Lunch hour lectures repository Spring 2011
- Who enjoys shopping in Ikea?
- Building scientific models with computers
- Stabilising the global population: Where next for the Millennium Development Goals for health and nutrition?
- Lisbon, 1939-45: the untold story of Portugal and the Jewish refugees
- Homophobia: a global phenomenon
- Landing on a planet at 600 miles per hour
- From prehistory to the London blitz: foreshore archaeology and a rising river
- Sex education via the media: promises and pitfalls
- Will robots take over the world?
- The origins of the ‘ndrangheta of Calabria: Italy’s most powerful mafia
- Genetic testing in the 21st century: Should we screen the human embryonic genome before implantation?
- Sex, Drugs, the Internet and Juries
- Should the brain be left to neuroscientists?
- Great 2 meet u IRL :-) Twitter and digital identity
- Would you give your right arm to protect your heart?
The origins of the ‘ndrangheta of Calabria: Italy’s most powerful mafia
7 March 2011
Professor John Dickie (UCL Italian)
On 15 August 2007, six young men with origins in the Italian region of Calabria were ambushed and murdered in the German steel town of Duisburg. This was northern Europe’s St Valentine’s Day massacre, the worst ever mafia bloodbath outside Italy and the United States. Suddenly, journalists across the globe were struggling with what the New York Times called an ‘unpronounceable name’: ‘ndrangheta (en-drang-get-ah.) In the 1990s, the ‘ndrangheta placed itself in a leading position in the European wholesale cocaine market by dealing direct with South American producers. It is now thought to be the wealthiest and most powerful of Italy’s major criminal brotherhoods. But how, when, and why did it first emerge?
Page last modified on 07 mar 11 16:26

