Free Republic

In the late interwar period, a few years before the ascendency of Adolf Hitler to the Chancellery, the famed German film director Fritz Lang created a classic of the silent film era. Spione (English: Spies) is a thriller of international espionage, intrigue, and manipulation by a criminal mastermind. Playing diplomats, politicians, and detectives against each other, using prostitutes, opium, and blackmail to control his adversaries, Lang’s arch villain Haghi pushes the world to the precipice of total war before he is brought down by the film’s hero. There is a man operating like this today. He has control of vast...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- Cigarette smuggling costs states an estimated $5.5 billion annually. Much of that traffic takes place on the East Coast along Interstate 95, as cigarettes from lower-tax states are being smuggled to states with higher taxes in the Northeast. A new website, sponsored by RAI Services Co., a subsidiary of Reynolds American Inc., calls the I-95 corridor "The New Tobacco Road."The website draws attention to the problem to encourage states to pass stiffer penalties for smuggling and devote more resources to enforcement.The website, www.thenewtobaccoroad.com, shows how I-95 has become a key transit route for cigarette smuggling from southern...

<p>Arriving now in the mailboxes of more than 10.6 million California voter households: Sen. Leland Yee’s pledge to fight corruption.</p> <p>Yee, indicted earlier this month on corruption and conspiracy charges, paid $6,250 for a statement touting his secretary of state candidacy in the voter information guides that began going out Thursday for the June 3 primary.</p>

Add Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) to the list of Senate Democrats who have benefitted from Koch money. In fact, he might as well pay one of his grandchildren to stitch Koch insignias onto his suit to denote their sponsorship: According to campaign finance records, former Koch Industries lobbyist Robert P. Hall III donated $500 to Reid’s campaign in 2003. Hall worked for Koch Industries from 1998 to 2004, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. He was previously a lobbyist for INVISTA, the Koch Industries subsidiary that Democrats are targeting in their latest campaign to “other” the...

Comrades Hand Over Your Weapons Corrupt politicians are much more of a factor in large urban centers than in rural communities and small towns.    The same applies to organized crime.  it is associated with urban areas.   It is much harder for significant corruption to exist when the amounts are small, the people involved mostly know the politicians personally, and there are no large public works to play favorites with.   A significant exception might be planning and zoning, where local elites have great power, little accountability, and where significant money is at stake. Corrupt politicians and organized crime figures hate...

A "goon-squad" group named The Helpful Union Guys (THUG), members of Ironworkers Local 401 set fires, started riots, and took crowbars to the competition in an effort to protect union jobs. THUGs stalked women, took baseball bats to a Toys R Us site, and even torched a Quaker meetinghouse that dared to use non-union labor. Philly.Com reports 10 leaders of Ironworkers Local 401 charged in racketeering indictment. They called themselves "the Helpful Union Guys" - "THUGS" for short - and woe awaited any contractor who dared cross them by hiring non-organized workers. For, federal authorities alleged Tuesday, this "goon squad"...

Authorities have confirmed that one gunman has been wounded and that five kidnapping victims have been rescued following a Wednesday afternoon shootout in a busy downtown Reynosa shopping district. Mexico's Ministry of National Defense (SEDENA) confirmed that a shootout took place in the "peatonal" or "pedestrian shopping area" of downtown Reynosa on Wednesday afternoon. SEDENA officials reported that soldiers were in the area when they came under fire from an unknown number of men. Reynosa residents reported the gunfire on the social media network Twitter. SEDENA officials reported that shootout ended with one gunman being wounded and five alleged kidnapping...

SNIPPET: "Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics security will be beefed up following Boston Marathon explosions, officials say Russian sports officials said they will beef up security at forthcoming sports events and the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games in the wake of deadly explosions at Boston's marathon that killed three people, and injured over 140 others." "Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics security will be beefed up following Boston Marathon explosions, officials say" SNIPPET: "The World Athletics Championship takes place in Moscow on Aug 10-18, and the event is seen as a dress rehearsal for the 2014 Winter Games in the Black Sea resort...

The fact that the 2014 Winter Olympics is taking place is Sochi, Russia, a city with a mild climate that is close to the volatile region of Chechnya has puzzled many observers. ABC News points the finger to a man named Gafur Rakhimov, Rakhimov is an Uzbek gangster, according to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, with ties to that country's regime. He has been associated with the production and distribution of heroin in Central Asia. He has ties with the Uzbekistan regime and claims to be a legitimate businessman who founded an import/export business in the wake of...

