Sometimes I find the Boston Globe is stuck in the past.
"Top Italian mob boss is captured in bunker; Zagaria had been on run since 1995" December 08, 2011|Associated Press
ROME - Police captured one of Italy’s most-wanted fugitive mobsters yesterday, arresting the last major boss of one of Italy’s bloodiest mafia clans.
Michele Zagaria, on the run since 1995, was found in an underground bunker in Casapesenna, in his hometown province of Caserta in southern Italy, the headquarters of the Casalesi clan of the Neapolitan Camorra.
Anti-Mafia prosecutor Piero Grasso said it was likely Zagaria had spent his years as a fugitive nearby because mob bosses “can only exercise their power if they’re in an environment that protects them.’’
Like those ensconced at the top of governments.
“This was the nightmare: We knew he was there, but it was tough to find him, tough to get him out,’’ he told Sky TG24. “Finally we did.’’
Police had located the bunker some time ago and were digging around it. Zagaria was watching their progress on closed-circuit televisions and gave up without a fight after police cut off the electricity that was pumping fresh air into the bunker, news reports said.
“The government won,’’ he told police, the ANSA news agency reported. “It’s over.’’
Investigators contend the Casalesi family runs a lucrative illegal business in transporting and disposing of toxic waste, a murky world explored in the book and film “Gomorrah.’’ Other moneymakers for the crime clan are rackets, extortion, drug trafficking, and the smuggling of illegal migrants and arms....
In one of their bloodiest strikes, Casalesi gunmen shot six African immigrants in one swoop as they chatted on a town street, in what police said was a warning to other Africans to stay away from drug trafficking in the area.
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Better not open any mail:
"Letter bomb explodes at Italian tax office" December 10, 2011|Associated Press
ROME - A letter bomb exploded yesterday at an office of Italy’s tax collection agency, wounding the organization’s director. Police said an Italian anarchist group that sent a letter bomb to Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt earlier in the week claimed responsibility.
Meaning it was an intelligence agency operation.
A Rome police official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that yesterday’s bomb was contained in a yellow bubble envelope mailed to the director’s attention at an Equitalia office on the outskirts of Rome.
The director, identified by the government as Marco Cuccagna, underwent surgery after suffering injuries to a hand and his face, caused when a glass desktop was shattered by the explosion, Equitalia official Angelo Coco told the ANSA news agency.
Italy’s Informal Anarchist Federation claimed responsibility. The claim included in the package was very similar to that which was contained in the Deutsche Bank letter bomb, which didn’t explode, a police official said.
The group, known in Italy as FAI, had warned in its Deutsche Bank claim that there would be three explosions in its latest campaign. Last year around Christmas, the group sent package bombs to three embassies in Rome, injuring two people.
Premier Mario Monti, who is pushing a package of tax hikes and spending cuts to help Italy solve a financial crisis, issued a statement expressing solidarity with Cuccagna, as did Italy’s president.
Mayor Gianni Alemmano of Rome called the bombing “an evil, vile act,’’ and urged vigilance. “There is someone who wants to take advantage in terroristic terms of the sacrifices that Italy must take to get out of the crisis,’’ Alemmano said on Tgcom24 television.
So pony up that money to bankers or the terrorists win (long, heavy sigh).
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Speaking of terrorists:
"Italian appeals court explains Knox decision" by Colleen Barry
MILAN, Italy — No murder weapon. Faulty DNA. No motive. Even the time of death was wrong by nearly an hour. The Italian appeals court that cleared Amanda Knox in the killing of her roommate explained its ruling on Thursday: The evidence just didn’t hold up.
Yeah, turns out STATE TYRANNY is the WORST form of TERRORISM known!
In a 143-page document that criticized nearly every stage of the investigation that led to the conviction of Knox and her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, the appeals court said the lower court didn’t even prove they were in the house when Knox’s British roommate, Meredith Kercher, was killed.
Kercher was found slain in a pool of blood in the house she shared with Knox in the Italian city of Perugia.
