Table of Contents

Introduction.........................................................................................................2

I. Being powerful................................................................................................3

II. White power...................................................................................................5

2. 1. Abraham Lincoln.....................................................................................5

2. 2. George Washington.................................................................................9

2. 3. Vladimir Putin.......................................................................................12

2. 4. The power of Vatican............................................................................14

III. Women and power.......................................................................................19

3. 1. Angela Merkel.......................................................................................20

3. 2. Iulia Timosenko.....................................................................................22

3. 3. Indira Ghandi........................................................................................24

3. 4. Margaret Thatcher.................................................................................26

IV. Black Power................................................................................................29

4. 1. Pablo Escobar........................................................................................29

4. 2. Frank Lucas...........................................................................................32

4. 3. El Chapo................................................................................................37

4. 4. Al Capone..............................................................................................39

4. 5. Bugsy Siegel..........................................................................................44

4. 5. Omerta and the power...........................................................................46

Conclusion.........................................................................................................48

Bibliography......................................................................................................49

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 Introduction

In our work Backstage of power, we try to make a short analyze of the concept of
power, but also an analyze of powerful people’s behaviour.
Why did we choose to talk about this concept?
Because power’s action on the brain has many similarities to drugs like cocaine, and
can cause similar changes to the brain, including, in extreme cases, a sort of addiction to
power.
Because powerful men have a great influence all over the world. Because power is
about the ability to influence or control.
Because having the power makes you almost invincible. But being „a drug”, power
involves a dangerous life.
Power can make you smarter, but it can also make you inhuman, unbeatable, afraid of
the idea of loosing the power and its benefits.
Our work is structured in four chapters.
In the first chapter, Being powerful, we try to find out an answer to the question „what
do we understand by having the power?”
The second chapter, White power, is about powerful people like former or presents
statesmen as well as the Church represented here by Vatican.
In the third chapter, Women and power, we discuss about the power of important
women all over the world and about the influence they have in any activity field.
Finally, the last chapter, Black power, we present the power that ends by destroying
people.

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 I. Being powerful

Being a powerful person means being capable of exerting power. But what do we
understand by “having the power?” How can we recognize people who own the power?
How do powerful people behave? In particular, powerful people act either to get what
they want or simply to sustain and enhance their power.

First of all, we should mention that power is given only to those people who dear.
Because power is about the ability to influence or control the behaviour of people, power
involves a lot of courage. Power can be seen as evil or unjust, but the exercise of power is
accepted as endemic to humans as social beings. In business, power is often expressed as
being “upward” or “downward”. With downward power, a company’s superior influences
subordinates. When a company exerts upward power, it is the subordinates who influence the
decisions of their leader or leaders.
The use of power need not involve force or the threat of force. But, as we will see in
our study, backstage of power often rimes with force.

When we talk about power we must admit that there are more types of power.
1. Power as a Perception: Power is a perception in a sense that some people can
have objective power, but still have trouble influencing others. People who act powerfully and
proactively tend to be perceived as powerful by others. Some people become influential even
though they don’t overtly use powerful behaviour.
2. Power as a Relational Concept: Power exists in relationships. The issue here is
often how much relative power a person has in comparison to one’s partner. Partners in close
and satisfying relationships often influence each other at different times in various arenas.
3. Power as Resource Based: Power usually represents a struggle over resources.
The more scarce and valued resources are, the more intense and protracted are power
struggles.
4. The Principle of Least Interest and Dependence Power: The person with less to
lose has greater power in the relationship. Dependence power indicates that those who are
dependent on their relationship or partner are less powerful, especially if they know their
partner is uncommitted and might leave them. The principle of least interest suggests that if a
difference exists in the intensity of positive feelings between partners, the partner who feels

3
the most positive is at a power disadvantage. There’s an inverse relationship between interest
in relationship and the degree of relational power.
5. Power as Enabling or Disabling: Power can be enabling or disabling. Research
has been shown that people are more likely to have an enduring influence on others when they
engage in dominant behaviour that reflects social skill rather than intimidation. Personal
power is protective against pressure and excessive influence by others and/or situational
stress. People who communicate through self-confidence and expressive, composed behaviour
tend to be successful in achieving their goals and maintaining good relationships. Power can
be disabling when it leads to destructive patterns of communication.
6. Power as a Prerogative: The prerogative principle states that the partner with
more power can make and break the rules. Powerful people can violate norms, break
relational rules, and manage interactions without as much penalty as powerless people. These
actions may reinforce the powerful person’s dependence power. In addition, the more
powerful person has the prerogative to manage both verbal and nonverbal interactions. They
can initiate conversations, change topics, interrupt others, initiate touch, and end discussions
more easily than less powerful people.

Power is a compound social characteristic in virtue of which an individual or group is

able to compel the actions or inactions of other individuals or groups against their will or
contrary to their interests, needs, and desires. Power derives from the ability to impose
coercion - truncheons, prisons, and punishment.

In every society the struggle for the power represents an important characteristic.

In our essay we will try to describe the backstage of power by analysing different
powerful characters’ behaviour from different types of society, levels or history ages.

4
 II. White power

The post representative symbols of a society are, undoubtedly, the leaders. Presidents,
prime ministers, kings or queens they are the symbol of the power in any country. They
represent probably the highest level of power and they are opinion leaders. That’s why their
thoughts, their acts have a great impact over common people.

For common people they are powerful and indestructible, but as we will see, some of
these leaders were destroyed by the power itself.

2. 1. Abraham Lincoln

“I walk slowly, but I never walk backward.”

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States and he brought about the
emancipation of slaves.

Reconstruction began during the war as early as 1863 in areas firmly under Union
military control. Abraham Lincoln favoured a policy of quick reunification with a minimum
of retribution. But he was confronted by a radical group of Republicans in the Senate and
House that wanted complete allegiance and repentance from former Confederates. Before a
political battle had a chance to firmly develop, Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865, by
well-known actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theater in
Washington, D.C. Lincoln was taken from the Theater to a Petersen House across the street
and laid in a coma for nine hours before dying the next morning. His body lay in state at the
Capitol before a funeral train took him back to his final resting place in Springfield, Illinois.

5
 For what he did as a president he is still consider the best president of all times.

He signed the first of the Homestead Acts, allowing poor people to obtain land.

The Homestead Act of 1862 was passed in Lincoln’s presidency. It gave the applicant
ownership of land at little or no cost. Anyone who had never taken up arms against the U.S.
government (including freed slaves and women), was 21 years or older, or the head of a
family, could file an application to claim a federal land grant. The occupant had to reside on
the land for five years, and show evidence of having made improvements.

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 Homestead Certificate

He signed the Morrill Land-Grant Act which led to creation of numerous universities

On July 2, 1862, the Morrill Land-Grant Act was signed into legislation by Abraham
Lincoln. The Act allowed for the creation of land-grant colleges on the condition that the
proposed institutions would teach military tactics as well as engineering and agriculture. The
Act led to the creation of numerous universities and colleges which went on to become some
of the best in US.

Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation which led to abolishing

slavery in US

On January 1, 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation which started the
procedure for freeing the slaves in America. The proclamation, which was issued during the
American Civil War, allowed black soldiers to fight for the Union against the Confederacy. It
was also a precursor of the Thirteenth Amendment, which made slavery and indentured
servitude illegal in the United States. Lincoln couldn’t see the enactment of the Amendment in
December 1865, as he was assassinated in April.

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 A depiction of the First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation of President
Lincoln by Francis Bicknell Carpenter

Lincoln established the US National Banking System

In 1863, the National Banking Act was signed into law by Abraham Lincoln. It created
the United States National Banking System providing a strong financial network to the
country. It also established a national currency. The legacy of the Act is its impact on the
national banking system as it stands today and its support of a uniform U.S. banking policy.
Apart from banks, Lincoln helped the economy flourish through canals, railroads, factories
etc.

A greenback note issued by the U.S. during the Civil War

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2. 2. George Washington

George Washington was a leader of the Continental Army in the American Revolution,
and was the first to become U.S. president.
Though the British Proclamation Act of 1763 — prohibiting settlement beyond the
Alleghenies—irritated him and he opposed the Stamp Act of 1765, Washington did not take a
leading role in the growing colonial resistance against the British until the widespread protest
of the Townshend Acts in 1767. His letters of this period indicate he was totally opposed to
the colonies declaring independence. However, by 1767, he wasn’t opposed to resisting what
he believed were fundamental violations by the Crown of the rights of Englishmen.
In 1769, Washington introduced a resolution to the House of Burgesses calling for
Virginia to boycott British goods until the Acts were repealed. After the passage of the
Intolerable Acts in 1774, Washington chaired a meeting in which the Fairfax Resolves were
adopted calling for the convening of the Continental Congress and the use of armed resistance
as a last resort. He was selected as a delegate to the First Continental Congress in March
1775.
After the battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775, the political dispute between
Great Britain and her North American colonies escalated into an armed conflict. In May,
Washington travelled to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia dressed in a military
uniform, indicating that he was prepared for war. On June 15, he was appointed Major
General and Commander-in-Chief of the colonial forces against Great Britain. As was his
custom, he did not seek out the office of commander, but he faced no serious competition.
Washington was the best choice for a number of reasons: he had the prestige, military
experience and charisma for the job and he had been advising Congress for months. Another
factor was political. The Revolution had started in New England and at the time, they were

