T. Belman, Conrad Black is a wonderful word smith and a good historian. His description of the ME situation is right on. But I don’t understand why he is making a case for America to assume more Syrian refugees. In so doing he ignores that they are Muslims.
By CONRAD BLACK, Special to the Sun | September 23, 2015
The unannounced policy of the Obama administration of progressively withdrawing from much of the world, while it has been riddled with inconsistencies and been the subject of endless dissembling, is starting to incite regional powers to fill part of the resulting vacuum. The most positive recent example of this is the long-awaited determination of the Japanese diet to approve the dispatch of Japanese military forces beyond immediate Japanese territorial limits, even if Japan itself is not under attack.
For the first time in the 70 years since the Japanese surrender at the end of World War II, after having been driven back 2,000 miles in the central and southwest Pacific and flung out of the Philippines, after losing its entire navy, and after enduring the only two military applications of the atomic bomb, Japan is resuming its role as one of the world’s great powers. Prime Minister Abe has explicitly predicted much closer cooperation between the Japanese navy (self-defense force) and the U.S. Seventh Fleet
Mr. Abe has made no secret of the fact that the increased assertiveness of China has been the principal motive of his government in enabling Japan to join with other regional powers in countering Chinese claims to large stretches of the far Pacific. By some measurements, Japan has the world’s fifth-largest navy now, including two helicopter carriers, and clearly has the ability and the will to resume its formidable naval tradition as an ancient seafaring island nation.
Less straightforward, and certainly less benign, is the deployment of advanced interceptors and apparently several thousand ground troops by Russia to Syria. The West attempted to ostracize Russia for its aggressions in Ukraine, imposing sanctions and taking advantage of the fortuitous reduction in the world oil price by Saudi Arabia, which deprived Vladimir Putin’s government of the means for much adventurism beyond Crimea and Donbas.
The Obama administration’s feckless assertions that Syrian president Bashar Assad “must go,” with no follow-up, and vague notions of supporting “moderate” forces in the Syrian civil war against both Mr. Assad and the barbarous onslaught of the Islamic State, effectively encouraged the intensification of the civil war to the point where ISIS controls half the country, Mr. Assad a quarter, and other factions, which would include the U.S. protégé if there were one, the rest. More than 4 million refugees have fled the country, and almost 8 million others have been displaced within it.
Hundreds of thousands have got to Europe, where most are stopped at the borders in desperate and disorderly conditions. Russia now presents the only visible force of potential stability, and the West is in no position to object to Russia’s propping up of Mr. Assad. Certainly, should there be any direct encounter between ISIS and trained units of the Russian army, the successors to the victors of Stalingrad will make short work of a force whose specialties are circulating videos of the beheading of defenseless Westerners and the destruction of historic monuments and antiquities.
American and Western European influence in the Middle East has sunk to such a nadir that Mr. Putin is the closest there is to an outside civilizing influence in the region. Americans should be aware that, with the best will in the world, American influence in the region over the last nearly 40 years since the Camp David Agreement (1978) has been almost wholly negative, except for the expulsion of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. The Carter administration is complicit in the overthrow of the shah, and the Obama administration has facilitated the nuclear militarization of the ayatollahs.
The Iraq War, which was designed to democratize Iraq, atomized the country, and the George W. Bush administration’s demobilization of 400,000 soldiers and police, who went into unemployment with their weapons and munitions, created chaos that was brought somewhat under control by the troop surge but exploded again after the abrupt departure of remaining American forces in 2011. Iranian influence predominates in the majority of Iraq, and apart from Kurdistan, ISIS predominates in the rest, as well as in much of Syria.
The agitation for democracy in the Middle East by the second Bush administration elevated Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Here, we dodged the bullet, as the Brotherhood mismanaged its position and was overthrown by the military leadership it had installed, and was sent packing for violations of the constitution that it had largely written, somewhat in the manner of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973. Yet the administration and even certain Republicans, including John McCain and Lindsey Graham, badgered the new, pro-Western secular regime to be more generous to the Brotherhood.
It is rarely a benign circle in the Middle East. Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and Anwar Sadat (eventually murdered by an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood) practically bundled the Russians right out of the Middle East in the mid Seventies. Barack Obama, by his self-evaporating “red line” in Syria (which dumped the issue of Assad’s gassing his citizens into the lap of the Russians) and his refusal to play any role in supporting a palatable alternative in the Syrian war, is ushering the Russians back into the region now.
