21 years ago one of the most active judge in mafia fight was killed | Hacker News Reader

21 years ago one of the most active judge in mafia fight was killed

internazionale.it

42 pointstigroferoce13 comments

I don't understand why this was posted to hacker news, even after a translation was provided. Can someone explain?

It was one of the most dramatic and relevant facts in recent Italy's history. Probably (since the spread of mafia around the world) this have also affected other countries. I just thought this would have been relevant also for hackers, even if this is isn't strictly technical.

I decided to post this after having seen many interesting stories from the New Yorker or links to wikipedia pages which were strictly technical, but (IMHO) relevant also for hackers.

If I broke any convention on HN (like the non relevant questions of SO), just let me know.

Well, while it is true that stories of deep significance to history and society have their place on HN, what's been posted here is a slideshow. I'd also argue that the news peg...that this is a 21-year anniversary, is a bit of a non sequitur (although to be fair, it's not any less arbitrary than anniversaries based on the decimal system).

Agree that 21 year is not a usually relevant anniversary, but as I wrote in another comment, starting from this fact it has started a country-wide discussion on the role of police, secret services and government in fight to mafia, so it is common to see news about this topic these days in Italy. Even if it only is 21-year anniversary ;-)

If the story isn't interesting or relevant to the people here, it won't get seen. If it's inappropriate, it will get flagged. Pay no mind to the "what's this doing on my HN?" chorus.

Aside: I've opened nine comment threads this morning, and every one of them had a "why is this on HN" comment.

thanks for the support. Actually I was quite impressed it stayed a bit on the home page.

The Valley is run almost entirely by the Sicilian Mafia. You knew this, right?

An don't forget Vegas ;-)

Actually? Can't tell if serious or joking.

For anyone interested in the history of the Italian mafia, I can't strongly enough reccommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/Cosa-Nostra-History-Sicilian-Mafia/dp/... (no affiliate link, I promise!)

It covers, in detail, this incident and talks about how it was a major turning point in people's perception of organised crime in Italy, and the change in attitudes of Italian people towards it.

Let me also add that there is a on going discussion in Italy on the role that italian secret services had in this event.

It seems that there have been some kind of "agreement" between Italy's government and Sicily's mafia which would have resulted in the stop of mafia's attacks to civil targets in change of this attack to Paolo Borsellino.

Translation:

On July 19th, 1992, a car bomb killed in Palermo judge Paolo Borsellino and five police officers escorting him: Walter Eddie Cosina, Agostino Catalano, Emanuela Loi, Claudio Traina e Vincenzo Li Muli. A sixth officer, Antonino Vullo, was injured.

Together with Giovanni Falcone, killed on May 23rd of that same year, Borsellino was one of the (Italian) anti-mafia squad.

Photo: D'Amelio street, in Palermo, where judge Paolo Borsellino was killed.

The book "Excellent Cadavers" which documents this tragedy and the preceding events is incredible. These two judges were the first to take an entirely systematic approach to rooting out corruption and they were very successful in doing so before they were killed. As an engineer I found their methods precise, but as ween entrepreneur I found their methods cunning and clever and yet within the laws. And, you get a tour into the world of Italian politics which is just as corrupt as that of the US.

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