'The Sack Of Palermo': Buried In Concrete: How The Mafia Made A Killing From The Destruction Of Italy’s South

I have fond memories of visiting Palermo, Sicily in 1975 when I was a young sailor assigned to a U.S. Navy tugboat stationed at the nuclear submarine base in Holy Loch, Scotland. 

I took two weeks leave and visited the place where many years before my maternal grandparents, named Guardino, left the island and sailed for South Philadelphia.    

So I was interested in reading Roberto Saviano and Lorenzo Tondo’s piece at theguardian.com on organized crime in Palermo, Sicily and the south of Italy. 

It is the result of a building frenzy of the 1960s and 1970s, when Vito Ciancimino, a mobster from the violent Corleonesi clan, ordered the demolition of splendid art nouveau mansions to make space for brutalist tower blocks, covering vast natural and garden areas with tonnes of concrete. It is one of the darkest chapters in the postwar urbanisation of Sicily and would go down in history as the “sack of Palermo.” 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link: 

Buried in concrete: how the mafia made a killing from the destruction of Italy’s south | Mafia | The Guardian 

My Washington Times Review Of 'The Piranhas: The Boy Bosses Of Naples'

The Washington Times published my review of Roberto Saviano The Piranhas: The Boy Bosses of Naples.

I visited Naples, Italy, in the mid-1970s while serving in the U.S. Navy. A friend who knew Naples very well warned me about the gangs of children who swarm visitors and ask for money, a scene I saw often while previously serving in Southeast Asia.

While swarming around you, the children distract and disorient you and then they pick your pocket, lift your watch or steal your camera. My friend advised me to raise my hand and yell “Basta!,” which means enough or stop it in Italian. The command worked as the children scattered away from me. I was amused, yet I felt sorry for the children who begged and stole on the street.

Today, according to Roberto Saviano, children like those I encountered many years ago are the new Godfathers of Naples.

Robert Saviano is the author of “Gomorrah,” a fine non-fiction book about the Camorra, Naples‘ centuries-old organized crime group. The book was adapted into a film and later a TV series. The Camorra clans in Naples placed a contract on Mr. Saviano’s life and he went into hiding, surrounded at all times by Italian police officers.

Mr. Saviano now covers much of the same ground as he did in “Gomorrah” in a factually researched novel titled “The Pirahanas: The Boy Bosses of Naples.” The novel, translated into English, is about the sad, profane and violent world of the children who are involved in Naples‘ underworld of crime.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/oct/31/book-review-the-piranhas-by-roberto-saviano/ 

A Review of Roberto Saviano's ZeroZeroZero

Mark Bowden reviews Roberto Saviano's ZeroZeroZero for the New York Times.

Roberto Saviano has written a kind of concordance of cruelty in this cocaine-­trafficking epic, minus the alphabetized structure, which would have made it easier to follow. Much of it, sadly, may be true.How much is an open question. 

The second chapter begins with the story of Don Arturo. We never learn exactly who this is, beyond the first name and the honorific. He is like a character out of “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” a rich old patriarch who in his younger days grew poppies for morphine production. ­Saviano writes of the day a general arrived at Don Arturo’s Mexican estate and set fire to his growing crop. Don Arturo watched the flames grow higher, incinerating live animals and even some peasants who had fallen asleep in his fields. While villagers feared the flames too much to attempt a rescue of their burning neighbors, the story goes, a dog braved the conflagration to pull its puppies to safety: “He remembers because it was there he learned how to recognize courage, and that cowardice tastes of human flesh.”

Neat sentence. Memorable passage. But did this actually happen? Is there ­really a Don Arturo? Field of flames? Brave dog? What in this sometimes compelling, often tedious assortment of parables, poetry, dramatic monologues, cautionary tales and horror stories is true, and what is fantasy? 

