ZeroZeroZero - Look at cocaine and all you see is powder, look through cocaine and all you see is the world.

From the author of the #1 international bestseller Gomorrah: A Personal Journey into the Violent International Empire of Naples' Organized Crime System, comes an electrifying investigation of the international cocaine trade, as vicious as it is powerful, and its hidden role in the global economy

In many countries, “000” flour is the finest on the market. It is hard to find, but it is soft, light, almost impalpable—like the purest, highest quality grade of cocaine. ZeroZeroZero is also the title of Roberto Saviano’s unforgettable, internationally bestselling exploration of the inner workings of the global cocaine trade—its rules and armies, and the true depth of its reach into the world economy and, by extension, its grasp on us all.

Gomorrah: A Personal Journey into the Violent International Empire of Naples' Organized Crime System, Saviano’s explosive account of the Neapolitan mob, the Camorra, was a worldwide publishing sensation. It struck such a nerve with the Camorra that Saviano has had to live under twenty-four-hour police protection for more than eight years. During this time he has come to know law enforcement agencies and officials around the world. With their cooperation, Saviano has broadened his perspective to take in the entire global “corporate” entity that is the drug trade and the complex money-laundering operations that allow it to function, often with the complicity of the world’s biggest banks.

The result is a truly harrowing and groundbreaking synthesis of intimate literary narrative and geopolitical analysis of one of the most powerful dark forces in our economy. Saviano tracks the shift in the cocaine trade’s axis of power, from Colombia to Mexico, and relates how the Latin American cartels and gangs have forged alliances, first with the Italian crime syndicates, then with the Russians, Africans, and others. On the one hand, he charts a remarkable increase in sophistication as these criminal entities diversify into many other products and markets. On the other, he reveals the astonishing increase in the severity of violence as they have fought to protect and extend their power.
Saviano is a writer and journalist of rare courage and a thinker of impressive intellectual depth, able to see the connections between far flung phenomena and bind them into a single epic story. Most drug-war narratives feel safely removed from our own lives; Saviano's offers no such comfort. As heart racing as it is heady, ZeroZeroZero is a fusion of disparate genres into a brilliant new form that can rightly be called Savianoesque.

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Sam Giancana Ordered JFK Whacked!!

"Mafia Princess" Antoinette Giancana, daughter of the late Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana, claims in her book that her father ordered the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. If true, this would make Sam Giancana guilty of one of history's worst crimes. But that doesn't trouble Antoinette Giancana. "The Kennedys were not kind to my father," she said. "They were just as evil and corrupt as any mafioso."

Giancana teamed up with two University of Illinois at Chicago doctors to write JFK and Sam: The Connection Between the Giancana and Kennedy Assassinations. The 217-page book was published by Cumberland House Publishing. Giancana's co-authors are Dr. John Hughes, a neurologist, and Dr. Thomas Jobe, a psychiatrist.

Jobe earlier wrote Lyndon Baines Johnson: The Tragic Self, a Psychohistorical Portrayal. He and Hughes then teamed up on a book about the JFK assassination, and enlisted Giancana's help. Hughes said he did the bulk of the research and writing. But he said Giancana is getting top billing in the list of authors because she's better known.

Giancana's best-selling 1984 memoir, Mafia Princess, was made into a TV movie starring Tony Curtis as Sam and soap opera star Susan Lucci as Antoinette. Now 70, Giancana lives in Elmwood Park. She's a sales associate for a retail chain and markets Giancana Marinara Sauce ("Just Like Dad's, Maybe Better").

Hughes said he read more than 40 books on the JFK assassination and spent almost every weekend for 13 years writing and rewriting the book. He wrote that he used his expertise in neurology to analyze how Kennedy's body moved after he was shot. This led Hughes to conclude that there must have been a shooter on the infamous grassy knoll to Kennedy's right.

The mafia, Hughes wrote, helped Kennedy carry Illinois in the close 1960 election, assuring his victory. In return, JFK was supposed to go easy on the mob. Reneging on the deal, Kennedy unleashed his brother Bobby, the attorney general, on organized crime, the authors claim.

In 1975, Sam Giancana was gunned down while cooking sausage in the basement kitchen of his Oak Park home. The book says the CIA killed Sam Giancana to prevent him from telling a congressional committee about his role in CIA plots to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

These theories, scoffs Sam Giancana biographer Bill Brashler, "are as old as the Easter bunny. It's just silliness." Brashler said Kennedy owed his election to the first Mayor Daley, not to the mob. And even if Sam Giancana felt betrayed, it wasn't the mob's style to murder politicians, much less the president. Finally, it was a trusted bodyguard who killed Sam Giancana, not the CIA. "It was a classic mob hit," Brashler said. Brashler said he interviewed Antoinette Giancana for his book, The Don: The Life and Death of Sam Giancana. He concluded she knew next to nothing about her dad's business.

