U.S. Justice on trial!

Lord Black of Crossharbour (a.k.a. Conrad Black) has a problem!

Ever since the financial scandals in the United States business community over the last 15 years (Enron, World Com, Duke Energy, Lucent Technologies, AIG etc.) the U.S. justice department has declared open season on business executives and good old Conrad got tagged as "It" in the big game of financial "gotcha."

So as not to bore you too much I will give a very brief history of what our wayward hero did over the years to get himself in this jam.

1960s to 1970s - Black began buying small Canadian newspapers during his 20s and in 1971 co-founded the Sterling Newspapers Group.

1978 - Became chair of the Argus Corporation, one of the original and biggest "old money" corporations of the Canadian Establishment.

This was a position he used as a stepping stone to launch the Hollinger Group.

1990s - By the early part of the decade Hollinger controlled 60 per cent of Canadian newspaper titles, as well as hundreds of dailies in the U.S., England, Australia and Israel. Newspapers included the Spectator, Chicago Sun Times, Montreal Gazette, Daily Telegraph, and Jerusalem Post.

Black soon earned a reputation for taking over newspapers and raising profits by cutting costs and slashing jobs and before you could shout "hold the presses" he was the third largest Media (Press) Baron in the World behind Rupert Murdoch and Robert Maxwell.

At its peak in 1999, Hollinger was earning revenues of more than $2 billion a year but then for some strange reason our protagonist decided that he had made his fortune and started selling everything in one gigantic garage sale.

The British government moved to make him Lord Black, but Prime Minister Jean Chretien, who was attacked relentlessly by Black's newspapers during his leadership, opposed the move.

Chretien pointed to the 1919 Nickle Resolution which ruled that foreign governments could not grant honours to Canadians that carry a title or privilege. Black challenged the ruling in court, but was unsuccessful so in a fit of pique renounced his Canadian Citizenship.

During the sale of Hollinger assets by November 17, 2003 Black announced he would step down as CEO of Hollinger International following an internal inquiry which found that Black and other Hollinger executives received more than $32 million US in unauthorized payments. Refusing to admit any wrongdoing, Black described his departure as "retirement."

The committee of Hollinger's board found that payments styled as 'non-competition payments' were made that were not authorized or approved by either the audit committee or the full board of directors of Hollinger."

Of that, Black and chief operating officer David Radler each reportedly received $7.2 million, while $16.6 million went to parent company Hollinger Inc. Two other Hollinger executives reportedly received just over $600,000 each. Black again denied any wrongdoing and insisted the unauthorized payments were above-board.

His position was that the "non-competition" payments were made to him and his management team and not the Board or shareholders. (Since the old board and shareholders were not the threat to the new owners/managers. Black was if he started another competing paper.)

(His position was vindicated when, after his departure, Hollinger shares fell from about $21 to less than a buck. (They went into the 'penny stock' category!) PLUS they went from being a highly profitable paper to losing money. This made the Board see red all the more.)

(Conrad wondering how things ever got so crazy!)

One thing led to another and the next thing you know lawsuits for tens and even hundreds of millions were flying this way and that.

On top of this the U.S. Justice Department had by then decided it needed another businessman to make an example of and our Hero and all his Canadian friends came under their scrutiny.

(By some strange co-incidence none of the Americans were indicted.)

November 17, 2005 - The U.S. Attorney's Office in Chicago charges former Hollinger International head Conrad Black and others in an alleged scheme to divert more than $80 million US from the company. (Remember the non-competition clauses, etc.)

December 1, 2005 - Conrad Black pleads not guilty to eight fraud charges in connection with the alleged diversion of $80 million from Hollinger International Inc. He is released on $20 million US bail and ordered to live in Canada, Chicago, or Florida.

By this time the District Attorney is getting really carried away with his job and by Dec. 15, 2005 four new charges are leveled against Conrad Black, including racketeering, money laundering and obstruction of justice. Black faces a maximum of 95 years in prison if convicted on all charges.

Now, my friends, we get to the point of this diatribe.