9
the only colonies that had directly felt the blunt of British tyranny. Virginia was the largest
British colony and deserved recognition and New England needed Southern support.
Political considerations and force of personality aside, George Washington was not
necessarily qualified to wage war on the world’s most powerful nation. Washington’s training
and experience were primarily in frontier warfare involving small numbers of soldiers. He
wasn’t trained in the open-field style of battle practiced by the commanding British generals.
He had no practical experience manoeuvring large formations of infantry, commanding
cavalry or artillery, or maintaining the flow of supplies for thousands of men in the field. But
he was courageous and determined and smart enough to keep one step ahead of the enemy.
In the late summer of 1777, the British army sent a major force, under the command of
John Burgoyne, south from Quebec to Saratoga, New York, to split off the rebellion in New
England. But the strategy backfired, as Burgoyne became trapped by the American armies led
by Horatio Gates and Benedict Arnold, at the Battle of Saratoga. Without support from Howe,
who couldn’t reach him in time, he was forced to surrender his entire 6,200 man army. The
victory was a major turning point in the war as it encouraged France to openly ally itself with
the American cause for independence.
Through all of this, Washington discovered an important lesson: The political nature of
war was just as important as the military one. Washington began to understand that military
victories were not as important as keeping the resistance alive. Americans began to believe
that they could meet their objective of independence without defeating the British army. On
the other hand, British General Howe clung to the strategy of capturing colonial cities in
hopes of smothering the rebellion. He didn’t realize that capturing cities like Philadelphia and
New York would not unseat colonial power. The Congress would just pack up and meet
elsewhere.
As the first president, Washington was astutely aware that his presidency would set a
precedent for all that would follow. He carefully attended to the responsibilities and duties of
his office, remaining vigilante to not emulate any European royal court. To that end, he
preferred the title “Mr. President”, instead of more imposing names that were suggested. At
first he declined the $25,000 salary Congress offered the office of the presidency, for he was
already wealthy and wanted to protect his image as a selfless public servant. However,
Congress persuaded him to accept the compensation to avoid giving the impression that only
wealthy men could serve as president.
George Washington proved to be an able administrator. He surrounded himself with
some of the most capable people in the country, appointing Alexander Hamilton as Secretary

10
of the Treasury and Thomas Jefferson as Secretary of State. He delegated authority wisely and
consulted regularly with his cabinet listening to their advice before making a decision.
Washington established broad-ranging presidential authority, but always with the highest
integrity, exercising power with restraint and honesty. In doing so, he set a standard rarely met
by his successors, but one that established an ideal by which all are judged.
During his first term, Washington adopted a series of measures proposed by Treasury
Secretary Hamilton to reduce the nation’s debt and place its finances on sound footing. His
administration established several peace treaties with Native American tribes and approved a
bill establishing the nation’s capital in a permanent district along the Potomac River. In 1791,
Washington signed a bill authorizing Congress to place a tax on distilled spirits, which stirred
protests in rural areas of Pennsylvania.
In foreign affairs, Washington took a cautious approach, realizing that the weak, young
nation could not succumb to Europe’s political intrigues. In 1793, France and Great Britain
were once again at war. At the urging of Alexander Hamilton, Washington disregarded the
U.S. alliance with France and pursued a course of neutrality. In 1794, he sent John Jay to
Britain to negotiate a treaty (known as the Jay Treaty) to secure a peace with Britain and clear
up some issues held over from the Revolutionary War.
Washington could have been a king. Instead, he chose to be a citizen. He set many
precedents for the national government and the presidency: The two-term limit in office, only
broken once by Franklin Roosevelt, and then later ensconced in the Constitution’s 22nd
Amendment. He crystallized the power of the presidency as a part of the government’s three
branches, able to exercise authority when necessary, but also accept the balance of power
inherent in the system.
He was not only considered a military and revolutionary hero, but a man of great
personal integrity, with a deep sense of duty, honour, and patriotism. For over 200 years,
Washington has been acclaimed as indispensible to the success of the Revolution and the birth
of the nation. But his most important legacy may be that he insisted he was dispensable,
asserting that the cause of liberty was larger than any single individual.

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2. 3. Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin is one of the most powerful men in the world. He is the former Russian
president.
Vladimir Putin is a powerful Russian politician who has served many offices in the
country’s government. He was born in a middle class family and led a usual life. Putin had a
dream of becoming an intelligence officer ever since he was a child. He got acquainted with
the procedure involved in becoming an intelligence officer and whole heartedly followed the
path. He finally realized this dream and entered the KGB the Russian intelligence agency
where he received training and was posted in various places as an undercover agent. For a
larger part of his life, he served at the agency. Eventually, he got involved in political affairs
of the country and resigned from KGB. He then, diligently worked for the welfare of the
country and its people, which soon earned him recognition. His hard work, knowledge and
calm got him appointed in many offices in the government. Finally, when the then President
of Russia Boris Yeltsin decided to step down from his post, he found no better successor than
Putin and appointed him as the president of the country. A few months later, the elections took
place and there too he emerged as the winner. The deft handling of issues with admirable
efficiency led to his re-election for a second term to the office of President of Russia
On May 8, 2008, Vladimir Putin was appointed Russian Prime Minister by
presidential executive order.

12
 Putin is known in the world as a tsar looking for a new empire. He tried to eliminate
the power of the press he used the press in order to gain the confidence of Russian people and
then he tried to put it to silence. This was the first sign of power.
Then he surrounded himself by reliable people who did what he wanted to do. This
was the second sign of absolute power.
He is also considered the man who ordered the assassination of one of the most
important Russian figures: Litvinenko.
Litvinenko was arrested on charges of exceeding the authority of his position. He was
acquitted in November 1999 but re-arrested before the charges were again dismissed in 2000.
He fled with his family to London and was granted asylum in the United Kingdom, where he
worked as a journalist, writer and consultant for the British intelligence services.
On 1 November 2006, Litvinenko suddenly fell ill and was hospitalised in what was
established as a case of poisoning by radioactive polonium-210 which resulted in his death on
23 November. He became the first known victim of lethal Polonium 210-induced acute
radiation syndrome. The events leading up to this are a matter of controversy, spawning
numerous theories relating to his poisoning and death. A British murder investigation pointed
to Andrey Lugovoy, a member of Russia’s Federal Protective Service, as the prime suspect.
Britain demanded that Lugovoy be extradited, which is against the Constitution of Russia,
which directly prohibits extradition of Russian citizens. Russia denied the extradition, leading
to the cooling of relations between Russia and the United Kingdom.
All his actions were meant to remove Europe from investing in Russia but although to
create fear: fear of what Putin could do and of what he represents. And spreading fear is
obviously a sign of power.
According to Forbes Magazine Russia’s prime minister continues to prove he’s one of
the few men in the world powerful enough to do what he wants --and get away with it.
International sanctions set in place after he seized Crimea and waged war-by-proxy in the
Ukraine have kneecapped the Ruble and driven Russia into deepening recession, but haven’t
hurt Putin one bit: In June his approval ratings reached an all-time high of 89%. In October,
he bombed ISIS forces in Syria and then met face-to-face with President Assad, making the
U.S. and NATO look weak in the region, and helping rebuild Russian influence abroad.

13
2. 4. The power of Vatican

The Vatican, or Vatican City, is the centre of Roman Catholicism and the residence of
the bishop of Rome (the pope). The popes controlled the Papal States in what is now Italy
throughout most of the Middle Ages. On 13 May 1871, the new Italian state restricted the
pope’s temporal authority to the Vatican and Lateran areas of Rome and the rural retreat of
Castel Gandolfo. The popes refused to accept the validity of this law until theConcordatof11
February1929 gave the Catholic Church special status in Italy and paid an indemnity to the
now independent Vatican City.

Political Life
Government. The basic law is the Code of Canon Law. Church councils meet
approximately once per century. Bishops’ synods meet periodically and offer advice, but the
day-to-day running of the Vatican

(The Piazza San Pietro at night. The Piazza is the site of public masses and worldwide
papal addresses.)
is in the hands of appointed officials who oversee the Curia.

Leadership and Political Officials. There are no political parties, but the positions held
by the clergy and the laity cover a wide spectrum of opinion, although those positions are not
always equally represented. There is an elaborate code of etiquette for approaching officials.
Generally, go-betweens are used to arrange meetings. Much is done informally. There is a

14
feeling that consensus should be reached before decisions are published. Therefore, things are
discussed at length before the pope speaks officially.
Social Problems and Control. There is little crime, and the typical problems are
disputes over religious doctrine and governance. Strict statements and actions regarding
conformity to doctrine, including censorship and the silencing of dissidents, have alternated
with attempts at persuasion and expressions of conciliation.
Military Activity. The Vatican is officially neutral in world affairs but can mediate
disputes if invited to do so. Swiss guards in medieval uniforms protect the pope and the city.
Vatican conspiracy theories are conspiracy theories that concern the Pope and/or
the Roman Catholic Church. A majority of the theories allege that the Church and its
representatives are secretly controlling secular society with a Satanic agenda for global
domination.
Pope John Paul I died in September 1978, only a month after his election to the
papacy. The timing of his death and the Vatican’s alleged difficulties with ceremonial and
legal death procedures have fostered several conspiracy theories. British author David
Yallop wrote extensively about unsolved crimes and conspiracy theories, and in his 1984
book In God’s Name suggested that John Paul I died because he was about to uncover
financial scandals allegedly involving the Vatican. John Cornwell responded to Yallop’s
charges in 1987 with A Thief In The Night, in which he analyzed the various allegations and
denied the conspiracy. According to Eugene Kennedy, writing for the New York Times,
Cornwell’s book “helps to purge the air of paranoia and of conspiracy theories, showing how
the truth, carefully excavated by an able journalist in a refreshing volume, does make us free.”
Various theories have been brought forward in regards to the attempt by Mehmet Ali
Ağca to kill Pope John Paul II. Those theories have involved the Grey Wolves, the Bulgarian
Secret Service, and others.

