Posted on 06/16/2012 3:58:24 PM PDT by AtlasStalled
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 new route in the mafia's international drug trade, centered in New York City, where the crime syndicates can secure easy access to cocaine shipped in by Mexican cartels. Gratteri relies on the support of local intelligence for his operations, and he's been able to make more international arrests of 'Ndrangheta members than any other Italian prosecutor in large part because he's gained the trust of colleagues overseas. "Gratteri is a great investigator; it's a pleasure to work with him and nobody knows the 'Ndrangheta better than he does," says an FBI special agent who works in New York. "The 'Ndrangheta has become one of our top priorities in recent months, and we need to be able to rely on people like Gratteri to face it."
Some mob watchers believe that Ndrangheta or Calabrian Mafia clans from New York City and Quebec are responsible for the ongoing mob war against the Rizzuto clan from the Sicilian Mafia in Montreal, QB Canada for control over the drug trade.
The Rizzuto clan allegedly is headed by Vito Rizzuto who currently is incarcerated at the supermax facility in Florence, CO on a 2007 racketeering conviction involving the 1981 New York City murders of three Bonanno capos during an internal power struggle. While serving his time Vito's son Nick Jr. got whacked in 2009 and his father Nicolo in 2010. The Rizzuto clan allegedly pushed back last November by murdering former Bonanno boss Salvatore Montagna who some suspect had aligned with the 'Ndrangheta clans in the power play for Montreal.
Gratteri says the war on drugs generally and the war on the 'Ndrangheta specifically is unwinnable:
"I am simply being realistic," Gratteri says. "No matter how many investigations we carry on in the world, we recover less than 10 percent of the cocaine that arrives in Europe. 'Ndrangheta members are so many: strong, clever, determined people. Secrecy is their motto and, moreover, they don't have a godfather that leads on everyone, which means that no arrest can really threaten the existence of the organization. Eradicating the 'Ndrangheta? Impossible."
Of course, it's going to be hard for U.S. law enforcement to land even a blow against the Calabrian Mafia unless the country first gets over its terrorism hysteria and once again dedicates resources to the real threat from organized crime.
Separate maybe, it would depend.
They will join forces if they feel threatened.
They’ve been around for a while, you occasionally will encounter them even here. There was a girl going to grad school and tending bar on the side that I just fell for once, hard. Until I met her father, that is. Very hard, cold for an Italian and an explosive foul temper. I wasn’t the one for her, she was reserved for one of her own was the distinct impression with which I was left. We saw one another a few more times but there was that odd love/fear/reverence thing going on with her, and it faded out. She’s still quite beautiful, I’ve seen her around all these years later, but married.
Yes, its true many people who were young knew hard work. I should have elaborated. My granddad came with zip and stared an entire company in NY when he was nineteen, car routes, drivers...the whole shabang. I can see if it took years to build up a business it would make sense, that was not the case with grandpa.
My Dad left NY during WW11, only on occasion went back. I never really knew the family growing up, he did not want us too, we have reconnected in our older age.
My oldest brother went back and started a company in NJ, were he reconditioned 50 gallon barrels. He cleaned out the contents, repainted and resold. I do not have one cousin or nephew who will talk about what they do for a living.
Just saying.
;-)
Your family doesn’t seem ‘family’ like.
Sounds like a good theme for another Miami Vice movie.
Yes, that’s true, when it comes to Italian vs not Italian, they all stick together. Too bad Americans don’t have the same esprit de corps!
No mob, of any kind or nationality, can exist without a corrupt government to feed off of. Mobs are government symbiotes - if you don't take away the corrupt host, they always return, because they're the other half. Mobs are the main way government workers get kickbacks for their positions in government (because both the "legal" and "illegal" mobs are, in fact, identical).
Governments do two things, protect the mobs, and "crack down" on mob customers, thus increasing the number of laws agains the populus. So for the mob and the government, it's win-win. The only time a mob boss gets in trouble, is when he cheats the wrong government agency. And the only time the government gets in trouble, is when they let the mobs get out of control and the people revolt.
It never ends well.
Yeah, they have always been here, the Neapolitan mafia too, but the Sicilians have been the dominant ones for a long time.
