| Table of contents no. 1/2006 |
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Participation of the Director of SISde
Dott.Stefano Folli's opening lecture: "Communication and terrorism"
Participation of the Minister of the Interior |
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‘Ndrangheta
hierarchy and loyalty: the strength of the ‘ndrine |
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Answers by: Salvatore BOEMI, Enzo CICONTE, Luigi DE SENA, Fabrizio FEO, Marina VALENSISE.
The recent news events in Calabria have put under the spotlight of the national community, the growing danger of the ‘ndranghetista phenomenon. Forum proposes to analyze several aspects of the threat from different viewpoints; each one fruit of evaluations and qualified experience, from which emerges the “subversive” character of the phenomenon and the strong connotation, on the one side, regional, for its local rooting, and on the other, globalized, for the competitive capacity expressed in the illicit international markets. (photo ansa) |
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| Essays and articles |
|  | Can a ‘French November’ spread abroad? Sociologists and annalists are asking this question in the face of this sudden and completely new phenomenon. Particularly, due to its lengthy duration and intense violence, and because the usual reasons (lack of integration, clashes of cultural models etc.,…) have not offered even the semblance of the usual reassuring alibis. In her article, Anna BARDUCCI has mentioned several of these explanations: some are severe, such as the system of integration, (the French way). However, the problem could be spreading and not necessarily circumscribed to a single nation. There is juvenile unrest in France which has reached mass proportions....... It is only one of the many explanations. Perhaps, the most simply, but also the first which offers a possible indication towards a solution: a more sociably acceptable habitation policy, which avoids ghettos or what Professor MARCONI calls, ‘homogeneous spaces’. Because, the modification of the work dynamics, the end of juvenile unemployment, the increase of social securities, could take too much time. And we are told that we just cannot afford a ‘banlieue’ rebellion. (photo ansa)
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|  | What is commonly referred to as the “XXII October” gang is the story of a group of young Genoese, whose criminal actions, between 1969 and 1971, upset the tranquillity of the Liguria capital. It is the story, in particular, of a self-named ‘revolutionary’ extreme Left group, inspired to contest with violence the system of social, economic and political relations at the end of the 1960’s. This movement left behind numerous questions as to its effectiveness, numerical force and political and ideological heritage. The study of the events which characterized the activity of the group, in the city of Genoa, has never been done in any detail. However, in the first interpretations of the “XXII October” gang’s initial criminal activities, one common idea prevailed: that they were nothing more than a disorganized gang of boys playing at revolutions. In this respect, the term “gang”, which was attributed to them, explains very well the mildness of the judgement expressed on their account. In reality, the trail of attacks and death which marked the brief passage of the “XXII October” on the Genoese scene, and the ties which were cemented between their militants and the Red Brigades of the Sossi kidnapping, obviously goes against the previously mentioned intention to under-estimate, at least at the beginning, this phenomenon.
