*Mafia36 Organisation*Friday, November 6, 2009
Friday, September 18, 2009
Saturday, September 12, 2009
History Of Mafia
A game called Murder, which is the prototype of Mafia, has been played for many years. In Murder, one murderer is selected by the moderator, and can kill one person per night. There is a detective who can inquire about one player per night. Dmitry Davidoff believes this game to have originated in England in the 1970's. It quite probably goes back much further, though. We have received correspondence from Mr. Brian G. McCue, who states that he played the game "Murder" on 31st December 1969 with a group of people who had definitely played "Murder" in the December of '67, and possibly earlier. These games were played in Vermont. Mr. Davidoff also recalls a Russian game called Ubiitca, which he translates as "Muderer." In Ubiitca, there is not night, and the lone murderer kills by "winking" at his victim during the day. The victim, seeing the wink, must say "ouch" and die. This version is played with and without a detective, although it is not absolutely clear what the role of the detective is in this game. Played with a night, this game is identical to Murder, except in small logistical details. Mr. Davidoff claims to have invented the modern game of Mafia in 1986. He describes the main thrust of the game as "informed minority versus uninformed majority." In his Mafia, members of the Mafia see each other in a preliminary "night." Following this, accusations begin. Mafia members know who each other are, but civilians, in the majority, do not. Multiple convictions are allowed, and night falls whenever a majority vote for it to end. During night, everyone writes something on a piece of paper; civilians write "Honest" and Mafia members write the name of the person they want to kill. The papers are collected by a moderator or a democratically-elected leader. All Mafia must choose the same person in order for the murder to be accomplished. Effective Mafia must therefore signal during the day, secretly. Note that the number of papers not marked "Honest" is the sole indication of how many Mafia are left. The difference between Murder and Davidoff's game is therefore that there are multiple murderers who work together. Kai Chan reports, however, that his mother played "Murder" with multiple murderers and inspectors in 1956-57, in England. Therefore, this innovation predates Mr. Davidoff's game. Mr. Davidoff may have invented the game independently, but he is not the originator. The next definite reference to the game is found in Hungary, where a group of players founded an organization in 1996. However, this page mentions that many players recognised the game played as a variant of other games. In the Hungarian rules, there is only one execution per day, but the Mafia still need blind unanimity during the night, although this is achieved in a different way. The game also caught on in Norway, where the inspector is given the name of a Mafia member every night. This game, according to Vegard Engstrom, was dervied from the game Kommisar Katania which was the name of a character in "La Piovra", an Italian television series. Mafia was introduced in Princeton by Steve Phelps on September 15, 1998, and was first played as a regular event on September 24, 1998. After a brief one-year hiatus in activities, Daniel Raburn reintroduced the game to the Coffee House on September 2, 2004.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
MAFIA
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
This article is about the Sicilian criminal society. For the Italian American counterpart, see American Mafia. For other uses, see Mafia (disambiguation).
The Mafia (also known as Cosa Nostra) is a Sicilian criminal society which is believed to have emerged in late 19th century Sicily, and the first such society to be referred to as a mafia. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct. Each group, known as a "family", "clan" or "cosca", claims sovereignty over a territory in which it operates its rackets - usually a town or village or a neighborhood of a larger city.
Offshoots of the Mafia emerged in the United States, Canada, and in Australia[1] during the late 19th century following waves of Sicilian and Southern Italian emigration (see Italian-American Mafia).
