Steve, You can split this if you like. Or not. Either way’s cool with me. I included an optional transition paragraph to use if you do split it. -- nessie •••••••••••••••••• COINTELPRO (tk http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/FBI/WarAtHome_page.html)is alive, well and thriving. Only the name has changed. It’s most disturbing manifestation of late has been moves by federal government to strengthen the ability of local police departments to conduct espionage, surveillance and similar operations against dissident political groups. On January 11, 2000, a three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a 1999 ruling by Federal Judge Ann Williams which had denied the City of Chicago's motion to gut the 1981 Alliance to End Repression/ACLU Consent Decree prohibiting the Chicago police from spying on or disrupting constitutionally protected activities. This is more commonly known as the Red Squad Consent Decree. It was the culmination of a 1974 lawsuit which accused the City of Chicago and its cops of engaging in a century of spying, disruption, and sabotage directed against political opposition. To anyone familiar with the history of the political repression by the police of Chicago, The 7th Court’s ruling is very disturbing indeed. For a detailed account, click here (tk http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=18503). The Chicago ruling did not take place in a vacuum. Political repression by local police has also ratcheted up in Portland Oregon. Two days after being denied permission to target "Left Wing movements," the Portland police nonetheless made their presence felt at a City Council meeting. According to the Willamette Week, Nov. 29, 2000:
On Nov. 22, three law-enforcement officials testified before City Council in what should have been a routine appearance. Two Portland police officials and an FBI supervisor were requesting permission for the FBI to join Portland police in a special unit called the Portland Joint Terrorism Task Force. But the language of the ordinance was striking. "The mission of the PJTTF," it read, "is to identify and target for prosecution those individuals or groups who are responsible for Right Wing and/or Left Wing movements, as well as the acts of the anti-abortion movement and the Animal Liberation Front/Earth Liberation Front." The wording of the unit's mission statement -- which said nothing about criminal activity, only political activity -- struck some as downright creepy.
The City Council authorized the Portland Police and FBI to form the PJTTF to "identify and target for prosecution . . . Right Wing and/or Left Wing movements . . . and the Animal Liberation/Earth Liberation Front." The PJTTF will deputize local cops as federal agents, and employ snitches and provocateurs in an effort to seek "the most effective . . . avenues by which to convict and incarcerate" activists. A Memorandum of Understanding (MUO) was signed. To read it, click here (tk http://portland.indymedia.org/display.php3?article_id=413) or here (tk http://www.earthliberationfront.com/news/2000/001206m1.html). Portland cops claim they're not targeting protesters. Don’t believe it. They didn’t even want protesters to know what they were up to. This agreement was brought before the Portland City Council, as an "emergency ordinance," which means that it was voted into law right on the spot and became effective immediately, without the usual procedure of first reading, public hearing, second reading, and the usual 30-day waiting period. The agreement went before the City Council with only the most minimal of notice to the public and no meaningful opportunity to testify. The only reason the progressive community found out about this ordinance at all is that Dan Handelman of Portland Copwatch happened to be at that Council meeting, on another matter. The very involvement of the FBI makes abundantly clear that a centrally coordinated, nation-wide program of political repression is at work here. Federal repression of political dissidents took a quantum leap in 1996, with the passing of the Anti--Terrorist Act. This Act was passed partly in response to the bombing of the Murrah Bldg. in Oklahoma City, allegedly by right wing terrorists out to revenge the terrorist murders of women and children by federal agents at Waco and Ruby Ridge. At least that’s the government’s version. However, the known laws of physics dictate that the government’s version of the Murrah Bldg. bomb is not physically possible. That much ANFO, in that location, could never have done that much of that particular kind of damage to that particular building. If you have any doubts, look up the formula and do the math. If that’s beyond you capacity, then consider this. Because it is liquid, an ANFO charge can’t be shaped . That means it exerts an equal force in all directions when it explodes. The bomb which the government says blew off the front third of the Murrah Bldg. when it went off in the street, left the smaller building across the street standing. Ergo, there were other explosives planted inside the Murrah Bldg. which went off almost simultaneously. This would account for the double seismic