councilor.org
| Source | Ian Murray |
| Date | 02/12/03/01:35 |
| "If protection rackets represent organized crime at its smoothest, then
war making and state making - quintessential protection rackets with the advantage of legitimacy - qualify as our largest examples of organized crime...[C]onsider the definition of a racketeer as someone who creates a threat and then charges for its reduction. Governments' provision of protection, by this standard, often qualifies as racketeering. To the extent that the threats against which a given government protects its citizens are imaginary or are consequences of its own activities, the government has organized a protection racket. Since governments themselves commonly simulate, stimulate, or even fabricate threats of external war and since the repressive or extractive activities of governments often constitute the largest current threats to the livelihood of their own citizens, many governments operate in essentially the same way as racketeers." [Charles Tilly] |
Copyright (c) 1998, Joongpil Cho