| Table of contents no. 3/2006 |
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The foreign organized crime or rather,the imported mafias
(by Emmanuela C. Del Re) |
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Answers by: Piero Luigi VIGNA, Alberto INTINI, Marco LUDOVICO, Emmanuela C. DEL RE
The European enlargement, which will soon include Rumania and Bulgaria in the Union, followed, in the future, by Croatia and Macedonia and further on also the western Balkan countries and Turkey, creates a scenario of a multi-ethnic and multicultural Europe of a thousand resources with open frontiers and with considerable flows of people and goods. On the other side, however, the opening of the frontiers in accordance with the Schengen Agreement, the ease of movement following the entrance of certain countries and of the association of others, constitutes the acid test for the Italian police force. In particular, the foreign organized crime which, for its penetration capacity, for its organizational ability and for the kind of criminal sectors which it has known how to cut into and dominate, constitutes a permanent threat: even more so when one considers the collaboration which has been created with the local criminality. Since the first migratory flows towards our country in the 1970’s, the immigration today, sees a more consistent presence of foreigners (about 4%), characterized by a more active participation in the life of our country reflecting a tendency to permanent settlement. To this phenomenon, however, must be added the clandestine immigration; one of the areas in which the foreign organized crime is most active. It should be underlined.... |
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| Essays and articles |
|  | The beginning of the new millennium has provoked a deterioration of the great alternative projects to the present society. The phenomenon concerns both the protest movements and the policies of the governments. The essay we offer takes its inspiration from certain recent publications which propose a reflection on the sense of the refusal to construct new models of society. The absence of utopia also in the new alternative movements is food for thought. A policy of the small things, of the smaller programmes, could be useful as an antidote to the great theories subsequent to 1968, but it also risks non-representation of diffused social needs. The eclipses of the utopias should make the task of governing easier, but often the stimulation to make innovations is reduced and renders the formation of general agreement impossible. (photo ansa) | | | |
|  | The anarchic universe is certainly a very complex scenario and is clearly outlined in the proposed article. It is a social phenomenon whose small dimensions do not diminish the risk and do not affect its ability to feed a considerable tension in the territories where it is prevalent. The disturbing aspect is the capacity of these movements to capture, persuade and convince the young malcontents and to channel them into a fight which might have objectives, but no outcomes, and it certainly does not contribute to the political growth of the country it represents: on the contrary, it is a shadow zone. In all democratic systems there are always these kinds of phenomena. Perhaps it is the reckoning we have to pay the piper, and until these phenomena are included within the area of official and civil debate on how the life in society should be organized (because also the position of an anarchist, if loyally represented, merits attention in a democracy), they will continue to be justly pursued and compressed into a microcosm which strongly limits the capacity of expression: a microcosm, however, which does not seem to disturb the supporters of these extreme positions. Indeed, they consider it the natural area of expression of their ideas. Almost as if, ontologically, they have a thus limited dimension. All of which, in a democracy, originates and determines the inevitability of failure. (photo ansa) | | | |
|  | The Val di Susa, in Piedmont, in the last months of last year, was marked by the protests of ‘no’ to TAV, which led to demonstration parades, barricades, road and railway line blocks, strikes, as well as real scuffles with the police force called in to protect the setting up of building yards for the go-ahead of geotechnical ground drilling, preliminary to the construction of high speed/capacity lines. The dispute was characterized by a very considerable participation of the population of the Valley (for a long time now, citizen committees have been constituted in protest against the project, which is held to be seriously damaging to the environment and a potential health risk).These citizen demonstrations were joined, however, by local and non-local antagonist collectives, intending to ‘exploit’ the dimensions of the revolt scenario to promote the role and affirm the validity of the ‘fight from the bottom’ with an end to opposing the decisional powers coming from ‘the top’. What is the message that these collectives are trying to send?
