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The Mafia


LucidElement

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My grandfather owned a billiard parlor in Chicago. He ran booze for Al Capone. His run was from Cicero (in Chicago) to South Bend Indiana. He died in 1980 when I was 10. I remember he had some neat old hand guns.

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My grandfather owned a billiard parlor in Chicago. He ran booze for Al Capone. His run was from Cicero (in Chicago) to South Bend Indiana. He died in 1980 when I was 10. I remember he had some neat old hand guns.

So tell us more. What do you know about him and his ties to Capone?

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Unfortunately I don't know as much as I should. I know that he borrowed money from Capone to build the pool hall. In return, he would run shine. He only had a thumb and one finger on his right hand. Not sure how he lost his fingers. I will do some research.

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There were a lot of Jews involved in organized crime and the list you provided makes fascinating reading. But they tended to keep their Jewish roots in the background. It was the Irish and the Italians who ruled the roost.

The Jewish mobs were quite powerful, in fact, with the large immigration of millions of Russian Jews during the 90s to Israel, there is a powerful Israeli/Russian Mafiya in Israel.

In *2013*, the Russian mobsters might be at the top of the OC food chain.

They are definitely amongst the top of the heap, we can't discount other Eurasian Organized Crime, Balkan Organized Crime, Italian Organized Crime, and Asian Organized Crime (D-Company, Chinese Triads, Japanese Yakuza, etc.) These are international crime organizations that operate overseas and in multiple countries and often collaborate with one another. But definitely the Russian Mafiya has to rank amongst the most powerful if not thee most powerful.

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They [the Russians] are definitely amongst the top of the heap, we can't discount other Eurasian Organized Crime, Balkan Organized Crime, Italian Organized Crime, and Asian Organized Crime (D-Company, Chinese Triads, Japanese Yakuza, etc.) These are international crime organizations that operate overseas and in multiple countries and often collaborate with one another. But definitely the Russian Mafiya has to rank amongst the most powerful if not thee most powerful.

That's a good point. There indeed is a lot of cohesiveness between crime groups in varied countries around the world, which is a scary proposition. Imagine if they created a real international organized crime syndicate that operates with the same kind of cooperation as the domestic Syndicate. I think that Italian and Sicilian groups do this now.

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That's a good point. There indeed is a lot of cohesiveness between crime groups in varied countries around the world, which is a scary proposition. Imagine if they created a real international organized crime syndicate that operates with the same kind of cooperation as the domestic Syndicate. I think that Italian and Sicilian groups do this now.

It is frightening really.

Italy and Sicily have several organizations combined.

Sicily

Cosa Nostra - Sicily

Stidda - Southern Sicily

Northern Italy

Mala del Brenta

Southern Italy

Basilischi - Basilicata

Camorra - Campania

'Ndrangheta - Calabria

Sacra Corona Unita - Apulia

I want to learn more about the Balkan Organized Crime, such as Albanians, Belgians, Bulgarians, Chechens, Corsicans, Estonians, Macedonians, Montenegrins, and Serbian mafias.

I know for a fact the Albanian mafia is definitely amongst the top of the heap. They're cooperative with alot of other criminal organizations such as the Italians and Russians. In fact, they are commonly considered the worst of the lot for their level of violence and unforgivening reprisals. The Albanian mafia has been likened to the Sicilian mafia during its earliest years. They are very scary people to encounter.

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What about the Mafia?

They're just a bunch of thugs dressed in nice suits and drive nice cars and live in nice houses, all paid for by the people they extort, steal and kill from.

Yet, they seem so "proud" and "puffy" about it.

I have ZERO respect for thugs.

Edited by pallidin
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What about the Mafia?

They're just a bunch of thugs dressed in nice suits and drive nice cars and live in nice houses, all paid for by the people they extort, steal and kill from.

Yet, they seem so "proud" and "puffy" about it.

I have ZERO respect for thugs.

There is a powerful allure of money, power, and respect. These are the top dogs and some rose up from the very bottom of the barrel. Unfortunately, there are people at the bottom of the barrel that see no future except through the opportunities of organized crime. They walk through life like the world owes them something. It is also a very cut-throat business, don't worry most will end up dead and the rest will be living in a cell.

I have zero respect for thugs and their street terrorism too because they prey on innocence and law-abiding citizens. The American mafia has produced some fascinatingly flamboyant characters but Hollywood myths haven't helped either.

I am fascinated by 1930s depression era that experienced an onslaught of bank robbers and public enemies such as John Dillinger, Alvin Karpis, Vernon C Miller, etc. Quite a fascinating era in US and Canadian history. There is an out-of-print biography on Vernon C Miller I simply can not afford and wished I could get.

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WikiLeaks: U.S. worried Israel becoming 'the promised land' for organized crime

U.S. Embassy follows Israeli crime families closely and considers them a serious threat, cable shows.

By Barak Ravid | Dec.03, 2010 | 2:25 AM | 2

The U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv sent a cable to the State Department in May 2009 expressing little confidence in the Israel Police's ability to counter the growing wave of organized crime.

The cable, released on WikiLeaks, said the embassy was taking pains to prevent members of crime families from being issued visas to the United States.

