Red Brigades Say They 'Executed' Italy Official (Murdered Capitalist Intellectual Marco Biagi)

The New York Times ^ | 3/21/02 | Reuters

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March 21, 2002

Red Brigades Say They 'Executed' Italy Official

By REUTERS

Filed at 3:35 p.m. ET

ROME (Reuters) - An offshoot of Italy's Red Brigades urban guerrilla movement published a 26-page Internet message on Thursday saying it had ``executed'' a top government adviser and reviving fears of a new era in political killings.

Marco Biagi, 52, was shot dead on Tuesday night in the northern city of Bologna with the same pistol that the Red Brigades for the Construction of the Fighting Communist Party had used to kill another government aide in 1999.

Police pored over video material collected from security cameras around Bologna and focused on the testimony of a witness who according to Italian media saw a member of the group in the northern city on the day of the assassination.

The original Red Brigades were responsible for a slew of murders of politicians, businessmen and policemen in the late 1970s and 1980s.

Their most notorious act -- the 1978 kidnapping and killing of former prime minister Aldo Moro -- aimed to bring down the Italian state but in effect strengthened it by alienating even their sympathizers. A series of crackdowns followed and the group was believed defeated by the mid 1980s.

Police believe some of the jailed guerrillas who have not rejected the past still have contacts with the new group and searched their cells on Wednesday evening and on Thursday.

In a diatribe against modern capitalism, the new group declared on the Web that ``an armed nucleus of our organization executed Marco Biagi.'' It accused the Labour Ministry adviser of ``exploiting'' workers with the labor reforms he had co-authored.

In a lengthy passage, the group said it approved the September 11 attacks on the United States, calling them ``a concrete move to contrast imperialist strategies.''

Police said they believed the message was authentic.

Biagi's killing came amid tension in Italy over plans to change employment laws that have prompted unions to call a general strike.

President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi called for unity and dialogue on Thursday to combat the renewed threat of politically motivated violence.

``The horror and anguish over the barbaric assassination of Marco Biagi cannot and must not weaken our confidence in the force of democracy,'' he said.

Labour groups have said they refuse to bow to violence and will go ahead with the strike in April but they also called for a mass demonstration next Wednesday to denounce terrorism.

In a gesture toward the unions, Labour Minister Roberto Maroni called a meeting with them on Monday or Tuesday.

FEARS OF MORE VIOLENCE

The claim of responsibility of Biagi's murder, sent to labor unions and posted on the Web site www.caserta24ore.it, vowed to continue fighting Italy's ``anti-proletariat project'' and threatened to create the ``political-military'' conditions necessary for a lasting class war.

Biagi's murder raised fears of a resurgence in guerrilla violence after officials identified the pistol as the one used to kill another Labour Ministry adviser, Massimo D'Antona, under a different, center-left government in 1999.

Some government members suggested the unions and the center-left opposition were partly to blame for creating tension over the labor reforms.

``These groups come out when one tries to reform something because they fear the new...but also when the political debate becomes too harsh,'' said Industry Minister Antonio Marzano.

Biagi, who has also worked with center-left governments in the past, had received a series of telephone threats after a police escort was deemed unnecessary and suspended last year. ''They have abandoned you,'' one caller told him.

His widow told reporters: ``I was scared. I could feel it.''

The Biagi family announced on Thursday it will hold a private funeral on Friday morning despite government offers for a state funeral and asked the media to respect their suffering.

News of the cancellation of the bodyguard has sparked uproar and prompted angry accusations from Maroni who said he had requested protection for Biagi while some opposition politicians have urged Interior Minister Claudio Scajola to resign.

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From Libertarian Samizdata:

Scientific Socialism

When economist and law professor, Marco Biagi began advising the Italian government on reforms to Italy's ossified Labour Laws, the Italian left sprang into immediate action. Using the rationale of marxist production theory and by the rigourous employment of dialectic method, they planned to confound Biagi by convincing him of the systemic contradictions of free-market ideology.

