Slightly off Topic ? Wayne Greavette

I went to the Wellington Water Watchers event last night, to help organize a fight against the extraction of billions of litres of irreplaceable water from the local acquifer in rural Puslinch. Every time I think about spring water in Puslinch I think about the 1996 murder of Wayne Greavette.

I'm not saying the stories are related, or that the Morgeti are involved, or that Nestle was involved (It was five years before they bought the Arberfoyle Springs) but both stories are circumstantially linked to the control of a multi-billion dollar water resource.

I urge you to go to the unsolved murder site linked above and think for yourself.
It may have nothing to do with water, but here's a bit of the site contents.

...Wayne and his wife started a small business of their own, in the same field, (the packaging machinery equipment industry ed.) which they ran out of their home in the rural Acton area until June 1996. In June 1996 they moved to a farm, located in Moffat (Puslinch Township), Ontario, just a half hour away from their previous home. From there, they continued to run their business, as well as developing a spring site located next to their property, until the time of Wayne's death in December 1996.

What is known about the murder:

A package addressed to Wayne was delivered to his home via Canada Post. When he opened the package, he was killed by the flashlight bomb contained inside. The package came with a letter, the details of which follow:

The letter was typed with a Smith-Corona typewriter using a daisy wheel font model 10/12 #59543. The daisy wheel used in this typewriter left a distinct anomaly in the letter, a slash after each period.

This anomaly is uncommon, and if you can remember seeing it in any of your correspondence at work or at home, you should contact the police. Please, check out the anomaly carefully.

It was clearly a hit of some kind, for some reason, and he did have enemies, but people have known for a long time how precious water was becoming to the world.

It just makes me think.

Speaking of Legends and Language

This site goes into some detail about linguistic origins and the interconnectedness of various Italian languages.
These are some of the selections that mention the ancient Morgeti to which my title alludes.

I would indeed distinguish between a Western Italic branch, which gave the Latins the Siculi and the Ausones/Opici, and this "Liguro-Sicanian" which I think included in the South the branch of the Oenotri (Morgeti, Sicani, Choni).

Peoples
The Sicani are reported by ancient authors to have been the first inhabitants of Sicily, at least among the historical ethnic groups. Thucydides and Diodorus say that the Sicani came from Iberia. Dionysus, quoting Hellanicus, says the Elymi (but likely he meant Sicani, since Elymi and Sicani merged later) were the first wave of Italian people to settle in Sicily. The second wave was that of the Siculi, which were Ausones escaping from the Iapygi. The same Dionysus says that among the Oenotri there were Siculi (possibly Sicani) and Morgeti.

Since King Morgezio's father was Enotrio, the Oenotri would refer to him, and the land that Morgezio's father conquered from the Ashkenazi, became known as Ausone during the father's reign, and then known as Morgezia in the son's reign. When the Iapygi invaded, the Siculi/Morgeti would have taken refuge near the site of the later Greek city of Morgantia, near Mount Etna in Sicily.

The Joys of Google Translation

This is what reading Italian is like for a non Italian speaker/reader
it's from a 2005 article on the arrest of Rocco Facchineri

Rocco Facchineri

REGGIO CALABRIA - Rocco Facchineri, 47 years, searched from 1989 and inserted in the list of the 500 more dangerous fugitives of Italy, have been arrested from the Police officers yesterday evening to Saint George Morgeto, in the reggino: it was participating to a banquet for the communion of the son of a its faithful, Francisco Corradino.

Facchineri carried with himself a stick of chestnut tree with one head of Aquila inlaid on the top, symbol of the commando. To the soldiers it has said: “You have been good. Just E' that pays my debit with the justice”.

Facchineri, thought “capobastone” of an operating clan to Cittanova, was fugitive in 1989 during a permission prize while she was in jail for the seizure of the manufacturer perugino Vittorio Garinei, happened in May 1983 to City of Castle. Against of he there is an execution order pain of 12 years and 4 months of confinement emitted from the Attorney General's Office of Perugia.