(photo by "NO TAV" La valle che resiste) | | | |
|  | It is always more difficult to define the terrorist threat juridically, as the present work of the United Nations shows. On the other hand, the right to the protection of democracy appears, by now, to be consolidated in the constitutional experience of the West. The risk is that the opacity of the juridical picture finishes with legitimizing, as much at the internal level as at the international level, regulations and political choices which are contrary to our constitutional principles. In the short term, an important role of balance is exercised by the judicial power and by public opinion. But in the long term, such dialectic is untenable by our systems. In an epoch marked by crises of the traditional political structures, to start from the national State, it appears probable that at the various decisional levels an empirical method is asserting itself: to let the definition of terrorism and the points of balance between security and freedom come from the corpus which is taking shape in the area of the experience – of which it is reasonable to foresee the expansion – of the international courts.(foto by www.un.org./terrorism) | | | |
|  | The economic development of a country has always, as a natural corollary, the growth of military potential: China, by now a rhetorical example of growth, is no exception. The phenomenon has several explanations: not least is the need to better manage its borders and exercise international pressure which is instrumental for its own interests. The military development is due also to the scientific and technological research evolution; also this, a corollary of the increased availability of money – a scientific evolution which finds its natural space of application in the military sector. The article explains with simplicity the inevitable process that justifies a strategy which does not hide any aggressive or belligerent policies, but confirms a rule which the experts of foreign politics know very well, and at the end of reading this article, each one of us will have greater awareness. (photo ansa) | | | |
|  | The artistic production of a country recounts much of the political and social evolution which a territory has faced and is facing. Art is the instrument through which, over the centuries, the more progressive elements of the society – often de-legitimizing the constituted powers – have been able to find fertile ground for efficient and penetrating expression, even if only behind the veil of language, images and literary prose, less feared by the authorities. This phenomenon is well represented by the production in Morocco of a film which describes the vehemence of a young woman who rebels against the styles and dogmas dictated by the social canons of a Moslem country. The film although strongly contested, has already been shown in some Moroccan cinemas, with a certain degree of success and is causing heated debates between conservatives and progressives. Beyond the considerations that each reader could make after reading this article, it must be noted that it is unequivocally positive that in that land an experience of this kind has been possible. This tells us a lot of what is happening in that Maghreb country which, thanks to the politics of the young Mohammed VI, is going through a delicate and interesting phase of social transformation. (foto by www.ciai-s.net) | | | |
|  | Martyrdom is an attempt to penetrate ideological and social confines which are present among groups that are fighting each other, by means of a hierocratic religiously established power. The religious power of a minority invokes a high and purifying vendetta against a prevailing adversary which, in turn, retaliates, as long it is not a matter of self-martyrdom, by killing the martyr. The situation can unite the people of the martyr, reinforcing its opposition when, under a charismatic leader, it develops its own organizational powers. The exemplary gesture of a martyr strengthens the courage of a people, helping it to support the daily tribulations and directing its rage against the cruel and murderous adversary, source of these tribulations. But the martyr can also stimulate the will of the enemy to reply with repression against the community of the martyr. Martyrdom, in short, politicizes the relations between the groups. This article develops some elements of the sociological theory of the martyr in an effort to illustrate the profound reasons, usually little considered in journalistic writings and studies on suicide as a weapon, often evaluating only the terrorist aspects. The fundamental questions are: under what conditions does a society produce martyrs? What are the various kinds of martyrs? And what special social circumstances give rise to these different types? And again, unlike the normal journalist contributor, this work aims at understanding the deep social-historical roots of martyrdom, which were put down in the dynamics of the first communities of the two great monotheistic religions, Judaism and Christianity, only a few centuries later to be followed by Islam.
(photo by www.giovannidesio.it/terrorismo) | | | |
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| Surveys |
ALL-ITALIAN STORIES  | |  | The story follows the urgent rhythm of criminal violence in Bari in a period of wars between the local clans. The real protagonist is the city itself, in the eyes of the police, agents, bandits and criminals. Although on opposite sides, all these people are joined by the need to question the destiny of the province’s main town – each one in their own way, according to values, ideals and their own different experiences. The story unfolds through a sense of time which is active expectancy, which does not cease to arm the intentions of the actors, which looks at the internal dynamics of the feuds and beyond the Adriatic, which is Bari’s horizon of new possibilities and aspirations Not by chance, is the evident the recall to the section ‘from the archives to history’, regarding the Italian tie with Montenegro in the tobacco sector – an occasion to reflect on how close they are, and not only geographically, Italy and the Balkans.
(foto by www.www.urbanworkshop.it) | | | |
| FROM THE ARCHIVES TO HISTORY | |  | The Mafias, as is known, tend to specialize, choosing or cutting out for themselves activities in which they can have dominant positions. Like any other ‘industry’, also the criminal one bases its business strategies on a series of factors and contingencies which, often, have their origins in the distant past. So it could happen that a confidential report on Montenegro compiled by the Home Office in 1908, could furnish some particular interpretations on the development of a trans-national traffic which the Montenegro and Puglia criminality still have control of today. The documents which we present here, tell the story of a country that lived in a state of “patriarchal happiness”…., smoking good tobacco, something which, absurd as it may seem, was considered as necessary “as bread”. The institution of the monopoly of tobaccos, in which an Italian society played an important role, brought this idyllic life to an unceremonious end and indirectly provoked the birth of cigarette smuggling. Today, instead, the Italian criminality has a real monopoly on another front, that of the illegal traffic between the two coasts of the Adriatic – a business which yields hundreds of millions of euro.
(foto by www.montenegro - canada.com) | | | |
| BOOK REVIEW | | | Two books for two different seasons. The story in first person of a protagonist of the “armed party” in Italy, Prosper Gallinari, and the long journey of a journalist, Zaki Chehab, in the labyrinth of the Iraqi terrorism. Two realities distant in space and time, but tied together by the consideration that no guerrilla warfare can survive without the support of the population. In the 70’s and 80’s, the Red Brigades lacked this mass support which, on the contrary, sustains the Iraqi terrorists today, in virtue of religion and national pride. Two books which tell of choices and errors, above all cultural, as much for the Red Brigades, but Gallinari does not seem to realize this, as for the Americans, and Chehab puts much emphasis on the subject to explain the Iraqi resistance. In short, two books which are worth reading with attention. | | | |
| 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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| BI-ANNUAL REPORT
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By the CESIS General Secretariat |
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