Antoinette Giancana said that for her book she was able to recall long-buried memories during extensive interviews conducted by Jobe.

Conspiracy buffs have proposed 250 theories to explain what "really" happened Nov. 22, 1963, said Ruth Ann Rugg of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, a JFK assassination museum in Dallas. But Rugg said the only credible explanation is that Lee Harvey Oswald alone shot Kennedy. Conspiracy theorists simply can't accept that such an insignificant drifter changed history by himself. "We want to believe that there was more to it, that there were huge forces involved," Rugg said.

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Goodfellas Named Top Film

As reported by the Scotsman, Total Film Magazine has named Goodfellas as its top film . Some excerpts from the article:

Total Film magazine, which compiled the list, said: "Goodfellas has it all - story, dialogue, performances, technique. It is slick, arguably the slickest film ever made. But it is also considered, layered and freighted with meaning."

The Godfather: Part II, another film that has topped countless movie polls, is fifth.

The Scotsman's film critic, Alistair Harkness, hailed Goodfellas as a "perfect combination of material, director and story". He said: "It is so visceral and exciting. It's a modern classic and that's why people love it so much. It tends to be at the top of most people's lists of modern movies anyway, so I'm not surprised.

However, he picked Fight Club as his personal favourite in a list that is destined to reopen a thousand bar-room debates. "It summed up a moment in time, that pre-millennium era, in a similar way as The Graduate did in the Sixties," he said.

Nicola Hay, the programmer of the Edinburgh Film Guild, the UK's oldest film society, said she was disappointed in the overall selection. "While no-one can begrudge Scorsese the accolades his career so richly deserves, looking at this list, it is disappointing to note the overabundance of modern American product and the dearth of British film and world cinema," she said. "As to whether Goodfellas is the best film ever made, I personally don't think so. Some of the others in the top ten definitely aren't that fantastic, such as The Empire Strikes Back and The Lord of the Rings trilogy."

Goodfellas stars Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, who won an Oscar for his portrayal of the terrifying character Tommy DeVito.

The story revolves around a real-life gangster, Henry Hill, who "ratted out" his Mafia buddies in 1980 and has lurked in the federal witness protection programme ever since. Despite this, Hill has appeared on US television and radio shows and even written the best-selling Wiseguy Cookbook, featuring his favourite Italian recipes.

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Unbridled Rage: A True Story of Organized Crime, Corruption, and Murder in Chicago

Unbridled Rage: A True Story of Organized Crime, Corruption, and Murder in Chicago

A true story of organized crime, corruption, and murder in Chicago.

The brutal 40-year-old murders of three Chicago boys were never solved, until two "cold case" agents decided to launch their own investigation. From eyewitness accounts, old police reports, and new information they delved deep into the Chicago Horse Syndicate, an underworld of violence, greed, and sex that produced--and protected--a brutal killer.

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Is Gun Control a Civil Right? Antigun Radical Michael Pfleger's Launches Latest Publicity Stunt Circus

The NRA has seen a lot of strange legal theories asserted by gun control advocates over the years, but a lawsuit filed on Tuesday by a group of Chicagoans still managed to distinguish itself in this dubious tradition by asserting that the plaintiffs have a "civil right" to specific forms of gun control.

The basis of the lawsuit is a May 27, 2014 “study” published by the City of Chicago entitled, “Tracing the Guns: The Impact of Illegal Guns on Violence in Chicago.” The report finds that a disproportionate number of guns recovered from crime scenes in Chicago from 2009 to 2013 originated at gun shops in the three suburban villages being sued. Of course, it’s hardly surprisingly that most Chicago crime guns originated outside the city, as sales of firearms within the city itself (as well as mere possession of handguns) were unconstitutionally banned for much of the reporting period covered by the study.

The complaint in Coalition for Safe Chicago Communities v. Village of Riverdale alleges that the Illinois Civil Rights Act prohibits local units of government from using “criteria or methods of administration” that have “the effect of subjecting individuals to discrimination because of that person’s race.” The plaintiffs go on to insist that the three Chicago suburbs being sued have violated this provision of law by failing to enact policies for gun dealers that the plaintiffs claim would prevent dangerous guns from reaching criminal hands. This, the plaintiffs argue, has “a disparate and terrible impact on African Americans who live in neighborhoods afflicted by such illegal gun use ….” The plaintiffs also claim that illegal gun use in their neighborhoods leads others in African American neighborhoods “to seek and obtain guns,” including by legal means, which they argue leads to “a high level of disorder and violent crime” that makes their neighborhoods a less desirable place to live.