The mighty effort in Iraq has delivered most of that country from the odious Saddam to the even more odious Iranian theocrats and Islamic State, and the U.S. is reduced to encouraging the Iranians in their efforts to keep ISIS out of Baghdad. Given this grim and ludicrous sequence of events, a general and official American desire to be done with the region is understandable, as is the fact that that desire is largely shared in the region.
But history, including the 9/11 attacks, indicates that, as the American enemies of isolation concluded at the end of World War II, ignoring explosive regions of the distant world generally causes their violence not to bypass the United States but to arrive at its shores. American disillusionment with commitment of forces to the Middle East is certainly understandable, but so is the widespread view in the Middle East that the ineffectual responses of the Clinton administration to the early terrorist acts (the first World Trade Center attack, 1993; the Khobar Towers attack in Saudi Arabia, 1996; the attack on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and on the USS Cole, all in 1998), the George W. Bush wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the waffling and posturing of the Obama years are all parts of the problem.
Given President Obama’s (completely unintended) role in generating the terrible and pitiful flight of millions of people from their homes in Syria and Iraq, it is contemptible that he should speak of possibly admitting just 10,000 Syrian refugees to the United States. Of the 4 million Syrians who have fled the country, about 1.7 million are in Turkey, where the Turkish government is making a reasonable effort to retain them in sanitary camps, adequately fed and sheltered.
On a relatively positive note, over 700,000 have arrived in Lebanon and have diluted the importance in that country of Hezbollah, a terrorist movement sustained by the Iranians via the Assad government; and perhaps 500,000 Syrians have been taken in, at least temporarily, in Jordan, where they dilute the demographic strength of the Palestinians in the Hashemite kingdom. Over 500,000 have arrived this year on the borders of the European Union, especially Greece, Italy, and Hungary, creating a humanitarian crisis as well as acute stresses within the EU, where agreed policy is for the border states to determine in which country asylum applicants are seeking to reside.
This is not a system that can function under the pressure of such numbers. France, Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom have been generous in the numbers of refugees they have accepted in recent years. But in the current circumstances, the violence in Syria and Iraq has contributed a majority of the migrants, including over 500,000 Christians, chased out of the cradle of civilization, where they have lived for 2,000 years. Given inadvertent American complicity in causing or aggravating these conditions and migrations, there is a moral obligation for the United States to try to help organize an effective international safety net for these destitute people.
?The U.S. generously helped the displaced of Europe after both World Wars, distributing food and assistance that saved the lives of millions of people. It evacuated and admitted 130,000 Vietnamese refugees when that country was overrun by the North Vietnamese in 1975. It is unbecoming and un-American for this administration to pretend, however accelerated its withdrawal from some parts of the world?, that it has no role or duty beyond the eventual admission of a risibly small number of people.
No sane person is asking the United States to accept an indigestible number of people, and the U.S. certainly has the right to reduce its involvement in the world, though anyone but America’s enemies would hope for a more elegant and coherent approach to that policy than the one this administration has pursued. But the United States has no right smugly to proclaim that this is a crisis that has nothing to do with the U.S., renouncing a shining American tradition of humanitarian assistance in times of mortal threat to masses of innocent civilians and washing its hands of it.
When Mr. Black invites the ” Syrian Refugees ” into his home, then I’ll give him some credit.
@ bernard ross:
Peer pressure. Prior to his arrest he received alot of press exposing him. He fought back by trying to take others down with him ie Israel Asper – another rich newspaper tycoon. It backfired on him. Sometimes we do see poetic justice.
Your on a roll……keep going! 🙂
Now….he is going to be a moral compass for us? lol He probably thinks he is in the same ballpark as Donald Trump! Has he ever demonstrated remorse? Not that I am aware of! He lost his Canadian citizenship. We have enough ‘bad apples’ per capita!
here is what conrad black kettle wants for the US
more muslims = more troubles
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/09/video-muslims-taunt-nj-school-officials-were-going-to-be-the-majority-soon/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1&v=x4FMfUO0vkw
Pot, kettle, BLACK???????
Looks to me that the smug one here is the jailbird BLACK, giving moral arguments from his jail cell.
very few sane and wealthy folks end up in jail.
Black wants americans to invite muslims into their home. I dont want them in my home or near my home. I never had this view in past years but in looking closer at muslim behavior and ideology I have come to that conclusion. calling anti muslims racist is absurd… islam is an ideological creed and not a race….. membership in such a club is synonymous with membership in a nazi party in my view. the goals of Islam are dangerous to the western world…. we will get a front row seat in watching my speculation first hand in europe and hopefully NOT as Black advises in the US. The seed of islam in america is already showing us the truth as opposed to the lies of our political leadership.
