Italy (catch all)

[Bill Moore]

The FBI honored the Falcone today on the 20 anniversary of his assassination. This was one of the first men to understand adversarial global networks and worked to develop his own global network to degrade the Mafia. I'm including the FBI public affairs release that honors him and the Wiki article about him that in my view makes him a hero with few peers. One of his quotes, one he lived and died by was:

He who is silent and bows his head dies every time he does so. He who speaks aloud and walks with his head held high dies only once.

—Giovanni Falcone

http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2012/may/falcone_051712

Remembering Giovanni Falcone
Italian Judge Assassinated by the Mafia 20 Years Ago

On May 23, 1992, Mafia hit men detonated a roadside bomb that killed Giovanni Falcone, his wife, and three bodyguards as they drove near Palermo, Italy. The assassination was payback for all the organized criminals Falcone had put behind bars as a prosecutor and judge.

To mark the 20th anniversary of his murder, a tribute was held at FBI Headquarters to remember Falcone as a courageous opponent of the Mafia—and one of the earliest advocates of international cooperation in the fight against organized crime.

Director Robert S. Mueller, who was joined by two former FBI Directors and several Italian dignitaries in paying tribute to Falcone, noted, “Long before ‘globalization’ became part of our vernacular, Judge Falcone recognized that no one department or country could fight crime alone. He went to great lengths to cultivate strong relationships—friendships—with partners here in the United States and around the world.”

“Judge Falcone always understood that there was strength in numbers,” Mueller said, “and that defeating the Mafia would require true solidarity. Due to his foresight, we have dealt a devastating blow to organized criminal syndicates.”

The relationships that Falcone forged years ago between the Italian National Police and the FBI “have borne tremendous fruit in this age of international crime and terrorism,” Mueller added. “Those friendships have set the standard for global cooperation among law enforcement.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Falcone

Exhausted and frustrated by the antagonism in Palermo, Falcone accepted a post in the Ministry of Justice in Rome offered to him by Claudio Martelli, the new minister of Justice in a new government of Giulio Andreotti in March 1991. The transfer was initially seen as a capitulation by Falcone, but he himself thought of it as a tactical move to better fight the Mafia. His first action was to prepare a degree to repair the disastrous sentence by Supreme Court judge Corrado Carnevale, known as the “sentence-killer”, that allowed most of the remaining defendants of the Maxi Trial to walk free from prison. Due to the Martelli-decree led to the immediate re-arrest of the Mafia bosses.[22]

While in Rome he started to restructure the Italian prosecution system, creating district offices to fight the Mafia and a national office to fight organized crime.[22] Next was his move to prevent Carnevale to review the sentence of the Maxi Trial. In a blow to the Mafia, the Maxi Trial convictions were upheld by the Supreme Court in January 1992. To the surprise of many, Falcone's move to Rome was very successful. He achieved a genuine revolution in the judiciary. The Mafia began to understand that Falcone was even more dangerous in Rome than he had been in Palermo.

[davidbfpo]

Thread re-opened after this update on Sicily in the German newspaper Der Spiegel; the title and sub-title:

How Sicily Became Ungovernable; Italy's poorest region, Sicily, is the country's problem child. Now it has elected a new government. To fix the island, it will have to overcome corruption and widespread Mafia control - and figure out how to convince its population not to leave.

Link:http://www.spiegel.de/international/...-1177068.html?

[Bill Moore]

Thread re-opened after this update on Sicily in the German newspaper Der Spiegel; the title and sub-title:
Link:http://www.spiegel.de/international/...-1177068.html?

An insightful article that generated a lot of thought about failing states, even within the West. Italy isn't failing, but regions of it have or in the process of being ungoverned by the elected government. Pockets of corruption and lawlessness can leap frog or spread to adjacent areas are where conditions are permissive.

A couple of initial thoughts, perhaps more later. Corruption has strategic effects over time, the recent trend in U.S. counterinsurgency is that corruption is largely irrelevant is deeply flawed. Corruption is a key means in the competitive control competition to compete for control over select regions.

Tactics evolve with means, as criminal organizations gain more wealth, they can shift from using terror as their principle means of coercion to infiltration and influence, resulting in a defacto government or shadow government. The police who are supposed to fight these organizations are quietly co-opted. Then it eventually becomes "just the way that it is." At this point it takes great leaders of great courage to create a movement to change the norm.

I found the following paragraph to be a ray of hope.

For a bar owner in Di Matteo's neighborhood, this "gift" amounts to a 6,000-euro (6,960-dollar) reduction in annual profits. Many businesses are no longer able to pay the protection money, some are now unwilling to do so. Stickers from the Addiopizzo organization are now displayed in more than 1,000 shop windows in and around Palermo. The organization encourages consumers to shop in businesses that refuse to pay the "pizzo," or protection money.

As I pointed out in my book review of the Originals.

http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...7&postcount=41

There was another section that spoke at some length on how to mobilize a resistance movement. For example, people prefer to challenge state sponsored oppression / terror as a group. Instead of facing the terror of standing out as lone resister, people were able to see themselves as members of a group based on seeing symbols in many locations that indicates others feel the same way. It’s easier for wan to be rebels to rebel when it feels like an act of conformity. The book provides several examples.

The stickers from the Addiopizzo are an example of this. Bravo!