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NATO's Secret Armies: Operation GLADIO and Terrorism in Western Europe (Contemporary Security Studies) by Ganser Daniele
Book Summary InformationAuthor: Ganser Daniele Edition: Hardcover Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published) Published: 2005-07-12 ISBN: 0714656070 Number of pages: 336 Publisher: Routledge
Book Reviews of NATO's Secret Armies: Operation GLADIO and Terrorism in Western Europe (Contemporary Security Studies)Book Review: A damning inditement of our supposedly democratic system Summary: 5 Stars
A seminal work in which Danielle Ganser provides us with the coordinates to help us put things like the so-called War On Terror into their proper contexts. He shows that the majority (if not all) of the western European governments, supposedly democratic in nature, have engaged in activities which can only be described as undemocratic since the end of WWII. The necessity to "prevent the spread of Communism" is an invalid excuse when examined from the standpoint of the democratic will; for if the majority favour Communism then, theoretically, that is what democracy is all about. And there can be no question of degrees; democracy either exists or it does not. Like free speech, you cannot have democracy up to a point.
That there has since the 1990s been little public accountability (despite public acknowledgement that the activities did take place) raises crucially important questions about the validity of the War On Terror, British involvement in Northern Ireland and elsewhere, and many other similar occupations and internal conflicts as well as many of the events which have been attributed to "terrorists" over the past decade or so. For not only do we not know that the countries involved actually dismantled the stay-behind armies in the 1990s, we don't know which countries ran stay-behind armies in each others' countries - and whether these were likewise dismantled. In fact, the main protagonists (the UK & USA) have so far refused to comment.
Whilst many would argue that this is essential to protect national security, this argument, when examined logically, is also groundless. For if we truly do live in democracies then no government should be above the law. And when supposedly-demoractic governments encourage - or turn a blind eye to - actions which are undeniably anti-democratic then it would seem to stand to reason that we actually don't live in democracies at all.
Danielle Ganser has added one more link into an ever-strengthening chain of evidence that democracy truly does not exist. A truly disturbing story, this is history that everyone should know.
Note: don't be put off by the price of the book; it is available at Amazon.co.uk at a slight reduction... ;-)
Summary of NATO's Secret Armies: Operation GLADIO and Terrorism in Western Europe (Contemporary Security Studies)This fascinating new study shows how the CIA and the British secret service, in collaboration with the military alliance NATO and European military secret services, set up a network of clandestine anti-communist armies in Western Europe after World War II. These secret soldiers were trained on remote islands in the Mediterranean and in unorthodox warfare centres in England and in the United States by the Green Berets and SAS Special Forces. The network was armed with explosives, machine guns and high-tech communication equipment hidden in underground bunkers and secret arms caches in forests and mountain meadows. In some countries the secret army linked up with right-wing terrorist who in a secret war engaged in political manipulation, harrassement of left wing parties, massacres, coup d'états and torture. Codenamed 'Gladio' ('the sword'), the Italian secret army was exposed in 1990 by Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti to the Italian Senate, whereupon the press spoke of "The best kept, and most damaging, political-military secret since World War II" (Observer, 18. November 1990) and observed that "The story seems straight from the pages of a political thriller." (The Times, November 19, 1990). Ever since, so-called 'stay-behind' armies of NATO have also been discovered in France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxemburg, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Austria, Greece and Turkey. They were internationally coordinated by the Pentagon and NATO and had their last known meeting in the NATO-linked Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC) in Brussels in October 1990.
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