Word: pyramidal
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According to Buscetta, the Mafia structure resembles a pyramid, whose base is composed of cosche, families or clans whose territorial and operational boundaries are strictly defined but whose chiefs bear little resemblance to the almost feudal Mafiosi depicted in The Godfather. In a startling statement, Buscetta disclosed that the capifamiglia, or family bosses, are elected and sometimes even fired by a vote of family members. He asserted that few such men were oldtime "men of honor," the occasionally benevolent criminals who were fully initiated into the codes and rituals of the Mafia. Only 8% to 10%, he said, met these...
...Buscetta explained it, the second tier of the pyramid is made up of provincial commissions throughout Sicily. These, he said, play a mediating and coordinating role among the families. The Palermo commission used to be the most important, Buscetta went on, but in recent years, the Corleone commission has displaced...
...pyramid is the so-called cupola, or commission of ten. Headed by the chief of the Palermo provincial council, the cupola is the body that settles jurisdictional conflicts and attempts to coordinate all activities outside Sicily. Dominated by the more powerful of the clans, the commission should sanction the murder of an important judge or politician, or approve the assassination of an uncooperative Mafioso in New York. Sometimes this system works. But on numerous occasions, says Pino Arlacchi, a sociologist on the staff of the Italian legislature's anti-Mafia commission, it does not. In fact, Arlacchi warns against...
...swing. Under the watchful eye of his Secret Service guards, he mixed with supporters for long stretches in open-air settings, shaking hundreds of hands, kissing babies, signing countless autographs. At a carnival booth on the grounds of St. Ann's, he delighted onlookers by knocking down a pyramid of mugs with a perfectly aimed pitch, winning a yellow stuffed elephant. Women told him he was handsomer than he looked on television. "Thank you," Reagan replied, "that's nice to hear...
Young soldiers competed to build the tallest human pyramid, and teen-agers danced to recorded calypso music. Children indulged themselves in cotton candy. In a carnival-like atmosphere, 300,000 slogan-chanting Nicaraguans gathered in Managua last week to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the revolution that brought down Dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle. In his address to the crowd, Junta Coordinator Daniel Ortega Saavedra announced that opposition parties would be allowed to hold public rallies and to travel more freely during the campaign for the Nov. 4 elections, the country's first since the 1979 Sandinista takeover...