"Postcode wars" refers to violent territorial disputes and gang rivalries where conflict lines are drawn by neighborhood boundaries or postal codes. These feuds, often centered around train stations and suburban shopping centers, frequently escalate to deadly stabbings and shooting. The phenomenon is notoriously prevalent across Sydney (such as conflicts between groups in Western Sydney) and Melbourne, where teenage gang violence has tragically claimed young lives.
A brutal conflict is playing out on the streets of Sydney, and the battle lines are drawn between postcodes.
Teens from across the western suburbs are being drawn into its violence, sometimes with deadly consequences.
Four Corners and Background Briefing go inside a powerful and dangerous criminal hierarchy, revealing how it stretches from the kids in the postcode gangs, into the lyrics of drill, and all the way up to some of Australia’s most notorious crime families.
"Number One" (1973) is an Italian crime-thriller film directed by Gianni Buffardi. It stars Renzo Montagnani, Luigi Pistilli, and Claude Jade, and it's loosely based on a real-life story about crime and drugs in the Rome underground. The film explores the dark underbelly of Rome in the early 1970s, revealing drug use, crime, and sexual scandals.
Click on the image for the full film.
A teenage girl struggles to survive and to find her younger sister during the July 2011 terrorist mass murder at a political summer camp on the Norwegian island of Utøya.
Black Axe is a confraternity in Nigeria that now operates as an international criminal organization, which originated around 1980. Among many crimes it was responsible for the Obafemi Awolowo University massacre.
According to BBC Africa over the 2010s they became one of the most far-reaching and dangerous organised crime groups in the world.
Two documents state that in Benin City, 35 million naira was funnelled to the Black Axe to "protect votes" and secure victory in a governorship election in 2012. In exchange for the support, the files suggest that "80 slots [were] allocated to NBM Benin Zone for immediate employment by the state government".
Over 2021 they attempted to steal €1m in welfare fraud during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Republic of Ireland.
Interpol arrested six alleged Black Axe leaders in Johannesburg in 2021, and they may be extradited to the United States. Members of the group are known as "Axemen". Its South African wing allegedly has security known as "butchers" to maintain discipline.
In November 2021 a massacre led by the group claimed six lives in the Okitipupa community, headquarters of Okitipupa Local Government Area of Ondo State, Nigeria.
There are many reports of the ill-effects of cultism on Nigerian society. One such report from 1999 states: "[Cults] have brutally ravaged Nigeria's 37 state-run institutions. The Obafemi Awolowo University massacre is only the most recent tragedy. Observers estimate that 150 students have been slain in the last five years, with scores more victimized by rape, assault, extortion, kidnapping, blackmail, torture and arson attack. Cultists—who often emulate the music and attitudes of American street-gang culture—dominate several campuses with intimidation tactics. Sometimes they employ threats of murder or extortion for seemingly petty ransoms, like an 'A' grade or a fraudulently written term paper. Unprotected students, professors and administrators are often forced to surrender whatever grades, goods and privileges the cultists demand."
By 2015 the Black Axe had become a persistent problem. Responsible for the involvement in the murders of at least 200 people in 2014 and carrying out other criminal activities around the world including Internet fraud (romance scams, inheritance scams, real estate scams and business email scams), murder, international smuggling of drugs, human trafficking, prostitution, use by politicians as 'hired thugs', extortion, counterfeiting of identity documents, cloning of credit cards, cheque fraud, advance-fee scams, robbery, and rape.
Members pledge allegiance to a deity called Korofo, the unseen God, according to their ideology they are fighting against colonial oppression. Their name comes from the Neo Black movement symbol featuring a black axe cutting chains of oppression. They have spies known as "eyes" all across Nigerian society.
The Other Side of Madness is a 1971 film directed by Frank Howard and produced by Wade Williams. The film is based on the crimes of the Manson Family, made while the trial was still ongoing. The film was briefly re-released in 1976 under the title The Helter Skelter Murders.
The majority of the film takes place in flashbacks from the perspective of various witnesses during the Manson trial. The entire second half of the film is dedicated to the Tate murders, attempting to recreate them based on the evidence and testimony available to the public at the time.
Several scenes of the film were shot at Spahn Ranch, the location used as the primary residence of the Manson Family, making it possibly the last film to contain footage of the ranch before it was destroyed by a wildfire in September, 1970. The film features the song Mechanical Man written and sung by Charles Manson. A promotional record featuring both Mechanical Man and another Manson song, Garbage Dump, was later released.
Due to legal issues, no names, with the exception of "Charlie", are mentioned in the film at any point. Produced Wade Williams claimed that legal difficulties threatened any sort of release until he showed the film to the lawyers in the Tate murder trial, all of whom he claimed were "impressed with its accuracy". Williams claimed that the film would utilise a technique known as "Auramation" which was described as a "special cellular film treatment designed to heighten or depress the emotions of the viewer by subliminal monochromatic suggestion", although in a 2020 interview, Williams reveled that this was simply fabricated in an attempt to get the film more press attention.<7p>
Charles Sobhraj is a publicity whore who cares for nobody but himself. He slaughtered as many as 50 innocent young people, only for the purpose of an easy life for himself by robbing them, he even abandoned his accomplices when it suited him. He also killed with deceit and cruelty, in a cowardly way, and without regard for his victims and their families and how they all suffered. He is also a narcissistic sociopath and a psychopath. A narcissistic sociopath is a person who exhibits a combination of both sociopathic personality traits along with narcissistic personality disorder. Psychopathy is characterized by diagnostic features such as superficial charm, high intelligence, poor judgment and failure to learn from experience, pathological egocentricity and incapacity for love, lack of remorse or shame, impulsivity, grandiose sense of self-worth, pathological lying, manipulative behavior, poor self-control, promiscuous sexual behavior, juvenile delinquency, and criminal versatility, among others. Many of these traits are demonstrated by Sobhraj in this documentary from 2002.