Knox and Sollecito, who had just begun dating, were arrested several days later, then convicted in what prosecutors portrayed as a drug-fueled sexual assault. They were sentenced to 26 years and 25 years, respectively, in proceedings that made headlines around the world.
The Perugia appellate court, which acquitted the two in October after reviewing the lower court’s evidence and conducting new hearings of its own, criticized the “building blocks” of the conviction and the failure to identify a motive.
The guilty verdict “was not corroborated by any objective element of evidence and in itself was not, in fact, probable: the sudden choice of two young people, good and open to other people, to do evil for evil’s sake, just like that, without another reason,” wrote presiding Judge Claudio Pratillo Hellmann.
Still, the three-judge panel stopped short of saying what actually might have happened the night of Nov. 1, 2007. “It is not up to this court to speculate about what actually took place,” Hellmann wrote, “or whether one or more people carried out the crime.”
A third defendant, Ivory Coast-born drifter Rudy Guede, was convicted in a separate trial of sexually assaulting and stabbing Kercher. His 16-year prison sentence — reduced on appeal from an initial 30 years — was upheld by Italy’s highest court in 2010.
So they got their man?
The appeals court said there was no evidence that Knox and Sollecito helped Guede assault and kill Kercher, and expressed incredulity that they would have committed such a crime with a man they had little contact with.
“There is no evidence of phone calls or text messages between the three,” he wrote.
Hellmann also ridiculed the prosecution’s efforts to demonize the 24-year-old Knox because she bought G-string underwear days after the murder instead of more modest apparel, calling it “a garment in style and widely worn by young and not-so-young women.”
Such a purchase, he wrote, “cannot be considered a show of an insensitive spirit or obscene inclinations.”
He also defended Knox’s behavior at a police station, where she did cartwheels and cuddled and kissed Sollecito while awaiting questioning.
Such displays could not be construed as evidence of guilt, he wrote, adding: “There are numerous ways ... to react to tragedy. An exchange of tenderness and even an exhibition of gymnastics can be explained by the need to find through gestures and behavior a bit of normality in a tragic situation.”
The only elements of the prosecution case that were proven, the judge said, were a charge of slander against Knox, who was convicted of falsely accusing a bar owner of killing Kercher, and the fact that Knox and Sollecito’s alibis did not match.
That the alibis were out of synch “is very different” from the prosecutors’ claim of false alibis, he wrote.
And as for implicating Diya “Patrick” Lumumba after hours of intense police questioning, Knox did so because “she was convinced that was what the police wanted her to do: to name a guilty person,” he said.
Looks like cops are the same the world over -- even in the "free" West.
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Also see: Perugia Case Makes Me Want to Puke
I didn't follow it closely at all; however, my football friend sure knew a lot and got all worked up about it.
Btw, he saw Ron Paul on Leno and likes him! He's also pissed at the media and other candidates for knocking the guy. He doesn't follow events like I do, but he's part of the collective unconscious of the country.
Meanwhile, back in Italy:
"British opposition hurts chances for EU deal; Markets uneasy as a quick fix to debt crisis appears unlikely" December 13, 2011|By David Stringer and Frances Emilio, Associated Press
LONDON - Strikes idled some Fiat auto plants in Italy and forced Milan’s famed La Scala opera house to cancel a performance. It was the first of days of union walkouts and demonstrations against spending cuts and tax hikes that Italy’s new technocratic government is seeking to restore investor confidence.
Occupy lives -- in Italy!!
Unions say Italy’s austerity measures are hitting too hard on pensioners and workers and not hard enough on the wealthy. A rally was called for Monday yesterday outside Parliament.
“Fairness, fairness!’’ shouted workers marching in Florence.
Italian public transport unions called walkouts for Thursday and Friday, bank workers were striking Friday, and other public sector employees were to walk off the job Dec. 19.
I checked, but I didn't see a word about it in subsequent Globes.
And if BANK WORKERS were on strike then IT IS ALL the PEOPLE who are opposed to the fascist takeover by the New Economic Order.
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Yup, same old Globe.
