Christy Kinahan offered €60,000 to have him whacked
Monday, 12 September 2011
GANGLAND hardman Martin Foley has taken to his bike in a bid to dodge another assassination attempt. ''The Viper' is paranoid about car bombs and hitmen outside his Dublin home after 'Dapper Don' Christy Kinahan offered €60,000 to have him whacked. Each morning Foley, who has survived four murder bids already, checks for hidden devices under his car and is now cycling instead of driving himself. And the Viper is not the only gangland tough guy under siege this weekend. Violent mob boss 'Fat' Freddie Thompson is holed up at his mother's house after it was firebombed by rivals who want him dead. Thompson has even gone to the gardai looking for protection as the feud threatens to explode. Viper's Vicious Cycle MARTIN 'The Viper' Foley has been warned that his life is in serious danger after 'The Dapper Don' Christy Kinahan put a €60,000 bounty on his head.
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In 2009, more people were killed in Chicago gang-related violence than U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. This statistic could be applied to other big cities, for it's as big an epidemic as anything else in America. Powerful and heart-wrenching, "The Interrupters" captures how neighborhoods have turned into war zones and spotlights an organized effort to stop the killings. It just might be the most important film released this year. Revered documentarian Steve James ("Hoop Dreams") spent a year on the mean streets of his hometown. He and his courageous crew had remarkable access to gang turfs and put themselves in harm's way on more than one occasion. They followed three members of CeaseFire, activists committed to changing the vicious circle of violence leading to retribution leading to more violence. These ex-cons were once gang members, and spent time in prison for their actions. Today, they are "the interrupters," monitoring gang activity, mediating conflicts, and trying to anticipate violent acts before they happen. They're trusted and negotiate with rival factors to prevent more deaths. Ameena Matthews, whose father was a major gang leader, is a compelling dynamo. She knows how to talk to kids, who crave someone to listen to them. She's candid about her early days of drugs, parties, and crime. The others -- Tio Hardiman, Cobe Williams, and Eddie Bocanegra -- have been down those same paths, and eventually turned their lives around. They want to prevent urban youths winding up six feet under, and their attempts to make a difference are stirring. The riveting images and poignant words of this documentary will sear into your brain -- the innocent victims, the mourning families, the tough-talking gangbangers. Gary Slutkin, a University of Chicago professor, founded CeaseFire in 1995. He relates that crime is an epidemic that should be treated like tuberculosis. This film was screened at the Sundance Film Festival at a nearly 3-hour length, but James has edited it down to about 2 hours for wider release. Based on a 2008 New York Times Magazine article by Alex Kotlowitz, who serves as the film's producer, the effect is undeniable. James, a graduate of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, dares to tell what's really going on, and in the process, leaves us with hope. For these persuasive messengers of change can be effective, and that's a start.
Police are on high alert after receiving intelligence about possible retaliation for the August execution in Kelowna of Red Scorpion gangster Jonathan Bacon and the wounding of others with gang associations. Supt. Tom McCluskie, who heads the Gang Task Force, said Wednesday that tensions between rival gangs have increased exponentially since the Aug. 14 slaying of Bacon and shooting of full-patch Hells Angel Larry Amero and Independent Soldier James Riach. The niece of the Haney Hells Angel president was paralyzed in the attack by masked gunmen. McCluskie said it is "no longer a question of if retaliation will occur, but when." He said law enforcement agencies in the Okanagan and across the Lower Mainland are working together to head off further violence. A special meeting to discuss the tensions was held Tuesday between the Gang Task Force, which is part of the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, Surrey RCMP and municipal officers from Vancouver, Abbotsford and Delta. A dedicated team of 65 officers will be working around the clock to prevent more violence, McCluskie said. "We simply said this is the situation, and this is the help we are looking for, and everybody is willing to pitch in," he said. McCluskie said the unease exists between the Hells Angels and their associated gangs, including the Independent Soldiers, and the United Nations on the other side, as well as the Duhre brothers of Abbotsford and allies of the late Gurmit Singh Dhak, who was gunned down at Metrotown mall last October. "As these groups all try to determine who's responsible for the shooting in Kelowna, all these conspiracies and theories are born, and as a result, tension is building," McCluskie said. "What happened in Kelowna can clearly happen again at any time in any place. A lot of these guys are opportunist. They have got people out hunting all the time - looking for rival gang members. And given the tension right now, that is something we want to get in front of . There are people obviously angry and looking for revenge." McCluskie said his officers have issued several "duties to warn" in recent weeks, where police are obliged to tell a gangster or associate about threats that might exist to harm them. None of those who survived the August shooting are cooperating with police, McCluskie said. No one has yet been arrested for the daytime ambush outside a posh lakeside hotel. "Our primary objective is, and always has been, the safety of the general public. The wanton and callous disregard for the safety of innocent bystanders was clearly demonstrated during the Kelowna incident and we as the police, must do everything we can to prevent further acts of violence and retaliation," McCluskie said. "We are not slowing down and these gang members have to know that the streets of B.C. are not theirs and our officers will make that message very, very clear to them."