The cable, under the headline "Israel, a promised land for organized crime?" notes that the U.S. Embassy was following Israeli crime families closely and considered them a serious threat to the United States. The embassy has set up a database on the subject with the help of Israeli and American law-enforcement agencies.

"Given the growing reach and lethal methods of Israeli OC [Organized Crime], blocking the travel of known OC figures to the United States is a matter of great concern," according to the cable, signed by James Cunningham, the U.S. ambassador to Israel.

The author, however, is probably the Tel Aviv consul responsible for granting visas to Israelis, or perhaps a U.S. law-enforcement attache.

The cable describes the violence among crime families that began in November 2008 with the murder of Ya'akov Alperon. "Israeli crime boss Yaakov Alperon was assassinated in broad daylight in a gruesome attack on the streets of Tel Aviv, only about a mile away from the Embassy."

Also described is the shooting of an innocent bystander on a Bat Yam beach during an attempt on the life of Rami Amira. The assassinations of Abutbul family members in Netanya are also noted.

The authors point to leading Israeli crimes families such as the Alperons, Abergils, Abutbuls, Rosensteins and Shirazis. They focus on gambling, extortion, trafficking in women, loan sharking and control over the recycling market.

Quoting a source, the authors note that "in recent years, however, the rules of the game have changed ... the old school of Israel OC is giving way to a new, more violent, breed of crime."

They note that "the new style of crime features knowledge of hi-tech explosives acquired from service in the Israeli Defense Forces, and a willingness to use indiscriminate violence, at least against rival gang leaders. New OC business also includes technology-related crimes, such as stock market and credit card fraud, and operates on a global scale."

The embassy informs the State Department about a new police unit, "called Lahav 433. The elite unit operates under the direct command of the police commissioner, and is charged specifically with infiltrating and eliminating Israel's major crime syndicates."

The embassy source, however, "expressed skepticism that recent arrests will bear fruit in the long term without a sustained commitment to enforcement. He noted that many of the crime leaders remain active while in prison and their operations are not hampered significantly even when they are convicted and jailed."

The cable notes that it is unclear how far the crime families have penetrated the government, but it mentions the 2004 arrest of former minister Gonen Segev, who tried to smuggle thousands of Ecstasy pills into Israel, and the election of Inbal Gavrieli to the Knesset in 2003.

"The election of Inbal Gavrieli to the Knesset in 2003 as a member of Likud raised concerns about OC influence in the party's Central Committee. Gavrieli is the daughter of a suspected crime boss, and she attempted to use her parliamentary immunity to block investigations into her father's business."

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/wikileaks-u-s-worried-israel-becoming-the-promised-land-for-organized-crime-1.328480

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Russian Mafia

Posted on July 9, 2012

Russian mafia is considered to be the most powerful crime syndicate in the world. The fact is that the “Russian” mafia is the Jewish mafia.

The Jewish mafia is nothing like their Irish or Italian predecessors in its American or European operations.They are richer, more international in scope and far more violent and ruthless. They kill children. They kill policemen and their families. They kill whomever they like.There has been nothing like it before in the history of the globe. And they are just getting started.

The entire “Russian” mafia is Jewish, without exception, and that they have used this as a shield to deflect criticism. This shield has permitted them to grow http://www.russiawithoutborders.com and prosper. The Jewish organizations throughout the world, led by the Anti-Defamation League, are the beneficiaries of largesse coming from organized crime, and that the organizations in question are aware of it.

In other words, Jewish organized crime is considered an acceptable part of Jewish life, and that Jewish organizations have actually lobbied law enforcement to stop investigations into this phenomenon, almost always with success. The confirmation of Zionist Michael Chertoff, to the post as chief of Homeland Security guarantees that Jewish organized crime in America will not be at the receiving end of the many stings that have targeted the Italian Mafia.

The roots of Jewish organized crime, it is said, go far back into tsarist times. Organized crime http://www.russiawithoutborders.com syndicates assisted Lenin’s gangs in bank robberies and the creation of general mayhem. During the so-called revolution, it was difficult, sometimes impossible, to distinguish between Bolshevik ideologues and Jewish organized crime syndicates. They acted in nearly an identical manner.However, in more modern times, they seem to have had their roots in the waning days of the stagnant USSR under Leonid Brezhnev.

By the late 1970s, the Russian economy was driven by the black market, and the early stages of the Jewish mafia were involved in this black underground. In fact, the Russian socialist economy would have collapsed much sooner if it had not been propped up by the extensive black economy. Soon, the rulers of the black market became so http://www.russiawithoutborders.com powerful they were able to form their own “people’s courts,” which dispensed “justice” completely apart from the Soviet state, and away from its control.Many of these black marketeers had been recently released from the gulag system of prison camps in an earlier era for their black market activities, and the toughness that was required to survive these dungeons served this new criminal elite very well.

The black market acted as a safety valve for the Soviet state for decades, making all estimations of the strength of the Soviet economy subject to speculation. The black market provided many goods and services the overextended Soviet system could not provide. In the gulag, they had formed brotherhoods, much like blacks and Hispanics currently http://www.russiawithoutborders.com do today in US prisons. They formed Jewish bunds that, upon release, served to create deep bonds that exist today, maintaining a highly secretive organization almost impossible to deal with or penetrate.

