Some anarchists are terrorists, but most of them are not.
--- In Politics_CurrentEvents_Group@yahoogroups.com, "Gary" <garyrumor2@...> wrote:
>
> Anarchist Propaganda of the Deed Or Provocateurs In Italy
> December 26th, 2010 Two Greek anarchists are making molotov cocktails. One says to the other: "So who will we throw these at then?" The other replies: "What are you, some kind of fucking intellectual?"
>
> I found this joke on a blog called `Slackbastard' from Australia. Anarchists are becoming more willing to take direct action to the home of the beast as austerity measures take their toll on the working classes of the world, especially noticeable in the USA and the Eurozone where workers had once been a relatively affluent.
>
> There is a question of the motivation of the group called Informal Anarchist Federation in Italy. Some claim this maybe the action of agent provocateurs and not genuine anarchists who are represented by groups like the Anarchist Federation of Italy, both go by the initials FAI. See the article from the Nihilist below. Wikipedia seems to take the position that the group is genuine. I know American Insurrectionary Anarchists with contacts with like minded Italians but I cannot verify the validity of the politics of the Informal Anarchist Federation at this time.
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> This is from Reuters
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> Anarchists claim responsibility for Rome bombs
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> Thu, Dec 23 2010
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> A package exploded at the Swiss embassy in Rome on Thursday, Italy's foreign ministry said on Thursday and Ansa news agency reported that one person was seriously injured.
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> By Roberto Landucci and Daniele Mari
>
> ROME | Thu Dec 23, 2010 5:41pm EST
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> ROME (Reuters) - An Italian anarchist group claimed responsibility for parcel bombs on Thursday that wounded two people at the Swiss and Chilean embassies in Rome, a reminder of Europe's home-grown threats at a time of political instability.
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> A Swiss man was seriously wounded and rushed to hospital. An employee at the Chilean embassy was less seriously hurt. A note was found stuck to his clothing, claiming responsibility for the attack on behalf of the FAI, or Informal Anarchist Federation.
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> "We have decided to make our voice heard with words and with facts, we will destroy the system of dominance, long live the FAI, long-live Anarchy," said the note, written in Italian, which was released in the evening by the police.
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> The incidents bore similarities to an episode in Greece last month in which far-left militants sent parcel bombs to foreign governments abroad and to embassies in Athens.
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> The note was signed by the "Lambros Fountas revolutionary cell" of the FAI, named for a Greek anarchist killed in a clash with Athens police in March. It also made reference to anarchist movements in Chile, Mexico, Spain and Argentina.
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> "Greece, Italy and Spain have seen the presence of anarcho-insurrectionalist groups that are tightly linked," Italy's Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said before the note was found. "They are very violent."
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> The FAI is well known to Italian authorities. Intelligence services said in a report to parliament last year that it was "the main national terrorist threat of an anarchist-insurrectionalist type."
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> In December 2009 the group claimed responsibility for a bomb that partially exploded in a tunnel under Milan's Bocconi University at 3 am, causing no casualties.
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> No note was found at the Swiss embassy, but police said the packages that exploded were almost identical.
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> The explosions came at a time of tension in Italy. Last week saw an anti-government student protest that descended into some of the worst street violence in Rome for many years.
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> Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini condemned the incidents, which he said were a serious threat to diplomatic missions in Rome. He urged caution and warned against alarmist reactions.
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> The attacks, like those in Greece, focused attention on Europe's domestic security threats at a time when authorities had otherwise been warning of the risk of attacks by al Qaeda.
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> "It doesn't look like a typical jihadist thing. It looks more like the act of a leftist, fringe group," said Stephan Bierling, professor of International Politics at Regensburg University in Germany.
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> Spending cuts caused by the financial crisis have led to demonstrations and strikes around Europe, and experts expect a rise in political violence by far-left groups.
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> "Given the similarities with the recent parcel bombs in Greece following anti-austerity protests, this could be a copycat incident by domestic activists," said Samantha Wolreich, European risk analyst at advisory firm AKE.
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> This is from Wikipedia
>
> Informal Anarchist Federation
> From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search
> Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI) (in Italian: Federazione Anarchica Informale), not to be confused with the Italian Anarchist Federation (also FAI) is an Italian insurrectionary anarchist organization. It has been described by Italian intelligence sources as a "horizontal" structure of various anarchist terrorist groups, united in their beliefs in revolutionary armed action. Groups comprising the FAI act both as separate organizations and also under the FAI, and are known to format group campaigns.
