A news item issued here in Italy today that may be of interest.

>NEWS ITEM<



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Hi Carole,

Interesting story, thanks for posting it

There was a big Gambino crime family takedown in NYC a couple of weeks ago. I think the Italian Police made arrests in Sicily at the same time. I wonder if this N'drangheta take down is connected.

I'm always torn about how the media potrays these guys (my opinion stems from American-Italian gangsters, not those in italy, which i understand is a totally different story). Last week, the press kept showing this pagent-like footage of the FBI parading these bad guys into a police armored car. Now, i don't doubt that these guys are criminals and should be put in jail, however, i do criticize the amount of time, money and effort the FBI & other law enforcement official devote to taking down some of these very petty gangsters. Most of these guys don't make much money and i think that more powerful organized crime figures from other ethnicities are ignored because its "sexier" to arrest Italian gangsters.

Again, i'm not saying that Italians are not involved in Organized crime, but we are by far not the only ones. I've done research about this for my thesis during grad school and i found that only about 30 to 40% of organized crime stories from the 1920s to 1950s involved Italians. The rest were Jewish gangsters, Irish gangsters, African-Americans and just plain old Americans. And this is research done in North Jersey, the fabled land of the Sopranos!

ok, i'll end my rant now, thanks for listening,
Mauro

Thanks for posting this Carole.

The raids here in NYC caught my eye, as a Vincenzo and Gaetano Savoca were nabbed !!

Mike are they related to you???

I hope not! We had one family member like that, but he's gone.

Another news item regarding the above arrests:

>MAFIA ASSETS SIEZED<