Sen. Henry “Scoop”Jackson’s famous bill, the Jackson-Vanick law, linked Soviet trade privileges to the treatment of Soviet Jews. It was a bill lobbied heavily for by American Jewish organizations. And while non-Jews could not emigrate from Soviet Union, Jews could.

Much of the Jewish mafia’s penetration into the United States came as a result of these Soviet “boatlifts,” which were partially financed by groups such as the ADL or the Hebrew Aid Society.

http://www.russiawit.../russian-mafia/

Edited by B Jenkins
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"The Italian mafia has a singular link between Italy and America. The Russian Mafiya is more international. The Russians seem crazier than do the Italians. While the mafia uses violence to punish enemies, the Mafiya will kill the enemy, his wife, his children. They kill as a warning and for the sheer joy of tyrannical violence. Because the Russian mob is mostly Jewish, it is a political hot potato, especially in the New York area. In general, state and federal law enforcement agencies were loath to go after Russian mobsters, instead devoting their energies to bagging Italian wise guys, a traditional route to promotion." (Robert I. Friedman. Red Mafiya. How the Russian Mob Has Invaded America, 2000)

"Nobody takes the Russian Jewish mob seriously," said a NYPD detective. "The lack of interest of law enforcement has given them time to grow." A major roadblock was the super sensitivity to the Jewish aspect of émigré crime. The Jewish leaders worried that the resulting negative publicity from acknowledging the existence of Russian Jewish mobsters, of which there were an estimated 5000 in the New York metro region, would foster a wave of anti-Semitism.

"The Mafiya dominates Russia, and has Eastern Europe in a bear hug. It is also turning Western Europe into its financial satrapy, and the Caribbean and Latin America have quickly become sandy playpens for coke and weapons’ deals with Colombian drug lords. There are few nations where the Russian mob does not hold some influence, making efforts to combat it ever more difficult." (R.I. Friedman, 2000)

http://www.americanmafia.com/Feature_Articles_372.html

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whoever it is further up moaning about mafia being thugs etc let me point out there is no real difference between the mafia and govt.

do what they say or you're punished...at least the mafia are honest about it.

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The information I posted from Russian Without Borders site, is actually just partial excerpts from this article, The Judeo-Russian Mafia: From The Gulag To Brooklyn To World Dominion by M Raphael Johnson, PH.D.

Here is the article in its full entirety: http://www.scribd.com/doc/48063026/The-Judeo-Russian-Mafia

or here: http://www.archive.org/stream/TheJudeo-russianMafia/thejudeorussianmafia_djvu.txt

Very shocking and frightening!

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It is frightening really.

Italy and Sicily have several organizations combined.

Sicily

Cosa Nostra - Sicily

Stidda - Southern Sicily

Northern Italy

Mala del Brenta

Southern Italy

Basilischi - Basilicata

Camorra - Campania

'Ndrangheta - Calabria

Sacra Corona Unita - Apulia

I want to learn more about the Balkan Organized Crime, such as Albanians, Belgians, Bulgarians, Chechens, Corsicans, Estonians, Macedonians, Montenegrins, and Serbian mafias.

I know for a fact the Albanian mafia is definitely amongst the top of the heap. They're cooperative with alot of other criminal organizations such as the Italians and Russians. In fact, they are commonly considered the worst of the lot for their level of violence and unforgivening reprisals. The Albanian mafia has been likened to the Sicilian mafia during its earliest years. They are very scary people to encounter.

Thanks for posting that. Some of the groups are new to me. I know about the ones in Calabria and Campania. Some folks think that all Italian organized crime groups are part of the Mafia. They don't understand that the Mafia is based in Sicily. Like you said, there are several groups in Italy. The La Cosa Nostra (our thing) took off in New York City because of immigration demographics. Most new arrivals there came from Sicily when the Mafia took root in the USA. Of course, there were Black Hand and "Mustache Pete" groups in larger cities across the country. The bulk of the Mafia was Sicilian, as far as I know. Now, the Albanians are taking their places in locales where their power weakens. They might be just behind the Russians in terms of growth in New York City.

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The information I posted from Russian Without Borders site, is actually just partial excerpts from this article, The Judeo-Russian Mafia: From The Gulag To Brooklyn To World Dominion by M Raphael Johnson, PH.D.

Here is the article in its full entirety: http://www.scribd.co...o-Russian-Mafia

or here: http://www.archive.o...nmafia_djvu.txt

Very shocking and frightening!

I saw a documentary on Israeli organized crime. From what I understood, some of the criminals were "old school" types who participated in regular crimes like bookmaking and loansharking. Others worked with mostly Russian gangsters in the sex slave ring. The victims were sent from eastern Europe to Tel Aviv to places around the world.

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The bulk of the Mafia was Sicilian, as far as I know. Now, the Albanians are taking their places in locales where their power weakens. They might be just behind the Russians in terms of growth in New York City.

I believe I agree. The Italian mafias were decimated by the FBI, informants, the Organized Crime Control Act, and The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO. What has filled the vacuum in their place is actually worse to be honest. These are really bad and scary people.

Here is excerpts from an article on the Albanian mafia:

Balkan Death: The Albanian Narco-Mafia

Feb 15, 2010

By Marko Lopusina | The network among ethnic Albanian clans, maintained by ancient codes of cruel vendettas, spans the world and equally involves unknown local Albanian clansman as well as the Albanian nobility and the pretender to the throne Albania’s Kong Zog.