In September 2008, 11 decapitated bodies were discovered in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula. When police arrested the killers, they found an altar in their home dedicated to Santa Muerte – the patron saint of death for Mexican drug cartels. One year later, an illegal immigrant called Jorge Flores Rojas was arrested in North Carolina for running a sex ring. He, too, had built a shrine in his east Charlotte apartment to Santa Muerte. Flores forced his girls to have sex with as many as 20 men a day while he knelt in his living room praying to the skeletal figure of death. In August 2011, the Mexican army stumbled upon a tunnel that ran right under the US border for 300 metres. It was six feet high and equipped with lights and ventilation. It also housed – you guessed it – an altar to Santa Muerte. Europeans complain mightily that Muslim immigration has introduced fundamentalism to their secular continent. Yet they tend to look upon Middle America’s fear of illegal Hispanic immigration with contempt, as if its paranoia was motivated entirely by racism. Reporting on new legislation designed to drive illegal immigrants out of the Deep South, The Guardian’s Paul Harris writes that it heralds, “The prospect of a new Jim Crow era – the time when segregation was law – across a vast swath of the old Confederacy. [The legislation] will ostracise and terrorise a vulnerable Hispanic minority with few legal rights.” Indeed it will, and that is a tragedy. But the debate about illegal immigration isn’t just about competition over jobs or lingering white racism. Many Americans share the European fear that mass migration is subverting their democratic culture from within. In the same way that exotic cells of Jihadists have established themselves in London and Paris, criminal gangs motivated by bloodlust and kinky spiritualism have been found living in the suburbs of Boston and Atlanta. One of its many manifestations is the cult of Santa Meurte. Santa Muerte is part Virgin Mary, part folk demon. The image of a cloaked saint wielding a scythe is supposed to offer those who venerate it spiritual protection. Offerings come in the form of flowers, alcohol, sweets and tobacco. Contraband can be used to invoke protection from the police. For the poor of Mexico – a nation torn between extremes of wealth and injustice – Santa Muerte is a very pragmatic saint. Like the gang leaders who offer hard cash in return for allegiance, she provides material blessings that the Catholic Church can no longer afford to bestow. Tens of thousands of Mexicans living in America venerate Santa Muerte and have no association with crime. Nor is the cult purely ethnic: in North California, the Santisima Muerte Chapel of Perpetual Pilgrimage is tended by a woman of Dutch-American descent. But the prevalence of Santa Muerte imagery among drug traffickers injects an interesting cultural dimension to the debate over illegal immigration. It accentuates American fears that the drug war in Mexico is turning into an invasion of the USA by antidemocratic fanatics. The Mexican conflict has claimed 35,000 lives since it began in 2006. Recently, the violence has spilled over the border and spread throughout the US along narcotics routes that stretch from Arizona to New York. The warring cartels are bound by a perverse ideology, with Santa Muerte as a unifying icon that terrifies opponents into submission. The gang known as Los Zetas marks its territory by mounting severed heads on poles or hanging dead bodies from bridges. Its members are family men who regularly go to church. A splinter group, called La Familia, is fronted by a fellow called El Mas Loco (The Craziest One). Loco has published his own bible, a confused mix of peasant Marxism and passages culled from American self-help books. The goal of these groups is to undermine democracy and govern autonomous secret societies through family, blood and religion. It’s a global trend. The Lord’s Resistance Army that slaughtered and raped its way across Uganda from 1987 to 2007 was led by a man who claimed to channel the Holy