| Table of contents no. 4/2008 |
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Handbook – manual - set of rules – guide -Decalogue
by Natale ARGIRO'
The foreigner between expulsion and being turned back
by Giuseppe AMATO
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Global financial crisis
by Emanuela C. DEL RE |
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Answers by: David GARDNER, Daniel GROS, Alberto NEGRI, Hardo PAJULA, Adolfo URSO
From the George Mason University, in Virginia, Barack Obama, a few days before his inauguration to the Presidency of the United States, launched his anti-crisis “manifesto”, the strategy of which is based on the attempt to elaborate a new model of development. In the same days, in Paris, the work of the International Conference opened “A new world, a new capitalism” on the global financial crisis. Participants in the Conference were, among others, Giulio Tremonto, Angela Merkel, Tony Blair and Nicolas Sarkozy, for whom it is necessary “to reform capitalism, certainly not destroy it, to restore the balance of the roles of the State and the Market”. Europe – after a long period of economic boom and, above all, a few years after the structural reforms started by the Countries which lately joined the European Union – was precipitated into an economic crisis from which neither the depth nor the duration can be foreseen with precision...(Photo Ansa) |
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| Essays and articles |
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 | In the ports of the world, tens of dozens of ships wait at anchor to be chartered, but there is nothing moving in the ports (1). This is, perhaps, the image that describes better than any other the world financial crisis. Some very large navigation companies have declared downturns of up to 30%, compared to last year. The African raw materials accumulate more rapidly than they are loaded onto the ships and Suez has registered a decrease of passages of 7%. At Lagos, the ships have been in line for days without being able to unload the petroleum and other goods on board. (2). The economy no longer navigates under full canvas. This, which could seem to be a metaphor, is instead, a reality. And yet, the crisis that is gnawing the world originated in the top echelons of the financial magnets and not in the mines or in the Asiatic and African ports. (Photo by mediaenvinment.wordpress.com) |
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 | The Guardia di finanza originated as an Institution destined to defend the interests of the Inland Revenue and to protect the national production. The Corp was committed, according to the regulations of the Institution, to guarantee the respect for the fiscal obligation and impede that illegal importation of goods steals resources from the Treasury or could damage the internal economy with the introduction of foreign goods onto the market – tasks which, at the beginning, were prevalently of the State, seen from a conception of the economy tied to protectionist principles. The State vocation of the Guardia di Finanze continued for decades until well after the 2nd World War. In the last thirty years there has been a rapid transformation due to the burst through of a new type of criminal activity in Italy and in the developed Countries, as well as, a metamorphosis in the economic fabric. The Guardia di Finanza within a few decades has found itself in the front line in actions countering organized crime... |
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 | The terrorist attacks on the Oberoi and Taj Mahal hotels at the Hebrew Centre and railway station of Mumbai generated declarations of non-involvement and messages of solidarity with the Indian Government from all the Heads of State of the Islamic Countries. The international analysts are not of one voice concerning the reasons and matrix of the attacks: from the destabilization of Pakistan to the attempt of provoking new friction with India. No-one has yet been able to clarify who was behind this operation, apparently out of pattern for the type of objectives, even less – if they are reliable – the claims of the unknown Mujaheddin of the Deccan or of the more known Lashkar Al Qaeda... (Photo Ansa) |
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 | The present world financial crisis is being characterized also by the involvement, in the international decision making, of new protagonists, until now considered as “emerging”. In this sense, the European Union has asked China for an active participation in the international counteraction to the crisis and a commitment to the drafting of new regulations of conduct for the world financial system. On China’s part, the President, Hu Jintao, has underlined the importance, for both sides, of collaboration between Asia and Europe, even though, according to the Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao, the contribution that China can give to the global crisis, today, is tied to maintaining its stability and internal economic development. The modality with which Peking intends to “participate” and contribute” to the global financial crisis is, therefore, in caution and pragmatism and in the sustainability, at the base of the politics adopted up to the present...( Photo Ansa) |
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 | The areas of political-military instability, the facility of arms procurement – also at high potential – the large number of ships laden with goods of all kinds that transit along routes with no alternatives, fuels a phenomenon that since Roman times periodically recurs: piracy. Ships seized; ship owners who pay millions of euro in ransom money; private security companies that offer to escort the ships; war ships that join forces to keep open the routes and intervene in case of attacks. Guido Olimpio explains who they are, how they function, how much they make and how they recycle the money – the pirates of the third millennium. The author investigates also the possible ties with fringe groups of Islamic terrorism and attempts to individuate adequate responses of counteraction, both at a military and legal level.
