14 August 2011

Mafia leader found hiding in air-conditioned underground bunker

An alleged leader of Italy's feared 'Ndrangheta mafia was arrested by police after being found hiding in a hi-tech underground bunker accessible only via a remote-controlled trap door.

The 'Ndrangheta: profile

The 'Ndrangheta, based in Calabria in the far south of Italy, is now believed to be the most powerful of Italy's four mafia organisations.

13 August 2011

Facebook under attack

Hacker netwrok "Anonymous" say they are going to take it down on November 5th

Criminal Enclaves in Licit Economies: Exploring the Criminal Consequences of Shuttle Trade

CALL FOR PAPERS for the panel “Transnational Crime: Difficulties of Responding to the Evasive Beast” to be presented at 2012 International BISA-ISA conference in Edinburgh 2012. Deadline for the submission of abstracts is August 27, 2011. Abstracts should be sent to: yuliya.zabyelina@sis.unitn.it

Transnational Crime: Difficulties of Responding to the Evasive Beast.

The ways in which transnational crime and its countermeasures confront the traditional borders of crime control, national security, national politics and international relations have challenge the disciplinary boundaries of orthodox criminology, which has traditionally focused on matters internal to nation-states. This panel invites proposals that investigate challenges of responding to transnational criminal activities:

- THEORETICAL: alternative theoretical approach to understanding both the phenomena currently labeled transnational crime and state responses to them; orthodox and critical ways of labeling and responding to transnational activities. State institutional challenges of responding to transnational crime; world risk society.

- SECURITY: merging national security and police threats; national and “a-national” sites of law enforcement; transnational policing; balancing the paradoxical intersection of neo-liberal globalization and “tough” security policies; a “panopticon” state against crime; evaluating the private security market.

- SOCIAL: strategies of border management in terms of fighting illicit cross-border movements; border politics and border reconstruction; crime and social injuries: the problem of “illegalized” migrants and “criminalized” victims of human trafficking; established social divisions based on race, class, and gender by maintaining and extending countermeasures; “gated” communities.

- TECHNOLOGICAL: new technologies for better surveillance; criminal technological empowerment and methodological sophistication; responses to cyber crime.

11 August 2011

How Mexico's deadly gang tactics are spreading

Unpleasant stories about the Mexican drug cartels moving into the migrant trade. Its really a puff for a BBC radio programme, but it suggests that los/las Zetas are spreading their power beyond Mexico.

10 August 2011

Fuel smuggler's paradise: a day on the border between Libya and Tunisia

Remember this. the origins of organised crime in Libya and its links with Tunisia. Yet again, the West creates organised crime...Is it deliberate?

Shopping riots?

Weird stuff. Sort of cod sociology crossed with journalism. going to be a lot of analysis of the riots over the next few days.

Trafficked women trapped between Italian mafia and immigrant gangs

Film today [10th August 2011]on Al Jazeera

09 August 2011

Italian journalists and mafias

An interesting inquiry on the risks faced by journalists in Italy because of the mafias operating in the country. Here something shorter in english from Reporters Without Borders: http://en.rsf.org/report-italy,111.html