Gangster Threats Quotes

So I close this long reflection on what I hope is a not-too-quaveringly semi-Semitic note. When I am at home, I will only enter a synagogue for the bar or bat mitzvah of a friend's child, or in order to have a debate with the faithful. (When I was to be wed, I chose a rabbi named Robert Goldburg, an Einsteinian and a Shakespearean and a Spinozist, who had married Arthur Miller to Marilyn Monroe and had a copy of Marilyn’s conversion certificate. He conducted the ceremony in Victor and Annie Navasky's front room, with David Rieff and Steve Wasserman as my best of men.) I wanted to do something to acknowledge, and to knit up, the broken continuity between me and my German-Polish forebears. When I am traveling, I will stop at the shul if it is in a country where Jews are under threat, or dying out, or were once persecuted. This has taken me down queer and sad little side streets in Morocco and Tunisia and Eritrea and India, and in Damascus and Budapest and Prague and Istanbul, more than once to temples that have recently been desecrated by the new breed of racist Islamic gangster. (I have also had quite serious discussions, with Iraqi Kurdish friends, about the possibility of Jews genuinely returning in friendship to the places in northern Iraq from which they were once expelled.) I hate the idea that the dispossession of one people should be held hostage to the victimhood of another, as it is in the Middle East and as it was in Eastern Europe. But I find myself somehow assuming that Jewishness and 'normality' are in some profound way noncompatible. The most gracious thing said to me when I discovered my family secret was by Martin, who after a long evening of ironic reflection said quite simply: 'Hitch, I find that I am a little envious of you.' I choose to think that this proved, once again, his appreciation for the nuances of risk, uncertainty, ambivalence, and ambiguity. These happen to be the very things that 'security' and 'normality,' rather like the fantasy of salvation, cannot purchase.

As regards the social apparatus of repression and coercion, the government, there cannot be any question of freedom. Government is essentially the negation of liberty. It is the recourse to violence or threat of violence in order to make all people obey the orders of the government, whether they like it or not. As far as the government’s jurisdiction extends, there is coercion, not freedom. Government is a necessary institution, the means to make the social system of cooperation work smoothly without being disturbed by violent acts on the part of gangsters whether of domestic or of foreign origin. Government is not, as some people like to say, a necessary evil; it is not an evil, but a means, the only means available to make peaceful human coexistence possible. But it is the opposite of liberty. It is beating, imprisoning, hanging. Whatever a government does it is ultimately supported by the actions of armed constables.

CONFESSIONS OF A GANGSTER A former gang member talks about racial violence from way back in the eighties. “It started out innocently,” Jones, 39, tells me at a Starbucks on Chestnut Street near the group’s old stomping grounds. The posse walked to South Street seeking action. “They had a term, ‘clocking wigs,’ that meant hitting someone in the head,” he recalls with shame and disgust. “They preyed on women, whites, and Asians.” “They were selective,” driven less by hating whites than wanting to feel superior to weaker, vulnerable strangers, he explains. “If they saw anyone who could defend themselves or pose a threat, they wouldn’t do anything.”1 Any questions?

Look, you are my father and I love you. I will always love you. But that love is not an all or nothing proposition. Brianna is my wife. Will and Gianni are my sons. You are all my family, but if you push me, Father, if you force me to choose between you and them you will not like the choice I make. You are never to treat William the way you did today, ever. Am I making myself clear?” “Is that a threat, Alessandro?” Bernardo asked, his voice cold. Bree felt her body stiffen with nervous tension. Her heart was racing, both with nervousness and joy that Alessandro was drawing a line in the sand with his father and that he was sticking up for them over Bernardo. “Remember, Father, you raised me. You raised me to be a Dardano. That’s who I am and I’m sure you know exactly what that means.

