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?
Uhm yes?
A novelist who took on the Italian mafia and lived
91–98 of 98 posts
Re: A novelist who took on the Italian mafia and lived
#92Sciascia, 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…
Nit: I suppose you mean 1900s, not just "'900". I mean, one could reasonably suspect that good writers existed in Italy in early 10th century, too.
See my other comment
Re: A novelist who took on the Italian mafia and lived
#93Sciascia, 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 thought I had replied to you, but somehow I ended up replying to Antirez's original comment. See my other comment
Re: A novelist who took on the Italian mafia and lived
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why wouldn't an up and coming government administration want to take professional photos and engage in all the other trappings of legitimate government?
I agree. Syria’s new leader, a former Al Qaeda, put on a suit and got a major glow up: https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20250508-syrian-interim-preside... . Macron embraced him warmly. News orgs gave him positive coverage. Then Trump said what everyone was thinking: he looks pretty good in a suit: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/ahmad-a... .
I have no idea why you’re being downvoted, since what you say is objectively true.
Re: A novelist who took on the Italian mafia and lived
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
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/
That was a serious question, thank you.
I think of mafia as providing services that a government/legitimate private entities cannot provide.
Human trafficking - yup, I should have thought of that. In the counties listed in the link the governments does serve that mafia function. I was US centric in my thinking.
Prostitution - no. It can be legal, but the government does not engage in it.
Drug trafficking - I am sure some governments do it. I wouldn't put US in that list. Both the government investigations and the newspaper investigations found the allegations unsupported, according to the given link. I would say it could happen incidentally but organized crime does not need to worry about the government as a competitor in this space.
Gambling - the lottery is not illegal gambling. But you can argue that is tautologically true.
Racketeering - I don't see where in that link it says that the government engages in racketeering. Rico is a law that makes prosecuting racketeering easier.
Re: A novelist who took on the Italian mafia and lived
#96My 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…
It's... a bit more complicated than that.
That episode, the Falcone Judge murder, was a bit of a last straw in the way most of italian political parties had dealt with mafia till that point. They realized the issue couldn't be contained to the sicilian cultural and political environment and they couldn't be... that much complacent (they still are, but at least they try to save face when they're found).
Long story short, every political authority at the time was pretty much aware the murder was going to happen, they just didn't expect a terrorist-like approach.
Once we got to that point, a newish department, the DIA[1] was given full authority to handle the issue... again, for a time. Then it went swallowed up too in the neverending whirpool of shit that is the Italian politics.
In the meanwhile, the Mafia got smarter, and rather than going in a full frontal attack with the authorities, they became much more... diplomatic, offering indirect support trough some proxies to some newly political figures that emerged shortly after. You probably heard about that Berlusconi guy.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direzione_Investigativa_Antima...
Re: A novelist who took on the Italian mafia and lived
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 j…
Because that's just how media works. It's like asking why sportsmen and scientists are invited to Big Brother VIP.
> ou can understand that he was complaining about the risk of judge appointments drived by anti-mafia positions
But if you read it all, you can clearly see that he was mostly pissed off at the risk of identifying the entirety of his beloved Sicily with the mafia; and in this context, that everything about the island would be judged in relation to that phenomenon. In addition, he was worried at the fact that many in the ruling political party had started using antimafia as a shield; that's a veiled reference to Giulio Andreotti, who around that time shifted his positions and passed antimafia laws to shore up his support in the party (which is why the mafia moved their votes to the Socialist Party in '87).
People obviously misread that column (willingly or otherwise) and proceeded to use it as a bat to beat any specialized anti-mafia figure, starting from the very person mentioned in it, Borsellino, who would end up isolated and assassinated by the mafiosi.
Re: A novelist who took on the Italian mafia and lived
#98Do 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?
In America some non-Italian mafias do get labeled as "a mafia" by the FBI. Generally the distinguishing factors between a "gang" and a "mafia" in FBI nomenclature is scale, sophistication, and organization structure/principles. In general, it being a "family operation" (trusting blood family over government or family as government) is a large factor, and often the "omerta" principle is a requirement (that's a strong, core collective binding to secrecy; "omerta" if held as a strong principal "breaks" the prisoner's dilemma game as a law enforcement tool). The Cornbread Mafia, taken apart by the FBI in the 1980s, is one interesting example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornbread_Mafia