sicilians/corleonesi

[CornerBoy]

holy shit. i finished the follain book and got through most of blumenthal book.

This Rinna was out of his fucking mind.

The Follain book said many ppl fled the Riina Provenzano mob for NYC

Who were those that fled that we know of?

I saw that the inzerillo's were basically massacred, like 20 fam members fucking killed.

sick fucking ppl.

how does octopus compare to the other Two?

Happy Junettenfth

[Yotam]

The "new faction" as Buscetta referred to them. To call them a freak show would be a wild understatement.

Anyway, I could be mistaken, but didn't Sicilian 'capo mandamento' Rosario Riccobono act as somewhat of a "messaggero" to the NYC Gambinos on behalf of the Sicilian commission (Greco, Riina, et al.), as part of their plot to kill the Inzerillo relatives being harbored in NY/NJ? I seem to remember reading about that.

[stubbs]

I would also recommend reading Excellent Cadavers if you want a good history of Riina and the mafia wars of that era.

The Sicilians really had a beautiful thing with their heroin pipelines and all of the systemic corruption in Italy. Riina fucked it all up and now they’re super weak, especially compared to the Calabrians.

[CornerBoy]

wow thank you guys!

[cobra]

- riina now blame for all murders but...
- stefano bontate killed after he try and fail to set riina in a trap and kill him
- giovanni bontate is happy with murder of his brother stefano
- salvatore montalto, underboss of inzerillo, is happy about inzerillo murder
- nino madonia telling riina he must kill pino greco for years before
- many other example, they tell "uncle toto" to kill and when everybody jailed, they say "u curtu" is a violent

[The Greek]

I would also recommend reading Excellent Cadavers if you want a good history of Riina and the mafia wars of that era.

The Sicilians really had a beautiful thing with their heroin pipelines and all of the systemic corruption in Italy. Riina fucked it all up and now they’re super weak, especially compared to the Calabrians.

This is one of my all time fav books. I think I've read it at least 5 times

[B.]

- riina now blame for all murders but...
- stefano bontate killed after he try and fail to set riina in a trap and kill him
- giovanni bontate is happy with murder of his brother stefano
- salvatore montalto, underboss of inzerillo, is happy about inzerillo murder
- nino madonia telling riina he must kill pino greco for years before
- many other example, they tell "uncle toto" to kill and when everybody jailed, they say "u curtu" is a violent

100%.

Riina the Terrible makes for a popular narrative and the guy was responsible or a lot of death and terror but many of the murders attributed to him came from internal factionalism. This happens with every mafia war, where members within a Family take advantage of the instability to try and gain power. It happened in Villabate in the 1920s, where the D'Agati-Profaci clan was involved in the wider Palermo war going on at the time but it was actually a rival faction within the Villabate Family who killed Giulio D'Agati and Domenico Profaci. Same thing happened during the Castellammarese War with many Families.

I've said the same about Scarfo recently. The Testa murder for example came from other members close to Testa trying to convince Scarfo to kill Testa for a long time before Scarfo relented and approved it.

[CabriniGreen]

- riina now blame for all murders but...
- stefano bontate killed after he try and fail to set riina in a trap and kill him
- giovanni bontate is happy with murder of his brother stefano
- salvatore montalto, underboss of inzerillo, is happy about inzerillo murder
- nino madonia telling riina he must kill pino greco for years before
- many other example, they tell "uncle toto" to kill and when everybody jailed, they say "u curtu" is a violent

100%.

Riina the Terrible makes for a popular narrative and the guy was responsible or a lot of death and terror but many of the murders attributed to him came from internal factionalism. This happens with every mafia war, where members within a Family take advantage of the instability to try and gain power. It happened in Villabate in the 1920s, where the D'Agati-Profaci clan was involved in the wider Palermo war going on at the time but it was actually a rival faction within the Villabate Family who killed Giulio D'Agati and Domenico Profaci. Same thing happened during the Castellammarese War with many Families.

I've said the same about Scarfo recently. The Testa murder for example came from other members close to Testa trying to convince Scarfo to kill Testa for a long time before Scarfo relented and approved it.

Whether you consider Riina and his cronies alone, or the Corleonesi as a collective whole they amounted to abject failure. What was their endgame? To secede and form their own State? That's nonsense bro... that's not Mafia. That's some Taliban type shit.... Direct challenge to the State? Thats like....Cartel style even...

I do agree that guy's like Bontade and Inzerillo made really boneheaded moves that all but granted their enemies permission to act against them. Even the Montreal stuff. Scoppa alluded to this in the book. That it more tit for tat murders and settling scores than coordinated mass conspiracies. Excluding Vito, the "Grappa Table" seems to have fucked MANY guys outta either their livihood, or years of their lives or BOTH. They couldn't wait for an excuse....


I agree with Dicke's assessment. That the Mafia in its most effective form essentially operate like vassals for the State. An instrument of local government.

Everything Ndrangheta built from the mid 90s onward probably should have been Cosa Nostras.