Organized narcotic trafficking has been the dirtiest and the quickest business that makes such a large profit that the business became attractive not only for the criminals but even for certain governments. Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey, Bulgaria, Albania, Columbia and Taiwan have often been linked to official drug trafficking.

Adopted from Marko Lopusina's book Balkan Death: The Albanian Narco-Mafia published in 2000

There are only three regions in the world producing narcotics today. These are countries in the South-East Asia, Middle East and South America. All other regions in the world are only markets for the resale of drugs produced in Taiwan, Cambodia, Indonesia, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Peru, Chile and Columbia. According to the Interpol data, the drug route from the South-East Asia to the consumers markets in Western Europe goes from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran to many centers in Turkey – Istanbul being the most important one. Interpol estimates say that about 90% of heroin confiscated in Europe comes from Turkey over Bulgaria and Macedonia. On that route, first Iranian, then Lebanese and finally Turkish drug network appeared 30 years ago. In the meantime, Bulgarian and Albanian mafia grew up on drug smuggling, using the Balkans roads, air and water ways to enter Europe and America.

Production and distribution of narcotics is the main source of income and the base of power in many South American countries, in the Middle Eastern part of Asia and in the north of Africa. The case of Manuel Noriega from Panama, whose coup in Nicaragua was partly drug financed was rather vocal about the power of drug dealers. In some parts of Asia one third of inhabitants make their living by smuggling drugs that sometimes end up on the streets of cities like Zurich and Amsterdam in Europe where drug addicts live and die in the streets.

In the countries where narco-mafia predominates, power and purpose of government has been eliminated. Money made in trade of drugs, then seeks to get legitimate and is often times invested in many developing programs of rich countries.

In former Yugoslavia, the Albanian mafia made $45 million annually in 1990s by controlling the Turkish drug chain from Istanbul through Zurich to New York. A large chunk of this money returned to Kosovo to finance separatist activities inside the province as well as use the money to buy sympathies from the international NGOs that will implicitly advocate Kosovo Albanian separatist agenda.

Ethnic Albanians were initiated as the couriers for the Turkish and Bulgarian state mafia thirty years ago. These used smuggling of narcotics as the source of financing secret political, military and intelligence service operations. The majority of them were recruited in the “Kosovo triangle” Veliki Trnovac-Preševo-Gnjilane, marked on Interpol map as a black point on world drug routes.

French expert on narcotics, Alen Labrus described Kosovo Albanian drug smuggling operations to the Washington Post as being managed by tough, merciless bands that have displaced Turks as the leading smuggling clan:

“Powerful Turkish clans controlling Europe heroin market, realized that Russian, Caucasian and Albanian narco-mafia have invaded their territory in the last ten years, looking for their part of the market and profit. Kosovo ethnic Albanians have become so strong that they keep under their control 70% of drug market just in Switzerland. The war in the Balkans interrupted previous Yugoslav channels of drug smuggling from the Middle East to Europe, but the agile Albanians have opened new distributive centers in the past 4 years and new passages to the West. The Albanian connection represents a heroin route causing great problems to European policemen and European countries,” said Labrus.

American drug domination

With estimated 60 million addicts, the US is an enormous drug market for the Albanian mafia men.

I was told by the Chicago police that the Albanians in America are only one in many strong links to the Colombian drug distribution link today. They keep New York and there are 60,000 of them in Chicago and Toronto and earn about US$ 50 million per year on heroin. American policemen told me that the Albanian underworld is hard to penetrate because the links are ethnic and compact and deal cruelly with informants.

I managed to meet Chicago policemen of the Drug Enforcement Agency- DEA, who told me about their experiences with Albanian drug dealers. The chief of this Department was Eugen Domart, and his associates Anthony Luna and Raymond Schnoor. Then the lieutenant Domart told me:

“ We are small operative group consisting of eight inspectors whose task is to follow Albanian dealers who work on a small scale up to 2 kilos of drugs. Our last seizure was £750 of heroin and £ 350 of hashish. In the Albanian settlement in Chicago and in the state of Illinois their political organization “Bali Combart” deals in smuggling. Beside Albanians there are Serbs from America in the drug network. Last time three of us managed to bring to the court two Albanians. The first was Besim Hasnama, called Beni, and the other was Faik Gashi, known as Toni. Both of them were members of the Albanian clubs in Chicago and in Toronto. For delinquency and illegal entrance in Canada they have been already brought into court. This time they have been caught while smuggling and reselling the drugs. During investigation and in court they did not say anything because they were afraid that “Bali Kombart” would kill all the members of the family in case they say anything to the police!”

In the archive of this inspector I saw a file of Zenun Djukaj, born in 1952 whose wife’s name is Isabelle and who came to USA from Switzerland. He was 185 centimeters tall, with brown hair and bright eyes – it was written in his file. He was suspected to trade in heroin in Washington by the Chicago police.

“ Zenun Djukaj came to Washington from Zurich in 1991 to his brother Redjep Djukaj. He has already sold 800 grams of heroin and 400 grams of hashish in Washington. Now we have been working on the evidences so that we could arrest him and condemn him”, said Eugen Domart to me.

