It looks all too convenient. I'm sure African and E. European immigrants clash with the Calabrian 'syndicates' if they attempt to run labor hiring gangs and drug distribution outside the underworld's own networks. But I would bet the racial incidents reflect Italian society as a whole. Afterall, Italy still stigmatizes the Calabrians and Sicilians as racially and ethnically different, clannish, backward, not Italian.
No doubt the authorities in Rome hope that they can use this as cover to run roughshod over the syndicates of Naples and Calabria like they already have over the Sicilians. Parallel to this, please note how RICO laws were used against American mafia by the US federal government to set precedents for the current unconsitutional positions on individual rights and incarceration without proper trial. The connections between the American mafia and various elements of the Italian mafia are murky and little understood by most people outside those groups. The more successful they are, the more successfully secret they are. But some accounts have it that the relatively prosperous US mafia helped bankroll the mostly broke Italian mafia after 1945--indeed, the entire blackmarket economy by which many Europeans had to survive after the ruins of WW II. One way of looking at it is that Americans with S. Italian roots (often actually mixed ethnicity, like the Italian-Jewish-Irish characters in Good Fellows), were more willing to make 'investments' in S. Italy after 1945 than N. Itaiy. They also apparently invested in the black market economy of Tokyo in the postwar period. CJ -- Japan Higher Education Outlook http://japanheo.blogspot.com/ ELT in Japan http://eltinjapan.blogspot.com/ We are Feral Cats http://wearechikineko.blogspot.com/ _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
