Fintan February 27, 2008 at 1:48 a.m.

Congratulations on the new blog and best wishes for success. It will be interesting to follow the continuing travails of His Lardship and Morticia for as long as the media can maintain interest, but I'm afraid that further down the line we'll hear about them only when they pop up in one of those "where are they now" columns.

Meanwhile, counting down - five days to go to the DAY OF KARMAGEDDON for the gruesome duo, five, ----

leaf February 27, 2008 at 3:07 a.m.

Well well well…. Look what the cat dragged in.

Thanks to the new and welcome registration rule, fickton was forced to leave behind his numerous aliases. he now posts to the site he once promised to leave, as himself.
he repeats the only words he knows, the only thoughts he owns.

observe the obsession of a sick (and repetitive) man.

Cosmo February 27, 2008 at 3:34 a.m.

Best of luck, Mr. Bell. I join Fintan Itse in congratulating you. Let us hope this blog will concentrate on the theme of the day rather than the kind of abuse that stalkers like leaf, who effectively ruined the Black Watch blog, spew out on a non-stop basis. May I respectfully suggest stricter application of the posting rules and immediate deletion of off-topic, abusive and threatening posts?

I'm very much looking forward to the comments after Monday next, when Black goes to prison. It makes no difference when he is released, even if it is only weeks or months down the line. All that matters is that one irreversible fact will have been established: Conrad Black is a jailbird, a convicted fraudster, and everything he and his vile wife and all of their ilk write from now on must be evaluated against that background.

leaf February 27, 2008 at 4:24 a.m.

so fickton is going through the trouble of registering multiple usernames after all….

Fintan & cosmo: share time frame, similar jargon & begging style, same deceitful ways…

As I said, let’s observe the obsession of a sick (and very naïve) idiot.

Casey February 27, 2008 at 6:50 a.m.

Congratulations, Mr. Bell and to Toronto Life staff who do try to remove offensive posts from posters like " leaf " ( but must be more consistent and dilligent ). This new blog promises to be interesting and intelligently written with great threads, including the " Black Watch ". The only thing that would render almost perfection would be the complete banning of " leaf ". However it is comforting to know that " leaf's " ip address and service provider and location are now on file.
Best wishes for continued success.

Casey February 27, 2008 at 7:22 a.m.

Best wishes for new blog and continued good info and news on Black Watch.

Casey February 27, 2008 at 7:34 a.m.

Congrats!

Casey February 27, 2008 at 9:53 a.m.

just verifying name....

Casey February 27, 2008 at 9:55 a.m.

sorry for all the posts - trying to make heads or tails of how this works......

ValC February 27, 2008 at 10:25 a.m.

Hi Fintan

I'm glad to see you back here at TL. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has missed you.

And here's a freedom of speech issue for Doug Bell. How far does freedom of speech go? Should someone who has threatened and harassed other blog participants be allowed to continue posting? Where does responsibility intersect freedom?

Fintan February 27, 2008 at 10:56 a.m.

Thank you Valerie C., and glad to see you back as well. You raise a good question about freedom of speech. Personally, I believe it should go pretty far, but not into the realm of illegality or trying to harm others or have harm done to them. Besides, there has only been one offender in the several months that I took part in the earlier blog and that person has now been neutralised, as it were.

Toronto Life only needs to observe its own rules and delete posts by persons who never address the theme at hand and merely insult other posters. On the other hand, I find it kind of flattering and fascinating that an elderly and rather ordinary person like me can be the subject of so much fascination, obsession and, dare I suggest it, jealousy. Was it something I said? ROFLMAO

Here's a "down memory lane" article that Google threw up when I set a search for "last 24 hours"! http://www.allbusiness.com/company-activ...

Excerpt: "Over the years Black has used his voting power to create a compensation structure that is highly opaque and complex."

It sure was, but those twelve little people on the jury, unsophisticated as His Lardship and the vile Morticia no doubt thought they were, saw through it just the same.

Registration is not as simple as it looked at first, because I did not intend my surname to appear. But what the hell! Let those who want to make something of the fact that it's a four-letter word knock themselves out!

Casey February 27, 2008 at 12:58 p.m.