The plaintiffs request the court to order defendants “to put in place by ordinance or regulation the kind of measures or methods of administration … set forth in the City of Chicago’s own municipal code to replace or supersede the current lax methods of administration or licensing of dealers ….”

It’s a remarkable theory, to say the least, that residents of city have a “civil right” to force other localities to adopt their city’s version of gun control. Even putting aside the broad preemption provisions of Illinois’ Firearm Concealed Carry Act of 2013, which reserve most regulation of firearms to the state, the job of courts when ruling on legislation is limited to determining whether or not it a given activity is constitutionally permissible. It’s not to cherry pick policies from one jurisdiction and force them upon another.

No surprise, the plaintiffs in the suit include antigun radical Michael Pfleger, who cloaks his political activism in the mantel of the Catholic priesthood. Known for highly dramatic publicity stunts, Pfleger infamously threatened to “snuff out” a gun store owner during a public protest in front of his shop. Equally unsurprising, Barack Obama himself once cited the Chicago cleric as among his closest “spiritual advisors.”

Whether or not Pfleger’s latest antics get any traction with the court is likely beside the point. The suit is already being widely covered by the media, which provides yet another opportunity for incessant pontification and holier-than-thou finger-pointing by Chicago’s antigun establishment. Hopefully the court will make quick work of this latest antigun abuse of the legal system, but Chicago’s well-funded antigun circus will no doubt continue.

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Diverse Chicagoans Exercise Their Right-to-Carry

A recent report by the Chicago Sun-Times reveals the diversity of the Chicagoans choosing to exercise their Right-to-Carry, offering some rare good news regarding the city’s beleaguered gun owners. According to a Sun-Times analysis of Right-to-Carry permit data obtained from the Illinois State Police, the city zip codes with the most permit-holding residents span from “upper middle-class, safe and predominately white neighborhoods” to “high-crime, minority neighborhoods.” Delving into further detail, the article states “Chicago’s highest concentration of permits is in the 60617 ZIP… According to the census, about 55 percent of the residents in 60617 are black, 34 percent are Hispanic and 7 percent white.”

The piece goes on to note that the Auburn Gresham, Avalon Park and Chatham neighborhoods also rank high in their number of permit holders. These areas are described as “minority neighborhoods that have been plagued by gun violence.”

The abundance of Right-to-Carry permit holders in high-crime and predominantly minority communities helps to break down pernicious stereotypes about the “typical” gun owner and permit holder. The data also proves that the protection offered by exercising the Right-to-Carry is being used by those most vulnerable to violent crime.

Under the rule of anti-gun Clinton and Obama staffer Rahm Emanuel, Chicagoans have been forced to cope with severe, and frequently-debated, levels of violent crime that the authorities often appear helpless to contain. In this climate of rampant crime, even the mayor’s son was the victim of a robbery only a short distance from the family home. Taking a brief respite from his usual spin on public safety, in January, the notoriously combative mayor conceded that city residents don’t feel safe, noting “Too many families, too many parents do not let their kids go outside because they're scared.” This feeling was likely further cemented following the July 4th holiday weekend, during which 55 were wounded by illegal gunfire and 10 killed. In this environment, permit-holding Windy City residents are wise to provide for their own self-defense. Hopefully, the breadth and diversity of permit-holding Chicagoans revealed by the Sun-Times will encourage more residents to follow their lead and get the tools of protection to the communities where they are most needed.

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Don't You Just Love Attorneys?

A Mafia Godfather finds out that his bookkeeper has screwed him for ten million bucks. This bookkeeper is deaf. It was considered an occupational benefit, and why he got the job in the first place, since it was assumed that a deaf bookkeeper would not be able to hear anything he'd ever have to testify about in court.

When the Godfather goes to shakedown the bookkeeper about his missing $10 million bucks, he brings along his attorney, who knows sign language.

The Godfather asks the bookkeeper: "Where is the 10 million bucks you embezzled from me?"

The attorney, using sign language, asks the bookkeeper where the 10 million dollar is hidden.

The bookkeeper signs back: "I don't know what you are talking about."

The attorney tells the Godfather: "He says he doesn't know what you're talking about."

That's when the Godfather pulls out a 9 mm pistol, puts it to the bookkeeper's temple, cocks it, and says: "Ask him again!"

The attorney signs to the underling: "He'll kill you for sure if you don't tell him!"

The bookkeeper signs back: "OK! You win! The money is in a brown briefcase, buried behind the shed in my cousin Enzo's backyard in Queens!"

The Godfather asks the attorney: "Well, what'd he say?"

The attorney replies: "He says you don't have the balls to pull the trigger.

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