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A novelist who took on the Italian mafia and lived

thetimes.com

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Re: A novelist who took on the Italian mafia and lived

#81

Post by lIl-IIIl »

etherus wrote: post #75
antirez wrote: post #23

Sciascia, btw, is one of the biggest thinkers and writers of '900. It is not really defined by his mafia-related novels and takes. He used to be friend with Borges, and was regarded as one of the top men in humanistic culture. Disclaimer: I was born in a town (Campobello di Licata) near his town (Racalmuto), but I'm not saying this because of this fact. If you never read Sciascia, I suggest you starting from his last…

As an aside, do you use dvorak as your keyboard layout? The ' for 1 typo is quite rare with qwerty, but I could see you meaning '1900s, though that becomes two characters in a short space. Thanks for the recommendation!

I think it's an Italian convention.

https://areasosta.com/faq/come-si-scrive-900-in-italiano

Re: A novelist who took on the Italian mafia and lived

#82

Post by lIl-IIIl »

Carrok wrote: post #42
rayiner wrote: post #41

Do all countries have something like an Italian mafia? Is there a German or British mafia of a similar scale and sophistication, but we just call them something else?

Most just call them the government.

Does the government engage in human trafficking, prostitution, drug trafficking, illegal gambling, racketeering, identity fraud, etc?

Re: A novelist who took on the Italian mafia and lived

#83

Post by jimnotgym »

I always thought it was fascinating how the Sicilian mafia started. Basically the English demand for lemons to prevent scurvy grew much faster than any institutions to control it. Protection rackets rose to control the trade.

https://theconversation.com/citrus-fruits-scurvy-and-the-ori...

Re: A novelist who took on the Italian mafia and lived

#84

Post by Tom1380 »

antirez wrote: post #23

Sciascia, btw, is one of the biggest thinkers and writers of '900. It is not really defined by his mafia-related novels and takes. He used to be friend with Borges, and was regarded as one of the top men in humanistic culture. Disclaimer: I was born in a town (Campobello di Licata) near his town (Racalmuto), but I'm not saying this because of this fact. If you never read Sciascia, I suggest you starting from his last…

It's not a typo. In Italian, we call the nineteen hundreds the nine hundreds in speech. So when we write it, we use '900s. As 900s without it would be the actual 900s

Re: A novelist who took on the Italian mafia and lived

#87

Post by markus_zhang »

fragmede wrote: post #79
markus_zhang wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mafia exists because legal entities refuse to take responsibilities —- oh it’s too expensive to do X so we will leave it alone or legalize it. So eventually the underground takes over and Mafia becomes quasi governments. To eradicate you need a stronger central government that is willing to send its probes into the deepest of the society and has a strong hand. Unfortunately this also has unforeseen consequences as we…

Does it need to be centralized?

After a bit of thought, no it doesn’t. Actually a better way is to have strong citizens than a strong central government.

Re: A novelist who took on the Italian mafia and lived

#88

Post by Carrok »

lIl-IIIl wrote: post #82
Carrok wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most just call them the government.

Does the government engage in human trafficking, prostitution, drug trafficking, illegal gambling, racketeering, identity fraud, etc?

Is this a serious question?

human trafficking? yup. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/how-to...

prostitution? yup. https://www.awakenjustice.org/is-prostitution-a-choice

drug trafficking? yup. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_involvement_in_Contra_coca...

gambling? yup. https://www.powerball.com/

racketeering? yup. https://www.justia.com/criminal/docs/rico/

Re: A novelist who took on the Italian mafia and lived

#89

Post by lormayna »

toyg wrote: post #73
lormayna wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about the year of birth, it's about the role. Saviano creates his own career with mafia and now is acting as opinionist to any other option (i.e. now about the constitutional referendum that "will enforce the mafia"). Falcone, Borsellino, Livatino, Don Puglisi (just to mention people that paid with their own life) fight heavily against mafia, but they never converted this fight in a career.

This is an unrealistic argumentation, usually deployed to paint contemporaries in a bad light by comparing them to "saints" who are, conveniently, always dead. And it's particularly funny that Borsellino is now in the "saints" category, when he was explicitly namechecked by Sciascia himself in the newspaper column that originated the term "anti-mafia professional". Falcone also got extremely close to becoming the nat…

> And it's particularly funny that Borsellino is now in the "saints" category, when he was explicitly namechecked by Sciascia himself in the newspaper column that originated the term "anti-mafia professional".

If you read the original article from Sciascia [1], you can understand that he was complaining about the risk of judge appointments drived by anti-mafia positions, more than competence.

> Saviano, however, is just a specialized journalist.

If Saviano is only a specialized journalist, why is invited in many public talk-show where the topic is different from Mafia?

[1] https://www.archivioantimafia.org/sciascia.php

Re: A novelist who took on the Italian mafia and lived

#90

Post by LtWorf »

alexpotato wrote: post #66

My mom, who is from Italy, has some great lines about the Mafia: "Italy will never go bankrupt b/c we have the Pope AND the Mafia" I once asked her how the Mafia was reined in and she mentioned: "The Mafia was once trying to kill some judge or politician and they blew up several hundred meters of highway to do it. They also killed a lot of innocent people and the outcry was so big that the Carbinieri(Italian FBI) got…

There's carabinieri in every 600 inhabitants village. Them being involved isn't any kind of big deal.

I think people who don't live in italy and have no understanding about italy are allowed to not comment on things they don't know.

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