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> Their ideology is opposed to both the current European order and Marxism, which they see as solely a replacement of one form of oppressive authority with another.
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> Structure
> The organization is composed by the following groups:
> July 20th Brigade
> Five C's
> International Solidarity
> Cooperative of Hand-Made Fire & Related Items
>
> These groups represent factions of the FAI. Beyond the organization, each group has also forged its own set of alliances. The New Red Brigades/Communist Combatant Party is an allied of the FAI. Collaboration between these anarchist groups and more established Marxist groups, essentially in opposition to the principles of the FAI, have been a subject of debate in both anarchist circles and within the Italian security community. These claims have been supported with claims of solidarity between the FAI and the newest incarnations of the Red Brigades.
>
> History
> In 2003, the group claimed responsibility for a bomb campaign targeting several European Union institutions. It had stated to target "the apparatus of control that is repressive and leading the democratic show that is the new European order". To address the situation, an order was issued to halt all packets addressed to EU bodies from post offices in the Emilia-Romagna region.
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> Sources at the prosecutor's office in Bologna said that the packages mailed to Trichet, Europol and Eurojust contained books and photocopies of a leaflet from the Informal Anarchist Federation. The leaflet described the Italian group and talked about its "Operation Santa Claus." After the December attack on the Italian politician Romano Prodi, the FAI sent a letter to La Repubblica newspaper saying it was opposed to the European Union and claiming the attack was carried out "so the pig knows that the maneuvers have only begun to get close to him and others like him."
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> The MEP Nigel Farage said his party had predicted 10 years ago the path the EU was taking could end in civil unrest. He classified the letter bombs as the "price of forcing a political ideal on people". Speaking the day after Mr Titley's wife suffered the attack, Mr Farage said: "We can only hope that the EU comes to its senses and listens to the people." Mr Titley reacted, saying: "I think it's outrageous to make a cheap political point out of a terrorist act. I am almost speechless with anger. I can't believe that they have done this - it is justifying terrorism and that's despicable."
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> In 2010, Italy's postal service intercepted a threatening letter containing a bullet addressed to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. A large envelope containing a letter addressed to Berlusconi with the threat "you will end up like a rat" was discovered on Friday in a post office in the Libate suburb of the northern city of Milan. On 23 December 2010, credit for exploding parcels delivered to the Swiss and Chilean embassies in Rome was claimed by the Informal Anarchist Federation, through many news sources erroneously reported that another group, the Italian Anarchist Federation, claimed responsibility for the mail bombs.
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> This is from the Nihilist #4
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> Beware of the State's Anarchists
> In the end of December 2003, various European Union (EU) institutions received a number of letter bombs. One of them is said to have exploded in the hands of the president of the EU Commission, Romani Prodi, but without causing any injuries. The press was quick to announce that this was the work of anarchists. The proof of this was a letter sent to the paper La Repubblica, where a so far unknown group with the name Informal Anarchist Federation claimed responsibility for two earlier bombs left near Prodi's home in Italy. Italian anarchists, however, take a very different view of whom are to blame: This was a provocation, they are convinced, meant to put Italy's anarchist in disrepute, and to give an excuse for increased repression against the country's strong extra-parliamentary left.
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> While no one had heard about the Federazione Anarchica Informale before the mysterious letter surfaced, there exists in Italy an established anarchist group with a similar name: Federazione Anarchica Italiana (FAI). FAI was established in 1968, and is active in above ground activities such as organizing public meetings and demonstrations, and publishing newspapers and journals. In a statement, the organization's coordinating committee states that FAI "asserts once more its condemnation of bombs, exploding parcels and such devices, that may strike without discrimination, and in any way look - at best - to be functional to logic of provocation and criminalization of dissent through the media, in a moment in which anarchists are among the protagonists of social conflicts - from strikes, to initiatives against war, etc."
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> In its statement FAI also points to the contradiction in speaking of an "informal federation," and claims that an organization must always be formal in order to guarantee "a libertarian and egalitarian method of assuming decisions." Other parts of the anarchist movement in Italy believe in informal organizing, but these groups do not use the word federation. The name therefore seems picked for its similarity to FAI's, and thereby associate this organization with bombs and terror. And FAI believes that "whoever points out a group of comrades to repression is a police or one that cooperates with them."
