarre bombings take place. These include attacks on an art gallery in Milan, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and the Rome cathedral of St John's in Lateran, which are rather implausibly blamed on the Mafia. In 1999 it would be claimed that Berlusconi was in fact behind the bombings, which occurred shortly before his election as Prime Minister at head of the so-called Freedom Alliance (which included Forza Italia, the regionalist-xenophobic Northern Leagues and the ‘post-Fascist’ National Alliance).
In the lead up to the anti-G8 mobilisation in Genoa during July 2001, a parcel bomb that is sent to a police station explodes, injuring a cop. No one claims responsibility for the bomb, but the media speculate that the bomb is the work of “militants on the fringe of the…protesters” (Guardian), failing to mention the historical context of the Italian states’ manipulation of, and heavy involvement in terrorism in the recent passed. During the massive anti-G8 demonstrations of July 2001, police subject demonstrators to systematic brutality, attacking the demonstrations organisational headquarters and the Independent Media Centre. Hundreds are arrested, many being subjected to intimidation and torture. One protester, Carlo Giuliani, is shot dead by the carabinieri. Following the Genoa repression, a Venice court is bombed hours before Silvio Berlusconi is due to visit the city. Twenty groups claim responsibility for the bombing! ‘Anti-terrorist’ police search the homes of two neo-Nazi sympathisers. In addition, a bomb explodes at the headquarters of the right-wing Northern League in the Italian town of Vigonza, near Venice. No group claims responsibility. Early this year, the Berlusconi government launched a series of raids against the network of social centres, which are connected to the ‘White Overall’ movement. In March 2002, Marco Biagi, an advisor to the Berlusconi government on labour law reform, is assassinated. The police suggest that the same gun was used to kill Massimo D’Antona three years previously! The killing, which takes place on the eve of a massive anti-government mobilisation against labour ‘reform’, is claimed by the Red Brigades over the Internet. The statement also praises the attack on the World Trade Centre in the USA on ‘anti-imperialist’ grounds. The planned anti-government mobilisation goes ahead, but the media portrays the massive demonstration as an anti-terrorist mobilisation (much of the Left and the Trade Unions play along with this, to some extent).
State involvement in the very terrorism our rulers so loudly declared war against has become an increasingly apparent phenomenon across the world. The example of the so-called Nijvel gang in Belgium could be cited here. This gang carried out a series of bizarre and brutal armed robberies on supermarkets in the province of Brabant between 1982 and 1985, which led to the deaths of 28 people with very small amounts of money being stolen. When it was revealed that the weapons used to carry out these murders, which have become known as the Brabant massacres, came from police arsenals the gang became linked to the far-right organisation Westland-New Post who in turn linked to the Belgian police and security apparatus. It has since come to light that the Nijvel gang were operating as part of a "strategy of tension" similar to that carried out in Italy during the early seventies, connected to NATO’s “stay behind” networks. One of the most blatant cases of this state involvement in terrorism was the bombings of working class apartment blocks in Moscow during 1999. These bombings took place during a period of acute economic crisis in Russian. They were blamed on Chechen terrorists without a shred of evidence. Suspicions at the time that forces closer to home were really behind these attacks appear to have been borne out, with detailed allegations that Russian intelligence carried out the attacks being made. The bombings created a massive sense of fear in Russia, resulting in a marked upsurge in racism, the election of the senior Russian intelligence chief Vladimir Putin as head of state, and the launching of a second murderous war against the Chechens. All this acted as a distraction from a very serious domestic crisis.