The Pope, in his primary role, is the spiritual head of the Roman Catholic Church with
its 400 million communicants who regard him as the earthly Vicar of Christ. For centuries the
Church (Roman Catholic) has exerted a profound and incalculable spiritual and cultural
influence in many parts of the world, helping to shape men’s minds, and the motives which
govern their actions. Our own Western culture is inextricably entwined with Catholicism.
The Pope is likewise a temporal leader — the head of a government — whose officials
are spread throughout almost every country of the globe. The Pope’s government is sovereign
only in its tiny Vatican enclave. Indeed, in a modern nationalist sense, the Church hierarchy is

15
not a government at all. Its whole existence dates back to an age that predates that narrow
concept of national sovereignty which has so bemused our modern era. But perhaps the day
will come when the logic of interdependence will make such international bodies, limited in
their functions but independent within them, an increasingly prominent part of the process of
government in the world.
As the oldest continuing international organization in the world today, the Vatican has
a well-deserved reputation for diplomatic expertise. It possesses a knowledge of foreign
countries and their government which cannot be matched, in many respects, by any national
state. It derives its additional diplomatic force from its attitude of benevolent neutrality, which
neutrality is an important aspect in the Vatican’s diplomatic position and effectiveness.
Although such a course sometimes arouses criticism, it does often allow the Vatican to play an
important role in conciliation.
This is hardly a new role. It goes back to the civilizing mission of the Church in the
Middle Ages. In today’s world feudal violence has been replaced by nationalist and
ideological violence, but the conciliation role of the Church continues. All through this
warlike century, Popes have struggled to end the fighting and to bring reason and charity to
the affairs of nations.
But this happens nowadays. We shouldn’t forget the Middle Age when the Pope was
spreading terror among people who didn’t believe in God or people who used to believe in
other Gods.
The Inquisition is a group of institutions within the judicial system of the Roman
Catholic Church whose aim was to combat heresy. It started in 12th-century France to combat
religious sectarianism, in particular the Cathars and the Waldensians. Other groups which
were investigated later include the Spiritual Franciscans, the Husites (followers of Jan Hus)
and Beguines. Beginning in the 1250s, inquisitors were generally chosen from members of
the Dominican Order, to replace the earlier practice of using local clergy as judges. The
term Medieval Inquisition covers these courts up through the 14th century.
In the Late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, the concept and scope of the
Inquisition was significantly expanded in response to the Protestant Reformation and the
Catholic Counter-Reformation. Its geographic scope was expanded to
other European countries, resulting in the Spanish Inquisition and Portuguese Inquisition.
Those two kingdoms in particular operated inquisitorial courts throughout their respective
empires (Spanish and Portuguese) in the Americas (resulting in the Peruvian
Inquisition and Mexican Inquisition), Asia, and Africa. One particular focus of the Spanish

16
and Portuguese inquisitions was the issue of Jewish anusim and Muslim converts to
Catholicism, partly because these minority groups were more numerous in Spain and Portugal
than in many other parts of Europe, and partly because they were often considered suspect
due to the assumption that they had secretly reverted to their previous religions.
Except within the Papal States, the institution of the Inquisition was abolished in the
early 19th century, after the Napoleonic Wars in Europe and after the Spanish American wars
of independence in the Americas. The institution survived as part of the Roman Curia, but in
1904 was given the new name of “Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office”. In 1965
it became the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon(Latin: Pauperes
commilitones Christi Templique Salomonici), commonly known as the Knights Templar,
the Order of Solomon’s Temple (French: Ordre du Temple or Templiers) or simply
as Templars, were among the wealthiest and most powerful of the Western Christian military
orders and were prominent actors in Christian finance. The organisation existed for nearly two
centuries during the Middle Ages.
Officially endorsed by the Roman Catholic Church around 1129, the Order became a
favoured charity throughout Christendom and grew rapidly in membership and power.
Templar knights, in their distinctive white mantles with a red cross, were among the most
skilled fighting units of the Crusades. Non-combatant members of the Order managed a large
economic infrastructure throughout Christendom, innovating financial techniques that were an
early form of banking, and building fortifications across Europe and the Holy Land.
The Templars existence was tied closely to the Crusades; when the Holy Land was
lost, support for the Order faded. Rumours about the Templars’ secret initiation ceremony
created distrust, and King Philip IV of France, deeply in debt to the Order, took advantage of
the situation. In 1307, many of the Order’s members in France were arrested, tortured into
giving false confessions, and then burned at the stake. Under pressure from King Philip, Pope
Clement V disbanded the Order in 1312. The abrupt disappearance of a major part of the
European infrastructure gave rise to speculation and legends, which have kept the “Templar”
name alive into the modern day.
The current position of the Roman Catholic Church is that the medieval persecution of
the Knights Templar was unjust, that nothing was inherently wrong with the Order or its Rule,
and that Pope Clement was pressed into his actions by the magnitude of the
public scandal and by the dominating influence of King Philip IV, who was Clement’s
relative.

17
 The Vatican State is the most concentrated and long-lasting power in the world. Since
its creation in 1929, seven popes and nine secretaries of state have continued its diplomacy.
Eight of them have carried considerable weight. They have in turn been confronted with
fascism, Nazism, Soviet totalitarianism, civil war, two world wars, the extermination of Jews,
purges under Stalin, the Cold War and the atomic threat. At the same time, the Church has
taken on a universal socio-political dimension.

III. Women and power

18
 “Through out history, Elizabeth I, Catherine the Great, Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi;
these are women you may not wanna f**k, but you definitely don’t wanna f**k with.”
— Robin Williams, Weapons of Self-Destruction

Non-royal women in positions of power are almost always portrayed as very stoic and
no-nonsense, at least publicly. Rarely will you find a female president, prime minister,
governor, legislator, judge, business executive, or military leader who is presented as
indecisive, incompetent, or otherwise “weak”. She’s also usually not portrayed as corrupt,
either, although if she’s directing things from behind the scenes, that tends to change.
The reason usually given for this is that women seeking positions of power (as
opposed to those who inherit them), both in reality and in fiction, are faced with two
unfortunate truths: (1) that they need to give the appearance of toughness, ruthlessness, and
coldness in order to get past other people’s masculine-tinted expectations of leadership, and
(2) that in the circles such women travel in, they actually need to be tough, ruthless, and cold.
The ones who aren’t are left by the wayside. Thus, female leaders are generally portrayed as
trying to demonstrate their iron will at all times. Indeed, they have to lest they lose all
credibility.

3. 1. Angela Merkel

19
 According to Forbes Magazine, the most powerful woman in the world at the moment
is Angela Merkel.
Angela Merkel is a German politician best known as the first female chancellor of
Germany and one of the architects of the European Union
In the 2005 election, Merkel narrowly defeated Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, winning
by just three seats, and after the CDU agreed a coalition deal with the Social Democrats
(SPD), she was declared Germany’s first female chancellor. Merkel is also the first former
citizen of the German Democratic Republic to lead the reunited Germany and the first woman
to lead Germany since it became a modern nation-state in 1871. She was elected to a second
term in 2009.
For a woman who is seen around the world as a disciplinarian, given to lecturing her
European partners on the dangers of drowning in debt, the most surprising thing about Angela
Merkel is her irrepressible sense of humour. It is hardly something you would expect from the
chancellor of Germany when she greets you at the door of her office with a businesslike
handshake and marches you smartly to a plain working table, boasting no more than a pot of
coffee to serve to her guests.
She is called a Machtfrau in Germany – a woman of power – who has managed to get
to the top as an outsider in a male-dominated world, removing all her potential rivals on the
way and now revelling in popularity ratings ahead of any other politician in the land. But she
does not spell out big visions, and she does not make emotional speeches.

20
 Her favourite expression is “step by step”. “There is no alternative” is another. And for
the past three years her catchphrase has been: “If the euro fails, then Europe will fail.” Fixing
the crisis in the eurozone has become the touchstone of her entire political career. It is a
historic challenge, but she tackles it as a fundamental scientific problem to be solved,
stubbornly and consistently. “There is no big bazooka,” she insisted, when David Cameron,
UK prime minister, unwisely called for one. The debt crisis took years to take shape, and it
will take years to resolve, she says. “Step by step”.
She was described in a profile last week in the left-leaning magazine Der Spiegel – no
great admirer of conservative politicians – as “relentlessly matter-of-fact”. It suits her public
image, always dressed in the same combination of buttoned-up coloured blazers and trousers.
She does not pay much attention to fashion, either.
Yet the laughter lines round her eyes betray a constant temptation to see the funny side
of life.
Her humour can be mischievous. According to those who know her best, she is a
brilliant mimic, delighted to take off (in private) other politicians and world leaders she
knows, such as Nicolas Sarkozy, former French president, or Barack Obama.
“She has a very dry sense of humour,” says her biographer Margaret Heckel. “In
private, she can be extremely funny. She can entertain a whole room by herself.”

Merkel can also use her sense of the ridiculous to devastating effect. Last year, when
she was asked at a press conference in Brussels if she “trusted” Silvio Berlusconi, then Italian
prime minister, she said nothing, but simply raised her eyes to the ceiling. She turned with an
impish smile to Sarkozy, beside her, who giggled – and then she delivered a careful
diplomatic response. Berlusconi resigned six days later.
No one seriously disputes that Merkel is today the most powerful politician in Europe.
Forbes magazine just declared her the second most powerful figure in the world, after
President Obama. She is suitably self-deprecating. As head of government of the biggest
economy in Europe, that naturally gives a certain weight to her decisions, she says. But she
doesn’t take such polls too seriously. They are not relevant to her political activity, she says,
grinning again.

