I had an idea for a mafia gangster story today. Tell me what you think.
The story opens as the big mafia bosses are looking to expand their empire.
They take on a new guy - let's call him Vinnie - who's running his own small-time operation and set him up in business raiding a mutual foe. Now Vinnie is a vicious bastard, killing off civilians on his own turf as he pleases, but hey - business is business say the big bosses, who don't much care who else he knocks off as long as he gets the job done.
Unbeknownst to Vinnie, the big bosses have another agenda. Their optimum business advantage comes from keeping all the smaller bosses like Vinnie at each others' throats, so they not only arm Vinnie, they also arm the very foe they sent him out to raid.
When he discovers he's been double-crossed, Vinnie goes ballistic and starts shooting his mouth off that he's been set up. The bosses take over his turf, shut down his operation, kill a ton more civilians, and kidnap him.
To make their takeover of Vinnie's turf look legit, the Big Bosses have a show trial in which they accuse him of the one crime against his own people that they didn't directly finance. His defense lawyers get taken out in a hail of bullets and eventually Vinnie gets handed back to his own turf for a revenge killing and they hang him.
The story ends with the Big Bosses' mouthpiece saying some bullshit while everyone else looks around trying to guess who's being set up to be the next Vinnie.
So whaddaya say? A bit hackneyed? Too predictable?
In an unlikely coincidence, the same picture for this story ran on the front page of most Canadian newspapers.
Sunday, December 31, 2006
Friday, December 29, 2006
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Top 10 Searches of 2006
1. Britney Spears
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Link
2. Britny Speers
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5. Briteny Speirs
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Link
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Saturday, December 23, 2006
Canadian sharecropping
And here I thought sharecropping was supposed to be a bad thing.
The story so far :
A timeline of the Cons attack on the Canadian Wheat Board, a Canadian monopoly which brings in $800 million to the prairies by controlling 20% of the global grain market.
July 27 Canadian Agriculture Minister Chuck Strahl tells the press his government will not be bound by the Canadian Wheat Board Act which prohibits any changes to the marketing of grain that is not supported by the grain producers.
Oct 5 Strahl imposes a gag order on CWB to prevent directors and staff from defending its position as a single desk seller of Canadian wheat and barley, despite the fact this monopoly was formed to provide growers with the most stable price for their crop on the world market.
Strahl removes two of the five directors of the CWB for their support of the CWB and replaces them with two directors who are anti-CWB.
Oct 17 In the middle of a CWB election, Strahl removes 16,269 farmers - or 36% - from the voters' list. Farmers who did not sell grain through the CWB in the previous 15 months due to being the victims of flood or drought are struck off.
Oct 25 Bill C-300, a private members' bill to remove the CWB's single desk (monopoly), is put forward by the Chair of the Agricultural Committee. It is defeated.
Dec Strahl fires Adrian Measner, the 32 year veteran and president of the CWB because he insisted on representing the people who elected him instead of the federal government.
Dec 19 Strahl replaces Measner with Greg Arason, a former CWB CEO whose new condition of employment is not to speak out against the federal government.
Dec 21 Arason hands out $1000 bonuses to CWB employees.
So who doesn't like the CWB?
Well, there's Monsanto, who were blocked by the CWB from Canadian registration of RoundUp Ready Wheat.
And the US who have taken Canada to WTO court umpteen times over this monopoly which is exempt under the rules of NAFTA and have lost every time.
The Western Growers of Alberta who comprise 1% of the CWB membership.
Oh yeah, and free market fundamentalists like Harper and Tom Flanagan who don't like labour-based aggregates of any kind. And their deluded admirers.
Are the rest of us too stupid to protect the people who grow food from these assholes?
Because if we are, here's what will happen :
Some farmers will privately get a better price from another grain buyer, say - because they live close to the US border and so their transport costs would be lower than that of more northern farmers.
More farmers will switch to this new buyer.
CWB loses power and folds.
Individual farmers are pitted against each other and the price of wheat falls.
NAFTA says no new CWB can be launched.
Farmers have to sell out to whoever is big enough to survive the price drop, ie agribiz.
Farmers become sharecroppers on what was formerly their own land.
The big buzzword being bandied about by Strahl et al is "choice". The farmers should be allowed "choice".
Hey Stahl, they've already made a choice. They have chosen to retain their way of life and their farms by voting for a strong single marketing board. You are merely giving them the choice of becoming sharecroppers.
And Harper. You're a speck of flyshit due to be blown away in the next election. Try to spend your limited time with us not screwing with our food or our farmers.
For the real stuff : Economist and agrologist Wendy Holm.
The story so far :
A timeline of the Cons attack on the Canadian Wheat Board, a Canadian monopoly which brings in $800 million to the prairies by controlling 20% of the global grain market.
July 27 Canadian Agriculture Minister Chuck Strahl tells the press his government will not be bound by the Canadian Wheat Board Act which prohibits any changes to the marketing of grain that is not supported by the grain producers.
Oct 5 Strahl imposes a gag order on CWB to prevent directors and staff from defending its position as a single desk seller of Canadian wheat and barley, despite the fact this monopoly was formed to provide growers with the most stable price for their crop on the world market.
Strahl removes two of the five directors of the CWB for their support of the CWB and replaces them with two directors who are anti-CWB.
