http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...l-9231115.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/30/wo...gacy.html?_r=0
Italian troops sent into Naples' 'Triangle of Death' to stop mafia wars over illegal waste disposal
Michael Day Author Biography
Rome Tuesday 01 April 2014
...
The Italian authorities have a history of sending in the troops to the south of the country after flares in mafia activity. But Massimiliano Manfredi, a Naples-born MP for the Democratic Party and a member of the parliamentary Anti-Mafia Commission, said that rooting out the corrupt officials who helped the mafia was more effective then sending in the troops. ?You don?t just fight the Camorra with the army. Its real strength stems from the fact that it?s embedded in the public administration,? he told The Independent. ?Rather than the military, we need strong controls on public procurement and to insist on the renewal of the ruling class to break the continuity between political power and organised crime. So we need a show of strength, but also to clean out politics where it?s contaminated.?
Michael Day Author Biography
Rome Tuesday 01 April 2014
...
The Italian authorities have a history of sending in the troops to the south of the country after flares in mafia activity. But Massimiliano Manfredi, a Naples-born MP for the Democratic Party and a member of the parliamentary Anti-Mafia Commission, said that rooting out the corrupt officials who helped the mafia was more effective then sending in the troops. ?You don?t just fight the Camorra with the army. Its real strength stems from the fact that it?s embedded in the public administration,? he told The Independent. ?Rather than the military, we need strong controls on public procurement and to insist on the renewal of the ruling class to break the continuity between political power and organised crime. So we need a show of strength, but also to clean out politics where it?s contaminated.?
A Mafia Legacy Taints the Earth in Southern Italy
By JIM YARDLEYJAN. 29, 2014
...
Two jailed mafia informants had identified the field as one of the secret sites where the Camorra had buried toxic waste, near a region north of Naples known as the Triangle of Death because of the emergence of clusters of cancer cases. One environmental group estimates that 10 million tons of toxic garbage has been illegally buried here since the early 1990s, earning billions of dollars for the mafia even as toxic substances leached into the soil and the water table.
While the dumping has been widely documented, the trash crisis has only worsened, as the parallel problem of the illegal burning of toxic waste has brought the region another nickname, the Land of Fires. With new revelations fueling public outrage, the question is whether the Italian government will confront the Camorra and clean up the mess ? and whether the mess can be cleaned up at all.
?The environment here is poisoned,? said Dr. Alfredo Mazza, a cardiologist who documented an alarming rise in local cancer cases in a 2004 study published in the British medical journal The Lancet. ?It?s impossible to clean it all up. The area is too vast.?
He added, ?We?re living on top of a bomb.?...
By JIM YARDLEYJAN. 29, 2014
...
Two jailed mafia informants had identified the field as one of the secret sites where the Camorra had buried toxic waste, near a region north of Naples known as the Triangle of Death because of the emergence of clusters of cancer cases. One environmental group estimates that 10 million tons of toxic garbage has been illegally buried here since the early 1990s, earning billions of dollars for the mafia even as toxic substances leached into the soil and the water table.
While the dumping has been widely documented, the trash crisis has only worsened, as the parallel problem of the illegal burning of toxic waste has brought the region another nickname, the Land of Fires. With new revelations fueling public outrage, the question is whether the Italian government will confront the Camorra and clean up the mess ? and whether the mess can be cleaned up at all.
?The environment here is poisoned,? said Dr. Alfredo Mazza, a cardiologist who documented an alarming rise in local cancer cases in a 2004 study published in the British medical journal The Lancet. ?It?s impossible to clean it all up. The area is too vast.?
He added, ?We?re living on top of a bomb.?...
Comment