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3. 2. Iulia Timosenko

Yulia Volodymyrivna Tymoshenko is a Ukrainian politician. She co-led the Orange

Revolution and was the first woman appointed Prime Minister of Ukraine, serving from 24
January to 8 September 2005, and again from 18 December 2007 to 4 March 2010.
Tymoshenko is the leader of the All-Ukrainian Union “Fatherland” political party that
has 19 seats in parliament and has Tymoshenko as its parliamentary faction leader. In the 2012
Ukrainian parliamentary election the party had received the second most votes, winning 101
of parliament’s 450 seats.
In the 2014 Ukrainian presidential election Tymoshenko received 12.81% of the vote,
coming in second place after Petro Poroshenko who won the election with
54.7%. Tymoshenko finished second in the Ukrainian presidential election of 2010 runoff,
losing by 3.5 percentage points to the winner, Viktor Yanukovych. In the first round she had
also finished second.
After the 2010 presidential election, a number of criminal cases were brought against
her. On 11 October 2011 she was convicted of embezzlement and abuse of power, and
sentenced to seven years in prison and ordered to pay the state $188 million. The prosecution
and conviction were viewed by many governments – most prominently the European Union,

22
who repeatedly called for the release of Tymoshenko as the primary condition for signing the
EU Association Agreement, the US, and international organizations such as Human Rights
Watch and Amnesty International – as politically biased. She was released on 22 February
2014, in the concluding days of the Euromaidan revolution, following a revision of the
Ukrainian criminal code that effectively decriminalized the actions for which she was
imprisoned. The decision was supported by 322 votes. She was officially rehabilitated on 28
February 2014. Just after Euromaidan revolution, the Ukrainian Supreme Court and European
Court of Human Rights closed the case and found that “no crime was committed”.
In 2005 Tymoshenko placed third in Forbes magazine’s list of the world’s most
powerful women.
“Yesterday I was simply ready to kill you.”

With these words, Ukraine’s former Prime Minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, jailed for
allegedly exceeding her authority, addressed her letter to Ukraine’s President Viktor
Yanukovych after the decision to postpone the signing of agreements with the European
Union that promised to bring Ukraine closer to Europe. The decision sparked a wave of
peaceful protests across Ukraine, known as the Euromaidan Movement, which has grown
significantly in numbers, at times hovering around a million or more in the capital alone. In a
few days, the protests will enter their fourth week.
Tymoshenko is a controversial figure. Abroad she is revered for her charisma and style
(her iconic crown braid hair has been copied by fashionistas across the globe). At home she is
viewed as a blessing and curse, depending on who you ask: a blessing because of her
strongwoman approach, relentless fight against oligarchy and opaque energy traders that have
plagued Ukraine’s economy since the 1990s, and a curse because of her populist
policies rather than genuine reform while in the government. But few regard her
imprisonment in 2011 as anything but a politically-motivated persecution by current
Yanukovych, who seems to be afraid of her.

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3. 3. Indira Ghandi

Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi was a key 20th century stateswoman, a central figure of
the Indian National Congress party, and to date the only female Prime Minister of India.
Indira Gandhi was the only child of India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. She served
as Prime Minister from 1966 to 1977 and then again from 1980 until her assassination in
1984, making her the second-longest-serving Prime Minister after her father.
Gandhi served as her father’s personal assistant and hostess during his tenure as prime
minister between 1947 and 1964. She was elected Congress President in 1959. Upon her
father’s death in 1964, Gandhi refused to enter Congress party leadership contest and instead
chose to become a cabinet minister in the government led by Lal Bahadur Shastri. In
Congress’ party parliamentary leadership election held in early 1966 upon the death
of Shastri, she defeated her rival, Morarji Desai, to become leader and thus succeed Shastri as
the prime minister of India.
As the Prime Minister of India, Gandhi was known for her political ruthlessness and
unprecedented centralisation of power. She went to war with Pakistan in support of
the independence movement and war of independence in East Pakistan, which resulted in an
Indian victory and the creation of Bangladesh, as well as increasing India’s influence to the
point where it became the regional hegemon of South Asia. Gandhi also presided over a
controversial state of emergency from 1975 to 1977 during which she ruled by decree. She

24
was assassinated in 1984 by her Sikh bodyguards a few months after she ordered the storming
of the Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar to counter the Punjab insurgency.
She was the nation’s daughter, brought up under the close watch of both her father
Jawaharlal Nehru, who was India’s first Prime Minister after decades of British rule, and her
country. When Indira Gandhi (no relation to Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi) was elected
Prime Minister in 1966, a TIME cover line read, “Troubled India in a Woman’s Hands.”
Those steady hands went on to steer India, not without controversy, for much of the next two
decades through recession, famine, the detonation of the nation’s first atomic bomb, a
corruption scandal and a civil war in neighbouring Pakistan that, under her guidance, led to
the creation of a new state, Bangladesh. By the time she was assassinated, in 1984, Gandhi
was the world’s longest-serving female Prime Minister, a distinction she holds to this day.
She was an autocrat, no doubt. But she never succumbed to any international pressure
and made Indian’s keep their heads high. Margaret Thatcher called her “the Iron Lady in the
20th century world politics.”
Being the Prime Minister, she nationalized the Banks, abolished privy purses, Won the
War against Pakistan for the liberation of Bangladesh, India launching its first satellite into
space and testing of nuclear devices.. In 1975, she imposed emergency in the country and
ruled by decree during which she became dictator. Emergency atrocities are well
known. Though being responsible for the worst period of Indian democracy, she was able to
win the people within 3 years after being voted out of power with a handsome majority.
She had remarkable endurance and ambition whilst building a formidable international
reputation. She is among the few south Asian women who revolutionized the global political
arena.

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3. 4. Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher was a

British stateswoman and politician who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from
1979 to 1990 and the Leader from 1975 to 1990. She was the longest-serving British Prime
Minister of the 20th century and is currently the only woman to have held the office.
A Soviet journalist dubbed her the “Iron Lady”, a nickname that became associated with her
uncompromising politics and leadership style. As Prime Minister, she implemented policies
that have come to be known as Thatcherism.
Originally a research chemist before becoming a barrister, Thatcher was elected
Member for Finchley in 1959. Edward Heath appointed her Secretary in his 1970 government.
In 1975, Thatcher defeated Heath in the Conservative Party leadership election to
become Leader of the Opposition and became the first woman to lead a major political party
in the United Kingdom. She became Prime Minister after winning the 1979 general election.
On moving into 10 Downing Street, Thatcher introduced a series of political and
economic initiatives intended to reverse high unemployment and Britain’s struggles in the
wake of the Winter of Discontent and an ongoing recession. Her political philosophy and
economic policies emphasised deregulation (particularly of the financial sector), flexible
labour markets, the privatisation ofstate-owned companies, and reducing the power and
influence of trade unions. Thatcher’s popularity during her first years in office waned amid

26
recession and high unemployment, until the 1982 Falklands War and the recovering economy
brought a resurgence of support, resulting in her re-election in 1983.
Thatcher was re-elected for a third term in 1987. During this period her support for
a Community Charge (referred to as the “poll tax”) was widely unpopular, and her views on
the European Community were not shared by others in her Cabinet. She resigned as Prime
Minister and party leader in November 1990, after Michael Heseltine launched a challenge to
her leadership. After retiring from the Commons in 1992, she was given a life peerage as
Baroness Thatcher, of Kesteven in the county of Lincolnshire, which entitled her to sit in
the House of Lords. After a series of small strokes in 2002, she was advised to withdraw from
public speaking.
As prime minister, Thatcher battled the country’s recession by initially raising interest
rates to control inflation. She was best known for her destruction of Britain’s traditional
industries through her attacks on labour organizations such as the miner’s union, and for the
massive privatization of social housing and public transport. One of her staunchest allies was
U.S. President Ronald Reagan, a fellow conservative. The two shared similar right-wing, pro-
corporate political philosophies.
Thatcher faced a military challenge during her first term. In April 1982, Argentina
invaded the Falkland Islands. This British territory had long been a source of conflict between
the two nations, as the islands are located off the coast of Argentina. Taking swift action,
Thatcher sent British troops to the territory to retake the islands in what became known as the
Falklands War. Argentina surrendered in June 1982.
In her second term, from 1983 to 1987, Thatcher handled a number of conflicts and
crises, the most jarring of which may have been the assassination attempt against her in 1984.
In a plot by the Irish Republic Army, she was meant to be killed by a bomb planted at the
Conservative Conference in Brighton in October. Undaunted and unharmed, Thatcher insisted
that the conference continue, and gave a speech the following day.
As for foreign policy, Thatcher met with Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, in
1984. That same year, she signed an agreement with the Chinese government regarding the
future of Hong Kong. Publicly, Thatcher voiced her support for Ronald Reagan’s air raids on
Libya in 1986 and allowed U.S. forces to use British bases to help carry out the attack.
Returning for a third term in 1987, Thatcher sought to implement a standard
educational curriculum across the nation and make changes to the country’s socialized
medical system. However, she lost a lot of support due to her efforts to implement a fixed rate
local tax—labelled a poll tax by many since she sought to disenfranchise those who did not

27
pay it. Hugely unpopular, this policy led to public protests and caused dissention within her
party.
Thatcher initially pressed on for party leadership in 1990, but eventually yielded to
pressure from party members and announced her intentions to resign on November 22, 1990.
In a statement, she said, “Having consulted widely among colleagues, I have concluded that
the unity of the Party and the prospects of victory in a General Election would be better
served if I stood down to enable Cabinet colleagues to enter the ballot for the leadership. I
should like to thank all those in Cabinet and outside who have given me such dedicated
support.” On November 28, 1990, Thatcher departed from 10 Downing Street, the prime
minister’s official residence, for the last time.

