Red.eVolution-My Window In The World

The Sopranos

The Mafia is a sort of ghost, invisible to anyone visiting Sicily unless he does know how to look for it, for all other residents it's all an other matter... First, it's the kind of Mafia you won't find on American movies but the kind of Mafia you'll find in Sicily has nothing appealing. Those American movies based on the glamorous American Mafia are contrasting sharply with the reality of the Sicilian Mafia. The Sicilian Mafia is a revolting, treacherous, deceitful, viscid, threatening world that like a leech sustains itself by bloodsucking vital lymph from the sane tissues of the Sicilian society.

Why the Mafia can't be defeated in Sicily?

That's the one million dollar question which I wish, I could answer it! I'll take my years I lived in Sicily as an example while I'm trying to give an answer to this Sicilian eternal dilemma.

I remember from the experience that I had acquired while I was living in Palermo, that there was a stratified society similar to many other societies you'll find around the globe: there were the wealthy of an upper class, the middle-income people (as might be expected) from the middle-class, and last a lower class made up of the underprivileged such as: the poor, the helpless, the illiterates, the miserables, the misfortunate people, along with all the other kind of inadequates from a society (note: this last class sometimes has been rejected by the the rest of the upper-classes, but it has also been totally neglected by a failing Italian system for a very long time).

***

Now, from this lower class is where most of the times the Mafia refuels its ranks.

The people of this class, usually lives in unacceptable conditions inside run-down neighborhoods where crime is the norm, and where the kids of this lower class hardly get to finish the primary schools so that they can manage to speak a decent and acceptable Italian language. Those kids are usually been neglected by their own fathers (ordinarily these fathers are men with stone aged mentalities) and are spending the rest of their days hanging around the streets by doing nothing or almost nothing!

That nothingness is where takes those kids in looking toward detrimental activities. First of all, they start their petty crimes activities with broken-windows, small burglaries, doing small favors of doubtful nature to the next neighborhood's thug (like delivering packages of drugs, or delivering dubious messages to the local bosses, etc and etc...)

And soon, very soon escalating these activities with their first, "scippo". Scippo? What is this thing called scippo, you may ask! Ask a tourist that went to Sicily for a vacation, and maybe, he can answer you. The, "scippo" may sound like a beverage's name but it isn't. It's a violent motorcycle theft, and it is caused by the grabbing of an incautious's property with a violent pull by one or two kids while they are riding fast their motorcycle.

Consequentially to that violent pull, the poor tourist is left on the street floor badly bruised and sometimes even with broken bones (this form of stealing it is most of the times, practiced on unaware tourists and rarely on the locals because the locals know where to find them or to who to talk to get the stolen property returned). As soon these kids grown up and the local family Mafia have noticed them, they will be engaged in their ranks as, "picciotti" (literally it means youngsters but in the Sicilian culture it was also used for soldiers) to do their dirty jobs.

Mafia is an invisible and invincible force incapable of been defeated by traditional policing methods!

I believe we should still have a long time to confront ourselves with the organized crime of mafia origin. For a long time, not for the eternity: because the Mafia is a human phenomenon and like all the human phenomenons it has an its beginning, an its evolution and it will also have an its end.

Giovanni Falcone (assassinated Italian judge)

Now my next question is: why this malicious cycle can't be broken by removing the running water from the watermill?

Next: Why the Mafia can't be defeated in Sicily? (part 2)

The years of the MAfiA's reign in Palermo.

2009-11-08T15:01:00.001-05:00

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Before the carnages of the anti-mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1992, and before the carnage of Gen. Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa in 1982, and even before many other carnages that happened over there, there was a time in which Palermo was living in an apparent state of optimism while the Mafia was having very good times!

Those were the years of when the Sicilian's Mafia families were dictating their laws, the years where legality and national institutions were partially active in Sicily, the years of the Mafia's illegal building constructions, rampant misappropriations, and corrupted mayors.

The years of Palermo's sack.

Thanks to the Mafia, there was for Palermo a partial era of economic boom (the only one I could ever recall from the years of my growing up in Palermo). All over the city of Palermo there was a frenetic activity of constructions. Construction buildings were springing up all over the city, like they were malefic mushrooms. I remember those years as the, "Sack of Palermo".

I still have in my memories of a much smaller Palermo than it's today. From up above the mountains that are surrounding it, you could have had an astounding panoramic view. Palermo looked like was made of gold because of all its lemon's trees cultivations, and for that specific reason Palermo's valley was named, "La Conca D'oro" (the golden valley). From where I lived, my father to get in the city's center for work, he had only one small street available to reach his destination. Along this single street there was nothing but trees, interminable lines of lemon's trees and a few old buildings scattered all over.

La Conca d’Oro - (golden valley)

Oil painting of, "Francesco Lo Jacono' (1838-1915)

In a very short time period, everything was destroyed and was replaced by a processes of savage urbanization with little control from the competent authorities. I remember, a few of those Liberty stile Villas at the corner of viale della Liberta and viale Lazio, been bulldozed down just for speculative interests. I was too little to figure out why those marvelous Villas were demolished. The penetration from the Mafia of the public administrations was so deep, that they did find very little oppositions to their devastating pillages to the city. The Mafia sacked Palermo the same way the barbarians did to Rome. That's why that devastation is still remembered till these days as the, "Sack of Palermo".

Vito Calogero Ciancimino.

The sack of Palermo was, the construction boom from the 1950s through the mid 1980s. The high point of the sack happened under the Christian Democrat Mayor Salvo Lima. Vito Calogero Ciancimino (born in Corleone) also a Christian Democrat, became assessor for public works and building permits under Salvo Lima. At some point Ciancimino himself became mayor of Palermo, and he gave out a record number of licenses for building constructions, which all of them were managed from the Corleonese's Mafia. Who was Ciancimino? He was an Italian politician and in the same time a criminal!

I remember from those times, the people of Palermo were much happier because there were more jobs availability (thanks to all the illegal construction buildings that were going on around all the city), and more jobs meant more cash were flowing into their packets. I remember that even my father was happy, because he was doing businesses in his shop with people in a hurry to spend their money.

The Mafiosi are the bad guys!

Unfortunately for the Palermitans that were wrongly believing that Mafia with its thriving and lucrative businesses of the cement coupled with cigarette smuggling and heroin trafficking (and believe me, some Palermitans knew back then, who really had the hands firmly on the power of command) were really bringing jobs for everyone...

Naturally, their dreams of better lives were easily shattered once the Italian State decided to put a stronghold to the Mafia's unrestrained criminal activities with the cement, by closing down all the building constructions and starting penal processes to the Mafia and all of the corrupted politicians accused of Mafia association.

Consequentially to the Italian State's actions, a darker and deeper depression came back more revengeful than before by rolling down on a once green city, and now silent, exhausted, and cemented with its citizens left at the top of their desperations and drained from their energies and hopes.

There was in those years, unattainable social peace for Sicily because of (besides the criminal organizations) inept and sometimes corrupted politicians. I don't know right now, but back then there were politicians very easily corruptible in exchange for votes, and the Mafia knew very well all that. Politicians were colluding together with the local Mafia's boss by plaguing the well-being of Sicilians, and overall, the same was happening to the rest of the south's Italian regions with their local 'Ndrangheta/Cammorra/Sacra Corona Unita/Stidda's bosses and their illicit activities!

Leoluca Orlando - Former mayor of Palermo.

I would like to dedicate this post to one of the few good men left in Palermo, because of his activities in understanding, fighting, and sharing awareness on the pervasiveness of the Mafia in Sicilian society. This man is Leoluca Orlando, a former (and very honest and uncorrupted politician) mayor of Palermo.

Fighting the Mafia-Incorrect conceptions and bad attitudes from the Sicilians people.

2009-11-05T15:12:00.004-05:00

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Looking inside a Sicilian's ordinary mind can be a very difficult task to accomplish, because of his impenetrable mentality.

Sometimes looking inside an ordinary Sicilian's mind can make you better understand the social impact of the Mafia, and all of the mafiosi's typologies that are deeply entrenched into a society. There are many Sicilians (not mafiosi) which are proud to know mafiosi and they brag about it whenever they can. Just to mention to know a mafioso make them feel feared and respected, like they were mafiosi themselves even though they aren't! If I know someone I am someone. But the thing is, if this someone is a mafioso it's even better. You know, he can open many doors for me.

That honorable guy sent me here!

"In Sicilian dialect: mi manna u zu' toto, or mi manna u zu' pippinu (it's impossible to translate, so that I give you a different English version hopefully with the same meaning)... To an employer: that honorable guy (intending a politician, someone very important, or a mafioso) send me here for a job, and now you must (note: the request is an imposing one) give me a job. While buying a new car, a new house or whatever: that honorable guy send me here to buy a new car, a new house or whatever for myself, now you must sell it to me very cheaply. In short: because of, "that" guy you must treat him respectfully.

The real meaning of the words Mafia and Cosa Nostra in the Sicilian society.

I use the word, "Mafia" often and almost never the word, "Cosa Nostra" (meaning belonging to us) when I talking about mafia topics because on those words there are differences in their meaning, sometime very slight differences that only Sicilians can understand.

Cosa Nostra, what it really means? Unfortunately is very hard to explain it in a plain english, but I'll try it anyway! The common Sicilians never use the words, "Cosa Nostra" when they want to indicate a mafioso, or hes belonging to a family of mafiosi, but they just say: a mafioso, or he belongs to a mafia's family. Only mafiosi call the mafia organization the Cosa Nostra, and thus they named their organization Cosa Nostra. The common Sicilians call it simply Mafia or Mafia organization, never Cosa Nostra. In matter of fact, I remember when I was used to live in Sicily and the Sicilians never spoke about the mafia organization as the Cosa Nostra, but only as the Mafia (news media sometimes refer to the mafia with a symbol, the octopus's symbol because of its many tentacles).

In the other hand, the everyday Sicilians are using the words, "cosa nostra" in regular sentence, for their real meaning like: these toys belong to us. You see, "cosa nostra" means: it belong to us. That's what really means in regular conversations. Keep also in mind to pay close attention, to the tone of voices and the facial expressions when Sicilians are pronouncing words, because sometime they can have different meanings.

