Word: armies
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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General Motors' popular Chevrolet Beretta sports coupe is as hot as a pistol. In fact, it even has the same name as a pistol. GM denies any connection to the famed brand of Italian guns favored by both the fictitious James Bond and the very real U.S. Army. But last week Italy's Fabbrica d'Armi P. Beretta of Brescia fired off a $250 million suit against GM in Manhattan, charging that the automaker was guilty of trademark infraction and unfair competition...
...precursors of the modern Mafia were the compagnie d'armi, small private armies that feudal overlords employed to enforce their authority. In the absence of law courts, these armies dispensed a hideous kind of primitive justice. Peasants who found a corpse with a hand chopped off knew that a petty thief had been punished. A body with severed genitals stuffed in his mouth meant that the dead man had "offended" the wife of a compagnie member. A missing tongue signified that someone had violated the code of omerta, or silence...
...time the term Mafia came into general usage in the early 19th century, the descendants of the old compagnie d'armi had evolved into a secret hierarchical organization, divided into specialized sectors that controlled Sicily's cattle and pasturelands, slaughterhouses, fruit plantations, market gardens and ports. The nucleus of the "honored association," as the Mafia's members euphemistically referred to their organization, was the family, whose members were linked by blood or marriage. A group of families would be allied in a cosca (artichoke), a cluster of separate leaves forming a single unit...