Thanks
to dominic@mobilito.com
With
the Mafia a "mere shadow of it's former self", and has assumed a "has
been"
status, why does "Hollywood" continue to focus on Italian
Americans=Crime,
when the serious threats to our society, according to the
FBI
are the Colombian and Mexican Cartels, the Jewish Red Mafiya, and Israeli
"Kosher
Nostra", and the Chinese Tongs, and Japanese Yakuza among others??
Is
it really as Bill Maher says, "Italian Americans are COLORFUL, and they
don't
COMPLAIN", OR is it that for Hollywood to use a "protected, privileged"
class,
would be "Politically Incorrect", OR that I-As are "Typecast", or that
Hollywood
indeed has a "Vendetta" against I-As???
=====================================================
GOTTI
DYING, BUT AMERICAN MAFIA WEAKENED LONG AGO
Yahoo
Lifestyle - Reuters - Wednesday August 22, 2001
By
Grant McCool
NEW YORK (Reuters) - John
Gotti, the flamboyant Mafia boss who became known
to the world as ``The Dapper
Don,'' is dying in prison. But across the United
States and especially in
NewYork, his gangster lifestyle of extortion and
murder is...severely weakened.
There are almost daily prosecutions
and trials of mobsters from New York to
Philadelphia, from Chicago
to Atlanta. But law enforcement officials and old
Mafiosos say times have
most definitely changed for the worse for
Italian-American crime families.
``La Cosa Nostra across the
U.S. is much, much different, ''Keith Trace,
manager of the FBI squads
that fight organized crime in New York, said in an
interview with Reuters...
Former Mafioso-turned-author
Salvatore ``Bill'' Bonanno, said that for a
short period of time in
the mid-20th century, ``we were involved in every
political, social and religious
institution in this country...`` Just like
everything else, our time
came, and went.''
The infamous crime families
may be faded, battered organizations, but the
U.S. public's fascination
with them is apparently unlimited, with demand high
for books, movies, TV shows
and Web sites. The most recent example is the HBO
cable TV drama series ``The
Sopranos' about a New Jersey mobster. It quickly
developed a cult following
and has been watched by millions of viewers for
three straight seasons...
OLD-STYLE MAFIOSO
Bonanno, a self-described
old-style Mafioso who is writing a history of the
American Mafia, said that
long before Gotti's brief rise, Cosa Nostra (''Our
Thing'') had lost any traces
of the traditions of kinship that immigrants
brought from Sicily at the
end of the 19th century to protect each other and
their extended families.
``What's out there today
is nothing more than a parody of what it used to be
because the glue that held
us together -- the trust, the loyalty, the
obedience, the friendships,
the family ties -- is not there anymore,''
Bonanno, 68, said in a telephone
interview from Tucson, Arizona, where he
retired from the life of
organized crime 30 years ago.
His father, Sicilian-born
Joseph ``Joe Bananas'' Bonanno, ran one of the five
most powerful crime families
in New York from 1930 to the end of the 1960s.
At its height, the Bonannos
had interests in New York's concrete business,
Kennedy airport, the Fulton
Fish Market and labor unions.
The elder Bonanno was anonymous
until a police raid on a mobster's meeting in
Appalachian, New York, in
November 1957. He is now 97 years old and also
lives in Arizona.
``People of my world, in
my generation anyway, lived off the values of
kinship and we had respect
for one another, the recognition of power and
place, yours and somebody
else's,'' Bonanno said. ``We had that father
figure, we had that figure
of omnipotence in front of us at all times. That's
no longer with us and I
think that had probably more to do with it than all
the force of the government.''
Bonanno, author of ``Honor
Bound, A Mafioso's Story,'' published in 1999 by
St. Martin's Press, said
he started writing about ``my world'' because he
wanted to ``unbend a twisted,
bended story, much of it created by news media
and much of it created by
law enforcement.''
STAPLE CRIMES
The FBI's Trace, whose 17
years at the FBI have mostly been spent combating
organized crime and gangs,
said the Mafia was turning more and more to staple
crimes -- loan-sharking
and shylocking, gambling and prostitution -- after
being forced out of big
industry and unions...
He said the bull market on
"Wall Street" saw ``wiseguys'' provide the muscle
for so-called ``pump-and-dump''
schemes -- enforcing unlawful agreements
among traders to manipulate
stocks for profit.
A few mobster trials have
made national headlines recently. In early August,
the Jewish owner of an Atlanta
strip club -- the Gold Club -- with alleged
ties to the Gambino crime
family, pleaded guilty... In July, a Philadelphia
jury found a reputed mobster
and six co-defendants guilty of extortion...
Trace said it was dangerous
to assume (anything) from the farce and humor of
mob movies, that these were
benign characters...
"PSYCHOPATHS''
Retired FBI agent Bruce Mouw,...
believes ...``A lot of these guys are
psychopaths ...it isn't
something to glamorize.'' Mouw also said today's
Mafiosi differ from the
mobsters of the 1920s and 1930s in a crucial way.
``There is no honor among
these guys. It's not like 'The Godfather' movies
where you've got the local
Mafioso who settles some neighborhood dispute, and
kinda rights the wrongs.'...
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