In the case of when the Sicilians are using the words, "e' cosa nostra?" (is it ours?) with a particular tone of voice and contemporaneously they are lifting an hand in the air to make a circular motion with their fingers toward their interlocutor, what they are saying to them with their gesture is: did you steal that? Instead, when they want to allude something or someone that belongs to the mafia, they say in a disdainful way: cosa nostra eh! When Sicilians are saying jokingly to their interlocutor, they say: lui e' cosa nostra; what they are saying is: he is with us.

The words cosa nostra, when it is pronounced among mafiosi can have also many meanings. A mafioso when using those same words he intent also something different, and by the way, the mafioso uses them when he's only with other similar. As I said, when they are conversing among them, they are giving to the words, "cosa nostra" also different meanings (now that's the hard part), but remember to pay attention to the different tone voices and facial expressions when they are spoken those words.

When they say: non ti proccupare di lui, e'cosa nostra; what they are really saying is: don't worry about him because he's with us (meaning he's a mafioso like us). When they are simple saying: lui/esso e' cosa nostra (meaning: it is ours); they are saying: don't worry about it/him, we'll take care of that problem or any other problem that will arise. Sometimes that problem could even be an assassination. You see, a subtle change of voice, some gestures, an expression of the face, and the adding of a few more words into a short sentence of two words as the, "cosa nostra" and it'll be enough to pronounce a death sentence.

At last, the mafiosi are using the words Cosa Nostra to name their organization, including any mafioso from top to bottom together with all of their filthy activities. And of course, there are many other instances where those words are used, but they'll take too much space in a single post just to talk about them.

L'arte di arranggiarsi (the art of getting by).

If the Mafia still esiste in Sicily in part is because of some honest citizens that sometimes are unknowingly or knowingly too condescending with their social attitudes, and and because of them, sometimes they are even imitating mafiosi's behavioral by getting their hands on whatever don't really belong to them by using an unethical shortcuts.

In south of Italy, there's a way of thinking that is called l'arte di arranggiarsi (the art of getting by), and it's deeply embedded in the DNA of many people. Sometimes this kind of thinking can be very bad, often contrasting with ethics and laws. More often than not, this form of cheating to beat the system can lead someone to deal with mafiosi, camorristi, or any other form of criminal organizations by asking them favors to get what they are looking for. Of course, the mafioso himself will be very happy to help you (for his help in time, he'll ask you a big favor in return).

This kind of thinking from ordinary citizens on the south regions of Italy, it's what really keeping the mafia and any other criminal organization to fade away from theirs cities. These cities can't become modern and industrialized, not until the bad attitudes from those people of arranggiarsi (of getting by) is removed. Look in Italy: the north and south part of it, industrially there are totally unbalanced. North regions are more wealthy than the south regions, and that's why many poor people decide to leave from the south regions with destinations toward the north of this nation, or altogether to emigrate in a new nation.

Naturally if you could look inside a Sicilian's mind, you could find many other answers that could explain why the Mafia hasn't been defeated yet. To entirely explain the whys and wherefores of the Mafia still living in Sicily, it would take to write many more chapters or to write an entire book which right now I not feel particularly motivated in doing it!

Or maybe it's just because I'm not really that capable to do it? Hmm...

Good people versus the people of respect in the Sicilian society.

2009-06-10T19:41:00.002-04:00

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Since I was a little boy in Sicily, I learned to distinguish the people in general as good people and people of respect.

I remember of when people were mentioning my family in their conversations, and they were always referring to my family as good people. What that meant? I learned soon what they really meant.

"Good people" was a way to distinguish the honest hard working people inside the Sicilian society from another kind of people. This other kind of people which reputations were with dubious moralities, and they were the so-called, "people of respect".

The people of respect (also mis-regarded as honorable people) was and still it is in Sicily, the people gravitating around or living within the Mafia's contest.

When the common people were mentioning them in their private conversations, they were always doing it with uneasy feelings of hidden fears. In fact the phrase of, "people of respect" evokes till these days in the honest people a bad concealed truth, and this truth was that they were indeed all fearful of them (the mafiusi).

That was and unfortunately still it is, the sad truth. When you found yourself in some particular circumstances and you asked to someone close to you, who were those people present at that moment and this someone was telling you that they were people of respect, then you realized soon what that meant. That meant to be cautious, to be afraid, because you never knew what they wanted from you.

Indeed, what you really heard when you were hearing those words in the Sicilian society for sure was: fears, intimidations, extortions, murdering and so on. As you can see, there was little of respectfulness on those words and more of fearfulness. That's what the mafia really evoked in the minds of the Sicilian men when those words were spoken, and none of respectability.

Now, I want to tell you a story of when I was a teenager living in Sicily and I had a small incident with one of these people of respect.

This incident happened one summer morning, and I was with the company of my young friends. My friends and I were all playfully horsing around a nearby empty water channel.

During this playfulness, I felt someone grabbing my right shoulder with excessive strength. Then, in a puzzled way, I turned myself around and saw a tall old man with completely white hairs under a black coppola looking angrily at me. He started shouting at me with an old Sicilian dialect, which I could barely understood.

While I was trying to make sense of the words rushing out from the mouth of this old guy, he was already pushing me toward the edge of the empty water channel. After we reached that edge, he pointed his index finger to something which I could barely see down there.

I was totally confused up then. I could not make any sense of what he was trying to tell me, and either the why he was pointing his finger to that mysterious thing at the bottom of the channel.

At that point I was getting in a mix of frustration, angriness, and fearfulness. Slowly my brain started to decipher the intelligible words shouted at me from the old guy (later, I found out this old guy was on his seventies).

He was accusing me to had thrown his metallic wheelbarrow to the bottom of that channel. I promptly rejected his accusation vented on me, and his face started to twist more in an unrecognizable mask of angriness (I want to be more specific, in that incident I believe I was around the age of nine or maybe eleven years old). The kind of exaggerated reaction of this old guy, was like he was dealing with an adult guy capable to stand up to his confrontational attitude.

In fact now, he was pushing me harder to the edge of the channel while with a furious tone of voice (the kind tone of voice from someone used to give commands) he was ordering me to go towards the bottom of it to recover his metallic wheelbarrow. Right that moment, I started to think that the old man must had been out of his mind for wanting from me something like that, in spite of my young age. For me at that young age, his request sounded like he was asking me to descend from a very high mountain's peak, to recover a very heavy metallic object at the bottom of it.

Consequentially to his unreasonable request I started to cry while I was imploring him to let me go, but still he kept insisting with his absurd request. I can't recall how long he persisted with his absurdity. Eventually, he gave up and let me go but not before he warned to harshly punish me if he ever saw me again around that place.

Later, I had a conversation with some acquaintances about that old guy. I asked them who he was, and they told me he was a man of respect. A man of respect which was the family head of the Di Maggio's clan. To be more concise, he was a mafia boss well know and respected (I dare to say that more than respected he was feared) in the neighborhood where I lived.

In those days, I started to learn for the first times those words, "men of respect" and their real meanings.

Those same words, kept coming back during the rest of my years I lived in Sicily. I can say today, that harsh, brief encounter with the old, "respected" man was for me a childhood trauma, as well the first lesson on the real nature of the mafia's grasp on the minds and lives of the honest Sicilian people.

A personal analysis on a pernicious disease. - Islam, the end of many cultures.

2009-06-02T15:34:00.000-04:00

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Despite the fact that the Arab world is geographically positioned side by side (even though is physically divided by the Mediterranean sea) with the European continent, since historically it has always been, the antithesis of the European Christianity and its many cultures.

The culprits of these constant alienation and confrontation reside for the most part, inside their own archaic Arabic cultures, and most of all, in their religion of nearly-peace, "Islam".

Nowadays, these fundamentally different models of cultures have collided in confrontational manners. All this difficult situation was created by far, with the help of European's fanatic visionaries on a new era for Europe. Their personal ideas on a new Europe with their wrong ideologies and their theorizations on multi-ethnic societies came to life, when they thought, the time was right...

Multiculturalisms, a new trend for European cultures to commit suicide?

As from today, it is very hard to foreseen the outcomes of all this mess created as result from national multiculturalisms been forcibly melted into single identities under the banner of, "globalization".

Threatened by big masses of Muslims entering Europe's borders together with the backwardness of their so called, "religion of peace" Europe is today on the verge of been conquered without a real war going on.

Islam has greatly failed its own people. And now in this modern age, it has become a latent infection for the rest of all free societies. Already, Islam is ready to spread its malefic influence toward anything that divert from the Koranic teachings.

When Islam comes to dominate other cultures, those other cultures are often destroyed.

BetBasoo

Potentially the mere existence of this pestilential malignancy can be a dangerous downfall for all the progress made by the free minds belonging to all the mankind, during its long journey throughout its history of discoveries and enlightenments, for the sake of human evolution.

All of these advancements, created after centuries of human struggle to free itself from its own chains of darkness and ignorances, and today this progress, is in danger of been annihilated by a regressive force such as the Islamization of all the European continent and following the rest of the world.

After all the struggling from our dark past, what we are getting today are many humanitarian reforms, and most important freedoms. The freedom to express freely our thoughts without the fears of reprisal and persecution by an uncompromising Islam.

Now, what I am afraid of is: free thinking being banished or ostracized from society by unmerciful Sharia courts alongside its deleterious Koranic's laws!

Islamic devotees (mostly the fanatic wings of Islam) have been trying more and more, to push Christian nations to become Islamic nations.

Islam is a religion of peace and to prove it we'll kill you!

A religion which was and is, endlessly nurtured and worshiped throughout the centuries by those fanatic and extreme adherents of this brand of religion which was named, "Islam". Now it is pushing even harder to proselytize more believers in its ranks, to ultimately render more fertile for its sustainers to reach their prefixed goal, the Islamization of the old continent, and later the entire globe.

In Euroland, an out of time and out of touch religion together with a bunch of retarded Koranic laws which will stain in the long run even the already existing cohesion with other cultural diversities.

Nefarious schemes has been perpetrated by these Islamic, "enthusiasts" infiltrated in the European soil which are already portraying gloomy scenarios under the shadow of rigid Sharia courts.

Europe has the right to preserve its identity, and not to be watered down by sentiments for multiculturalisms!

