@@ Gladio: from Italy to Iraq "false-flag terrorism" and "strategy of tension" @@
Arash
September 25, 2005
Calipari's widow says his slaying 'cannot be allowed to become yet another of Italy's
mysteries'
By Luciana Bohne
lbohne[AT]edinboro.edu
Maria Rosa Calipari, widow of Major General Nicola Calipari
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicola_Calipari) of the Italian military Security and
Intelligence Service (SISMI) who was killed by American troops at Baghdad Airport
last March 4, after rescuing kidnapped Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuliana_Sgrena), called on all political forces to
support the Italian judiciary's quest for truth and transparency in the death of her
husband.
"Let the political forces guarantee support for the investigation which the judiciary
is carrying out to identify those responsible for my husband's death", Maria Rosa
Calipari said.
She is convinced that the truth can be obtained only through the efforts of the Roman
judicial investigating commission, which at this time is awaiting the results of
experts' ballistic and other analyses of the car involved in the shooting. This
investigation, she claims, is being frustrated by the Americans, along with the
complete silence of the Italian government.
"My husband's homicide", she adds, "cannot be allowed to become yet another of
Italy's 'mysteries".
Mrs. Calipari is referring to countless unsolved political crimes—from the murder of
Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldo_Moro) to the
massacre of 80 people and wounding of 200 in the Bologna train station bombing in
1980 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bologna_massacre) —that point to collusion between
the Italian secret services, trained and funded by the CIA, and
Anglo-American-dominated NATO intelligence, which sought to reverse the electoral
progress of Italy toward a coalition government of national unity that would welcome
the powerful and then respected Italian Communist Party
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Communist_Party) as a partner.
In spite of the Italian Communist Party's official separation from Moscow and
recognition of Italy's participation in NATO, the idea of a multi-party sovereignty
for Italy was anathema to the George H.W. Bush's CIA (the senior Bush was head of the
CIA in 1976 for one year http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_H._W._Bush), to then
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger),
and to then Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, General Alexander Haig
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Haig).
The terrorist crimes of the Italian "years of lead", carried out by neo-fascist or
Mafia elements, were subsequently blamed on the left to discredit it in the eyes of
the electorate and were part of the infamous "strategy of tension"
(http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2004/3117tension_italy.html), born and bred within
the intelligence institutions of the Anglo-American allied command of post-war
occupied Europe to stem, subvert, and thwart the advance of socialist and democratic
forces in Europe (to look up this intelligence saga, research Stay-Behind and GLADIO,
the names of secret subversive operations for Europe under the eventual umbrella of
NATO).
The decade of "false-flag terrorism" in Italy in the 1970s, clearly documented
through various trials and parliamentary investigations, is attributed by most
Italians to planned interference by foreign powers (mainly American) in tandem with
opportunistic pro-American, home-grown national elements and various parties' that
sold out to create a state of civil war and terror whereby the population would
consent to a loss of civil rights and welcome the "shadow government" of powerful
corporate, right-wing forces, friendly to American interests. Call it a rebirth of
fascism.
Many Italians today, following the news emanating from Iraq, are skeptical of reports
that attribute suicide bombings and other terror attacks to shadowy "terrorists" of
the Zarqawi ilk, fundamentalist fanatics, Sunni recalcitrants, and lumping break-away
Shias like Moqtada Sadr in the same bloody cauldron of crazed lunatics—all of whom
seem, at one time or another, to have as their objective the extermination of
civilians.
How, skeptics ask, does this benefit the resistance, which traditionally depends on
the collaboration of the tacit but helpful masses? The polarization of Iraqis into
simplistic religious identities ignores their roots in a national identity—one that
already fought and ejected British rule.
Such a polarization can only be the product of "orientalist" propaganda
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism) —the soft-sell of invented reality by
western "scholars", convenient misinterpreters of Muslim life eager to feed the
imperialist hunger for facile stereotypes in order to dupe or confound naive
Westerners with what is in reality false knowledge.
When Italians fought in the resistance against occupying Germans in WW II, the
resistance fighter was first and foremost an Italian, and only secondly a liberal, a
Christian-Democrat, a monarchist, a socialist. One doesn't fight occupation by
turning one's crosshairs on one's brother or sister if he wants to succeed in
liberating the country. Or do we want to believe that Iraqis are somehow inferior to
other occupied people and prefer to slaughter one another? That is certainly the
picture someone wants us to buy.
During the Vietnam War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War), they used to tell
us that "Life in Asia was cheap". They obviously want us to fall for the same canard
in Iraq, seasoned Italian observers suspect, having witnessed a decade of maneuvers
of the terrorist genre to turn Italians against one another for the prize of the
Italian state under the domination of foreign if invisible boots.
Recent events in Basra confirm the average Italian citizen's suspicions. The two
Britons, held by Iraqi police, were SAS, British special forces. Dressed as civilians
but wearing tribal Arab headgear, they were seen planting bombs in a Basra street and
perhaps instantly pursued (http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=32).
Had they succeeded, who do you think would have been blamed? They were speeding at a
checkpoint and refused to stop.
http://groups.google.ca/group/soc.culture.iranian/msg/164e791680a738e8?hl=en
British tanks and helicopters were deployed to secure their release because Iraqi
police refused to give them up. The police station was leveled—you've seen the
pictures. Angry mobs stormed British positions. What this whole process, which even
the liberal British press (http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=34) characterized as a a break in
"trust" between occupying Brits and subject Iraqis (an imperialist, paternalistic
term only an empire, however former, could dream up!)—reveals is that 70% of Iraqi
police, trained and armed by the Brits, is loyal to anti-occupation forces and
specifically to Sadr.
Now, how are the invasion apologists going to spin this one? And isn't it odd that
Zarqawi was nowhere around?
For this—however they spin it—is resistance. This is the real thing. People and
police fighting on the same side—for the same cause. No
suicide-movie-script-evil-doer here. Because this snafu was not planned—worse, the
plan to create mayhem and perhaps turn popular support for resistance against it went
awry.
Maria Rosa Calipari spoke judiciously—out of lived national and personal experience
with the tricksters of empires. Though her husband was a secret service agent, he did
not work for the Americanist Party, the Berlusconi clique
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvio_Berlusconi). In fact, the contingent within
SISMI dedicated to national sovereignty and the security and safety of Italian
citizens is being dubbed the "Caliparist" faction, and it is heavily under attack by
forces loyal to Washington (the campaign to savage SISMI's Director Nicolò Pollari
(http://www.serviziinformazionesicurezza.gov.it/pdcweb.nsf/pollari.jpg) by the
Italian chief of police, for example) to the point of revealing the identities of
secret agents—"burning" them, Rove-style (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Rove).
http://www.ciai-s.net/calipari-rosa_nicolo-pollari.jpg
Nicolò Pollari and Rosa Calipari at Nicola Calipari's funeral (March 7, 2005)
To get an idea why Nicola Calipari's death has become a national symbol for the
repeatedly frustrated aspirations for sovereignty and liberation from the bloody ties
that bind Italy to Washington since 1945, through state corruption, terror, and
blood, we need only hear Rosa Calipari's words on the kind of decent human being he
had always been: "He was a criminal lawyer, but he couldn't find it in him to defend
the Mafiosi. So he entered the police force. He was a man who strove to make
institutions accessible to the people, advancing a process of democratization of the
forces of order".
He was one of the incorruptible ones. An idealist. Worse, a man for the people. In
the war of Bush's terror, therefore, he was of no use—a meddlesome inconvenience.
* Luciana Bohne teaches film and literature at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=BOH20050925&articleId=1003