WSJ Fallout

In light of the takeover the WSJ by Rupert Murdoch the ripples are happening even in Canada.

The Bad News:

One of Torstar Corp.'s five controlling families has signalled it will soon begin selling off shares in the tightly held newspaper publishing company in an effort to diversify their investments.

The Thall family, part of the voting trust that steers Canada's largest newspaper by circulation, the Toronto Star, informed the company that it intends to divest "some or all" of its non-voting shares in Torstar Corp.

Of course there is always a silver lining, if Murdoch can't buy the Toronto Star there is always the National Pest.

National Post readers across Atlantic Canada will now have to travel to Halifax if they want to buy an actual print copy of the national newspaper.

Following an annual business review of the paper, Post management decided to limit sales to only one Atlantic Canadian market — the metropolitan area of Halifax — as of the end of July.

This latest move follows another decision, announced in late March, to limit Atlantic Canadian distribution of the Post to provincial capitals only.

At that time, the paper blamed the prohibitive costs of distributing the paper regionally after circulation numbers are factored in. Home delivery to the Atlantic region was also discontinued in 2006.

Similar reasons were cited this time, with the paper also blaming difficulty distributing the Toronto-produced and printed paper in a timely manner.

"As we took a look at our business model, looked at how and where we're distributed across the country — and frankly no newspaper has 100 per cent distribution across the country, it's just too big — we made some hard decisions," said Steven Hastings, National Post vice-president of marketing and reader sales.

The National Pest continues to decline in circulation, and thus withdrawing from being a National Paper to one that is just another Toronto Rag.

Upon its much ballyhooed introduction in October 1998 by media mogul Conrad Black, the National Post offered a bold new, neo-conservative voice in Canada's national newspaper landscape, offering a different take on the news and current affairs as well as a jazzy, colourful look compared to venerable newspaper the Globe and Mail.

However, the Post soon began amassing large debts from the heavy spending incurred during its startup period. Black eventually sold the paper to fellow media scion Izzy Asper and his CanWest Global Communications (in two stages over the course of 2000 and 2001).

In 2001, management of the still-young newspaper imposed severe budget cuts, laid off a significant percentage of its staff and nixed several sections, with a plummet in circulation the ultimate result.

Wow that was some business plan. Typical of the right, overwhelmed by all their pompous social conservative blathergab when it comes to good old fashioned capitalism they are utter failures, bleeding cash and blue bloods.

SEE:

Liberal Or liberal Media

Lord Black No Robin Hood

Conrad Black

Criminal Capitalism


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Dinos and World Systems Theory

In the World Systems Theory of political economy, the sociologist Immanuel Wallerstien claims that capitalism evolved coincidentally with the decline of feudalism, it did not suddenly replace that political economic system but rather evolved out of it. It was not the only political economic system evolving at the time but the one that became dominate.

This can be proven with a simple example, a robber baron newspaper owner who sells his national citizenship in order to buy a lordship from Baronial Britain. Here we have someone who is a capitalist aspiring to the titles and honorifics of the old feudal order.

Now we find the same thing happened with proto-dinosaurs and their later dinosaur relatives. The dinos did not wipe out their earlier relatives but co existed with them. Much like the remnants of feudalism, Lords, Queens and Kings, autarchies, exist today under capitalism.,

UC Berkeley scientists, digging deep into a remote New Mexico hillside, have discovered a trove of fossil bones that they say is evidence that dinosaurs and their early relatives lived side by side for tens of millions of years before the relatives slowly died off and left the dinosaurs to dominate the ancient world.

Until now many scientists had thought that dinosaur "precursors" -- perhaps their ancestors -- disappeared suddenly long before the dinosaurs themselves rose to prominence, but the bones dug up by Berkeley paleontologists show evidence of a different story.

The discovery of a wide variety of creatures all mingled together in layer upon layer of rocks dating from Earth's late Triassic period between 235 million and 200 million years ago, they say, shows that the strange relatives of the dinosaurs remained on the scene while the dinosaurs evolved into truly dominant creatures during the Jurassic period, between 120 million and 200 million years ago.