Differences between conservative Islamic values and Europe's traditionally secular liberalism are been daily tested inside the European borders. Exacerbated continuously by cultural sensitivity and by short-sighted and sometimes too zealous European politicians, as end result, European citizens are becoming more wary of the continuous Muslim's mass immigration into the heart of Europe and their presumably full integration with the rest of the native populations.

How all will end?

All will end with the creation of a fully reformed Islam that can coexist peacefully with the European values.

It's that really possible?

I wish, I can live long enough to see that happen. Because differently, God helps Europe!

A new economic rating for nations is needed.

2009-05-18T17:24:00.000-04:00

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A new economic tool for rating the economy status of a nation is needed.

Why?

Italy has the third public debts in the world, but still it is managing this crisis fairly well. The reason is: the public debts' data alone doesn't tells us much about the true economic health of a nation.

In fact, Italy has better standing on the private debts than the United States, meaning that Italian banks and industries are far less financial indebted than the American counterpart.

As a matter of fact, better readings for a correct interpretation of the true economic strength from nations is needed. The creation of a new form of indicator which will accumulate the private debts of a nation together with its public debts. Consequently at the creation of this new indicator which will consolidate the two debts in one single reading. Then, and only then, we'll have the correct economy's health of a specific nation.

For sure in this new rating system the United States will scores much worst than Italy, and that's why these two nations in the face of this economic crisis are performing differently.

As proof of the economic performance of these two nations, I'm adding two links where you'll get some more infos:

Is Fiat buying Chrysler or Opel or both?

Everyone Wins in a Fiat-Chrysler Deal.

Conclusions:

The past United States' political system has failed its own people by far. Today, after the election of Obama as the new American President, there are some American conservatives which are afraid that this Obama's Presidency will change the American economic system by creating one which will resemble more to a socialistic system and less of a capitalistic one.

Now, Obama has vowed for a new plan to repair and to revive the American's shattered economy. A new U.S. political system which is more inclined towards the people and not towards the rich. How bad that will be if that will ever happen, for the people of the United States?

Is the American capitalism a model for bankruptcy?

2009-05-16T19:50:00.001-04:00

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This last American financial crisis has shown the real weaknesses of this nation's economic strength. The United States are or were, one of the wealthiest and strongest economic nation in the world. But how much of all that, is still holding true nowadays?

Is the American capitalistic model, a model of bankruptcy especially for the common U.S. citizens?

The rich of the U.S. will sail this current economic crisis with more or less worries for their own pockets. In the other end, while this economic storm is still going on, who is really bearing (as always happens in these kinds of situations) the full brunt of this economic turmoil are the common citizens with less cash availability in the hands, and even less confidence to overcome it.

This U.S. financial crisis has also spurred a global economic recess, and while the United States has to deal with it in various ways to solve this economic crisis, I find out that in the world there are some exceptions of nations been more capable to deal with it.

Some of these exceptions are in the old continent. In particular one of the European's nations, which is it Italy. What I have learned, was indeed that Italy is coping with this economic crisis much better than the United States of America.

Afterwards to it, my personal question was: the why of that?

In Italy the private debts are much lower than the U.S. debts, and for the mere facts even lower than the English debts, or the Irish's debts (these nations share most of the same financial and economical models).

In fact, while Italy doesn't have to create more public debts to cure its own financial woes, the United States has to invest a lot of money in the hope to avert an immediate financial meltdown. And of course to get fresh cash to pay for avoiding a financial meltdown, the United States has to squeeze more juice from the wallets of the American people.

Now my thinking on this financial situation is this: perhaps inside the American's economical models lies the truth about their own economy's weakness on the global markets...

Using different approaches by national governments for the social benefits.

Now, what are the differences between these two economic systems which are allowing them to deal with this global economic crisis.

While in Italy the social economic market is that of a state which is closer to the needs of the majority of its own people, rather than, closer to the needs of the few Italian's industrial tycoons.

On the contrary in the United States, the social economic market seems to be all bent to protect the welfares of the industrial tycoons, in spite of all the needs of the majority of the American people.

In what ways, the Italian people are benefiting more from an Italian economic system than the U.S. people with their own economic system?

First and foremost, the Italian people are getting some more benefits from their own social economic system by allowing them to not be worried to the extremes in the case of they losing their jobs. Because in the event that it happens, they, the Italians will get some more social protections than their U.S. counterparts.

Second, the Italian are more inclined to save than more on spending their hard earned money. Instead most of the U.S. citizens, because of their attitude to frenziedly spend all of their money like there's no tomorrow, most of these people when they've lost their jobs are left in deep desperation and with almost none of the same social protective net of the Italians.

You see: most Italians have saving in the Italian banks, but most U.S. citizens have only debts with the American banks. This American spending attitude is due to the American life style's pressures on its own people.

Third, most of the Italians own their houses...in the other hand, how many U.S. citizens own a house?

and lastly...

Fourth, Italians are getting better (unfortunately this is not always true, especially in the south of Italy... but this is an other story) and mostly free health cares than the U.S. citizens.

Continue...

Next: A new economic rating for nations is needed.

Of when I was living in another dimension.

2009-05-08T16:34:00.007-04:00

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Today I want to share with all of you, a weird experience I had in my past.

Did ever happen to you, to apparently live in another dimension? This weird experience happened to me more than once, but if you ask me how many times it happened, frankly, I can't answer it at all. I never ever told to anyone about it, for the simple reason it was a real weird one, and besides I was afraid I could end up in a psychiatric ward.

Now, what this experience was it's very hard to tell even today.

Here I go:

I remember in the past, to have had some unusual feelings when they were less expected, and all of them happened indifferently in the daytimes and as well in nighttimes. Mostly, they were sensations of temporary living in another dimension, a dimension in which I didn't belong.

All of those sensations were happening when I was in a sort of dreamlike state, and even though I consciously knew back then that I was fully awake when they were happening. In those moments I felt like I wasn't in my body anymore, but I was living in somebody else body. Also in those weird moments, I had the clean impression that all around me was from an alien ambient, like I wasn't anymore on earth but in a bizarre and strange planet.

Another thing which hit me about those moments was, when they were happening during the daylights they felt more real to me. The brightness levels of those days were so blinding and painful to watch, like there was too much light been emanated from the sun.

Also the people around me looked so bizarre, so alien. The all looked luminescent and almost transparent, sort of evanescent beings. Even physical objects appeared to me weirdly. I felt that buildings around me had real bodies and souls, like they were breathing organisms. At the same time to my eyes, those buildings seemed that they were been slanted out from their equilibrium points.

In addition to that strange atmosphere, I didn't fail to notice the air which was getting in my lungs was filled with more pure oxygen and it was much warmer than usual.

At times in those moments, I was really terrified. I had the clear sensation that something awful was going to happen. Despite the fact that I wasn't feeling any pain, I was afraid that I was dying.

Why?

Why I was so scared that I was going to die, in such beautiful and not easily explainable days. I couldn't answer my own question. Fortunately, I knew in those awkward moments that they weren't going to last forever.

Five minutes, maybe half of an hour, or maybe two hours passed before everything ended. Exactly, I didn't know how long they lasted but eventually they always ended, although, the rest of those particular days went on like nothing ever happened.

Today, I can't still figure them out the whys and wherefores they were occurring to me. Those unusual moments were for me sort of out of body experiences.

Maybe unknowingly, in those strange days I was in the verge of some serious illness. Or maybe those weird moments had something to do with my body's chemicals balance.

On second thought I believe, on those weird moments I was really been transfered into a parallel dimension by some evil Martian.

But, despite the fact that they are unpleasant moments to remember even today, ultimately I prefer to remember them as some kind of spiritual events.

Islam and multiculturalism - At what price the cost for freedom.

2009-05-03T21:34:00.012-04:00

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I may not agree with what you are saying, but I will defend to the death your right to say it!

Can the above quote from the French philosopher Voltaire, be applicable in cases such of those Islamic extremists that are shouting in any possible occasions all their intense hate toward anything that differs from the Islamic teachings.

When the freedom of speech becomes freedom of hate?
Ah, the joys of multiculturalism together with the freedom of speech. Lately, I have seen and heard it over and over again in many news.

Indeed, in many rallies and marches of Islamic, "cowards" which are using our same rights and our same beliefs solely to smear their willful contempt and hate on our own faces.

See how much proficiency these fanatics are putting when using the same free speech which they hate soooo much!

Next is an extract taken from the dailymail.co.uk:

'HE is the coward for mocking victims of friendly fire': Families of dead soldiers react with fury to Muslim hate preacher's taunts

By Andrew Levy and Paul Harris

The families of soldiers killed by friendly fire in Iraq have reacted with fury after a firebrand preacher taunted them over the deaths of their loved ones.

Anjem Chourdary added insult to the injury caused by Islamic extremists' hate-filled protest against soldiers returning home from the war-torn region by saying they were 'not heroes but closer to coweards who cannot fight, as their uncanny knack for death by friendly fire illustrates'.

The three soldiers to whom he was referring - Privates Robert Foster, 19, John Thrumble, 21, and Aaron McClure, 19 - were killed in Afghanistan in August 2007 when an American F-15 jet dropped a 500lb bomb on their position.

Choudary's extraordinary comments were delivered hours after Muslim protesters waved offensive placards as members of 2nd Battalion Royal Anglian Regiment marched through Luton.

The preacher, the right-hand man to cleric of hate Omar Bakri, went on to attack the 'vile' parade. He said the soldiers were 'terrorists', comparing them to Nazi troops who 'cannot be excused for simply carrying out their duty'.

Fanatic Muslims are the enemies within European and American's borders, and even though they are a minority of big masses of Muslims settling in Western nations, they have an extreme interpretation of Islam. Besides lay the rest of the Muslim communities, and I don't know if these communities really are wishing to be integrating parts of these free Nations. But, in the other hand they want to change their close societies to same images and similitudes as dictated by their sacred Koran.

I want to make this part more clear by telling you how much they really want to assimilate within the host countries by telling you something about these processes of assimilation. I live in the US, and in front of the apartment from where I live every single day I see, a door open and a flock of women all rigorously dressed in black chadors swarms out from that door.

Unfortunately, fanatics of multiculturalism are putting today the all of European and America's nations in danger of becoming lands of many sharia courts and... worst! And because of their blindness in the multiculturalism, they are unknowingly injecting a Trojan horse into our countries (Islamization through big masses of Muslims of entire continents).

