Cosa Nostra News

July 2018 marked the 75th anniversary of the Allied invasion of Sicily, aka Operation Husky... American troops advancing to Messina, 1943. The summer 1943 Allied invasion of Sicily was an unmitigated success, what historians term as one of World War II's major turning points. After defeating Italy and Germany in the North African Campaign (November 8, 1942-May 13, 1943) of World War II (1939-45), the United States and Great Britain, the two leading Allied powers, decided to liberate Italy, to accomplish the vital goals of removing Benito Mussolini's fascist regime, securing the central Mediterranean, and destroying the Axis bulkhead and driving the remaining Italian and German forces to either surrender or retreat. The Allies invaded Sicily in July 1943. After 38 days of fighting, the U.S. and Great Britain drove German and Italian troops off of Sicily and prepared to continue to assault them on the Italian mainland. Setting the stage for Operation Husky...

Mario Cuomo was one of the greatest orators in modern political history. He was formally a democrat, but his goals and accomplishments made him too complex a politician to be so easily defined by such a label. He's been back in the news recently due to reports that the Sicilian Mafia marked him for death to send a message to Americans calling for nothing less than the destruction of the witness protection program . (They also wanted to whack New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. The brutish Salvatore ‘Toto’ Riina, allegedly planned the hit when Giuliani was a state prosecutor in the 1980s. The American mob told him not to even try such a caper; Giuliani would wipe them out.) Cuomo's  July 16, 1984 Keynote Address to the Democratic National Convention tops many lists as one of the 20th Century's most inspirational speeches. I'd delete the qualifier and say it's one of the most inspirational and powerful in American history. Listening to it again, it sounds even m...

Preorder by clicking book cover. James "Jimmy the Hat" Lanza certainly earned his place among the pantheon of Cosa Nostra's wiliest bosses as will be revealed in Lanza's Mob by Christina Ann-Marie DiEdoardo, Esq., a criminal defense lawyer in San Francisco (who lived for years in Queens, New York). Available for pre-order now, the book will be released on July 31, 2016. Lanza truly knew the old-school ways of hiding in plain sight. While there's much evidence that he was one of the attendees of the doomed 1957 Apalachin summit, he successfully avoided arrest unlike so many others. "It would have been child’s play for Lanza to evade the New York state police, as he apparently did," as the author writes below. The book is based on extensive research by the author (who knows her stuff, folks!) and includes how major events such as the Castellammarese War impacted the Lanza crime family. The book details some lucrative and probably gener...

"The Mafia is oppression, arrogance, greed, self-enrichment, power and hegemony above and against all others. It is not an abstract concept, or a state of mind, or a literary term... It is a criminal organization regulated by unwritten but iron and inexorable rules... The myth of a courageous and generous 'man of honor' must be destroyed, because a mafioso is just the opposite." -- Cesare Terranova , Italian Magistrate murdered in 197 9 Gaetano Riina, brother of Salvatore 'Toto' Riina, after he was arrested in Mazara del Vallo Photo: AP An interview with Professor John Dickie Cosa Nostra - rebranding the Mafia : "The mafia, in the strict sense of Cosa Nostra , the hierarchical criminal organization based in Sicily, does not ‘run Italy’ as you sometimes hear people rather glibly say,” explains John Dickie, senior lecturer in Italian at the University of London, and author of Cosa Nostra – a history of the Sicilian Mafia. 

Italian Law Enforcement Officials Call It Italy's Fifth Major Mafia Group Mafia Capitale is based in Rome. In a story posted this week about Matteo Messina Denaro ,  The Independent notes that Italian law enforcement has uncovered what is believed to be Italy's fifth major Mafia group. It's based in Rome. The organized crime group is less violent prone than the traditional Mafias and seems to largely rely on corruption. In terms of age, it goes back "at least three administrations."

Here is a little story -- a conversation between two Sicilians circa late-19th century. What these two are discussing, is one question, but the more important one is: why. It is an example of why there is in existence one of the Mafia "rules" by which members live their lives. (Googling any of the names will not help you! Don't Google any of this -- try to use your mind, those of you who think you know Cosa Nostra, that is.) Man A: Man, does my tooth hurt! Man B: Mine too. A: When did the pain start? B. On Our Lady of Ascension day.