term.subject="Organized crime --"

Summary: "This book puts forward an innovative standpoint for politics and governance that seeks meaningful connections with organized crime, corruption and ecocide. Looking into the sources of their growth and global spread, it upholds that capitalism, the market system and economic liberalism have nourished and enabled such developments, while criminal organizations, corrupt politicians, businessmen and multinationals engaged in ecocide have been evolving and bringing havoc to countries and their populations alike. Furthermore, it intimates how organized crime, corruption and ecocide have thrived and turned out to be a conspicuous and wide-ranging player not only in governance but also in politics worldwide. When we ask ourselves why such developments took place, the answer would disclose an outrageous picture: this process simply unfolded from using the same toolkit of resources, regulations, skills, and technological innovations that capitalism and the market system had been providing to the formal habitats of legal economy and politics since the nineteenth century; needless too say, with the help of an ideology entangled in economic liberalism and its latest outgrowth, neo liberalism. We could wonder why criminal organizations and political malfeasance were both able to carry out this way so far. The answer will shock everybody: because those organizations were allowed, firstly, to set up efficacious governances to profit from crime and, secondly, politics furnished them with clout, connivance, and power to handle riches and spoils. To countervail the hideous workings of a system that faces its reckoning days and own demise, the book finally puts forward that the social democracy is the best qualified political system to build up the road towards post capitalism. Let us take a look on the roadmap for this work. In chapter 1 we will lay the grounds to a comprehensive treatment of governance and politics, which must be assessed as complementary stages in pursuit of the common good1. Besides, political networks and their governance will be brought to the shore since they are changing the way politics is being crafted at the end of the day. Chapter 2 will focus on the basic tenets of sound governance and politics: firstly, accountability (as the interplay of both commitments and responsibilities) and, secondly, transparency. Against the mainstream approach, it will be ascertained that both features must be regarded as social learning processes. Finally, it will highlight the governance and politics of secrecy. It is for chapter 3 to deal with political conflict systems, claiming for a clinical approach to conflicts of interest, also introducing the notion and scope of dual governance that proves essential whenever we address the subject of state-owned firms. Chapter 4 will enlarge upon dysfunctional and opaque styles of governances, moving on to the capture of the state by groups of interest and spreading corruption. Due heed will be given to regulation, gatekeepers and connivance. Chapter 5 is devoted to the governance and politics of organized crime and ecocide, what amounts to a new approach to criminal organizations that sheds light to their partnership with bad governance and worse politics. Chapter 6 points out to the comprehensive failure of both capitalism and the so-called liberal market-system. Markets in the flesh will be described further, whereas several misunderstandings involved in the predicated coalescence between capitalism and democracy will be debunked eventually. Afterwards, the hideous consequences of the business interests of the military industrial complex in the most powerful countries, as well as the shock doctrine advocated by most graduates from the so-called Chicago School economists (joining forces with followers of the Washington Consensus) will be related together so as to connect the dots that lead to the crumbling of capitalism. Finally, the last chapter gathers the threads that run through the foregoing ones, so as to shape the following two lines of argument: It seems rather implausible that within the current architecture of capitalism and economic liberalism, the above-mentioned triad could be curbed, not least uprooted. And this should not be surprising, since the triad embodies and assimilates countless black holes streamlined in the incumbent political and economic structure. In this day and age, post capitalism cannot be regarded any longer as some utopian destination, but instead as a sheer need for redressing the wrongs of rampant social inequality and widespread spate of criminal behavior. That is why this book advocates that social democracy, social markets, and the welfare state will stand for post capitalism, within healthy representative democracies. 1 The reader will find, at the beginning of each chapter, an abstract as well as an introduction to their main contents"

Summary: This book provides an overview of transnational organized crime in Latin America. It explores the geography of illicit activities, analyzes the relationships of specific groups, assesses the approaches of regional governments to combatting transnational organized crime, and recommends future action for regional governments and US policymakers

Summary: The definition of organised crime has long been the object of lively debate, at national and international level. Sociological and legal analysis has not yet led to one definitive answer to the question of what exactly 'organised crime' means. Nonetheless, many instruments adopted both at international and national levels set forth special legal regimes designed to target criminal groups featuring a stable organisation, which are perceived as particularly dangerous to society. Therefore, identifying the notion of organised crime is crucial to establishing the scope of any legal instrument specifically designed for combating it. The aim of this book is to reassess the scope, the effectiveness and the overall coherence of existing definitions of organised crime, and to identify any need for a reconsideration of these definitions, specifically with reference to the EU legal order. It will be of interest to academics, practitioners and legislators working in the sphere of EU criminal law and of organised crime more generally

