I have been, and remain, privileged, enjoying the experience of exceptional new events and able to unlock the memories of so many that have been. It is rare that a day passes without something which makes me say “wow, am I not the lucky one,” and then feel guilt, sadness, with the knowledge that for so many others day follows day in deprivation and misery. This was brought home to me in a radio interview of a young new immigrant family living the most appalling of tenement condition in an area of Glasgow and which reminded of when I was training to become a professional child care social worker and nearly lost my place because of writing to a Member of Parliament friend about the rented housing condition in which they found themselves. The new immigrants will always been prey to the unscrupulous profiteer and it is understandable that established communities will give priority to supporting their own. There is also the aspect of personal accountability and lack of responsibility which cannot be overlooked. In the interview the mother confided that she was too ashamed for the children to go to school because they did not have proper clothes and footwear and yet she was pregnant again. I suspect most of the existing European Community countries were unprepared for the scale of the migration of the poor from the new countries but I blame the professional advisers and planners, not the politicians, a theme which I suspect I will be returning to time and time again over the next twelve months.
The role of immigrants in welcoming countries is subject which also arose as I watched the second part of the fictionalised account Joseph Bonanno story who led one of the five main Mafia families in the US between 1930 and 1960. The second part of the story covers the decision not to support Batista in his call for the US to invade and stop Castro because Bonanno recognised that Castro had the support of the majority of the people, except for those who were part of the corrupt Batista power. The film also argued with conviction that it was the link between the Mafia and the father of the Kennedy boys that got them into power, and that the assassination was arranged by Mafia families because Bobby's insistence of pursing organised crime. So much for the Warren Commission and other official investigations then.
The Wikipedia internet information on Mafia crime in the USA is amazing. It explains that the Castellammerse war between Masseria and Maranazno families was used by Charles Lucky Luciano to have both the leaders killed within six months in order to remove the boss of bosses and create a federation called a commission to regulate activities and one of the five major families created as a consequence, was from part of Maranazno facility, the Bonanno family headed by Joe Bonanno It is widely believed that Mario Puzo based Vito Corleone, the Godfather, on Joe Bonanno because both wanted their sons to succeed them and both were opposed to moving into narcotics trade. It is understandable why many remain fascinated by these men, the leaders, especially those who kept the moral codes which meant you did not attempt to kill law enforcers and non combatants, you remained silent and took your medicine even when that meant a decade in prison, you were devoutly Catholic and financial supported the church, you tried to go into legitimate business, especially for your families and you put your life up for the welfare of your family.
These men killed, or arranged, the killing of each other, they were terrorists who exploited the poorest sections of their own communities, and attempted to corrupt, often successfully, officials in the justice system and in government at local and national level. The life of Tony Soprano and his ilk is closer to the truth than with some of the glossy the self image portrayed in the Bonanno film. The Bonanno family which commenced in 1925 with Salvatore Maranazno the boss for only 1 year and Joe for 33 years was followed 18 others with the present boss Vincent Vinny Gorgeous Bassano convicted and imprisoned so Sal the iron worker Montagna is the acting boss, Michael Mickey Nose Mancuso the underboss in prison, Nicholas Nicky Dimes Santora has become the acting underboss, Anthony Fish Fat Tony Rabito is the consigliore. 28 influential members are listed including Andrew Bonanno, 22 associates are also listed 9 inducted members of the family have defected (provided evidence) hence our knowledge of the family, plus five associates and what appears to be the seven key members of the Bath Avenue Crew. It also emerged that the defence lawyers came to admit that they were also members of the family.
What supports my contention that while the crime and corruption can never be condoned and should be appropriately punished, it is important to see the whole individual, Joe Bonanno was brought to the USA his father in 1906 and operated a bar restaurant until being required to return to the family in Castellammare del Golfo in Scilly because of feuding family business interests,
Joe was orphaned at 15 and attempt to make his way enrolling in a nautical college at Palermo and shortly aft wards Mussolini rose to power cracking down on everyone in Sicily thought to be mafia or associated because of their potential threat to the regime, torturing and executing hundreds. Jo joined an anti fascist student group and were forced to flee Italy for their lives by freighter to Marseilles, then to Paris and Cuba and hen smuggled ashore in Florida by boat from where he got himself to the area where he had lived as a boy in Brooklyn, affiliating himself to the neighbourhood Mafioso who were mainly from his home town.