Bill Dal Cerro of the Italic Institute of America [Free for All, Dec. 28] took Dana Milbank to task for allegedly stereotyping Italians in his Dec. 22 Sunday Opinion column, “Godfathers of the Capitol.” But Milbank never used the word “Italian.” He did write “mafia” twice, and he used the phrase “going to the mattresses” once. He also used the term “mob boss.” In my opinion, it takes more effort than it is worth to be offended, no matter what one’s origins, by any of these words. It seems to me that even in “today’s enlightened era,” to use Dal...

In the home stretch of the 2012 presidential campaign, from August to September, the unemployment rate fell sharply — raising eyebrows from Wall Street to Washington. The decline — from 8.1 percent in August to 7.8 percent in September — might not have been all it seemed. The numbers, according to a reliable source, were manipulated. And the Census Bureau, which does the unemployment survey, knew it.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – Food stamp fraud is a “significant problem” in Rhode Island. That was the message U.S. Attorney Peter Neronha sent Thursday when he announced that nine people are facing criminal charges for allegedly defrauding the federally funded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program out of more than $3 million. During a two-year undercover investigation, Neronha said eight Rhode Island residents and one New York man were found to be illegally allowing food stamp recipients to use their EBT cards to obtain cash in exchange for a large surcharge at five Providence convenience stores. ... Six people were charged by...

The women signed up over the past four days with the UPOEG, Xaltianguis community self-defense force commander Miguel Angel Jimenez said MEXICO CITY – More than 100 women in the southern Mexican town of Xaltianguis have taken up arms to protect their community from organized crime groups, a local self-defense force official said Monday. The women signed up over the past four days with the Union of Peoples and Organizations of Guerrero State, or UPOEG, Xaltianguis community self-defense force commander Miguel Angel Jimenez told reporters. “We have an average of nine groups” of community police, with each one made up...

The drug trade is expanding throughout the world as reported by Holly Ellyatt for CNBC: "according to data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and European crime-fighting agency Europol, the annual global drugs trade is worth around $435 billion a year, with the annual cocaine trade worth $84 billion." The United States has the most junkies per capita but drug consumption in Brazil, Argentina and other emerging markets is approaching America's degenerate levels. Meanwhile, Attorney General Eric Holder and his Justice Department have decided to release more drug dealers from U.S. prisons many of whom no...

For most of the first half of my life, I lived in or near Boston. Usually, I am proud of my hometown, its history, its universities and its spirit. After the Boston Marathon bombings, Beantown united under the phrase "Boston Strong." I left in 1985. When I go back, I see how much the city has changed. The Boston I left had a wrong side, too -- a culture that looked away when organized crime terrorized young and old. Boston Wrong has been on parade this month during the long-awaited trial of James "Whitey" Bulger, 83, on 32 federal counts...

SNIPPET: "The prosecution also told the court that most wanted Dawood has also been declared "international terrorist" and is facing stringent United Nations Security Council sanctions. In the running of organised criminal activities against strategic and economic security of India and its citizens, he plays a pivotal role."

The President has put in place an organization with the kind of database that no one has ever seen before in life," Representative Maxine Waters told Roland Martin on Monday. "That's going to be very, very powerful," Waters said. "That database will have information about everything on every individual on ways that it's never been done before

...The pontiff exhorted Mafiosi to change their ways, issuing the call Sunday, a day after the beatification of an Italian priest in Palermo who was slain in 1993 by mobsters after he defiantly preached against the Mafia...

The Mr. Ding-A-Ling truck hadn't been rolling through the streets here for more than a week before Joshua Malatino made his message clear: There ain't enough Fudgsicles in this city for the both of us. Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Cops-Snow-Cone-Joe-stalked-Mr-Ding-A-Ling-in-4479911.php#ixzz2SMcToNAd

Nearly two dozen defendants were arraigned last Friday in a Manhattan federal court for their alleged roles in a gambling ring for the fabulous people but missing from the crowd was reputed Russian mobster Alimzhan Tokhtakhunov who remains a fugitive as reported by Richard Behar for Forbes: "The feds call him a 'major figure in international Eurasian Organized Crime' who has been involved in 'drug distribution, illegal arms sales and trafficking in stolen vehicles.' In the current gambling case, he's accused of using his status as a thief-in-law (or vory v zakone) -- a select group of the highest-level criminals...