Of course, I want to make clear a point before I do go ahead with this post of mine. I do believe most of the Muslim community are not terrorists and hence peaceful people, but by allowing big masses of Muslim immigrants to settle in Christian lands, indiscriminately and without much limitations they will in time change the fabrics of those same Western Democracies.

The cultural heritages of those Christian Western nations (which are spanning back thousands of years into human's history), in time they will lose their original make up and they will become something of opprobrious and of foreign characteristics to themselves and their original inhabitants.

Right now, many free (for the time being) European nations are harboring within their societies a malignant tumor, ready to spread to the rest of Europe and later destroy everything that we all love and appreciate, meant, "our own freedom".

Today, nations such as the UK, Denmark, Netherlands and many more are becoming sort of trampolines ready to launch an assault to the rest of Europe, and later in all probability the rest of the world.

Did I said enough nonsenses for today? Swell, that wasn't my intent. In fact, I wanted to stir some concerns on the matter of criticize Islam.

Freedom of expression go to hell!

Why so? Because after the Durban 2 conference, to criticize Islam will be a dangerous matter for many of us, naturally if a Muslim request will pass.

The UN assembly is considering a biding resolution urging member states to make a crime to criticize Islam. The so called, "Anti-blasphemy resolution" is a resolution sponsored by (guess who?) a block of 57 Islamic countries (by the way, you'll find no democracy whatsoever in this block), which have pushed hard this biding resolution to pass at the United Nations for combating defamation of religion. If passed this resolution, it will be very heinous. Then, it will be a crime to write a book, make a movie, or even criticize a religion. And guess what? Islam itself would be the main beneficiary of this biding resolution.In fact, it will be immune from future criticisms.

Freedom Under Fire: U.N. Anti-Blasphemy Resolution - With Christopher Hitchens

Yet, I don't get it! I called Islamophomic if I criticize Islam.

Why I am Islamophomic, if I criticize Islam. Islam is not a race but a religion (and besides I don't even believe it is a real religion at all) and nevertheless just for the matter, I do criticize my own religion when it needs a good dose of criticism. Why I can't criticize Islam? What it has of special from the rest. Maybe is because Islam is an oppressive and despotic regime under false pretenses of, "a religion of peace".

In light of what I was saying before regarding the Islamic extremists, I should still have the same rights as those, "bastards" in matter of free speech. Particularly, when I call them fanatic cowards,or when I say that Islam is bad for humanity like a malignant tumor.

Am I wrong?

I want to conclude all this by asking a final question. Can Islam really co-exist within a free and democratic society?

No, I don't think so.

Peace.

To have the right to die in peace and dignity. - The sad story of Eluana Englaro.

2009-02-27T16:59:00.009-05:00

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Since 1992, following a car accident, Eluana Englaro was living in a vegetative state thanks to the artificial life support that was given to her. For years the father of this unfortunate girl, Beppino Englaro, fought the Italian legal system in order to interrupt the forced feeding of his beloved daughter.

Now, the case of Eluana Englaro has been carried out: after a long legal battle, in fact, the civil court of appeal of Milan has authorized the father, to interrupt the treatment of forced feeding and hydrating, till the death of the women.

After 17th years of deep coma and the following of therapeutic enforcements, Eluana Englaro was continuously imposed to live an undignified existence. Can we say, this is a kind of life that is worth the pain to live with?

C'mon!!!

Why keep torturing her? Because that's what it was! Indeed, that's what the doctors had been doing for the past 17th years, after they put the than 20 years young, Eluana Englaro, inside a life support machine. A forceful feeding through the help of a cannula to keep her in life, when there was no chances of recovery and no chances of a life normalcy, following the 1992, tragic event of the car accident.

That's the real sin!!!

She should have been taken off life support at the request of her family, and not to be debated outside the family circle, or at least should have been given them support for their final decision by competent support groups, and not to obstinately hindering their personal decision by outsiders on this delicate matter.

Some attitudes coming from politicians, the common people, and the church itself are for me morally reprehensible. There are certain limits to the human condition, and when those limits are by far exceeded, by forcefully injecting chemicals into a consumed body to keep it breathing even when there aren't anymore signs of an human being dwelling in it, (that's the real sin for me) and thus life becomes unbearable and unworthy to live anymore, then let the people close to the victims (as in the case of this sad story) make the right decisions.

No politicians, no church, no common people, but the circle of friends and relatives close to the victim. I frankly believe, nobody else is entitle to make a choice of life or death on a critically ill patient, but the beloved ones.

This is my personal opinion! But then, anyone is entitle of a personal opinion.

What's yours?

Eluana Englaro: may she finally rest in peace.

This is an article of mine which I have been thinking for quite sometime to post it here, but because of the seriousness of the case I have decided to delay it.

Lost and confused.

2009-02-12T16:56:00.011-05:00

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A personal view on the TV series, "Lost".

I've been watching the TV series, "Lost" and I must admit that I don't like to watch TV series because of their lengths. While I've been watching, "Lost" I've found myself battling with my intelligence while I was trying to make sense of the entire series, and I bet many of you were and are in the same mental confusion in which I've found myself while watching it.

Nevertheless, I still like to watch Lost. And yet, I haven't got any idea how the all series will end up after the six years will come to the conclusion.

The authors of Lost, I frankly believe, will have a very hard time to find a decent and believable ending to this fictional story of survivors from a plane crashed into a mysterious and remote island.

Lost, gives to me the impression of a mix and match of ingredients. Ingredients which are ranging from love stories, to alien stories, and horror stories, science fiction stories, supernatural stories, and etc, etc, and the all was created by the minds of very mentally sick and confused men.

In fact, they should had named this TV series not just to, "Lost" but to, "Lost and confused". Each 1/2 episodes is a story apart from the rest of the main story without a real ending to each of them. In truth, the all Lost's story is a continuous and tortuous tantalizing story without apparently, much of a correlation between each of the single episodes.

In an attempt from the writers of this fictional TV movie, to span the entire complex and cryptic story in a six year seasons, this TV movie based at the start on a simple idea of a bunch of people surviving from a plane crash in a remote island is turned into a mixture of confusing and of course not always logically related mini-stories, to the main story of these people lost in that island which are all bent to find a way back to their homes.

And when they (at least some of the characters) do find their way back to their homes, they are damned (see the last episodes) to go back to the island.

You see, they are damned if they stay in that mysterious tropical island, and they are also damned if they leave from that island.

What a mess of story is that!

But still, I'll be waiting for the end of the story. How the all mess will end up? If, the authors of this fantastic and confusing story will be able to give us a decent and credible ending as they have promised, I will be the first one to applaud them, but I am really skeptical about it.

Why?

Because I believe, the ending of Lost will be as the the entire TV's Lost series. It will leave us more confused and perplexed as the entire Lost's series, still looking to find some answers to the many puzzles that this TV movie will leave behind after it will be over.

Maybe, that's what would bring the real success to this tediously protracted story, a trail of bewilderments and mysteries which will be left behind it without much of an explanatory on them.

After all that's the real nature of humanity, always ready to be amazed by something strange and surprising, and in the end we'll be quite happy. Even though, we'll be left without much of an explanation to something that much incomprehensible. That's us, that's humanity...alleluia.

Now, what has to do this post with my blog?

Nothing, or maybe all.

You see, I feel to be in the same situation of the authors from the TV series Lost. I started it, and now I don't know where to go from there, or what to do with it! I'm totally lost and confused, for the moment. I hope, I'll find my way out of all this messy situation.

Maybe I'll keep writing unrelated posts for this blog, even in the coming years. Or, I'll get all of a sudden tire of it and stop all together. Quite frankly right now, I don't really know what to do with it.

What I know for the moment is that I'll try to keep posting, even though, I don't really know what I'll be posting about, or if I'll be respecting the cadence of my postings anymore.

That's all folks, and thanks for your patience.

Saying goodbye to Bush and hello to Obama.

2009-01-20T21:11:00.012-05:00

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For most of the American people wasn't enough to put Bush above the mediocrity, even when they were remembering him standing on the ruins of ground zero after the 9/11 terrorist attack while with the help of a megaphone he was promising to punish the responsible for that horrible attack.

And neither wasn't enough for the American people when they were listening to his final radio address as president when he took the merit by saying: America has spent seven years after 9/11 without an other major terrorist attack on its soil.

What really disappointed me was: how in the hell the American constituency got the second time so wrong and decided to reelect him after his first mandate.

First of all, what got the U.S. into Iraq?

Did President Bush took this nation to an unwanted war with Iraq and ultimately discredited the Americans' credibility in the eyes of the entire world.

Historians will debate over who did more damage to the country, or even over who had more of a predilection for hiring political cronies whose tendencies were more self-centered rather than leaning toward the interests of an entire nation.

Let’s also not forget, the collapsing of our economy under the last half of Bush’s Presidential mandate. Under his administration, we oversaw the crumbling of the dollar through the Federal Reserve.

And also I can't forget, when I was listening to him while he was deceiving the American people, particularly when he was asserting that the United States' economy wasn't in a economic slump, or I better call it with its real name, "recession". He admitted these facts only after they happened, long after the social working classes were feeling the pain at home.

Eight years of a George W. Bush's disastrous administration is finally over. For Bush what was left during his departures from the American Presidency (which by the way, it was marked by a low approval rating), was an exit from the scene without glory.

President Bush Makes Farewell Address to the Nation - Part 1

President Bush Makes Farewell Address to the Nation - Part 2

*****

As an epoch ends a new era begins.....

.....Obama's era.

Today, the American people is among serious economical worries and high expectations for a renewed Presidency. This new President, "Barack Obama" used his inaugural address to pledge a "new era of responsibility".

Following a brief summary of Obama's first address to the nation and the world at the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C. after his sworn in as our nation's 44th president.

Obama to the Americans: starting from today, we must remake the United States. -The time of easy choices is gone, it's needed to roll up our sleeves. -Everywhere we look we'll see there is work to be done. -This economic crisis requires a rapid and bold action.

Obama to the world: we gather here today, because we have chosen the hope over the fear, and unity of intents over conflict. -We must end the false promises and recriminations from worn out dogmas which had strangled our politics. -We all deserve the same opportunities and to realize our own happiness.

