|
| McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld (Borzoi Books) | 
 enlarge | Author: Misha Glenny
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
Buy New: $16.14
You Save: $11.81 (42%)
New (38) Used (11) from $14.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  24 reviews
Sales Rank: 6795
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.8
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 6 x 1.4
ISBN: 1400044111
Dewey Decimal Number: 364.106
EAN: 9781400044115
ASIN: 1400044111
Publication Date: April 8, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Review
Amazon Significant Seven, April 2008: In McMafia, Misha Glenny draws the dark map that lies on the other side of Tom Friedman's bright flat world. That connected globe not only brings software coders and supply-chain outsourcers closer together; it's also opened the gates to a criminal network of unsettling vastness, complexity, and efficiency that represents a fifth of the earth's economy, trading in everything from untaxed cigarettes and the usual narcotics to human lives and nuclear material. Glenny's a Balkans expert, and he begins his story there, with the illicit--but often state-sponsored--underworld that grew out of the post-Soviet chaos, but he soon follows the contraband everywhere from Mumbai and Johannesburg to rural Colombia and the U.S. suburbs. It's not just a hodgepodge of scare clips, though: Glenny reports from the ground but follows the leads as high as they go, showing how the dark and bright sides of the flat world are more connected than we imagine. --Tom Nissley
Product Description
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the deregulation of international financial markets in 1989, governments and entrepreneurs alike became intoxicated by forecasts of limitless expansion into newly open markets. No one would foresee that the greatest success story to arise from these events would be the globalization of organized crime. Current estimates suggest that illegal trade accounts for nearly one-fifth of global GDP.
McMafia is a fearless, encompassing, wholly authoritative investigation of the now proven ability of organized crime worldwide to find and service markets driven by a seemingly insatiable demand for illegal wares. Whether discussing the Russian mafia, Colombian drug cartels, or Chinese labor smugglers, Misha Glenny makes clear how organized crime feeds off the poverty of the developing world, how it exploits new technology in the forms of cybercrime and identity theft, and how both global crime and terror are fueled by an identical source: the triumphant material affluence of the West.
To trace the disparate strands of this hydra-like story, Glenny talked to police, victims, politicians, and members of the global underworld in eastern Europe, North and South America, Africa, the Middle East, China, Japan, and India. The story of organized crime’s phenomenal, often shocking growth is truly the central political story of our time. McMafia will change the way we look at the world.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 19 more reviews...
 An absolutely terrifying study of the oncoming future April 18, 2008
29 out of 33 found this review helpful
To make a long story short, this book is essentially the history of the mafiacation of soverign states during the turbulent phase of the 1990s. Numerous case studies are presented which map out the ways, shapes, and forms of organized crime penetration from unstable regions and societies into the the formal structures of stable and legitimate governments.
For glaring example, the Yakuza crime syndicates gradually evolved into a parallel legal system in Japan, then foundering in their own inefficiencies, began subcontracting their day to day rough work to the Chinese Triads.
The lesson here is disturbing to the idealist mentality, because Misha Glenny is clearly pointing to the inescapable conclusion. Mafia like organizations are becoming increasingly interlinked and coordinated and resultantly imposing their values, tastes, methods, and derangements on a world order poorly equipped to monitor them, much less curtail their activities.
Many luxury items such as caviar and cocaine are now thoroughly controlled through distribution networks that seem actually more sophisticated than their legitimate corporate counterparts, while just as many counterfeit luxury items are manufactured and distributed by the same organizations.
Without belaboring the point, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the world is on the brink of a regulatory crisis phase where tax evasion, counterfeiting, human trafficing, militarized organ harvesting operations, wholesale corruption, social brutalization and cultural degeneracy are inseparably intertwined.
A grim prognosis is ever there were a grim prognosis, and yet the general public seems blissfully unaware of the plague spreading around them, while the political class seems all to happy to sweep these metastasizing social carcinomas under the rug and furiously debate the most inane of trivialities instead.
