Word: mafia
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Much like a board of directors, or even a parent-teacher association, the Sicilian Mafia has been known to operate with a whiff of organizational democracy. In the past, La Cupola, a kind of consultative board of regional bosses, met from time to time to resolve internal disputes and forge long-term strategy...
...Investigators say those taken into custody had been attempting to re-establish the authority of the Cupola to solidify the Mafia's power structure after a leadership vacuum had followed from the high-profile earlier arrests of Bernardo Provenzano and Salvatore Lo Piccolo. Leading anti-Mob magistrate Pietro Grasso said operations over the past few years have the Sicilian Mob, also known as Cosa Nostra, on its knees. Tuesday's roundup, Grasso said, "keeps it from getting...
...Mafia has long fascinated the world with its mix of murder, mystery and Old World folklore. But the Mob is best understood as an organization constantly trying to consolidate its power in order to accumulate wealth. Considered the modern inventor of organized crime, the Sicilian Mob remains hugely powerful, even as its share of the international trafficking business has diminished and other syndicates have made headlines for their bloody turf wars. (Read a TIME cover story on the Mafia...
...loved Mafia iconography and liked being known as a tough guy. When he watched the Sopranos, it was "like he was going to church," said one of his five wives, with whom he had an autistic son named after a character in The Godfather. He used the score from that film as the hold music on his office phone. Pellicano often brandished a baseball...
...There were times when he would make my children kiss his hand like he was the Godfather. He started to think he was Don Corleone." - Katherine Pellicano, on her husband's Mafia obsession (Vanity Fair, June...