ITALY WITH MOST DANGEROUS MAFIAS

Salvatore Lo Piccolo was arrested near Palermo

Salvatore Lo Piccolo, who had been at large for 20 years, was apprehended along with his son and two other men near the Sicilian capital, Palermo.

All four men were among Italy's top 30 most wanted Mafia suspects, police officials said.
Mr Lo Piccolo, 65, is believed to have succeeded the Cosa Nostra Mafia's "boss of bosses", Bernardo Provenzano, after he was arrested last year.

Officials say those arrested were Mafia chiefs who exercise immense power over the territory they control
"The Lo Piccolos were two bosses involved in restructuring the Mafia after the arrest of Provenzano and are go-betweens with the American Mafia," AFP news agency quoted Mr Forgione as saying.

"Since the arrest of Bernardo Provenzano, the boss of bosses of the so-called Corleonesi Mafia, Salvatore Lo Piccolo was considered the new boss."
Mr Provenzano, who led the Cosa Nostra from the early 1990s, was arrested in April 2006 after being on the run for more than 40 years.

Mr Lo Piccolo’s History

RISE OF THE BARON
Lo Piccolo began his crime career as a bodyguard for a Sicilian Mafia boss
He is believed to have taken over after Provenzano's arrest in 2000
Magistrates believe he fought for the leadership with Matteo Messina Denaro
Lo Piccolo has been on the run since 1983

Mr Lo Piccolo allegedly began as a bodyguard for a Sicilian gangster and worked his way up through the organisation.

With his son Sandro - who was also arrested - 65-year-old Lo Piccolo has been a major power-broker in Sicily despite having been on the run for nearly 25 years.
Nicknamed The Baron, he is believed by magistrates to have taken over from Bernardo Provenzano, who was the undisputed head of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra from 1995 until his arrest in 2006.

Provenzano had run the Corleone Mafia, which gained supremacy in the 1980s. It hailed from the town of the same name in central Sicily, immortalised as the birthplace of the Marlon Brando character in the film The Godf

After Mr Provenzano's arrest, Mr Lo Piccolo was believed to be among his most likely successors, along with Antonino Rotolo and Matteo Messina Denaro.
Mr Rotolo was arrested in June 2006. Mr Denaro remains at large.
Mr Piccolo's arrest came on the day that Palermo held a day of memory for all victims of the Mafia.

The Mafia's "Ten Commandments"

The Mafia's "Ten Commandments"
The original Ten Commandments
1. No-one can present himself directly to another of our friends. There must be a third person to do it.
1. Thou shalt have no other gods before me
2. Never look at the wives of friends.
2. Thou shalt not make for thyself an idol
3. Never be seen with cops.
3. Thou shalt not make wrongful use of the name of thy God
4. Don't go to pubs and clubs.
4. Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy
5. Always being available for Cosa Nostra is a duty - even if your wife's about to give birth.
5. Honor thy Father and Mother
6. Appointments must absolutely be respected.
6. Thou shalt not murder
7. Wives must be treated with respect.
7. Thou shalt not commit adultery
8. When asked for any information, the answer must be the truth.
8. Thou shalt not steal
9. Money cannot be appropriated if it belongs to others or to other families.
9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor
10. People who can't be part of Cosa Nostra: anyone who has a close relative in the police, anyone with a two-timing relative in the family, anyone who behaves badly and doesn't hold to moral values.
10. Thou shalt not covet

Why death is always good?

The willingness to call everything into question and the determination to accept nothing less than an adequate account of the nature of things makes you the first clear exponent of critical philosophy.

We shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good, for one of two things:
Death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness. As men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by the sight of dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain.

For if a person were to select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, and were to compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and then were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the great king, will not find many such days or nights, when compared with the others.

Now if death is like this, I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night. But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead are, what good.

Muhipa's Interest

Patience is a Flower That Grows Not In Every Garden