But that didn't work so they just shot him.

"Investigators said flatly Wednesday that they had no doubt Biagi was slain over his controversial efforts to help Silvio Berlusconi's center-right government rewrite Italian labor law in a way that would make it easier to fire workers. The unions, and the left in general, vehemently oppose any challenge to the current labor law, which effectively guarantees many workers lifetime job security."

We have seen this in Europe before. In the late 60's and early 70's a number of marxist terror gangs starting springing up as the cracks in the heads of their own 'intellectuals' began to show. But, they were assuaged as Europe embraced the 'Third Way' and thus cocooned them from the chill wind of Reagan/Thatcher capitalism.

Only now, the cracks are starting to appear in the 'Third Way' as well and they know it. Having nothing else to offer, the die-hard disciples must resort to terror and murder. What else can they do when they have invested so much of their lives in a bankrupt philosophy that fewer and fewer people wish to buy or even browse? Like their apprentices in the anti-globo movement, they seethe within the spiritual prison cells of their own incoherent minds.

"An intelligence report to Parliament last week had warned of the risk of terror attacks in response to the conservative government's policies."

The article makes it clear that we are not dealing with Islamic radicals here but, in a sense, we might as well be. The same flat-earth mentality is at work; an identical impotent rage in the face of better people and better ideas. Wahabbism and marxism are merely two sides of the same psychotic coin and it is entirely predictable that they are undertaking a congruence of method.

The poor Mr.Biagi deserves better then to be a chilling portent of things to come. Tragically, though, that is exactly what he might be.

Posted by Perry de Haviland (London) on Thursday, March 21, 2002

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These terrorists need to die.

[StopDemocratsDotCom]

BASTARDS!

[KantianBurke]

Looks like Italy has a bunch of home grown John Walkers

[Cachelot]

Looks like Italy has a bunch of home grown John Walkers

They've always been there.

Interesting, is it not, that these marxists choose this moment in time to go live again, and align with the islamics. The national-socialists of EU and US are doing the same thing...

[livius]

Oh, great. They're back.

Not that they (Red Brigades) ever really went away; they were just dormant for awhile. But they clearly feel encouraged by Islamic attacks on the West, and they're probably going to resurface not only in Italy but in other parts of Europe.

[BJClinton]

Isn't it odd that the NYT didn't call them left-wing extremists?

[BOBTHENAILER]

Isn't it odd that the NYT didn't call them left-wing extremists?

What's really odd is that they didn't call them freedom fighters.

[BJClinton]

Good point, my perspective was skewed.

[Chad Fairbanks]

Damn... these guys are still around?

[Antoninus]

Bologna has traditionally been a hotbed of Italian marxism. I have long suspected that this is where the term "full of bologna" came from...

[JDGreen123]

They don't stand a chance if the Muslims sweep into Europe. The Red Brigade are minor leaguers compared to the militant Muslims.

Our old friends in Peru, the Shining Path Guerillas also have re-emerged this week. Its like a reunion of terrorists. We even had the ex-SLA woman sent to prison and Patty Hearst on all the talk shows in the last year. Maybe they will stage a comeback. I even look for the Serbian "Black Hand" terrorists from World War I to reappear soon not to mention the Anarchists and Luddites of the late 1800's staging a reunion tour. The Barbary Pirates are probably regrouping in Libya as we speak.

[livius]

Quite frankly, nothing would surprise me. Even the Barbary pirates....

[Catspaw]

The Red Brigades gone active again....Shining Path car bombing in Lima, Peru.... Hmmm. All of a sudden these terrorist groups are active after being dormant for years. I'm beginning to see a pattern here.

[VOA]

- An offshoot of Italy's Red Brigades urban guerrilla movement published
a 26-page Internet message on Thursday saying it had ``executed'' a top government adviser

I'd automatically suspect the perps to be language majors.
Most likely also big on "creative language" classes...and holders of PhDs.

I can hardly think of any other sort of profile for someone who'd take 26 pages
to proclaim "We shot the dude!".

