5 Things You Could Do to Kill the Mafia

As a little kid growing up in Palermo (Sicily), I used to dream of chasing the Bad Guys who were terrorizing my beautiful city.

In my teens, I started to consider the idea of stopping the Mafia one of those naive dreams that could never become a reality.

But now, for the first time in the last 20 years, there is a concrete possibility to kill the Sicilian Mafia, ending its presence in Italy, in USA, and everywhere else it operates, thus improving the lives of thousands of people around the world. And your help is needed, so listen up.

Sicily. Maybe the last place in the world where you can find yourself having lunch next to Armani or Madonna in an inexpensive restaurant overlooking a turquoise sea. Unfortunately, a land still plagued with organized crime, which protects tourists – they bring money to the local economy – but merciless target local business owners, demanding a large share of their revenue in exchange for "Protection."

Locals call the extortion racket “Pizzo”, and experts agree that this criminal activity is Mafia’s core business, bringing in a steady cash flow which finances its worldwide operations. But “Pizzo” offers much more than just a large financial gain: the protection racket is Mafia’s way to affirm its control over a city, sending the message "I own this place, so you must give me a share of anything you earn, and you must ask my approval for anything you do."

The extortion racket has flourished for decades with the Italian business organization Confindustria secretly telling his associate to comply with Mafia's financial requests: “If we all pay” they used to say “We will all pay less.”

Recently, things have started changing for the better:
- The association of Italian business owner is now expelling from its ranks anyone who pays the “Pizzo.”
- Police has been very successful in taking into custody Mafia bosses, whilst at the same time confiscating Mafia's financial assets.
- Business owner who have said no to Pizzo are increasingly joining an association called AddioPizzo (Goodbye Pizzo) which put them in contact with thousands of Sicilians who are tired of the Mafia and are willing to buy only mob-free products.

The association AddioPizzo is really hitting the Mafia where it hurts, and its leaders now lives in constant danger of a terrible retribution: their popularity is their only defense, since Mafia knows that if AddioPizzo leaders were killed today, thousands of people would take the street in protest, and new stronger leaders would inevitably emerge. So everything depends on national and international attention: the moment we forget about AddioPizzo, Mafia will destroy them without too much fuss, maybe killing a few and spreading negative rumors about the others.

Considering the goal it pursues, AddioPizzo has yet to receive a decent level of International media attention: only a bunch of articles from BBC, Telegraph, Herald Tribune and The Independent, and then nothing else.

Silence is Mafia's natural ally, so please talk about what's happening. Pick one or more activities from the following list and dedicate the next five minutes to it:
1- Write your name on AddioPizzo guestbook to publicly express your support for this brave organization.
2- Help AddioPizzo with a donation. It can be very safely done via PayPal and you get an email confirmation at the end of the process.
3- If you write on a Blog, a Newspaper on any other media, please talk about the possibility of killing the Mafia: nothing scares the Mob more than people not being afraid of it.
4- Alternatively, please Digg this article, review it on StumbleUpon or save it on Delicious. Let’s have as many people as possible knowing that together we can kill the Mafia.
5- If a friend of yours is planning an holiday in Sicily, make sure he’ll sleep only in a beautiful Pizzo-free hotel, such as Addaura Residence or Amarcord Hotel. If you want to try typical Sicilian wine or food, make sure you’ll buy it only from a pizzo free online portals such as Buona Sicilia, and let them know that you are purchasing from them because you’ve read that they are pizzo-free. In short, let’s make sure that Pizzo-free business increase their sales, so they can have an added incentive to stay clean. (The growing list of businesses who have publicly said no to the Mafia is here.) In fact, anyone who speak out against the Mob should be protected and rewarded. So long life to AddioPizzo, and long life to you.

Thanks to Even Happier

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Prison Sentence for 87 Year Old Mafia Capo

Federal authorities announced that Ciro Perrone, 87, a “capo” or captain in the Genovese Organized Crime Family, has been sentenced to five years in prison.

Perrone was convicted by a jury in June 2007 following a two-week trial of all counts against him, including racketeering.

Perrone has been a member of the Genovese Family since at least the 1960s, the feds said.

He was convicted of four separate racketeering acts including operation of a gambling business, loan-sharking conspiracy, and loan-sharking against two victims; RICO conspiracy, conspiracy to make extortionate extensions of credit; and conspiracy to use extortionate means to collect extensions of credit.