On the list of drug dealers from the Albanian underworld in the Chicago police there were, as I could see, Erdogan and Arif Kurap from Istanbul, Destan Celikovski from Kicevo. And in USA prisons there were already 30 Albanians condemned for drug smuggling throughout America.

In the USA, the goods were also overtaken by the family members. Daut Kadriovski, born in 1949, Albanian from Skopje, is the biggest supplier of heroin of the American market with the turnover of about several hundred million dollars. Our Police has his file as a drug dealer in former Yugoslavia and Europe. He went to Spain over Yugoslavia, developing his business and finally settled and made his throne in America, organizing his own drug distribution network since 1992. FBI has been looking for him unsuccessfully for 6 years. The wanted circular has been stuck to all federal buildings in the USA.

According to the 1994 testimony of then lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani from New York an American Albanian offered his solicitor $400,000 to “give that money to anyone who would kill Alan Cohen, assistant prosecutor and Jack Delmar, DEA agent” who discovered an Albanian mafia cartel in New York.

American gangsters rarely kill law enforcement officials but even Giuliani was threatened with death. As a result, the FBI initiated an official investigation of Albanian drug cartel in New York and discovered that Albanian drug mafia had their head office in New York borough Bronx, that they had their branches in the Detroit and the suburb of Hamtramck as well as in Massachusetts and Illinois.

“ Albanians in USA have their own distribution network, mainly for heroin. But they very often engage in the same business with South Americans and Sicilians”, said Captain Glen McAlpin from Detroit.

“ Today Albanian drug mafia supplies New York with 30% of heroin coming from Yugoslavia”, said Endrew Fernich, DEA official, a special department for fighting the drug addiction in the USA. “That heroin is being distributed throughout America exclusively by the Albanians and the Turks who use their companies as a cover for this dirty business.”

The case of Skender Fici who ran a tourist agency “The Staten Island” and of Theresa Worldwide was written about in the US media. The story notes that his tourist agency was used for quick and short trips to Yugoslavia and Turkey, where the heroin was bought and then smuggled to America. The first kilo of Fici’s heroin arrived in New York in February of 1979 and the job was done with the clan of Xhevdet Lika called Joe Lika, who had his base for processing and distribution of heroin in the artistic part of Manhattan. The drug sales were carried over Chinese boutiques.

Lika worked alone till 1980, but then he joined Xhevdet Mustafa. Their main financier was Albanian king Zogu who used the drug profit to strengthen his monarchy and crown. After the dispute with Lika at the end of 1982, Mustafa disappeared. Police supposed he was killed by the Albanian drug mafia. New associate of Lika clan was Duja Saljani, the owner of a restaurant in New York.

Full article: http://serbianna.com/analysis/archives/427

If the article has any misinformation please note I really don't know a whole lot about the Balkan Organized Crime or the Albanian mafia.

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What about the Japanese Yakuza and the other Asian mobs. Might not strictly be Mafia but just as dangerous. Or the drug cartels in South America? You know, Medellin wasn't exactly a tourist hot spot.

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What about the Mafia?

They're just a bunch of thugs dressed in nice suits and drive nice cars and live in nice houses, all paid for by the people they extort, steal and kill from.

Yet, they seem so "proud" and "puffy" about it.

I have ZERO respect for thugs.

I have to agree with dekker on this,everything you have mentioned sounds a bit familiar doesnt it?

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What about the Japanese Yakuza and the other Asian mobs. Might not strictly be Mafia but just as dangerous. Or the drug cartels in South America? You know, Medellin wasn't exactly a tourist hot spot.

Yeah, I made brief mention of the Japanese Yakuza, Chinese Triads... but there's also the Nigerian mafia, Pakistan mafia, Taiwanese Triads such as Bamboo societys, Vietnamese Triads/mafias, India Mafia, the multi-national D-Company of India and the United Arab Emirates .

I remember watching one documentary some years back in which the Yakuza were portrayed as nothing but a bunch of lazy bodied slobs that banked off their rackets and crimes. Yamaguchi-gumi is the biggest and strongest Yakuza family with 50,000+ members strong.

The biggest and strongest Chinese Triads are the 14K, the Sun Yee On, the Wo Shing Wo, and the Wo Hop To. The memberships of these Triads definitely number in the tens of thousands may even easily surpass a hundred thousand.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and then there is the Columbian drug cartels and the Mexican drug cartels too. But are they transnational? Do they have as much powerbase and territory of operations as these other organized crime groups?

Edited by B Jenkins
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The information I posted from Russian Without Borders site, is actually just partial excerpts from this article, The Judeo-Russian Mafia: From The Gulag To Brooklyn To World Dominion by M Raphael Johnson, PH.D.

Here is the article in its full entirety: http://www.scribd.co...o-Russian-Mafia

or here: http://www.archive.o...nmafia_djvu.txt

Very shocking and frightening!

be very careful where you get your information....that article is published on the barnes review website...which is basically an anti-semitic / neo-nazi site originally set up to promote holocaust denial by a man called willis carto....google him....his friends include the kkk, christian identity loons and others....

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be very careful where you get your information....that article is published on the barnes review website...which is basically an anti-semitic / neo-nazi site originally set up to promote holocaust denial by a man called willis carto....google him....his friends include the kkk, christian identity loons and others....

