Spectator's Journal/Letter from Sicily
Martinez, Mary
shins, and ankles, in order to jog to nowhere and back again" ("Whatever Happened to America?"). Midge Decter obviously loathes exercise to make such a statement full of excesses containing the...
...the sense of outrage mounts because boys and girls are dying of drug addiction in Italy now the way they have been dying in other Western countries...
...Only the bosses know how much of the chagrin is genuine and how much is bluff...
...Introduction by William F Buˆkley...
...Still, Ronald Reagan is trying...
...The rate of inside gangland murders has jumped from one every two days at the beginning of 1982 to one every six hours in October...
...Eighty percent of the heroin sold in the United States is processed in Palermo and its immediate environs...
...he newer Iefc 4ifferrnces of opiniorti t loud his appreciation of those who people I he human eti•t'")i w of his lime...
...The atmosphere was tense when Pope John Paul arrived in Palermo in mid-November for a two-day pastoral visit...
...In the 1920s when the Mussolini government stamped out the Mafia in Sicily, membership consisted largely of administrators of the great estates working for absentee landlords...
...As befits his office and mission Mr...
...Midge Decter obviously loathes exercise to make such a statement full of excesses containing the stuff which flows from the rear of the uncastrated bovine ruminant...
...To use the term "nowhere" indicates the user has not "been there...
...Even as he moved a contingent of squad cars into the zone known as the Triangle of Death where most of the murders occur, in order "to demonstrate the presence of the State," Carabiniere headquarters received an anonymous telephone call suggesting officers look into the Fiat parked outside their door...
...In neither the first nor the second phase were Mafia activities altogether clandestine, nor did their financial scope begin to compare with that of the new Mafia, lords of the drug traffic...
...It also stimulates journalistic creativity as a result...
...A move in the President's crusade against the drug traffic, such an agreement has long been sought by Italian judges eager to bring some 28 Italians serving time in the United States to trial in Italy...
...Those who know John Chamberlain will Sense his presence in ewer page, end every reader w,II come awaV with grcaler understand ing for i he ideas and forces I hat have made the world we live in...
...Jogging takes one physically, psychically, and emotionally somewhere...
...Mafia today means drugs...
...Gavin Maxwell, Scottish writer on otters and mafiosi, compares trying to get to the core of things in Sicily-to peeling an onion...
...12-95 BOOKS OF CONSEQUENCE...
...Both references were left out when the Pope spoke to the crowd...
...victrons...
...He may well be more hopeful than British officials in his position...
...jai inlellcctu¢I disease of our lime...
...Meanwhile, as the cynics say, give the gun-happy mobsters enough time and they will solve it themselves...
...In the press release given out ahead of the main papal address there was mention of "fresh blood on the city's streets" and condemnation of omerta, the traditional silence that protects the criminal from the law and the witness from the criminal...
...12.95 ii I. nou5_: .0...
...As unlike mountain tribesmen as their "families" in Manhattan, the Mafia millionaires of Sicily go on processing opium into heroin in at least four laboratories tucked away in obscure neighborhoods of the island's capital, using a new and efficient chemical formula invented by a French ex-pediatrician known as "Monsieur le Docteur...
...and lourna Irsts u ho have been ceiehratinq I he mcdiucre and depraved in a time when evcry'Lhinrl was great precisely because nothing was realty fiery goo-d- he identifies and suggests a cure for what might be t he fundamen...
...But...
...Belatedly too the island's bishops have issued pleas to the faithful to shake off their inertia and to the politicians to stand up to the Mafia...
...The war over and Fascism defeated, the bosses returned from Chicago and other transatlantic havens with new sophistication...
...Through %eathiny dnd hdar,uus examples of the popular arl isi s_ C i iLitS...
...Mary Martinez From 1he seedlings of his Iwo part al• tic le first appcaring in Harper's in 19b l _ l has g real I yr expanded and nlcirc oui .pok.:n 4,emon is an even more unorthodox portrayal...
...They moved into the cities to profit from the postwar building boom...
...At first the mob played games with him, chalking up 100 killings during his first 100 days...
...Illinois 6(11610.0990 37 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1983...
...As the slaughter mounts so does the public's expression of outrage...
...You'll love it or hats it - beer you must read 11...
...S P E C T A T O R' S J O U R N A L Letter from Sicily The way things are going cynics here predict it won't be long before the Mafia problem takes care of itself...
...Only occasionally have bullets been spent on outsiders and only on those like Italy's Carabiniere Numero Uno, Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, who have attempted to interrupt the rhythm...
...punaa: 'L . comes from Pakistan where the government admits it has virtually no control over refineries in the autono mous tribal regions to the north...
...They found two just-strangled bodies...
...Although he is o man of strong can...
...Exercising one's body no more damages the legs, knees, spine, etc., than journalistic exercise or mental inquiry damages the brain...
...for times of Concern A uniquely honest, candid portrayal An uproarious osso..I i !, 1 he Amer i of Iumultvous 1imcs, told with hurrwi can literary_ cultural r•,!.in1i-,hnnent and admirable detachment A LIFE WITH PANIC AMONG THE PRINTED WORD THE PHILISTINES JOHN CHAMBERLAIN L3RYAN (;RIFhFIN RF:CRERY GATEWAY The Publisher for 1b ,%k- -,% ho wee the ni t dt of the future clearly RECIMERY GATEWAY...
...A good many bad things will have to change before the tragic problem is solved...
...Belatedly, ordinary lawabiding Sicilians, shamed by the image their homeland is taking on abroad-and "abroad" means the Italian mainland as well as the rest of the world-have organized protest marches...
...Citing a remark made by the Mayor of Palermo in a television interview that neither special powers nor important corpses were called for, Nando Dalla Chiesa says his father understood the threat...
...There had been three murders the night before and, expectedly, no witnesses...
...His envoy Attorney General William French Smith came to Rome in early November to sign a new and more workable extradition accord with Italy's Minister of Justice...
...Last May the central government did come up with a dramatic gesture when it sent the hero of Italy's antiterrorism campaign, General Dalla Chiesa, to Palermo...
...It is now an integral part of that society," and the magazine goes on to describe Palermo, a city of 700,000 with 120,000 unemployed where "money flows and it is hard to find a shabby looking person...
...In the opinion of the weekly, Panorama, "The Mafia can no longer be said merely to infiltrate Sicilian society...
...and con...
...It is probable that at least 200,000 Palermitani live, in one way or another, on Mafia profits...
...it,1F west S yip i' i :n i ~, i eevt • Chicago...
...In Rome alone there have been 49 deaths in the past year and in the whole of Italy an average of 20 per month...
...Indeed within five months after arriving on what turned out to be a futile mission the General and his wife were gunned down on one of the principal streets of Palermo...
...George E. Goodwine Institute of the Veracious Arts Warrensburg, Missouri...
...The General's son has insisted that his father received no help from local Christian Democrat authorities, no cooperation, none of the necessary assistance...
...Smith was optimistic...
...In the face of official indifference, a group,of mothers in Rome has taken over an abandoned house to create a therapy and counseling center...
...Eighty percent of the heroin sold in the United Kingdom No journalist of lhiscentwye has been rnorr widely read over d career that bean in 1925 and rnntrnues, today, through a widely syndicated column...
...t lnue to inference it...
Vol. 16 • February 1983 • No. 2