When you go back to Pablo Ecobar, this guy blew up a passenger plane, police headquarters, funded guerrillas to kill Supreme Court justices, and had the number one Colombian presidential candidate assassinated. Now there is no organization in Colombia that can go toe-to-toe with the government, that can threaten the national security of Colombia. In each successive generation of traffickers there has been a dilution of their power. “Pablo Escobar lasted fifteen years. The average kingpin here now lasts fifteen months. If you are named as a kingpin here, you are gone. The government of Colombia and the government of the United States will not allow a trafficker to exist long enough to become a viable threat.” In this analysis, drug enforcement can be seen as a giant hammer that keeps on falling. Any gangster that gets too big gets smashed by the hammer. This is known as cartel decapitation, taking out the heads of the gang. The villains are kept in check. But the drug trade does go on, and so does the war.

In the way people like my father (businessmen, lawyers) dream of being gangsters, of meeting each setback, each humiliation, with a sneer and a shove, a threat of violence; gangsters like Reles dreamed of being businessmen, lawyers, whipping every enemy with words, and not caring a stitch about the getaway. It is a kind of transitive property, a formula that connects the lower and higher orders: George Raft dreaming he is a real gangster as Ben Siegel dreams he is a real movie star.

I'd like you to see that we are interfering too drastically. WE can't just assume so completely that Azerbaijan is in the hands of dangerous men and vicious Bolsheviks. I suppose it's all in the way you see Iran. I'd like you to see that Iranians are just as serious about their politics as we are: perhaps more so. The Iranian is a vigorous individual with definite ideas about the right and wrong done to him. It's easy for these journalists to laugh at the idea of political spontaneity among the Iranians because they look on these people as dirty, stupid, childlike natives who stare open-mouthed while the wonders of the west are offered to them. …... They are not like that at all. They want proper government, the same as anybody else. They have certainly tried hard enough to get it, but they haven't had a chance. We have done a great deal to prevent them getting real government. It may shock you, but we have always wanted corrupt administrations. Since the Reuter concessions sixty years ago we have begaved like American gangsters using threats, money, and even war to extort privileges and concessions which amounted to owning the country. At one time we had complete control over the administration, over the entire wealth of the land, the banks, and the army. It's rather silly to say the Iranians are un-political when you realize how quickly we had to hand back those concessions. This country rose to a man against us. We gave in hastily, but we managed to cling desperately to our oil concessions. [MacGregor] I think you are worrying yourself unduly [Essex]. We can't be too bad an influence. We may not be reformers ourselves... but we do not fight people who are really trying to improve the country. You must admit that we did not resist the last Shah, and he certainly reformed the place as best as it could be reformed. [MacGregor] It has become a habit to pass all compliments to Reza Shah,...even though we dethroned him. All reforms and modernizations are supposed to be his idea. Yet he simply took over the power of a popular revolution which we resisted at the time. He took power as a despot and he was little better than his predecessors. These people are getting fed up with despots. They obviously want to achieve some kind of better government, particularly in Azerbaijan.… That revolt in Azerbaijan doesn't have to be a Russian idea. It is really the continuation of five or six revolutions, all of them trying to get rid of corrupt governments. This time they seen to be succeeding. Our idea is to stop it.... Every level of government in Iran is corrupt from top to bottom, including the court, the police, and the parliament. Government is organized corruption. The ministers prey on the population like buzzards; they arragne taxes, laws, finances, famines; everything to the purpose of making money. The last Shah might have wiped out some of it; but that meant he became the biggest grafter of them all. He controlled the little fellows, and took the best of everything for himself. By the end of his rule he owned about a fifth of this entire country. He is not the hero we think he is, and his police regime was as brutal as anything the Germans had. Though we co-operated with him, he was a little tougher than the others and he always held out for more. Once, he threatened to wipe out our oil concession but we brought him off. He could always be bought off, like all the other grafters.

Only the Army conducts an annual assessment, and they appear to do relatively little to analyze the problem, contributions to the problem, and potential solutions.

If you continue to threaten us, I will act upon my threat.’ I felt silly using the precise language of bargaining dictators and gangsters, but they seemed to take it seriously. Stickings’ smirk almost completely faded. ‘The thing is, Effie –’ his voice dropped to barely a murmur, ‘– I don’t believe you.