Oh how humiliating, however Johnson provides his sources at the end of the article, some of which are the same sources used for the article provided on Rick Porrello's AmericanMafia.com that I also posted. Namely Robert I Friedman's journalistic research and his book, Red Mafiya: How The Russian Mafia Has Invaded America.

So I believe the information is genuine.

I didn't google The Barnes Review at all and had no prior knowledge of what it was. Otherwise I would never had posted such a source because it SCREAMS disingenuous. I didnt give a second thought especially with the list of Johnson's sources appropriately listed.

I did however google Matthew Raphael Johnson and he was an editor of TBR and a Orthodox Nationalist? Whatever that entails.

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.

I am fascinated by 1930s depression era that experienced an onslaught of bank robbers and public enemies such as John Dillinger, Alvin Karpis, Vernon C Miller, etc. Quite a fascinating era in US and Canadian history. There is an out-of-print biography on Vernon C Miller I simply can not afford and wished I could get.

Same here B,talk about some interesting characters....They came from all walks of life

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Here is a nice article on the Russian Mafia straight from US International Regional Security Agency:

The Russian Mafia

Organized Crime in the Former Soviet Union

An estimated 80 percent of the private enterprises and commercial banks in Russia's major cities are forced to pay a tribute of 10 to 20 percent of their profits to organized crime.

On April 21, 1994, during a Senate hearing, CIA Director R. James Woolsey said, "Organized crime is so rampant in Russia that it threatens Boris Yeltsin's presidency and raises concern that syndicates will obtain and smuggle Russian nuclear weapons to terrorists or foreign agents."

Woolsey revealed that organized crime syndicates from Russia, Asia, and Africa are forming alliances with traditional Italian and Latin American organizations, creating a formidable threat to international peace and stability.

Our investigation of the Russian mafia has been limited to its activities in Thailand. We feel it we are a much greater threat than the Japanese mafia not only because they are more violent but they are much less predictable. So our investigations have been limited surveillance and information gathering, and we have avoided confronting the Russian mob in Thailand.

In fact by paying off the Thai special police that is supposed to investigate the transnational mafias they are one of the major players in the local area. One of the few bank robberies that the resort town of Pattaya Beach has ever had and the most violent one turned out not to be done by local Thai criminals but by the Russian mafia who had no qualms about shooting down local policemen during the commission of the robbery. Whereas Thai robbers would go to great lengths to avoid armed confrontations with the Thai national police force.

Our Agency's information on the Russian mob will not be discussed here because we still have to go Back to Thailand Infrequently. but below is an outline of the Russian mob and how it works.

"Mafia" Threat

Since the "collapse" of the Soviet Union in 1991, oceans of ink have been poured into press coverage of the Russian Mafia, and the subject has become a staple of Hollywood action fare.

However, there is nothing novel about the activities or ambitions of the Russian mob. In an April 1994 interview published in the International Herald Tribune, Georgian mafia leader Otari Kvantrishvili boasted: "They write that I am the mafia's godfather. It was Vladimir Lenin who was the real organizer of the mafia and who set up the criminal state." In 1995, former Lithuanian Vice President Algirdas Katkus stated that although "Westerners believe that the mafia is the product of post-Communism … in reality it is organized, staffed, and controlled by the KGB."

These observations are confirmed by Yuri Maltsev, a former senior adviser to Mikhail Gorbachev, who told THE NEW AMERICAN that "Russia has become the criminal capital of the world. In Russia today, the organized mafia and the government are one and the same thing. They're two hands of the same ruling elite." This state of affairs began with the founding of the Soviet state. "The Soviet state security apparatus was essentially staffed by criminals collected from Russian prisons," Maltsev recalls. "In short, you had a criminal state using criminals to enforce what it called the law."

One irony noted by Maltsev is that the Soviet state, like any totalitarian enterprise, "essentially prohibited any form of social or economic activity that didn't advance the interest of the state. In short, they criminalized everything." The "collapse" of the Soviet Union in 1991 brought "little, if any, change in the organization of the criminal justice system in Russia," Maltsev wrote in the December 1995 issue of The Freeman. "Russia's prisons, probably the worst in the world, are still filled with over 100,000 entrepreneurs, most of whom were convicted for commercial and business practices absolutely legal in civilized countries. Private production and exchange - the most natural of human activities - are still criminalized through a confiscatory tax system and monstrous regulatory mechanism."

With 111 different federal and local taxes, a tax code even more inscrutable than our own, and top rates which run as high as 140 percent of income, it should come as no surprise that there are more than 600,000 tax convictions each year in Russia. Furthermore, Maltsev points out that "ex-communists" still occupy more than 60 percent of local government and bureaucratic positions and 90 percent of all positions in the central government.

Accordingly, Russians still suffer beneath the basic conditions of totalitarianism: Complete insecurity of person and property, fear of summary arrest for ill-defined or undefined offenses, and an omnipresent sense of incipient violence. Lenin defined the governing philosophy of his state as "power without limit, resting directly upon force, restrained by no laws, absolutely unrestrained by rules." This remains the governing philosophy of "post-Soviet" Russia.

Whom Are We Helping?