Welcome back, Fintan! I agree with Valerie's post and also found the settings for TL a bit confusing, as you can see from all my posts. Having discovered recently that these new settings will help TL to keep tabs on " leaf " and to better monitor this sicko, we can at least take comfort that " leaf's " coordinates are filed and that he is being watched closely. Great to have you back, Fintan and look foreward to more terrific poats from you!

Casey February 27, 2008 at 1 p.m.

" poats " = POSTS - lol sorry..

Lit_200 February 27, 2008 at 1:12 p.m.

Good wishes on your new blog Doug Bell.

leaf February 27, 2008 at 1:51 p.m.

This blog is so much fun and suspenseful, there should be a cover charge.

I was wondering which username donna would adopt…. Would she stick to (the infamous) donna, the one with a condo in Chicago?
Would she resurrect sandy…. ? This is a multiple choice answer if there ever was one as the list of her various personas is endless.

The suspense has come to and end. Ladies and gents, let me introduce the new donna, as confused and typoed as ever: Miz Casey Smith.

Let’s have some fun donna. You and fickton should feel safe now that I am closely watched in this new monitored environment ☺

TL and DB: great initiative to introduce registration. The number of posters will drastically diminish but the number of posts won’t. one of life’s many mysteries…

Cheers to Spectator!

Fintan February 27, 2008 at 1:52 p.m.

Thank you very much, Casey (Smith). Just one thing. The person you refer to is female, and I believe very unbalanced. I wish I had the technical capability to post voicemail messages, because those from her are a real revelation, albeit pretty incoherent, screeching and very angry. They are preserved on voicemail and were made, presumably in at attempt to wake me up in the middle of the night, after I had made some unusually uncomplimentary comments about the dreadful Morticia and her spectacular failure to reverse the tide of time. Beauty, they say, in only skin deep, but ugly goes all the way to the bone. Go figure!

Now, lest I be accused of being off-topic à la the malicious stalker, here is a link that I hope will give all of you as much listening pleasure as it has given me. It is to an Australian radio programme broadcast a few hours ago. It features His Lardship's biographer George Tombs and after listening to it I will finally follow Donna's advice and order his book Robber Baron first thing tomorrow.

http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/c...

Click on "Download audio" and then when it loads, move the bar about a quarter way along to get to the conversation between the - delightfully irreverent - Australian anchor and George Tombs. Some great insights. Enjoy.

leaf February 27, 2008 at 2:25 p.m.

Did I say obsessed?
The man Itsy blogs CB, reads CB, listens CB and dreams of….CB’s wife.

Glad you finally acknowledged my phone calls Itsy fickton. won’t you share my phone # with the blog now that your advanced answering machine picked it up?

Or are you, as predicted, all bs talk?

Fintan February 27, 2008 at 3 p.m.

Some more thoughts on the Australian podcast about Black:

Tombs gives the first plausible explanation that I have heard of Black's reasons for becoming a Catholic. Twisted reasons, naturally. And, of course, he's a very à la carte Catholic. Most of those I know disapprove of stealing and many of them give generously out of their meagre means to help the less-fortunate.

Also interesting to hear he suffered from depression as a young man. It ain't anything like the depression he's likely to feel in the days, weeks and months ahead. Karma be praised!

Yet another interesting point about the interview is that Tombs makes no mention at all of Morticia's role in His Lardship's "rise" (too high) and fall (you can't go much lower than being at Bubba's beck and call (or should that be pecker and call? LOL). In better days, she'd be firing off a missive to the Governor-General of Australia demanding the dismissal of the radio radio show anchor for lèse majesté. ROFLMFAO

I just found this link and am not quite sure whether or not it's a spoof:

http://video.aol.com/video-detail/video-...

The video is very long and of very poor quality and the guy who is, apparently, defending Black is either spastic or sozzled (note the Bailey's bottles everywhere) or both.

I haven't yet had time to check out all of this website: http://www.supportlordconradblack.info

But it looks like a hoot!!!

Desmond February 27, 2008 at 3:24 p.m.