Obama to the Muslim world: the terrorism is in the wrong part of the history. We'll not lose. America can get to a new age of peace and of hope. -We will leave Iraq to its own people. -We'll look in Afghanistan for a peace difficult to obtain. -To the Muslim world I say mutual respect. Your people will judge you for what you will be able to build, and not for what you will destroy.

Obama to himself: only the virtue could survive the difficulty. Our memory is important.

President Barack Obama 2009 Inauguration and Address

=== The world has changed we must change with it. ===

Now that the pageantry is over what will be waiting for Obama and his administration is, to give back a much needed self-confidence to the American people.

Points of divergence from a non Arab/Jew - The Gaza conflict.

2009-01-14T11:49:00.006-05:00

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I'm not siding for the Palestinians and neither the Israelis' cause. I don't personally know the reality in which today these people are living in, and besides I do not have a very good knowledge of the true history of that part of the world.

For me, it's very hard to come up with a personal opinion on the Israelis/Palestinians conflict, and because of what I know which I learned from history's books and news medias, that could easily been manipulated by politics' agendas, to give us the recipients, a partial truth of what is really going on in that part of the world.

What I do have here are some questions:

I know that the Jews were exiled from Palestine (what is now Israel) and scattered worldwide after a series of historic events, and that they, the Jewish people lost their native land for nearly two millennium!

Israel is a nation which was created by the Jews when they took forcibly the lands belonging to the indigenous people.

After WWII, many Jews from different nationality's backgrounds (because of the feelings of guilt from some European nations regarding the Jewish's Holocaust) were allowed to resettle in Palestine. Afterward, the Jewish settlers claimed a pretentious “divine right” on the Palestinian land, and after sequential steps the Jews declared the Jewish "Nation" of Israel in 1948.

Now, it's well known that in ancient times the Jews inhabited Palestine, but in my humble opinion the lost their natural rights once they were expelled from Palestine, for over two thousand years. They can't pretend after two millennium to go back and because of some, "divine right" ask their land to be returned. Could they?

When the Jewish settlers went back in Palestine, didn't they know that already were people living in it, or they thought that Palestine was a deserted land just waiting to be taken?

They say (the Jews) that the Palestinians have no right to that land, because they are not the original inhabitants, but frankly after two thousand years they have all the rights to be called the owners of that land. In short: the Jewish people after so many years lost the ownership of that land, and doesn't count any fanciful divine right. Am I wrong?

Unfortunately for the Palestinians, it is too late to recriminate on the creation of the Jewish state. The Palestinians have to deal with it, not with bombs but dialog, because the Israel nation isn't going to vanish, it is here to stay!

Even though I must confess, I do have an other terrible thought on the Jews real intentions regarding the Palestinians' fate, and it is the justification they are seeking to erase the Palestinian people from earth's face when they are declaring terrorists most of the Palestinian fighters.

Today according to some news medias, the action taken by the Israeli military in response to the rocket attacks inside the Israeli's borders by the Hamas movement as been too disproportioned. Even in this recent Israeli-Palestine's crisis is very hard for me to give a personal opinion! In one hand, I do believe that Israel has the right to defend itself, but in the other hand (as some news medias have reported) I do believe Israel has overstepped that right.

Some time, I do get the impression that to some news medias it's more important to report and emphasize the few Jewish casualties of this war than the thousands of Palestinian casualties.

Of course, I can be completely wrong in any of the above thoughts...My are personal opinions of the current Middle East crisis, and they don't pretend to be anything else.

In conclusion, will this Middle East's mess ever stop?

I'm sure about one thing in all this Middle East's mess, and it is that this Palestinian/Israeli's war has been going on for over fifty years, and sadly it will continue for an other fifty years. The real victims of this prolonged Israeli-Palestine's war are the innocents of both side, and with them in the end I will side.

Apologies from my bleeding heart.

2009-01-09T19:37:00.007-05:00

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Holy Cow I just returned from my daily swim on the beautiful Fijian beach and realized I have not updated this since last year...

You would not believe I spend all my time in front of a computer. Apologies to my regular readers! Even the little blue ones!

I am absolutely consumed with drinking a lot of water, playing The Sims, just generally being a coach to my psychologist, my day seems to be a litany of stuff and giggles from the moment my children manage to unlock my bedroom door and use me as a jumping castle to I am begging my kid to go to sleep or so help me God that kid will be decorating my wall, 'Duct tape still life'. I am so exhausted. Maybe tomorrow.

I solemnly swear I will write something that makes sense soon. Well, I'll try. Don't hold your breath though, you're likely to turn blue...

P.S. I removed a banner and a picture from my blog because they could be wrongly interpreted, but I left the American eagle not because it is an American symbol but because it represent to me an unique symbol. The symbol of freedom and equality for all the mankind.

Apocalypse versus the final apocalypse.

2009-01-09T18:21:00.009-05:00

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The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

I've been trying to analyze how the world could end within hypothetical apocalyptic scenarios, and I came to realize that in reality there are two kinds of apocalypses.

As the title of this post states, "Apocalypse versus the final apocalypse" what I really meant with it? I try to explain with some examples: first off, the simple (if I can really call it simple) apocalyptic scenario is when a man-made catastrophe such as a nuclear war between let me say India and Pakistan, or between Israel and Iran.

Of course, a nuclear war between any of the above mentioned rivals, will be a doomsday scenario by itself. But still, it will be a partial apocalypse for humanity.

How so?

Even when the participants of this (I'm afraid not so much...) hypothetical nuclear war will suffer with millions of deaths, and will it in the end be the total destruction of their nations, and consequentially with the rest of the world suffering from the nuclear fallout. Yet, it won't be a real Apocalypse but a partial one.

This is a nightmarish disaster for humanity which I firmly believe will happen someday, and unfortunately it is unavoidable. This is the apocalypse, or as I put it: a simple apocalypse. The aftermaths of it will be a slow and painful recovery for humanity.

You see, only when humanity will realize to be on the brink of disaster such as a limited nuclear war, then humanity will react to it. Still as I mentioned, there will be a recovery for humanity from a partial doomsday scenario, or as I was saying before from a simple apocalyptic scenario.

What about the, "final apocalypse"?

There isn't much explanatory to it. As the word, "final" implies it is final, no chances of survival for humanity but the end!

Of course, this kind of apocalypse will never happen....because of a total nuclear war, but there is an other kind of final apocalypse which is been dictated by humanity, and this other one is happening right now under our own eyes.

The difference of this other, "final apocalypse" is that it is slow, very slow, so slow that to be perceive it, we need to pay a close attention to it. We are so much busy with our lives that we are failing to pay any attention to it. That's why most of us fail to recognize it as an apocalyptic event!

What is it?

It is our world being slowly poisoned by our sewage and garbage dumped in lands and seas, it is our skies been polluted with poisoning gases, it is our trees been corroded by acid rain, it is the fishes been depleted from the oceans, it is all the animals wiped out from earth's surface.

That's what it is!

We are slowly contaminating our own world and with it sentencing our own survival. I'm afraid this is our, "final apocalypse".

Why so?

Because we are wasting time in useless debates while the clock is ticking away the time we have left to our, "final apocalypse".

There are too much political debates and very little actions to a very urgent situation. That's what we are doing right now! Wasting time, while the, "final doomsday" is approaching very fast!

Unfortunately in this instance, there isn't a wake up call before the real disaster hits home, or as I was saying before regarding the limited nuclear war, a simple apocalypse (a big disaster in which humanity would still be able to recover from) which could shake us all from our torpid sleeps, but this time it will be...the final one.

To live with the terrorism - World day against terrorism.

2008-12-26T11:53:00.009-05:00

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The afterward terrorist attack in the Mumbai's railway station.

The following post is long overdue, and now I have decided to finally write it.

What is it about?

I live in New York City, and I have lived the September 11, 2001 terror attack and its aftermaths.

I have heard some words of resignation from common people of different backgrounds and different nationalities which are living and working in N.Y., after the last terrorism attack in Mumbai.

What frightens me the most of this new phenomenon is: we are getting used to the idea that terrorism is everywhere and we have to live with it.

After the Mumbai attacks, I came to the conclusion that Islamic terrorism is the new enemy of the peoples, any people that dwells on earth's face. Doesn't matter to those fanatics who are their victims, we are seeing radical Islamists in action everywhere.

To those Islamic fanatics doesn't matter from which nationality, skin color, or religion are their victims: rich, poor, white, black, yellow, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Jew, atheist, and even Muslim victims doesn't really matter to them.

The attacks in the African Embassies in the 1998 bombings, and following it a string of terrorist attacks in New York, Madrid, London, Casablanca, Bali, and now Mumbai together with a multitude of forgotten minor terrorist attacks, they are all symptoms of a new threat from an indiscriminating war. An indiscriminate war waged against the innocents and their ideas of free and open societies.

Islamic terrorism has masked itself into a global jihad, an Islamic jihad waged against imaginary oppressions from the Western cultures imposed on Muslim lands and on their archaic beliefs.

But the sad truth is: who is paying the consequences of this holy war are the common people. All of the common people around the world, which have done nothing wrong to a fundamental Islam.

By looking at the past terrorism attacks, I realized that Islamic terrorism is here to stay. And consequently to it, much of the free world is adopting a negative tendency of acceptance to these terrorism recurrences.

What can be done, to fight this sad tendency?

From my part, I can blog in a useful way. I can start here, right now, by announcing a, "World day against terrorism". I know, I know, it sounds too much of an emphatic declaration. But at least, I'm doing something about this tendency.

What will be the next steps?

The next steps are up to the communities of bloggers, from the cyberspace. All the willing bloggers around the world! If all together we could join forces by talking about this initiative, and possibly later to adopt a plan of actions. It would be the first step to counterattack the nefarious schemes of the terrorism evilness.

This initiative to be set in motion needs all of your help. Talking about it and consequently by creating a momentum of initiatives, which then could be the very first steps in creating something good in the hope to fight the negative aftereffects of the terrorism, in the people's minds and souls.

Perhaps with our blogs, we could really create a movement of people around the world capable of stopping Muslim fanatics to terrorize the world.