signature that was recorded. Either the government is lying or the known laws of physics can be intermittently suspended in an arbitrary fashion. Ergo, the government is lying. Ergo, the most plausible explanation of the bombing is that it was the work of agents provocateur in the government’s direct employ or under its control through undercover intermediaries. Ergo, whatever else they may be, Nichols and McViegh are patsies. They were set up to take the fall. The Anti-Terrorist ACT was the direct result of this heinous perfidy. The broadly written Act contains language which can charge law abiding citizens of being agents or affording support to terrorist organizations. Intent to commit terrorist acts is defined as “Appeared To Be Intended Toward Violence or Activities Which Could Intimidate or Coerce a Civilian Population; or To Influence the Policy of a Government.” The Act can thus be used by police to target any group of persons that would dare demonstrate for or against any issue. Any picket line or demonstration, alleged by police to have blocked or obstructed public access, could qualify as "Terrorist Activities" to intimidate or coerce a civilian population. Terrorist charges make it possible for police to forfeit attending demonstrators’ homes used for meetings and the vehicles they used for transportation to the event. A fist fight between union demonstrators and persons crossing a picket line, for example, can be upgraded by police, should they so choose, to charge union members with “Terrorist Activity”. The Act, broadly redefined "Terrorist Acts as involving any violent act or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or any state." The violent or physical act need not cause bodily harm. Vandalism and arson qualify, no matter how great or small the physical damage. This gives the federal government, particularly the FBI, unprecedented powers of law enforcement at the local level. This is extremely distressing because, by it’s own definition, the FBI itself is a terrorist (tk http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=18252) organization. No FBI agent can ever be trusted to tell the truth or to do the right thing. An FBI agent is a person who, as a personal act of conscious will, has refused to resign in disgust from an organization that burns innocent women and children alive. They are wholly without honor and cannot be trusted one inch further than they can be thrown. Among the groups cited by the FBI as rational for the Portland MUA, two have been repeatedly branded in the press as being “anarchist” in nature. They are the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front. They appear, on the surface at least, to be overlapping organizations. They specialize in arson and vandalism. Their trademark MO is that they attack only inanimate objects, never human beings. They have both stepped up their activity lately, especially the ELF. Since both are said to organized horizontally, as a non hierarchical collection of autonomous cells, it is not unreasonable to consider that they are, indeed, anarchist organizations. Horizontally organized, non hierarchical federations of autonomous affinity groups are, after all, the very basis of anarchist social structure. In politics, however, things are seldom what they appear to be. It is tempting to jump to conclusions, but what is really called for is an objective analysis based on empirical data and the perspective of history. After years of relative neglect, the North American anarchist movement has once again become the favorite scapegoat, whipping boy and bogeyman of the corporate-government’s ubiquitous propaganda machine. It is no coincidence that CBS’s Sixty Minutes did a hit piece on the ELF only a week before the Inauguration. It was a less than subtle attempt to tar all anarchists with the “terrorist” brush. To understand the real ELF it is imperative to look beyond the image that is being projected in the media. It is also important not to get bogged down in the debate over whether violence is justified or whether violence against property is “really” violence. Violence has a definite place in life. It is not, in and of itself, either a good or bad thing. It all depends on the circumstances. When a man attempts to commit rape, he is doing a bad thing. When his intended victim blows his head off, she is doing a good thing. To some people, this is not self evident. They obviously suffer from impaired cognition. Whether it results from brainwashing or a congenital cognitive deficit is irrelevant. The moral justification for violence against property is even clearer. If violence against property is wrong, then the American colonists shouldn’t have thrown all that tea in the harbor and Jesus shouldn’t have kicked over the tables of the money changers. However, just because violence is morally justified in some situations, does not mean it is required, or that it is necessarily the wisest thing to do. Au contrair. All actions have consequences. Consequences, not the musings of moralists, are the most important aspect of of any action. Look at the consequences of the ALF/ELF actions, not the media images and the moral