>> “Your family doesn’t seem ‘family’ like.” <<
.
It is a huge family! Over 100 members in San Jose alone.
Each of the 3 brothers had from 10 to 15 kids. One of the brothers started a general engineering construction company in the ‘50s that built the Hwy 17 freeway from milpitas to Santa Cruz. His kids are spread all over California, Arizona, and Nevada. My mother’s branch is mostly in the East Bat area.
Palermo is one of the places my grandfather's ship stopped at en route.
I think conditions have been bad there much longer than 100 years and long before there was an international commerce in illegal drugs. I remember reading something from the early 1800s by someone from the town of Tropea in Calabria complaining about the horrible conditions there then—I forget if Mafia-type organizations were part of the problem but I wouldn’t be surprised.
My husband’s grandfather’s name is spelled differently in every census from 1890 to 1940. The only reason we know its him is because he never moved.
It is a difficult Lithuanian name. The original spelling isn’t even close to what it became. Yet, if you go to the Lithuanian/Polish cemetery in Chicago the name that is not common in the US is loaded with people with his last name.
I guess they decide it was just easier to go with the simplified spelling.
The genealogy search can be fun.
My grandmother said Sicily was taken over by so many different countries for centuries, that they formed their own quasi government to stay as a cohesive group to do what they needed to do.
My ‘family’ had great respect for them. One of my aunts had a gun safe, they all carry guns but when they went to her house she would not let them sit at the table armed.
Exciting group.
Obviously they hated the mafia intensely, after the killing and theft of everything they owned in Scicily.
They left the catholic church soon after arriving in Ca, and found Christ, and attended one of the earliest AOG congregations in SJ. That caused some friction until the whole bunch finally landed in the same church.
>> “One of my aunts had a gun safe, they all carry guns but when they went to her house she would not let them sit at the table armed.” <<
.
Sounds like my mother. My Bro and I carried our .22s with us almost everywhere we went, but when they came in the house, they had to be put away.
Ready for a long story? You’re gonna get it anyhow...
Thirty or so years ago I met a young lady who had moved from Jacksonville, Florida to Poulsbo, Washington all by herself. We dated for several years and I heard all about her deceased father who had been an “organizer” for the unions in Florida. He had moved to Florida from Philadelphia late one night while she was a small child.
During the time we were together I worked on a construction project of a shopping center. The entire project was owned by a man with a very Sicilian name. We got along fine until one day I noticed his crews doing stuff that just wasn’t legal. If an inspector called them on it they’d just have a cup of coffee while the “old man” made a phone call and then everyone would go back to work.
In my idiocy I thought I should do something about this so I called a local TV reporter and told him all about it. He assured me that he had been wanting to get something on this particular Sicilian for a long time and that I should not talk to anyone else about the matter until he had some spare time to work on it. I thought I had done the right thing.
The next day I was laid off.
Two months later I was back on the job and the “old man” was right there to greet me. He was pleasant and friendly but I knew that he knew and he was just letting me know who was “boss.”
Remember the girlfriend? We were driving home one night and I told her about my little experience. She asked me the name of the “old man” and when I told her she dug around in her purse, pulled out a small notebook and leafed through the pages until she found what she was looking for. She read something in there - I don’t know just what - and then after a pause said, “Leave that man alone. He can hurt you.”
I was impressed. Especially since she always carried a snub-nosed .38 in that purse, ostensibly in case one of her father’s old “friends” dropped by.
I started rooting for the mafia group when I read “obscene profits”.
In the Bible they call it “Mystery Babylon the Great.”
It has run the world since the time of Nimrod, or possibly earlier. It has two branches: The eccliastical, and the secular, and they are attached at the hip.
People who are a part of it try to rationalize the Bible references to it by saying that an ancient city named Babylon will be rebuilt in the near future, but there really never was a city named Babylon; Nimrod’s city was named Ninus, or Nineveh, not Babylon.
The cover-up goes on! :o)
The Mafia, and organized crime in general, is the best reason to legalize drugs and prostitution. Most of the profits of organized crime would dry up.
They are the toe kicking the ball, they are the eggplant wiseguys not the cannoli wiseguys.
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