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Politics : Canadian Political Free-for-All -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Eashoa' M'sheekha who wrote (3256)	11/23/2003 8:43:20 PM
From: 49thMIMOMander	Respond to of 37265

I recall being puzzled a few years ago understanding that the majority of anglo-murricans were so lost in space, on FPTP and two-party systems. Luckily I understood, later on,in almost a week, that this was the reality. Brain drain or damage, that seems to be the question.

To: Eashoa' M'sheekha who wrote (3256)	11/23/2003 8:57:21 PM
From: Eashoa' M'sheekha	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 37265

Lord and Lady Black CBC News Viewpoint \| November 20, 2003 The media joy at Conrad Black's comeuppance is understandable but not quite as fair and deserving as it ought to be. It is the joy of vengeance, of seeing your betters get clobbered and of getting in on the clobbering process, as well. Lord Black the newspaper proprietor is now losing his papers! Hoorah! Lord Black the righteous tycoon has been caught with his hands in the cookie jar! Hoorah! Lord Black the tycoon will soon be a beggar! Hoorah! The media love of Conrad Black when he was on top was for the many stories he provided. There was Conrad Black getting his shares from the Argus widows and taking over Argus Corporation. There was his constant talk of Canada joining Britain and the United States in an Anglo-Saxon-Canadian coalition. There was the creation of the National Post and its staggering losses, then the sale of his papers to Izzy Asper. It was all so Charles Foster Kane; Conrad was Citizen Black. Then Citizen Black wanted to become a Lord. Jean Chrétien said no. Black gave up his Canadian citizenship, thumbing his nose at Chrétien and the Canadian media in the process. Then there was Conrad Black the historian. Single-handedly he wrote an epic revisionist history of former Quebec premier Maurice Duplessis. The Black epic rescued Duplessis from the liberal ashcan he had been put into by the Trudeau liberals and socialists. Black's version provided the first real look at Duplessis in English. Now there's Black's epic revisionist biography of Franklin Roosevelt. Once again, Black is tackling liberal bias and suggesting that Roosevelt is a hero because he saved capitalism in the 1930s in its worst crisis. One thinks of the Securities and Exchange Commission Roosevelt created and put Joe Kennedy, Wall Street's number one manipulator, in charge of, the theory being that it takes a thief to stop a thief. The Roosevelt book is getting favorable reviews and the media are jealous of the tycoon turned scholar. Now the media can focus on Conrad Black, the tycoon and thief, with his empire collapsing all around him. The joy in mediaville knows no bounds as Conrad at bat has finally struck out. I've known Conrad Black since the late 1960s. At the time I first met him, Black had only one daily paper, in Sherbrooke, plus some Quebec weeklies. He dressed like a cowboy and flaunted a crew cut. He was full of quotations of his heroes, who ranged from Napoleon to Roosevelt and the labour leader, John L. Lewis, the founder of the CIO. What struck me then was the intensity of his enthusiasms. Black was a hero worshipper with a vengeance. Black worshipped Margaret Thatcher and had nothing but contempt for Pierre Trudeau. Brian Mulroney's agenda pleased Black but Mulroney the man left him cold. Chrétien in particular was contemptible in Black's eyes. Black saw in Chrétien only an ignorant peasant with no class at all who stood in the way of Black's lordship. Like Citizen Kane, Black used his newspapers to blacken his opponent's reputation at every twist and turn. It was Black's National Post that created the Shawinigate scandal. The Black press ridiculed Chrétien's defence that he was acting as an MP in aid of a constituent. Black's volatility was classic. After Peter Newman wrote a flattering biography of Black as the number 1 businessman in Canada on the rise (a book that also included Black saying I was his favourite humourist), Black quarrelled with Newman and then publicly and privately ridiculed him at all times. Then there was the vulnerable side to Black no one saw until he went public with it. He admitted to having anxiety attacks on occasion and wound up as the chairman of the board of Toronto's Clarke Institute of Psychiatry. He brought in his friend Henry Kissinger to do a fundraiser for the Clarke. But this human side didn't placate his enemies who by now were legion. When Black met Barbara Amiel it was like the sky opened up for both of them. Now Black had added true love to his repertoire. It was a real meeting of minds and bodies. The beautiful Amiel was as conservative as Black, as Ayn Randish, as Zionist, as rugged an individualist. And even better, she was a convert to Black's conservatism before she ever knew him. When I first met Barbara Amiel she was a funny, quirky Jewish lady of the Trotskyite persuasion hanging around University College at the University of Toronto. At the time, she had a well-off boyfriend reputed to have connections to organized crime. He bought her cashmere sweaters and skirts by the dozen. Then, ever so slowly, right before our very eyes, Amiel began her Road to Damascus. Freidrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom replaced Trotsky's Permanent Revolution. Soon Barbara was University College's number 1 conservative. Her conversion was accompanied by a nose bob and chest lift, which really made her look special. The media looked on Conrad Black's landing of the beautiful Amiel as one more reason to dislike him. Black was a beast and didn't deserve the beauteous Amiel. The media delighted in taking shots at them. But the marriage has been extremely successful. Lord and Lady Black are among the world's leading couples. Lord Black and his retinue of neo-cons, Kissinger and Richard Perle, have the ears of Tony Blair and George Bush any time they want. Lord and Lady Black lead the only pro-Israel, pro-Jewish contingent in the media today. Their philo-Semitism, love of Jews, was as reassuring as it was startling in an age of strident anti-Israel, anti-Jewish rhetoric. Unlike the British Royal Family, Lord and Lady Black were free of any lurid episodes, scandals or other forms of media titillation and vengeance. They sat on their perch, throwing crumbs to the media mob below on occasion, but above all being the essence of media themselves. Now the jealous media can't believe what's happening to the Lord and his Lady. The scholar, the tycoon, the lover has become a figure of fun and it's all in his business dealings. Now the media are calling Lord Black a crook and Lady Black his accomplice. How nice, too, it should all have happened after Black had written his Roosevelt book. Now the media are saying Lord Black needs every book sale he can get to pay back the shareholders of Hollinger he has allegedly robbed. To me all this media hate, jealousy and vehemence directed towards Lord and Lady Black tell us more about the media than about the media's favourite couple. Jealousy and envy now have seized the day, but Lord and Lady Black have just begun to fight back. This is far from over.

