You should have seen the newsrooms the other day when you got out on bail. Senior journalists were wandering around in a daze, smacking their heads in disbelief and calling up their libel lawyers for the first time in years.
Your Conrad Black thread.
Liz J – “A lot of people are safer since Conrad Black has been banned from toting a gun as one of his bail conditions”
Hallelujah! I was terrified he’d be coming after me some night, sporting a 30-06 and snarling “do you feel lucky, punk!?!”
But now I know that if he wanted to go off on a bloody rampage for some reason he’d be unable to, because of the gun registry.
Good stuff.
I am confident that the Canadian ‘Journolist’ equivalent cabal will co-operate to find a diversity of ways to attack this man. Only their imaginations can limit their carefully created fictions which pass for media in this racist outhouse of a country, which begrudges adequate funding for friends and bum boys of the main stream media.
Thanks, felis corpulentis. And did I mention that Chretien’s a thug to add to his other sins?
Do you think Jason Kenney has any say in whether or not Lord Black is allowed to come back to Canada? Isn’t this the decision of the overly zealous, finger-wagging, politically correct, puritanical American judge?
Absolutely fells corpulentis, all Canadians with the ability to reason, (that excludes the Leftists), should email Jason Kenney and demand he expedite the process to reinstate Conrad Black to his birthright as a Canadian citizen.
I’ve already done so, his email is: kennej@parl.gc.ca
Get going!
Oh, Lord!
Conrad Black is no saint. At UCC, he was alleged to have stolen copies of final exams and selling them to other students. He either was expelled, or left the College voluntarily, depending on whose account you believe.
His business career was chequered by brilliant strokes, and dubious shenanigans, some of which were alluded to above.
I don’t really care if he comes back to Canada; it makes no difference to me either way. But I am getting sick to death of the Post’s blanket coverage. 2-3 pages every single day? Yawn.
Finally, my understanding is the final charge against him is the obstruction of justice charge, which was the same thing that tripped up Martha Stewart. She only got a few months, so even if Black is convicted, he’d probably be let off for time served. I wish I’d be let off from the coverage.
Take your point batb, the American judge in the case is problematic,has been from day one, she has to answer to her government and like the rest of this case it’s beyond reason. When not if she does allow him to return home to Canada Jason Kenney will have to be involved.
As long as Conrad Black makes the Elite pee their pants, I’m all for him.
His sentence like Martha Stewart, & Jim Bakker’s ,where ridiculous.
It was plain maliciousness that only the left dispalys like the beast it is. Socialists live by instinct as do animals. Thought is beyond them in the natural way. They come closest when they emote.
Otherwise its just put downs, or innuendo’s, from that bunch. Fact is not relevant. To the Nut bar Marxist crew.
JMO
Check out Blazing Cat Fur’s latest:
Coming soon….
The revenge of Conrad Black
He’s put together a great poster!!
http://blazingcatfur.blogspot.com/
Liz, I guess I’ll write to the estimable and Honourable Jason Kenney. What a great guy to be our Minister of Citizenship. He’ll get on it, I’m sure, if it’s within his jurisdiction.
KevinB, lots of us did lots of bad things in high school (not me!!!) and Lord Black has since become a Catholic which, I suspect, means that he regularly goes to confession.
So sorry you don’t get it, that he’s made Canada a better and more democratic country. But, if you can’t figure that out, too bad, so sad. Your loss.
I’d be thinking Chretien could be in Conrad Black’s virtual gun sights. What Chretien did to Black when he had full power with a majority government was over the top, very far fetched and beyond all reason. He overstepped the boundaries of common decency.
Go get him Conrad for all who value Canadian citizenship and are against abuse of power by a Prime Minister.
I hope that Lord Black is exonerated, I followed his show trail via Mark Steyn, it wasn’t just Canada that benefited from his media business, it wasn’t for nothing that Mrs Thatcher proposed him for a Lordship, he gave back Britain its Daily Telegraph and its Spectator as true news journals, it gave conservative writers and thinkers and incidentally a few liberals( as in the English Language sense of Liberal) a platform and pulpit from which to countermand the socialist liberal fascist agenda of the establishment BBC and MSM.
Thats something we have lost as Hollinger was ritually led to the slaughter, I hope he regains his money and still has the time and inclination to again build a media empire to prove how wrong the fascists are I would again buy a newspaper or magazine if I could read Steyn/Amiel/Dalrymple/Daly/ et al.
Maybe he is going to have to join up with Bin Laden and the Taliban and toss some grenades at our troups.
That seemed to generate a lot of sympathy for the other guy that the media seems to love.
If this world were just I suspect Conrad Black would be outside looking in at Jean Chretien who would be looking out of a jail cell.
We can’t forget Chretien went to bat for the sire of the Khadr kids, visited him in a Pakistan hospital so he really was a fan of the Khadr’s at some point.