Few women in history have achieved the political, social and economic influence that
Margaret Thatcher did, and whether you disagree with what she did or not, by any measure
she was a historical ‘great’. Above all, she showed that biology had not handicapped women
from achieving dominance in the human tribe and that the barriers to women becoming
leaders were primarily social and psychological, not Darwinian.
She was a dominant politician, but whereas in a man this would have often have been
seen as a virtue, her gender meant that this tough leadership style was often negatively
framed as a particularly female type of hectoring.
The best leaders enjoy power because if they don’t, they too-easily succumb
to stress and self-doubt. Power has strong anti-anxiety and anti-depressant properties and
equips leaders to take unpopular decisions and to follow a course of action through the
complex forest without being distracted by individual trees. Power can make you smarter and
the Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny’s hugely increased performance since becoming
Taoiseach is an example of this.
But no leader can survive too much power for too long and the eleven years of
dominance in her country took its toll on Margaret Thatcher’s judgment and abilities.
Margaret Thatcher taught us that women leaders are not immune to the distorting –
and sometimes corrupting – effects of power that we have seen throughout the ages in men.
My own research of the scientific literature suggests that women may be somewhat less at risk
for this, and that we need many more women in positions of power, not just in politics but
also in business and other domains of life.

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 IV. Black Power

Power is the ability to influence both, people and your surroundings. It’s the ability of
being in control instead of simply reacting to events as they occur. It’s the ability to make a
change instead of being a helpless spectator. Power is what can make some people respect
you, others fear you and it’s a trait that can help you get what you want.
There are many sources of power and not just one
Till this point, we have talked about powerful people. All over the world, people who
gained this power being helped by the others; most of them were presidents or prime ministers
and it was the people who gave them the power.
But we can also speck about another kind of power, that we are going to call “black
power”. Why black? Because it spreads fear, death, organized crime. It is a kind of power
against which we try to fight and that we try to destroy, but sometimes it is so difficult to do
that.

4. 1. Pablo Escobar

29
 Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was a notorious Colombian drug lord whose cartel, at
the height of his career, supplied an estimated 80% of the cocaine smuggled into the United
States. Often called „The King of Cocaine”, he was the wealthiest criminal in history, with an
estimated known net worth of US $30 billion by the early 1990s. He was also one of the 10
richest men in the world at his prime. Escobar was shot and killed by Colombian National
Police.
Pablo Escobar was born in Rionegro, in the Antioquia Department of Colombia, the
third of seven children to Abel de Jesús Dari Escobar, a farmer, and Hermilda Gaviria, an
elementary school teacher. As a teenager on the streets of Medellín, he began his criminal
career by allegedly stealing gravestones and sanding them down for resale to smugglers. His
brother and accountant, Roberto Escobar, denies this, claiming that the gravestones came
from cemetery owners whose clients had stopped paying for site care and that they had a
relative who had a monuments business. Pablo studied for a short time at the Universidad
Autónoma Latinoamericana of Medellín. Pablo left the University and he never obtained a
college degree.
Escobar eventually became involved in many criminal activities with Oscar Benel
Aguirre — running petty street scams, selling contraband cigarettes and fake lottery tickets,
and stealing cars. In the early 1970s, he was a thief and bodyguard, and allegedly made
$100,000 by kidnapping and ransoming a Medellín executive before entering the drug
trade. His next step on the ladder was to become a millionaire by working for contraband
smuggler Alvaro Prieto. Escobar’s childhood ambition was to become a millionaire by the
time he was 22.

In his home town he was considered a Robin Hood because he was good and kind and
he built hospitals, houses and he was giving a lot of money to the poor. That’s why people
from the town were trying to protect him every time the government was looking for him.
Pablo Escobar’s approach to authorities was known as “plata o plomo” (silver or lead).
Those he couldn’t bribe were killed. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of police officers were
murdered on Escobar’s orders simply for doing their job. Countless were families destroyed
to help a rich man could grow even richer.
Over the Eighties the demand for cocaine skyrocketed. At its peak, Pablo Escobar’s
Medellín cartel smuggled 15 tonnes of cocaine per day to the United States. That’s
approximately the weight of two African elephants.

30
 Often storing his money in dirty, rundown warehouses, ten per cent of Escobar’s
yearly earnings were written off as spoilage due vermin and damp. That’s $2 billion. $2
billion. He lost more each year than most people will ever own.
Pablo Escobar owned 5,000 acres of land in the small Colombian town of Puerto
Triunofo. The utopia was built as a holiday getaway and included a pool, a bullring and a zoo
housing hippos, giraffes and elephants.
In 1991, Pablo Escobar agreed to surrender to the Columbian authorities. He was
confined in a luxury prison, La Catedral, which he helped design. From La Catedral Escobar
continued to run his operations, receive visitors, and enjoy a football pitch and barbecue pit.
Columbian authorities were not allowed within 3 miles of the compound.
Pablo Escobar was killed in a fire fight with the Colombian police. The fatal bullet
wound was right above his ear - the exact same place where Escobar told his brother he would
shoot himself were he ever cornered. The truth will never be known.
Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar’s ambition and ruthlessness made him one of the
wealthiest, most powerful and most violent criminals of all time.
Using terror, Escobar tried to influence Colombian politics towards a no-extradition
clause and to grant amnesty to drug barons in exchange for giving up the trade. His terror
campaign resulted in the killings of thousands of people, including politicians, civil servants,
journalists and ordinary citizens. The violence claimed the lives of three Colombian
presidential candidates, an attorney general, scores of judges and more than 1,000 police
officers.
His son wrote in the book Pablo Escobar: my father, about his father’s power:
“My father’s not a person to be imitated. He showed us the path we must never take as
a society because it’s the path to self-destruction, the loss of values and a place where life
ceases to have importance.”

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4. 2. Frank Lucas

Frank Lucas (born September 9, 1930) is an American former heroin dealer, who
operated in Harlem during the late 1960s and early 1970s. He was particularly known
for cutting out middlemen in the drug trade and buying heroin directly from his source in the
Golden Triangle. Lucas boasted that he smuggled heroin using the coffins of dead American
servicemen, but this claim is denied by his South East Asian associate, Leslie Ike
Atkinson Rather than hide the drugs in the coffins, they were hidden in the pallets underneath
as depicted in the 2007 feature film American Gangster in which he was played by Denzel
Washington, although the film fictionalized elements of Lucas’ life for dramatic effect.
Lucas was born in La Grange, North Carolina, and raised in Greensboro, North
Carolina He was the son of Mahalee (née Jones 1909-2003) and Fred Lucas. He claims that
the incident that sparked his motivation to embark on a life of crime was witnessing his 12-
year-old cousin’s murder at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan, for apparently “reckless
eyeballing” (looking at) a Caucasian woman, in Greensboro. He drifted through a life of petty
crime until one particular occasion when, after a fight with a former employer, he fled to New
York on the advice of his mother. In Harlem, he indulged in petty crime and pool
hustling before he was taken under the wing of gangster Bumpy Johnson. Lucas’ connection
to Johnson has since come under some doubt; he claimed to have been Johnson’s driver for 15
years, although Johnson spent just five years out of prison before his death in 1968. According
to Johnson’s widow, much of the narrative that Lucas claims as his actually belonged to

32
another young hustler named Zach Walker, who lived with Johnson and his family and later
betrayed him.
Frank Lucas wanted to be rich — what he called “Donald Trump rich”. He not only
believed he could make it big in the drug world, he also understood how to do it. He started
with the planning. He called it “backtracking”. He would hole himself up in a hotel room,
away from any distractions, for a month or two at a time. He would look back on all his past
experiences and what he’d learned. Then he’d look forward to the future including every
possible detail and the detail of the details, making sure he mentally walked through every
step of the operation.
Frank Lucas realized that to take over Johnson’s operation he needed to break the
monopoly of the Italian Mafia. His idea was to bypass the Mafia’s heroin trade in Harlem, and
go directly to the source of the drug. By 1968, the Vietnam War had been raging for several
years. It was common knowledge that U.S service personnel had been exposed to many
different illegal drugs, including heroin. When they came back to the States with their
addictions, they sought out new sources. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, dope was rampant
in most large American cities, with “brand names” like “Mean Machine”, “Can’t Get Enough
of that Funky Stuff” and “Harlem Hijack”. Lucas knew he could meet this demand and make a
hefty profit if he could get the drugs directly from the source. He decided to travel to
Southeast Asia.
Frank Lucas had what is called an “expectation of invincibility”. He really thought
nothing of getting on a plane by himself and travelling half way around the world to Thailand.
He knew little about the country, and didn’t speak the language. Yet, he was engaging in one
of the most deadly occupations imaginable — international drug trafficking. On his arrival in
Bangkok in 1968, Lucas checked into the Dusit Thani Hotel. There he met Leslie Ike
Atkinson at Jack’s American Bar, a rest and relaxation hangout for African-American soldiers.
Atkinson ran the bar and was well connected with many U.S. Army soldiers in Southeast
Asia, often supplying them with drugs on demand. Atkinson also hailed from Greensboro,
North Carolina, and had married one of Lucas cousins. Thus, Lucas initiated the policy of
only hiring relatives or close friends.
Atkinson agreed to supply Lucas with the heroin, but Lucas wanted to see the
operations for himself. The two men travelled for nearly two weeks through the jungles of
Thailand until they located Atkinson’s main connection and business partner, a Chinese-Thai
gentleman named Luetchi Rubiwat. Rubiwat — also known by the code name 007 —
controlled several hundred acres of poppy fields in the Golden Triangle, a dense jungle area

