Cantona savoured the warm rays of the sun hanging high in the midwestern sky; his suit jacket draped over his shoulder and his shirtsleeves rolled up to make the most of the weather. Sighing contentedly as the always present Chicago wind brushed against his beard like the gentle caress of a long forgotten lover, he was reminded taken back to the city of his youth, Marseille, before the grating screech of the brakes of an L train overheard rudely brought him back to the present. Finally having some idea of how he wanted to phrase what was on his mind Cantona plucked the toothpick he'd been fidgeting with from his mouth and began to speak.

Ómerta, Onore, Famiglia, Sangue. Duty, responsibility, respect. Tradition, procedure and protocol. All of these things may seem like key precepts; pillars and foundations on which our thing is built. In reality they only have one thing in common, and that is you can ball them up as tightly as possible and shove 'em up your anus because they don't mean jack shit.

It's just window dressing, it is all ultimately convenient justification to do the things that we do; and the real reason we do these things is in the name of power or influence. Every interaction I make and every crime I commit, every act I carry out, in short, is to either obtain more power and influence or to limit the power and influence of others. At the basest level, purse I snatch and bank I rob, every drug run I complete and every criminal activity I'm associated with is something I involve myself in for the simple reason that it earns me money. That money is useful to me for two reasons, I can use it to hire myself protection which thus increases my standing or power in a very direct, or I can use it to keep my Leader sweet which increases my standing and power by sheer merit of association.

This speech and every other public appearance I've made as well the paper I co-edit and contribute to are things I do for a very simple reason. It increases how influential I'm perceived to be. The more I am known, the more people will listen to my opinions; the more people listen to my opinions the more well regarded I become and the more people will begin to treat my opinions with respect and perhaps take them on as their own. In short, the more influence I have.

This is all basic, every day, run-of-the-mill type stuff; because I'm ultimately a very basic, every day, run-of-the-mill Capo. You can be sure as shit that this is even truer and more applicable at the higher levels - strip away all of the justifications, the reasoning and the propaganda and ultimately it is all about power. It is about how much power and influence you wield either as an individual or through your associations with others; and it is about how you can exert that power and concentrate that power in your favour.

Take the Queens takedown, as a charming 'for instance'. If you assert that the fallacy of us all living according to some strict and unbreakable code of ethics is true then the takedown all becomes very confusing. Tarantino would initially have been in the right to shoot Veronica over what happened. She showed ultimate disrespect in laying hands on a member of his family. In return, the son of the felled earner was in the right by tearing a strip off Veronica because blood and loyalty is a very important thing and he was acting in his Father's memory. Simultaneously, he was disrespectful to the Queens and she was perfectly entitled to request or even demand an apology.

I'd say this was a minefield, but it's not. It's totally fucking irrelevant. The salient points here are that Detroit had the power and the influence to involve another city and hit the mattresses. Queens didn't have the same level of power or influence, and now they are all dead - regardless of how legitimate their grievances were.

Did lefty have a legitimate reason to go rogue? I wouldn't say so, but the deaths of Testarossa and Zmeika clearly indicate he had the power to see through his goal; just as someone else did to end his life. This week there have been, at the very least, two instances of sponsored gangsters being shot due to genuine mistakes. One of the perpetrators is dead, the other isn't. I'd elaborate on this but I think you could all guess what direction I'd take it in. I could continue to give examples all day; but the bottom line is that traditional concepts and values are only applicable when it is convenient to apply them. We are not ruled by them.

We all live on the edge; knowledge of the limits of your own power and influence as well as those around you, and the wisdom of when you can exercise that power and influence and when you can't is the difference between success and failure. Nothing more, nothing less.