Whilst responding to a comment on my previous post, it dawned on me that I had failed to mark a notable anniversary.
The bombing of Bologna railway station on 2 August 1980.
Twenty five years ago to the day (plus nine more days).
I’m not sure if the British press remembered either. I don’t recall seeing anything. You would have thought that somebody would have mentioned something. There again, it was only a bunch of wops I suppose.
Bologna is the state capital of Emiglia Romagna, the Italian province where my father’s family originate from. I was spending my school holidays with family in Emiglia at the time and I can still recall the whole of Italy going entirely batshit; in a manner not entirely similar to what happened in London last month.
The resonance doesn’t end there.
Eighty five people were killed and many more were injured. Before the investigation had even got started, the Italian government wasted no time in blaming Communists and, specifically, the Red Brigade as being responsible.
Only they weren’t.
Twenty five years on we still can’t be sure who set the bomb, though most Italians now believe that it was set by anti-Communist neo-fascists pretending to be Communists. The reason why we can’t be sure who did it is that the Italian government started to interfere with the official investigation as soon as some rather embarrassing names started turning up.
Those names included members of two interesting organisations that were intimately linked with the government…
‘P2’ – a very well connected Masonic organisation that occupied itself preparing for a fascist coup in Italy during the 1970s and 80s. In its spare time P2 was also involved in shady deals with the Vatican Bank and possibly also had a hand in the surprisingly untimely end of John Paul I from a 'heart attack'. That would be the same John Paul who had a history of low blood pressure and who was embalmed less than twelve hours after he died, without an autopsy. All thoughts of fascist coups died away in Italy after Berlusconi came to power. There didn’t seem to be any need.
Operation Gladio – a ‘stay behind’ intelligence network set up by the CIA in Italy during the Cold War to resist any future Russian or Communist occupation. When it became increasingly obvious that Russian tanks weren’t going to be rolling along the autostrade, Gladio operatives started to concern themselves with the ‘enemy within’ and used their US supplied weapons stockpiles to kill Italian Communists and launch 'false flag' terror operations to discredit Communists in general.
Now why would I mention all this in the context of the bombings in London last month?
Just whimsy I guess...
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