If the bombastic, arrogant, self-righteous Lord Black had been tried in any other jurisdiction, (Such as New York) where they understood the intricacies of financial matters then I would have no sympathy for him whatsoever. But, instead he is being tried in a "blue collar" (read "lunch bucket") town (Chicago) by a blue collar jury and they do not bode well for our wayward Baron.

The day after jury selection one of these lunch bucket jurors was quoted as saying "It would take me a lifetime to make a million dollars and if this guy can make that much and more in one year he has got to be a crook!!!"

(And the prosecution didn't see anything wrong with that!)

Chicago could be a black day for our dear Lord Black!

Your "hot of the press" scribe;
Allan W Janssen

Fraud!

With all the hoopla over identity theft and fraud, especially this time of year, I am attempting to do my part to help!

I will be leaving my credit cards maxed-out and my bank accounts overdrawn from now on. That way it will thwart any potential thieves!

Your "always willing to help" scribe;
Allan W Janssen

The Truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me Howard!

This goes to show how you can never trust reports out of the Middle East or find out the truth and who is right and who is wrong. .............Verrrry Interesting!

Why the Israelis are so sceptical about Qana

If you are wondering why Israelis are so sceptical about what really occurred at Qana, the answer is quite simple:

The Massacre at Jenin (that wasn't). From wikepedia "The battle attracted widespread international attention because journalists, particularly in the UK, falsely reported that a massacre of Palestinians had taken place during the fighting, and that hundreds, or even thousands, of bodies had been secretly buried in mass graves by the IDF, allegations that were later shown to be baseless."

For weeks there was a media frenzy with grieving relatives interviewed, coverage of funerals, and claim after claim of atrocities, each worse than the last, that Israel supposedly committed.

The media continued to report as fact that hundreds of innocent people, mainly women and children, had been brutally, cold-bloodly murdered despite being shown evidence that funerals were being faked such as being shown this video caught by a drone flying overhead.

This clip would be funny if the accusations being thrust at us had not been so serious: the supposedly dead person keeps falling out of the funeral shroud he's being carried in --and then getting up to climb back in again so they can proceed along. He falls out again and again.

It took some 6 months for the independent investigations by human rights organizations to make clear that no massacre had occurred. Of course, by then the damage was done in the media.

No one was covering the story of the "massacre that didn't happen" --the "massacre that didn't happen" didn't get weeks of airplay, it got a small mention if it got any mention at all. You can still hear many people in the U.S., Germany and elsewhere talking about the horrible Israelis and how they cold-bloodly mowed down hundreds of innocent children in Jenin a few years ago.

More recently we had the Hamas accusations that Israel bombed a rally and killed and injured nearly two-scores of people, including many children. We claimed it wasn't so.

In this instance, the Palestinian Authority came out and supported Israel and stated very clearly that it was a Hamas car at the Hamas rally that was filled with rockets and weapons that exploded due to Hamas negligence, thus killing the children and adults who were gathered around it.

In fact, over this two week period of time Hamas claimed we bombed a house and several other targets and Fatah came out and said nooooooo those were additional accidents in which bomb-makers accidentally exploded themselves and their family members.

Why did Fatah suddenly become so honest? Well you see, this was right before the Palestinian elections...you know, Hamas vs. Fatah...

A lot of the news clips that make it onto the nightly news of reputable news channels such as CNN, NBC, BBC, and so forth, showing theoretical Israeli aggressions and horrible activities against the Palestinians have also been shown to be....fabricated.

The supposed massacre caused a major turnabout in world diplomacy. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice suddenly canceled her plans to fly to Beirut, saying "my work towards a ceasefire is really here [in Jerusalem] today." The implication was clearly that the onus was now upon Israel. French President Jacques Chirac condemned Israel's "unjustified action which demonstrates more than ever the need for an immediate ceasefire," Jordan's King Abdullah called it an "ugly crime," and other world leaders echoed these sentiments.

Though Israel emphasized that Hizbullah was to blame for waging its rocket war against Israel from within a civilian population, Foreign Ministry officials repeated their "deep regret at the loss of innocent life in the campaign against Hizbullah," and were forced to promise a "thorough and comprehensive examination."

However, the incident may have been all one big fraud, staged by Arab elements for the world media in order to lead precisely to the situation described above.