Too bad Harper’s already made his GG selection.
Back on the farm in the waning days of eight tracks we needed a newer combine. We ended up with a Massey Ferguson, our first ever new one. The Claes, or even Deere we really wanted was prohibitively expensive due to protectionist federal import tariffs.
The MF thing should have been painted yellow instead of red, it was such a lemon.
A few years later and out of high school I ended up working with a guy from Brantford who’d grown up on a farm in that area. His uncle worked at MF. Naturally the MF on our yard came up in conversation. He illustrated how protectionism and union sclerosis combined to rot the company. The memorable vignette was about one hundred pieces of equipment produced on a saturday, from which less than a handfull worked well enough come monday to be loaded on the trains west.
Out west, we had to buy this stuff, since we were, and still are thanks to transfer scams etc, the colony upon which this imperialist house of cards depends.
Dont know what Dominion stores was, but one could argue Black tried to save MF’s of this world by giving voice to the anti-socialist majority with the Post, it just happened in the wrong chronology if you were an MF fan.
Recenlty, we had some fun with the arrogant and effete Iggy. We laughed at his tone deafness, his preciousness. His paternal arrogance.
Now, Black is also arrogant and haughty BUT unlike Iggy also has the common touch. I gather he was very well liked by the other inmates and that he used his time very constructively, teaching them history and literature, etc. That greatly impressed me.
I’ve never been bothered by Black’s haughtiness as I always felt it was solidly grounded in talent and erudition, and there’s always a hint of irony in Black’s presentation. I have forgiven him for claiming that FDR saved capitalism!
I’ve been deeply disturbed by the maniacal hatred of the man by many Canadians — something I’ve always chaulked up to ENVY plain and simple and small and ugly. Once, in Tofino BC, picking up a day-late NP at a small general store, I was actually ACCOSTED by another customer when he spotted me with the paper. I was stunned. Speechless.
The STATE destroyed Black’s company. The assholes who “reported” him — the investment firm Tweedy Browne later regretted its actions.
He may be guilty of “sharp” business practices, but he committed NO crime. This “honest business practices” thing was totally bogus, which Black has now proven through the SCOTUS.
Yes, batb, Black is a hero — a bigger than life Gulliver in Lilliputian Canuckistan.
He probably made some useful friends in prison.
I wish for Mr. Black all the best, wherever he decides to settle. I believe he is an innocent man and that he has been both wrongfully pursued and wrongfully convicted.
The National Post is a gem of a newspaper that I’ve always enjoyed. Perhaps it seemed better in the beginning because of the comparison to the rest of what passed as canadian journalism. I still enjoy it now, I’m not offended when I read it, unlike most of the other rags.
Mrs. (batb) Malaprop:
Vis a vis the Honourable Jason Kenney: He’s inestimable.
Vis a vis his position in the government: He’s Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism
Like you, Me No Dhimmi, Lord Black’s “arrogance” doesn’t bother me; it’s part of his persona, it’s grounded in reality, and it’s usually accompanied by a twinkle in his eye and a raised eyebrow which says, “so sue me”!!!!!
Trapped,
MF, the holding company essentially put it in too much debt and liberated the cash for other things. The company got incolved in stuff it shouldnt have distracting it from operational issues (as you point out). Lots of financial jiggery pokery over pensions etc and yes the Unions helped kill the place, the debt hastened the end or prevented a turnaround.
Dominion Stores. Black essentially took money from the pension plan, which he claimed was overfunded. Ended up putting the company in too much debt….again.
By the time he got to something he knew and loved, newspapers. He at least knew how to cut costs and operate, something he had know idea how to do in a manufacturing or reatil and food environment. When he got to his calling he did wonderfully….as I said, the education of COnrad was paid for by many many thousands of other people.
Re, Re Sasquatch: Cretin always hated the Irish, Quebec’s minority.
And there might be someone else to sue as of today, too.
At 9:30-10:00 Saturday morning, CTV Headline News (or whatever it’s called) was interviewing some Brit who’d written an anti-Black book and he stated as fact that Black had been convicted of stealing $250-million when, in fact, the four charges of the thirteen of which he was convicted amounted to US$8-million (Cdn$13-million at the time) IIRC that is a pretty basic fact to get wrong by the author and not to have been corrected by the news bimbo. (Probably Marcia. They all look alike to me.)
Oh. MF stands for Massey-Ferguson and not… something else. Never mind.
Something sensible from David Frum:
” … Whatever else you say about Conrad Black, he is truly an eminent Canadian, who has contributed enormously to the country’s public life. It is time for him to be allowed home.”