And if we will succeed by promoting this initiative, it will even be a way to pay some respect to the memory of all the innocent victims from the past terrorism attacks all around the world.

In the long run, we'll even feel good about ourselves by doing something useful to the world, while we will be using our blogging habits for a just cause.

By announcing today a, "World day against terrorism" I hope in the near future that will really be there, a day dedicated against the terrorism. Possibly, a day against any form of terrorism act perpetrated on innocent lives.

Now, I will be waiting for all of your responses at this initiative. Please, let me know what you think about it, and what can be done to really jump start it.

Muslim heads being stuck in the middle ages...

2008-12-18T22:31:00.008-05:00

...and their deeply embedded culture of tendency towards denial for the truth and enlightenment.

Category:

The Middle East.

After an anonymous have left a comment on one of my posts: In response to: Why do Muslims hate the United States, I have decided to write this new post.

The following article, is in a way a follow up of it.

Anonymous said...

Hey there!
I had a similar accident when I was looking for the forum "Rise Of Pakistan" and I found your forum. Here are few of the points I want to make to try to open up your eyes.
Iam a pakistani muslim living in canada right now. Iam doing my engineering from a university in canada.
So Lets start now; shall we?
1)Before accusing islam of hatred and terrorism we would have to look at little back in the history and see why did all that happen.

We all know of Newton's third law........."Every action has a reaction".....
a)After the first world war the illegal occupation over muslim lands by UK and US
b)During the WWII phase the illegal and forceful occupation of palestine by zionists.

So according to your standards US and UK have all the licenses to carry out any aggression against the muslim world whenever they please to but muslims should not show any sign of agression and anger. If they do they are called terrorist......bravo my friend

Just few more questions:
1)US claims pakistan is an irresponsible state and their nuclear weapons should be taken away becoz..........But unfortunately if we see in the history US is the only country who has used atomic bomb against any other country. Ooopppsss.....now who's irresposible here......
2)US talks about pakistan selling off nuclear technology to other countries........but if we look back a little, during the WWII only US had the nuclear technology....how did it come out of US at first place......Oooppsss.....US sold it to make money
3)Who has given right to US to invade Iraq and afghanistan......They said they invaded iraq coz iraq has weapons of mass destruction.....they didnt find any there......Oopppsss US president is a lier
They also claimed they are going after Osama Bin Laden in afghanistan.......but Osama has died even before 1995 ......Oopppss US military darama exposed......
4)Just because US and UK control the resources of the world and they have strong propaganda.......they cant control the world for ever.......evil deeds end in misery....so thats gonna happen one day.....unless people in US and UK(which I strongly believe are educated and most of them still have concious)stop this nuisance created by these mean freaks like BUSH and Blair company........leeches like Dick Cheneey have to be stopped.

I hope now you understand why that lady in pakistan was saying......“They feel they can basically come in, use as they please, and then..."
She was reffering to the fact that who has given license to US and Israel and UK to carry out all the agression agasint muslim still being innocent..........
Remember one thing.......this agression can go on for centuries .....but the Newtons law will apply always......No matter how much you try to cover up the reality and mould the things and present them in different way to world....the muslim agression wud stop the day agression against them is stopped. This all was not started by muslims.......
5)Last of all......have u heard ur dear president using the word Crusades for this so-called ...."War On terrorism".....why

I hope you better understand the reason of muslims behaviour in present world........stop the agression against them and their agression wud stop too.........Newtons law simple...is it?

I'll try to answer to you (dear anonymous), by going point to point to your comment:

First: the tirade over the Palestinian land occupied by the Zionists and all the blah, blah, blah..... (I have heard it so many times, already. Any time there is an Arab/Muslim crisis in any part of the world: is because of the Jews, or the UK, or the Americans). Instead, try to explain to me of the nowadays Muslims' (violent) demands with its legacy of hundred thousands death of innocents victims of terrorism all over the world.

I want to add that at first, I was sympathetic to the cause of the Palestinian, but then, when many Islamic radicals turned the Palestinians' cause (among many other excuses) to a justification for an ugly fight between Western cultures and Muslim cultures, or a fight between Jews/Christians and the Arabs/Muslims (and I won't mention here the Hindus-Muslims' many carnages - see the latest on the Mumbai attack).

Lets put it this way:

If Muslims would have had the possibility to colonize the entire European continent (or worst the entire world), don't you think that they would have done it by now. Look at the history, and you'll see that all the Muslims conquests on the European continent (or for the mere fact in any other part of the world) were not less aggressive, ruthless, or (as you said) illegal than any other European colonizing nation of the Middle East afterward. Seem to me that the aggression and overpower of humans on another humans are something deeply encoded in the human genes.

And what standards are you talking about? My only standards are the good and the freewill of the people. Any people living on this rock, called planet earth!

What I wanted to single out on my blog were: the acts of cowardly terrorism on innocents and the motivations which are deeply embedded in minds and souls of some of the Allah's followers.

Don't you think by now, that there is something really wrong with some Muslims and Islam itself.

The fighting methods of the Muslim Jihadists is against any human decency. To fight something wrong we don't need to make it worst by doing something bad...meaning if you want some justice for the Palestinians' cause, or for any other presupposed injustice toward Muslims do it in more civilized ways and not by bombing innocent lives.

Regarding the rest of your questions: they sound to me pretentious ways to spur more contentious debates on if.... and for this reason I won't even bother to answer them.

Anyway, now do I understand the reason of Muslims behavior and the Newtons law, but do you understand the fears of the innocents been blow up by the bombs of those fanatic Islamists?

....and the reasoning behind the whys and wherefores of the radicalized Muslim minorities which have unleashed a reign of terror, and all of it is done in the name of Islam and its prophet Allah.

By stopping the aggression against the Muslims people committed by the Western world, some Muslim Apologists (like yourself dear anonymous) are legitimizing the killing of innocent people.

And besides, you are still missing the point of my related blog's posts on: Muslims being stuck in the past, of when the poor Muslims nations were under some kind of European domination.

You as many other Muslims, are still looking for scapegoats to their misfortunes.

You should stop whining and stop living in the past. Try to gain some mental and physical forces, to build better Muslim nations and better relations with the rest of the world.

And for once, let all together forget about the religion components which has and will do more harm than good, for the sake of the entire mankind.

P.S. And yes, I was against the war in Iraq and the Bush's excuse to invade it.

Facing the Mafia - Between mafia's myths and realities (chapter III).

2008-12-13T19:15:00.013-05:00

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Beati Paoli

The mafia in search of dignified lineages and perhaps of noble justifications, tries to retrace its origins back to medieval times. Exactly, to a legendary and secretive sect of incappucciati (incappucciati-men's heads covered with hoods) thought to have existed in the medieval Sicily.

The name of this sect was the, "Beati Paoli".

The Beati Paoli were represented in the Sicilian popular imagination as a sort of Robin hoods. They took from the rich to give to the poor. To be more exact, they fought against vary abuses of power from riches and nobles on oppressed and underprivileged. I heard a lot stories about these Beati Paoli when I was very young from many people. Those same people swore to me that those stories were all true and not legend.

The Beati Paoli, when moving through the dark alleys and underground passages of Palermo, they were always dressing entirely in black tunics and were concealing their heads in long black hoods. In their punitive actions to rectify un-justices, they were dispensing crude punishments (meaning death by stabbing) through their secretive and unmerciful underground tribunal.

Now how much of all that was true? Because of the Beati Paoli secrecy's nature, it is possible that they had left behind very little of their real existence.

In fact, there are very little evidences today which could suggest us, that the sect of the Beati Paoli has ever existed in a Sicilian past history.

Another thing that has always struck me about the mafia is, its fervid religious devotion to God and saints. You can even see in mafia's movies when mafiosi are acting in their criminal behaviors, that sometimes they are referring to God, or some saint.

Some other times, you will see them with sacred images in their hands, and especially when these mafiosi are making some murdering decisions. Or when they are using some pseudo-religious formulas in their oaths of faithfulness to the family.

Since always, the religion supplies aliment to the Mafia. In a way, religion gives to the mafiosi a sense of normalcy. A sense that they are devoted believers, and hence still human beings to the eyes of God even with all their aberrant behaviors.

The symbols of the Mafia.

The mafia doesn't use symbolisms as sign of distinctions or to be recognized. The mafia at the contrary wants to be left unnoticed, to quietly carry its own criminal activities.

In fact, it prefers to use symbolisms for intimidations which goes beyond the actual material damage. Like when it wants to leave a warning message to its victims.

The Sicilian mafia in the 1800's and in the 1900's was using specific symbols to warn its adversaries, and sometimes even left threatening warnings towards the local population. Those warnings had particular meanings to the intended victims.

Often the corpse of a mafia's adversary, or of a mafioso that had sgarrato (sgarrato-disrespected) was found with determined signs on his body, so that all knew of the why he was killed and in the same time to warn others from making the same mistakes.

One of these signs was: the hand cut of the victim, meaning that the dead man had stolen something, knowing that he couldn't steal in that area, or that he couldn't steal from a particular individual just because that individual was protected by the mafia.

Another of these signs was: the extracted eyes of the victim put inside his fist, meant that man had killed someone affiliated to the mafia.

Another one was: the pad of a ficodindia (ficodindia-prickly pear) on a dead man's chest meant that the man had stolen money which did not belong to him.

And a handkerchief, or a pebble in mouth meant that man shouldn't have spoken.

Genital organs around the neck meant that man had annoyed women of an arrested mafia member.

Instead sponge letters, petroleum on the fruit, or a slaughtered animals were some pressing invitations to pay the pizzo (pizzo-money for the protection).

The head of an animal, a metallic heart riddled with holes, an empty coffin, or a dead bird

found close to someone's home

were instead warnings of a promise death.

A cut face was instead, an indelible sign of infamy among mafiosi.

And finally another symbol, but in this case it's used by the Italians to define the Mafia. This symbol is the piovra (piovra-octopus). Figuratively speaking, the mafia is like a parasite octopus which has thousand tentacles and despite the fact that you cut one tentacle from it, another one is ready to grow up back.

And that's why the piovra/octopus is associated as symbol of the mafia.

I want to add one more at these list of symbologies: the mafia is also like a chameleon. A chameleon capable of camouflaging itself to get confused with the surrounding ambient.

