Letter from Rome: This has been a week when it was hard to avoid the Mafia, or at least some consideration of the phenomenon of organised crime in Italian society, writes Paddy Agnew.
Just yesterday, six people, including two former Deputies and one journalist, were arrested in Reggio Calabria, southern Italy on charges of "Mafia association" and of having tried to intimidate magistrates.
The two former Deputies arrested were Amedeo Matacena of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party and Paolo Romeo of the former Social Democrats, whilst the arrested journalist was Francesco Gangemi, editor of the review, Il Dibattito.
Amongst those magistrates subjected to intimidation because of investigations into alleged links between organised crime and politicians was Calabria's chief anti-Mafia investigator, Enzo Macri, who commented: "Now one understands just why Il Dibattito for the last five years has carried out a relentless campaign of defamation, denigration and de-legitimatisation to the detriment of various magistrates in Reggio, including myself. That magazine was quite simply the official paper of the 'ndrangheta (Calabrian Mafia)".
It was important to note, too, that on top of the arrests, a further 34 people, including judges, lawyers, police officers, bank officials, doctors and civil servants, were formally notified that they are under investigation for Mafia-related offences.
Italy's chronically slow judicial system will eventually get around to dealing with this case but, in the meantime, the basic premise of the prosecution's charges is all too obvious. Namely, that without friends in high places - in the courtroom, the police station, the hospital, the bank and the newspaper news room - organised crime goes nowhere.
Just last week, that same thought crossed one's mind when reading that Salvatore "Toto" Cuffaro, head of Sicily's regional government, had been sent for trial on charges of having done favours for "Cosa Nostra". He denies any wrongdoing.
He is accused of being part of a group of local officials and politicians in regular contact with Mafia bosses, including the legendary Bernardo Provenzano. For the uninitiated, Provenzano, the "Boss of Bosses", has been on the run for more than 30 years, outwitting police attempts to capture him.
Closer to home, in a high security prison in Viterbo, just up the road from here, there emerged this week the story of how one Sicilian mafioso continued to run his "business" from behind bars. Under the terms of his long term incarceration, Leonardo Vitale was allowed to use a fax machine and this he duly did, sending messages to his wife about the "workers", the "cows" and the "milk". Given that Vitale comes from Particino, a rural area close to Palermo, this might sound normal enough. Investigators, however, were not so sure. Convinced that Vitale's wife, Maria Gallina, was running the "business" for her husband, they put her under surveillance.
Soon enough, the investigators soon cracked the not overly complicated fax code, discovering that the "workers" were the foot soldiers sent out to collect protection money, the "cows" were the shops and commercial concerns hit for the protection money and "milk" represented the ill-gotten gains of extortion. On Monday, Ms Gallina and two relatives were arrested on charges of "Mafia association".
Even if you were not following the news closely this week, however, the Mafia still kept getting in the way. For example, on Monday and Tuesday night, "Canale 5", the main channel in Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's commercial TV empire, gave its prime time evening slot to a two part dramatised version of the life and times of Sicilian anti-Mafia investigator, Paolo Borsellino, the man blown up by the Mafia in the summer of 1992.
Perhaps the most unusual and encouraging Mafia-related development of the last week, however, came from Rome's Third University where a new course of studies entitled, "The History of Organised Crime", attracted more than 500 students on its opening day, much to the surprise of the course directors.
One of those who addressed the opening session was Pier Luigi Vigna, Italy's chief anti-Mafia investigator.
He told reporters: "There simply isn't enough knowledge about how the Mafia is structured and how it operates. Only people who see it in action really know. We will use real legal cases to discuss and explain the issues because this is one of Italy's most real problems."
He said it.