| Table of contents no. 3/2009 |
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Juvenile discontent and possible extremist drifts
by Emanuela C. DEL RE |
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Answers by: Franco FERRAROTTI, Luciana IZZO, Maria MANSI, Giancarlo ROSSI, Ilaria SOTIS
By some, juvenile discontent is considered a “social pathology”. Disturbing frequent is the news reported of episodes of violence – if not real and proper crimes – perpetrated by the young.
Even though the media is prone to exaggeration and, at times, renders certain situations more alarming than they really are, the question of the violent juvenile drifts cannot, and must not be underestimated.
The youth problem is transversally diffused. It would be a simplification to reduce it to a question of social marginalization, attributing the responsibility to broken or ‘careless’ families, circumscribing the phenomenon to the poorer social classes. Numerous episodes have involved youngsters belonging to the middle class, and everywhere, gangs or other kinds of aggregation among peers that fall into excesses and violence, form every day. The institutions of socialization seem unable to respond to the changing scenarios of youth and often, they themselves, become sources of unease, remaining impotent spectators... (Photo Ansa) |
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| Essays and articles |
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 | The economic crisis that weighs on the global economy has favoured the increase of reflections on the discipline of the exchanges on the Stock Market, on the Government and on the laws of the economy. At times, alternatives adopted in the past have re-emerged. Return to the State? End of laissez faire? More often, we have questioned the nature of the instruments aligned to govern the economic relations, to fight the pathologies and to discipline the game. The crisis that is obliging a revision of the systems of regulations of the economy in all areas of the globe suggests certain changes also for Italy. Is a limited monitoring in the national sphere sufficient? Are the existing Institutes adequate to the new awareness? How can the needs of the company be reconciled with those of the firms that allocate the credit?
At the centre of the discussion of the G8 are the measures to contrast the economic criminality, the corruption, the circulation of dirty money and the misuses of the banking secrecy.... |
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 | The state of insecurity generates diffused fear caused by events which are considered potentially dangerous. Furthermore, the great changes tied to globalization make the future of the individual always more difficult to predict. It is an element which goes hand in hand with a sense of inadequacy before the ever-pressing meritocratic competition, also in function of age: the older one gets, the more the fear increases. If that is not enough, the end of the blocks has eroded many certainties and, therefore, many secure points of psychological anchorage. While the deluge of news that the media unloads onto the normal man on the street, emphasizing the negative events, increases the state of anxiety and distress of the common citizen....(Photo Ansa) |
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 | A consolidated traditional crime, which has been in use since Mediaeval times (or even before) (1), and which has never shown signs of waning, even in the face of negative market trends.
The usurer prospers because he exploits the financial difficulty and needs of the victims, their lack of access to credit and their frictional relations with traditional financers. A crime, but, above all, a social phenomenon; macroeconomic and microeconomic together, which can touch everybody, especially the weaker sections of the population, and today, sadly, almost half of the small and medium business enterprises – craftsmen and commercial – of our Country.
Upon enquiring into the present situation, with the last available data – necessarily conditioned by the approximation given to the estimation on the crimes of such fact – one cannot but add to the economic treatment (that which the write feels is predominant), the legal-legislative factor...(Photo Ansa) |
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 | The social economic conditions, with the break-up of the fabric and the loss of any collective conscience has permitted the mafia, better still, the mafias, to grow and to re-distribute part of the wealth which they have been accumulating. As a result certain sectors of the population have obtained sizeable economic advantages, profiting from diffused illegality and, at the same time, indirectly contributing to consolidate the mafia system Alberto Cisterna notes that in the contrast action against the conservative and narrow minded “mafia system” it benefited from errors deriving from an ideological vision, which aimed at changing the entire Southern society, instead of smashing the criminal organizations, family by family, ‘ndrina by ‘ndrina. However, it came to the point that between mafia and anti-mafia, an unwitting reciprocal legitimization came about: the more the mafia system was described as strong and powerful, the more a powerful anti-mafia organization was justified... |
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 | The V National Conference on anti-drug policies and the problems connected with the diffusion of narcotic or psychotropic substances, held at Trieste (from 12th to 14th March, 2009) on the initiative of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers – Anti-drug Policies Department, offers the occasion to take stock of our legislation on the subject of narcotic substances and, in particular, on the “yield” of the modifications introduced to the Decree of the President of the Republic, 9th October, 1990, N°309, by the so-called Fini-Giovanardi Act, (Decree passed 30th December, 2005, N° 272, converted in law,21st February, 2006, N°. 49). (Photo DEA) |
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 | The economic crisis which exploded a year ago led to many risks of bankruptcy for the economies of various nations and imposed State support interventions at several levels. In fact, the globalized economy entails the globalization of the crisis and risks of social destabilization of an incalculable burden. It is the scenario in which Professor Francesco Zaccaria places a new vision of the Intelligence, which moves from the necessity of understanding and averting economic flows and financial speculations able to influence and endanger the social and political stability of a Country. (Photo Ansa) |
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 | The “high-frequency trading” allows the contemporaneous transaction – automated and in micro-seconds – of millions of sale orders (through algorithm mathematics), on the different financial markets (shares, bonds, raw materials, derivatives). The societies that operate high-frequency exchanges can gather “privileged” information on the strategies of the investor, cause unjustified increases of prices of the exchanged securities, influence the volatility of the market and, thereby, send distorted signals to the economy. The instrument opens to an era of “automatic inside trading” with purchase orders automatically generated by high-frequency trading software and simultaneously cancelled (so-called ‘flash orders’), useful in confusing the institutional investors, as well as any programme that observes the movements of the principal actors of the market (of the type of the Vigilance Authorities). Together with the aspects of increasing the volatility and of the potential manipulation of the stock markets...(Photo Ansa) |
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 | Sun-tzu, General and strategist who lived in China, presumably, between the 4th and 5th Centuries, wrote that in any conflict, whatsoever, the terms of reference are two, oneself and the others. The consequences that derive are: one knows both the terms, then it will be easy to prevail in any circumstances; one knows only one of the two terms, oneself, but not the others, then one will meet successes and/or failures with equal possibility; one does not no either of the two terms, then independent of the size of one forces or the environmental situations, there will be defeats.
