| Table of contents no. 2/2007 |
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Assets of the Criminal Organizations
at the service of society |
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Answers by: Raffaele CANTONE, Francesco FORGIONE, Angela NAPOLI, Lucia REA
It is a year at least since we all started whitnessing a clear attack of the clans against those groups set up to re-utilize the assets and goods siezed from the criminal organizations: could this be a challenge and, all toghether, a message to the institutions? It clearly appears that, for the fight against the mafia organizations to prevail, we need to locate their assets, sieze them and re-convert them. Also because such assets are so consistent and so intermingled with the economical tissue, that they represent, in certain areas of the Country, an essential element for the growth. The Forum has analyzed, also in detail, problems and possibilities of this element of contrast against the organized crime. (photo Ansa) |
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| Essays and articles |
|  | Since the year 1977, there has been an ever increasing number of journalistic and scientific works dedicated to a crucial period of contemporary history: the 70’s and, above all, the year 1977.
The 1970’s are accompanied by a serious economic, social and political crisis of the West, but they represent also a laboratory able to generate new products: both innovative and regressive.
On one side, in Italy and Germany, there is the effort to overcome the great divisions tied to the Cold War and to the antagonisms of the 30’s: In Italy, with the Historic Compromise, in Germany, with the Great Coalition. On another side, the large majorities went hand in hand with the multiplication of the conflicts, and to the rooting of the political violence (in the streets, but also exercised by armed minorities) which blood-stained Europe and, above all, Italy. The curiosity shown towards those years and towards that year is not only due to the arid thirty-year anniversary, but it is reinforced also by the fact that in 1977, social phenomena appear, which even yet accompany the developed societies: the crisis and the “end” of labour, the emergence of new social subjects excluded from the Fordian development, the incapacity of welfare to satisfy new needs.
Certain reconstructions of 1977 have been conducted with the detachment of the historiographer and/or journalist: analyses of the sources..... | | | |
|  | The SISDe’s Academy hosts academics and experts in topics of institutional interest, so as to support the knowledge of those who operate in the intelligence community. Because of the peculiarity of the topics dealt with each time, we deemed convenient to offer to our readers the content of the conferences. We shall start with the speech given by Dr. Pietro VIGNA, on the phenomenon of organized crime. The speaker, while outlining the new strategies of “Cosa Nostra”, focuses, amongst other aspects, on the evolution of the mafia enterprise, that has been changing, since its original form, into its present shape, where the presence of the mafia’s interests remains concealed to the outside world. | | | |
|  | The notable drop in the use of cocaine recently registered in zones like North America is counterbalanced by an alarming increase in many European countries, where levels have reached among the highest in the world. A correct evaluation of the phenomenon cannot be reached without considering an analysis of the vertiginous change in the scenes relative to both the production and commercialization of narcotics and the consequent repercussions, particularly, on Columbia, one of the major producers of cocaine, which is, at the moment, shaken by problems of guerrilla warfare, kidnappings and by a tormented “moral question”. Let us try to understand how the situation stands through considerations made by Columbia’s Vice-President, Francisco Santos Calderon in a recent interview with Tg3. | | | |
|  | Delocalization appears to be an essential requirement to sustain and confront economical competition. The reaserch for lower costs often leeds to delocalization strategies of the productive process. Is it a danger or an opportunity for the italian system to tranfer the productive process abroad? Can delocalization raise the tension in the labour classes and, therefore, pose new risks for the national security? (photo Ansa) | | | |
|  | How can terrorists be identified before they perpetrate destructive attacks? From the United States to the European Union, the question is being asked; how the techniques for the filing and analysis of preventive and anti-terrorist strategy information can be streamlined. In the meantime, the terrorist escapes control. The panorama is, in fact, so vast and many-sided that it is difficult to understand and know it in its complexity. However, to intervene with the “preventive” aim, as the American anti-terrorist philosophy maintains, raises many questions in Europe. There is a need to reflect upon the errors already committed, improve the methodologies of the utilization of the data and, above all, know better the potential terrorist, before he actually becomes one, when he is still “our” very normal next-door neighbour.(photo Ansa) | | | |
|  | By now, united Europe represents a geopolitical reality in the extreme foreground of the world scene. But still there is no coherent common policy in the fight against terrorism although on this ground one can speak of a “shared memory” on the Old continent. In this article, the various possible explanations for this deficit will be taken into consideration.
In this regard, one realizes the tendency to add up, rather than to integrate, the various experiences, with the result of favouring the technical aspects over the precise political ones.