Oct 17 In the middle of a CWB election, Strahl removes 16,269 farmers - or 36% - from the voters' list. Farmers who did not sell grain through the CWB in the previous 15 months due to being the victims of flood or drought are struck off.
Oct 25 Bill C-300, a private members' bill to remove the CWB's single desk (monopoly), is put forward by the Chair of the Agricultural Committee. It is defeated.
Dec Strahl fires Adrian Measner, the 32 year veteran and president of the CWB because he insisted on representing the people who elected him instead of the federal government.
Dec 19 Strahl replaces Measner with Greg Arason, a former CWB CEO whose new condition of employment is not to speak out against the federal government.
Dec 21 Arason hands out $1000 bonuses to CWB employees.
So who doesn't like the CWB?
Well, there's Monsanto, who were blocked by the CWB from Canadian registration of RoundUp Ready Wheat.
And the US who have taken Canada to WTO court umpteen times over this monopoly which is exempt under the rules of NAFTA and have lost every time.
The Western Growers of Alberta who comprise 1% of the CWB membership.
Oh yeah, and free market fundamentalists like Harper and Tom Flanagan who don't like labour-based aggregates of any kind. And their deluded admirers.
Are the rest of us too stupid to protect the people who grow food from these assholes?
Because if we are, here's what will happen :
Some farmers will privately get a better price from another grain buyer, say - because they live close to the US border and so their transport costs would be lower than that of more northern farmers.
More farmers will switch to this new buyer.
CWB loses power and folds.
Individual farmers are pitted against each other and the price of wheat falls.
NAFTA says no new CWB can be launched.
Farmers have to sell out to whoever is big enough to survive the price drop, ie agribiz.
Farmers become sharecroppers on what was formerly their own land.
The big buzzword being bandied about by Strahl et al is "choice". The farmers should be allowed "choice".
Hey Stahl, they've already made a choice. They have chosen to retain their way of life and their farms by voting for a strong single marketing board. You are merely giving them the choice of becoming sharecroppers.
And Harper. You're a speck of flyshit due to be blown away in the next election. Try to spend your limited time with us not screwing with our food or our farmers.
For the real stuff : Economist and agrologist Wendy Holm.
Thursday, December 21, 2006
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Batman lives...
President Vladimir Putin pauses to admire the logo gracing the floor of Moscow's new intelligence HQ.
Bruce Wayne - playboy, wealthy philanthropist, and head of the GRU.
BBC via Dominion Weblog.
The art of forgetting
There's a reason why we reward selfless acts of public service with a commemorative statue in the park or the naming of a ship, as opposed to, say, giving the hero a nice gift certificate to Bed and Bath. It's because we wish as a community to show our gratitude by honouring and remembering them.
Last March the people of Hartley Bay went out in their fishing boats in the middle of the night and rescued 99 people off the sinking Queen of the North. Immediately popular opinion called for the replacement ferry to be named Spirit of Hartley Bay. Good idea. The people of Hartley Bay liked it.
A couple of days ago I heard the president of BC Ferries David Hahn announce on CBC that the new $51M ferry would not be called Spirit of Hartley Bay after all. We gave the people of Hartley Bay a new dock and some fire-fighting equipment instead, explained Hahn, and we're naming the new replacement ferry Northern Adventurer. It was "purely a marketing decision", he said.
I'll fucking bet it was.
It was a marketing decision to fire the BC Ferries safety inspector before letting him investigate the crash, a marketing decision to shred all documents related to the Queen of the North five days after it sank, and a marketing decision to destroy the all the crew operation manuals.
Hahn would just like this whole thing to disappear. And thanks to P3remier Gordon Campbell quasi-privatizing the corporation three years ago, he will probably get his wish. According to the Deputy Auditor General, BC Ferries is no longer answerable to government as a shareholder.while still being a risk to the taxpayer.
The Czech novelist Milan Kundera once said the fastest way to rewrite history is to change the street names - that way no one will remember what the old street names stood for.
I guess not naming them after anything in the first place is even faster.
Last March the people of Hartley Bay went out in their fishing boats in the middle of the night and rescued 99 people off the sinking Queen of the North. Immediately popular opinion called for the replacement ferry to be named Spirit of Hartley Bay. Good idea. The people of Hartley Bay liked it.
A couple of days ago I heard the president of BC Ferries David Hahn announce on CBC that the new $51M ferry would not be called Spirit of Hartley Bay after all. We gave the people of Hartley Bay a new dock and some fire-fighting equipment instead, explained Hahn, and we're naming the new replacement ferry Northern Adventurer. It was "purely a marketing decision", he said.
I'll fucking bet it was.
It was a marketing decision to fire the BC Ferries safety inspector before letting him investigate the crash, a marketing decision to shred all documents related to the Queen of the North five days after it sank, and a marketing decision to destroy the all the crew operation manuals.
Hahn would just like this whole thing to disappear. And thanks to P3remier Gordon Campbell quasi-privatizing the corporation three years ago, he will probably get his wish. According to the Deputy Auditor General, BC Ferries is no longer answerable to government as a shareholder.while still being a risk to the taxpayer.
The Czech novelist Milan Kundera once said the fastest way to rewrite history is to change the street names - that way no one will remember what the old street names stood for.
I guess not naming them after anything in the first place is even faster.
Sunday, December 17, 2006
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