debate. Pay particular attention to who actually benefits. It isn’t always immediately obvious. Keep in mind at all times that the property destroyed by the ALF and ELF is heavily insured. Insurance fraud by arson is exceedingly common. Like all crimes, it is easiest to get away with when there is a plausible patsy on hand to take the fall. And, above all, keep in mind COINTELPRO. Do your own research. Don’t rely on corporate media. Don’t even rely on this column. Rely on yourself. Remember the immortal words of anarchist Emma Goldman, “Ignorance is the most violent element in society.” So if you don’t want violence, eliminate ignorance. Start with your own. Start today. Click here(tk http://www.earthliberationfront.com/main.shtml), here(tk http://www.animal-liberation.com/), here(tk http://www.animalliberationfront.com/), here(tk http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=18318), here(tk http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=18252), here(tk http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=18113), here(tk http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=17411), here(tk http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=18684), here(tk http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=18690), here(tk http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=18799), here(tk http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=18805). There’s more, of course, many more. But this will get you started. To fully understand the ALF/ELF’s alleged connections with anarchism, and the role that the anarchist movement plays in the contemporary political landscape, it is imperative to draw upon the lessons of history. Nothing ever happens without a cause. All events are part of a historical process. This is not the first time that anarchists have been called terrorists and it certainly wouldn’t be the first time that they were blamed for terrorist acts with which they had nothing to do. In order to gain some historical perspective, it is only necessary to go back thirty years and examine the story of one particular anarchist. His name was Guiseppe Pinelli. His story can be found in a book called Stefano Della Chiaie: Portrait of a Black Terrorist by Stewart Christie, ISBN 0946222096. “Black,” in this context, has nothing to do with race. It is long and widely used European political shorthand for “fascist.” It’s origin is the uniform of Mussolini’s goons. Christie describes in detail how several NATO intelligence agencies used fascist mercenaries to infiltrate leftist and anarchist organizations and to perpetrate a series of terrorist bombings in Italy. These bombings were initially blamed by the press and police on leftists and anarchists. This was called the “Strategy of Tension.” It was planned and executed by fascist elements within the NATO power structure. It’s purpose was described in the words of a dispatch by the Lisbon based Aginter Press, a known fascist front. The dispatch was sent to Aginter’s Italian correspondents. It came to light in October 1974. It was dated November 1969. It was one of a number of dispatches sent to Lisbon titled "Our Political Activity." It explains the Strategy of Tension thus:
Our belief is that the first phase of political activity ought to be to create the conditions favouring the installation of chaos in all of the regime's structures. This should necessarily begin with the undermining of the state economy so as to arrive at confusion throughout the whole legal apparatus. This leads on to a situation of strong political tension, fear in the world of industry and hostility towards the government and the political parties. . . . In our view the first move we should make is to destroy the structure of the democratic state, under the cover of communist and pro-Chinese activities. Moreover, we have people who have infiltrated these groups and obviously we will have to tailor our actions to the ethos of the milieu, propaganda and action of a sort which will seem to have emanated from our communist adversaries and pressure brought to bear on people in whom power is invested at every level. That will create a feeling of hostility towards those who threaten the peace of each and every nation, and at the same time we must raise up a defender of the citizenry [sic] against the disintegration brought about by terrorism and subversion. . . .
The report goes on to describe the political situation in Italy and the emergence of the extra-parliamentary left:
Outside the present contingencies these people are possessed of a new enthusiasm and huge impatience. This fact should be carefully considered. The introduction of provocateur elements into the circles of the revolutionary left is merely a reflection of the wish to push this unstable situation to breaking point and create a climate of chaos . . .
The unknown author concludes:
Pro-Chinese circles, characterized by their own impatience and zeal, are right for infiltration. . . . Our activity must be to destroy the structure of the democratic state under the cover of communist and pro-Chinese activities; we have already infiltrated some of our people into these groups. . .
