Being Only Slightly Duplicitous
Because who wants a straightforward explanation of anything? and before you leap in to answer, don't forget that for us content creators, being sly and underhand waiting to be invoked for murder* means a higher word count.
Okay! first of all, NO! we are not talking about the English coastal town, which is situated on the Channel, and which specialises in tourism, light industries and punnery. Population about 30,000 and if you want a more precise estimate you're welcome to travel there and knock on doors. Art!
Yes, picturesque, and also probably liable to flooding, and likely one of the first places to get hit by the Sea Tanks if "The Kraken Wakes" comes true, bec
ANYWAY nor are we talking about the lumber produced from softwood trees such as the pine or fir, which word originates from the Middle Low German 'dele', meaning 'plank'. Again, we now know more than we did five minutes ago. Art!
Wooden it be nice -
What I actually want to talk about here are what are known in South Canada as 'Plea deals'. Not being too technical here, this is where the defence, prosecution and the criminal involved all agree that the Criminal Involved - hereafter CI - will plead Guilty.
Why would they do this? O I thought you'd never ask! Their pleading Guilty means that a full trial with judge and jury need not go ahead; the judge alone can determine what the sentence will be, thus removing the need for a long and expensive trial. The prosecution are relieved of any burden of proof, which can rely on the jury, who can be extremely capricious. The defence secures either a shorter sentence than legal guidelines would otherwise require - there is a UK website that lists what sentences are recommended for which level of which crime and I presume South Canada has similar - or a reduction in the level of charges. In South Canada this may mean dropping the level from the much more serious 'Felony' to the much less serious 'Misdemeanour'. Art!
I don't expect you to peruse this far without Conrad bringing in a real-world example, so I shall. You ought to remember the cryptocurrency scandal that surrounded and sank the crypto exchange FTX, because we've covered it in the past as of 2023. There were five principals who were deemed responsible for the scamble**: Sam Bankman-Fried; Caroline Ellison (his girlfriend - immediate Conflict of Interest issues!); Ryan Salame; Nishad Singh; Gary Wang. Art!
An outline - not the detailed end-plan - of FTX's corporate structure
The latter four all decided to cop a plea, meaning they pled Guilty but would receive a lesser sentence because there wouldn't be a trial. The prosecution would be especially grateful for this because fraud trials involving financial deception are often complex and hard to follow. So far only Salame has been sentenced, in his case for 7 years. Caroline Ellison's sentence is up soon, and her defence counsel has appealed for a term of only two to three years, because, again, she did a deal and has been helping the prosecution. Singh and Wang are due to be sentenced in October and November, no details on what they'll receive. Art!
That's SBF, who decided he wasn't going to plead Guilty or cop a plea. Instead he pled Not Guilty and thus went to full trial with a jury. During his time out of prison on bail he was discovered to be trying to fiddle with the legal proceedings, which is - you may be ahead of me here - GUARANTEED to tick off the presiding judge. Thus he was found guilty on 7 counts of Wire Fraud, other counts of Securities Fraud and Money Laundering.
His sentence? 25 years. The other parties who took plea deals were merely charged with a single instance of fraud, not eight additional charges. That's the beauty of copping a plea. There may also have been a limit to how many pleas the District Attorney was willing to make, because restricting the amount available inevitably leads to criminals throwing each other under the bus. First man standing, you might say. I believe this is what happened in the Enron case, where one of the principals tried to do a deal too late, got refused and then self-deleted. Art!
This is Michael Petron, the happy smiling CEO of 'Stout', who helped put Enron executives in prison. A silver lining to every cloud, nicht wahr?
More Of Bangs From Barad-Duh
Not an ammunition depot this time. No, this embarrassing fiasco was the Ruffians trying to test-launch their Sarmat-2 Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile from a silo in Plesetsk, in the far north of Archangelsk oblast. Or, 'Archangelsk Blast', because their missile - which they have been taunting the Global West with for the past two and a half years - blew up in the silo. Art!
It's a bit like that line from the poem "Ozymandias", isn't it? "The lone and level sands stretched far away". When this thing blew up in it's silo it levelled the whole test site.
Expect this event to never, ever, EVER, be mentioned on Ruffian state television, because it's simply too embarrassing to ever be acknowledged. The Ruffians won't admit how many died, or at least not for another forty years.
Also, this is seemingly the fourth failed Sarmat-2 launch.
Colour Conrad unsurprised. They couldn't even land Luna-25 on the Moon, all they could do was hit it head on.
Bernie Frightson
Ha! Sometimes I amuse even myself! This isn't one of those times. Yes, we are back to celebrating the mind of Mr. Bernie Wrightson, which must have been a place where angels fear to tread. Art!
Treebeard's scary cousin, mayhap? Although the cards did come out a good eight years before the films did.
Squared Away
Conrad distinctly remembers seeing a clip from a Sinister film from 1925, which had a comedic bent to it, showing how Ruffians Sinisters were chess fiends. In fact - <short Google search ensues> - Art!
"Shchakhmatnaya Goryatska"
Well, 99 years later the Ruffian chess world is not held in high regard any more. Garry Kasparov, ex-Ruffian chess grand master, is now a vocal and trenchant critic of Ruffia. He has a Twitter channel. Art!
Garry, already 37 moves ahead of you
Sadly for those resident inside the borders of Modern-day Mordor, the bad news about chess keeps on coming. Art!
Ooopsie. It's - it's almost as if there's something in the background working against them, isn't it?
Please note how I have avoided dragging in any chess-based puns.
O Joy Unabated!
It had escaped my notice, as Your Humble Scribe cordially detests the ballfoot game, but it seems that the 'See-Son' as they call it has now begun. Not that I give a Basenji bark about any teams involved, what I love to read are the Comments, where creative venom is liberally applied. Art!
Still Englands most successful club
18:51
Bring on more popcorn!
Finally -
Better go sort out that Sunday Stew. Tatty-bye!
* Sorry, I came over all "Forbidden Planet" there, didn't I?
** If this word makes it into "Collins Concise Dictionary" I want royalties.
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