Thanks to Mr. Itse for that great link. I think I'll buy that Tombs biography as well. Hate him or despise him, you have to admit that Black is interesting. What a pity he went over to the Dark Side a long time ago and may well die a broken man in jail. It was all so unnecessary. He seems like a man who has a self-destructive streak in him, but failed in that endeavour, as in so many others, until fairly recently. What is leaf de blogger on about actually?

Casey February 27, 2008 at 3:45 p.m.

A pleasure, Fintan. You were missed and let us hope that you are back to stay. This blog needs more posters like you....

Casey February 27, 2008 at 4:45 p.m.

Thanks to Fintan for terrific link above.....

ValC February 27, 2008 at 5:03 p.m.

to D O

leaf is stalking / harassing Fintan because F has posted some insults about Barbara Amiel.

L has made nuisance reports about F to the police in his country, acusing him of being a paedophile. Those allegations are based on exerpts from F's posts which were taken out of context. For example, in one infamous post, F said that young women were naturally beautiful, older women were beautiul because of their dignity and life experience but BA is just plain ugly. (that's F's idea in my own words, not an exact quote. I'm sure F will correct me if I misrepresented his idea.) So L has used this and other posts as evidence that F is an abuser of children.

L claims to be an impartial guardian of truth and fairness but has consistently only attacked posters who are anti-Black. In fact L only posts abusive messages -- I have never seen any posts from L that were on topic.

leaf February 27, 2008 at 5:27 p.m.

i am honored to be Spectator's 1st topic.

bowing gracefully...

jade_lee February 27, 2008 at 11:32 p.m.

LOL you are being rather grandiose don't ya think Leaf, isn't it difficult to bow from that perch you sit on?

Fintan February 28, 2008 at 2:29 a.m.

Wriggle, wriggle! Like a fish twitching at the end of a line, His Lardship and his lawyers (who might well end up not getting their money) go through the paces as the time ticks away towards his tryst with destiny and Bubba. As this Sun-Times article reports, they filed another 12-page plea on Wednesday. 12 pages! How many ways can you say: I didn't do it!

http://www.suntimes.com/business/holling...

It seems their principal ground for appeal is that the judges haven't been told clearly and loudly enough that Black got away Scot-free with several of his crimes, something that the dogs in the street know only too well.

Thank you, Valerie for your explanation. Your summation is far from verbatim, but very concise and accurate. Only an idiot, or someone who has learned the Black art of twisting and misrepresentation from the master himself or his grim wife, would have construed a reference to sari-clad beauties as referring to children, since only adult women wear them. Children and adolescent girls are more likely to wear churidars (kurtas).

As someone who will celebrate our 38th anniversary on Monday, the day His Lardship finally ends up where he belongs, I'm afraid I'm depressingly normal, but it's hardly a sin to have an eye for beauty, is it?

The point I was making in comparing young Tamil beauties, who wash their hair in coconut milk and adorn it with neem flowers, with the old crone Morticia, who has spent the GDP of a small nation on cosmetic surgery, chemical treatments and ultra-expensive couture clothes and designer footwear and hangs $2-million diamonds around her scrawny neck, is that such wastefulness is indulged in at the expense of others.

I also went on to make the point that when these Tamil beauties are no longer young, their beauty lives on in the dignity with which they bear their difficult lives. Morticia would have only contempt for women like them, and has spent her entire professional life opposing policies that would mean a better deal for the so-called Third World - and indeed for women who are "inferior" to herself in the First World as well.

Of the Malicious Duo, I consider Morticia by far the more obnoxious, and I wish she were going to prison as well. But it's a consolation to see her bereft of power and influence at least.

Roll on Monday, only four days to go.

GravityLevity2 February 28, 2008 at 10:58 a.m.

what an inauspicious start to the new blog! First, in its rationale, Doug extensively references Citizen Kane, a good, but over-rated movie.
Then the first poster is IRA enthusiast, Fintan, who despite his anti-colonialist stands, apparently think a European man wealthy enough to take an exotic vacation is perfectly innocuous in eyeballing poorer women of colour going about their daily lives. Except for people working in the tourism and entertainment industry, the people in "exotic" places are not on display for YOUR delectation and evaluation, Fintan, in the same way that a public figure like Barbara Amiel is.
Then we get leaf unfurling herself noisomely, and Valerie recapping the disgusting flutterings about of that being.

