Bottle recycling adds up to a $5 million-a-year industry, according to estimates by police and environmental groups. Police say criminals sell restaurants protection in exchange for empties, which leave no paper trail and offer crime families a relatively legitimate source of income.
Organized crime, long overshadowed by the Arab-Israeli conflict, has become such a part of everyday life that Israel has its own “Sopranos”-style TV series, “The Arbitrator,” in which even synagogues are no refuge from hit men.
In the past, rival families would settle their scores quietly. But as the pot gets richer they are getting bolder, taking more risks and posing a greater threat to public safety. Most crime bosses now travel with bodyguards in armored vehicles.
Last May, Yaakov Alperon’s older brother, Nissim, survived the ninth assassination attempt against him. A three-man hit team dispatched to get him was intercepted by police, and in the ensuing gunbattle a policeman was seriously wounded and one of the gunman was killed.
The mob always seems to prey on very basic, essential and unglamorous markets like garbage and recycling.
[T]oday, when the future is uncertain, when markets are unstable, when investor confidence is shaken, this is the time — more than ever — when we need a powerful voice for compliance.
In a line you should expect from the SEC, he warned everyone that
[W]hen a company cuts compliance, violations will occur. And if violations occur, punitive actions should and will be taken. In the current environment, that is true now more than ever. There will be no favor granted because a company made a cost-cutting decision to minimize
their compliance budget.
While looking through the years of photos for an album of Twilight, I came across this one of an evening cloud formation. It was taken with a small digital camera out the window of my truck on the way home from a 4×4 camping and fishing trip on the Rubicon trail.
In my sky at twilight you are like a cloud
and your form and color are the way I love them.
You are mine, mine, woman with sweet lips
and in your life my infinite dreams live.
The lamp of my soul dyes your feet,
the sour wine is sweeter on your lips,
oh reaper of my evening song,
how solitary dreams believe you to be mine.
You are mine, mine, I go shouting it to the afternoon’s wind,
and the wind hauls on my widowed voice.
Huntress of the depth of my eyes, your plunder
stills your nocturnal regard as though it were water.
You are taken in the net of my music, my love,
and my nets of music are wide as the sky.
My soul is born on the shore of your eyes of mourning.
In your eyes of mourning the land of dreams begin.
