By Nathaniel Moher

If you were to keep a list of the top three media barons who have gone to jail, it’d look a little something like this: Martha Stewart, John Rigas, and Conrad Black (and if you haven’t kept a list of the top three media barons who have gone to jail, then you should probably sit down and write one now – I’ve pretty much done all the work for you anyways – before someone laughs at you). Though if everything goes according to plan, Rupert Murdoch will soon replace Martha Stewart at the top of the list. (That’s right Murdie, that’s what you get for tapping my phone. If you even think of publishing those messages between my “secretaries” and I, you’ll get your comeuppance.) And now Conrad Black has been released back into the real world, and we should all be worried.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: Why should we be worried about Conrad Black? –it’s not like he’s some sort of serial murderer (although we can’t really be sure of that, because there are a lot of unsolved serial murders out there). But think about it — Conrad wasn’t in some sort of “white-collar” prison (which I’ll now be pitching as a movie starring Kevin James); he was in, like, an Oz prison. And that means that not only is Conrad Black a hardened white-collar criminal, he’s now a semi-hardened real criminal. In fact, he’s probably now one of the most well-rounded criminals around.

So, what is it that Mr. Black learned in prison that we should all be worried about? Thankyou for asking. Conrad went to prison on fraud charges, meaning he is already a master at working the markets: stocks, investing, bonds, all the markets (and don’t tell me those are all really the same thing — they obviously have different names). But, now that he’s lived in prison for 71 months with real bad guys, he’s going to be a master of the black market as well. Do you think they’re using money in prisons? Nope. I’ve watched enough adult videos about women in prisons to know that they’re trading cigarettes and other such contraband — that’s how they make deals in the big house. So Conrad will not only be able to screw you out of your investments, he’ll screw you out of your carton of cigarettes, too.

Beyond that, he’s probably spent the last 71 months in prison just buffing the hell up. And, I can only assume, if something like Ab Ripper X will get you ripped in just 90 days, then imagine how ripped you’re going to be if you’ve spent 2,130 days straight just working out. He’s going to be massive! (Think Arnold Schwarzenegger in his Mr. Universe phase, or Mr. Universe in his Arnold Schwarzenegger Halloween costume.)

The only hope we have really is the fact that Conrad will have found God while in prison (everyone does  . . . even the girls in those adult videos end up screaming his name a lot), and therefore probably won’t hurt any of us. I don’t know what it is about being in prison that makes people religious, but I can only assume eventually you’ve run out of John Grisham novels to read and the only thing left is the Bible.

But God help us if Conrad Black hasn’t found God while in prison, because, now that he’s a super criminal, a death ray can only be next.

Nathaniel Moher is a television writer living in Vancouver. This column first appeared in The Flying Shingle.

Let’s play CanWest Idol! — in which we decide who should get to buy the bankrupt media company’s assets.

The finalists for the TV operation appear to be just two: Shaw Communications and Catalyst Capital. The former is the Alberta-based cable company; the latter is the front-organization for Leonard Asper and New York investment firm Goldman Sachs.

Simon Cowell says: Really? These are the choices? A hardware company run by a cowboy and the same people who drove CanWest into the ground in the first place? No wonder I’m quitting this show.

We say: That’s a little harsh, Simon. Besides, we know cowboys, and Jim Shaw is no cowboy. As for the Aspers, it’s true that letting them reassume control would be like putting Joseph Hazelwood back at the helm of the Exxon Valdez, but, y’know, their convergence strategy showed foresight and may just work yet, once the economy is out of the pooper.

On the other hand, they’re in large measure responsible for the pathetic state of Canadian specialty channels, so we say stick with the decision to give it to Shaw. Given all his mouthing off about the horribleness of Canadian programming, we’d like to see Jimbo try to do better. And who knows? Maybe he will.

In the print category, the known finalists are BC newspaper publisher David “No Relation to Conrad” Black, Vancouver-based Glacier Media, Inc., a consortium led by current National Post executive Paul Godfrey, and — guess who? — the Aspers.

Simon says: The Aspers again? Let me see: if the bank foreclosed on my home and put it on the market, and I tried to buy it back, promising that this time I’d really, really pay the mortgage, what do you think the bank might say to me? As for the rest: Who are these nobodies?

We say: Well, actually Simon, one of them has been running CanWest’s flagship newspaper for awhile now. But there’s the problem. The CanWest newspapers need a total reboot, and, plainly, neither Godfrey nor the Aspers are the people to do it. After Conrad Black sold the Post to Izzy Asper and Asper (eventually) fired Ken Whyte, the Post became a shadow of its former, robust self and remains so today. It needs reinventing. As for the others in the chain, particularly the big city papers like The Calgary Herald and The Ottawa Citizen, they are still beset by the poisonous atmosphere created by Black’s union-busting and the Aspers’ predilection for censorship — most famously reflected in their firing of Russell Mills, publisher of the Citizen, after the paper called for the resignation of Jean Chretien, and continuing today with their suppression of news and commentary contrary to Israel’s interests. Again, a housecleaning is in order.

