Mafia toxic waste dumping poisons Italy farmlands. Maybe times have changed -- but the mobster bad boys haven't

Mafia toxic waste dumping poisons Italy farmlands 

 Dec 20th 2013 6:12AM       Verne Strickland / Blogmaster / Dec 22 2013

In this Nov. 18, 2013 photo, rubbish is piled up on the edge of cultivated land near Caivano, in the surroundings of Naples, southern Italy. Dozens of fields in the area were sequestered by police, prohibiting any one from harvesting or even setting foot on the plot. Decades of toxic waste dumping by the Camorra crime syndicate that dominates the Naples area poisoned wells, authorities have found in recent months, tainting the water that irrigates crops with high levels of lead, arsenic and the industrial solvent tetrachloride. (AP Photo/Salvatore Laporta)

CAIVANO, Italy (AP) - On Ciro Fusco's farm in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, police swooped down one recent day and planted a warning sign in his broccoli fields, prohibiting any one from harvesting or even setting foot on the plot. Dozens of other fields in the area were sequestered in the same way. Decades of toxic waste dumping by the Camorra crime syndicate that dominates the Naples area poisoned wells, authorities have found in recent months, tainting the water that irrigates crops with high levels of lead, arsenic and the industrial solvent tetrachloride.

The warning came too late: Fusco had already sold some of his broccoli at nearby markets.

The farmlands around Naples, authorities say, are contaminated from the Mafia's multibillion-dollar racket in disposing toxic waste, mainly from industries in the wealthy north that ask no questions about where the garbage goes as long as it's taken off their hands - for a fraction of the cost of legal disposal. The poisoning is triggering widespread fear and outrage in the Naples area, and tens of thousands of people marched through the city's chaotic streets last month demanding to know whether they have been eating tainted vegetables for years.

In an interview with The Associated Press, the head of the Naples environmental police force rattled off a list of substances in higher than permissible levels contaminating 13 irrigation wells on farmlands: arsenic, cadmium, tin, beryllium and other metals; tetrachloride and tolulene among other chemicals used as industrial solvents.

Gen. Sergio Costa did not provide specific levels as tests were ongoing, but described the amounts as reaching "dangerous" levels. On one farm in Caivano, Costa said, four times the permissible level of lead was found in the irrigation well's water. Cabbages irrigated by that water were found to be contaminated with lead, although tomatoes irrigated with the same well showed no harmful lead levels, said Costa - illustrating the complexity of testing crops for toxicity. The wells are not used for drinking water.

Analyses of the vegetables are still being conducted, and Fusco was waiting to learn if his family's farm's broccoli was tainted. Costa said the crops, irrigated by wells later found to be contaminated, were sold only in markets in the Naples area. Officials estimate that waste seepage from one of the more notorious sites, a hill-like dump in the nearby farm town of Giugliano, a short drive away, will keep poisoning the water for half a century.

A top Camorra boss, Francesco Bidognetti, was convicted last month of poisoning the water table in the town of Gugliano with toxic waste and received a 20-year sentence. It was by far the stiffest punishment yet for waste dumping and a strong sign that the state is cracking down on the lucrative racket. Much of the waste the Camorra has trafficked has come from factories, processing plants and hospitals, mainly trucked down from in Italy's industrial north to the mobsters' power base near Naples and Caserta.

Some of the waste was buried under a soccer field in Casal di Principe, the stronghold of the Casalesi crime clan that dominates the illicit business, along with a few other families. Naples-based anti-Mafia Prosecutor Giovanni Conzo said in an interview that waste was also buried under a water-skiing pool in the town of Castel Volturno, near the sea.

Camorristi "poisoned their own territory, they poisoned their own blood," said Costa, the Naples environmental police force chief.

According to a nationwide environmentalist group, Legambiente, Camorra mobsters since 1991 have systematically dumped, burned or buried nearly 10 million tons of waste, almost all of it coming from factories that either don't seek to know where the waste ends up or are complicit in the crimes. According to evidence used in trials, the waste contained PCBs, asbestos, industrial sludge and metal drums filled with dangerous solvents used to make paint.