(Photo lighthousepatriotjournal.files.wordpress.com) |
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 | To communicate through the transmission of thought; to control a human being through the alteration and manipulation of the mind is an ancient aspiration, practiced, above all, in the East. It seems that the way to reach this objective was first opened by Stalinist Russia in the 30’s and then, after the Korean War, when the survivors of the Chinese prisoner of war camps showed strange behaviour, it was baptized by the CIA official, Edward Hunt as “brain washing”. But if the attempts to control the brain represent the past, in times of the “information container”, the continual and incessant gathering of data for the future is entrusted to the development of the technologies at radio frequency (RFld – Radio Frequency Identification), applicable to the human being and available to obtain useful information in real time. Developing this method would allow us to go still much further, above all, by using the technology of the electromagnetic frequencies of the human body. A future which, not immediately, but not too far ahead, will permit an infinite flow of information in real time: even the reading of thought. It is the prospect of the Third Millennium, with one problem, however: to guarantee the security of the information and of its transmission via ether, preserving, at the same time, the privacy and the integrity of the information itself.
(Photo www.window.state.tx.us) |
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| Surveys |
| TRUE STORIES, ANECDOTES AND LEGENDS |
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 | Many are the cases of agents held for years in the field, employed in peaceful work – according to the legend created for them - waiting to be utilized, if and when the occasion arises. In 1942, an article in the American newspaper, the Evening Standard recounts the story of a watchmaker, in reality, a German Secret Service agent, who for years had spied on the English naval base of Scapa Flow. His information had allowed Captain Gunther Prien to penetrate the Bay and sink the armoured ‘Royal Oak’ and to damage the ‘Repulse’. The journalist furnishes data, names and dates. Three years after, at the end of the war, the specialists comb the German archives. Of the watchmaker, of his presumed name, of his cover name, no trace. So, who had revealed the accesses to the English base on the Island of Orcadi, which enabled Admiral Wilhelm Canaris to carry out Operation Baldur, the vendetta against the Home Fleet, for the humiliation suffered by the Imperial Germany Navy, twenty years previously? Does the watchmaker belong to reality or legend? Only the great spies strike and leave behind them the mystery. When they existed. (Photo silent-addict.com/files)
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FROM THE ARCHIVES TO HISTORY  |
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 | ...1907, 1929 are only two of the dates that take us back to some of the blackest moments in the history of the world economy.
During the course of recent months, clouded by a highly unstable economy that is strongly at risk, the analogy that many observers make between the financial crisis of today and the crash of ’29 is significant. The expressions such as ‘crisis of the banks’, ‘panic among the small savers’ ‘violent collapse at the New York Exchange’, are found, in fact, in the newspapers of yesterday and of today, as the article of the Messaggero testifies, dated October, 1929, as shown on the opposite page.
Notwithstanding that the comparison necessarily imposes precise distinctions, tied to the changed historical, political, social and cultural conditions, nevertheless, common factors emerge that have induced some to speak even of a ‘systemic cyclical character’ of the crises.
The Wall Street Crash, at the origin of the crises of 1929 and of 2008, has led, in fact, to a drastic reduction on a world scale of production, employment, incomes, consumption, investments and savings. The serious upheaval of the financial markets has generated, and continues to generate, such profound crises in businesses that they are forced to ask the competent Government Authorities for immediate special interventions of support.
The archive documents dated 1931 and 1933 are a clear testimony... |
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| BOOK REVIEW |
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 | The Romans do not love spies and in the history of the years of the Republic, from Tito Livio onward, little is said of the secret agents of Rome. Even today it is difficult to distinguish between what the Romans recount and what they actually did. However, Rose Mary Sheldon, Professor at the Virginia Military Institute has tried with her “Secret War in Ancient Rome”, where she recounts how they functioned, or did not function, and for whom the Secret Services of the Romans worked. With his fourth book on spies, “History of the 007’s of the Modern Era until today”, Ambassador, Domenico Vecchioni outlines the origin and developments of the modern Secret Services and their development up to our times. The course is interesting that goes from the years when espionage was entrusted to machines and to the return of the “human factor”, until the necessity was foreseen of collaboration among “services” in light of the new and looming dangers. |
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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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APPENDIX
THE WORK MARKET
FLEXIBILITY AND PRECARIOUSNESS
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Academic contributions to the growth of the Intelligence Recently a Seminar took place in our Offices, directed by the AISI Training School. The work market was the theme in which authorative professors of the LUISS ‘Guido Carli’ (Roberto PESSI, Raffaele FABOZZI e Anna Maria BATTISTI) University participated. We present the following synthesis of their expositions. |