33
on the borders of Thailand, Burma, and Laos. Next to the poppy fields were caves bored into
the mountains, where the poppies were then processed into heroin. On Lucas’s first trip, he
bought 132 kilos of high quality heroin for $4,200 per unit. In Harlem he would have paid
$50,000 for a kilo from the Mafia.
Lucas and Atkinson created an “army inside the Army” of draftees and enlisted men in
order to set up the international distribution system. Key military personnel had to be
“bought” into the system, including high-ranking officers, both American and South
Vietnamese. Lucas used a combination of charm and pricey bribes to recruit his team. As he
did with nearly all parts of his enterprise, Lucas would oversee the operations personally in
Southeast Asia, sometimes disguising himself as an Army officer.
The plan was to send shipments of heroin on military planes to military bases on the
eastern seaboard. From there, the packages would be sent to accomplices who unpacked the
heroin and prepared it for sale. Hyperbole suggests that much of the dope was stuffed into the
coffins of dead service men, or even stuffed into the cadavers. Lucas testified that he recruited
a North Carolina carpenter and flew him to Bangkok to build over two dozen government-
issued coffins with false bottoms, big enough to load in 6 to 8 kilos of heroin. But it has been
reported that Atkinson only packed the smuggled heroin in furniture.
In setting up his organization back in the States, Frank Lucas combined toughness
with intelligence, being very careful to make sure every detail was covered. He contracted
only trusted relatives and close friends from North Carolina; people like Leslie Atkinson. He
believed they were less likely to steal from him and be tempted by the vices of the city. He
recruited his five younger brothers, and moved them to New York. In the city, they became
known as the “Country Boys” and they controlled the territory on 116th Street between 7th
and 8th avenues in Harlem.
Lucas approached marketing his product like any entrepreneur by offering value for
the right price. Because he was getting nearly pure heroin directly from the source, he was
able to “cut” the drug at a higher level—usually between 10 and 12 percent—when most
street heroin was only about five to six percent. Lucas hired several young women to mix the
imported heroin with mannite and quinine. To prevent theft, these women wore nothing but
plastic gloves. To protect his investment, Lucas inflicted brutal violence against anyone who
stood in his way, inflicting fear in adversaries and inspiring respect from friends and business
partners.
Just as Lucas had planned, the money came pouring in. He often bragged that he was
making a million dollars a day. There often wasn’t enough space to hide the cash, so he would

34
launder the money, personally driving large bags of bills to a bank in the Bronx where the
bankers would count it and exchange it for legitimate bills. Bank executives would later plead
guilty to 200 misdemeanour violations of the Bank Secrecy Act. At the height of his career, he
had over $52 million in various Cayman Island banks and 1,000 kilograms of heroin on hand
worth $300,000 a kilo. To “hide” the exchanged money, Lucas bought into legitimate
businesses — such as a string of dry cleaners and gas stations—in the hopes of avoiding
detection. He also owned office buildings in Detroit, apartments in Los Angeles, Miami, and
Puerto Rico, and a several thousand acre ranch called “Paradise Valley” in North Carolina
where he had 300 head of Black Angus cattle and prize breeding bulls.
Lucas also made the rounds in New York’s celebrity circuit. He would often be seen at
several of the hottest nightclubs in Manhattan, hobnobbing with famous athletes like Joe
Lewis and Muhammad Ali and entertainers like James Brown, Berry Gordy and Diana Ross.
Lucas was slated to be in a Hollywood gangster movie entitled The Ripoff, set in the streets of
New York City. He contributed nearly a $100,000 into the movie, and lent the production
several of his exotic automobiles. However, the movie was never finished. He spent money
freely, once buying a couple of $140,000 Van Cleef bracelets for both him and his wife, Julie.
She bought him a $50,000 chinchilla coat and $10,000 hat to match. However, most times
Lucas preferred to dress very casually, so as to not attract attention to himself.
Just as Frank Lucas wouldn’t have been successful obtaining and transporting the
heroin from southeast Asia without the support of corrupt military personnel, so too would he
have been unable to sell the stuff on the streets of Harlem without dishonest cops. During the
1960s and 1970s, the New York Police Department’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU) was
hopelessly corrupt. It had city-wide jurisdiction and nearly unlimited authority. The unit had
developed a cowboy-like mentality, breaking in and conducting warrantless searches of
suspected drug dealers; creating illegal phone taps; using bribery; and controlling addicted
informants with confiscated heroin. Several of the officers were “on the take” with local drug
dealers to look the other way. At one point, Frank Lucas was caught by the head of the SIU,
Bob Leuci, with several kilograms of heroin and cocaine in the trunk of his car. According to
Lucas, he was taken to the police station, where he had to negotiate his release with an offer
of $30,000 and two “keys” of heroin. This was a common practice, and made many New York
police officers participants in the crimes they were supposed to be stopping.
In time, the police corruption made national news, and the Justice Department wanted
it stopped. In 1971, officials in Essex County, New Jersey, formed an investigative narcotics
unit called the Special Narcotics Task Force (SNTF), headed by then-assistant prosecutor

35
Richard Richie Roberts. Serving as a detective in Essex County since 1963, Roberts was a
former U.S. Marine and recent law school graduate from Seaton Hall University. He was very
street-smart, and was known as a cop who did what he had to do to get the job done. Unlike
some of his counterparts in the New York Police Department, Roberts was incorruptible.
On January 28, 1975, after a lengthy investigation by the SNTF, a DEA strike-force
staged a surprise raid on Frank Lucas’ house in the upscale neighbourhood of Teaneck, New
Jersey. In the panic, Lucas’ wife, Julie, threw several suitcases stuffed with cash out the
window. All total, $584,000 was recovered hat Lucas referred to as “street money.” Also
found were keys to several Cayman Island safe-deposit boxes, property deeds, and a ticket to
a United Nations ball, compliments of the ambassador of Honduras. In short order, 10
individuals were arrested, but none of them was Frank Lucas. As yet, there was no direct
evidence tying Lucas to the drug operation.
Then came a break. During the interrogation of suspects, Lucas’ nephew — one of the
Country Boys — broke. He named names, showed investigators where buys were made, and
identified public pay phones used to make drug deals. Assistant prosecutor Roberts used the
evidence to charge 43 people, many in Lucas’ immediate family, with the crime of drug
trafficking. Admittedly, Roberts had a weak case against Lucas, but with the corroboration of
the co-defendants, he was able to put enough evidence together to go to trial.
At the trial, several people testified about the devastating effects of heroin, particularly
Lucas’ “Blue Magic” brand, which was far more potent than most heroin, and caused many
deaths due to overdose. Roberts made the case against Lucas, declaring he had “killed more
black people than the KKK with the sale of Blue Magic.” The jury turned in a guilty verdict,
and Lucas was sentenced to 70 years in prison. After a few short months, Lucas turned
informant and gave names of Mafia accomplices and corrupt members of the New York police
department. He even gave up Atkinson, who was his heroin connection in Thailand. Lucas’
testimony resulted in 150 multi-defendant cases including three-quarters of New York’s Drug
Enforcement Agency and 30 members of his family.
As a reward for his information, Lucas’ sentence was reduced to 15 years, and he was
released in 1981. He was arrested again in 1984 for trying to exchange an ounce of heroin and
$13,000 for a kilogram of cocaine. By this time, Richie Roberts had gone into private practice
as a defence attorney and, upon hearing of his onetime nemesis’ arrest, contacted Lucas. Even
though Lucas had once ordered a $100,000 contract on Roberts’ life during the first trial, he
was willing to defend Lucas, who accepted. Largely through Roberts’ efforts, Lucas received
a sentence of seven years; light for a man who had been convicted twice for a similar crime.

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When he was released from prison in 1991, Roberts contacted Lucas and again offered his
help, this time to get his life straight. Lucas had developed a tepid relationship with Roberts
during the post-trial investigation. Now the relationship strengthened as Roberts genuinely
believed Lucas was remorseful. In the process, Roberts became the godfather of Lucas’ son.
After his final prison release, Frank Lucas returned to a devastated Harlem to witness
the poverty and squalor, caused in part by his drug business. For possibly the first time, he
began to realize how destructive his enterprise had been to individuals and an entire
community. Lucas repented, saying, “I did some terrible things... I’m awfully sorry that I did
them. I really am.” As a result, he has spent much of his remaining life working to repair the
damage he caused. He joined efforts with his daughter’s non-profit organization, Yellow Brick
Roads, which provides a safe haven for children of incarcerated parents. In 2007, Hollywood
once again paid Lucas a visit, with the biopic American Gangster, starring Denzel
Washington, which depicted his life of crime.

4. 3. El Chapo

Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán, born on 25th December 1954 or 4th April 1957 is
a Mexican drug lord who heads the Sinaloa Cartel, a criminal organization named after the
Mexican Pacific coast state of Sinaloa where it was formed.
Known as “El Chapo Guzmán” (“Shorty Guzmán”, for his 168 cm (5 ft 6 in) stature,
he became Mexico’s top drug kingpin in 2003 after the arrest of his rival Osiel Cárdenas of

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the Gulf Cartel, and is considered the “most powerful drug trafficker in the world” by
the United States Department of the Treasury.
Each year from 2009 to 2011 Forbes magazine ranked Guzmán as one of the most
powerful people in the world, ranking 41st, 60th, and 55th respectively. He was thus the
second most powerful man in Mexico, after Carlos Slim. He was named as the 10th richest
man in Mexico (1,140th in the world) in 2011, with a net worth of roughly US$1 billion. The
magazine also calls him the “biggest drug lord of all time”, and the US Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) estimates he has surpassed the influence and reach of Pablo Escobar,
and now considers him “the godfather of the drug world”. In 2013, the Chicago Crime
Commission named Guzmán “Public Enemy Number One„ for the influence of his criminal
network in Chicago, though there is no evidence that Guzmán has ever been in that city. The
last person to receive such notoriety was Al Capone in 1930.
Guzmán’s Sinaloa Cartel transports multi-ton cocaine shipments
from Colombia through Mexico to the United States, the world’s top consumer and has
distribution cells throughout the U.S. The organization has also been involved in the
production, smuggling and distribution of Mexican methamphetamine, marijuana, ecstasy
(MDMA) and heroin across both North America and Europe. By the time of his 2014 arrest,
Guzmán had exported more drugs to the United States than anyone else: more than 500 tons
(450,000 kg) of cocaine in the U.S. alone.
Guzmán was captured in 1993 in Guatemala, extradited and sentenced to 20 years in
prison in Mexico for murder and drug trafficking. After bribing prison guards, he was able to
escape from a federal maximum-security prison in 2001. He was wanted by the governments
of Mexico and the United States, and by INTERPOL. The U.S. offered a US$5 million reward
for information leading to his capture, and the Mexican government offered a reward of 60
million pesos (approximately US$3.8 million) for information on Guzmán.
Guzmán was arrested by Mexican authorities in Mexico on 22 February 2014. He was
found inside his fourth-floor condominium in Mazatlán, Sinaloa, and was captured without
any gunshots being fired. Guzmán escaped from prison again on 11 July 2015 by exiting
through a tunnel that led to a nearby construction site. He was recaptured by Mexican
marines following a shootout on 8 January 2016.
“Mission Accomplished,” the President wrote. “We have him.”
The drug lord’s apprehension came one day before his interview with Penn was
published on Rolling Stone’s website. It was unclear whether his communication with the

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actor contributed to his capture, although Mexican authorities cited the monitoring of his
electronic exchanges as helpful to the process.
Guzmán was returned to the same prison from which he escaped the previous summer,
and faced the possibility of being extradited to the U.S. to face drug trafficking charges.