"How could this all happen?" Michele Buonomo, Legambiente's Naples-area president, said in an interview.

Franco Roberti, Italy's top organized crime fighter, offers an explanation.

It wasn't just the Camorra profiting off the waste racket, he said in an AP interview: In Italy's industrial north, factories and processing plants saved at least half the cost of the going rate of legitimate waste disposal or detoxification. Companies falsified documentation identifying the wastes' content, said the national anti-Mafia prosecutor. In the Camorra's power base, he added, town officials, dump operators or farmers with vacant land closed an eye for their own payoff.

Roberti said the first Camorra turncoat to reveal the business of waste trafficking told him in interrogations that "monnezza" - Neapolitan for garbage - was, in effect, worth its weight in gold.

Investigators' first big break came in 2007, nearly 20 years after the mobsters started trafficking in wastes. Turncoat Gaetano Vassallo, from the Casalesi clan, gave prosecutors a "very complete picture" about the racket, Roberti recalled. He told them where waste had been dumped and buried. And he indicated which companies, mainly in Italy's north, were turning to the Camorra to cart away waste.

Vassallo's tips were borne out when investigators, using backhoes and shovels, dug into the sprawling Giugliano dump. Exhaustive analyses of soil samples by a geologist in a two-year study, whose results were made public this fall, found many of the cancer-causing or otherwise harmful substances exactly where the turncoat said Bidognetti had them dumped over several years. Some of the waste trafficked by Bidognetti allegedly came from a major dye-manufacturing plant in the northwest Piedmont region, which was eventually shut down after Piedmont residents grew alarmed when local rivers were colored with the factory's runoff.

Geologist Giovanni Balestri's study, commissioned by Naples-based anti-Mafia prosecutors, of soil and aquifers contaminated by the dump found a laundry lists of substances similar to those discovered around the Caivano farms: Chromium, lead, nickel, sulfates, toluene and other substances - all in concentrations higher than, often far exceeding, permissible levels.

Costa said the vegetables irrigated by water from contaminated wells was destined for local markets, not supermarkets - whose strict quality standards, backed up by spot-checks, would virtually eliminate the possibility of any tainted produce from reaching tables beyond the Camorra's backyard.

Italy's agriculture minister last month hastened to assure consumers that testing of the produce is continuing "non-stop." Nunzia De Girolamo was referring to a strategy devised by Costa: Since much of the waste seeps down to aquifers, which feed irrigation wells, his squad is analyzing the water of each well supplied by the contaminated aquifers, a painstaking process that started this year and will take several more months to complete.

Farmers scoffed at the idea their vegetables - a key part of the much-touted healthy Mediterranean diet - would be bad to eat.

"I eat them, my sons eat them and my grandchildren eat them," said Domenico Della Corte, holding up a cauliflower as big as a bridal bouquet.

Meanwhile, Naples anti-mafia prosecutor Conzo speaks of another fear: The mob may be poised to cash in on the massive cleanup - using its time-tested expertise at muscling in on public contracts.

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ELECTRODE 13 hours ago May be that Jimmie Hoffa is under that pile...........
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hsena 13 hours ago this again shows the law can't stop anything. italy's law is no better then a third world country
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John Billingsley 14 hours ago I would thank with the Mafia doing the polluting, it would be body parts and bad spaghetti.
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Wendy 14 hours ago This is so tragic! The poor population down there. Now comes the hard job of requiring, by law, for the Mafioso, and the Factories to do the proper clean up! Such a shame!!
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carc206 14 hours ago Those northern Italian factories should be the ones to pay for the clean up of the affected areas because it is their "toxic waste" that is causing the problem.
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eeverettm 14 hours ago Can we still buy their olive oil? Hmmm....the love of money....
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ashlivesjk 15 hours ago Why don't those 10's of thousands march on the mafia, and the rich companies that are producing the other things they want.?
Oh and the writer misspelled toluene :P
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wodmann 16 hours ago guess they didn't pay the mandatory extortion from the italian mafia......
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babyicant 16 hours ago Poisoned Land in Naples by the mafia? I doubt it. Sure they run the garbage removal but why **** where they eat? No its not them. I think its more Eminent Domain Italian Style. It clearly states in the article...."""".Dozens of fields in the area were sequestered by police, prohibiting any one from harvesting or even setting foot on the plot."""""" That is how Governments do it.
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bigfile4 16 hours ago That's the problem with parasites. They suck the host organism dry and eventually kill it.
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1 reply to bigfile4's comment