Ted Belman Said:
apparently Black, who used to own newspapers, was unaware of this very reasonable speculation.
dove Said:
Not only his character but also his judgement….. how does a man so wealthy end up in jail for years? whether right or wrong it is an error in judgment. If someone with poor judgement gives opinions meant to convince and push people to action on the basis of the efficacy of those opinions then his analysis must be scrutinized. For those with a shred of knowledge and a minimum of good judgement, like me, there is no problem with seeing how his opinion is based on his poor judgment and his advice is to be discarded… but for ignoramuses his arguments would be coercive….. especially those who elected a guy named hussein to be their president after 911…… they would buy any rationalization.
If I were an investor I would not elect black as CEO based on his past errors in judgment.
conrad black is ludicrous. One cannot compare past refugees with the current muslims. The past refugees were escaping oppression whereas these muslims bring oppression with them. wherever they are in the world there is trouble which grows into turmoil. Their ideological culture, which masquerades as a religion, contains all the distasteful elements nauseating to democratic western culture: intolerance, violence, honor killling, taquiyya, enslavement, sharia, jew hating, rabble rousing, etc etc etc. Only a fool would invite a gang of nazis into his house, they are a danger not because of their racial background but because of the culture and ideas they embrace… just like the culture and ideas of the nazi party and the KKK…. continued membership in such orgs demonstrates the danger. the muslims are more dangerous because they have international economies, structures and nations which finance and support the spread of these disgusting ideas and practices to the western world.
best to keep the honor killers in europe as the euros are the ones who most enthusiastically support the destruction of the jews at the hands of the same honor killers which are now out to chop euro heads. In the case of europe it is a matter of justice, the balancing of the european evils, set forth in a way that only can be appreciated by those who appreciate irony. the west, north america should avoid the errors and sick pathologies of the euros and thus avoid the honor killer hordes posing as peaceful refugees. the euros are building homes for honor killers to plague the Jews and now the same very plague is descending on europe just like they did on the Pharaoh and egyptians. After the pharoah freed the jews he then, like the euros, decided to chase them back to their homeland and murder them….. but…. like the euros, and as foolish, he did not reckon on the flood which engulfed him. He must have thought that Hashem had run out of plagues.
At the beginning of the “refugee” flood to Europe, I was told that they were mainly Turks. It is a plan of Erdogan’s to flood the EU with Turks.
Here it is Ted….from a fellow Jew.
https://youtu.be/7IXOvPVd9D0
@ Ted Belman:
As I said before….take what he says with a ‘grain of salt’. His character demonstrates just that. He may have an opinion but I don’t think his track record is going to allow his opinion to be taken too seriously by the ‘just’.
You were probably already in Israel just before his arrest when he viciously went after Israel Asper – the Jew. Very nasty dark side to his character. Is it any wonder that he would have a bleeding heart for people who could resemble ‘Hitlers children’?
Did you know that only 1 in 5 of the refugees are actually Syrians according to an admission by the UN ? I can back that up later but I am currently in between Yom Kippur services.
Absolutely not, but only because his opinion couldn’t possibly be less valid. What moral obligation do infidels have to import Islamic supremacists who not only belligerently refuse to assimilate but demand conformity by their hosts?
@ dove:
What has this got to do with his opinion. Is it any less valid?
Take Conrad Black with a grain of salt. Here’s why….
Verdict and sentence
After twelve days of deliberation, on 13 July 2007, the jury found Black guilty of three counts of mail and wire fraud and one count of obstruction of justice and acquitted him of nine other charges, including wire fraud and racketeering. The fraud convictions related to money taken by the executives in exchange for their agreements to not compete with various Hollinger units. Prosecutors claimed these were fraudulent agreements.[14] Co-accused, Peter Y. Atkinson, John A. Boultbee and Mark Kipnis, were each found guilty of mail and wire fraud (David Radler had already pleaded guilty to fraud).[15]
On November 5, 2007, Judge Amy St. Eve denied Black’s motion for a new trial. On December 10, 2007, Black was sentenced to 78 months in jail.[16] Twelve weeks later, the Court of Appeals denied his motion to remain free on bail while appealing his convictions. Black requested to be housed in a minimum security prison camp near Miami but the Bureau of Prisons denied his request and instead ordered him to report to Coleman Federal Correctional Complex near Orlando, Florida on March 3, 2008, to begin serving his sentence. Prior to his being granted bail, Black’s projected release date was in October 2013.