In conclusion of this very long article: the mafia is wounded but still alive, ready to rise again from its hiding places.

Facing the Mafia - La Mattanza (chapter II, part 2).

2008-12-01T16:35:00.023-05:00

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Palermo's freeway after a major bomb attack from the Mafia.

In fact, in the following months more notable Italian figures were murdered in Palermo. The Mafia was, indeed, challenging the Italian State with its vicious war. Again and again, the Mafia kept murdering the servants of the Italian State sent in Sicily to fight the Mafia, and to many Italian citizens it looked as a losing war.

As the months went by I felt really afraid for the Sicilians as the the Mafia had once again killed an other great Sicilian man. This time the man to be murdered was Giovanni Falcone.

Giovanni Falcone (May 18, 1939 – May 23, 1992) was an Italian magistrate who specialized in prosecuting the Sicilian Cosa Nostra. He was killed by the Mafia, together with his wife and three of his bodyguards, by a 350 kg dynamite explosion placed beneath the freeway from Palermo Airport to Palermo near the town of Capaci.

Palermo's highway after the bomb attack to the Sicilian magistrate Giovanni Falcon.

At this news, I cried. I wanted to kill one by one with my bare hands those responsible for this atrocious crime (I couldn't really express my anger by just writing it here). That murder was an other brutish way from the Mafia, to eliminate a resolute man of justice.

Capaci was the small town where I was used to go in summertime for fishing, and that freeway was the same freeway I took the last time to get to the Palermo's Airport, before I embarked into a flight that was bound for New York.

Now, my desolation was complete.

The mattanza keeps going on.

After two only months from the death of Giovanni Falcone, an other tragic assassination reaches me through the American's mass medias. This time, was the turn of Paolo Borsellino to be murdered by what seemed an unstoppable Mafia's arrogance.

Paolo Borsellino (January 19, 1940 - July 19, 1992) was an Italian anti-Mafia magistrate who was killed by a Mafia car bomb in Via D'Amelio, Palermo, less than two months after his friend and fellow anti-Mafia magistrate Giovanni Falcone had been killed by the Mafia. The bomb attack also claimed the lives of five policemen: Agostino Catalano, Walter Cosina, Emanuela Loi, Vincenzo Li Muli, Claudio Traina.

(Palermo)- Via D'Amelio after the bomb attack to the Sicilian magistrate Paolo Borsellino.

This new murder was extremely unpleasant and extremely serious, it added to the sum of more than a thousand of murders, the highest officials of the Italian State being murdered on the Sicilian streets in the space of few years: a mattanza! This freakish word, "mattanza" which I have learned in my youth, keeps coming back like a terrifying nightmare.

The turning point to the mattanza.

Going back in Palermo where the mattanza of highly Sicilian figures keeps going on, but slowly things starts to change even at the magistracy's level.

Thanks to the pentiti (collaborators with justice, or informants) of the Mafia that are testifying against their former associates.

Among the most famous Mafia pentiti (informants) is Tommaso Buscetta, the first important pentito (informant), who was very helpful to judge Giovanni Falcone in describing the Sicilian Mafia Commission or Cupola, the leadership of the Sicilian Mafia in the 1980s, and identifying the main operational channels that the mafia used and uses for its business.

And with Tommaso Buscetta start talking even bosses of the caliber of Francesco Marino Mannoia, Salvatore Contorno e Antonino Calderone.

La mattanza finally reaches its end.

Together with the informants' revelations and the magistrates' investigations, also all the investigative work from a police squad led by De Gennaro with their phone's interceptions, their following of suspects, and all their paperworks, finally, all these hard work starts to pay off, with a series of incriminations toward the men of the Sicilian Mafia.

All the incriminations emanated by the Italian judicial system will bring to the police blitz of San Michele (that's how it was called) with hundred of arrests in a single day. At last, the result of all these arrests will take to the maxi trial.

The Ucciardone's penitentiary.

The maxi trial with its 474 arrests accused of Mafia associations, began in Palermo in the 1986 inside a bunker next to the penitentiary institution of the Ucciardone. Among all the accused there are names such as Luciano Liggio, and Pippo Calò said to be the Mafia's cashier. The trial ended on December 16, 1987, almost two years after it commenced.

Palermo 1986 - Mafia's maxi trial video.

Red's note: Unfortunately, this video is only in Italian. I really sorry that I couldn't find an English translation of it.

The dark years of the Sicilian mattanza are finally over. Until...

Next: Facing the Mafia - Between mafia's myths and realities.

Facing the Mafia - La Mattanza (chapter II, part 1).

2008-11-30T19:40:00.019-05:00

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The tuna fishes, "Mattanza".

The word, "mattanza" how is related to Mafia and what it meant to me? I have to go back to a couple years after I had immigrated in the U.S. to answer to this question.

First off, the term, "mattanza" is an heritage left after different centuries of Spanish dominations of the Sicilian island, and it originated from word matar, meaning to kill. There are two specific contexts where the word, " mattanza" has been used like expressions in every day Sicilian life.

In first context, the word mattanza is used for the killing of tuna fishes in the Mediterranean Sea. For hundreds of years, fishermen in Sicily and Sardinia have used dense nets to capture the Mediterranean blue fin tuna (thunnus thinnus) in a quasi-spiritual procedure known as the mattanza (if you like to read more about it, here is the link for: Mattanza

In the second context, the word mattanza has been used for a different Sicilian expression. Even though, it still meant to kill something, this time the killing wasn't a tuna fish but a human being. And to be more exact, it meant to kill a lot of people with methods of ferocious assassinations, like the same ferocious methods used to kill a large number of tuna fishes in the Sicilian seas.

Now, going back to a couple years after I had immigrated in the U.S. and I learned a bad news by watching the TV. The bad news was that a man was brutally murdered by a Mafia's reprisal, and this man wasn't just a common man but he was also the embodiment of an ideal, a hope to finally defeat the Mafia. That man was, " Il generale Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa".

I cento giorni a Palermo di Dalla Chiesa.
( The one hundred days of Dalla Chiesa in Palermo.)

The general Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, was the new prefect of Palermo which was sent in Sicily by the Italian government after the premature death of Pio La Torre (of course, a premature death inflicted by the Mafia), to fight the Mafia.

Pio La Torre (Palermo, December 24, 1927 – Palermo, April 30, 1982) was a leader of the Italian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI). He was killed by the Mafia after he initiated a law that introduced a new crime in the Italian legal system, mafia conspiracy, and the possibility for the courts to seize and to confiscate the assets of the persons belonging to the mafia conspiracy.

Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa was the man that had defeated the Italian terrorism, "the red brigades" and because of this success he was sent in Sicily with full powers granted to him, in the hope to defeat the Mafia. Unfortunately, in the paper was given to him full powers, but in reality was given to him none.

In fact, the Italian government was accused by many Italian citizens to have betrayed Dalla Chiesa's trust in the Italian institutions by leaving him alone to fight the Mafia. Consequently to this betrayal, he was left very vulnerable to the attacks of the Mafia that already had marked him as a dead man.

Before he was brutally slaughtered in his car together with his young wife Emanuela Setti Carraro by a Mafia's ambush on September 1982, had just passed one hundred days of his takeover of the Palermo's prefecture. Also I wanted to remember here, in the same attack died, "Domenico Russo" who was a police agent in escort with his armored car to Dalla Chiesa. On the place of the massacre, an anonymous citizen had left to the wall a paperboard with written on it a few bitter words:

Here died the hope of the honest Sicilians.

I was tremendously shocked and angered by those few words because were accurately telling a truth. The truth that the Mafia had killed the only man capable that could have given back to the Sicilian people, a hope of rebirth from the miseries and the abuses of a Mafia's historical impositions.

Even though I was living in the U.S., I felt at the moment defeated because the Mafia had won once more, first by enforcing me to leave my Sicily and now by making me feel like I had betrayed my land because I fled from it without a real fight.

When the TV's news was parading in front of my eyes those cruel images of the Dalla Chiesa's assassination, I couldn't believe it! Those streets were so familiar to me. Indeed, those streets were the same streets from where I grew up. The same streets, where I used to play soccer in my adolescence. And now, those images were broadcasted around the world. I felt an increasing desperation as the news went on. At some point, I started to hit the wall with a couple fists to calm down my rage.

What I didn't realized that time was, the Mafia's killing spree had just started. In other words, the Mafia's mattanza hadn't finished its job but it was just beginning.

Continue...

Next: Facing the Mafia - La Mattanza (chapter II, part 2).

Facing the Mafia - Mafia's American style (chapter I).

2008-11-25T01:51:00.008-05:00

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Preface:

I been thinking for quite some time to post this new Mafia's article, but I have been delaying it for some time. The reason of this delay was that it could have endangered the safety of my life and the safety of my own family. Or worst, end up in some protection program for the rest of my remaining life.

That's why I'll be removing any potential references (such as: personal names, or location's names, and besides I don't know if I'll be writing the all story) which they could essentially lead to my true identity. Even though, in same particular case I'll be forced to keep them, because of their historical nature (meaning: facts that are worldwide well known).

Mafia's American style.

After I came to live in the U.S., I worked in different places. After some time, I started to work in a place (sorry but I can't tell what place it was) where a lot people came to do their usual business. They were people of every backgrounds: businessmen, politicians of every sorts, very rich men, affiliated to some kind of association, common people, and some, "Mafioso".

I'll pause for a brief moment and deviate from this part of the story, but I'm promising that I'll come back later to finish it. Now, I wanted to write of when I knew the first American goodfella.

When I knew the first American goodfella, I couldn't help but notice the way he was dressing. Unlike his Sicilian counterpart's fellows (which were dressing most of the times rather poorly), that wise guy was wearing a fashionable dress with nice shining shoes on his feet, gold rings on his fingers, and pomaded hair all combed towards the rear of his head. And strangely enough, he was acting to me very friendly. Maybe, because he knew I was Sicilian (That encounter, was for sure a real weird one. In truth, if he could been able to know back then how much I despised him and what he really represented to me, frankly, I don't believe he would have been that friendly to me).

And yet, I can't quite figure out if this guy was copying the bad style of some Mafia's American movies (see: Godfather, Goodfellas, the Sopranos, or many other American old movies) or it was the other way around. Those movies had really succeeded, in the capturing the real nature of the American Mafia's gangsters.

