BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black

Subject: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: Little Hawk
Date: 23 Jan 09 - 01:59 PM

How about that, eh? Disturbing, isn't it? I thought the rich could count on their friends in high places, but apparently not this time.

---

Conrad Black

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: john f weldon
Date: 23 Jan 09 - 02:04 PM

Thinking of Conrad in his cell gives me the warm fuzzy feeling others reserve for "Lassie",

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: PoppaGator
Date: 23 Jan 09 - 02:34 PM

I have no idea who Conrad Black might be ~ ????

If he's Canadian (as are LH and John), it wouldn't be within Bush's purview to pardon him.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: Little Hawk
Date: 23 Jan 09 - 02:56 PM

It's a complicated story, PG. He was a Canadian once. Perhaps he still is, I'm not sure. Perhaps someone else who feels like typing at length about it will help fill in the rest for you. Anyway, he's very rich, he was made a "Lord" in England some years back, he got indicted in the USA for various questionable financial maneuvers, and he is now in jail. Bush could have pardoned him (as some expected), but he didn't.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 23 Jan 09 - 04:53 PM

The old thief needs some quality time in the calaboose. Little Hawk is correct, he was convicted in the U. S. and was sentenced to a U. S. prison (he has appealed to the Supreme Court, I read).

At one time (dunno what his holdings are now, and care little) he owned a couple of large UK, Israel and Canadian newspapers, the Chicago Sun Times and "182 small U. S. newspapers" according to one source.

Also had some pretty big financial stakes.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: gnu
Date: 23 Jan 09 - 05:10 PM

No prob. He will be repatriated and then his sentence will be commuted. The rich take care of their own.

As for being a Canuck, he had to give that up to become an asshole.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: Beer
Date: 23 Jan 09 - 05:32 PM

Very well said Gnu.
Beer
(adrien)

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: katlaughing
Date: 23 Jan 09 - 07:52 PM

Too bad, the Worst Person in the World (#3 in the video) in THIS MSNBC Video isn't convicted of something and in need of a pardon.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: Riginslinger
Date: 23 Jan 09 - 09:30 PM

Okay, LH, I give up. Why in the world would George W. Bush be motivated to pardon Conrad Black?

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: Little Hawk
Date: 23 Jan 09 - 10:36 PM

I don't know. ;-) But it seems that Conrad Black and his family had high hopes that Bush might pardon him. Perhaps because Black is one of the "have-mores" and Bush instinctively likes those kind of people?

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: Riginslinger
Date: 23 Jan 09 - 10:40 PM

Yes, well he certainly does. But it seems to me that he favors those folks the most who he thinks might be in a postition to do something for him.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: Little Hawk
Date: 23 Jan 09 - 10:46 PM

Ah! Well, you might be onto something there.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: john f weldon
Date: 23 Jan 09 - 11:44 PM

GB didn't issue many last-minute pardons, and CB would have been low on the list. Still, hope & fear spring eternal.

By the way, despite Conrad's incarceration, he still seems to have access to the internet, and great reams of his turgid prose have appeared lately in newspapers & on various blogs. He hasn't shown up on Mudcat yet, but these days nothing would surprise me. Look out for some Very Long (and cranky) postings.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 24 Jan 09 - 12:11 AM

The Wiki article linked in the first post gives a pretty thorough bio of Black, although dates cited appear to dwindle off in 2008 so some update might be in order if anything new has happened.

He was convicted in US Courts, and is (was) serving time in a US prison, hence the possibility of a Bush pardon or commutation.

Wiki reports that he resigned his Canadian citizenship some time ago, apparently in order to receive a barony from the UK. He has made noises about reassuming Canadian citizenship, possibly in the believe it would allow him to take advantage of more liberal US-Canadian extradition laws, and/or allow some form of Canadian pardon or commutation.

The Wiki bio is not particularly complimentary, essentially describing a person of rather mediocre talent, suspect morals, and enough luck to have acquired sufficient power (i.e. money) to think himself immune to the rules. (comparisons to that other Canadian WS not required - ; > )

John

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: GUEST,Schadenfreude
Date: 24 Jan 09 - 01:49 AM

Black is a big-time neocon and zionazi, married to Barbara Amiel (her fourth husband), the far-right columnist and greedy bitch.

He gave up his Canadian citizenship, describing it as "uncompetitive", to take the seat he had bought himself in the House of Lords in London.

A real know-all and self-described expert on everything, Black is not nearly as clever as he thinks, because he thought he could get away with stealing from the rich in the USA. How clever is that?

He got 78 months in the hoosegow and will have to serve 85% of that time - release date October 2013. If he had not pissed on his Canadian citizenship, he could have transferred to a Canadian prison and would qualify for parole before the middle of this year.