4. 4. Al Capone

Alphonse Gabriel Al Capone was an American gangster who attained fame during
the Prohibition era as the co-founder and boss of the Chicago Outfit. His seven-year reign as
crime boss ended when he was 33 years old.
Capone was born in the borough of Brooklyn in New York City to Italian immigrants.
He was considered a Five Points Gang member who became a bouncer in organized crime
premises such as brothels. In his early twenties, he moved to Chicago and became bodyguard
and trusted factotum for Johnny Torrio, head of a criminal syndicate that illegally supplied
alcohol – the forerunner of the Outfit – and that was politically protected through the Unione
Siciliana. A conflict with the North Side Gang was instrumental in Capone’s rise and fall.
Torrio went into retirement after North Side gunmen almost killed him, handing control to
Capone. Capone expanded the bootlegging business through increasingly violent means, but

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his mutually profitable relationships with mayor William Hale Thompson and the city’s police
meant that Capone seemed safe from law enforcement.
Capone apparently revelled in attention, such as the cheers from spectators when he
appeared at ball games. He made donations to various charities and was viewed by many to be
a “modern-day Robin Hood”. However, the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre of gang rivals,
resulting in the killing of seven men in broad daylight, damaged Chicago’s image - as well as
Capone’s - leading influential citizens to demand governmental action and newspapers to dub
him “Public Enemy No. 1”.
The federal authorities became intent on jailing Capone, and they prosecuted him for
tax evasion in 1931, a federal crime and a novel strategy during the era. During the highly
publicized case, the judge admitted as evidence Capone’s admissions of his income and
unpaid taxes during prior (and ultimately abortive) negotiations to pay the government any
back taxes he owed. Capone was convicted and sentenced to 11 years in federal prison. After
conviction, he replaced his old defence team with experts in tax law, and his grounds for
appeal were strengthened by a Supreme Court ruling, but his appeal ultimately failed.
He was already showing signs of syphilitic dementia early in his sentence, and he
became increasingly debilitated before being released after eight years. On January 25, 1947,
Capone died of cardiac arrest after suffering a stroke.
A crackdown on racketeering in Chicago meant that Al Capone’s first mobster job was
to move operations to Cicero. With the assistance of his brothers Frank (Salvatore) and Ralph,
Capone infiltrated the government and police departments. Between them they took leading
positions within Cicero city government in addition to running brothels, gambling clubs and
racetracks.
Capone kidnapped opponents’ election workers and threatened voters with violence.
He eventually won office in Cicero but not before his brother Frank had been killed in a shoot
out with Chicago’s police force.
Capone had prided himself on keeping his temper under wraps but when friend and
fellow hood Jack Guzik was assaulted by a small time thug, Capone tracked the assailant
down and shot him dead in a bar. Due to lack of witnesses, Capone got away with the murder,
but the publicity surrounding the case gave him a notoriety that he had never had before.
After the attempted assassination of Capone’s friend and mentor Johnny Torrio the
frail man left his legacy of nightclubs, whorehouses, gambling dens, breweries and
speakeasies to Capone. Capone’s new found status saw him moving his headquarters to the
luxurious Metropole Hotel as part of his personal crusade to become more visible and court

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celebrity. This included fraternizing with the press and being seen at places like the opera.
Capone was different from many gangsters who avoided publicity. Always smartly dressed, he
set out to be viewed as a respectable businessman and pillar of the community.
Capone’s next mission involved bootleg whiskey. With the help of his old friend
Frankie Yale in New York, Al set out to smuggle huge quantities into Chicago. The events
would lead to what became known as The Adonis Club Massacre where Capone had Yale’s
enemies brutally attacked during a Christmas party.
Capone’s bootlegging whiskey trail from Chicago to New York was making him rich,
but an incident involving Billy McSwiggin, known as the “hanging prosecutor” was to prove
a major setback for the unassailable gangster. McSwiggin was mistakenly shot and killed by
Capone’s henchmen during a shoot out between rivals outside a bar. Capone was blamed but
once again due to lack of evidence he escaped arrest. However, the murder was followed by a
big outcry against gangster violence and public sentiment went against Capone.
High profile investigations against Capone failed. The police therefore took their
frustrations out by constantly raiding his whorehouses and gambling dens. Capone went into
hiding for three months during the summer. But eventually he took a huge risk and gave
himself up to the Chicago police. It proved to be the right decision as the authorities did not
have enough evidence to charge him. Capone was a once again a free man having made a
mockery of the police and justice system.
Ironically, Capone took on the role of peacemaker, appealing to the other gangsters to
tone down their violence. He even managed to broker an amnesty between rival gangsters and
for two months the killing and violence ceased. But Chicago was firmly in the grip of
gangsters and Capone appeared beyond the reach of the law. Somewhat ironically it was the
pen pushers from the tax office who were to pose the greatest threat to the gangsters’
bootlegging empires. In May 1927, the Supreme Court ruled that a bootlegger had to pay
income tax on his illegal bootlegging business. With such a ruling it wasn’t long before the
small Special Intelligence Unit of the IRS under Elmer Irey was able to go after Al Capone.
Capone left for Miami with his wife and son and bought Palm Island estate, a property
that he immediately started to renovate expensively. This gave Elmer Irey his chance to
document Capone’s income and spending. But Capone was clever. Every transaction he made
was on a cash basis. The only exception was the tangible assets of the Palm Island estate,
which was evidence of a major source of income.
Meanwhile, internal infighting between rival gangsters escalated into street violence
and frequent hijackings of Capone’s whiskey transports became a big problem. Another thorn

41
in the side for Capone was Frank Yale. Once a powerful associate, he was now seen as the
main instigator of disruptions to Capone’s whisky business. One Sunday afternoon, Yale met
his end with the first use of a “Tommy gun” against him.
Al Capone also had to deal with rival gangster Bugs Moran and his North Siders gang.
They had been a threat for years. Moran had even once tried to kill Capone’s colleague and
friend Jack McGurn. The decision by Capone and McGurn to avail themselves of Moran was
to lead to one of the most infamous gangland massacres in history The St Valentine’s Day
Massacre.
On Thursday, February 14, 1929 at 10:30am Bugs Moran and his gang were lured by a
bootlegger into a garage to buy whiskey. McGurn’s men would be waiting for them, dressed
in stolen police uniforms; the idea being that they would stage a fake raid. McGurn, like
Capone, made sure he was far away and checked into a hotel with his girlfriend.
When McGurn’s men thought they saw Bugs Moran, they got into their police
uniforms and drove over to the garage in a stolen police car. The bootleggers, caught in the
act, lined up against the wall. McGurn’s men took the bootleggers’ guns and opened fire with
two machine guns. All the men except Frank Gusenberg were killed outright in cold blood.
The plan appeared to go brilliantly except for one major detail; Bugs Moran was not
among the dead. Moran had seen the police car and took off, not wanting to be caught up in
the raid. Even though Al Capone was conveniently in Florida, the police and the newspapers
knew who had staged the massacre.
The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre became a national media event immortalizing
Capone as the most ruthless, feared, smartest and elegant of gangland bosses. Even while
powerful forces were amassing against him, Capone indulged in one last bloody act of
revenge — the killing of two Sicilian colleagues who he believed had betrayed him. Capone
invited his victims to a sumptuous banquet where he brutally pulverized them with a baseball
bat. Capone had observed the old tradition of wining and dining traitors before executing
them.
Al Capone’s activities attracted the attention of President Herbert Hoover who in
March, 1929, asked Andrew Mellon, his secretary of the Treasury,
“Have you got this fellow Capone yet? I want that man in jail.”
Mellon set out to get the necessary evidence both to prove income tax evasion and to
amass enough evidence to prosecute Capone successfully for Prohibition violations.
Eliot Ness, a dynamic young agent with the US Prohibition Bureau, was charged with
gathering the evidence of Prohibition violations. He assembled a team of daring young men

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and made extensive use of wire tapping technology. While there was doubt that Capone could
be successfully prosecuted for Prohibition violations in Chicago, the government was certain
it could get Capone on tax evasion.
In May 1929, Capone went to a “gangsters” conference in Atlantic City. Afterwards he
saw a movie in Philadelphia. When leaving the cinema he was arrested and imprisoned for
carrying a concealed weapon. Capone was soon incarcerated in the Eastern Penitentiary where
he stayed until March 16, 1930. He was later released from jail for good behaviour, but was
put on the America’s “Most Wanted” list which publicly humiliated the mobster who so
desperately wanted to be regarded as a worthy and man of the people.
Elmer Irey undertook a cunning plan to use undercover agents posing as hoods to
infiltrate Capone’s organization. The operation took nerves of steel and despite an informer
ending up with a bullet in his head before he could testify, Elmer managed to amass enough
evidence through his detectives, posing as gangsters, to try Capone in front of a jury. With two
vital bookkeepers Leslie Shumway and Fred Reis, who had once been in Capone’s
employment, now safely under police protection it was only a matter of time before Capone’s
days as Public Enemy No. 1 were over.
Furthermore, agent Eliot Ness, angered by Capone for the murder of a friend, managed
to enrage Capone by exposing Prohibition violations to ruin his bootlegging industry. Millions
of dollars of brewing equipment was seized or destroyed, thousands of gallons of beer and
alcohol had been dumped and the largest breweries were closed.
On March 13, 1931, a federal grand jury met secretly on the government’s claim that
in 1924 Al Capone had a tax liability of $32,488.81. The jury returned an indictment against
Capone that was kept secret until the investigation was complete for the years 1925 to 1929.
The grand jury later returned an indictment against Capone with 22 counts of tax
evasion, totalling over $200,000. Capone and 68 members of his gang were charged with
5,000 separate violations of the Volstead Act. These income tax cases took precedence over
the Prohibition violations.
Fearing that witnesses would be tampered with, and having doubts that the six-year
statute of limitations would be upheld by the Supreme Court, a deal was secretly truck
between Capone’s lawyers and government prosecutors. Capone was to plead guilty to a
lighter charge and would receive between two and five years. However, when word got out,
the press were outraged and campaigned against what they saw as a blatant whitewash. The
over confident Capone, who believed he would receive less than five years in prison suddenly,
became less cocky when he realized that his plea bargain was now null and void.

