Taiwan's Biggest Ever Mafia Funeral
Organized crime is big in Taiwan, judging by the attendance at the funeral of top mob boss Lee Chao-hsiung. The funeral drew prominent politicians, Buddhist monks, TV variety show celebrities, and foreign dignitaries. Guests included more than ten legislators, dozens of mayors, county magistrates, and councillors, including Taichung's Mayor Jason Hu, a former foreign minister. Mr Lee died of liver cancer at the age of 73. The 108-car funeral procession conveying his body to a crematorium included a Rolls Royce hearse, Mercedes-Benzes and BMWs. Female models carried signs announcing each delegation. It was believed to be the island's biggest ever gangster funeral, with more than 20,000 attending and lines of spectators stretching for more than a mile. http://mafiatoday.com/general-breaking-news/politicians-gangsters-mix-at-funeral-for-taiwan-mafia-boss/
Standard Operating Procedure
Iraq war veteran Ethan McCord, who is seen running with an Iraqi child in his arms in a video posted by WikiLeaks of a July 2007 massacre of civilians in Baghdad, talked to the World Socialist Web Site about the impact of this and similar experiences in Iraq.
McCord and another former member of the company addressed an open letter to the Iraqi people, in which they insisted that "the acts depicted in the video were everyday occurrences of this war: this is the nature of how US-led wars are carried out in this region."My platoon leader yelled at me for [evacuating a wounded child from the scene]. He told me to "stop worrying about these motherfucking kids and start worrying about pulling security." So after that I went up and pulled security on a rooftop. Our rules of engagement were changing on an almost daily basis. But we had a pretty gung-ho commander, who decided that because we were getting hit by IEDs a lot, there would be a new battalion SOP [standard operating procedure]. He goes, "If someone in your line gets hit with an IED, 360 rotational fire. You kill every motherfucker on the street." We were just sitting there looking at each other like, "Are you kidding me? You want us to kill women and children on the street?"
Gangsters have taken over Port-au-Prince
Gangsters have stepped into the law and order vacuum in Port-au-Prince, notably in the sprawling shanty town of Cite Soleil which they dominated before being locked up following police operations supported by UN troops over the last three years. The Haitian authorities are crippled by heavy casualties and destruction of infrastructure. "The problem is they have weapons so we cannot send the population or just any policemen to capture them," said Jean-Max Bellerive, Haiti's prime minister. Police officers have now effectively given up by appealing to local vigilantes to take the law into their own hands. "If you don't kill the criminals, they will all come back," Haitian police announce over loudspeakers from heavily armed checkpoints in Cite Soleil.
