{"id":37015,"date":"2011-04-15T08:40:36","date_gmt":"2011-04-15T13:40:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=37015"},"modified":"2011-05-17T09:58:10","modified_gmt":"2011-05-17T14:58:10","slug":"in-effort-to-control-mafia-france-bans-spaghetti-and-meatballs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/daily-astrology\/in-effort-to-control-mafia-france-bans-spaghetti-and-meatballs\/","title":{"rendered":"In effort to control Mafia, France bans spaghetti and meatballs"},"content":{"rendered":"

International Herald Tribune<\/em><\/p>\n

In a desperate effort to stem the rising tide of the Mafia, France has banned spaghetti and meatballs. The venerated dish, first brought to France by the agents of Catherine de Medici, is a favorite of wiseguys around the world. Godfathers, caporegimes, consiglieres and ordinary soldiers enjoy the dish regularly, and it’s hoped that making it unavailable will drive the powerful French Cosa Nostra from the Republic forever.<\/p>\n

“Leave it to the French to come up with a culinary solution,” said Franklin Wasserman, an Oxford professor who specializes in the eating habits of European gangsters and the influence of food on underworld activity. “This is ingenious,” he added.<\/p>\n

The special project, dubbed Operation Mama Mia, began March 19 at the Feast of San Giuseppe on Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es, when INTERPOL agents seized several thousand meatballs, 16 gallons of tomato sauce, 500 boxes of spaghetti and several large pots. Just to be sure, several hundred crates of sausages, peppers and rolls were confiscated as well. Tomato sauce spilled in the streets, a grim reminder of the dark history of the Mafia in France. The festival was disrupted, but several people persisted in a feeble attempt to keep it going.<\/p>\n

“That will get these gumba bastards where it hurts,” said Inspector Cochon Goinfre of the Paris Metropolitan Police, which is sort of cooperating with the operation. He then sat down to a dish of confit de carnard, which was swiped in retaliation by a bus boy who is visiting as an exchange student from Rome.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Nicholas Sarkozy, le president du France, immediately signed an executive order banning anyone in a public restaurant from tucking their napkin into their shirt. Known in Italian as the gonna del ventre<\/em>, the tucked in napkin has kept generations of Italians enslaved to the Mafia. “This is more than the symbol of oppression,” said Prof. Pierre de Pomp of La Sorbonne. “This is the way these men are controlled.”<\/p>\n

“We will have none of that bullshit here,” said a spokesman for President Sarkozy, who later found his car had been buried in ricotta cheese. “This is bullshit,” he added, as he called a taxi and was forced to wait 45 minutes for it to arrive. When it did, there were already six euros on the meter.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, a special police force dubbed les Flics de Cuisine stormed into several Italian restaurants in Paris’s Petite Italy, confiscating bread crumbs and parmesan cheese, along with ground beef, cases of pasta and a tattered copy of Mama Leone’s Cookbook<\/em>. In one raid, agents raced into the renowned Iannello restaurant as Augusto di Spessore, the Italian ambassador to France, lifted a fork to his mouth. He pushed over the table to protect his family, then staggered out into the streets, where he took out his cell phone and called his publicist.<\/p>\n

At midnight, one of France’s most powerful judges ordered that linguine and spaghettini could be seized along with lasagna and penne. But French mafiosi went to the mats, taking 200 goats hostage in the Loire Valley and blowing up vintages in the Bordeaux region.<\/p>\n

Despite these setbacks, authorities were satisfied they were making progress. A high-stakes dice game along the Seine was put out of business, and a protection racket that had been demanding old copies of Playboy<\/em> from book dealers along the river seemed to grind to a halt. Once-powerful leaders of French organized crime families cried like babies.<\/p>\n

“This cannot be,” said one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

International Herald Tribune In a desperate effort to stem the rising tide of the Mafia, France has banned spaghetti and meatballs. The venerated dish, first brought to France by the agents of Catherine de Medici, is a favorite of wiseguys around the world. Godfathers, caporegimes, consiglieres and ordinary soldiers enjoy the dish regularly, and it’s … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37015"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37015\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}