Which is either shockingly unshocking, or unshockingly shocking, while we numb out to unreality TV and the semiotics of Britney.
A new "Criminal World Order" is already in the making. May 1, 2008
17 out of 19 found this review helpful
Misha Glenny has tapped into a deep and dark undercurrent that is sweeping the globe: from Eastern Europe, to Africa, to the Middle East, to Japan and China, to the West including the U.S., and most places in between: corruption and organized crime both with and without government complicity, has become a silent grime reaper that must be reckoned with, lest it sweep our own civilized way of life down into the undercurrents with it.
The stories in this book are mind-blowing not just in the creative ways that international criminals get around legalities and quickly learn to exploit the latest laws and technology, but also because they are so widespread and so injurious to what we have come to respect as a normal, ordered civilized and moral existence. Organized international criminals are resourceful, intelligent and intent on colonizing the world with a new set of decadent values. A new "Criminal world order is already deep in the making.
In most of the rest of the world, a reliance on an underground economy is an existential imperative (in post-Communist Russia, for instance, Nigeria, or Albania and indeed most of the poorer countries in the Middle East). The King of the underground economy, whether in the first or the third world is drugs: The West seems to be the carriers of a disease that makes drugs a necessity, and the rest of the world is all too anxious to apply a remedy for us.
But even if drugs were shutdown completely there is still trafficking in pirated goods, in humans, mostly young women being forced to go from poorer to more advanced countries; and now also computer and identity thefts.
What to do? While the UN has shown an interest in "trafficking in humans," has had the issue on its agenda for a number of years, the larger phenomenon of international organized crime is too large even for that international body to get its hands around: Misha Glinny has seen the future and given us a glimpse into it, and it is very dark indeed.
An outstanding read. Five stars
 Good overview of global crime but can stand less commentary May 20, 2008
15 out of 28 found this review helpful
I must give Mr. Glenny credit for writing a very comprehensive and encompassing overview of the global nature of organized crime. He makes the point very clear that a number of crime organizations exist with the knowledge of, or as an extension to, many governments. Furthermore he does a good job of showing how some countries, such as India, are making attempts to combat this global plague.
This book does have two major shortcomings. The first is that the author does not do a good job of showing crime as more than a local feature with spot international implications. He uses human trafficking and drugs as one example of the international reach but fails to connect the dots on how country A's criminal syndicate works with country B's. There is also hardly a mention of the U.S. as anything more than an annoying pest. He goes to great lengths to avoid mentioning U.S. help in cutting Columbia's murder rate in half, eliminating opium from Vietnam and Cambodia. Reducing crime in the Philippines not to mention at home.
So despite what the book pretends, the criminals are not always winning. If you don't buy the U.S. look at the UK, Ireland, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Norway, Finland and Sweden as some examples of countries where organized crime has been dealt strong set backs. He also fails to mention Canada's defeat of its strongest criminal gang, the Hells Angels. All in all an interesting, but highly unbalanced work.
A Massive Education May 11, 2008
13 out of 23 found this review helpful
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/RN6OUHJHOY2DQ Bernard Chapin saying hello and glad to report on a book I couldn't put down.
Drugs - engine of the McMafia April 24, 2008
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
McMafia is an argument for the legalisation of drugs. Without explicitly demanding such a thing, it gives the best possible argument for legalising all narcotics; that drug money is the engine of the McMafia.
Misha Glenny covers many more McMafia activities; cigarette smuggling, investment scams, slavery, fake goods, intimidation etc, but behind them all lies drugs and the massive profits they engender.
He points out that we in the west are largely to blame. We buy the fake DVDs, hire the slaves and turn a blind eye to the sweatshops. Mainly, we buy the drugs.
The author's point is that so long as the drug barons grow fat on human misery, so will the McMafia thrive.
A hypnotic read.
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