“The arrest - the provincial commander of the police officers of Reggio Calabria has explained, Antonio Fiano - has been the fruit of certosino a job of control of the territory”. According to the investigators, the fugitive had a prominent role in the within of the gang and maintained contacts with relatives and affiliates to you operating in Umbria and Goes them of Aosta.

In the period of the furtiveness, Facchineri has been married in church and has had four regularly recognized sons. The wedding was celebrated in the 1992 in one church of Saint George Morgeto. The priest asserted not to know that the spouse was searched.

In the February 2003 Facchineri was successful to escape to a raid of the police officers in Aspromonte. Put in guard barking of a dog, the man had thrown itself in a dirupo making to lose the own traces during one snow storm. In I brood, a hut of wood with the sheet roof hidden between the rovi, came found again of all: a pump gun Maverick 12 magnum, one scanner radio syntonized on the frequency of the police enforcements, giubboto a antibullet, but also spaghetti, schedine of the Superenalotto, specialized witnesses of criminal proceedings and legal reviews.

“To have captured Facchineri while he participated to a baptism - the vice president of the Commission has commented parliamentarian the antiMafia, Angela Naples - he demonstrates as the men of 'ndrangheta not only live the furtiveness in it accustom them territory of belongings, but also with the certainty of impunity”. “The fact that the furtiveness of Facchineri is begun during a permission prize - has added - the necessity evidences see again the norm in matter”.

(22 August 2005)

CSIS on Transnational Crime

"UN estimates place the cost of this transnational criminal activity in developed states at two per cent of annual gross national product (GNP). The potential transnational crime-related losses for Canada in 1995 would have been about $14.8 billion, based on a GNP of $742 billion. Figures like this led the 1998 G8 summit in the UK to label transnational criminal activity one of the three major challenges facing the world today."
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service has this to say about transnational crime.

RCMP Money laundering Prevention Guide

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have a book too.

Money Laundering - A Preventive Guide

A Preventive Guide for Small Business & Currency Exchanges in Canada


FINTRAC
The Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada

One of the RCMP's roles within Canada's Initiative to Combat Money Laundering is to inform the public. To most businesses, money laundering is something that happens somewhere else, involving only criminals. The truth is, it can happen anywhere, anytime, and you may not even be aware that you have been involved.

Money laundering is the process whereby criminals conceal illicit funds by converting them into seemingly legitimate income. While the term refers to the monetary proceeds of all criminal activity it is most often associated with the financial activities of drug traffickers who seek to launder large amounts of cash generated from the sale of narcotics.

The RCMP Proceeds of Crime (POC) program's mandate is to identify, assess, restrain and forfeit illicit and/or unreported wealth accumulated through criminal activities. Most of the POC sections work under an integrated model. These Integrated Proceeds of Crime (IPOC) Units bring together the skills, knowledge, and abilities of a diverse group of experts, including RCMP, provincial and municipal police investigators, lawyers from the Department of Justice, forensic accountants, representatives from Canada Revenue Agency, and customs officers from the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA).

It is important for businesses of every kind to be informed about how they can be used to launder money, and how they can help to make it more difficult for criminals to prosper. We recommend you review this booklet to ensure that you are aware of the problem.

Index

* Foreword
* Why criminals want to "launder" money?
* Money Laundering Methods
* What is "wilful blindness"
* Preventive strategies for small and medium businesses
* Record keeping requirements for small and medium businesses
* Impact of money laundering on society
* If you suspect money laundering
* What we need from you
* Partners in identifying the proceeds of crime
* RCMP Proceeds of Crime Units

