What I've called "the Mafia doctrine" in many publications: when the Godfather issues an edict, others must obey, or else. It's too dangerous to allow disobedience. A leading principle of world affairs - though, of course, officials and commentators put it more politely.
You don't need to buy a $7 billion company to penetrate maritime security. The Mafia doesn't buy FedEx to smuggle.
The IMF is the International Mafia Federation. They're the loansharks of last resort.
Russia is a mafia state today, and Putin is its top godfather.
I have reported enough about Islam and terrorism to recognize that a lot of what is at stake is not strictly religion, even though it's also about power and control. In the case of Karachi, like so many other growing cities, it's also about land, mafias, gang activity.
I never write about CIA conspiracies or the FBI or mafia or anything like that because I just dont understand that world. But I think I do understand individual human harmfulness.
International relations bears more than a slight resemblance to the mafia.
The Mafia has higher standards than the Catholic Church hierachy because if their members were "raping children, they'd off them."
We can learn from this history that when the Department of Justice, the FBI, the DEA, and the state and local police and prosecutors were combined in a task force directed by and at the mafia, when they looked at the mafia and really went after them, they were able to get great, great successes and prosecutions out of them in seizing their business interest, in a lot of things; including their business interest, taking them away, and removing their infiltration from legitimate areas of society.
Everyone always says, Does it bother you that Italians are always portrayed as Mafia characters? No, it doesn't bother me. First of all, not everybody in my family is in the Mafia. I have one uncle who's clean.
The same liberty that protects me also protects members of the Mafia.
Before you lost your mind, how did you make a living?" "I was a hitman for the Mafia. Are you done crying yet?" "I wasn't crying! And I wish you were a hitman because, if I had money, I'd hire you right this minute to knock yourself off.
And still she felt more confident at the prospect of taking on the Russian Mafia than she did attending a backyard barbecue.
What is "credibility"? It's a very familiar notion. It's basically the notion that is central to the Mafia. So suppose say the Godfather produces some kind of edict and says you're going to have to pay protection money.
Quite generally, international affairs have more than a slight resemblance to the Mafia. The Godfather does not take it lightly when he is crossed, even by a small storekeeper.
Congress is a Mafia running a protection racket.. .
I think one of the ways that these young singers got started is that they would end up in clubs. And a lot of them were mafia owned. And so there was almost an unspoken kind of mafia sponsorship, which is just a very interesting part of that area's music history.
Cool thing about Fidel Castro is that the CIA and the mafia - which are both terrible organizations that tried to murder him again and again - haven't succeeded.
The only other scenario that could explain everything, up to and including your own bizarre apperance, is a convoluted conspiracy theory involving the Russian Mafia and a crack team of plastic surgeons.