Bro.. I've said it before...to me... the 70s marked a period where Cosa Nostra's strategy started to become more....corporate. More business minded, more divorced from specific territory/geography. You can't become a GLOBAL criminal power corrupting the LOCAL budget of your municipalities, even if your city is huge.

Ndrangheta, to me seemed to take what the Caruanas did and applied it wholesale to MANY clans.

[CornerBoy]

all the names get very confusing.

[B.]

- riina now blame for all murders but...
- stefano bontate killed after he try and fail to set riina in a trap and kill him
- giovanni bontate is happy with murder of his brother stefano
- salvatore montalto, underboss of inzerillo, is happy about inzerillo murder
- nino madonia telling riina he must kill pino greco for years before
- many other example, they tell "uncle toto" to kill and when everybody jailed, they say "u curtu" is a violent

100%.

Riina the Terrible makes for a popular narrative and the guy was responsible or a lot of death and terror but many of the murders attributed to him came from internal factionalism. This happens with every mafia war, where members within a Family take advantage of the instability to try and gain power. It happened in Villabate in the 1920s, where the D'Agati-Profaci clan was involved in the wider Palermo war going on at the time but it was actually a rival faction within the Villabate Family who killed Giulio D'Agati and Domenico Profaci. Same thing happened during the Castellammarese War with many Families.

I've said the same about Scarfo recently. The Testa murder for example came from other members close to Testa trying to convince Scarfo to kill Testa for a long time before Scarfo relented and approved it.

Whether you consider Riina and his cronies alone, or the Corleonesi as a collective whole they amounted to abject failure. What was their endgame? To secede and form their own State? That's nonsense bro... that's not Mafia. That's some Taliban type shit.... Direct challenge to the State? Thats like....Cartel style even...

I do agree that guy's like Bontade and Inzerillo made really boneheaded moves that all but granted their enemies permission to act against them. Even the Montreal stuff. Scoppa alluded to this in the book. That it more tit for tat murders and settling scores than coordinated mass conspiracies. Excluding Vito, the "Grappa Table" seems to have fucked MANY guys outta either their livihood, or years of their lives or BOTH. They couldn't wait for an excuse....


I agree with Dicke's assessment. That the Mafia in its most effective form essentially operate like vassals for the State. An instrument of local government.

Everything Ndrangheta built from the mid 90s onward probably should have been Cosa Nostras.

Bro.. I've said it before...to me... the 70s marked a period where Cosa Nostra's strategy started to become more....corporate. More business minded, more divorced from specific territory/geography. You can't become a GLOBAL criminal power corrupting the LOCAL budget of your municipalities, even if your city is huge.

Ndrangheta, to me seemed to take what the Caruanas did and applied it wholesale to MANY clans.

I disagree that forming their own quasi-statehood is not mafia. The Sicilian mafia going back to the 1800s strived to be its own government independent of the legitimate state.

But my point wasn't about the mafia's larger intentions in the 1980s or whether they succeeded, it was just that Riina wasn't the one pushing for a lot of these murders and many of them came from within as people realized that allying with the Corleonesi gave them the opportunity to take out rivals and gain power like Cobra said.

[PolackTony]

The way that I’ve always understood it is that the mafia forms a shadow state, one that presupposes the existence of the state (a certain kind of state, with specific types of patron-client relationships and patronage networks) and essentially parasitizes off of it, rather than seeking to supplant the state or create its own state. This of course makes the mafia a totally distinct phenomenon from revolutionary political groups, which seek to either outright seize control of the state apparatus or overthrow the existing apparatus and install an alternative one.

[CabriniGreen]

The way that I’ve always understood it is that the mafia forms a shadow state, one that presupposes the existence of the state (a certain kind of state, with specific types of patron-client relationships and patronage networks) and essentially parasitizes off of it, rather than seeking to supplant the state or create its own state. This of course makes the mafia a totally distinct phenomenon from revolutionary political groups, which seek to either outright seize control of the state apparatus or overthrow the existing apparatus and install an alternative one.

Yes! They NEED the State. This is how I perceived it. I mean.... unless they were going to like.... split Western and Eastern Sicily and create a new country? Maybe?

[scagghiuni]

we should keep in mind that Riina didn't do all this shit by his own, the massacres of judges Falcone and Borsellino for example were ordered by other entithies, Berlusconi, Dell'Utri, the freemasons and the secret services

[Uncle Pete]

we should keep in mind that Riina didn't do all this shit by his own, the massacres of judges Falcone and Borsellino for example were ordered by other entithies, Berlusconi, Dell'Utri, the freemasons and the secret services

Good point. Considering how loved Falcone was, perhaps he was seen as a serious threat politically down the road

[scagghiuni]

we should keep in mind that Riina didn't do all this shit by his own, the massacres of judges Falcone and Borsellino for example were ordered by other entithies, Berlusconi, Dell'Utri, the freemasons and the secret services

Good point. Considering how loved Falcone was, perhaps he was seen as a serious threat politically down the road

yes, what the Corleonesi did in the 80s and 90s cannot be limited to the Sicilian mafia alone, it was a wide-ranging plan that also involved politics