Summary: "In July 2011, President Barack Obama promulgated the Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime. In the letter presenting the strategy, the president stated that the expanding size, scope, and influence of transnational organized crime and its impact on U.S. and international security and governance represent one of the most significant challenges of the 21st century. Through an analysis of transnational criminal networks originating in South America, this report develops a more refined understanding of the operational characteristics of these networks; the strategic alliances that they have established with state and other nonstate actors; and the multiple threats that they pose to U.S. interests and to the stability of the countries where they operate. It identifies U.S. government policies and programs to counter these networks; the roles of the Department of Defense, the geographic combatant commands, component commands, and task forces; and examines how U.S. Army assets and capabilities can contribute to U.S. government efforts to counter these networks. The report also recommends reconsidering the way in which nontraditional national security threats are classified; updating statutory authorities; providing adequate budgets for the counternetwork mission; and improving interagency coordination"--Publisher's web site

Summary: "The Italian Antimafia, New Media, and the Culture of Legality is the first book to examine the online battles between the mafia and its growing cohort of opponents. While the mafia's supporters have used Internet technologies to expand its power, profits, and violence, antimafia citizens employ the same technologies to recreate Italian civil society. The contributors to this volume are experts in diverse fields and offer interdisciplinary studies of antimafia activism and legality in online journalism, Twitter, YouTube, digital storytelling, blogs, music, and photography. These examinations enable readers to understand the grassroots Italian cultural revolution, which makes individuals responsible for promoting justice, freedom, and dignity."

Summary: This book provides insight into the paradigmatic approaches evolved by CIA decades ago in Vietnam which remain operational practices today in Afghanistan, El Salvador, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere. Valentine's research into CIA activities began when CIA Director William Colby gave him free access to interview CIA officials who had been involved in various aspects of the Phoenix program in South Vietnam. The CIA would rescind it, making every effort to impede publication of The Phoenix Program, which documented the CIA's elaborate system of population surveillance, control, entrapment, imprisonment, torture and assassination in Vietnam. While researching Phoenix, Valentine learned that the CIA allowed opium and heroin to flow from its secret bases in Laos, to generals and politicians on its payroll in South Vietnam. His investigations into this illegal activity focused on the CIA's relationship with the federal drugs agencies mandated by Congress to stop illegal drugs from entering the United States. Based on interviews with senior officials, Valentine wrote two subsequent books, The Strength of the Wolf and The Strength of the Pack, showing how the CIA infiltrated federal drug law enforcement agencies and commandeered their executive management, intelligence and foreign operations staffs in order to ensure that the flow of drugs continues unimpeded to traffickers and foreign officials in its employ. Ultimately, portions of his research materials would be archived at the National Security Archive, Texas Tech University's Vietnam Center, and John Jay College. This book includes excerpts from the above titles along with updated articles and transcripts of interviews on a range of current topics, with a view to shedding light on the systemic dimensions of the CIA's ongoing illegal and extra-legal activities. These terrorism and drug law enforcement articles and interviews illustrate how the CIA's activities impact social and political movements abroad and in the United States. A common theme is the CIA's ability to deceive and propagandize the American public through its impenetrable government-sanctioned shield of official secrecy and plausible deniability. Though investigated by the Church Committee in 1975, CIA praxis then continues to inform CIA praxis now. Valentine tracks its steady infiltration into practices targeting the last population to be subjected to the exigencies of the American empire: the American people

Summary: The organized crime group that dominates much of the socioeconomic life of contemporary Naples, the Camorra, is organized by kin and geography, and it is notoriously the most violent, fractious, and disorganized mafia in Italy. The Camorra controls local extortion rackets, the drug and counterfeit trades, and other legal and illicit activities as well as wielding substantial political influence throughout Naples and its environs. Felia Allum has been researching the Camorra for twenty years, and in The Invisible Camorra she reveals a surprising alteration in Camorra behavior when operatives live outside the Neapolitan base. When gang members move away from Naples, having been forced out by intense policing and gang competition, they are attracted by business opportunities that, on the whole, fit in with their usual activities. When they move to other parts of Western Europe and are therefore no longer criminals simply by virtue of "mafia association" as they are in Italy, they become largely invisible. Gang members avoid the spectacular deployment of violence, they merge quietly into local life, they keep themselves to themselves, and, when necessary, use legitimate local actors such as lawyers and accountants to further their economic well-being. Allum has constructed a meticulous description and analysis of Camorra activities abroad. To build accounts of the Camorra in Germany and the Netherlands, France, Spain, and the United Kingdom, she has interviewed investigating magistrates, police officers, and confessed criminals; done substantial mining of Italian and European police data; and made extensive use of judicial investigations, court records and transcripts as well as of journalistic accounts. The result is the first systematic analysis of the overseas activities of this major criminal organization

Summary: Gangsters like Al Capone and Lucky Luciano are infamous as figureheads of organized crime, which is now synonymous with criminal groups such as the Mafia. Michael Woodiwiss reveals a more disturbing side to organized crime, in which government officals and wider business communities are deeply complicit. Woodiwiss shows how control policies on systematized crime are mired in corruption, legitimizing repression and concealing failure. Delving into attempts to implement such policies in the US, Italy and the UK, Woodiwiss reveals little-known manifestations of organized crime among the political and corporate establishments. Woodiwiss examines those who constructed and then benefitted from this mythmaking. These include the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, opportunistic American politicians and officials and, more recently, law enforcement bureaucracies, led by the FBI. -- from back cover