Another relevant document surfaced in Covert Action Information Bulletin, January 1979 (No. 3), pp. 9-18. It was the top secret Supplement B to U.S. Army Field Manual FM 30-31. The manual itself is unclassified and discusses techniques for intelligence support and liaison with "host countries" where U.S. troops are stationed. Supplement B is dated March 18, 1970 and is signed by General Westmoreland, American commander in Viet Nam. It describes special operations that may be required when “host country” governments “show passivity or indecision in face of Communist or Communist-inspired subversion, and react with inadequate vigor to intelligence estimates transmitted by U.S. agencies." In such situations, "U.S. Army intelligence should seek to penetrate the insurgency by means of agents on special assignment, with the task of forming special action groups among the more radical elements of the insurgency." These groups under U.S. Army control "should be used to launch violent or nonviolent actions according to the nature of the case." The section concluded, "In cases where the infiltration of such agents into the insurgent leadership has not been effectively implemented, it may help toward the achievement of the above ends to utilize ultra-leftist organizations." Along with other factors such as corruption and organized crime, the Strategy of Tension accounts for much of the recent history of Italy. Eventually, the role of the fascist infiltrators and agents provocateur in the bombings did come to light, but not until many, many lives were lost, most of them working class. Guiseppe Pinelli was one of its victims. He was born in the working class Porta Ticinese district of Milan in 1928. He worked as an errand boy, and later as a warehouseman. In 1944-45 he took part in the Resistance as a courier in an anarchist partisan group operating in Milan. In 1954 he joined the railways as a fitter. The next year he married Licia. The couple had two daughters. His friends called him “Pino.” A dedicated militant, he was active all his life in a variety of projects and organizations. Most notably he became Secretary of the Anarchist Black Cross in Milan. The Black Cross is an international anarchist relief organization for prisoners and victims of repression. Pinelli was murdered in cold blood during interrogation by the police while in custody. •••••••••••••••••••••••••• Steve, If you want to split this, here’s the spot. If you split it, whatever the title, it should include “(Part 1)”. If you split it, close the first installment with this line: *** This murder was part of a distinct pattern of repression and manipulation that continues to this day. Next time we’ll examine it in detail. *** If you want to run this as a single piece, skip that line and just continue thus: •••••••••••••••••••••••••• In April 1969, in the small southern town of Battpalgia, rumors of an impending plant closure triggered a strike. In the course of confrontations between strikers and police, the police shot a nineteen year old worker to death. They also killed a young school teacher who had been watching from the window of her flat. The government attempted to lay the blame, not on the police, but on what they called a “preordained plan” implemented by “provocateurs alien to the city.” The media immediately blamed Maoists and anarchists. The Italian public is ever so much more politically sophisticated than their dumbed down American counterparts. They were not fooled. The were outraged. Their outrage forced the Italian parliament to propose a bill which would have prohibited police from carrying firearms while on public order duty. The bill was due to come up for debate on April 28. But before it came up, the Fiat stand at the Milan trade fair was bombed. So was the Milan central rail station. These bombings had been carefully planned in order to lay the blame at the foot of the Anarchists. Though there was no evidence whatsoever as to the identity of those who had placed the bomb, the police and the media claimed to know their political convictions. After a wave of anti-anarchist hysteria in the press, fifteen anarchists were arrested, including Pinelli. Although he and five others were quickly released, over five months passed before the others were even questioned by the magistrate. Two years passed before they were finally acquitted on all charges. From April onward, the press, television and radio all began to talk of international anarchist plots to foment bloody revolution. This coordinated psy-war campaign was designed to instill fear and uncertainties in the public mind which were intended by the Strategists of Tension to lead to military intervention in Italian political life. The bombings continued. They grew more horrific. In August, one hundred and fifty anarchists were arrested and brought in for questioning by teams of detectives under the command of a rising star in the firmament