VIDEO: Farmer To Mafia: Hands Off My Tomatoes!

Friends of Ours ^ | 07/10/10 | Friends of Ours

[AtlasStalled]

Tomato farmer complains about the role of the Mafia in southern Italy's fruit and vegetable trade. Last May police broke up "an unusual alliance of Italy's three main crime syndicates controlling wholesale produce markets, including price fixing" as reported by The Associated Press. The 'Ndrangheta or Calabrian Mafia, the Camorra or Neapolitan Mafia and Cosa Nostra or Silican Mafia "dropped traditional rivalries to join forces in running fruit and vegetable wholesale markets in central and southern Italy," and "authorities said the mobsters fixed high prices, at the expense of consumers, and decided which trucking companies transported the produce." Police seized caches of weapons and arrested about 60 individuals including "20 suspects believed to belong to the Neapolitan mafia's powerful Casalesi clan and approximately a dozen people from its rival Licciardi and Mallardo clans, as well as six suspects from the Santapaola clan" as reported by Adnkronos International. Among those arrested "was Paolo Schiavone, son of imprisoned mobster Francesco Schiavone, reputedly one of the top bosses of the ruthless Casalesi crime clan based in Caserta" as reported by Frances D'Emilio for The Associated Press: "Paolo Schiavone had just stepped onto the docks of Naples at the end of a honeymoon cruise that had taken him around the Mediterranean, when officers handcuffed him."

[humblegunner]

Here’s that video you advertised but didn’t link to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7vNmJtIi_U&feature=player_embedded

[Haiku Guy]

I read an article in the Irish Independent this morning about farmers in The Netherlands who were making a killing by scamming the VAT tax and selling strawberries on the black market. They got busted because they were registering all of their luxury cars in Luxembourg, which is a well-known tax dodge that alerted the authorities. When one of these previously-humble farmers went to register his new private jet, they were rolled up.

Big government just makes bigger opportunities for organized crime, by either conventional racketeers or the political type.

[Haiku Guy]

I read an article in the Irish Independent this morning about farmers in The Netherlands who were making a killing by scamming the VAT tax and selling strawberries on the black market. They got busted because they were registering all of their luxury cars in Luxembourg, which is a well-known tax dodge that alerted the authorities. When one of these previously-humble farmers went to register his new private jet, they were rolled up.

Big government just makes bigger opportunities for organized crime, by either conventional racketeers or the political type.

[TheBattman]

Italy kind of reminds me of Mexico... the government is so entrenched in organized crime that they allow these criminal enterprises to go on unabated, taking superficial action every-so-often to keep the population brainwashed into thinking all is under control...

And Chicago is a perfect example of this right here!

[AtlasStalled]

“the government is so entrenched in organized crime”

as the old saying goes: organized crime cannot exist without public corruption

[houeto]

Here’s that video you advertised but didn’t link to:

Priceless!

[Frantzie]

Sounds like Dutch farmers were just avoiding a BS VAT tax that the Dem commies want for America. You sound like a Dem supporting VAT taxes.

[Haiku Guy]

I do not support a VAT tax. One of the reasons I do not support it is because it gives an advantage to he law-breaker at the expense of the law-abiding. It rewards criminality. I thought I was being pretty clear.

Now, if the entire population decided to thumb their noses at the government and ignored the VAT, I think that would be a wonderful thing. But that is not what we are talking about here. What we have in this case is a group of people who exploit stupid government regulation to dominate a market by being criminal. That is a very different thing.