As painful events recede into the past, our perceptions soften; when we physically remove ourselves from emotionally disturbing situations, our emotions cool. Once attained, psychological distance allows us to romanticize and feel nostalgia for almost anything. It provides a filter, eliminating some details and emphasizing others.
We speak of the good old days, hardly ever of the bad. Psychological distance is, among other things, a coping mechanism: it protects against depression and its close cousin, rumination, which pushes us to dwell too long on unpleasant details from the past instead of moving forward. When, instead, we smooth the edges of the past, remembering it as better than it was, we end up hoping for an equally happy future.
Under the right conditions, it can flourish in the moment. The lives of serial killers offer those concrete reminders: they lurk in neighborhoods like ours, threatening people who could be us. Abstraction lends itself to psychological distance; specificity kills it. That dinner in Cuba is recalled as an illustration of friendship and family: Lucky was just a man making good, torn from the people he loved so the U. Psychological distance allows us to see him this way, too.
It makes us part of the family. The mobster Whitey Bulger secretly worked for the F. Or was it the other way around? By Patrick Radden Keefe. The Profaci family was taken over by Joseph Colombo a few years later, and he became so famous that the family is now known as the Colombo family. The same thing nearly happened to the Gambino family when it was taken over by John Gotti. Before it became the Gotti family, though, Gotti was arrested and convicted of racketeering and murder, based largely on the testimony of Mafia traitor Sammy "The Bull" Gravano.
That family continues to be known by law enforcement officials as the Gambino crime family. Most of the other U. Thus, you have the Philadelphia family, the Buffalo family, the Cleveland family and so on. The details of a Mafia induction ceremony were a carefully kept secret for decades.
But in the early s, Joe Valachi's testimony before a Senate subcommittee shined a spotlight on the mob. The Mafia induction described here is the ceremony conducted by the Sicilian Mafia as well as most American Mafia families. Circumstances can alter some details of the ceremony, such as an induction in prison or a quick induction during a gang war. First, the potential gangster is told simply to "dress up" or "get dressed. Other Mafioso who are present will join hands and recite oaths and promises of loyalty.
The inductee may then hold a burning piece of paper. In some families, the new soldier is paired with a more experienced mobster who will act as his " godfather ," guiding him into Mafia life. The inductee must promise that he will be a member of the family for life, and then a drop of blood is drawn from his trigger finger. It takes more than just an oath and a drop of blood to get into the Mafia, however.
Only men of Italian heritage are allowed in. In some families, both parents must be Italian, while some require only an Italian father. The prospective mobster must also show a penchant for making money or at the least a willingness to commit acts of violence when ordered to do so.
Usually, the criminal must pass a test before he will be considered for induction, and this test is commonly rumored to be participation in an act of murder. One last obstacle that some mobsters face when they try to become made men: the Commission. In the s and '30s, the Mafia families in the United States were almost constantly at war with one another.
They would often recruit new soldiers by the dozens so rival families wouldn't recognize them as enemies. These new recruits could easily approach members of other families and assassinate them.
To put a stop to this, the Commission began requiring all the families to make a list of their prospective members and circulate the list among the other families. In addition to helping to ID family members, these lists also allowed the bosses to weed out prospects that other families had problems with. If the prospects became made men, individual disagreements could grow into violent wars between families.
Families use a variety of activities to accomplish the Mafia's main goal of making money. One of the most common is one of the simplest: extortion. Extortion is forcing people to pay money by threatening them in some way. Mafia "protection rackets" are extortion schemes. The twist is that the Mafia members themselves are the criminals who threaten the business. The Mafia has made money through a wide variety of illegal activities over the years.
Mobsters have dealt in alcohol during Prohibition, illegal drugs, prostitution and illegal gambling, to name a few. Sometimes, burglaries and muggings generate income, but the capos know that their activities need a grander scale to ensure maximum profit. That's why they hijack trucks and unload entire shipments of stolen goods. Another method used by Mafioso is to pay off truck drivers or dock workers to "misplace" crates and shipments that later end up in Mafia hands.
The stolen goods could be anything from stereo equipment to clothing a favorite of John Gotti early in his career.
One of the most notorious Mafia schemes was the infiltration of labor unions. For several decades, it is believed that every major construction project in New York City was controlled by the Mafia. Mobsters paid off or threatened union leaders to get a piece of the action whenever a union group got a construction job, and they sometimes made their way into the ranks of union leadership.
Once the Mafia had its grip on a union, it could control an entire industry. Mafioso could get workers to slow or halt construction if contractors or developers didn't make the right payoffs, and they had access to huge union pension funds.
At one point, the Mafia could have brought nearly all construction and shipping in the United States to a halt. In the last few decades, the federal government has cracked down on Mafia-union connections to a great extent. The current structure of the Mafia took centuries to develop.