Until now, many scientists have argued that the early close relatives of dinosaurs must have disappeared abruptly in an early "mass extinction" about 215 million years ago that has never been clearly explained. Others have thought that the true dinosaurs, whether carnivores or plant eaters, simply outcompeted their relatives for dominance in the ancient environment and quickly drove them to extinction.

And after all economists call themselves scientists. Of course like its prehistoric ancestor Capitalism itself is a dinosaur. And those who believe that Capitalism is, was, and will always be eternal are to political economy what creationists are to paleontology.



See:

Paleontologist Versus Paleo Conservatives

Commodity Fetish a Definition

Marx For Beginners

Saving Capitalism From Itself

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And Justice For All

Shareholders rights upheld in Lord Blacks trial which has conservatives all in a tizzy. Since they favored the aristocratic pretensions of robber baron Black rather than the rights of the 'little guy and gal'.

For Prince, 58, Black's fate was sealed in a 2002 shareholders' meeting.

As prosecutors played the recording, and she heard angry investors lambasting Black about why he and other high-ranking Hollinger executives were receiving millions in non-compete payments, Prince decided she would do everything she could to convict him of fraud.

In fact, if it were up to her, Black would also be going down on an additional fraud count. Had that happened, she said, it might have shown the pattern of criminal activity jurors needed to convict the fallen media baron of the most serious charge of all – racketeering.

Despite efforts to avoid media during the trial, jurors overheard in an elevator one day that some Canadian media had called them a "blue collar" jury and critiqued their appearance. "When we were deadlocked, one of the jurors, she's a teacher, gave us a pep talk," said Prince. "She said, 'They're calling us country bumpkins. They think we're too stupid to figure out this case.' And it brought us all together. We were going back in there with a unanimous verdict," she said.

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Comeuppance

The irony here is that Lord Black of Crossharbour left Canada to buy his Lordship from the Mother Country, because he thought we were too liberal for his pro-American conservative values.

Say it loud: Lord Black is too proud

Now that democracy of the common man; America, has given the Lord his comeuppance.

Conrad Black found guilty of obstruction and could face decades in prison

Just like his Her0 that other Crime Lord from Chicago.




Also See:

Conrad Black

Criminal Capitalism: Black Lord Dodges Tax Man

Criminal Capitalism: Black & Radler,Thick as Thieves

Criminal Capitalism: Lord Black Fugitive

Criminal Capitalism: Black gets his comeuppance

Criminal Capitalism: Hollinger's Black Eye

Criminal Capitalism: Black Out


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A Captain of Industry

I see my post here has caused some comments from the rightwhingnuts. It is amazing to see the folks who line up behind Lord Black of Cumuppance Harbour, a would be aristocrat and ruthless tyrant over his press empire. Folks like Sun writer and right wing bon vivant Peter Worthington who have been bemoaning his trial as class war.

They all praise Lord Black for being a hard working Captain of Industry. Except they seem to over look that he sunk his ship, leaving the women and children (shareholders, the little people, etc.) to fend for themselves as he and his wife made off like bandits.

Those on the right love their aristocrats. So much so that they create their own little family compacts. Damn shame about the end of feudalism.

Also See:


Conrad Black

Criminal Capitalism

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Why Not?

‘You can’t convict Lord Black for being rich’ Why not. He got his ill gotten wealth like all other wealthy folks from theft or inheritance, which is just theft from long ago. And his hero is that other Chicagoan famous for being wealthy through crime; Al Capone

Also See:


Conrad Black

Criminal Capitalism

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Lord Black No Robin Hood

Black accused of stealing, 'plain and simple'

From the little people; shareholders. Those whom Lady Black dismisses with the aplomb of Marie Antoinette.

The prosecution painted Conrad Black and his co-accused as fraudsters who systematically committed theft from Hollinger International shareholders.

The accused took a "slice of their company's profits" and "created a phony paper trail to make their actions appear legitimate

"We are here because five men systematically stole over US$60 million from the shareholders of Hollinger International."

"Conrad Black was paying himself not to compete with himself. It's ridiculous."

Also See:


Conrad Black

Criminal Capitalism

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If Wishes Were Horses

If wishes were horses; Odds are Black will go free

It seems the Black Lord has a cheering section in Canada, of course it comes from the right. Surprise, surprise. Or perhaps it is less sympathy for him than for Lady MacBeth his wife and outspoken fellow traveler of the right.