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Last Photo of John Gotti Emerges

Here's the last photo ever taken of John Gotti, the murderous degenerate who once headed the Gambino crime family. Gotti, the so-called Dapper Don, posed for the below Bureau of Prisons photo on October 17, 2001, less than eight months before he died, at age 61, at the federal prison hospital in Springfield, Missouri.

The Gotti image was released this week in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by The Smoking Gun. According to a BoP letter, the color image was Gotti's "institution commissary photo." The once-robust Gotti appears frail in the prison photo, which was snapped more than two years after the convicted killer was operated on for head and neck cancer.

Compare the above photo with that of perhaps of John Gotti's "rookie card". Unearthed from the files of New York's Suffolk County Police Department, the photo captures a Brylcreem-laden Gotti, then 24, following his March 1965 arrest for a botched burglary.

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IRS Agents Used Muscle to Get Capone

Recently released memos written by the IRS investigators who brought down Al Capone are shedding new light on the way federal agents successfully ended the reign of the Chicago crime lord.

IRS investigators could prove Capone had money, but they couldn't prove where he was getting it from, said Jonathan Eig, a Chicago author who is writing a book about the investigation leading to Capone's arrest and conviction.

Agents found one bookkeeper who could testify to Capone's income source, and they "used a lot of muscle to get this guy to testify," Eig said.

The bookkeeper was sent to South America for a time to safeguard him from assassins, he said.

"The evidence shows the IRS agents really did get out of the office and track down this accountant and really put the screws to him to get him to testify," he said.

Eig sought the material through the Freedom of Information Act, something others had previously done without success. A new lawyer at the IRS reviewed Eig's request and released the documents to him.

Eig's book, whose working title is Get Capone, is being published by Simon & Schuster. It focuses on the last years of Capone's reign. Eig said he hopes to correct the myth that Eliot Ness brought down the man known as "Public Enemy No. 1."

"'The Untouchables' movie has made Eliot Ness the hero of the story," he said. "The IRS agents are."

Thanks to Kara Spak

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Sam Giancana Mini-Series Announces New Ownership

Zuma Beach Entertainment, Inc. (Pink Sheets: ZMBC) ("Zuma") announced today that "MOMO," The Sam Giancana Story, is the first project of a slate of film and television projects in which ownership interest has been acquired from Westlake Productions, LLC ("Westlake").

Mark Wolper, President of The Wolper Organization, prolific producers of television mini-series and movies, is developing and producing the six-hour mini-series for Warner Bros. Entertainment, a Time Warner Company (NYSE: TWX).

The high profile television mini-series details the life of infamous Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana whose rein spanned the 1950's and 1960's. Giancana was best known for his ties to John F. Kennedy and is reputed to have played a key role in helping Kennedy take the White House in 1960.

After Giancana's wife died as a result of a rheumatic heart, he was left to raise three daughters while carrying out his role as a mob leader. Giancana, a larger-than-life character whose flamboyant lifestyle included friendships with celebrities like Frank Sinatra of the "Rat Pack," paved the way for high profile mobsters until his assassination in 1975.

Wolper optioned rights to the life story of Giancana from Nicholas Celozzi who had acquired them from
Giancana's daughter Francine, who is Celozzi's cousin. Wolper is producing the project for Warner Bros. while Dimitri Logothetis and Nick Celozzi are co-writing and co-executive producing the television mini-series. Production of the project is scheduled for summer/fall 2008.

Said Wolper, in an earlier press release; "This is a fascinating chapter in American history with an incredibly compelling family story and real-life character in Sam Giancana as the patriarch. We envision the mini-series as a true-life "Sopranos" meets "The Gangster Chronicles," shedding light on never-before-exposed parts of the story."

Wolper is the recipient of multiple Emmy Award-nominations including those for the mini-series "The Mists of Avalon," the television movie "Murder in Mississippi," the CBS mini-series "Queen," and the Showtime series "Penn & Teller's Bullshit".

Logothetis has served as an executive producer and showrunner for two shows on Warner Bros. Television -- "Code Name Eternity" and "Dark Real".

Celozzi is a prominent Actor, Director, Producer and Writer. He was the Executive Producer and starred in "Dumb Luck in Vegas" (1997) and directed "Deep Cover, a.k.a. Checkmate" (1996) and "Dark and Deadly" (1995). Along with Freddy Braidy, he recently co-produced the film "Bottoms Up" starring Paris Hilton and released from Sony Pictures Entertainment, a U.S. business of Sony Corporation of America.

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