Anyway going back to when I started my first job in New York. This same place where I knew a lot people, and where I even knew some politicians from the New York metropolitan area, including guess who? The former mayor of New York City, Rudolph W. Giuliani (but this is an other story). As I said, I new from that place a lot of different people. One in particular which I wasn't too eager to know, just because, his only presence was enough to give me bad cramps to my stomach. He was a wise guy, and he looked exactly as one of those badly portrayed from some very bad Mafia's American movies.

The difference now was that he was for real. His attitude and his talk, were real too (the attitudes and the talks of a wise s..h...). I tried to avoid him the most I could, but because of my job I couldn't avoid him as much as I wished.

The first thing that struck me the first time I noticed him was, the golden rings he was wearing on his fingers.

He had a golden ring on his left hand's ring finger (I guess that indicated that he was married), and on his right hand, he was showing off two more golden rings. The one on his pinky finger was a gold ring with an embedded stone at the top of it. The other one, the one that had struck me was on his middle finger, and it was a big gold ring with some strange engravings on it.

I thought, that wasn't nothing special in it at the first glance (probably many people are wearing gold rings that big, and for sure they aren't gangsters), but when I paid a more attentive look at it, my mind quickly recalled back a couple of events from when I was still living in Sicily. In fact, I remembered to have seen that same ring with those same strange engravings on it, already twice.

The first occasion happened because of my business. It was in Palermo, I was talking to a Mafia's boss from the neighborhood, for the reason that I was trying to convince him to cut me some slack by giving me some more time to hand over, " u pizzu' " (The pizzu' is the protection money paid to the Mafia).

The second time happened in a different Sicilian location, and it was in a small town between Palermo and Corleone. That time I was also speaking to a local boss, but for a different reason. This time, I was pleading to the local Mafia boss to give back what he had stolen from my father. In fact after my father died, that piece of s... had the courage to steal (with the help of some corrupted local administrator) the land that my father had bought with the savings of a lifetime hard work.

I could have forced him to give back what didn't belonged to him, but I knew that I was playing with my life. In fact, the @#%$&@ was guarded by a pair of armed scum bags. At some point of our animated discussion, the two lowlifes that were guarding the boss motioned in a threatening manner their guns toward me. What else, I could have done? I left! When I left, I left with a heart full of bitterness and insane ideas in my head, for the revenge... Fortunately as the time went by, my head started to cool off and began to think that was better to give up the lost, rather than getting myself entangled in something much, but much worst.

In both of those two occasions the two, "gentlemen" were wearing (as I was mentioning before) that same gold ring with those strange engravings on it.

Just a pure causality, or there was more? I can't still figure it out. Exactly, what that meant? Maybe, that meant nothing! Or maybe, that meant a lot!

For sure, there must have been some sort of correlation among those facts. We already know, that the American Mafia and the Sicilian Mafia have (or have had) tight links. Is that ring a Mafia thing? Like an oath of loyalty and belongings to a certain clan, or just it is a simple way to recognize each other even in faraway lands?!?
............

Continue: Facing the Mafia - La Mattanza (chapter II).

Roberto Saviano and the other Mafia.

2008-11-20T22:47:00.008-05:00

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Francesco Pischetola / AFP/Getty Images

(In the center of the picture is Roberto Saviano: the author of 'Gomorrah' the book, while he's escorted by policemen and bodyguards.)

One day while I was having a rather animated conversation with friends of mine, on the matter of the Mafia and Camorra's criminal activities. At the conclusion of it, I came to realize that the Camorra compared to the Mafia was all by itself, a different kind of beast.

While less famous than its Sicilian counterpart, progressively the Camorra is getting more powerful and notoriety, than the Mafia.

The reason of it?

The Camorra is of a more bloody thirsty animal than the Mafia itself.

The Mafia in its own way has (or at least had it), a code of honor. The "mafiusi" were bound to this code, and if they didn't respected this unwritten code, then they were likely to be severally punished. And the penalty was of course, death. This unwritten code was: to never kill young people, women, or priests.

And even though wasn't in their code of honor, they tried very hard to not kill any police officer, for the obvious reason that if they did kill one of them, afterwards the knew, that the all police system were highly motivated to catch the police officer's assassins.

The Camorra has none of those codes. When the Camorra is in pursue of money and power doesn't respect anyone, it is more brutal and merciless than the Sicilian Mafia.

By now, I have seen every other day in the news of the Italian TVs, how true is it!

The Camorristi had killed, maimed, and punished in the streets of Naples, youngsters, women, and any other innocent standby, indiscriminately.

In comparison the Mafia tried to conceal anyways they could their bloody busyness. Indeed, the Mafia is more of a secret criminal society which likes to keep their filthy affairs very obscured.

In the other hand, the Camorra doesn't care much of hiding it!

Among Mafia, Ndrangheta, Stidda (that's just for naming a few of the many souther Italian criminal organizations), and now the Camorra which are trying to cannibalize whatever of productive, good, and honest are left in the southern regions of the Italian's societies by keeping those same societies, in a terrifying stranglehold of fears and retaliations.

Roberto Saviano: who is this guy?

Roberto Saviano is a regular guy, who had the guts to write the "Gamorra's book" (in English: Gomorrah) a "non-fiction novel" about the Neapolitan mafia, the Camorra, to denounce its undermining on a society efforts for a better future.

After Saviano published his book, he had to be relocated from Naples and given 24-hour armed police protection.

Recently Saviano was in Los Angeles (California), for the presentation of the movie, Gamorrah (which by the way, it has a chance to win an Oscar). During this visit, he had a brief interview with an American journalist which asked him if was regretting to had written the book, Gomorrah.

Roberto Saviano's Gomorrah trailer:

Roberto Saviano had answered to the journalist that he wasn't regretting to had written it, but his life had changed a lot since he did write the book.

In an other interview with an Italian newspaper he said: "Right now I don't see why I should keep living like this, as a prisoner of myself, my book, my success. I want a life, that's all," he told La Repubblica.

A police informer reportedly told police that the Camorra planned to kill Saviano, "before Christmas".

Right now, he needs a round-the-clock protection because hes life was threaten by the, "Casalesi" to be ended by the end of this year.

The Casalesi are the most sanguinary of all the Neapolitan's Camorra clans.

Even tough, I never wrote any book about Mafia (maybe in a far future I will - I never know ), a part of my life was for sometime in the same position in which he's right now.

I admire his choice of writing that book, and the courage to stand for what he believes. To the contrary of what he did, I simple left my Sicily when I came to realize that I couldn't take anymore..... In those moments, I was so deeply disgusted and discouraged that nothing would be ever changed, that I had resorted to simply given up on my dreams and leave my Sicily for good.....

Takes a lot courage to fight the Mafia, particularly when standing alone.

I personally know both reality: the Sicilian realities, because I lived for a long time there, and the Neapolitan reality, because I was there many times and I had a lot of Neapolitan friends.

Saviano has right now a lot support, but I don't believe that would be it enough to prevent his life to be prematurely terminated. I wish him luck, a lot of luck. Because, he's going to really need it.

Obama, the community organizer and his new role as President.

2008-11-16T16:09:00.005-05:00

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Telling it like it is.

Barack Obama wants to be the American President, and yet hes credentials states that he's never even managed any American company. But in the other hand, he has plenty of charisma! Is that enough?

Judging from his activities and preparations before his actual Presidency ever occurs, I can foreseen what could be and how would evolve his coming political and economic agendas.

By just looking at the Obama's resume, I can tell that many American citizen may have some concerns regarding Obama's qualification as the chief executive, because apparently he has not enough credentials and experiences to be in charge of the American's destiny.

As I already said by looking at his (I must say: a rather paper thin) resume, I can envisage what kind of leadership we should expect from an Obama's Presidency.

Before becoming a community organizer in Chicago and practiced as a civil rights attorney, Obama attended and graduate at the Columbia University and Harvard Law School where he was also, "the president" of the Harvard Law Review. From 1997 to 2004 he served three years in the Illinois Senate.

Later, Obama was a junior United States Senator from Illinois from 2005 until his resignation on November 16, 2008.

The thing that I wanted to emphasize here is the, "community organizer" work he has done back in Chicago. To many Americans, it can look very little and not that much of important help to Obama coming administration, but I firmly believe, that everything he will do, or will decide to do, will be centered in this former job of his!

The community organizer.

So, as a community organizer what he can do?

He can do a lot with it! Obama could reach across the political aisle with an open mind to [the Republicans] and as well the democrats, and ask some of them to join forces with his team, and in the very end put together a team of the best and brightest minds of America.

Ultimately, that's what a good organizer will do. Convince people with different ideas and backgrounds, to pull together for a common goal: the good of America (and of course, the good of his administration).

We can expect in the near future, that Barack Obama will be prospecting anyone capable of, to put together a team of unmatched people and convince them to work for his own cause.

Obama, Clinton Discuss Top State Job.

As already we may have heard, there are rumors that the President-elect Barack Obama is considering for secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton... A lot people were really amazed that Obama has made a such decision. A bad move? Maybe! He wants to incorporate in his new administration even a former major rival, for the democratic nomination such as a Hillary Clinton...

Hypothetically, if I had an administration of mine and I had to possibility to have somebody on my team as talented and asserted such as her, could I have allowed myself of leaving her out of a my hypothetical administration/team? No, of course not!

Frankly, with Obama in the world stage, I anticipate more discussions and less threatening politics in the America international affairs. Probably, he will look for dialogues rather than have any confrontational attitudes towards his interlocutors. And hopefully in the end, to find solution for untangle possible explosive situations.

So that, he will handle international affair in mellower ways, rather than imposing America's will with its overwhelming status. But, in the same time when the situation will require it, he will show enough toughness towards his hostile interlocutor.

And therefore, that's what Obama is doing. Indeed, with the mind of a good community organizer, he's looking beyond the boundaries of personal preconceptions if the scope requires it, and extending his hand even to former enemies, for the good of his administrative success.

We can be sure that his operations in the White House, will be a mix of tactics and mediations. Obama will try to draw to his cause, anyone capable of making him sail smoothly during all of his Presidency.

A new era? Obama's era.

2008-11-12T22:01:00.018-05:00

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