[Askel5]

two sides of the same psychotic coin and it is entirely predictable that they are undertaking a congruence of method.

So ... when do we converge on Italy and Ireland's terrorists? Waitin' for another black September to roll around or what?

Roots of Soviet Terror

Abu Nidal Organisation
Arab Organisation of 15 May
Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine
Fatah
Hezbollah
Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Faction
Organisation of the Armed Arab Struggle
Palestine Liberation Front
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
(General Command Popular Struggle Front)
Sa'iqa

Basque Fatherland and Liberty group
Combatant Communist Cells (Belgium)
Direct Action (France and Belgium)
First of October Anti-Fascist Resistance Group (Spain)
Iraultza or Basque Armed Revolutionary Workers'Organisation (Spain)
Irish National Liberation Army (INLA)
Popular Forces 25 April (FP-25)
Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA)
Red Army Faction (Germany)
Red Brigades (Italy)
Revolutionary Cells (RZ)
Revolutionary Organisation 17 November (Greece)
Revolutionary Popular Struggle (Greece)

While the Soviets were urging the West to discard its image of the Soviets as an "enemy," they were duplicitously providing support to anti-Western terrorist organizations. on June 5, 1992, Russian Information Minister Mikhail Poltoranin told a news conference, according to the Washington Post (June 6, 1992), that:

documents would soon be released showing that the authors of "new political thinking" - a sarcastic reference to Gorbachev - practiced a "double standard" in foreign policy. He said the documents showed that the Kremlin continued to have contacts with terrorist and other subversive groups well into the Gorbachev era.

"The latest date on these documents is 1991. Assistance mainly took the form of money, weapons, special supplies," said Poltoranin. ..."Weapons were delivered by warships to be handed over somewhere in the Atlantic. Sometimes sacks or whatever were loaded on rafts. Some time later, another ship would come by and pick the load up."

The Post article noted:

Recent assertions by Russian officials that the Soviet Union channeled funds and arms to "terrorist groups" have dismayed the Kremlin's traditional allies in the Third World. At today's press conference, an Arab journalist asked Poltoranin if he was not confusing "terrorist organizations" with "national liberation movements" that Moscow openly supported.

"When we speak about assistance to terrorist activities, we mean supplies to terrorist groups that filed requests with the Central Committee, declaring their readiness, for example, to blow up oil pipelines or kill American businessmen," said Poltoranin. "They were supplied with rifles, guns, hard grenades, submachine guns, and so on. This is terrorism and this had the support of the party leadership."

---

Two Soviet placements in the Nigerian press in 1989 illustrate how this concept was understood by the Soviets. One, entitled "Respecting rules of international behavior," appeared in the March 29, 1989 issue of the Tide, authored anonymously by "A correspondent." It made it clear that, in the Soviet mind, the "de-ideologization of state-to-state relations" affected only one sphere of international affairs and did not mean the end of Soviet support for "national liberation movements." It stated:

De-ideologization is one of the basic principles of new thinking, advanced by the Soviet leadership.

Does this mean that Moscow is abandoning the policy of support for national liberation movements, as some people claim? Not all. When we speak about the de-ideologization of relations between states we should remember that they are only a part of the total package of international relations, which includes a broad range of contacts and ties between nongovernmental, mass, professional, party, humanitarian, and other organizations.

When we deal with parties, movements, and trends, we proceed from class interests.

...In general, the era of national liberations revolutions is over.

...The exceptions are in the Middle East and South West Africa.

Eliminating the Enemy Image ...

[VOA]

Oh, and if it took these guys 26 pages to say "We are the group who shot the dude!"
just imagine what kind of government these idiots would create.

Probably something even worse than Gray Davis' current version of California state government.
OK, maybe not that inefficient.

[Askel5]

Pattern?

You can practically see the buckling of the chain as they play crack the whip on the West.

[WOSG]

I see this terrorist group is not described using that term by Reuters. hmmmm.

This is sad. hopefully it will discredit the left completely in Italy.