Therefore, a compared analysis will be made of the principle European constitutional courses on the subject of fighting the subversive phenomena and of the management of emergency situations: Great Britain, France, Spain, Italy and Germany. The British experience is characterized by a very pragmatic approach, which allows the Government to act with ample freedom, without, nevertheless, infringing the rights embodied in the Rule of Law. While in France, the role of the President of the Republic is decisive, the powers of whom are very wide, subordinate, however, to the control of both Parliament and constitutional Justice. The experience of these last years in Germany, decidedly unbalanced in favour of the guarantees of individual rights, where the constitutional union has a fundamental role in the institutional mechanics. Italy and Spain are on a par by the refusal of the legislation of emergency – a refusal confirmed even with recent exacerbation of the terrorist threat. Therefore, a variegated picture emerges, in which, however, it is possible to trace a common political philosophy inspired by the following principles: the democracies have the right and the duty to impede that fundamental rights are utilized against the constitutional system; liberty and security cannot be bartered; the fight against terrorism cannot be reduced to a police and judicial question, but calls upon the Government, above all, in its dialectic relations with Parliament. The construction of a common policy against terrorism could be the most important way to reach an effective constitutional integration of Europe. | | | |
|  | In this article are outlined the different kinds of under cover operations contained and provided for in our legislation, also in the light of the new elements introduced by the Law nr. 146/2006, on trans-national crime. There is an effort to shed some light the most delicate – at an interpretative level – “trial situations” contained in the legislation, with special reference to the absence of liability for the undercover agent, to his “position in trial” and to the content of the statements that he can be called to make. ( photo Ansa) | | | |
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| Surveys |
ALL-ITALIAN STORIES  | |  | The imaginary story assembles certain ideas which, without the pretension of wanting to be exhaustive, nonetheless, throw light on the contradictions which lacerate certain Sicilian criminal contexts and concern the collusive relations which feed the power of the Cosa Nostra. A grey, ambiguous picture emerges, which tries to isolate contiguous experiences and to investigate the sense, also from a human aspect. Without indulging in the hagiography of the protagonist, the conclusion is to reduce the mafia stigma to its everyday cruelty, banal and tied to the power game, to which not only the criminal organizations aim. The title, besides, brings to mind the statute of Cosa Nostra to use violence necessary for the attainment of the scope, ‘preserve the patch when the hole demands an adequate intervention, alternating the choices of ruining and tolerance to the recourse to violence, according to opportunity and convenience. ( photo www.mafianews.it/) | | | |
| TRUE STORIES, ANECDOTES AND LEGENDS | |  | The intent of this new column is to re-read certain spy stories of the past, bringing back “true stories”, if only briefly – to outline the protagonists, “anecdotes” and “metropolitan legends” to lead consolidated, but untrue beliefs, to the reality. The one we now propose is a “true story”. The year is 1967, the place, Algeria, during the war of liberation. ( photo content.answers.com/) | | | |
| FROM THE ARCHIVES TO HISTORY | |  | The problem of ‘air security’ was presented in all its dramatic force following the attack on the Twin Towers, which has obliged the greater part of all nations to attune their security policies, adjusting regulations and interventions, above all, in the matter of air defence. The necessity of a common strategy is testified to, in this column, by a document from the archives of 1915, in which is seen that also the Vatican, with the objective of defence against “air dangers on Rome”, adopted, in wartime, preventive measures against interventions on the territory, founded on collaboration with the neighbouring State. In fact, in the writing, addressed to the Director General of the Public Security from the Village Police Station, not only refuges for the papal personnel more at risk and strategic points of observation, but fixed precise agreements between Inspector Bertini and the Commander of the Papal barracks to facilitate the operations which would guarantee security. ( photo www.romeguide.it/foto/romasparita) | | | |
| BOOK REVIEW | | | A novel by the writer, Frederick Forsyth, dedicated to the fight against the terrorism of Al Qaeda led by Osama Bin Laden and his right-hand man, the Egyptian medical doctor, Al Zawahiri. It is the task of Mike Martin, Special Air Force veteran, to face the risk of infiltrating the terrorist organization. The story unwinds from Afghanistan to Pakistan, from the green hills of England to the jungle and the seas of the Indian Ocean, from the ultra-technological laboratories of intelligence to the operations in the field. The novel has the power to grip the reader, who at the end, realizes that he has learned many things that he didn’t know on the many whys of the Afghan situation, on the Islamic religion, on terrorism and counter-terrorism, and on the difficult fight undertaken by the West. | | | |
| CHRONOLOGY OF TERRORISM | | | It is understood that an act of terrorism is a violent action, politically motivated, intended to strike objectives of symbolic value and destined also to intimidate a ‘targeted audience’ socially or politically connected to the primary objective.
The act of terrorism, unlike that of ‘political violence’ (carried out by individuals or groups acting ‘in the open’)and that of the ‘guerrilla ’(carried out with instruments and paramilitary logistics) is usually performed by individuals or groups who operate in secrecy or undercover, or in any event, under disguised conditions within the threatened societies”. | | | |
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| APPENDIX
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