(photo of archives) | | | |
|  | The Web – a privileged place and instrument of the liberty of expression and communication – has become, as seen (n.3 di Gnosis),the medium most used, in the antagonistic scenario, to circulate news, connect groups which are physically distant one from the other and to launch campaigns of dissension. The world of virtual communication lends itself, in particular, to those who criticize power and hierarchy and, at the same time, the absence of rule, the very hinge on which their faith and representation is attached: the anarchists. “….anarchism is, before anything else, a movement against hierarchy. Why? Because hierarchy is the organizational structure which incarnates authority…..” Brian Morris cited from Max Anger – 1997, page 38. And following: “….the anarchists desire a society based on individual liberty and spontaneous collaboration. In other words, a society which operates from the bottom towards the top, and not imposed by authorities at the top towards the bottom”. (excerpts from “What is Anarchy”? in the correspondent section of the site Counter-Power, www.ecn.org/contropotere). | | | |
|  | Since 1992, following the first attack of an Islamic matrix in Buenos Aires, Latin America and, above all, the Triple Frontier, the bordering region of the three countries, (Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina), has been considered a terrorist paradise and a free zone for illegal traffic. Hizbollah and other Islamic groups manage to operate quite freely in this territory; financing themselves from the profits of weapon and drug trafficking; gaining advantage from the growing corruption; organizing training camps and lastly, providing a logistic base for terrorist attacks. Hizbollah’s connections with Farc and with other local opposition groups, and Al Qaeda’s interest in participating in such a remunerative illegal traffic, make very clear the threat which such an area can represent - always more the hub of Islamic extremists’ interests. (photo www.jinsa.org/documents) | | | |
|  | In this article, we have tried to attempt an inquiry going back along the path of radicalism: from the history of Shehzad Tanweer, one of the four “bombers” of the 7th of July attack in London - whom we have taken as an example - to the history of the Hindu Pakistani fundamentalist school of “Deobandi” and of its bearers to the West. Over a distance of almost one and a half centuries, from the first Koran school of Deoband to the militant Islamism of Mawdudi, from the Afghani Jihad to the international of Bin Laden, focusing on the stages of one ‘that comes from the sacred’ that walks in our midst, in the steps of young Moslems ‘brought up at home’, for whom the distance between the past and the present is short, but the memory of hatred against the West is long.(photo www.kbr30.dial.pipex.com) | | | |
|  | On the 15th of October 2005, the Iraqi people approved their Constitution with a 61% participation at the polls and 78% voting in favour. To the surprise of the Sunnite environment, in the province of Ninive the “no” votes did not reach the 2/3rds of the votes necessary which, together with the foreseen 2/3rds of “no” votes in two other Sunnite provinces, would have caused the failure of the project. In an analysis of this event, we present the two following contributions; one of a philosophical-juridical kind and the other journalistic.
In the first article, the author analyses the text of the Iraqi Charter, underlining the legitimacy of this constitutional experience and sustaining the compatibility of the Islamic culture with the constitutionalism. However, a few knots to be untied come to light: the federal structure which requires a further rationalization and a syndicate of constitutionality which has not been foreseen in the text voted by the Iraqi. In the second article, the possible developments of the Iraqi transition are shown, keeping in mind the complexity of the geo-political scenario. In this sense, the incongruities within the text could prove to be seriously destabilizing. On the other hand, a Shiite constituent commented: “Well, at least, we didn’t try to shoot each other in the Constituent Assembly”. It is not so little if we consider the Constitution –and the two authors agree upon this – not as a point of arrival, but as a point of departure in the construction of a new Iraq.
(photo http://www.lib.utexas.edu) | | | |
|  | A recently diffused United States analysis on the Moslem world after the 11th September, gives food for thought about the moderate Islam. Although in the majority, the Moslem Liberal component finds little space for expression, which is mostly monopolized by the noisy proclamations of the radical ulema(s). However, this situation is changing also in Italy, where a web site, dedicated to the promotion of a new Arab intellectual elite, has been created by a group of Maghreb journalists, resident, for some time, in our country.(photo www.novatv.nl) | | | |