I have explained all this because England is having to get used to the arrival of the Mafioso from all parts of Europe these days just as it was many of the Hungarian Mafioso who came here after the failed revolution. Protection rackets, the sex industry in all its form and drugs and money laundering have become an international and world wide business which digital and internet communications and international transport systems has made easy, together with the corruption by those in the police and judicial systems, and in politics and the administration at national and local level. Britain was never immune but the scale and pace of the development is now our problem. The film alleges that Joe and fellow Sicilians actively supported the allied invasion to end the Fascist rule in Italy, which would explain some official blind eye in the immediate post war period.
It is also important to member that addition to the individual role in the Mafioso, the Cosa Nostra and brotherhoods or whatever romanticised name given organised criminal gangs the majority led normal family lives marrying and raising children. Joe married Fay Labruzzo in 1931and had three children, his eldest son Salvatore developed a mastoid ear infection and was sent to a private residential school in Tucson Arizona, and Joe, who had already moved out of Brooklyn to Long Island, subsequently bought property in Tucson and retired and died there subsequently.
It was only in the mid sixties that the USA authorities were able to begin to officially unravel the extent of the situation which had developed in the century before then, because Joseph Valachi of the Genovese family broke the code of omertia and accurately explained the working structures and many of the leadership, as well as something of the recent history.
The significance of Bonanno is not that he made a multi personal fortune from loan sharking, bookmaking, numbers racket running (we now call it the national and European lottery) and prostitution but he became an effective business man in the fields of the garment industry, cheese factories and funeral homes and had interests in Tucson and Canada as well as the original interests in New York. The concept of the global business is not a post second world war phenomena.
And I underline, as I have mentioned before, and will continue to repeat I found some of the most loyal monarchists, national flag wavers and religious people were criminals, encountered in prison and through my professional and managerial work.
While the likes of you and me will plan to make at least one visit and make one trip to or from what the head if the best railway system in the world, the SNCF, has said, is likely to be recognised as the best railway station in the world, it is the international business class, and celebrities and personalities that are like to make use of the new 5 star hotel and private apartment complex to be opened in 2009 from the neo gothic front of St Pancras station and it can be assumed that only proportion of the 150000 a week using the international part of the station will be able to afford to use the longest champagne bar and the other top nosh places to be opened and also that a proportion of these will be using cash that is dodgy, but this does not mean that the rest of us cannot celebrate the fact that the station has been created in the capitol than elsewhere and for me that it is next door to my usual arrival station is an added bonus. There is no doubt that the new station will become an even greater attraction than the New Wembley and the completion of two such buildings in one year does indicate an upturn in national fortunes despite all the other problems.
The programme tonight concentrated on the role of the architect as he battled to ensure the standards of the design and concept were maintained, (and at a personal level if he has developed throat cancer which he had not), and the young female project coordinator for the lower level commercial centre working seven days a week for six months. The more I find out I am in greater awe.
Afterwards I discovered an audio visual tour on the official site which is yet limited in the information provided. I cannot wait to see the 9 metre statue of contemporary lovers (a successor to the Rodin?) and there is to be, if not already, a statue of Sir John Betjeman who I remember fighting to save the station from demolition in the 1960's. Although Eurotrains commenced operation yesterday the complex is still in the process of completion. The main area is the famous William Henry Barlow shed which now has 18000 panes of self cleaning glass and repainting the iron work to match the original blue required 20000 litres of special paint I will leave some of the other stats until later in the series.
I stopped working comparatively early last night to check out the suitability for a young view of one the Daily Mail free DVD's which was fortunately in two episodes as it enabled me to see first the programme on St Pancras and then a magnificent recording of Verdi's Messa Da Requiem, which I first heard live at a Promenade at the Royal Albert Hall in 1956, over fifty years ago, after buying a half season Promenade Ticket. The Hall was a magnificent magical place then and I plan to return to see the latest refurbishments on my December visit to London although it looks as if there are no behind the scenes tours scheduled, or they are already fully booked. I will make further enquiries by phone. Alas I have not retained the programmes, tickets or other information of that first experience. As soon as I was able to do so I purchased the Deutsche Grammophon version with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Ferenc Fricsay (Hungary) conducting. and it is only within the past three years that I purchased a CD recording with Herbert von Karajan conducting the Berliner Philharmoniker, also on Deutsche Grammophon. Tonight's Performance channel recording also featured the Berliner Philharmoniker, conductor Claudio Abbado and the soloists the gorgeous Angela Georgiou, Daniella Barcellona, Roberto Alagna and Julian Konstantinov.