(Photo Ansa) |
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 | The impoverishment of the water resources due to contamination, inconsiderate exploitation and climatic changes, delineates alarming prospects of new conflicts in the not too distant future. A danger already exists in the Middle East for the Tigris-Euphrates Basin, due to the disparity of use and of exploitation by Turkey, with respect to Syria and Iraq. But Gianluca Ansalone points out that it is possible to remove these risks, by beginning to consider water as ‘goods’ which must have a market and, therefore, a price, tied to the quantity available. This would not only mean water saving in agriculture, but also a re-routing of the water towards domestic uses and industrial productive activities. |
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 | If we are not yet at the “Stellar Wars” we are pretty close to it. With the Third Millennium, the advance of technology has become all-powerful also in the field of war. We are two steps away from the robot soldier, while the skies are dotted with small silent aircraft, able to “read” the terrain and transmit images and information in real time to an operator a thousand kilometres away. In a instant, by pressing a button, it may also be decided to give the “spy” a “licence to kill”. They are the “drones”: little remote controlled planes that are able to fly for hours and hours. They are the new instruments of combat of the modern armies –the “eyes” of the sophisticated Intelligence structures in territories where an infiltrated agent would be easily discovered. Giudo Olimpio conducts us to the inside of the new scenarios of the fight against terrorism, piracy, illegal immigration and drug trafficking, but also to the training centres of the new “digitalized” soldiers, for whom the battle-field will assume more and more the semblance of a tragic videogame, but the game is with human lives.
(Photo Ansa) |
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 | Captology, a complicated word to indicate the discipline that studies the utilization of computers to influence ideas and behaviour, from the publicity to the “social” messages on the dangers of smoking and speeding. Through the inter-activity, the computer performs an operation of persuasion, assuming the role of a credible instrument, of a device of belief.
By means of the computer, international terrorist groups have created real and proper cybernetic training camps, in which the militant is persuaded to martyrdom, with an escalation which starts from isolation of the subject from the group or community until the demonization of the enemy. And, in this way, Information Technology and Internet, which have already supplied significant contributions to the realization of certain terrorist attacks, can become, more and more, instruments of new globalized processes of social de-stabilization. (Photo Ansa) |
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| Surveys |
HISTORY
From the Archives
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 | I Monti di Pietà (Pawnbroker Centre) was instituted in Italy in the mid 1400’s, on the initiative of the Franciscan Order, to stem the serious and diffused phenomenon of the loan from an usurer, thus permitting, the issue of a sum of money to persons in difficulty, after delivery of a pledge of goods. Such Institutes, firmly desired by Bernadino da Feltre, were financed solely by charitable donations. It was the Papal Bull ‘Inter Multiplices’ of Pope Leone X, of 1515, which affirmed the legitimacy, praising the scopes “good and necessary to the society” and appreciating “…. the zeal for the justice which desires to avoid the threat of the usurer…”....
(Photo by www.romeartlover.it)
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| Facts, Anecdotes and Legends |
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 | No one can ever calculate how much they contributed to trigger and fuel the Cold War – Anthony Blunt, Donald Maclean, Kim Philby, Guy Burgess and John Cairncross, the “Cambridge Five”, the group of English spies at the service of the Soviet Union, in the name of anti-fascism.
For fifteen years, jealously guarded military-political secrets, economic analyses, progress reports on nuclear research and the decision to produce the atomic bomb were punctually passed to Moscow, while dozens of infiltrated agents into the communist Countries were “burnt” and lost their lives as a consequence of the spies’ information. A story which has returned to the limelight with the memoirs of Anthony Blunt, published 25 years from his death. |
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CULTURE
Studies of Intelligence |
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 | The culture of the Intelligence is the instrument through which we understand the role and the work of the modern services of information and security. An instrument given by the close examination of the studies and analyses of the principal “think tanks”, research centres, and Italian and Foreign Universities. This Columns Section intends, therefore, to select and periodically present the most significant studies on the subjects relative to the Intelligence structures, or to those directly connected, facilitating the comprehension of the history, methodologies and function of the most modern structures of the sector. A contribution to undo the many myths and banalities which have always accompanied the image of the Secret Services throughout the world and to acquire, on the contrary, knowledge of the role and of the work. |
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| Reviews |
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 | To tell the story of the war in a world that changes so rapidly is a difficult job, also for the experienced journalist who, of the “giving testimony” he has made a profession. If then, the virtual prevails over the real, then the “testimony” no longer counts and it is always more complicated to distinguish the truth from the false, the news from the fiction, the event from the entertainment. A great journalist and a grand story teller, with his “The Reporters of War”, Mimmo Candito blends together the story and the instructions to disentangle oneself from the ‘infotainment’, a mixture of information and entertainment which, today, has become the reportage of the war fronts. |
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CHRONOLOGY
Organized crime
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 | IWe 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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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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