Soviet analyst J. Michael Waller of the American Foreign Policy Council informed THE NEW AMERICAN that "U.S. aid and trade policies with Russia have had the net effect of entrenching the nomenklatura and the KGB oligarchy at the expense of Russians sympathetic to the West." Joint U.S.-Russian law enforcement initiatives are used by the "ex"-communist elite to preserve this hegemony: "We're collaborating with the very people who created the problem of organized crime in the former Soviet Union. In part, this is because American policymakers tend to 'mirror-image' everything in our relationship with Russia. They look at Russian organized crime through the lens of our own experiences, and the Russians are only too happy to play along."

Frank Cilluffo, an adviser to a Senate task force on global organized crime, told THE NEW AMERICAN, "Most of the FBI's cooperative initiatives are conducted with the MVD, which is more or less their analogue in Russia." Although Cilluffo maintains that the MVD does not have significant connections to the Russian mafia, he acknowledges that "we can't exonerate any of the [Russian] services" because of Russia's "endemic corruption." As a result, "It's almost impossible to know when we're helping the criminals."

Writing in the December 1995 issue of the Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, Michael Waller and fellow Soviet analyst Victor J. Yasmann observed: "When analyzing the Russian government's approach to fighting organized crime … it becomes apparent that the country's political, economic, security, and law enforcement elites fundamentally are part of the problem." This is not merely a result of runaway corruption, but rather a product of long-term strategic planning:

What is often seen as a "spontaneous" development of Russian organized crime … in many instances is a process unleashed by the communist/state security oligarchy, and in many important aspects is guided by them.... KGB guidance virtually transformed the Russian Mafia, which only a decade ago looked underdeveloped and provincial at best. KGB officers provided the criminal chiefs with the institutional and organizational experience, professional intelligence, and tradecraft, and later shared their contacts, first domestically and later internationally.

Looting and Pillaging

In addition to its efforts to strengthen the mob, the KGB also laid the groundwork for almost all post-Soviet joint economic ventures with the West. According to Waller and Yasmann, a KGB training and operations manual published in 1989 stated that in the era of perestroika, "'active reserve' or 'operational reserve' officers no longer needed to mask their identities when approaching foreigners; indeed, it was becoming an asset to announce one's 'former' career in the KGB because foreign businesses thought it attractive - chekists [secret policemen] could provide security and get things done like no one else." By 1992, an estimated 80 percent of all joint ventures in the Russian Federation had been infiltrated, or were controlled outright, by the KGB.

Similar measures were undertaken by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) to provide for its continued ascendancy even after it formally surrendered its legally mandated political monopoly in Russia. On August 23, 1990, CPSU Administrative Director Nikolai Kruchin issued a document entitled "Emergency Measures to Organize Commercial and Foreign Economic Activity for the Party," which outlined the fashion in which the Soviet nomenklatura would supervise "privatization" efforts. According to Kruchin, "confidentiality will be required and in some cases anonymous firms will have to be used disguising the direct ties to the CPSU. Obviously the final goal will be to systematically create structures of an 'invisible' party economy...."

Within the "invisible party economy," party members are subject to discipline and conspiratorial control as complete as any which prevailed during the Soviet era. Dissident Russian author Lev Timofeyev writes that every "ex"-communist in charge of a "private" venture is "bound hand and foot to his social class - the apparatus, the military-industrial complex, and the KGB. He is dependent on that trinity in everything he does, because he obtains his property rights from them for a price: a silent oath of loyalty. If he breaks that oath, he will not remain a property owner for long."

Nor are genuine entrepreneurs spared the rigors of party loyalty. Russian businessman Konstantin Borovoi has described the shakedown tactics jointly employed by the KGB and the Russian mob: "First [comes] the racket, strong pressure, then a KGB proposal to 'help.'" The "help" comes in the form of "penetration of KGB officers into the top leadership of the company, or the leadership of the company [must establish] close contact with the KGB, and the company [must cease] to exist as an independent commercial organization."

Thieves' World

Were the impact of the KGB-organized Russian mob confined to U.S.-Russian joint economic ventures, the case for disengagement would be compelling enough. However, given that the KGB's Russian mob continues to pursue traditional Soviet strategic objectives through its increasingly powerful connections in the global underworld, disengagement becomes an imperative.

Russian authors Georgy Podlesskikh and Andrei Tereshonok have documented that the KGB took the leading role in "advancing and consolidating the 'horrible mutant,' the modern professional underworld," on a global basis. This has provided a new strategic avenue for Marxist ambitions: "n contrast to the 'world proletariat,' about whom the Kremlin's adventurists dreamed, the criminal clans of all countries are indeed moving to the quickest unification."

Frank Cilluffo points out that "because the Russian mob has been controlled by elements of the Communist Party and the KGB, there's no question that they [the mob] have the tradecraft, techniques, contacts, and resources to pursue both personal enrichment and political designs in the post-Soviet era. The KGB's still got their active networks all over the world, including their sleeper networks. Nobody knows the extent to which those networks are involved in mob activity, or are carrying out strategic designs on behalf of the Russian state - and these objectives overlap, of course."

