Loretta Napoleoni Quotations

I think generally the heads of terrorist groups are very, very smart people. They're also great manipulators. I would presume that cult leaders are identical. These sort of individuals are very strong, they have very strong charisma.

Rogue economics is a sort of umbrella under which we find the criminal economy, the illegal economy, but also those gray areas, gray areas where there is not a proper regulation, where there is not legislation for the economy.

As consumers and as voters we can say 'no' to rogue economics and demand regulation.

Multiculturalism may well be our saviour, wresting us out from the straitjacket of our history, thrusting the old continent into an environment where other ethnicities, less cynical and more positive, will play a big role in its future.

I found a correlation between the spreading of democracy after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise in slavery. Now, as countries, former Communist countries, became so-called democratic, people started to be enslaved by their own countrymen.

Globalization is a great thing, but it needs a legal framework in which to blossom.

Europeans are forever the offspring of Machiavelli, trapped in a historical rollercoaster that can bring us a monarchy-toppling French Revolution and then a few years later Napoleon Bonaparte as emperor.

Decolonization actually boosted slavery. As foreign powers withdrew from the colonies, people were enslaved by their own countrymen. And we see it in Africa, we see it in Asia.

I think that anybody can become a terrorist. That's my point of view. But, not everybody can actually kill. In order to reach that level, you have to be deeply convinced.

I've always been very interested in political violence. When I finished high school, I did a small dissertation about political violence and fascism in Italy.

Now, I am not saying that there is one single type of individual who is a better type of terrorist than another. What I am saying is that the circumstances that push certain individuals over the edge, to become terrorists, are generally very, very similar.

Seventy percent of the fish we eat is black market, fished in violation of international laws. Our ignorance makes us unwilling partners in crime. Rogue economics is turning the global market into our worst nightmare.

The majority of the cocoa that we eat, it is actually produced by young kids which are being enslaved in the plantations of the Ivory Coast. Ivory Coast is the largest producer of cocoa.

I had failed the psychological profiling of a terrorist. The central committee of the Red Brigades had judged me too single-minded and too opinionated to become a good terrorist.

Contrary to what many people believe, terrorism is actually a very expensive business.

So I think if we want to turn the table around, more than thinking about how can we starve the Islamic State in terms of money, we should think about how can we maximise the amount of resources that we have in order to secure ourselves. For us, instead of bombing so much, which is extremely expensive, perhaps, you know, we should use some of that money in order to protect ourselves.

Europe has been in the grip of a very serious economic crisis for few years, so there have been major cuts to anti-terrorist funding, to intelligence funding. So we do not have the manpower to carry on this kind of monitoring.

Well, I think here there is some money gathered, especially in Europe, through the web, through connection to a network. I mean, imagine that in Brussels there is only one person, one single person, which is monitoring the traffic that goes on on the internet for the jihadist groups. In Strasbourg there are two people. So I mean you can imagine how easy it is to raise money through the net.

It is not possible to starve an organised terrorist group because it is number one a state, so it levies taxation inside the territory that is controlled by Islamic State. But also the activity, for example the smuggling of oil, is taking place in an area which is a war zone. So of course people will buy that oil because they don't have any alternative. So even if we wanted to stop that kind of trade, it will be very, very difficult to do that.

Terrorism is actually a very expensive business.