Reaction and consequences
Black told journalists he would continue his “long war” against the charges and said “any conviction is unsatisfactory”.[17] After the verdicts, Black’s Canadian lawyer Edward Greenspan said, “The heart of their case was lost.” However, former federal prosecutor and SEC enforcement lawyer Jacob Frenkel called it a “stunning victory” for the government and explained how a split verdict “highlights for the appellate court that the jury was very thoughtful and thorough in its deliberations.”[18]
Investigators hired by Hollinger companies to locate assets examined more than forty bank accounts which may be, or may have been, held in the name of Black, his wife, or affiliated entities. According to court filings, Ravelston Corp. also had a subsidiary in Barbados called Argent News Inc. and another in Bermuda called Sugra Bermuda Ltd.[19] A report by a special committee of the board of Hollinger International Inc. said Black co-owned two Barbados companies, Moffat Management Inc. and Black-Amiel Management Inc., which both received millions of dollars in payments, the former allegedly owned by Black and his co-defendants, and the latter by Black, his wife and Boultbee.[20] In November 2007, Sun-Times Media Group (formerly Hollinger) said in a regulatory filing that it had spent $107.7 million on legal fees and indemnification costs for criminal and civil actions involving Black, Boultbee, Kipniss and Atkinson.
After the verdict, New Democratic Party of Canada Member of Parliament Charlie Angus publicly called for Black’s expulsion from the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada and for his removal from the Order of Canada. The Toronto Star similarly called for then-Governor General Michaëlle Jean to remove Black from the Order.[21] Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper stated that Black would have to go through regular channels to attempt to regain his Canadian citizenship, that membership in the Order of Canada is the purview of the Governor General and that decisions about the Privy Council would only take place after the legal process, including appeal, had been completed.[22]
Black’s ability to re-enter Canada is uncertain unless he obtains dispensation from the Canadian government. Were he to regain residency, “Canadian citizenship can’t be granted to those who are criminally inadmissible and neither the minister nor the Governor in Council (cabinet) can override that,” according to an immigration department spokesperson.[23] The loss of his Canadian citizenship also makes it impossible for Black to be transferred to a Canadian prison where he would be eligible for parole much sooner than if he were to serve time in the United States.[23]
Appeal
Black’s oral arguments were heard June 5, 2008, by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Andrew Frey argued that Black and his co-defendants did not steal from Hollinger when they authorized individual non-competition payments. Frey asserted that the monies were “management fees” and that Hollinger International shareholders were not hurt by the payments. Appeals judge Richard Posner said, “The bulk of the evidence [in the Hollinger case] has to do with pretty naked fraud.”[24] Posner was skeptical about defense arguments that Black did not obstruct justice by removing boxes from his Toronto office, commenting, “The timing was bizarre, the removal of the documents in the middle of an investigation.”[25] Three weeks later, on June 25, 2008, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the convictions.[26] and rejected all of the arguments raised by the defense. The circuit court found that “the evidence established a conventional fraud, that is, a theft of money or other property from Hollinger by misrepresentations and misleading omissions…” The panel affirmed the jury’s findings stating that, “It is not as if Black had merely been using his power as controlling shareholder to elect a rubber-stamp board of directors or to approve a merger favorable to him at the expense of the minority shareholders … He was acting in his capacity as the CEO of Hollinger when he ordered (Mark) Kipnis to draft the covenants not to compete and when he duped the audit committee and submitted a false 10-K.”[27] Black, for his part, maintained the form in question was simply improperly, and not falsely, submitted.[8]
Prosecutor Eric Sussman replied to news of the initial appeal decision saying, “I think at some point in time Mr. Black needs to take a hard look in the mirror and ask who it is that really doesn’t understand the conduct that took place in this case…You’ve got 16 people who have taken a look at the facts and the law in a very detailed and time-consuming way, and they have all reached the same conclusion, which is that he stole money from this company and he tried to obstruct the investigation.”[28]
Black added Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz to his law team and asked the 7th Circuit Court to reconsider the appeal decision without success.[27][29][30][31] In June 2008, he ruled out trying to obtain a presidential pardon from George W. Bush,[27] though he later applied for one in November of the same year.[32] The final acts of clemency of Bush’s presidency were announced on his last full day of office, January 19, 2009. Black’s name was not included in the list of commuted sentences.[33][34][35]
The US Supreme Court heard an appeal of Black’s fraud conviction on 8 December 2009.[36][37] Black’s application for bail pending his appeal was turned down by the Supreme Court and [38] subsequently by Judge St. Eve of the US District Court.