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> If these letter bombs actually were sent by provocateurs, this would not be the first time in Italy's history. On the 12th of December 1969, a bomb exploded at Piazza Fontana in Milan, which killed 16 people and wounded more than a hundred. Then too, the anarchists were blamed, and several local anarchists were arrested. Three days after the explosion, one of the arrested, Giuseppe Pinelli, died from falling from a window of the fifth floor of the city's police headquarters - while five police officers were present in the room. The police first announced that it was a suicide, then quickly changed their story and claimed it was an accident. This event was later immortalized in Nobel laureate Dario Fo's burlesque theater play, Accidental Death of an Anarchist.
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> Another anarchist, Pietro Valpreda, was convicted of the bombing, and sat several years in prison before his conviction was overturned in a new trial. It has been proven that it wasn't Milan's anarchists who were responsible for the bomb plot, but a group of neo-fascists. The bomb plot was the beginning of the so-called "strategy of tension" put into action by Italian fascists in consort with the CIA and Italy's intelligence services. At the end of the 60's, it looked as if the Italian Communist Party might be admitted into the government for the first time. At the same time, a new and more radical left emerged, who rejected the whole parliamentary game. A campaign of destabilization was therefore started, where fascists conducted terrorist acts, which were then blamed on the left. In the span of 15 years, 150 individuals were killed in eight bomb explosions; the worst of which was the massacre at the railway station in Bologna in August 1980, where 85 was killed and 200 wounded. Fascists and intelligence agents also infiltrated small communist and anarchist groups where they tried to incite violent acts, at the same time as they were helpful in procuring weapons and explosives. During this time, there were hatched several plots where the fascists, together with their allies in the military and police, would take power in a coup d'etat. It was assumed that the Italian people would accept a "state of emergency," in order to save the country from chaos and to "reestablish law and order." However, as the political situation in the country stabilized during the 70's, a fascist coup ceased to be an option.
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> Not until 2001 was a group of fascists brought to trial for the bombing in Milan over 30 years ago. In this trial, a former chief in the Italian military intelligence agency SID gave testimony. General Gianadelio Maletti explained that SID had discovered that right wing terrorists in the 70s had been equipped with military explosives from Germany, possibly with the help of American intelligence agents. "The CIA, following the directives of its government, wanted to create an Italian nationalism capable of halting what it saw as a slide to the left and, for this purpose, it may have made use of right-wing terrorism," Maletti explained. Maletti himself needed a temporary court amnesty in order to testify, as he for the last 20 years have been living in South Africa as a fugitive from Italian justice. He had been convicted in absentia for obstructing the investigation of an attack on the Italian Minister of the Interior in 1973. Four people were killed and 45 injured when the "anarchist" Gianfranco Bertoli threw a bomb at group of people outside the police headquarters in Milan. Bertoli actually had right-wing sympathies, and was a long time informer for SID. SID supposedly knew about the plot against the minister in advance, but did nothing to warn him, and neglected to tell investigators what they knew after the crime was committed.
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> Before the protests against the G8 summit in Genoa in 2001, Dario Fo published an article called Beware of the State's Anarchists, where he warned that the strategy of tension was about to be revived. In the article he wrote: "What we are witnessing is an incredible repetition of what happened back then. In the face of the growth of a deeply peaceful world protest movement, the system replies by trying to drag it into a spiral of violence. Therefore we get bombs, and people look for excuses to beat up and arrest demonstrators, hoping that some young people will engage in violent confrontations. And to make sure that this happens, you can bet your bottom dollar that agents provocateurs are already at work."
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> Fo was to see his dark premonitions come true, and during the summit protests, one could find extensive evidence of both provocations and excessive police violence. The most tragic event was when the young activist Carlo Giuliani died after first being shot and then run over by an armed police vehicle. The next night, the police raided a school that was used to house some of the demonstrators. Dozens of sleeping activists were brutally beaten by the police, and several of them needed to be sent to the hospital. It has later been proved that the cops themselves planted the Molotov cocktails they showed to the press to justify raiding the school.
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> There were also several instances of homemade bombs going off in Italy in the days before the Genoa summit. One of these was claimed by a group calling themselves Cooperativa Artigiana Fuoco e Affini (Occasionalmente Spettacolare). This is one of the groups who, according to the anonymous letter to La Repubblica, have joined together to form the Informal Anarchist Federation. Another of the four groups mentioned in the letter, Brigata XX luglio, claimed responsibility for two explosive devices set off in the vicinity of the police headquarters in Genoa in December 2002. Again, many Italian anarchists and leftists are convinced that all these incidents were the work of agents provocateurs.
