[GJM] Fw: [globalnetnews-summary] McMafia: coming soon to a location near you

[mary rose]

My comment on this is that as I have reported before, back in 1997 on Easter 
Sunday,
the Mafia's of the world met in Venice Italy for the purpose of "uniting 
their efforts"
as they determined that they could accomplish more through cooperation than 
they
could by fighting over territory.  Reports of this made San Diego news 
headlines
as leaders of the Mexican cartels bragged of their affiliation.

Again with my perverted sense of humor, I find it amusing that while the 
drug cartels
have come to the awareness that they can accomplish more through 
cooperation,
many of the the rest of us continue to want to "do it our way".

Another interesting tidbit is that a well known representative of the 
Christian Right
was present at this meeting as disclosed by CIA records.  This same attendee 
was
later recognized by yours truly as someone who was leading the AARP 
movement.
AARP by the way is the largest PAC in the U.S.  And, it is only natural is 
it not that
AARP members want to protect and ensure the continuation of the ROI on their
investments in mutual funds.  So, AARP is very much inclined to support the 
"K"
Street (corporate) lobbyists. And, as well to vote for the political 
candidate that will
keep these shareholders happy and living the lifestyle to which they have 
become
accustomed. Many of them may as well be members of the Israeli PAC.

And, we wonder why the world is in the state that it is in.

The only effective way to counter this kind of stuff is to do it at the
community level by weaving together neighbor with neighbor such
a tight web that the evil cannot seep through.  This takes committment
and a lot of hard work.

mary rose

We must be the change we wish to see in our lives. M Gandhi


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Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2008 11:32 AM
Subject: [globalnetnews-summary] McMafia: coming soon to a location near you



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McMafia: coming soon to a location near you
The global underworld is a greater threat than terrorism. We ignore it at 
our peril.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0422/p13s02-bogn.html
from the April 22, 2008 edition


Book reviewer Mary Wiltenburg talks with author Misha Glenny.

It began with a missing Audi. One morning, nearly two decades ago, reporter 
Misha Glenny went out to the parking lot of his Zagreb hotel and found his 
new car had skipped town.

Skipped the country, actually: a casualty of "Europe's fastest-growing 
industry," car theft. Mr. Glenny collected the insurance money. Some weeks 
later, his Audi turned up 200 miles away, in a market in western 
Herzegovina. Slowly, the veteran BBC correspondent began to see his small 
car as part of a much larger, bloodier, and more important story.

During the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, a lucrative smuggling operation 
united combatants on both sides of the conflict to move great quantities of 
autos, cigarettes, women, and girls to the streets and brothels of Western 
Europe. In the past 20 years, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the 
deregulation of financial markets, such local and regional networks have 
exploded into a worldwide criminal fraternity that continues to grow in 
scope and might.

Glenny's sprawling, ambitious McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal 
Underworld tracks major players in this transnational brotherhood across 
five continents. Profit - not national, religious, or ethnic identity - 
governs their complex alliances. From Moscow to Spokane, Lagos to Tokyo, 
today's globalized, organized crime is as pervasive, entrepreneurial, and 
"every bit as cosmopolitan as Shell, Nike, or McDonald's." The "shadow 
economy" it governs - tax dodges, human trafficking, and, most profitably, 
oil, arms, drug, and diamond dealing - now accounts for a staggering 15 to 
20 percent of global turnover. What's more, Glenny writes, "this shadow 
world is by no means distinct from its partner in the light."

To map it, Glenny embarked on a reporting odyssey: smuggling Kazakh caviar, 
learning the secrets of Canadian pot smugglers, scoping out Tel Aviv 
brothels, and sharing a memorable afternoon tea with one of Bombay's most 
notorious hit-men. The result is a smart, outraged, and vividly described 
whirlwind tour of criminal conspiracy.

The leaps of geography and logic in "McMafia" can be hard to follow. But its 
thesis is clear, compelling, and scary: the West may have declared war on 
terrorism, but organized crime is by far the more serious threat to our 
world today, and one we ignore at our peril.

That threat is both physical (scattered across the globe, the former Soviet 
nuclear arsenal poses perhaps a greater threat now than it did at the height 
of the cold war) and virtual (for the tech-savvy, cybercrime is a lucrative 
new world of criminal possibility).

On the ground in El Salvador, and other failed states recently engulfed by 
violence, the proximate threat is "testosterone-driven young men who are 
suddenly unemployed but have grown accustomed to their omnipotence."

Likewise in post-Soviet economies, where countless operatives lost their 
jobs: "secret police, counterintelligence officers, Special Forces 
commandos, and border guards, as well as homicide detectives and traffic 
cops. Their skills included surveillance, smuggling, killing people, 
establishing networks, and blackmail" - and only organized crime was hiring.

For women in today's struggling states, the threat is more intimate: 
kidnapping and sexual exploitation, often facilitated by friends or 
relatives. In the cold language of the global marketplace, women forced into 
prostitution are often "an entry-level commodity" for criminals, because 
"the initial outlay is a fraction of the sum required to engage in car 
theft" and "they can cross borders legally and do not attract the attention 
of sniffer dogs."

Glenny reserves his most undisguised contempt for their tormentors.

He has no love, either, for the Russian oligarchs - with their ludicrous 
Soviet-nostalgia parties, complete with toiling peasants - who have pillaged 
the country's mineral resources and laundered billions beyond its borders 
while the majority of the populace struggles to eke out a living. Neither 
does he spare any patience for the rapacious Western appetites so much of 
today's illegal trafficking aims to satisfy.

But certain criminals, Glenny writes, make good points: the Nigerian e-mail 
scammers who see robbing greedy, gullible Westerners as payback for an ugly 
colonial legacy, or the Chinese snakeheads who bring a needed, albeit 
illegal, labor force to shrinking European economies. What's more, in cities 
like Odessa, enlightened criminal leaders have helped to maintain order in 
the face of political and economic catastrophe.

For all these reasons, policing global crime is an unprecedented challenge. 
The most urgent need, Glenny says, is for greater regulation of financial 
markets, because "the deeper the involvement of shadow funds with the licit 
money markets, the harder it becomes to follow the cash that is the key to 
the successful policing of international organized crime."

Meantime, like their licit counterparts, many criminals see their future in 
outsourcing to China.

Although his story becomes increasingly disjointed as it progresses, 
Glenny's journey through the international underworld is, on the whole, a 
rich and illuminating one. The problem of crime in a globalizing world may 
have no quick fix - but in "McMafia," it has quite a strong introduction.