He continues to write know-all articles for a few right-wing publications, like the Nazional Post (which he founded)in Canada and the Daily Beast on the Internet.

He has now suddenly discovered that the American justice system is a farce. Earlier, he saw only good in the USA and even wanted Canada to merge with it.

There will be enough black marks against Bush in the historical record without letting this crook walk.

I hope for his sake he's learned to keep a good grip on the soap, becasue his ass is Bubba's for the next five years.

Karma be praised.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: Peter T.
Date: 24 Jan 09 - 03:13 AM

It does warm the January heart to be reminded that he is in jail. I confess that I am particularly fond of the irony -- as reported above -- that he pissed on his Canadian citizenship, and then was caught by it. (I am sure that it brings a smile to Jean Chretien's face even now).

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: gnu
Date: 24 Jan 09 - 06:52 AM

Peter T., re JC, hahahaaa!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: john f weldon
Date: 24 Jan 09 - 08:24 AM

For once, "bluster" didn't work. He could have fought a delaying battle, but he stormed over to the USA demanding immediate justice and total vindication. He got the first.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 24 Jan 09 - 10:25 AM

There is an asounding amount of misinformation here as regatds Conrad Black . I do wish that if people are going to make comments about people they at least get the facts correct. It seems that many posters dislike Mr. Black for no other reason than that he is rich.
As for his wife, I don't know how many husbands she has had, nor do I care, but she does not, in my opinion, write hugely right wing articles and, she is a very good writer, even when you disagree, you have to give her credit for that.
   I am no great fan of Mr. Blacks but I do feel that the US syytem persued him not for what he supposedly did but for who he was. This seems to me to be a flagrant abuse of a judicial system.
   Just my opion, dfor what it is worth.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: Peter T.
Date: 24 Jan 09 - 10:56 AM

I dislike him because he was a crook and an arrogant son of a bitch and he wandered around all holier than lesser mortals and then he got caught and whined about it.   But apart from that, a wonderful human being.   

Um, have you ever read any of her articles? Attilette the Hun.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: john f weldon
Date: 24 Jan 09 - 11:13 AM

If you subscribe to the New Yorker, you can read the entire text of this very funny and memorable article about Conrad, from 2001. In any case, the precis version gives a bit of the flavour.

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2001/12/17/011217fa_fact_trilli

Barbara Amiel was writing right-wing BS for years before she met Conrad. A marriage made in heaven. Or somewhere.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 24 Jan 09 - 11:16 AM

Yes, I have read many of her articles. I do not always agree with her, but she is not, in my opinion a right wing writer. As for Conrad Black, like any other person, he should not be prosicuted because people don't like him. As for the crook part, the legal proof of that was dubious at best and, at worst, a miscarriage of justice.
    My point here is not to present an unmitigated defence of either party, but merely to suggest that justice should not rest upon the wealth of the defendant. That appears to be the case here. Many legal experts both in and out of the US have great difficulty with the concept of immunity or reduced sentances given to those who testify on behalf of the state. It reeks of unfairness and blatant oppurtunism. Weather or not the accused is Conrad Black or anyone else is not the point, is it ?

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: john f weldon
Date: 24 Jan 09 - 11:37 AM

Come off it. He was not convicted because of wealth. Being caught by his own security cameras, on the hand...

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 24 Jan 09 - 11:42 AM

I go only back to my point about the legal system. The US justice Dept has no legal jurisdiction in Canada, therefore Mr. Black was entitled to enter his own premises as no injunction in Canada forbade his to do so. The evidence on video shoild not have been permissable because the US had no jurisdiction in Canada. So I return too my point, people, regardless of wealth are entiteled to fairness under the law.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: Teribus
Date: 24 Jan 09 - 12:11 PM

Well just to pre-empt it there were approximately 2.3 million others he didn't pardon either.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: GUEST,Schadenfreude
Date: 24 Jan 09 - 12:14 PM

For those who want to know more about Black and his wife, who once famously described herself as a "North London Jewish bitch", I would recommend Tom Bower's excellent book "Conrad and Lady Black: Dancing on the Edge".

If Amiel isn't far right-wing and zionazi to the core, who is? For goodness sake, she has even advocated the reintroduction of debtor's prison. Anything resembling a welfare state is utterly abhorrent to her, although I have no doubt she draws the old age pension to which, as a British citizen, she is entitled.

Black was not convicted because of his wealth, but in spite of it! His defence cost tens of millions of dollars, most of it paid by the employer he robbed due to a clause in his employment contract. The guy even had the neck to send the legal bill for appealing to the Chimp for a pardon to the same victim!