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> Whoever is behind these letter bombs: fascists, intelligence services, anarchists, or perhaps lone individuals - one thing is sure: The Italian police and prosecutors are itching to use these events as an opportunity to crack down on a troublesome oppositional element. While the rest of Italy have never heard of the mysterious Informal Anarchist Federation, and are even questioning whether it actually exists, the Italian prosecutors claim to have full knowledge of the organization's structure and ideology. The city prosecutor of Bologna, Enrico Di Nicola, has told the press that this is an "insurrectionist anarchist organization" which consists of "individualists who don't accept any type of organization, structure or centralization of decision-making." Di Nicola further claimed that membership of the organization "may be about 350 in all of Italy." The question that naturally arises, is why these shady individuals would establish a federation, considering that they don't accept any type of organization?
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> To be fair, there actually does exist an insurrectional anarchist milieu in Italy. In issue one of The Nihilist, we wrote about the last time Italian prosecutors tried to crack down on this milieu. This was in the late 90s, after some anarchists were caught robbing a bank. 58 anarchists were then accused of being members of a subversive, paramilitary organization, a group called ORAI (Organizzazione Rivoluzionaria Anarchica Insurrezionalista). However, there was no evidence that this organization actually existed, and after a long and farce like court case, these accusations had to be dropped. (Although a number of the accused anarchists were convicted of other criminal offenses.)
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> There are signs that a new crackdown on the insurrectionalists is being planed. This time it seems that the authorities are trying to link the insurrectional anarchists with the remnants of the Marxist-Leninist armed groups of the 70's, such as the Red Brigades. The latest example of this came in August 2004 when someone placed a bomb in a Sardinian village, near a villa where the Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi were entertaining his British counterpart Tony Blair. An anonymous caller who claimed to represent the Proletarian Nuclei for Communism, a local Marxist separatist group, warned the police about the device. Despite this, interior minister Giuseppe Pisanu did his best to implicate anarchists, claiming that "the Sardinian terrorist milieu has now brought together remnants of the Red Brigades, separatists and anarchist-insurrectionists."
>
> This from Athens Indymedia
>
> Diplomacy Lessons
> John Brady Kiesling, former U.S. Foreign Service Officer
> Athens GREECE +30 210 322 7463 westtothesea{a}hotmail.com
>
> A small group on motorcycles, with an expansive view of what constitutes legitimate targets, can quickly prove the powerlessness of the police to defend private property or even their own police stations. Apart from gasoline bottles, the usual tool is a gazaki (in simplest form a propane gas canister wrapped in a petrol-soaked rag) placed to destroy a car or ATM. The better-organized groups publish short proclamations on sympathetic web sites to explain those attacks.
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> The "Conspiracy of Fire Cells" (Synomosia Pyrinon tis Fotias — SPF) was an attempt to increase the political impact of anti-authority violence. SPF appeared on January 21, 2008, with a barrage of 12 gas canister attacks against widely dispersed banks, car dealers, and the Public Power Company in Athens and Thessaloniki, during a half-hour period just after midnight. The declared purpose was solidarity with Thessaloniki anarchist Vangelis Voutsatzis, arrested in November 2007 for gazaki attacks.
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> For the next 20 months, SPF averaged one arson wave a month, usually in Athens and Thessaloniki simultaneously. The number and coordination of SPF's attacks - presumably six or more 4-6-person teams on motorbikes - alarmed police. SPF's retaliatory capabilities were an additional reason for Greek police to think twice about arresting "anarchists" for any but the most blatant and serious crimes.
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> Solidarity with local and foreign anarchists and hatred of banks, police, prisons, the army, and consumer society are the themes of SPF's 22 (as of 30 October 2009) extant proclamations. SPF is uninterested in class struggle and the quest for a future utopia. The proclamation writers embrace urban warfare not as a means to an end but as an end in itself, resistance as art. Modern consumer society is "slow suicide." "The revolutionary element of arson is not only in its material destruction but also in the transgressiveness of the act."
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> For more of this article
> http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=1129729
>
> Wikipedia article on Insurrectionary Anarchism
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurrectionary_anarchism
>
> Wikipedia article on Conspiracy of Fire Nuclei
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_of_Fire_Nuclei
>
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