steve 14 hours ago Yep your correct, Just like illegals that come to this country and people who have made welfare a life style generation after generation. Their ******* us dry..

Beaufort elections board member removed from office -- illegally endorsed Greg Brannon, GOP candidate for U.S. Senate.

Delma Blinson removed from Beaufort elections board for participating in partisan political activities -- endorsing Dr. Greg Brannon, U.S. Senate candidate (GOP)

 Dr. Greg Brannon, Cary -- GOP candidate for U.S. Senate


By Mark Binker

Posted: 4:22 p.m. today 12/20/13
Updated: 5:06 p.m. today

Tags: Elections

Raleigh, N.C. — The State Board of Elections on Friday removed a member of the Beaufort County Board of Elections for participating in partisan political activities.
Delma Blinson, who was appointed to the Beaufort board this summer, participated in a local tea party meeting in October.

During that meeting, Blinson made a motion that passed to endorse Greg Brannon, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate.

The state board sets major policy for state elections and oversees the operations of local boards. Local boards have the job of actually running elections. This summer, state board leaders warned new members of local boards that they must abstain from political activity in order to preserve their objectivity.

"You were on notice that we were going to aggressively enforce this statute," said Josh Howard, chairman of the state board.

Blinson acknowledged that he had participated in the tea party meeting, but he said he did not think it violated the law, which prohibits "public" displays of political opinion.

"I would say anyone in public office ... has a right to private conversations," he said.

But board members pointed out that the tea party meeting time and location was advertised to the public. The activity at the meeting -- making an endorsement -- was a process in which one's political opinions are made known.

"If 20 people at a political rally isn't public, what is?" Howard asked.

The board voted 5-0 to remove Blinson and asked the local Republican Party to recommend a replacement.

Meet ‘wacko bird’ Greg Brannon, the tea party’s secession-backing, public school-hating hopeful