The case of Filipp Bobkov, the former First Deputy Chairman of the KGB, exemplifies the role of the mobbed-up KGB networks. Bobkov was "cashiered" from the KGB for his role in the bloody KGB-Spetnaz crackdown on the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius in 1991. As a "private" citizen, Bobkov pursued the KGB-ordained strategy of marketing his services to Western investors, and quickly assumed control of a banking group in Moscow. Bobkov swiftly assembled a collection of KGB veterans who had been stationed in Burma, Cambodia, Laos, and Korea. This was the nucleus of what has become known as the "Moscow Narco-Group," which coordinates drug-running operations in Romania, Colombia, Peru, and Cuba. Its main base of operations is the Russian naval base at Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam - a communist regime which is next in the queue for "joint ventures" and American foreign aid.

The "Moscow Narco-Group" is just one identifiable example of the role carried out by the KGB mob's global network. In her book Thieves' World: The Threat of the New Global Network of Organized Crime, the late Claire Sterling observed: "As the old geopolitical frontiers fell away, the big crime syndicates drew together, put an end to wars over turf, and declared a pax mafiosa. The world has never seen a planetwide consortium like the one that came into being with the end of the communist era." By 1993, wrote Sterling, "The big syndicates of East and West were pooling services and personnel, rapidly colonizing Western Europe and the United States, running the drug traffic up to half a trillion dollars a year, laundering and reinvesting an estimated quarter of a trillion dollars a year in legitimate enterprise."

Perhaps the most shocking aspect of the KGB-created mob network's activities is the impunity with which it conducts its affairs. A remarkable account published in the January 22nd issue of New York magazine describes how over the past two years the Russian mob has received at least $40 billion - all of it in uncirculated $100 bills still in their Federal Reserve wrappers - via Delta Flight 30, which flies from New York City to Moscow five times a week.

The Russian mob, reports New York, "has been using an unimpeded supply of freshly minted Federal Reserve notes to finance a vast and growing international crime syndicate.... The Russian mob's monstrous growth has been aided considerably by its ability to quickly and easily launder its dirty criminal proceeds into clean - and now supposedly counterfeit-proof - U.S. hundreds. Russian banks have been eager to assist, which is not surprising given that a good number are owned outright by Russian mobsters." An official at the federal Comptroller of the Currency office told New York that the laundered currency "is used to support organized crime; it's used to support black market operations.... Yet it appears that at least part of the federal government sees nothing wrong with it."

Stephen Handleman observes that the Vorovskoi Mir (Thieves' World), a thriving Russian underground which has existed since the 1600s, has always exhibited "a complex paramilitary structure whose exclusive rituals and codes of honor were often copied by the early Bolshevik conspirators.... The nomenklatura's principal attributes - a paramilitary hierarchy, hostility toward outsiders, and a propensity for illegal behavior - established its similarity with the criminal societies of the old Russian underworld. The similarity was no coincidence. The organizational model that the Bolsheviks found so attractive in the Russian criminal bands … was internalized in the modern Communist Party structure."

It was a common theme in Soviet propaganda that organized crime was an affliction to which socialist societies are immune. This illusion was disposed of in the era of perestroika in part to provide the KGB security organs with a new rationale: They were to defend "reforms" against the new "criminal element," a role that was defined in an order issued in October 1991 by then-KGB chief Vladimir Kryuchkov.

Many Russians, understandably terrified by the KGB-abetted rise of organized crime, support authoritarian measures to preserve some semblance of order and domestic tranquility. One Russian who understands the larger picture is author Yevgenia Albats. In her book The State Within a State: The KGB and Its Hold on Russia - Past, Present, and Future, Albats recalls:

At the height of Perestroika, in the winter of 1990-91, the KGB announced that it was going after the Mafia's economic stranglehold, whereupon Gorbachev issued a decree granting agents the right … to "unimpeded entrance to the premises of businesses, offices, organizations" … and production spaces used by citizens for enterprises of individual labor.

"The true aim of this campaign has been achieved," Albats records. "Our citizens have been reminded that whatever they do, whatever work they take up, the Chekists will be watching them." This is a particularly bitter realization for Albats. On the evening of August 21, 1991, Albats recalls, she and a few close friends held a quiet celebration as a crane removed the statue of KGB founder Felix Dzerzhinsky from its former place of prominence outside the organization's Lubyanka Square headquarters. "And yet," Albats ruefully records, "as God is my witness, on that night, we left worse Chekists in place."

Global Implications

The KGB-controlled Russian mob is thus used by the security organs to preserve the communist oligarchy's control. Further, the threat of the global mob network is being used as a rationale for the consolidation of police authority in the United Nations. As British Sovietologist Christopher Story observes:

[T]he "problem" of transnational crime and global terrorism is being "addressed" ever more intensively, as Governments respond to the perceived "need" for international cooperation in this area and even as the "former" Soviet Bloc states with which the West is seeking to cooperate ever more anxiously, intensify their global criminal operations. In all probability, many high-profile "international" terrorist incidents, culminating in a "nuclear accident," are planned. Urged on by agents of influence in the West and the United Nations, Western Governments are being "softened up" for "global solutions" to this "international crime" epidemic.

The Clinton Administration eagerly advanced the most corrupt and dangerous of those "global solutions" - intimate cooperation between the FBI and the worst surviving elements of the Soviet security state coupled with relentless subsidy of KGB-controlled joint ventures. In this fashion the "strategic partnership" between the U.S. and Russia is used to construct a global "robbers' state."

http://irs-agency.us/russian_mafia.htm

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