Fintan February 28, 2008 at 1:12 p.m.

John Bell, you sound like a really bad case of anal-retention. Regarding your reference to the IRA, all I will say on that matter is that one man's terrorism is another man's pest control. You sound like that headcase Peter Griffith, who is still fighting the war against the Japanese.

You have obviously never been to India - and I suspect not very much outside your own area. What on earth is wrong with someone taking a vacation in an inexpensive country? I probably spend as much in a month there as His Lardship and Morticia spent in a day in Bora Bora, excluding the jet - the only difference being that it is my own money. I don't smoke. If I smoked a pack a day @ €4.30 - which many people on lower incomes than mine foolishly do - it would come to €1,573.80 this year. A direct flight Helsinki-Mumbai costs €435 return.

Some people have their eyes and senses open wherever they are, and people in India don't mind being looked at - any more than I mind them staring at me. They are very friendly people and I go there as someone who loves and respects them and wishes their country well. I guess they sense it too, because I always feel so welcome there.

I think the biggest compliment I ever got was when a very wise Bengali, whom I respected as I have respected few people, told me: "You are sensitive to India."

Go there, and sensitise yourself. It might not be too late for you to get a life!

GravityLevity2 February 28, 2008 at 7:07 p.m.

Fintan asks rhetorically: "What on earth is wrong with someone taking a vacation in an inexpensive country?"
Why, nothing.
But there is something a little odd about a white anti-colonialist going and ogling the woman of colour in a much poorer country as go they about their lives. Their lives and bodies are not there for your delectation or your commentary. Nor can most of them afford reciprocally to come and ogle Finnish men--or, if so inclined, Finnish women--in their natural setting. So your money gives you power to "define" them and their lives in a way they cannot do to the lives of your folk. You are commiting the trope of the exotic--in this case the noble and more sensual honest "savage". I take it the very wise Bengali who you quote was not any of the young Tamil women you describe in words so shallow, so much like a picture from a tourist brochure. What's wrong with the young women of your own country and culture if you want a counterpoint in your musings about Barbara Amiel? Are Finnish women too pure, too degraded, too humdrum, or (I hope)too variously real individuals in your eyes for you to use them in such a way?

(Speaking of India and its traditions, I believe it was Ghandi who advised the IRA, "The only way to get those English colonists' attentions is bomb, boys, bomb." And then from South Africa, didn't Nelson Mandela advise them, "oh, yeah, the collateral damage of human casualties doesn't matter.")

It's not too late for you to study up on the historical, and still existent power of the white male's gaze as it has defined and objectified women of colour. It's not too late for you to sensitize yourself to the history of use and abuse of women of colour by the European colonizers.

Finally, it is the constant sexist and ageist harping on the wonders of female youth and beauty in a natural state as a great value that leads to wealthy women like Barbara Amiel grotesquely trying to stay looking youthfully beautiful forever.

You, sirrah, are part of the problem that you attempt to mock Amiel for.

Fintan February 29, 2008 at 1:44 a.m.

John Bell, you need help! Get it.

Lit_200 February 29, 2008 at 6:50 a.m.

The joy of your victory to Fintan, Roger, Donna, Kelly, Jab 3 and all others who have waited so long for Conrad Black to be jailed.

I believe Black will accept his fate with dignity, although not quietly. While I have no use for his strong right-wing views, I see reserves of high intelligence and fortitude in the man. There are depths as well as shallows in his character.

I also believe there is still a good chance that he may escape 78 months of his confinement if the obstruction charge is reversed, as I think it should be.

Adieu

Lit_200 February 29, 2008 at 7:08 a.m.

Before I go, may I say that those are interesting points worth thinking about in your post above, John Bell. Well said.

leaf February 29, 2008 at 8:23 p.m.

what john bell wrote makes sense to any normally constituted human being.

that excludes you fickton, which explains why you miss his point totally.
no help can provide a cure for your sexual aberrations but preventive action is being taken, Mr. Itse.

ps.... did your wife ask for a houseboy?