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Old October 11th, 2012 #27
M.N. Dalvez
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Join Date: Jun 2012
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In my spare time recently, I have been finding and reading books about organised crime in the United States, particularly in the first 50 years of the 20th century. Some of the titles I've recently found include:

The Brothers Bulger, by the Boston journalist Howie Carr, which looks at the rise to power of the eponymous Bulger brothers - Billy Bulger, the long-time treasurer of the State of Massachusetts , and James 'Whitey' Bulger, the gangster and long-time FBI Number One Most Wanted (he was captured this year, after about 15 years on the lam). This is interesting because it does such a good job of showing that the causes of the two brothers coming to so much power in their fields weren't so different as one might think.

Tough Jews, by the Rolling Stone writer Rich Cohen. Now, TBB was interesting, but this... Where to start?

1: The author's father is some kind of well-known business figure, and the boyhood friend of well-known television corpse Larry King. They grew up in the same neighbourhood as the 'Murder Inc.' underworld hit-squad (almost entirely jewish, but for a few Italians), and he makes the point that his father, and all his boyhood friend, and indeed their entire generation, were deeply influenced by that generation of out-and-out jewish criminals.

2: He gives a lineage, of sorts, of NYC crime from the 20's to the current day, and what's important about this is that the progenitor of all these Lucianos, Lanskys, Anastasia/Gambinos, Genoveses ... is none other that the 20's organised crime figure, Arnold Rothstein. Basically, the very strong implication being made is that it was jewish criminals who were absolutely instrumental in making organised crime in America the massively organised, pervasive force that it became in later years.

(He also claims that the difference between the Italian and jewish criminals of that day was that the Italians perpetuated it into future generations, whereas the jews became assimilated into the mainstream of American society. PR?)

3: It draws a direct line between the 'attitude' of these criminals, and the general attitude and mindset behind the 'state' of Israel

4: It is very much an 'internal document'. The authors goes into the internal jewish debate about whether these criminals were good for jews in America or not, and he is very much of the opinion that they were: they gave American jews something to emulate, they taught American jews that they could do anything they wanted to in America if they were organised about it.

It's a very revealing document, let's say. I recommend that you all find and read it.