The central piece of evidence leading to this conclusion is the fact, mentioned by IDF officials from the very beginning, that the building collapsed a full seven hours after the Israel Air Force bombing. Why, then, would the residents inside not have been evacuated in the meantime? As Brig.-Gen. Amir Eshel of the Israeli Air Force told reporters Sunday night, “It is difficult for me to believe that they waited eight hours to evacuate it.” Without additional evidence, Eshel merely left open the possibility that Hizbullah terrorists, or explosives they left behind, caused the explosion.

"Indeed," writes Robert Spencer for Front Page Magazine, "it strains credulity that not only did these Lebanese civilians remain in a house that had been bombed for eight hours, but peacefully went to sleep in it after the bombing – since the victims were all apparently sleeping, despite continuing Israeli air bombardment in the area, when the building collapsed."

Gen. Eshel also said that the building was used by Hizbullah to store explosives. This was supported by a letter by Dr. Mounir Herzallah, a southern Lebanese Shiite, who wrote that Hizbullah terrorists came to his town, dug a munitions depot and then built a school and a residence directly over it.

In addition, as Reuven Koret writes for Israel Insider, the bombing of the area occurred in three waves. The first bombs, according to CNN correspondent Brent Sadler, did not hit the building in question, but rather landed "20 or 30 meters" away. The second strike hit targets further away, and the third strike, around 7:30 in the morning, landed over 400 meters away. The first reports of a collapsed building arrived a half-hour later.

Another CNN correspondent, Ben Wedeman, noted that there was a larger crater next to the building. He observed that the roof of the building was intact and that the building appeared not to have collapsed as a result of the Israeli strike.

Thus, the building was used to store explosives, was apparently not destroyed by the bombing, and sheltered dozens of women and children throughout a night of bombing. The identity of the victims was also not clear, except that they were not the original occupants of the building; a National Public Radio correspondent reported that they had left. "The victims were non-residents who chose to shelter in the building that night," Koret writes, and who were "'too poor' to leave the town, one resident told CNN's Wedeman. Who were these people?"

Hear Koret speak about the Hizbullah manipulation on IsraelNationalRadio.com.

As an aside, the hospital in Tyre, Lebanon, and Human Rights Watch both reported today that 28 people were killed in the Kafr Kana bombing, and not twice that number, as originally reported.

Other facts brought by Koret and Spencer:

* Sometime after dawn a call went out to journalists and rescue workers to come to the scene. Though Hizbullah has been claiming that civilians could not freely flee the scene due to Israeli destruction of bridges and roads, the journalists and rescue teams from nearby Tyre had no problem getting there.

* Lebanese rescue teams did not start evacuating the building until after the camera crews came. The absence of a real rescue effort was explained by saying that equipment was lacking. There were no scenes of live or injured people being extracted.

* There was little blood, CNN's Wedeman noted, concluding that the victims appeared to have died while they were sleeping - despite the thunderous Israeli air attacks. Rescue workers equipped with cameras were removing the bodies from one opening in the collapsed structure, and journalists were not allowed near it.

* Rescue workers carrying the victims on stretchers occasionally flipped up the blankets so that cameras could show the faces and bodies of the dead. But, Koret noted, the ashen-gray faces of the victims gave cause to think that the bodies looked like they had been dead for days.

* Photos of the rescue operation transmitted all over the world are "extremely suspicious," Spencer writes, citing work by EU Referendum showing numerous anomalies in the photos. "Most notably," he writes, "the dating of the various photos suggests that the same bodies were paraded before reporters on different occasions, each time as if they had just been pulled from the rubble. [In addition], some workers are wearing different gear in different photos, yet clearly carrying the same corpse."

* The Christian Lebanese (French-language) website LIBANOSCOPIE has charged that Hizbullah staged the entire incident in order to stimulate calls for a ceasefire, thereby staving off its destruction by Israel and Lebanese plans to rid themselves of this terrorist plague.

Spencer concludes, "Americans and Westerners are not used to dealing with carefully orchestrated and large-scale deception of this kind. It is time that it be recognized as a weapon of warfare, and an extremely potent one at that."

So this is why we scrutinize and ask a lot of questions when claims of mass deaths are reported...
posted by Yael K