Oh Lord, it's Conrad Black again - TheNewTopical.com - current events, politics, culture, ethics, economics discussion forum

Zichao · #1 (**permalink**) 23-07-10, 03:15 PM

Oh Lord, it's Conrad Black again | Douglas Haddow | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

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After suffering another blow from the velvet gloves of the Obama administration, it may appear that good old-fashioned dog-eat-dog capitalism is down and out. But old-school tycoonery can claim at one small victory: Lord Conrad Black is back. Well, sort of. The man who in 2005 called himself a "corporate-governance counterterrorist" was yesterday swarmed by the paparazzi after exiting out the back door of Coleman Federal Correctional Complex, en route to his ocean side mansion in Palm Beach.

The former owner of the Daily Telegraph, the Jerusalem Post and countless Canadian dailies, was released yesterday following the US supreme court's revaluation of "honest services" law. Their verdict: the term "honest" was too vague to keep Black behind bars.

But this was not the lord of yore. Gone are the $24,950 cocktail bills, the Kissinger-grade entourage and the Rolls Royce. What was seen sitting in the back of a blacked-out SUV was a magnate stripped down to sweatpants and a T-shirt, a man whose fortunes so diminished that he had to rely on a friend to pick up the $2m bail tab. While Black is by no means fully vindicated, his situation is looking far better than it has in recent months. But if indeed he does end up a free man in the near future, where on earth will he go?

A Canadian who renounced his citizenship so he could take up British peerage only to be imprisoned in the United States, Black has become somewhat of a persona non grata across the globe. Now a convicted felon without a passport or valid identification save for a mug not even a goldfish could forget, the legalities of his citizenship remain unclear. Whatever his final destination, there is already a palpable shift in opinion concerning the possibility of his return. The Wall Street Journal was the first in line to welcome the lord back into the fold, printing an apology for any previous criticisms.

The odds are he will attempt to reclaim his Canadian citizenship, and if the legal system permits, he will almost certainly be allowed to return there. The country Black once described as a "third world dump run by raving socialists" now has a prime minister more in tune with Black's politics.

During his tenure in the Florida penal system, Black spent much ink penning love letters to Stephen Harper, fawning over their shared love for Israel and overt displays of nationalism. And while it baffles the mind to consider what use a former newspaper magnate would be to anyone in this day and age, perhaps Black will find a comfy niche as a PR man for Canada's nascent Christian movement.

Here in Canada's British Columbia, two major papers that Black once owned (the Vancouver Sun and the Province) were recently dragged out of bankruptcy and resuscitated under the newly minted "Postmedia" brand, no pun intended I'm sure. The name is said to reflect "both where we have been and where we are going". A fitting motto for Black's return to Canadian society. And with his new comrades in parliament gearing up for a culture war against the forces of liberalism that Black railed against for much of his adult life, it looks as if he might be able to resume various campaigns which he had left off.

Perhaps Canadians and all other concerned observers should take this opportunity to glean a bit of wisdom from the words of George W Bush, the man who refused to give Black a pardon when he had the opportunity. "Fool me once, shame on … shame on you. Fool me … you can't get fooled again."

Mainly just an excuse to post this again:

Zichao · #2 (**permalink**) 02-08-10, 06:24 PM

Prison works: Conrad Black becomes a liberal - Americas, World - The Independent

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Holed up in his Palm Beach mansion, an unrepentant Conrad Black has broken his silence for the first time since his release from prison with a paean to the virtues of fine wine, his wife, Barbara Amiel, and the pleasures of "pristine quiet, free of loudspeakers, screamed argument, and the snoring of a hundred men".

The disgraced media mogul, freed on bail last month after almost two-and-a-half years in prison, also used a comment piece for Canada's National Post to announce (like so many other famous conservatives who end up behind bars) that he has become a convert to the cause of penal reform.

The former proprietor of The Daily Telegraph – once a paid-up member of the hang 'em and flog 'em brigade – explained that his time among the 1,800 residents of Coleman Low Security Prison in Florida has convinced him of "the fallibility of American justice, which does convict many people, who, like me, would never dream of committing a crime in a thousand years".

The article was his first public comment on his circumstances since the US Supreme Court ordered a fresh look at his three fraud convictions for illegally skimming money from his newspaper businesses. His time inside, Black says, has "been an interesting experience, from which I developed a much greater practical knowledge than I had ever had before of those who had drawn a short straw from the system; of the realities of street level American race relations; of the pathology of incorrigible criminals; and of the wasted opportunities for the reintegration of many of these people into society".

Black – who is preparing to appear before an appeals court which will consider whether to uphold or quash his convictions – also appears to have been inspired to take up a surprisingly liberal position in relation to the legalisation of recreational drugs.

"I saw at close range the failure of the US war on drugs," he said, "with absurd sentences, including 20 years for marijuana offences, although 42 per cent of Americans have used marijuana and it is the greatest cash crop in California."