Tag Archives ⇒ tragedy

Mafias and chaos

June 19, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I like this inter­view on the Ital­ian mafia by Isaac Chotin­er in Slate, “The Mafia Is More Pow­er­ful Than It’s Ever Been.”

It seems that this per­pet­u­al cyn­i­cism may be the great­est threat of our era. Is the child of irony? The grand­child of gov­ern­ment con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries? Maybe the cause does­n’t mat­ter as much as the effect.

The mob thrives on chaos. It likes chaos. It likes to be the alter­na­tive author­i­ty that you go to because you can’t get any­thing done through the legit­i­mate state. For that very rea­son, I think there’s no doubt that it pro­motes that chaos. It likes civic dis­trust. It likes cyn­i­cism. It can prof­it from that. I think the great tragedy of Italy is that, to a large extent, it’s kind of succeeded.

I think that if we want­ed to con­struct a Quak­er cri­tique of the cur­rent Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment – and the type of cor­po­ra­tized cor­rup­tion we see in Rus­sia and the pet­rostates, it would best start with the polit­i­cal cul­ture that deny basic facts, gaslight cit­i­zens with ever-changing ratio­nales, and cre­at­ing chaos that can let finan­cial huck­sters reap bil­lions. These are not gov­ern­ments based on integri­ty and fair play­ing fields.


The Mafia Is More Powerful Than It’s Ever Been

The Mafia Is More Pow­er­ful Than It’s Ever Been 

If you think of vio­lent, influ­en­tial orga­nized crime in Italy as a thing of the past, think again.

Slate Magazine Slate Magazine 

“Have you ever felt like the fall guy?”

July 18, 2003
· Martin Kelley

In strange and sad news, the man who was prob­a­bly the unnamed “senior offi­cial” who first told the BBC that Britain “sexed up” its Iraq weapons dossier has turned up dead in the woods near his home. Dr. David Kel­ly gave evi­dence to the UK for­eign affairs com­mit­tee just days ago, where he asked the com­mit­tee “Have you ever felt like the fall guy?” One mem­ber of the com­mit­tee told the Guardian that “We thought he’d been put up quite delib­er­ate­ly to dis­tract us from the case of the gov­ern­men­t’s case for war.”

David Kel­ly has been described as a “soft spo­ken” man not used to the pub­lic glare he’s been under. Reports haven’t even giv­en the cause of death, so con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries will have to be put on hold. It’s quite pos­si­ble that this faith­ful civ­il ser­vant and sci­en­tist final­ly cracked under the pres­sure of the media onslaught and took his life. It is a tragedy for his family.