ETYMOLOGY
There are several theories about the origin of the term "Mafia" (sometimes spelt "Maffia" in early texts). The Sicilian adjective mafiusu may derive from the slang Arabic mahyas (مهياص), meaning "aggressive boasting, bragging", or marfud مرفوض meaning "rejected". Roughly translated, it means "swagger", but can also be translated as "boldness, bravado". In reference to a man, mafiusu in 19th century Sicily was ambiguous, signifying a bully, arrogant but also fearless, enterprising, and proud, according to scholar Diego Gambetta.[2]
The public's association of the word with the criminal secret society was perhaps inspired by the 1863 play "I mafiusi di la Vicaria" ("The Mafiosi of the Vicaria") by Giuseppe Rizzotto and Gaetano Mosca. The words Mafia and mafiusi are never mentioned in the play; they were probably put in the title to add a local flair. The play is about a Palermo prison gang with traits similar to the Mafia: a boss, an initiation ritual, and talk of "umirtà" (omertà or code of silence) and "pizzu" (a codeword for extortion money).[3] The play had great success throughout Italy. Soon after, the use of the term "mafia" began appearing in the Italian state's early reports on the phenomenon. The word made its first official appearance in 1865 in a report by the prefect of Palermo, Filippo Antonio Gualterio.[4]
Leopoldo Franchetti, an Italian deputy who travelled to Sicily and who wrote one of the first authoritative reports on the mafia in 1876, saw the Mafia as an "industry of violence" and described the designation of the term "mafia":
"the term mafia found a class of violent criminals ready and waiting for a name to define them, and, given their special character and importance in Sicilian society, they had the right to a different name from that defining vulgar criminals in other countries."[5]
Franchetti saw the Mafia as deeply rooted in Sicilian society and impossible to quench unless the very structure of the island's social institutions were to undergo a fundamental change.[6]
Some observers have seen "mafia" as a set of attributes deeply rooted in popular culture, as a "way of being", as illustrated in the definition by the Sicilian ethnographer, Giuseppe Pitrè, at the end of the 19th century:
"Mafia is the consciousness of one's own worth, the exaggerated concept of individual force as the sole arbiter of every conflict, of every clash of interests or ideas."[7]
According to popular myth, the word Mafia was first used in the Sicilian rebellion - the Sicilian Vespers - against the oppressive Anjou rule on 30 March 1282. Mafia is the acronym for "Morte alla Francia, Italia anela" (Italian for "Death to the French is Italy's Cry").[8] However, this version is discarded by most serious historians nowadays.
THE NAME "Cosa Nostra"
The Sicilian Mafia has no formal name, as members see no need for one. Nonetheless, in many Italian publications the term "Cosa Nostra" is used to distinguish the Sicilian Mafia from other criminal networks that are also sometimes referred to as "mafias" (such as the Camorra, the "Neapolitan Mafia").
When the American mafioso Joseph Valachi testified before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the U.S. Senate Committee on Government Operations in 1962, he revealed that American mafiosi referred to their organization by the term cosa nostra ("our thing").[9][10][11] At the time, it was understood as a proper name, fostered by the FBI and disseminated by the media. The designation gained wide popularity and almost replaced the term Mafia. The FBI even added the article to the term, calling it La Cosa Nostra (in Italy this article is not used when referring to the Sicilian Mafia).
Italian investigators did not take the term seriously, believing it was only used by the American Mafia. Then, in 1984, the Mafia turncoat Tommaso Buscetta revealed to the anti-mafia magistrate Giovanni Falcone that the term was used by the Sicilian Mafia as well.[12] According to Buscetta, the word "mafia" was a literary creation.[13] Other defectors, such as Antonio Calderone and Salvatore Contorno, confirmed this. Mafiosi introduce known members to each other as belonging to cosa nostra ("our thing") or la stessa cosa ("the same thing"), e.g. "he is the same thing, a mafioso, as you".
The Sicilian Mafia has used other names to describe itself throughout its history, such as "The Honoured Society." Mafiosi are known among themselves as "men of honour" or "men of respect".
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
This article is about the Sicilian criminal society. For the Italian American counterpart, see American Mafia. For other uses, see Mafia (disambiguation).
The Mafia (also known as Cosa Nostra) is a Sicilian criminal society which is believed to have emerged in late 19th century Sicily, and the first such society to be referred to as a mafia. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct. Each group, known as a "family", "clan" or "cosca", claims sovereignty over a territory in which it operates its rackets - usually a town or village or a neighborhood of a larger city.
Offshoots of the Mafia emerged in the United States, Canada, and in Australia[1] during the late 19th century following waves of Sicilian and Southern Italian emigration (see Italian-American Mafia).