By Travis Gettys
Monday, December 16, 2013 14:03 EST

A tea party candidate whose role model was an unrepentant segregationist and has spoken to a group that supports Southern secession said he’s eager to join the U.S. Senate’s “wacko bird caucus,” and he’s got some big-name supporters.
Republican Greg Brannon said he moved to North Carolina due to his admiration for the late Sen. Jesse Helms, and he vowed to emulate the obstructionist conservative if he can unseat Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan next year.
During his time in public office, Helms fought against interracial marriage, held up disability rights legislation and funding for HIV prevention, opposed a bill establishing a national holiday for Martin Luther King Jr. and never renounced his support for racial segregation.
Brannon, who calls the late senator a “modern hero,” is the first non-incumbent 2014 candidate endorsed by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), and he has also picked up endorsements from Red State editor Erick Erickson and conservative provocateur Ann Coulter.
Despite the high-profile plaudits, Brannon faces long odds in the GOP primary, where he’ll face four candidates, including North Carolina Speaker of the House Thom Tillis – although a recent survey conducted by Public Policy Polling found he was the only Republican candidate who beat Hagan in head-to-head matchups.
If he makes it that far, Brannon would fit right in with the Senate’s tea party-backed “wacko birds,” Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT).
The extremely conservative Brannon opposes public education, which he says is Marxist and dehumanizes students, and doesn’t believe states must follow Supreme Court decisions.
Brannon cosponsored and spoke at a rally in October supporting nullification – the idea that states can invalidate any federal laws they wish – that was also sponsored by the secessionist League of the South group that is seeking “a free and independent Southern republic.”
The group complains on its website that the federal government has since 1861 – the start of the Civil War — attempted to strip states of their individual sovereignty and compromised individual religious expression and freedom of association.
“We envision the States peacefully and lawfully exercising their Right of self-determination and withdrawing from the present union dominated by an aggressive, centralized federal government; only then can a true constitutional republic, founded upon the Bible and the original constitution, once again exist in America,” the group states among its goals.
Brannon, an obstetrician and gynecologist who refuses to advise his patients on contraception or abortions, said the Supreme Court has claimed powers it doesn’t have.
“Just because nine people in black robes, seven of them voted that abortion is in the Constitution, it does not make that law,” Brannon said.
He advised state Rep. Paul Stam on anti-abortion legislation in 2011 that requires women to wait 24 hours for elective abortions after their first visit to an abortion provider and mandates sonograms of the fetus even if not medically necessary.
Brannon said he favored a version of the bill that would have required abortion providers to give women printed materials that claimed “the life of each human being begins at conception,” and he also wanted patients to be told that abortion is linked to breast cancer.
The American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have dismissed the possibility of a link between breast cancer and abortion.
The bill was eventually passed, but without the provision warning of a link to breast cancer.
Brannon serves as medical director for Hand of Hope, a nonprofit organization that operates several crisis pregnancy centers in North Carolina, and he recently described the clinics’ patients as “little girls” who don’t understand their own bodies.
“When I see little girls that come here, boyfriends that do show up are my favorites,” Brannon said. “Then I can whoop on them with love. How many people have we got married over the last 20 years just by riding that boy’s rear end?”
The organization’s website makes false claims that morning-after emergency contraceptive pills cause abortions and discourages their use.
Brannon has raised just $250,000, mostly from individuals, and less than one-third what Tillis has raised – and that’s not including the quarter million dollars that the North Carolina House Speaker had loaned himself.
But the tea party conservative claims that he’s building a diverse coalition that will deliver him to the U.S. Senate.
“We’re getting African Americans, Hispanics, women,” Brannon said. “We’re building this coalition of many.”

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Democratic super PAC boosts Kay Hagan, targets Thom Tillis

Verne Strickland Blogmaster / Dec 20 2013

Democratic super PAC boosts Kay Hagan, targets Thom Tillis

Posted by Jim Morrill and John Frank on December 5, 2013 

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A super PAC aligned with U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is attacking Republican Thom Tillis in a new TV ad – and Tillis is making the most of it.
The Senate Majority PAC is spending $750,000 on a 30-second spot defending Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan on the federal health care while attacking Tillis, one of five announced GOP candidates for her seat. (See the ad below.) The ad will run statewide for two weeks, PAC officials said.
The PAC is run by former staffers of the Nevada senator. It's the second pro-Hagan ad they've run in North Carolina, spending near $400,000 in November.
In the new ad, they defend Hagan's support of the Affordable Care Act, without ever referring to the act or its commonly known name, Obamacare. Instead, they tout her support of legislation that "forced insurance companies to cover cancer and other pre-existing conditions."
Tillis, it says, "sides with insurance companies." It’s a reference to Tillis’ opposition to the health care law.
Tillis’ campaign put a message on Twitter saying: "It is a badge of honor to be attacked by Harry Reid -- I'll work night and day to beat Kay Hagan and overthrow Reid's majority."
The ad is also an acknowledgment that Tillis is the front-runner in the GOP primary and the one Democrats think will win in May. And the big dollar buy recognizes that Hagan’s poll numbers are sinking amid the botched federal health care law roll out.
Tillis is using the new ad to raise money – just as Hagan did when outside groups spend similarly huge sums earlier this year to attack her.
"Clearly, North Carolina is ground zero in the effort to get rid of the liberal Reid majority that is keeping Obamacare in place and keeping our country on a path to fiscal disaster," he wrote in an email to supporters.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/12/05/3435527/democratic-super-pac-boosts-kay.html#storylink=cpy