‘STRATEGY OF TENSION’/GLADIO NETWORK SOURCES:-
• ‘Operation Gladio’ – a very short summary of Italian aspects of Gladio
• ‘Operation Gladio’ - Not particularly good short summary of Italian aspects of Gladio
• Namebase anti-spook database on Gladio -
• Statewatch Italian ‘Strategy of Tension’/Gladio press-cuttings archive
• Philip Willan’s Guardian articles (see book and note below concerning this useful idiot):
‘Three jailed for 1969 Milan bomb’
‘Paolo Emilio Taviani’ ‘…was among the founders of the Gladio stay-behind network…’
‘Terrorists 'helped by CIA' to stop rise of left in Italy’
‘US supported anti-left terror in Italy'
‘Bomb trial may call Bush Sr’
‘Andreotti cleared for second time’
‘Andreotti's acquittal puts Italy's supergrass system in the dock’
‘Andreotti walks free as court clears him of murder plot’
‘Professor wins retrial for killing of police chief’
‘Infiltrators blamed for murder of Italian PM’ – ‘Spies working for the Italian secret services who infiltrated the Red Brigades were the masterminds behind the kidnapping and murder of the former prime minister Aldo Moro in 1978, according to one of the group's founders.’
• A Situationist view:
Is the Reichstag Burning? - Sanguineti’s immediate response to the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing - ‘THE BOMB IN MILAN EXPLODED AGAINST THE PROLETARIAT, it was intended to wound the least radicalized categories in order to ally them with power, and to tighten the ranks of the bourgeoisie for the witch hunt…’
Prefaces to Gianfranco Sanguinetti’s On Terrorism and the State (unfortunately, full text not available on-line. Available in English translation from: B.M.Chronos, London, WC1V 6XX.):
-1979 Italian Edition -
-1980 French Edition -
Sanguinetti archive -
• Autonomist intellectual Tony Negri’s reflections on the period (‘Reviewing the Experience of Italy in the 1970’s’)
• ‘Fascism and the Establishment: Italy – the Strategy of Tension’
• Extract from Chomsky
• The following material that is in varying degrees useful, but unfortunately not available on line (nearly all out of print):
Anon. The Italian State Massacre (London: Libertaria Books, 1972)
Bale, Jeffrey M., ‘Right-wing Terrorists and the Extra-parliamentary Left in Post-World War 2 Europe: Collusion or Manipulation’ in Lobster (18) 1989.
Christie, Stuart, Stefano Delle Chiaie: Portrait of a Black Terrorist (London: Refracts/Anarchy, 1984)
Ginzburg, Carlo, The Judge and the Historian: Marginal Notes on a Late-Twentieth-Century Miscarriage of Justice (London, 2000). On this case, see
Sanguinetti, Gianfranco, On Terrorism and the State (London, 1982)
Willan, Philip, Puppet Masters: the Political Use of Terrorism in Italy, (Constable, London, 1991) - This book should be handled with care, due to the author’s pedalling of outrageous Italian Communist Party inspired disinformation directed against the Autonomist Marxist intellectual Tony Negri. See review by Larry O'Hara, ‘Blinded by the Light’, in issue 23 of the British para-political magazine Lobster
• Of related interest:
Statewatch archive on Belgium Gladio/ "Nijvel gang”/ "Brabant massacres" of the 1980’s:
‘Two academics appointed to lead an investigation into the "Nijvel Gang" enquiry have resigned after just two months. Professors Fijnaut and Verstraeten of Louvain University claim that lack of cooperation from Government institutions was a major reason for their abandoning of the enquiry. The Nijvel gang carried out a series of brutal armed robberies in the province of Brabant between 1982 and 1985, which led to the deaths of 28 people. When it was revealed that the weapons used to carry out these murders, which have become known as the Brabant massacres, came from police arsenals the gang became linked to the far-right organisation Westland-New Post who in turn had deeply infiltrated the Belgian police and security apparatus. It has since been suggested that the Nijvel gang were operating as part of a "strategy of tension" similar to that carried out by the Italian extreme-right in the early seventies, connected to the "GLADIO" programme.’
UK Parliamentary question on Gladio Networks: ‘Mr. Flynn : To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what is his policy on the public disclosure of information on the activities of and United Kingdom support for Operation Gladio since its inception. Mr. Archie Hamilton : It has been the policy of successive Governments not to comment on matters of this nature. This remains the policy.’
Gianfranco
Gianfranco