Also See:


Conrad Black

Criminal Capitalism


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Barbara Amiel No Libertarian

Columnist and author Barbara Amiel calls herself an extreme libertarian. Other journalists call her a provocateur. Critics call her the "Iron Lady of Wapping." Whatever you call her, there's no denying that Amiel has cut a broad swathe through the newspaper business (and gossip columns) in two countries.

Unless one considers Marie Antoinette a libertarian. Amiel's politics are not libertarian but neo-aristocratic. Amiel believes she should have her cake and eat it too just like Marie. As for the peasants they can eat cake too. As she reminds us in defense of Polish House Frau Inc.; Martha Stewart;

If Stewart had been living in ordinary times, it is unlikely so marginal a case would have involved the FBI and the Department of Justice. But Revolution has been sweeping the boardrooms of corporate America and the Terror is well under way. Last Friday night, Stewart's head was being held up high by its golden locks on television screens across the nation.

The neo-aristocratic airs of Amiel belie just another Conservative housefrau. In defending fascist revisionist David Irving she said;

" I would not hire Hitler to paint my house if there were other housepainters around, but if Hitler had simply written Mein Kampf and was an anti-semite, I would not ban him as a housepainter."

And her opinion of corporate malfeasance is clearly aristocratic; how dare the lowly peasants, the investors have any say. Let them eat their cake too. After all they are just ammunition in the revolt of the new bourgeois class against old money.

The revolution that Eisner and American business face comes from the once-silent partner of American public companies - the minority and institutional shareholder. After the huge bankruptcies and frauds of Enron and WorldCom, US business cried out for improved corporate governance but also became vulnerable to attack. A "Newly Emboldened Investor Class", as the New York Times calls it, rose up from their spreadsheets. The money managers for mutual funds, pension funds and insurance companies led by a handful of shareholder activists were in revolt: they were no longer content to remain confined to the dreary routine of analysts' reports and computations. The business world's atmosphere of shame and suspicion gave them a justification and an entry point into the companies in which they had invested. Now they had a chance to act like owners and have a say in operational decisions. Heady stuff.

Is it any wonder that the Queen Bitch of Cross Harbour, she of the Almeda Marcos school of self indulgence is so upset that hubby is facing racketeering and fraud charges in the U.S. Her gold digger demands on hubby are the reason for his criminal misuse of public company funds. And it is clear her outburst the other day was because like Marie Antoinette she is experiencing the revenge of the investors and the dreaded new bourgeois, the little people are clamoring for justice not cake.

CHICAGO -- From the moment Jeffrey Cramer, the 41-year-old prosecutor, stood up and began his opening argument in the trial by saying "Ladies and gentlemen, you see in the courtroom before you four men who stole $60-million," you knew he was going to make the whole thing simple.

And clear. There was no mistaking that. The four sleek, young U.S. prosecutors on the right side of courtroom 1241 in the federal courthouse in downtown Chicago, where Conrad Black and three co-defendants are on trial for fraud and related boo-boos, are the representatives not just of justice, but of a new moral order. They are the new gods of governance. The light of right seemed to shine off them.

She of aristocratic pretensions is no libertarian, she is a throw back like her husband to the neo-aristocratic conservatism of Edwardian Canada.

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.

When exposed in public for the political harridan she is, Lord Black, true to form, sues.

The embattled former owner of the Telegraph, Conrad Black, is suing for almost £5m in libel damages over a critical biography that depicts the fallen press baron as an overweight teenager from a loveless home who grows up to be a "criminal sociopath".

Lord Black has taken particular exception to the book's treatment of his wife. His lawsuit says it portrays her as "grasping, hectoring, slatternly, extravagant, shrill and a harridan", and a "Nazi apologist".

An Ottawa-based legal analyst, Stanley Kershman of Perley-Roberts, Hill & McDougall, said the lawsuit was typical of Lord Black: "He has done this throughout his career - suing people to keep them from saying things he doesn't like."

And like many of the new right liberals of the Post War era she dabbled in Trotskyism before turning to the right. And like all anti-Stalinist liberals, she mistook State Capitalism for Socialism.