of Italian political police, Inspector Luigi Calabresi. Calabrisi had undergone training at various police academies in the United States. He must have made some extremely valuable connections in certain political circles while he was here. When extreme right-wing US General Edwin A Walker traveled to Italy, Calabrisi accompanied him. Walker was a confidant of Senator, and 1964 presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater. Walker made headlines when he was forced from command after having been discovered to have been indoctrinating his troops with the propaganda of the John Birch Society. His main claim to fame though, was that Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly took a shot at him once but missed. It was Calabrisi who introduced Walker to Italian secret service chief General Guiseppe de Lorenzo. People are known by the company they keep. Inspector Calabrisi kept company with some very bad people. Among them, presumably, were the friends of the subject of Christie’s book, Stefano Delle Chiaie. Delle Chiaie was the fascist terrorist who was eventually indicted for the bloody bombing of the Bologna railway station, which claimed 85 dead and over 200 injured. Delle Chiaie’s name is inextricably linked to General de Lorenzo’s attempted seizure of power in 1964, and to a long string of right wing scandals and fascist outrages which plagued Italy for over a decade. They include the abortive coup attempt by the “Black Prince” Valario Borghese in December 1970, the bombing of the Rome-Munich express in August 1974 which killed 12 and injured 48, and the murder of the magistrate investigating the bombing. He is also inextricably linked to the the Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan which killed 16 people, seriously injured 88 more, and directly led to the death of the anarchist Guiseppe Pinelli. General de Lorenzo, as conspiracy buffs will recall, was the founder of La Rosa Dei Venti -- Guinta Executiva Piscossa Sociale Italiana, which translates as “Compass Rose -- Executive Council of Italian Social Salvation.” Compass Rose was a powerful and long secret putchist organization with close ties to Italian intelligence, and through them, to NATO intelligence. In the mid-1960s, Lorenzo was one of the most powerful men in Italy. In 1956, he had been appoint head of Italy’s Secret Services, SIFAR. In 1962 he was made commander of the carabinieri. He kept his job as head of SIFAR. The carabinieri are a militarized national police force which combines what Americans would recognize as central aspects of our own FBI, BATF, state troopers and local police. According to Conflict Studies No. 8, November 1970:
Since the carabinieri have units down to the village level, the C-in-C is an unrivaled position to keep his finger on the pulse of what is going on. He would also be excellently placed to take some undemocratic initiative against the established system, were he so inclined.
Sound familiar? It should. It gets worse. Behind Compass Rose, and pulling its strings, was an even more secret organization, the shadowy "Propaganda Due” (P-2), a nominally Masonic lodge. For decades P-2 virtually ran Italy from behind the scenes, while the front men in Rome traded cabinet posts back and forth dozens of times in what they laughably call “changes in government.” For a while, with the help of American born gangster-priest Paul Marcinkus, P-2 ran the Vatican Bank. It was during this era that the Vatican Bank was caught red handed laundering counterfeit paper for the Gambino crime family. For what it’s worth, Marcinkus grew up in Al Capone’s home town, Cicero, Illinois. Coincidence? Perhaps. P-2’s long time “grand master” (cappo de tutti cappos) was a man named Licio Gelli. Gelli was(tk http://www.io.com/~patrik/october.htm), among(tk http://www.lbbs.org/chomsky/dd/dd-c11-s01.html) other(tk http://www.totse.com/en/conspiracy/institutional_analysis/p2masons.html) things(tk http://www.pir.org/news05.html), attended the inaugural ceremonies of Ford, Carter, and Reagan, and called himself a friend of George Bush. In July 1981, Gelli's daughter was stopped at the Rome airport and documents were confiscated from a false bottom in her suitcase. One of these was a photocopy of Supplement B. These are kind of people Guiseppe Pinelli was up against. Following his arrest on suspicion of involvement in the Milan trade fair and railway station bombings, Pinelli had devoted his time to the Black Cross, providing assistance for his comrades arrested on false charges. He also coordinated an international investigation into the activities of the various fascists and intelligence agencies who were actually responsible. Knowing full well that the police and the press were not going to find the real perps, Pinelli, in typical anarchist fashion, had set out to do it himself. DIY is the heart and core of anarchism. When the Piazza Fontana bomb went