Mexico, Narco States and drug law

On the CBC's The Current today (March 30 2007) they interviewed Charles Bowden, author of Down by the River: Drugs, Money, Murder, and Family. (Bowden lives in Tucson, Arizona.)
After discussing the fact that Mexico is essential a narco state governed by drug cartels supported by the military, he suggests that the only solution to the problem is the legalization of the sale of drugs. Making them illegal has turned a health issue into a legal issue, created an enormous burden on the state, and made the cartels rich.
I tend to agree with him. As I have said before, "there is no salvation in law". The Ontario Temperance Act of the 'nineteen teens' helped turn secret Italian socio-political extortion societies into modern organized crime in this Province. Money sent back to the old country helped the development of Crime in Calabria and Sicily.
Drug laws aid and abet organized crime at home and abroad the ensure the creation of narco states run by people with drug money they use to buy off badly paid police, soldiers etc.
Since America is the largest consumer of illegal drugs in the world, American anti-drug laws are especially useful to international organized crime.
If the drugs were made legal, and the regulated and taxed, the prices would remain considerably lower, the tax money could go directly to the health care system to deal with drug abuse, the budgets of police and national security now being focused on fighting organized drug dealers could be refocused, the connection between arms dealers and drug dealers could be dissolved.
Sure problems would still exist, and murky ethical issues would have to be addressed, but not only is what we're doing not working, the only people it benefits are organized criminals. Without their drug profits, their toxic influence on local economies is considerably lessened, which limits the damage they can do elsewhere. Illegal drugs are expensive because they are illegal, make them legal and the margins shrink, leaving more money for the legiti8mate economy: qualities of life for the non-users in the family will improve, especially if drug abuse becomes a health/mental health issue, in which an open an honest policy of concern is made central to our drug policies.
The only people who benefit by attempts to legislate morality are those without any morality.

Another Reason I Wrote this Book

Guelph is a small city, not much more than a town surrounded by sprawl.
Rumours abound here about the city's Italians and which of them are mobsters and which aren't. The longer you live here the more rumours you hear, the more facts you hear, the more hypocrisy you sense, the more uneasy the whole mess makes you.
The police know who the gangsters are, and I don't just mean the local police. In fact the local police for the most part consist of recruits who come and go. It's a university town, Guelph's police force is a kind of Police Academy graduate school-practicuum campus. The Ontario Provincial Police, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Combined Special Forces Units, and the Canadian Security Intelligence Services all know who the gangsters are, they've been following their activities for decades. However, Canadian rules of evidence are necessarily strict about bringing cases to court.
And so next to nothing happens. Especially now that money-laundering is the favoured activity of Canadian mobsters. The veneer of business respectability and the depth of local rumour and unease over the town's mobsters combine (in this case) to cast a shadow over business in Guelph. Consumers aid and abet criminal organizations in laundering the proceeds of crime every day, making us accessories during the fact.
I already find it hard to buy products from companies that treat third world sweat shop workers like slaves, and so avoid shopping in places like WalMart. Helping businesses that are laundering the proceeds of drug misery money makes me equally uneasy.
The only way I can help is by trying to distinguish rumour from fact, cause from effect, context from events, individuals from communities, secret society members from non-members.
If enough people become aware of the need to do the same, something can be done.
The world is headed for an environmental cataclysm, I don't want to get there and discover that the water and the food and every aspect of our surviving economy is controlled by gangsters, by extortionists and bullies who have friends in high places and friends among the arms dealers and the prostitute makers and the Third world resource sector slave trader, people who will be fully prepared to put me and my loved ones into their 'business plan.'
It's not that gangsters are immoral, it's that they are amoral, they may have a code of behaviour, but whatever it has in common with community standards of what is right and what is wrong arises only from the fact that they have amoral allies in all walks of life.
And what about the ethical Italians whose honesty and integrity is tainted by the existence of gangsters in their midst, in their families. They need community support, we need to give them our business, and stop giving it to their corrupt 'cousins'.
In order to do that we need to separate rumour from fact. And one of those facts is that it is not just Italians who are involved in organized crime.
In a way the truth is the smallest part of the process, the point of the fulcrum on which this whole edifice can be levered off its foundation once there is a community will to do so, a national will to do so.
But this is more like a Truth and Reconciliation process. This is not a witch hunt, this is about redeeming society, not condemning families or individuals.