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.

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.

See

Conrad Black

Criminal Capitalism


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Anna Nicole Smith and Barbara Amiel

So what do Anna Nicole Smith and Barbara Amiel, Mrs. Lord Black, have in common?

Besides being notorious media self promoters? Black's wife blasts media as trial adjourned

The strain of Conrad Black's racketeering trial has taken its toll on the fallen newspaper mogul's wife, Barbara Amiel-Black, who unleashed a foul-mouthed tirade at the media yesterday in which she called a Canadian journalist a "slut". "As the doors closed, suddenly, out of nowhere, Barbara Amiel said -- in a very cut-glass, rather aggressive voice -- 'You slut!'," said British journalist Joanna Walters, who was in the elevator with some other journalists.

Both of them married wealthy older men.

There's a term for morbid sexual fascination with the elderly. It's called gerontophilia.

In Canada, it's also called Barbara Amielia.

One must admire the skills of a woman who is her own ruthless invention. Despite penning an article for Chatelaine magazine entitled "Why Women Marry Up,'' Amiel never needed to sleep-up, or wedlock well, to gain either social or professional altitude, although beguiling the right men did bring riches and opportunity. And maybe Amiel really did look upon the troll-like Lord Weidenfeld, her primary patron-swain in England whilst a single female, as a hottie. Women are weird that way, hormonally responsive to the potency of power, the way men get tumescent on porn.

What kind of person would want “love” from someone who wants them only for their money?

It would be a lot cheaper and productive to dump the “friend” and spend the money on a good therapist.

There is not a law against being stupid. When a 60-year-old lottery winner suddenly gets an 18-year-old lover, the lover is not with them for their looks.

Three has been too much media coverage of Anna Nicole. She did not earn her wealth or make the world a better place. Her big accomplishment was inheriting money.

See:

Ben Stein's Truth

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Not His Peers

Former Canadian, remember he renounced his Canadian citizenship, Conrad Black, Lord Black of Crossharbour, will be judged in the United States by the working class. Which belies the old adage; of being judged by your peers.

• Video: Jury selection at the Black trial

Since he has a peerage, I guess they could have held court in the House of Lords. But then they would have acquitted him being good old boys and all.

The mask of invulnerability has begun to slip. For months, Conrad Black has scatterbombed his assailants with bombastic bravado and patronising put-downs. But as he arrived in Chicago to face a criminal trial which could consign him to dotage in jail, the scandal-hit media mogul looked tired, pale and faintly fearful.

The former Telegraph owner and friend of Lady Thatcher faces charges of racketeering, fraud, money laundering, tax evasion and obstruction of justice. With his bulky frame leaning on a courtroom table, he has spent two days listening to childcare niggles, health woes and financial hardships which jurors need settling in order to spend three months on a $40-a-day (£21) stipend sitting in judgment over him.

It is a window on to the life of ordinary folk which Black has never been near. He admits as such, complaining that his Rolls-Royce lifestyle of vintage wine, tuxedos and multiple homes is key to his downfall: "Since biblical times, and probably before, the wealthy have been envied and condemned."

But instead of throwing himself on the mercy of the Queen and her Lords, Lord Black high tailed back to the country he despises, that of his birth, the one he renounced his citizenship of.

And promptly hired crackerjack Canadian lawyer Eddie Greenspan to represent him in the United States. Which didn't go over well last week. Judge Is Not Amused by Conrad’s Black’s Lawyer

And there is further irony here, for the Black Lord is fan of that other famous racketeering Chicagoan; Al Capone

Jeffrey Cramer, the young prosecutor who is expected to deliver the government's opening argument today, even looks like Eliot Ness, who put Al Capone in jail for 11 years for tax evasion.

So perhaps to truly be judged by his peers Lord Black would not appear before his fellow British Lords but the Lords of Crime, like Capone, who like Black were busted on Rico charges.



Also See:

Conrad Black

Criminal Capitalism: Black Lord Dodges Tax Man

Criminal Capitalism: Black & Radler,Thick as Thieves

Criminal Capitalism: Lord Black Fugitive

Criminal Capitalism: Black gets his comeuppance

Criminal Capitalism: Hollinger's Black Eye

Criminal Capitalism: Black Out

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Nortels Chickens Roost

It takes the American SEC to actually charge the folks behind Enron North. Investors got tired of waiting for the Ontario Securities Commission to do anything. Another reason for having a single national regulator.