To learn about the history of the Mafia and to see how law enforcement has dealt with organized crime over the years, read on. It began on the island of Sicily. Although there are major organized crime groups from other parts of Italy, the Sicilian Mafia is generally considered to be the godfather of all other Mafia organizations.
Several unique factors contributed to the development of organized crime in Sicily. The island is located at an easily accessible and strategically important place in the Mediterranean Sea.
As a result, Sicily was invaded, conquered and occupied by hostile forces many times. This led to an overall distrust of central authority. The family, rather than the state , became the focus of Sicilian life, and disputes were settled through a system in which punishment often went beyond the limits of the law. In the 19th century, the European feudal system finally collapsed in Sicily. With no real government or functioning authority of any kind, the island quickly descended into lawlessness.
Certain landowners and other powerful men began to build reputations and eventually came to be seen as local leaders. They were known as capos. The capos used their power to extract tributes from farmers under their authority much like the feudal lords before them.
Their authority was enforced through the threat of violence. Their criminal activities were never reported, even by the victims, because of the fear of reprisal. This was the beginning of the Sicilian Mafia. Several elements of Mafia life that have lasted for centuries first developed during the transition from a feudal to a modern form of government in Sicily.
The phrase cosa nostra — "our way," or " this thing of ours " — was used to describe the lifestyle of a Mafioso in Sicily. The shroud of secrecy that surrounded Mafia activities in Sicily became known as omerta , the code of silence. Mafia bosses relied on this code — in which no one spoke about Mafia activities to anyone outside the family — to protect themselves and the family from the law. The practice of recruiting young boys into the Mafia, culminating with a final test, also stems from Sicily.
In the early s, organized crime had so thoroughly infiltrated Sicilian life that it was virtually impossible to avoid contact with the Mafia. Italian dictator Benito Mussolini cracked down on the Mafia using harsh, often brutal methods. But when U. Before long, the Mafia had a firm grasp on Italy's Christian Democrat party. In the postwar years, the various competing Sicilian families realized that their constant fighting was costing them money.
They called a ceasefire and formed a group called the cupola that would oversee the operations of all the families and approve all major enterprises and assassinations. Not all mobsters are involved in all of these crimes. Some mafiosi are too old to hunt like they used to. Some are too rich and smart to risk prison on smaller scams. Money always flows up in the Mafia. The underworld is not a trickle-down economy. It more resembles a feudal state, with peasants paying up to lords.
As a general rule, mob associates making money in a mob-controlled area or working with a specific mobster pass a significant portion of their proceeds to their Mafia contact. This is how a boss makes much of his money. It helps insulate him from prosecution by not getting his hands too dirty.
A man reputed to be a major Mafia boss in Toronto has a routine whenever gangsters present him tribute money. The combination of his reputation and position are all the heavy lifting he needs to do. How much mob soldiers make varies widely.
Some are rich while others struggle. There is a lot of dirty money being made, though, as shown when mobsters are arrested. Large stashes of cash and luxury goods are often found when police raid their homes and businesses.
Your go-to source for all the best Black Friday deals: tech, toys, fashion, mattresses, beauty, wellness, travel and more. The holiday, which is a big deal elsewhere, is becoming a thing here, too. If you're in the market for a new option this cold-weather season, we've rounded up four fashionable finds that will be sure to up your cool factor, while keeping out the cold.
The Mafia, a network of organized-crime groups based in Italy and America, evolved over centuries in Sicily, an island ruled until the midth century by a long line of foreign invaders. Sicilians banded together in groups to protect themselves and carry out their own justice.
The American Mafia, which rose to power in the s, is a separate entity from the Mafia in Italy, although they share such traditions as omerta, a code of conduct and loyalty. For centuries, Sicily, an island in the Mediterranean Sea between North Africa and the Italian mainland, was ruled by a long line of foreign invaders, including the Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs, French and Spanish.
The residents of this small island formed groups to protect themselves from the often-hostile occupying forces, as well as from other regional groups of Sicilians. These groups, which later became known as clans or families, developed their own system for justice and retribution, carrying out their actions in secret.
From this history, the Sicilian Mafia emerged as a collection of criminal clans or families. In , Sicily became a province of recently unified Italy.
However, chaos and crime reigned across the island as the fledgling Italian government tried to establish itself. In the s, Roman officials even asked Sicilian Mafia clans to help them by going after dangerous, independent criminal bands; in exchange, officials would look the other way as the Mafia continued its protection shakedowns of landowners.
The government believed this arrangement would be temporary, lasting just long enough for Rome to gain control; instead, the Mafia clans expanded their criminal activities and further entrenched themselves in Sicilian politics and the economy. The Mafia became adept at political corruption and intimidated people to vote for certain candidates, who were in turn beholden to the Mafia. Even the Catholic Church was involved with Mafia clans during this period, according to Raab, who notes that the church relied on Mafiosi to monitor its massive property holdings in Sicily and keep tenant farmers in line.
0コメント