The Supreme Court only reviewed Black’s fraud convictions and did not reconsider his conviction for obstruction of justice for which he received a sentence concurrent with his sentence for fraud; thus even a successful appeal would not necessarily have resulted in a reduction of his prison sentence. Eric Sussman, Black’s prosecutor in the Chicago trial, told the Toronto Star that the Supreme Court’s rejection of Black’s bail request means that the “Supreme Court is confident that no matter what happens he’s still going to be serving six-and-a-half years for obstruction of justice” regardless of the outcome of his appeal.[38]
On June 24, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court released its 9-0 decision ordering the 7th circuit court, which had upheld Black’s conviction at trial, to review its own decision regarding the three fraud convictions against Black in light of the Supreme Court’s construction of the honest services fraud statute in Skilling v. United States. Writing for the Court, Justice Ginsburg was critical of Judge Posner’s decision, referring to its “anomalous” ruling and the “judicial invention” found therein.[8] The appeal court was instructed to review Black’s case and determine whether his fraud convictions should stand or if there should be a new trial.[39] Black’s obstruction of justice conviction remained in place.[40] Black’s lawyers filed an application for bail pending the appeal court’s review,[39] which prosecutors contested, arguing in court papers that Black’s trial jury had proof that Black committed fraud.[41] On July 19, 2010, Black was granted bail pending a decision by the court on whether to retry his 2008 criminal fraud conviction. He was released on July 21, 2010, on a $2 million bond signed by Roger Hertog.[42]
On October 28, 2010, the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned two of the three remaining mail fraud counts. It left Black convicted of one count of mail fraud, of which his portion was $285,000 (USD),[43] and one count of obstruction of justice. The court also ruled that he must be resentenced.[44] On December 17, 2010, Black lost an appeal of his remaining convictions for fraud and obstruction of justice. The three-person panel did not provide reasons. On May 31, 2011, the Supreme Court of the United States refused to grant Black leave to appeal his two remaining convictions without any comment.[45] Resentencing on the two remaining counts by the original trial judge occurred on June 24, 2011.[46] Black’s lawyers recommended that he be sentenced to the 29 months he has already served, while the prosecution argued for Black to complete his original 6 1/2 year sentence. The probation officer’s report recommends a sentence of between 33 and 41 months.[47] On that date, Judge St. Eve resentenced him to a reduced term of 42 months and a fine of $150,000 returning him to prison to serve the remaining 13 months of his sentence.[48]
Black did not return to his former location of Coleman Federal Correctional Facility because two female guards at Coleman reported they feared for their safety if Black returned. Instead, he reported on September 6, 2011, to the Federal Correctional Institution, Miami.[49] He was released from prison on May 4, 2012. Although he has given up his Canadian citizenship in 2001 in order to receive British peerage, he has expressed desire to live in Canada after his prison term completed.[50] He was granted a one-year temporary resident permit to live in Canada in March 2012 when he was still serving his sentence. Critics denounced that Black received special treatment from the Canadian government but Stephen Harper, the Prime Minister, denied any political influence.[51] Upon his release from the prison, Black was immediately picked up by the U.S. Immigration officials and was escorted to the Miami International Airport. He arrived at Toronto on the same afternoon and returned to his home for the first time in nearly five years.[52]
On February 19, 2013 Black’s motion to vacate his guilty verdict was dismissed.[53]
Time in prison
Black, Federal Bureau of Prisons #18330-424, was incarcerated at Coleman Federal Correctional Complex near Orlando, Florida for 28 months from March 3, 2008, until he was released on bail on July 21, 2010.
On August 23, 2008, Black authored a piece in the National Post about the experience of jail. He repeated his assertion that he had been wrongly convicted and asserted “The bunk about a lavish lifestyle was disbelieved and rejected by the jury.” He believes that time will show the Canadian and American justice systems were disgraced by his conviction, not him. He adds, “But someone has to resist the putrification of justice in these jurisdictions, and if someone of my means doesn’t, who will?” [54]
In 2008 Black wrote to the Canadian Press, commenting that, “I am doing fine. This (prison) is a safe and civilized place, and I don’t anticipate any difficulty.”[55]
After being promoted from his initial prison job as a dishwasher, he taught high school level classes in American history helping a dozen prisoners earn their high school diplomas. Black was nicknamed “Lordy” by his fellow convicts.[
Yet another ivory tower elitist callously indifferent to the suffering of the American people. The black adult male population of Detroit is experiencing 55% unemployment. That is not a recession. It is not a Depression. It is Bangladesh. Wages for Americans have fallen by an average of $4,000 during the Obama regime. And Syrian Muslim refugees are currently laying waste to Europe. At which point is America’s moral obligation to Americans?