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/07/24/david-frum-lord-conrad-black-of-canada/
So if he got 6 years for a couple of million that directors signed paper saying he could take,
Should the government types who since they pulled black away from the helm and ran it into the ground and destroyed billions do 60 or 600 yrs in jail?
batb:
I’ve subscribed to the Post for years, and think it is currently by far the best paper in Canada. (This from someone who, when I worked in Manhattan some 20 years ago, would get up at 6:30 AM and trek to midtown just to get the Globe at the one newstand I found that carried it. I won’t even read the Globe if I find a copy on the subway now, although I’ll do the crossword puzzle.)
And my one personal experience with the man was when I worked at a restaurant across the street from his Toronto HQ. He sent us a very nice opening day bouquet, and came in once for dinner, where he seemed a very decent chap.
But, as I said, it makes no friggin’ difference to me if he comes back to Canada or not. He was quite content to go to London, and, you should pardon the expression, lord it up over there, spending millions of pounds on real estate in London and the US, on expensive cars, etc. A man who truly cared about his business and his workers would have seen the debt crisis coming, and would have cut his personal stipend just as an example. There have been plenty of CEO’s who’ve agreed to work for $1/year when their companies were in trouble. Black wasn’t one of them.
The fact that he regularly raided pension funds on the basis that they were “overfunded” then (they sure aren’t now!) is not what I call exemplary behaviour, even if it’s not strictly criminal.
Like I said, the man is no saint. All the fawning coverage given to him is boring, although I now just flip the pages. But let’s not elevate him to some place of reverence that he does not deserve. The man is a classic example of hubris, and I’m sure this time in jail, deserved or not, has taken him down a peg or two. He may well be a much better citizen now; I really don’t now. But let’s not overlook his past transgressions just because the lefty media clearly hates him.
dinosaur, excellent point. I’ve locked horns with my father over the Black conviction. My father, normally a steady-headed capitalist, was in fervent agreement with the Black conviction when it happened a couple years ago.
But, I’ve always said, the prosecution of Black did exponentially more financial harm to the Black companies, its workers and shareholders, than Black allegedly ever did. The pursuit of his conviction, and his ultimate conviction, served no public good. Not then. And, with the recent SCOTUS decision, certainly not now.
I’m visiting my father tomorrow, and am looking forward to serving him up a little bit of crow.
After reading some of his books and many of his articles, I have concluded jourmalists hate Lord Black because he is SO MUCH BETTER at writing then any journalist. It’s merely professional envy.
Never mind the fact that he renounced his Canadian citizenship. Never mind the fact that he ripped millions from investors, and was convicted by a judge and jury. Never mind the fact that tens of thousands of North American farmers ended up with Massey-Ferguson farm equipment that was worthless after Black broke the company. Let’s just type in anything that comes to mind to convince ourselves that A: It’s Ok to be sleazy as long as you’re rich. B: The law only applies to the middle and lower classes.
On a technical note, given the fact that Black does have a conviction, does that hinder his chances at gaining re-entry?
Say what you will about Conrad Black but no one can seriously deny Black is the quintissential conservative and would stand MSM on its head if he chose to engage with Kate McMillan aand Kory Teneycke in Quebecor’s new FOX North TV.
Cogitate on that folks!
T-shirt
Bring Black BaCK
What is “CBC”?
I agree with KevinB about the Globe and Mail. Let me add that as well as the cryptic crossword, I do the Kenken puzzles, better than Sudoku. The Bridge column in the Globe is also first class, I read it everyday and bring a copy home from the office for my wife.
Kevin B
“But let’s not elevate him to some place of reverence that he does not deserve.”
Couldn’t agree with you more. The US Supreme court has not found Black to be innocent, but rather that aspects of the charge given to the jury by the trial judge were inappropriate, and sent the matter back to a lower court to determine whether this should warrant vacating the convictions against him OR whether it doesn’t rise to that level and the convictions be left to stand. Either is possible.
Conrad was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and given great wealth by his father. He parlayed that into a far greater fortune but ultimately by his own behaviour now finds himself having to borrow a couple of million from a friend in order to make bail.
None of this is a victory.
Black didn’t kill Massey-Ferguson—it just died.
It’s precusor Massey-Harris never set the world afire with quality.
Design features were light weight and cost cutting design. Quality control was a problem.
Hereabouts a series of incidents resulted in owners disconnecting batteries—-dead batteries were the warning signs of fires, spontaneous starting…..never park a MF with the fuel on and in gear.
On of the more robust models the 1100 was modified by turbo-charging to produce the 1130 to product 30-40 more horsepower. The bull-gear differentials were not up to the strain but seldom failed because the motor usually went either up, down or sideways first. Those menaces totally disappeared 30 years back.
This during the rapid adoption of larger horsepower in the 60’s doomed MF.
The ‘Shawinigan strangler’ a moral pygmy indeed. BatB you crack me up !! Thanks.