| Table of contents no. 1/2008 |
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The relaunching of a complex system
by Enrico MICHELI
The Services: from "Yalta Order" to "disorder Nations"
by Carlo JEAN
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Internet - Intelligence:the spectre of a cyberwar
(by Umberto RAPETTO e Roberto DI NUNZIO) |
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Answers by: Andrea APARO, Robero DI NUNZIO, Corrado GIUSTOZZI, Vincenzo MEROLA, Ferrante PIERANTONI e Roberto VACCA
The technological evolution, as many times mentioned in Gnosis, has deeply affected the development of the Intelligence: uprooting methodologies and traditions, sidelining those unable to change with the times, thwarting titanic efforts, and making the most qualified professionalism obsolete.
The mobility of communications and the pervasion of Internet to every corner of the planet has determined a new Copernican revolution, according to which the Intelligence agent does not tirelessly search for untraceable information, but battles to sift the flood of data that pours onto his desk. Yesterday, the hunt: today, the filter: the overabundance of news and informative elements can drown even the most determined intelligence operator. The searching gives way to the screening, remodelling the preliminary activities of any informative initiative....(foto Ansa) |
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| Essays and articles |
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 | The fear of crime, the sentiments of insecurity continue to penetrate the Italian society. Common experience and surveys confirm this: not only those surveys effected in occasion of recurring painful events. Millions of pages have interpreted these sentiments.Is the new fear the fruit of a transformation of social relations? The effect of the disintegration of certainty with regard to the Welfare system crisis?
The fear of the great migrations? Or the consequence of inadequate public investment? The analyses on the causes of social alarm are legitimate, useful, praiseworthy, but they do not always help to find remedies. Not only must the causes be examined, but also the modifications, that is: the dynamics of the phenomena. And today, in matters of social alarm and fear of crimes, certain changes can be noted.
The need of security is de-idealized, no longer manifested as a corollary of a vision of society. Security is considered a basic need, without labels, fundamental to existence and civil life. Furthermore, new attitudes of reaction to crime are becoming evident.... |
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 | It is difficult to understand, in the absence of direct contact, and meetings which are susceptible to monitoring and tapping, the capacity of the Al Qaeda penetration into the Islamic world, and the capillarity of its propaganda.
Within the space of a few years, the qaedists have passed from amateur video from a cave to a chain of messages. And also the channels of transmission of the information have changed: from satellite TV, Al Qaeda has passed to qaedist sites on the Internet. Anyone, in any part of the world, can access to Internet, receive messages, exchange information, announce imminent actions, develop that “mediatic terrorism” which generates fear and panic without firing a single shot. This is a foretaste of the thesis developed by the author in his book shortly to be published.(photo Ansa) |
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 | This precious contribution photographs the situation in which Pakistan has precipitated since the tragic assassination of Benazir Bhutto. The author, beyond examining the different factors which contributed to such a serious, even though not sudden, evolvement of events, underlines the dangerous “radicalization of the Pakistan Islamic panorama” that is taking place. And it is precisely to this radicalism, “much more global and modern than the local and archaic one of the Afghani Taliban” that we must give due attention, also in light of possible threats which could involve “other Countries present in the Isaf Mission”.(photo Ansa) |
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 | In these last years, certain Governments, in particular, in the emerging Countries, have exercised, in a progressively growing manner, the role of investor on the international financial markets, constituted in the form of “Sovereign Funds of Investment” (FSI, known as Sovereign Wealth Funds – SWFs), administered separately from the State Budget, usually through private management, and financed from income deriving from the management of natural resources, from tax surplus or from international reserves.
This activity of “sovereign” patrimonial management raises questions relative to both national interests and to the national security of the States which are object of the investments.
The increase of foreign participation in an internal economic sector is certainly a problem of national interest. But also there is the risk that the investment plans of a Sovereign Fund can “hide” projects of control of technologies (of an industrial, financial or military nature) of the Country where the Sovereign Fund invests, or of acquisition of “dominant positions” in companies holding patents, or of control, “with hostile ends”, of critical infrastructures (telecommunications, energy or ports) or of access to the natural resources which are considered strategic, being “command levers” of the national economy...(photo Ansa) |
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 | It is the 17th of February, 2008, and Kosovo unilaterally claims its own independence. An historic event which the author tells as a sort of running commentary, suggesting lights and shades between past, ‘present and future’ of that part of Europe where, it appears, that stability has not yet been reached.(photo Ansa) |
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 | The Law 21st February 2006, No. 49 has changed the criminal sanctioning and administrative regulatory directives for narcotic substances. In actual fact, the modification intervention concerns also other sectors of the directives: from the care and recuperation of the drug addict (alternative measures to detention, precautionary measures system) to the action of fighting the illicit drug traffic (undercover activities). From among the new modifications which concern the criminal sanctioning system, we shall deal with what most interests the operator. In the first place, reference is made to the introduced ‘Equalization standards’ of all the prohibited narcotics – shown on one single table – which has determined an undoubtedly worsened sanctioning for the handling of hashish and marijuana. It concerns a change with which not everyone agrees. However, it is necessary to grasp its real significance and, most importantly, the legal effects...(photo Ansa) |
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 | In an historically complex geo-political context, which is that of the Israeli-Palestinian, this contribution proposes to analyse the present division of Palestine between the main political powers: Fatah, OLP and Hamas. This scenario becomes always more controversial, especially after the Hamas election victory of 2006.(photo Ansa) |
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| Surveys |
| TRUE STORIES, ANECDOTES AND LEGENDS |
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 | The story of the spy ‘Cicero’ was also filmed with James Mason as protagonist, but no-one has ever discovered why Elyesa Bazna decided to sell the most closely held secrets of the Allies to Nazi Germany: secrets which could have drastically changed the outcome of the 2nd World War. Fortunately, the top political and military officials of the III Reich did not believe them and, to add insult to injury, paid the informer in counterfeit money.
(photo www.frosina.org) |
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FROM THE ARCHIVES TO HISTORY  |
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 | In this number we present a document from the archives, dated June, 1925, in which the Ministry of the Interior asks the Division of Classified and General Affairs, whether or not, to adhere to the request – forwarded from the Copenhagen Police Division – to make ‘fingerprints available … of individuals suspected in any way of committing terrorist acts’. Such request resulted in the creation of a DACTYLOSCOPIC CATALOGUE, to be incorporated in the LONG DISTANCE INTERNATIONAL IDENTIFICATION REGISTER composed, as expressly written in the document, with the JORGENSEN method. The communication of the identification details....( photo www.chezplumeau.com) |
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| BOOK REVIEW |
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 | The globalized economy is muddy water in which dangerous fish swim, including international terrorism. Muddy water which nourishes new wealth, new poverty and new slavery. It is this that Loretta Napoleoni defines “Rogue Economy”. It is a book that is uncomfortable and goes against the tide. As disquieting as “Terrorism S.p.A” and “Al Zarqawi – story and myth of a Jordanian proletarian”. All of them to read with attention to understand what there is beyond the veil of illusion. |
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| CHRONOLOGY OF ORGANIZED CRIME |
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 | We present the chronological file of the most significant arrests of the organized crime
During the last three months, followed by an evocative and colourful description of one of them. (photo Ansa) |
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| CHRONOLOGY OF TERRORISM |
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 | 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”. (photo Ansa) |
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