Roberto Saviano: My life under armed guard | Hacker News Reader

Roberto Saviano: My life under armed guard

theguardian.com

108 pointssasvari16 comments

Good article. Saviano writes from the heart and avoids platitudes. He covers most everything when someone does something never done before or does it better: 1. Intimidation, in this case with threats to life. 2. Anger and a sense of irritation from the lay public for shining such a bright light on the problem. 3. Attempts at discrediting the person and hence by extension the person's work.

And the reward for this is: The immense loneliness of the person who treads the new path.

Hmm, reminds of what PG says (paraphrasing) "the modern age (in the western world) started when the good kids started to keep their candy." This seems to have missed parts of Italy.

I don't understand this quote and was wondering if you could link to the context?

Sure: "Two things changed. The first was the rule of law. For most of the world's history, if you did somehow accumulate a fortune, the ruler or his henchmen would find a way to steal it. But in medieval Europe something new happened. A new class of merchants and manufacturers began to collect in towns. [10] Together they were able to withstand the local feudal lord. So for the first time in our history, the bullies stopped stealing the nerds' lunch money. This was naturally a great incentive, and possibly indeed the main cause of the second big change, industrialization."

http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html

Very beautiful piece.

Unfortunately, here in Italy quite a few people (shame on them) think Roberto is "overrated" and the shallow public seems more focused on finding small details to criticize rather than being thankful and focusing on the real problem.

Well, if one writes a book, it's fair to judge his work not only for the content, but also for the form.

The investigation he's done is universally praised, but regarding his style, there's plenty of space for arguments, and they can be perfectly reasonable without any "shame".

I'm reading his new book (brazilian edition): Zero Zero Zero. A tale about the cocaine empire and history. It is as good as Gomorrah. Everyone should understand how deeply ingrained the organized crime is on our society. They are the real rulers of the world. It'll take so much time and guts to put them down.

Gomorrah is easily one of the best books I've read (and re-read) in the last ten years. Saviano beautifully sums up why at the end of the article.

"This is the power of the non‑fiction novel, the kind of book I’ve tried to write. To tell true stories with the rigour of a journalist and the literary style of a novelist."

I'm confused about why he needs so much protection outside of Italy. It's clear that the threat was from local groups. Not that they couldn't send someone after him elsewhere but they clearly don't have power in other places. It seems like this level of protection is extremely excessive.

Neapolitan Camorra, which is the organization exposed by Saviano, has strong ties everywhere, and has invested in many global ventures. Their reach is actually beyond the knowledge of many. It's good for them to look like local groups, but they really are a multinational entity already.

They don't need power in other places, just the ability to buy a bunch of guns there, and e.g. Germany has had shootings with clear mafia ties as well.

If I was under that kind of threat, why not buy a cottage in some remote country, get a dog, write books and go fishing all day? I mean life is probably not like hollywood where they can find you "wherever" and as long as you stay under the radar you should be pretty safe

or move to america and change your name? how many bilingual international assassins are there, anyway?

The FBI estimates the four Italian mafia families have about 25,000 members and 250,000 affiliates worldwide. They all are active in the United States [0]. I'm not sure what kind of ties the families keep with each other but considering the revenues of the Calabrian mafia alone ($80.5 Billion US Dollars in 2013) it's a safe bet that the ties of these families are very deep, and very wide [1].

Also if you look at Rob Saviano, he looks like a guy it would be hard to disguise. His hairline leaves very few options for drastic appearance changes unless he wears wigs which are a risk in their own right. He'd probably stick out in a lot of small towns (especially since if he wants to continue writing he'll just have to tell locals he's independently wealthy, which means he probably wouldn't hold a job, and would want to be at the scenes of interesting events) and in a lot of the big towns in America there's mafia family members he'd have to be worried about 24/7. That's just my speculation on the matter.

[0] - http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/organizedcrime/itali...

[1] - http://www.freenewspos.com/en/latest-news-article/d/1067995/...

Maybe that's what he's doing and this piece is a bluff on his movements. It's very specific -- 3 days planning, weeks, months when travelling international. Sure someone could have guessed as much, but why say this information at all?

>There was a war going on between two mafia clans for control of the territory, and violence between them spilled into the streets. I wanted to tell the world what this war zone was like: the victims’ families tearing their clothes, the stink of piss from a man who knew he was going to die and couldn’t control his fear, people shot in the street because they looked like the intended victim.

It is sad and ridiculous that this happens in modern Europe. Can the EU do anything?

> Can the EU do anything?

legalize drugs?

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