off, Pinelli had been with his friends and neighbors in his regular bar. When he heard the news he and another anarchist named Sergio Ardau went to the anarchist club at the Via Scaldasole. Inspector Calabrisi was already there. Pinelli and Ardau were invited to police headquarters for a “little chat.” Three days later, on December 15, the last interrogation of Guiseppe Pinelli began at 7:00 PM. At 10:00 PM, Calabrisi called Pinelli’s wife Licia on the phone and asked her to look for her husband’s railway pass which recorded train journeys for which no fares needed to be paid. She found it and called them back. At 11:00 a policeman came to the Pinelli home to collect it. Another anarchist, named Pasquale Valituttu was sitting in the corridor near the room where Pinelli was being questioned. At 11:56 PM he heard what he described as “very strange noises” coming from the room. Two minutes later, at precisely 11:58 PM a call was logged requesting an ambulance be sent to police HQ. At 11:57 PM journalist Aldo Palumbo left the press room at police HQ. He was walking through the central courtyard when Pinelli’s body plummeted to the ground before his eyes. Palumbo claims the body appeared to be already lifeless. This was later backed up by the pathological evidence. The most likely explanation for Pinelli’s murder was that his investigation had been somewhat successful, and he knew too much. Calabrisi’s goons apparently couldn’t beat a confession to the Piazza Fontana bombing out of Pinelli. For one thing, he hadn’t done it. But at some point in his interrogation he must have let slip some indication that he knew who did, or worse, that he knew who pulled their strings. At the point the cops had no choice but to bash in his skull, heave him out a window and try to make it look like he had jumped. Whatever the reason, out he flew. A number of anarchists were quickly charged with “illegal conspiracy to commit crime” and complicity in the Piazza Fontana massacre. But the people of Milan were not fooled. They knew it was not anarchists but the right wing who was responsible for the massacre. The targets of the Piazza Fontana bombing, like the targets of all the Strategy of Tension bombings, were working people. Anarchists do not kill working people. Anarchists seldom kill at all. When they do kill, it is almost always in self defense. It is never indiscriminate. It is never innocent working people who die. A large minority of anarchists are, in fact, doctrinaire pacifists. Even the most violent anarchists almost always direct their anger at property and not people. It has been this way for over half a century. Keep this in mind the next time you hear someone like Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski called an anarchist. Kaczynski is no anarchist. If anything, he appears to be a a victim of government mind control dating back to his participation in government sponsored LSD experiments at Harvard when he was an undergraduate. But don’t take my word for it, click here (tk http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/06/chase.htm) and read what the Atlantic Monthly has to say. Terrorism and assassination were abandoned by anarchists many, many decades ago, when it became painfully obvious they were only making things worse. While this is common knowledge to the Italian working class, indeed to the rest of the world, it is not widely recognized by Americans. Americans have been so dumbed down by public school and so brainwashed by the propaganda machine, that most of them will believe without question all sorts of lies about who anarchists are and what anarchists actually do. Should such a thing as the Piazza Fontana bombing to happen in America today, it is highly unlikely that the public would react in anything like the manner that the people of Milan did. A case could be made that a Strategy of Tension is already being implemented here, and has a serious chance of success. Not so in Italy, not in 1969, and certainly not today. Italians are, to put it frankly, far more sophisticated about politics than we are. It’s a pity and a shame, but it is the truth of the matter and must be faced up to. Americans are a clueless people. Our worst enemy is our own ignorance. The death of Guiseppe Pinelli backfired on the Strategists of Tension and foiled at least some of their plans. Their hopes to confuse and intimidate the working people of Italy were dashed when three hundred thousand Milanese overflowed the Piazza Doumo to pay silent homage to the victims of the Piazza Fontana massacre. They had come to show that they would not be intimidated by terror and that they knew where the real blame lay. Five days later, in spite of a climate of severe police intimidation, three thousand people with black flags accompanied “Pino” Pinelli to his final resting place. On December 17 an Italian secret service agent named Stefano Serpieri submitted a signed report to