The cool answer, I suppose, is that we shouldn’t care.A word about Saviano. Because of the work he did on his acclaimed first book, “Gomorrah,” he lives under constant guard. His life has been threatened by people who follow through. Some of the best passages in this book deal with these profound restrictions on his freedom, and with his determination to persevere.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/26/books/review/zerozerozero-by-roberto-saviano.html?ref=books&_r=0

Roberto Saviano: Italy's Most Hunted Author

Ian Thomson at the Telegraph offers a piece of Italian author Robert Saviano.

Roberto Saviano, baldheaded and dark-stubbled, is recognisable to most Italians. In Umberto Eco’s opinion, the 36-year-old Neapolitan journalist is a “modern Italian hero”. Paradoxically, the more famous Saviano becomes, the greater the need for him to be invisible. For the past 10 years, Saviano has been under police protection. His bestselling exposé of the Neapolitan Mafia, Gomorrah, published here in 2007, became an internationally celebrated film that put his life at risk.

“The Mafia want to be famous in their own, local territory,” Saviano explains, “but not on the international stage – my book drew unwelcome attention to their illicit affairs.”
 

As I expected, plain clothes police are discreetly in evidence in the London hotel where I meet Saviano to talk about his new book, Zero Zero Zero. The son of a Neapolitan doctor and Genoese mother of Sephardi-Jewish origins, Saviano is surprisingly easy to talk to, and his conversation ranges from classical music (“Claudio Abbado was a great friend”) to the inquisitorial realism of Francesco Rosi’s Neapolitan films.    

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/authorinterviews/11712823/Roberto-Saviano-Italys-most-hunted-author.html

Goodfellas Don't Sue Goodfellas, But 'Gomorrah' Author Is Suing The Gangsters Who Ordered His Death

Veteran organized crime reporter and author George Anastasia offered a gem of a statement in his  book The Goodfella Tapes: The True Story of How the FBI Recorded A Mob War and Brought Down a Mafia Don.

In the book Anastasia reported the FBI recording of a Cosa Nostra member telling a possible litigant in a mob dispute that "Goodfellas don't sue goodfellas... goodfellas kill goodfellas."

But Michael Day at the British newspaper the Independent reports that in Italy Gomorrah author Roberto Saviano is suing the organized crime figures who ordered his death for writing the book that exposed their criminal enterprises.
 
Italy's most prominent anti-mafia campaigner has appeared in court to sue the mobsters who ordered his death.

In a high security Naples courtroom Roberto Saviano, the writer whose print expose ‘Gomorrah’ and the eponymous hit film it spawned made him a household name, finally looked his enemies in eyes - six years after he was forced into hiding.

Mr Saviano confronted Camorra bosses Francesco Bidognetti and Antonio Iovine via video link as he began the process of suing them - and two of their lawyers, Michele Santonastaso and Carmine D'Aniello - for threats and defamation, which he says came in an 2008 appeal hearing.

You can read the rest of the story via the below link:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/antimafia-campaigner-roberto-saviano-sues-gangsters-who-ordered-his-death-8406282.html

You can also read my Crime Beat column on The Goodfella Tapes via the below link:

http://pauldavisoncrime.blogspot.com/2011/09/goodfellas-dont-sue-goodfellas-look.html    

Where The Mob Keeps It's Money

 

Roberto Saviano, the Italian who wrote Gomorrah, an interesting true crime book about the Neapolitan organized crime organization the Camorra, wrote a piece for the New York Times about organized crime and money.

The global financial crisis has been a blessing for organized crime. A series of recent scandals have exposed the connection between some of the biggest global banks and the seamy underworld of mobsters, smugglers, drug traffickers and arms dealers. American banks have profited from money laundering by Latin American drug cartels, while the European debt crisis has strengthened the grip of the loan sharks and speculators who control the vast underground economies in countries like Spain and Greece. 
      

Mutually beneficial relationships between bankers and gangsters aren’t new, but what’s remarkable is their reach at the highest levels of global finance.    

 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/opinion/sunday/where-the-mob-keeps-its-money.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all