Free Republic

MONTREAL — For the third time in just over four years, the main Italian Catholic church in Montreal hosted a funeral for Canada's reputed first family of Mafia power. A cortege of 11 limousines followed a hearse carrying the body of Vito Rizzuto, the multilingual don who ran an international crime syndicate that frustrated Canadian law enforcement for decades. The 67-year-old Sicilian-born Montrealer died of complications from lung cancer a week earlier. About 100 people attended Monday's funeral, mainly close relatives of the don. None of them spoke to reporters. It was a far cry from the big crowds that...

The 'Ndrangheta or Calabrian Mafia has emerged as the world's most powerful crime group due to its obscene profits from the cocaine trade in Europe, and it further has become entrenched in Australia, Canada and the United States with surprisingly little push back from law enforcement in those countries. Indeed, Nicola Gratteri, a top anti-Mafia prosecutor in Italy warns that "this mafia is quickly spreading in the United States, particularly in Florida and New York" as reported by Beatrice Borromeo for The Daily Beast: Gratteri's latest operations have led to the sentencing of 34 'Ndrangheta members and have uncovered a...

Toronto-- In the true life stranger than fiction category, Cantor Fitzgerald Securities and its subsidiary eSpeed network are one for the books. Cantor Fitzgerald’s New York office, on the 101st-105th floors of One World Trade Center, lost 685 employees in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks–more than any other employer. Its e-Speed electronic bond-trading network lost 125 souls. Happily for the disciples of "Kyoto Mo" (Canadian Maurice Strong), who argues that global climate change is driven by anthropogenic gases emitted by inhabitants of the Anglosphere, a six-member eSpeed carbon-credit trading team escaped death. Their annual one-day fishing trip had to...