Spirit. Perhaps the culprit behind this apocalyptic criminality was the death of Communism, which deprived thugs and thieves of a secular ideology to justify their actions. Organisations like FARC and Real IRA converted overnight to pushing drugs. But in Mexico, family and religion filled the vacuum left by the failure of socialism. Whatever its origins, the spread of the cult of Santa Muerde reflects the fact that the debate over immigration in the US is about more than economics. Sadly, Mexicans seeking work get caught in this existential drama and are either swallowed up into the gangs or demonised in the US for crimes they have not committed. Nevertheless, Americans of every ethnicity are legitimately concerned about their country being poisoned by a criminal subculture that blends political corruption with ritualised murder. Europeans should not be so quick to judge their transatlantic friends. Americans face a vicious threat of their own.
Four former News International executives will face a fresh round of questioning from MPs over the phone-hacking scandal. The Commons Culture, Media and Sport committee will quiz the News of the World's former editor Colin Myler and ex-legal manager Tom Crone after the pair publicly challenged evidence given by James Murdoch over his knowledge of the illegal practice. News International's former director of legal affairs Jonathan Chapman and Daniel Cloke, former group HR director, will also appear before the committee as the probe into the scandal is resumed following the summer recess. Mr Myler and Mr Crone have been summoned before MPs for the second time after publicly disputing claims made by Mr Murdoch earlier in the Parliamentary inquiry. The News International chairman told the committee he was not made aware of an email in 2008 indicating that the practice of illegally intercepting voicemails was not confined to a single "rogue" reporter. But the two former Sunday tabloid executives insist that they told him about the message in June of that year. The panel of MPs could now recall Mr Murdoch "depending on their evidence under questioning". Committee chairman John Whittingdale said the latest round of questioning was an attempt to uncover the truth in the "continuing difference in the accounts of James Murdoch and Tom Crone and Colin Myler about whether or not James Murdoch was aware of the so-called 'for Neville' email". The 2005 email contained transcripts of hacked phone messages and was headed "for Neville", in an apparent reference to the News of the World's then-chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck. Its existence came to light in April 2008 when Professional Footballers' Association chief executive Gordon Taylor brought a damages claim against the paper over the interception of his voicemail.
Disgusted travellers said the actor was drunk and called out: “I need to p***, I need to p***” then stood and relieved himself in front of the packed flight.
alleged Sureno gang member who told a California Highway Patrol investigator he fatally shot Vallejo musician Dewey Tucker on Interstate Highway 80 in 2010 also admitted fighting a rival gang member who was found stabbed to death in a Santa Rosa schoolyard in January.
Gardai are looking for the gangland's most prolific hitman, suspected of at least ten murders -- including eight in Ireland.
Daughter Elisabeth, a year younger than Rebekah Brooks and almost as tough, is understood to have fulminated at her handling of the scandal, telling friends that Mrs Brooks had ‘f*****’ the company. And last month when Murdoch’s young and glamorous third wife Wendi failed to turn up at his summer party at London’s Kensington Gardens, friends murmured darkly that it was ‘because Rebekah will be there’.
Estibaliz Carranza, a dual Spanish-Mexican citizen accused of dismembering her ex-husband and a former boyfriend in Austria, is asking her current boyfriend not to abandon her and to take custody of the baby she is carrying, the Austrian press reported on Thursday.
Genson Courtney, 23, was ambushed as he got into his car outside his girlfriend's home.
