I agree with this also. I think Jimmy Lanza's "strength" (if we can call it that) was the fact that he descended from royalty, in the sense that his father had been an old-time mafioso who for all intents and purposes founded the San Francisco Family. So Jimmy was well respected in that sense (having come from a Mafia blood lineage.) But after thinking about it, I have to agree that Rockford was probably more powerful and better connected...to both American families as well as Sicilian-born members which they continued to "import" into their ranks for years to come.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...baum-mexico-woman-president-victory.html

Claudia Sheinbaum becomes Mexico's first woman president with landslide victory in nation plagued by gang and gender-based violence

https://www.occrp.org/en/narcofiles...-how-colombian-cocaine-travels-the-world

Official statistics on busts of drug shipments originating in Colombia — the world’s largest cocaine producer by far — are scattershot and hard to find. A leak of prosecutor’s office documents helped reporters fill in some gaps.

Key Findings:

Drawing on leaked documents and official data, reporters identified 1,764 separate busts of cocaine originating from Colombia between 2016 and April 2022.
About three quarters of these took place on small vessels, such as fishing boats or lobster trawlers.
Out of the total, 431 cases took place on large ships, encompassing roughly 264.8 metric tons of cocaine, almost double the weight of the Statue of Liberty.
Outside of Colombia, Belgium and Spain were the most common sites of seizures.
Of seizures involving large ships, containers and vessels owned by the leading shipping firms Maersk and CMA CGM were the most frequently targeted by traffickers.
Early one summer morning, two small boats sidled up to the Cap San Tainaro, a container ship off the coast of the northern Colombian port city of Barranquilla. A dozen men raised ladders and scaled onto the vessel, and then, using ropes and pulleys, began to hoist up bags with hundreds of plastic packages, each of which contained a kilogram of cocaine.

A military helicopter patrolling the area spotted the men and hailed the ship. After four hours, they finally made contact and guided the vessel back to the dock, where authorities boarded it, found the drugs — over one metric ton in total — and arrested those suspected of involvement

This article is part of the NarcoFiles: The New Criminal Order, an international investigation into modern-day organized crime and those who fight it. The investigation began with a leak of data shared by two organizations, Distributed Denial of Secrets and Enlace Hacktivista. Read more about the project here.

Few details of the bust, which took place on August 2, 2018, were included in the statistics reported by Colombia’s authorities. Instead, reporters uncovered the minute-by-minute account of the operation in a massive leak of documents from the country’s prosecutor’s office, known as the NarcoFiles .

In Colombia, the world’s largest cocaine producer, statistics on drug busts are scattershot and hard to find. At least four different agencies keep records of seizures, but they are not easily accessible to the public and often do not overlap.
When data is published, it typically includes little beyond the date, location, and amount of drugs seized. And Colombian authorities do not keep data on busts of Colombian shipments that take place abroad, making it difficult to understand the full picture of how drugs are smuggled out of the country.

These limitations make it harder for reporters and civil society to analyze trafficking trends. Drawing on the NarcoFiles, OCCRP’s partner, Cuestión Pública, has spent over a year building a database that aims to change that.

By combing through the leaked files, reporters identified 158 busts of drug shipments that originated in Colombia. They then created a more comprehensive database by contacting Colombia’s defense ministry, prosecutor’s office, navy, and police, and filing freedom of information requests to gain access to their records. The data was also supplemented by reports from Belgium’s Customs Federal Service.

Later ill post some additional stuff regarding Chicagos pre-Prohibition era Dutch racketeers, although Ill need some help from you regarding the Dutch names.

Regarding Capone...if you ask me there was one "small" difference between leaders like Colosimo and Torrio, and the younger ones like Capone. They all literally inherited many lucrative operations and connections from their "predecessors" or allies from the former Irish or multi-ethnic mob, mostly in a peaceful way, but the difference was that the old guys like Torrio trusted all of their so-called loyalists probably too much. For example, Colosimo was probably killed by his own loyalists, while Torrio was almost killed allegedly by other former loyalists who in turn previously betrayed him to the cops, an action which resulted with Torrio killing their leader. On the other hand, Capone already knew this and chose his loyalists carefully and eliminated everyone in quite violent style, which was used to send message to the rest of their rivals. And as you already know, during those days, besides the Italian CN and Camorra, there were numerous other clans and so someone needed to place them in line under one top administration. And so thats how Capone's (multi-ethnic) Outfit was born with the Italian brotherhood at the top, meaning the bloodbath was inevitable. According to some sources, Capone allegedly was convincing other Midwest Italian bosses to do the same thing (hence Milton Rockman in Cleveland and the Purple gang in Detroit). Thats why I always say that the Chicago group was "slightly" unique then the rest of the Italian families, since the Chi boys worked with everyone and almost "breached" the limits between the Italian brotherhood and their trusted non-Italian associates. Or as Outfit non-Ital leader Murray Humphreys once said "I remember how it used to be in the old days, with us, when Al (Capone) used to run us guys all over. We trusted each other, see?!", followed by Ferraro's legendary statement "This is all one clique"., meaning both Itals and non-Itals belonged to the same crime syndicate.

Good article on Louis Greco

http://coolopolis.blogspot.com/2017/10/his-ex-was-murdered-in-westmount-and.html?m=1

His ex was murdered in Westmount and then he burned to death: Montreal capo Louis Greco

Great again and

The Domingo and Montagna had family relations with Salvatore Maranzano , considered the first Italian-American mafia boss, who was killed in New York in the 1930s. The family link with the overseas boss would be made up of the aunt of the regent of Castellammare, Angela Domingo, wife of Mariano Maranzano, Salvatore's son.

Israel is exploring an alternative to Hamas running Gaza
Israeli Defense Minister Gallant says the army leadership is looking for an alternative to Hamas' rule of Gaza. This should take over control of Gaza from Hamas during the process towards a permanent ceasefire.

In the meantime, Israel continues to seek the complete destruction of Hamas. “We isolate an area, take the Hamas people out of there and install forces there that can form an alternative government,” Gallant said. He did not say what forces those might be.

President Biden presented the outlines of a route to a permanent ceasefire in Gaza on Friday. Hamas has been in power in Gaza since 2007.There is no indication that it wants to give up its power and surrender its will.

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in Gaza City in 2021
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The Fiore Buccieri crew in Chicago. They had interests in Cicero, Berwyn, Lake County, the Near West Side and also parts of the South Side. By the mid or late 70's one crew of the Buccieri group took iver the Chinatown area which was previously controlled by a different crew. Buccirris guy or new capo for Chinatown became LaPietra, while Torello remained as rep for Cicero and the rest of the areas. Usually both groups had one representative on the Outfits board of directors, who belonged to one of the two crews, depending on which one was more powerful at the time. For example, in 1982/83 LaPietra sponsored two members of the Chinatown crew and a third one from the Cicero crew.

Previously there were also other larger Outfit crews wich gave the birth of two or three additional crews, each one with a capo of its own.

You are correct, Turnbull. That was my faux pas. I didn't notice that I had inadvertently inserted Genovese instead of Bonanno for Maranzano. That was a good catch and correction.
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Maranzano was, of course, the former head of the Castellammarese clan that later became known as the Bonanno Family.

PS: Here's an interesting side note about Salvatore Maranzano. He was, like most founding and future members of that borgata, born in Castellammare del Golfo. And he had allegedly been a Mafia power there, before immigrating to the U.S. His wife's maiden name was Minore, a well-known Castellammarese surname connected to a notoriously powerful blood-family dating back many years in the Trapani Province of northwestern Sicily. I suspect, that as a young man, the "Minore" connection aided Maranzano's rise to the top of the heap.