his boss, General Frederico Quirazza, head of the counter-intelligence bureau of the secret service. In his report he named Stefano Delle Chiaie and another fascist named Mario Merlino as the material authors of the massacre. Merlino, the report stated, took his orders from Delle Chiaie, who in turn took orders from Yves Guerin-Serac, director of the Aginter Press agency in Lisbon. Aginter also employed, the report continued, a certain Robert Leroy, a French citizen. Leroy was a veteran of the French “Charlemagne” division of the Waffen SS and was (according to his Aginter dossier) a serving NATO intelligence officer with Reinhard Gehlen’s BND. Leroy and Delle Chiaie had met in Milan in 1965 and remained fast friends ever since. Merlino and Delle Chiaie, Serpieri further specified, “passing themselves off as anarchists, carried out bombings so that the blame for them would fall on other movements . . .” The report was buried by Admiral Henke, the head of the Italian secret service at the time. Henke later lied to the magistrate investigating the links between the fascists and the secret service when he stated that the secret service had not investigated the outrages nor had it received any information on the subject. It was not until much later that details began to emerge. In November of the following year, a builder repairing the roof of a house accidentally broke through a partition wall belonging to a socialist town councillor and discovered a cache of weapons and explosives. One thing led to another and the truth began, slowly, to come out. For the whole story, I highly recommend that you track down a copy of Christie’s book. If you happen to be in San Francisco, you can find at Bound Together Anarchist Collective Book Store at 1369 Haight St. Or you can order it over the internet from AK Press(tk http://www.akpress.org/), which sells it for $8.95. It’s a thoroughly fascinating book, worth every penny. Delle Chiaie’s trail led to a shadowy mercenary army run by Hitler’s favorite commando, Otto Skorzeny, and later to Klaus Barbie, the “Butcher of Lyon,” through him to the cocaine cartels of Latin America, and through them, to the CIA. It’s an excellent book, every bit as good as Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International, ISBN 1570270392, Kevin Coogan’s riveting biography of another of the bad guys’ well connected underground heroes. While you’re at it, you can acquire a comprehensive overview of what is often called the “neo-fascist” movement, by reading an book by SFBG.com columnist, Martin Lee(tk http://www.sfbg.com/reality/). It is called The Beast Reawakens: Fascism's Resurgence from Hitler's Spymasters to Today's Neo-Nazi Groups and Right-Wing Extremists, ISBN 0415925460. It, too, is an excellent book. Lee is a consummate historian. He will, among other things, disabuse you totally of the notion that there is anything “neo” about the fascist movement today. Many changes have occurred since WWII came to an end, but there has been no break in the continuity of the fascist movement. Fascism is a dynamic, evolving philosophy. It’s one reason they are so dangerous. They know how to adapt. Lee follows the careers of enough of the individuals involved to make this more than abundantly clear. Not only is there an unbroken chain of fascist organizers and organizations, but they are steadily growing in power and influence. It’s financial power alone makes the Fascist International a major player on the world stage today. Not only is the fascist menace growing, its perpetrators are learning as they go. Above all else, they have learned the art of disguise, or “Tarnung” (tk http://www.sfbg.com/nessie/company.html) as it’s called. Today they were white shirts, that’s all. Don’t let it fool you. The fascists have undoubtedly learned from the initial shortcomings of the Strategy of Tension. They have presumably refined their infiltration techniques and trained more sophisticated agents provocateur. It would be foolish not to assume that they have also learned that if they want to pass themselves off as anarchists then they must try to act like anarchists. This means they must refrain as much as possible from killing people, especially from killing working people. Only by restricting their violence to inanimate objects can any agents provocateur ever hope to be mistaken for real anarchists today. Fortunately for them, this is quite easy to do. Which brings us back to the ELF. What exactly have their serial arson attacks actually accomplished? Two things stand out. They have put some fat insurance settlements into the pockets of a bunch of capitalists and they have created an excuse in the public’s mind for even greater surveillance, harassment and repression, and not just of anarchists. We must ask ourselves, as the Romans used to, “Cui bono?” Who benefits from these actions? Hint: It’s not the environment and it’s certainly not the anarchists.