the peg ... and hearst kickstarts the mob

winnipeg
billeted in the far distance
nice house
...
me and p back together after seven long weeks
...
quiet days in the winnipeg run up
...

reading a biography of randolph hearst
the man citizen kane was based on
Citizen Hearst
...
good book
amazing life
autocratic nightmare rich bastard
brilliant in many ways
...
and bastard times
if american politics seems scurrrilous and shameless now
the right wing columnists and tv pundits
well their shamelessness and dirtiness and scurrilousness is nothing new

...
amongst many interesting details
is how hearst's 1912ish hiring of gangs to intimidate newsellers into taking his newspapers
evolved, after defections, and the hiring of more gangs by rivals
into a gang war with many dead
...
and that this is seen by many as
the origin of organised gangsterism and racketeering in Chicago
...
which
makes you think
...
i said in a show a number of years back
the origin of the word gangster is from 1890s Chicago and originallly denoted
men who stuff ballot boxes
which, after the US 2000 election finally gave us proof the world is run by gangsters
...