If he had been poor, he would probably have been convicted of the other counts as well and might have been sentenced to as much as 99 years in the slammer. Even now, he seems to enjoy very special treatment in the hoosegow, with far more access to the Internet and e-mail than Bubba is likely to have.

The question of American jurisdiction extending to Canada is irrelevant. By removing those boxes from his office in defiance of a court order not to do so, he was obstructing an American criminal investigation. It would have been the same if the office had been in Beijing or wherever.

He even made a finger gesture at the CCTV camera, which he thought was disabled. It had been reactivated a day or two earlier - karma be praised!

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: john f weldon
Date: 24 Jan 09 - 12:34 PM

I can't believe anyone thinks it can actually be a disadvantage to have vast sums to hand out to lawyers. Surely the guys in jail who used public defenders would have more to complain about.

Tens of millions in legal fees? Actually hundreds of millions! Either he was very guilty, or his lawyers were somewhat overpriced!

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: GUEST,Schadenfreude
Date: 24 Jan 09 - 12:44 PM

Here's a comment written by Tom Bower just after His Lardship Baron Black of Crossdresser was convicted.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article2075179.ece

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: gnu
Date: 24 Jan 09 - 12:48 PM

Ah.... there's another point. In the US, as I understand it, ya can't easily buy the judges' verdicts in civil cases. Maybe he thought it was like the Canuck system?

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: Little Hawk
Date: 24 Jan 09 - 12:52 PM

Barbara Amiel is a very bright woman. I detest most of her political-philosophical outlook on the world, but she is as smart as a whip. Years ago I read her autobiography, "Past Imperfect" I think it was called. Good book. I read it because I dislike her politics so much that I wanted to get a better take on who she is and why she thinks the way she does, and I have to say it was an enjoyable read. Very interesting indeed. I still disagree with her politics, but I respect her intelligence and ability.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: john f weldon
Date: 24 Jan 09 - 01:22 PM

I tend to read Amiel's column in my dentist's waiting room, which often causes me to crack another tooth. No wonder he leaves that damn rag lying around...

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: Little Hawk
Date: 24 Jan 09 - 01:24 PM

Yeah, she certainly can be infuriating. ;-) She no doubt enjoys it.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: Willie-O
Date: 24 Jan 09 - 01:42 PM

Poor auld Lord Tubby, tucked away in what I suspect is a pretty nice cell.

Of course, he wouldn't be there if he didn't have money--the ways he acquired it are what got him into his current domicile! But in fact, he never had as much money as arrogance. At his peak even when he controlled the world's third-or-fourth-largest "media empire" (and I use the word controlled intentionally), his personal fortune was under $300 million. His game was all about gaining leverage. A game that, as he's not the first to discover, can fall apart big time when things go wrong.

The National Post is going down the tubes rapidly, which it would have done with or without him at the helm.

The weird thing about the nasty Ms Amiel is that you would think from her rantings that she was born to the upper class, and as such defends her privileges and wealth--understandable if not admirable. In fact she is the ultimate social climber, from a very modest working-class immigrant background. Your basic class traitor.

       W-O

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: GUEST,Hi Lo
Date: 24 Jan 09 - 02:09 PM

Basic what traitor..she should have stayed poor. Immigrants doing well is a form of class treason ?

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: Peter T.
Date: 24 Jan 09 - 02:44 PM

Both Barbara and Conrad are very smart, and both are good writers (he tends towards the excessively florid) -- which only goes to show that you can be both those things and still be shits.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: GUEST,Schadenfreude
Date: 24 Jan 09 - 02:48 PM

For all her airs and hob-nobbing with the hoity-toity, Amiel proved the adage that you can take the person out of the gutter, but it's harder to get the gutter out of the person during her crooked husband's trial in Chicago. When a respected British woman journalist stepped into the same elevator as the Black's, "Lady" Black snarled "you slut!" at her and launched into a rant about all journalists being "vermin".

Right now she's probably throwing shoes (she was reported to have 100 pairs of Manolo Blahniks alone) at a big picture of the Chimp in the Palm Beach mansion, because he failed to grant His Lardship a pardon.

See her latest whineologue in Macleans (http://blog.macleans.ca/category/opinion/barbara-amiel-opinion/), where her main worry is that Madoff's ethnicity will reflect negatively on all Jews (as if anyone knew or cared what his ethnicity/religion was).

The theft of billions doesn't seem to bother her at all. But then, who would she be to cast the first stone?

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: john f weldon
Date: 24 Jan 09 - 03:54 PM

Peter T - Barbara's prose is readable (though vile), but Conrad's is more than florid. It read as if written by someone wearing Lordly robes, as he has been known to do. I sometimes think these two lovebirds set out to be self-parodies, both in style and content.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: gnu
Date: 24 Jan 09 - 04:22 PM

Cell mates?