No one can hear this Requiem without being moved by its beauty, tenderness, celestial soaring, and powerhouse crescendo's and thundering choruses and I always listen in wonderment at the human being who created the work and those who perform it. I also have Requiems by Mozart, Rutter, Faure, and Durefle. No one can hear Verdi's work and doubt the immortality of the human spirit.
I should have gone to bed then but wanted to see the outcome of Merlin's Apprentice which I quickly decided was not suitable for anyone under 12 which if I looked closer is what it states on the cover. The first three Daily Mail giver always were marked PG so I forgive myself a little except for my motto Never assume anything, always check first and if possible do it yourself.
The role of immigrants in welcoming countries is subject which also arose as I watched the second part of the fictionalised account Joseph Bonanno story who led one of the five main Mafia families in the US between 1930 and 1960. The second part of the story covers the decision not to support Batista in his call for the US to invade and stop Castro because Bonanno recognised that Castro had the support of the majority of the people, except for those who were part of the corrupt Batista power. The film also argued with conviction that it was the link between the Mafia and the father of the Kennedy boys that got them into power, and that the assassination was arranged by Mafia families because Bobby's insistence of pursing organised crime. So much for the Warren Commission and other official investigations then.
The Wikipedia internet information on Mafia crime in the USA is amazing. It explains that the Castellammerse war between Masseria and Maranazno families was used by Charles Lucky Luciano to have both the leaders killed within six months in order to remove the boss of bosses and create a federation called a commission to regulate activities and one of the five major families created as a consequence, was from part of Maranazno facility, the Bonanno family headed by Joe Bonanno It is widely believed that Mario Puzo based Vito Corleone, the Godfather, on Joe Bonanno because both wanted their sons to succeed them and both were opposed to moving into narcotics trade. It is understandable why many remain fascinated by these men, the leaders, especially those who kept the moral codes which meant you did not attempt to kill law enforcers and non combatants, you remained silent and took your medicine even when that meant a decade in prison, you were devoutly Catholic and financial supported the church, you tried to go into legitimate business, especially for your families and you put your life up for the welfare of your family.
These men killed, or arranged, the killing of each other, they were terrorists who exploited the poorest sections of their own communities, and attempted to corrupt, often successfully, officials in the justice system and in government at local and national level. The life of Tony Soprano and his ilk is closer to the truth than with some of the glossy the self image portrayed in the Bonanno film. The Bonanno family which commenced in 1925 with Salvatore Maranazno the boss for only 1 year and Joe for 33 years was followed 18 others with the present boss Vincent Vinny Gorgeous Bassano convicted and imprisoned so Sal the iron worker Montagna is the acting boss, Michael Mickey Nose Mancuso the underboss in prison, Nicholas Nicky Dimes Santora has become the acting underboss, Anthony Fish Fat Tony Rabito is the consigliore. 28 influential members are listed including Andrew Bonanno, 22 associates are also listed 9 inducted members of the family have defected (provided evidence) hence our knowledge of the family, plus five associates and what appears to be the seven key members of the Bath Avenue Crew. It also emerged that the defence lawyers came to admit that they were also members of the family.
What supports my contention that while the crime and corruption can never be condoned and should be appropriately punished, it is important to see the whole individual, Joe Bonanno was brought to the USA his father in 1906 and operated a bar restaurant until being required to return to the family in Castellammare del Golfo in Scilly because of feuding family business interests,
Joe was orphaned at 15 and attempt to make his way enrolling in a nautical college at Palermo and shortly aft wards Mussolini rose to power cracking down on everyone in Sicily thought to be mafia or associated because of their potential threat to the regime, torturing and executing hundreds. Jo joined an anti fascist student group and were forced to flee Italy for their lives by freighter to Marseilles, then to Paris and Cuba and hen smuggled ashore in Florida by boat from where he got himself to the area where he had lived as a boy in Brooklyn, affiliating himself to the neighbourhood Mafioso who were mainly from his home town.
I have explained all this because England is having to get used to the arrival of the Mafioso from all parts of Europe these days just as it was many of the Hungarian Mafioso who came here after the failed revolution. Protection rackets, the sex industry in all its form and drugs and money laundering have become an international and world wide business which digital and internet communications and international transport systems has made easy, together with the corruption by those in the police and judicial systems, and in politics and the administration at national and local level. Britain was never immune but the scale and pace of the development is now our problem. The film alleges that Joe and fellow Sicilians actively supported the allied invasion to end the Fascist rule in Italy, which would explain some official blind eye in the immediate post war period.