And Nortel has been a bigger loss for more seniors and retiree investors than the Income Trusts.

SEC files charges against former Nortel execs

The securities regulator alleges the execs at the Toronto-based telecom maker repeatedly engaged in accounting fraud "to bridge gaps between Nortel's true performance, its internal targets and Wall Street expectations." "Each of the defendants betrayed Nortel's investors and their misconduct gave rise to billions of dollars in shareholder losses," said Linda Thomsen, director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement.

In the go go world of a long bull market like we have seen, the only house rule for casino capitalism is that rules are meant to be broken. The wave of criminal fraud cases that have hit the market are a result of the politics of Greed that we saw in the eighties and before that in the seventies and early sixties.

Gekko: Greed - you mark my words - will save Teldar, and that other malfunctioning corporation, the U.S.A.

During bull markets the movers and shakers of real existing capitalism, not the Von Mises /Hayek fiction, find accomplices like Accounting firms to do their bidding, which is to hide money away from the government, and also to make as much money as quickly as possible. Both of these ends then require a means, which is fraud, pure and simple.

The use of back dated shares, accounting practices to pump up market prices, accounting practices to avoid taxes, hedged bets on mutual funds after closing, these are all business as usual until they are declared fraudulent by those who are supposed to be regulating the market.

It is the political dominance of finance in the marketplace.

Nortel is not Canada's only criminal capitalist on trial in the U.S.

Establishment-watchers eagerly await Black's trial

See

Nortel Slash & Burn

NORTEL: REDUX

NORTEL: Canada's Enron

Dalai Canuck

Criminal Capitalism

We Need a Living Wage

The Phoney Debate On Net Neutrality

CEO


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Conrad Black and ADM

Along with its connection to Brian Mulroney, Archer Daniels Midland, ADM, the major beneficiary of subsidies for bio-fuels in the United States and Canada has a connection with Conrad Black.

Ethanol's boosters, led primarily by ADM, go to great lengths to screen the
public's knowledge of the facts behind this taxpayer-funded rip-off.
Justifications for the subsidy are draped in histrionics, flawed research
and/or demogogic appeals to patriotism (i.e. "No American soldiers should
die for foreign oil") --- Who would disagree with that ---
but who looks behind the statement to discover its falsehoods?

ADM's de facto monopoly in ethanol and its subjugating influence across wide
swaths of our agro-food system has been accomplished stealthily over decades
and is currently enforced by several largely hidden (but interlocking)
realities:
(1) political contributions and placement of ADM-approved toadies at all
levels of
government, particularly USDA and Congress,
(2) a large phalanx of controlled trade associations, commodity groups, and
related foundations at national, state and local levels and
(3) controlling influence in important media sectors through stock ownership
of newspapers, advertising and holding companies.

Let's illustrate the last point --- Have you been watching the public
destruction of Conrad Black, erstwhile chairman of Hollinger International,
and a member of British House of Lords? Hollinger, which controlled, among
other assets, The Chicago Sun Times, The London Daily Telegraph and dozens
of smaller newspapers, began imploding shortly after ADM's chairman emeritus
Dwayne O. Andreas and another longtime ADM director, Robert Strauss,
resigned their board seats at Hollinger in early 2003.

Other ADM directors and toadies, including former Ambassador Richard Burt and former Illinois governor James Thompson, continued serving on Hollinger's board and helped spark an internal investigation, brought in a former SEC chairman for window dressing and dumped Black amid a swirl of nasty allegations. Having orchestrated Black's ouster, by exposing audits
and other internal revelations of indefensible corporate greed, it would
appear the "Pot (Andreas) can call the kettle (Black)" and get away unscathed --- while simultaneously riding the public's post-Enron indignation.

See:

Bio Fuels = Eco Disaster

Real Costs of Bio-Fuels

BioFuel and The Wheat Board

The Ethanol Scam: ADM and Brian Mulroney

Capitalism Endangers Orangutan

Criminal Capitalism

ADM



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