|  | The adoption of a “declaration of principles”, on the 19th September, 2005. at the end of the 4th round of the multi-lateral negotiations of Peking (26th July - 8th August; 13th -19th September), in which the United States, China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas took part, is undoubtedly, an important step towards a diplomatic solution to the second North Korean nuclear crisis which exploded in the Asiatic North-East in October, 2002, following the revelation by the P’yongyang Regime that it had been secretly producing highly enriched uranium (HEU) for years. Such uranium could be used as fuel in nuclear reactors and for the manufacture of atomic weapons. However, the uncertainty remains as to the real wishes of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il: whether or not, he wants to abandon his nuclear programme completely, irreversibly and verifiably. This programme, used as a deterrent (or as psychological dissuasion) against the country’s long-hated enemy, the United States, and their allies, has guaranteed, so far, the sovereignty and territorial integrity of North Korea, while the nuclear crisis has permitted the Communist State to come out of the international isolationism of the “cold war” in which the “chuch’e” ideology had relegated it, and enabled it to submit the economic problems of the country, which had first appeared in an alarming manner in the early 90’s, to international attention. In this way benefiting from humanitarian aid, energy and economic help that was necessary for the country’s survival: while waiting for the reform of the socialist economic system, on the Chinese example, to produce the hoped-for effects.(photo http://img.timeinc.net/time/magazine/) | | | |
|  | Physchological studies on Hitler and Mussolini have long filled the shelves of modern history lovers. With this work an attempt is made to delineate the personality traits of the two subjects. Not, however, through an analysis of their public or private behaviour, but by examining the ‘psychological interaction’ between the two with the instrument of the so-called ‘comparative graphology’. It is an analytical approach – based on the ‘comparison’ between handwriting specimens – which, up till now has been little used in the field of Intelligence (mistakenly), insofar as it is considered an ‘unscientific’ method, on the grounds that it exploits the knowledge extrapolated from the psycho-biographic investigation and is not a procedure which is autonomous and independent of the psychological analyses. In reality, graphology, as a science, allows us to sketch certain personality traits (also those of a psycho-pathological nature) even in the absence of direct and/or documented observation. By exploiting this method, it has been possible to draw up a synthetic profile of Hitler and Mussolini, studying the single handwriting specimens; subsequently, the two graphic productions have been compared in such a way as to highlight similarities and differences (from an intellective/temperament viewpoint). The research has been done without taking into account any previous studies on Mussolini or Hitler, in such a way as to render, as much as possible, the exploration devoid of methodological conditioning which could invalidate the ‘genuineness’ of the graphological analyses of the two protagonists. (photo of editing) | | | |
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| Surveys |
ALL-ITALIAN STORIES  | |  | The review proposes an imaginary sketch about the Sicilian hinterlands at the end of the 1980’s. Here, the Mafia is less conspicuous, yet it emphasises even more the everyday dynamics which feed the criminal phenomenon. Situations in which, beyond the apparent banality of the tale, hover the subsequent tensions of the ‘maxi-trial’ and the deep and disenchanted expectancy of renewal in Sicily. The hopes of anti-mafia neophytes, of the common people and of the mafia members who had lost everything. When there was nothing but the dream. When history had yet to run its course, with its victims and its new repressive tensions. A past which could also be our future.
(photo www.sperimentaleleonardo.it/itinerari/lavoromafia1) | | | |
| FROM THE ARCHIVES TO HISTORY | |  | Since the times of the Caesars, the secrecy of communications in the political-diplomatic, military and economic fields has had crucial importance. The history of war campaigns, of wars and the acquisition of scientific discoveries has often been decided by the capacity of intercepting and deciphering the encoded communications of enemies or competitors. This article goes over some of principle steps in the history of cryptography and presents three examples of encoded messages by “special authors”: the first of Camillo Benso of Cavour, the second of Paolo Thaon of Revel, the third of Benito Mussolini.
(photo www.matheprisma.uni-wuppertal.de) | | | |
| BOOK REVIEW | | A pleasant illustration of the emotions which can provoke, in the heart of who knows the present social dynamics and the history which has determined them, the reading of a book in its way revolutionary, drenched with legitimate, but never adopted viewpoints. It is, perhaps, the best way to review a text: to become part of it, to complete the theme through the sentiments that it stirs, to conclude the journey to the point of becoming co-author. The book under discussion evidently inspires strong reflection, of the kind that shakes the soul; rousing one from the torpor.....
When the secret is out and the files are opened, surprises arrive for the historians and scholars. They are often disturbing, able to destroy legends and firm convictions. The CIA and the KGB are at the centre of two recent books published by Rizzoli and by Laterza. The first, signed Christopher Andrew and Vasilij Mitrokhin is the second part of the papers filched by the KGB archivist and reveals the moves of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. In the second, Paolo Mastrolilli and Maurizio Molinari, recount more than half a century of Italian history as seen through the eyes of the Central Intelligence Service..... | | | |
| 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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Prevention of terrorism Act 2005 |
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