It is also important to member that addition to the individual role in the Mafioso, the Cosa Nostra and brotherhoods or whatever romanticised name given organised criminal gangs the majority led normal family lives marrying and raising children. Joe married Fay Labruzzo in 1931and had three children, his eldest son Salvatore developed a mastoid ear infection and was sent to a private residential school in Tucson Arizona, and Joe, who had already moved out of Brooklyn to Long Island, subsequently bought property in Tucson and retired and died there subsequently.
It was only in the mid sixties that the USA authorities were able to begin to officially unravel the extent of the situation which had developed in the century before then, because Joseph Valachi of the Genovese family broke the code of omertia and accurately explained the working structures and many of the leadership, as well as something of the recent history.
The significance of Bonanno is not that he made a multi personal fortune from loan sharking, bookmaking, numbers racket running (we now call it the national and European lottery) and prostitution but he became an effective business man in the fields of the garment industry, cheese factories and funeral homes and had interests in Tucson and Canada as well as the original interests in New York. The concept of the global business is not a post second world war phenomena.
And I underline, as I have mentioned before, and will continue to repeat I found some of the most loyal monarchists, national flag wavers and religious people were criminals, encountered in prison and through my professional and managerial work.
While the likes of you and me will plan to make at least one visit and make one trip to or from what the head if the best railway system in the world, the SNCF, has said, is likely to be recognised as the best railway station in the world, it is the international business class, and celebrities and personalities that are like to make use of the new 5 star hotel and private apartment complex to be opened in 2009 from the neo gothic front of St Pancras station and it can be assumed that only proportion of the 150000 a week using the international part of the station will be able to afford to use the longest champagne bar and the other top nosh places to be opened and also that a proportion of these will be using cash that is dodgy, but this does not mean that the rest of us cannot celebrate the fact that the station has been created in the capitol than elsewhere and for me that it is next door to my usual arrival station is an added bonus. There is no doubt that the new station will become an even greater attraction than the New Wembley and the completion of two such buildings in one year does indicate an upturn in national fortunes despite all the other problems.
The programme tonight concentrated on the role of the architect as he battled to ensure the standards of the design and concept were maintained, (and at a personal level if he has developed throat cancer which he had not), and the young female project coordinator for the lower level commercial centre working seven days a week for six months. The more I find out I am in greater awe.
Afterwards I discovered an audio visual tour on the official site which is yet limited in the information provided. I cannot wait to see the 9 metre statue of contemporary lovers (a successor to the Rodin?) and there is to be, if not already, a statue of Sir John Betjeman who I remember fighting to save the station from demolition in the 1960's. Although Eurotrains commenced operation yesterday the complex is still in the process of completion. The main area is the famous William Henry Barlow shed which now has 18000 panes of self cleaning glass and repainting the iron work to match the original blue required 20000 litres of special paint I will leave some of the other stats until later in the series.
I stopped working comparatively early last night to check out the suitability for a young view of one the Daily Mail free DVD's which was fortunately in two episodes as it enabled me to see first the programme on St Pancras and then a magnificent recording of Verdi's Messa Da Requiem, which I first heard live at a Promenade at the Royal Albert Hall in 1956, over fifty years ago, after buying a half season Promenade Ticket. The Hall was a magnificent magical place then and I plan to return to see the latest refurbishments on my December visit to London although it looks as if there are no behind the scenes tours scheduled, or they are already fully booked. I will make further enquiries by phone. Alas I have not retained the programmes, tickets or other information of that first experience. As soon as I was able to do so I purchased the Deutsche Grammophon version with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Ferenc Fricsay (Hungary) conducting. and it is only within the past three years that I purchased a CD recording with Herbert von Karajan conducting the Berliner Philharmoniker, also on Deutsche Grammophon. Tonight's Performance channel recording also featured the Berliner Philharmoniker, conductor Claudio Abbado and the soloists the gorgeous Angela Georgiou, Daniella Barcellona, Roberto Alagna and Julian Konstantinov.
No one can hear this Requiem without being moved by its beauty, tenderness, celestial soaring, and powerhouse crescendo's and thundering choruses and I always listen in wonderment at the human being who created the work and those who perform it. I also have Requiems by Mozart, Rutter, Faure, and Durefle. No one can hear Verdi's work and doubt the immortality of the human spirit.
I should have gone to bed then but wanted to see the outcome of Merlin's Apprentice which I quickly decided was not suitable for anyone under 12 which if I looked closer is what it states on the cover. The first three Daily Mail giver always were marked PG so I forgive myself a little except for my motto Never assume anything, always check first and if possible do it yourself.
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