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 On October 6, 1931, fourteen detectives escorted Capone to the Federal Court
Building. He was dressed in a conservative blue serge suit and without his usual pinkie ring
and gaudy jewellery. It was inevitable that Capone’s henchmen procured a list of jury
members to bribe, but unbeknownst to Capone, the authorities had been aware of the plot.
When Judge Wilkinson entered the courtroom he suddenly demanded that the jury be
exchanged with another in the same building. Capone and his lawyer were shocked. The fresh
jury were even sequestered at night so that the Capone mob couldn’t get to them.
During the trial Attorney George E. Q. Johnson made a mockery of Capone’s claim to
be a “Robin Hood” type figure and man of the people. He stressed the hypocrisy of man who
would spend thousands of dollars on meals and luxuries but give little to the poor and
unemployed. How he asked could Capone possess so much property, vehicles and even
diamond belt buckles when his defence lawyers profess that their client had no income?
After nine hours of discussion on October 17, 1931, the jury found Capone guilty of
several counts of tax evasion. Judge Wilkerson sentenced him to eleven years, $50,000 in
fines and court costs of another $30,000. Bail was denied.
In August 1934, Al Capone was moved from a prison in Atlanta to the infamous
Alcatraz in San Francisco. His days of privileges in prison were gone and contact with the
outside world, even through letters and newspapers was minimal.
After release, Capone slowly deteriorated at his Palm Island palace. Mae, his wife
stuck by him until January 25, 1947 when he died of cardiac arrest at age 48.

4. 5. Bugsy Siegel

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 Benjamin Bugsy Siegel was a Jewish American mobster. Siegel was known as one of
the most “infamous and feared gangsters of his day”. Described as handsome and charismatic,
he became one of the first front-page-celebrity gangsters. He was also a driving force behind
the development of the Las Vegas Strip. Siegel was not only influential within the Jewish
mob but, like his friend and fellow gangster Meyer Lansky, he also held significant influence
within the Italian-American Mafia and the largely Italian-Jewish National Crime Syndicate.
Siegel was one of the founders and leaders of Murder, Incorporated and became
a bootlegger during Prohibition. After Prohibition was repealed in 1933, he turned
to gambling. In 1936, he left New York and moved to California His time as a mobster
(although he eventually ran his own operations) was mainly as a hitman and muscle, as he
was noted for his prowess with guns and violence. In 1939, Siegel was tried for the murder of
fellow mobster Harry Greenberg. Siegel was acquitted in 1942.
Siegel travelled to Las Vegas, Nevada where he handled and financed some of the
original casinos He assisted developer William Wilkerson‘s Flamingo Hotel after Wilkerson
ran out of funds. Siegel took over the project and managed the final stages of construction.
The Flamingo opened on December 26, 1946 to poor reception and soon closed. It reopened
in March 1947 with a finished hotel. Three months later, on June 20, 1947, Siegel was shot
dead at the Beverly Hills home of his girlfriend, Virginia Hill.
In the late 1930s, Siegel began dating actress Virginia Hill. They were a striking
couple known as much for their violent natures as for their glamorous looks. In 1945, the two
moved to Las Vegas, where Siegel began working toward his dream of building a gambling
Mecca in the Nevada desert. With funding from the eastern crime syndicate, construction of
the Flamingo Hotel and Casino began under Siegel’s supervision.

Iconic mobster Benjamin Bugsy Siegel built the Flamingo Casino in Las Vegas,
igniting an era of glamour, gambling and gangsters in the desert.

Originally budgeted at $1.5 million, the building project soon proved to be a problem
as construction costs soared to more than $6 million. When it was discovered that many of the
overruns were attributable to Siegel’s theft and mismanagement, Lansky (now a prominent
member of the eastern syndicate) became enraged by his betrayal.

On the evening of June 20, 1947, Siegel was brutally killed, when a fusillade of bullets
crashed through his living room window in Beverly Hills. Simultaneously, three of Lansky’s

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cohorts entered the Flamingo Hotel and declared a takeover. Although Lansky denied
involvement in the hit, there is little doubt that Siegel was murdered on syndicate orders.

4. 5. Omerta and the power

(Omerta, book written by Mario Puzo)

Omertà is a code of honour that places importance on silence, non-cooperation with

authorities, and non-interference in the illegal actions of others. It originated and remains
common in Southern Italy, where banditry and the Mafia-type criminal organizations (like
the Camorra, Cosa Nostra, ‘Ndranghetaand Sacra Corona Unita) are strong. It is also deeply
rooted in rural Crete (Greece), Sardinia and Corsica.
It also exists, to a lesser extent, in certain Italian-American neighbourhoods where
the Italian-American Mafia has influence—and Italian ethnic enclaves in countries such as
Germany, Canada, and Australia, where Italian organized crime exists. Retaliation against
informers is common in criminal circles, where informers are known as “rats” or “snitches”.
Omerta is the Code of silence when dealing with the government. It literally means
“manhood” and refers to the idea of a man dealing with his own problems without the help of
a law-body, but the term has a also become synonymous with Mafia’s code of silence. Omerta
is a very popular attitude in places of Southern Italy like Sicily, where the Mafia is strong.

46
 It all began in Sicily around the 16th Century A.D. as a way of opposing Spanish rule.
Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean and as such influence many countries to
invade and conquer it and then make immense riches from it. The local people were often
enslaved by the conquering party and were often treated very inhumanely by the foreign
overlords. The Mafia was born is such circumstances and provided the oppressed Sicilian
people with protection, stability and a kind of “pride”. The Mafia’s “Vendetta” became
Sicily’s justice system and no one approached the ruling body for any help.
The continuous invasions left the Sicilians with feeling of helplessness, mistrust and rage at
the government. They believed that the government was there not to help them out, but to
make things even more difficult. As a result, the Mafia’s golden rule of Omerta was born. It
became an unwritten law to keep the government out of their private affairs. Crimes began to
be considered personal and justice was received through personal vengeance and vendetta, not
by the decision of the government.
If the Code of Omerta were to be put into words, it would say something like this:-

“Whoever appeals to the law against his fellow man is either a fool or a coward. Whoever
cannot take care of himself without police protection is both. It is cowardly to betray an
offender to justice, even though his offenses be against yourself, as it is not to avenge an
injury by violence. It is dastardly and contemptible in a wounded man to betray the name of
his assailant, because if he recovers, he must naturally expect to take vengeance himself. A
wounded man shall say to his assailant:
‘If I live, I will kill you - If I die you are forgiven.’”
The accusation of being an informant was the worst possible stain on the manhood.
Each individual was obliged to prove his manliness by not appealing to legally constituted
authority for redress of personal grievances. A victimized person is expected to avenge the
wrong-doing himself or find some patron who will do it for him. It is shameful to even betray
one’s deadliest and worst enemies to the authorities. Breaking the code of Omerta in serious
cases especially if Mafia is concerned can lead to the assassination of the informant by the
Mafia.

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 Conclusion

Power is not a gift, but it is a race.

Becoming powerful involves struggling, giving up, loosing. Being powerful doesn’t
mean being happy.
No one can survive too much power for too long.
When someone reaches power, he should always think about Damocles’ sword. King
Dionysius effectively conveyed the sense of constant fear in which a great man may live.
Cicero used this story as the last in a series of contrasting examples for reaching the
conclusion he had been moving towards in this fifth Disputation, in which the theme is that
virtue is sufficient for living a happy life. Cicero asks:

“Does not Dionysius seem to have made it sufficiently clear that there can be
nothing happy for the person over whom some fear always looms?”

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 Bibliography

Bantas, A., 2010, Dictionar englez-roman. Dictionar roman-englez. 75.000 de cuvinte,

Bucuresti, Editura Teora
Blundell, J., 2012, Margaret Thatcher. Portretul doamnei de fier, Bucuresti, Colectia
Capital
Maior, G. 2013, “Cum se conduce o tara?”, in Cultura Politica, nr. 449, pe
http://revistacultura.ro
Puzo, M., 2007, Omerta, Bucuresti, Editura Rao
Roxburgh, A., 2013, Vladimir Putin. Un tar in cautarea unui imperiu, Bucuresti, Ed.
Litera

www.2knowmyself.com
www.biography.com
http://content.time.com
www.ft.com
http://mic.com/articles
www.quora.com
http://the-mafia.weebly.com/omerta.html
http://tvtropes.org
www.wikipedia.org

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