To: Eashoa' M'sheekha who wrote (3256)	11/24/2003 12:39:23 AM
From: marcos	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 37265

Lurid Conrad of Crossdressing, geez eh ... never let it be said that we lack sources of humour in this g.w.n. .... good riddance i say, the guy never did much for those hundreds of millions but shuffle paper and scheme others out of jobs and pensions, mostly though he just makes me puke for renouncing canadianship .... it shows what he values, money and faux sycophancy above honour of native land .... i know a little of what it means to adopt a new nationality, but cannot imagine throwing the old away like used snotpaper ... so repugnant that, i had no opinion on the individual until he spit on something i hold dear This country is too socialist for me also, but Lord Somebody help us if it ever falls into hands like that man's ... Chrétien was being a dickhead about it, that is true, also i don't think the law prohibiting foreign titles without guvmint approval makes sense, it's none of their business [i mean, who gives a shit, you don't need a permit for a sex change, so why for a lordship, even if it does come with the silly little wig, and a gown] .... but a country is far more than its government du jour, more than its policies or current political mood swings, much much more A friend became british, don't know if he got his citizenship yet but i think probably ..... he'll always be canadian though, we've joked around about it, there's plenty of humour in comparing regional quirks, little attitudes and expressions and all ..... but he's canadian, period, always was actually, even though he happened to be born and raised in another nation that demanded he go to the other side of the world in support of a military occupation he didn't believe in .... and he still feels attached to that original country, to certain of its stated principles and a goodly number of its people anyway ... kind of hard to explain ... but he's certainly superior as a member of the species to this press baron individual .... who has, give him his due, offered us something to talk about other than Lord Jacko of the Little Boys