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: Peter T.
Date: 24 Jan 09 - 04:24 PM

Er, I said, "excessively florid" already, yes?

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: gnu
Date: 24 Jan 09 - 04:26 PM

Like, polyorchid? Cause, he's got lots of balls.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Jan 09 - 07:07 PM

Have you compared the list of those pardoned by Bush with those his predecessor pardoned? I believe Bush pardoned fewer people than all the presidents in recent history.


DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: Rapparee
Date: 24 Jan 09 - 08:03 PM

I don't know about every president in US history, Doug, but Bush didn't pardon very many. Danged few, in fact, when compared to his recent predecessors in both parties.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: GUEST,Schadenfreude
Date: 25 Jan 09 - 02:03 AM

About Black's florid, sesquipedalian prose style, one on the more interesting words he used recently was in an article he wrote for the Nazional Post during the US presidential campaign, in which he gushed effusive support for McCain and seemed to see Obama as a major threat.

In a side-swipe at Mrs. Obama, in which he cast caddish aspersions on her academic prowess and insinuated that she would not have gotten far if she had not been Afro-American and benefited from positive discrimination, he referred to her as "callipygian" and invited his readers to "look it up". Naturally, he never commented on any of the physical attributes of the other (White) women involved in one way or another in the campaign.

I confess I had to look up the meaning of callipygian and now that I have, I sure hope for Lordy's sake that none of his fellow inmates get to thinking the same thing about him if he drops the soap in the shower.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: Rapparee
Date: 25 Jan 09 - 10:35 AM

Fortunately, folks in the US rarely pay any attention to the rantings of convicts OR the British aristocracy.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: Amos
Date: 25 Jan 09 - 01:21 PM

Callipygian means having beautifully shaped buttocks, after a statue of Venus from Callipygia in which the buttocks are pronounced and curvacious.

It was, indeed, a caddish remark.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: GUEST,Schadenfreude
Date: 25 Jan 09 - 01:25 PM

According to this article by Ruth Dudley-Edwards, a British journalist who is slightly to the right of Genghis Khan and, for example, staunchly defended the Protestant fanatics who threw bombs at little Catholic girls on their way to school through their (the Protestants') area in Belfast a few years ago, Black is a little disappointed at Bush, a man he brown-tongued for many years and grovelled shamelessly to in the last few months.

http://www.independent.ie/world-news/bush-a-cocky-lockerroom-fraternity-boy-1613972.html

It hardly needs to be said that Black and Dudley-Edwards go a long way back. When she wrote for one of the papers he owned, she was all for harsh punishments and totally against any kind of leniency being shown to criminals. Working class and ethnic ones, of course.

Sample passage from the article (Black's assessment of Bush).

"I have been something of a supporter of GWB because I think he was basically right about Iraq, stuck with it, and did well with the terrorists.

"But I know him a little and was always afraid that he was as he seemed, an ignorant, cocky, superannuated, locker room, towel-snapping frat-boy, who traded in alcoholism for low Protestant fervour, and got where he is by surviving childbirth."

Well, he got it pretty well right in the second paragraph, but that hardly proves he is super perceptive or intelligent. After all, I could write an article pointing out that the Pope is a Catholic.

ROFLMAO

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: Peter T.
Date: 25 Jan 09 - 01:33 PM

You could add these remarks to the remarks by other rat scum like David Frum and Richard Perle who were all for Bush until things began to go a little wrong, and then they scurried for safety, and now proclaim that it wasn't their fault.

Ratscum.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: Ebbie
Date: 25 Jan 09 - 01:34 PM

"I believe Bush pardoned fewer people than all the presidents in recent history."

Why would he, she asks snidely. He has always preferred to put them to death.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: bobad
Date: 31 Jul 12 - 10:29 AM

Conrad "Con" Black on the US legal profession from a recent interview:

"The United States has five per cent of the world's population, 25 per cent of its incarcerated people and 50 per cent of its lawyers. The legal profession in general in the United States, and to some extent in this country, is a cartel. It is an abusive cartel and the court system is essentially, on the criminal side in the United States, just window dressing to confer a veneer of a society of laws on the executable whims of prosecutors who win over 90 per cent of their cases, compared to 65 in this country. And more than 90 per cent of the cases they win are without a trial."

"I spent over 30 million paying off these American lawyers."

Subject: RE: BS: Bush didn't pardon Conrad Black
From: gnu
Date: 31 Jul 12 - 08:29 PM

That boy don't know when to shut up.