While I didn't use the word mafia, that's what I actually meant when I used words such as "criminal cartels" and "organised crime", obviously.
The thing is, drug trafficking is one huge industry, generating a shitload of billions of dollars per year. A substantial part of that money need to re-enter the legal economy at some point. Not necessarily in the same area where the cartels have their bases nor in their country at large. Needless to say, this is a huge and lucrative business for a lot of companies in the banking and financial sector…
But, geopolitical considerations apart, an interesting thing, and maybe more on-topic, is that basically every WOP cartel have a tribalistic, deeply reactionary "culture", all about "honour" and such stuff… In many respect, they look and behave almost like a kind of "catholic wahhabi", if you get what I mean. Maybe that's slowly changing with the last generation - the alleged boss of Sicilian mafia is renowned as a womaniser with a quite flamboyant lifestyle, also considering he is a lifetime fugitive, while the older godfathers used to be fucking shepherds straight out the Middle Ages hiding in literal caves. And quite possibly being literal goatfuckers.
Now that I'm thinking about it, maybe the definition "failed state" is more fitting. And it's fun to think about that Bannon retard coming to congratulate Mr B as some kind of "statist" when he's always been a huge beneficiary of this situation and, in the last couple of decades, one its main enablers.
Buonanotte, come va?
I'm from Rome - a fucking shithole you could really appreciate only as a tourist and no longer than two weeks, really. While my direct experience with the true South is really scarce, I have to say that, coming back after five uninterrupted years abroad, this city has really "southernified" itself. And it's bloody awful.
By comparison, the North has always been better off economically, even if it's going down the drain all the same. There's a huge, growing hatred between North and South, which is just a symptom of the "failed state" situation that I said before. I started to think that we are in a similar situation to Yugoslavia, except that we already had a huge dose of neoliberalism.