Three very pleasant items in tonight’s news.
Criminal financier Conrad Black, who is also a member of the British House of Lords, has been found guilty on four counts (racketeering, obstruction of justice, money laundering, and fraud) in a Chicago court, and may face prison time. While he is probably not a big name in the United States, and the trial drew only moderate coverage from American media, it was followed with great interest in Canada, where he has been despised by most decent people for decades.
Black was born into an extremely wealthy family in Winnipeg, and has spent a lifetime buying, mismanaging, and stealing from a long chain of companies, at first in Canada, then in the the U.K. and U.S. His proclivity for theft became well-known to most Canadians in the 1980’s, when his attempt to steal $62,000,000 from employee pension funds was headed off by the Supreme Court. As the owner of various Conservative newspapers, he entertained Canadians with tirades about how terrible a country Canada is. He also wrote several books of dubious value, including a worshipful biography of Richard Nixon. He retains his greatest admiration, however, for Napoleon, with whom he is reputed to be obsessed.
Canadians may have regarded Black with embarrassment and contempt, but the upper crust in the U.K. were delighted with him. After purchasing the Daily Telegraph, he began throwing a blizzard of extravagant parties for the rich and titled, with millions of dollars acquired by defrauding the shareholders of his companies. Prime Minister Tony Blair urged the Queen to grant him a peerage. This did not sit well with Canadians. Evver since the Nickle Resolution of 1919, the Canadian Government has taken a dim view of the Queen granting peerages to Canadians, protesting that the Canadian people find the concept of hereditary and aristocratic titles to be inherently repugnant. Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien was rightfully infuriated by the prospect of the Queen making Conrad Black, who had published endless tirades denouncing Canada, into “Baron Black of Crossharbour”, especially without any consultation with Canada. He launched a vigorous protest with the Queen. In the end, Black was forced to renounce Canadian citizenship in order to accept the title.
The outcome of the American trial is full of wonderful ironies. Black and his wife, ultra-conservative columnist Barbara Amiel, were always ranting about the superiority of both the British Aristocracy, and the new Republican Monarchy in Washington, as well as the supposed superiority of the American business ethos over the unsophisticated hicks in Canada. He somehow didn’t reckon with the fact that American regulating agencies and laws against fraud and corporate crime are tougher and more effective than they are in Canada. And all their conservative tirades about “getting tough on crime” have different implications in a country where juries actually do get tough on crime — and are not likely to make an exception because someone styles himself as “Baron Black of Crossharbour”.
Will Black serve the hard time he deserves? Or will appeals shuffle him into some fake “punishment” in an American “country-club prison”? Either way, I will have one satisfaction. For many years, I have called Conrad Black a criminal, and now it can’t be dismissed as rhetorical excess.
In contrast, there was an outpouring of public affection, here is Toronto, at the funeral of Ed Mirvish. Mirvish was a real businessman, i.e., an entrepreneur who lifted himself up from immigrant poverty by providing services that people needed, dealing honestly, and never forgetting his debt to his community. Yehuda (“Honest Ed”) Mirvish was the son of Lithuanian and Austrian immigrants who operated a small grocery store in Toronto. His father died when he was fifteen, so he dropped out of school to run the business. In 1948, he realized that the waves of refugees who had arrived in Canada needed a place to shop that offered low prices, and a colourful, friendly atmosphere that the prim-and-proper stores of that dominated the city could not provide. The store made a fortune. Mirvish plowed it back into the neighbourhood. He bought up decaying houses and rented them out cheaply to artists and musicians. His love of the theatre led him to purchase a bankrupt venue, and to bring in Broadway productions. His judicious selection of popular plays, and his encouragement and support for every aspect of the dramatic arts, triggered a general growth of the arts in Toronto. Largely due to his influence, a city that had languished in cultural obscurity became the third largest center of English-language theatre, after London and New York.
Generations of immigrants have shopped at his cheerfully vulgar store, which expanded gradually to fill an entire block. Nobody ever doubted his sense of humour —- he once instituted a “dress code” for his employees, then secretly payed them to go on strike in protest against it — or his loyalty to, and identification with the hard-working immigrant customers who made him wealthy. I mention this to contrast it with the arrogant pretensions of criminal sleeze like Conrad Black and Barbara Amiel, who give people pompous lectures about “free market economics” when they are, in fact, the most obnoxious enemies of any real free market.
Speaking of freedom, the third pleasing item in today’s news is that a Toronto judge has ruled that Canada’s marijuana possession laws are unconstitutional. Earlier court rulings against these immoral laws in Ontario have been much less clear-cut. Cudos to attorney Brian McAllister, who argued the defense of a young man charged with possession of a mere 3.5 grams of marijuana, and convinced the judge to see the issue in the light of the constitution.
The prohibition of marijuana is an egregious violation of fundamental human rights, and an assault on human liberty and dignity. There is no moral justification, whatsoever, for such vile laws.
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