ETYMOLOGY
There are several theories about the origin of the term "Mafia" (sometimes spelt "Maffia" in early texts). The Sicilian adjective mafiusu may derive from the slang Arabic mahyas (مهياص), meaning "aggressive boasting, bragging", or marfud مرفوض meaning "rejected". Roughly translated, it means "swagger", but can also be translated as "boldness, bravado". In reference to a man, mafiusu in 19th century Sicily was ambiguous, signifying a bully, arrogant but also fearless, enterprising, and proud, according to scholar Diego Gambetta.[2]
The public's association of the word with the criminal secret society was perhaps inspired by the 1863 play "I mafiusi di la Vicaria" ("The Mafiosi of the Vicaria") by Giuseppe Rizzotto and Gaetano Mosca. The words Mafia and mafiusi are never mentioned in the play; they were probably put in the title to add a local flair. The play is about a Palermo prison gang with traits similar to the Mafia: a boss, an initiation ritual, and talk of "umirtà" (omertà or code of silence) and "pizzu" (a codeword for extortion money).[3] The play had great success throughout Italy. Soon after, the use of the term "mafia" began appearing in the Italian state's early reports on the phenomenon. The word made its first official appearance in 1865 in a report by the prefect of Palermo, Filippo Antonio Gualterio.[4]
Leopoldo Franchetti, an Italian deputy who travelled to Sicily and who wrote one of the first authoritative reports on the mafia in 1876, saw the Mafia as an "industry of violence" and described the designation of the term "mafia":
"the term mafia found a class of violent criminals ready and waiting for a name to define them, and, given their special character and importance in Sicilian society, they had the right to a different name from that defining vulgar criminals in other countries."[5]
Franchetti saw the Mafia as deeply rooted in Sicilian society and impossible to quench unless the very structure of the island's social institutions were to undergo a fundamental change.[6]
Some observers have seen "mafia" as a set of attributes deeply rooted in popular culture, as a "way of being", as illustrated in the definition by the Sicilian ethnographer, Giuseppe Pitrè, at the end of the 19th century:
"Mafia is the consciousness of one's own worth, the exaggerated concept of individual force as the sole arbiter of every conflict, of every clash of interests or ideas."[7]
According to popular myth, the word Mafia was first used in the Sicilian rebellion - the Sicilian Vespers - against the oppressive Anjou rule on 30 March 1282. Mafia is the acronym for "Morte alla Francia, Italia anela" (Italian for "Death to the French is Italy's Cry").[8] However, this version is discarded by most serious historians nowadays.
THE NAME "Cosa Nostra"
The Sicilian Mafia has no formal name, as members see no need for one. Nonetheless, in many Italian publications the term "Cosa Nostra" is used to distinguish the Sicilian Mafia from other criminal networks that are also sometimes referred to as "mafias" (such as the Camorra, the "Neapolitan Mafia").
When the American mafioso Joseph Valachi testified before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the U.S. Senate Committee on Government Operations in 1962, he revealed that American mafiosi referred to their organization by the term cosa nostra ("our thing").[9][10][11] At the time, it was understood as a proper name, fostered by the FBI and disseminated by the media. The designation gained wide popularity and almost replaced the term Mafia. The FBI even added the article to the term, calling it La Cosa Nostra (in Italy this article is not used when referring to the Sicilian Mafia).
Italian investigators did not take the term seriously, believing it was only used by the American Mafia. Then, in 1984, the Mafia turncoat Tommaso Buscetta revealed to the anti-mafia magistrate Giovanni Falcone that the term was used by the Sicilian Mafia as well.[12] According to Buscetta, the word "mafia" was a literary creation.[13] Other defectors, such as Antonio Calderone and Salvatore Contorno, confirmed this. Mafiosi introduce known members to each other as belonging to cosa nostra ("our thing") or la stessa cosa ("the same thing"), e.g. "he is the same thing, a mafioso, as you".
The Sicilian Mafia has used other names to describe itself throughout its history, such as "The Honoured Society." Mafiosi are known among themselves as "men of honour" or "men of respect".
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