Re: I thought of this as a game idea

[Roger Burton West <roger@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, May 27, 2002 at 08:41:05PM -0700, Robert Frey wrote:
>Yoda is not a garden gnome!  Anyway, your link is broken :(  I'm curious to
>see your adventure idea, so please update your link.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/020527/80/czsg3.html works from here:


   Oddly Enough > Reuters | Photos
   Monday May 27, 01:54 PM
Italian women step out of kitchen and into Mafia

   By Shasta Darlington

                           Click to enlarge photo

   ROME (Reuters) - The headline news was sadly familiar for most
   Italians -- a high speed car chase in southern Italy ends in a deadly
   shootout between rival Mafia families. But these were not the usual
   suspects.

   The gun-toting clan leaders on Sunday night were 50-something Italian
   mammas and teenage girls, police said.

   "Obviously things are changing even in these feuds," the Corriere
   della Sera newspaper wrote on Monday.

   The protagonists in Sunday's bloodbath were the wives and
   granddaughters of Camorra gangster families, the Mafia organisation
   that operates in and around the southern Italian city of Naples.

   One car full of Cava family women and another car with Camorra boss
   Salvatore Graziano, his granddaughters and their mother showered each
   other with bullets in the prolonged shootout in Lauro, a town east of
   Naples. Two middle-aged mothers and a 16-year-old girl were killed.

   "Yesterday's incident shows that not only bosses and their 'soldiers'
   have the duty to eliminate members of rival families; now the women,
   the bosses' wives and even the daughters participate," Corriere wrote.

   Mafia women, especially in Sicily's "Cosa Nostra", are traditionally
   not allowed to get mixed up in men's business. Instead, the
   black-skirted women shuttle between the kitchen and the church,
   selflessly grieving for their fallen loved ones.

   MOVE OVER MARLON BRANDO

   But in Naples, the battle of the sexes has taken on new meaning with
   the "madrina," or godmother, muscling in on territory of the
   traditional godfather.

   One woman even allegedly ran one of Naples' most powerful criminal
   families while her brother was in prison.

   Sunday's bloody shootout could be another sign of changes for the
   Mafia woman long considered a loving mother and docile wife -- role
   models that are held up for women throughout Italy.

   While the Mafia "madrina" may not be an ideal alternative, Italian
   women are trying to throw off the stereotypes with only limited
   success.

   This weekend, the government's minister of equal opportunities,
   Stefania Prestigiacomo, sparked a fresh debate over women's role in
   Italian society with a magazine article promoting motherhood and
   wifely duties as the path to happiness.

   Prestigiacomo began her nine-point list of advice in the women's
   weekly Donna Moderna: "Consider motherhood a value, the greatest, most
   important, most special experience for a woman".

   While that may not be bad advice in a country that has seen a sharply
   declining birth rate, many readers worry it will just reinforce old
   stereotypes.

   The minister also encourages women to take joy in shopping, their
   husbands, looking good, travelling and following their dreams --
   whether they be to run a business or have a child.

   "I don't know whether to laugh or cry," opposition lawmaker Gloria
   Buffo told Corriere della Sera.

-- 
Roger Burton West - roger@firedrake.org - gamer since 1984
http://firedrake.org/roger/rpg/
50. The perfect officer for the job will transfer in the day after that
    billet is filled by someone else.