That leaves the other Black (David) and Glacier Media. We confess to having known nothing of the latter until we visited their website, but we can confidently say that any company that can’t produce a better website has no business running a national news organization. David Black, on the other hand, has quietly built up a very solid chain of newspapers, some big, mostly small, in both western Canada and the States, most of which also have sophisticated online editions. Black Press has run into its own charges of meddling, but Black himself is known as a hands-off publisher with no particular political agenda. Wouldn’t that be refreshing?

Not that the Bank of Nova Scotia and other creditors are going to spend a lot of time considering who’ll create the best product, and help renew Canadian media. They just wantz their money. If they did, though, Shaw and Black would walk away the winners. Cue the balloons.

Why is the mainstream media not covering this story? Why have The Globe and Mail, CBC, The National Post, Maclean’s et al. seemingly missed out on the fact that Hollinger Publishing — Conrad Black’s former newspaper holdings company — has been forced into bankruptcy protection? Why have these national news organizations not reported that more than 3,000 retired newspaper workers — former employees of the Montreal Gazette, Vancouver Sun, Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, Ottawa Citizen and other papers now owned by Canwest — were advised by letter just before Christmas that their pension and benefit plans could be in jeopardy?

There are many more questions that demand immediate answers:

· What happened to the $3.5 billion that Hollinger received for the sale of its newspapers to Canwest in 2000? In a court filing (Hollinger Canadian Publishing Holdings Co., File No. 09-8503-00CL. Ontario Superior Court of Justice — Toronto), the company says it has no assets and about $24.5 CAD million in cash. We do know what may have happened to about $6.1 million of it (currently the subject of a US Supreme Court appeal) but what about the rest?

· Why was not some of this money set aside to take care of Hollinger’s existing liabilities when the sale took place?

· What happened to the money that the Southam and Hollinger retirees paid into the pension fund in good faith over a period of many years (in my case, 27)? We were told the money was being held in trust and would not be affected by any future financial problems of the employer. Was this a lie?

· Why did Canwest not assume continuing responsibility for Hollinger’s pension obligations when it bought the company in 2000?

· How did Hollinger expect to continue meeting its pension obligations when, as the letter to retirees now says, it had no “ongoing business activity” to bring new revenue into the company?

· Why did Hollinger tell the retirees in 2007 that the “events” affecting the financial status of the company (i.e. the indictment of certain directors for defrauding shareholders) should not have any impact on the pension and benefit programs administered by the company?

· Why did a Hollinger employee subsequently tell me that my pension plan was fully funded and protected when, in fact, it is “not insured or prefunded”?

· Why is the Sun-Times Media Group, the parent company of Hollinger, not assuming responsibility for the debts of its subsidiary?

Somebody knows the answers. The mainstream media has the resources — and surely as much interest as those of us who used to work for the Southam and Hollinger newspapers — to find out what they are. Canwest is also in what it euphemistically calls “creditor protection.” Could its retirees find themselves in the same situation a few years hence? It’s in their interest to start seeking answers now.

It takes a village to rehabilitate a criminal, and I’m afraid we’ve all been failing Conrad Black. His chief enabler is The National Post, for which I have been known to write myself. The Post has given Prisoner #18330-424 a column, thus allowing him to maintain the delusion that he remains a man of position, and to reiterate his belief that he has done nothing wrong. I doubt that many of his readers are persuaded, but, as any cognitive therapist will tell you, constantly repeating distorted thoughts to oneself is a sure recipe for lunacy.

In his latest missive from Coleman correctional facility, Prisoner #18330-424 begins with a few self-deprecating remarks about his circumstance, which suggests there is hope for him yet. At least I think he does; I had supposed for awhile that writing for a newspaper was forcing concision and lucidity upon his prose, in a way that his seigneurial contributions to old Saturday Night magazine never did, but now I’m not so sure. “I am also prepared to commit the moral authority gained by my present residential perspective in an authentic laboratory of the American Dream,” he writes, “both of the Jeffersonian call to the pursuit of happiness, and of the constitutional right to the blessings of liberty.” Wait, is he actually saying that being a victim of prosecutors, judges, juries, et al. confers upon him greater moral authority? Who knows?

Regardless, he later uses the article to offer some stock tips: “I put in a buy order last week for some shares in Bank of America, Brookfield, General Electric and News Corporation — whose chairman, my dear friend Rupert Murdoch, demonstrated” oh never mind. It’s unclear how Mr. Black, in using the Post to promote these stocks, is different from fraudsters who use the internet to inflate the worth of penny stocks. This raises the possibility that, far from being rehabilitated, the prisoner is continuing to conduct criminal activities from his 9×8 foot living space.

He is not aided in his recovery by the “large number of readers and followers of these events” from whom he claims to receive regular “encouragement.” I’d discount his claim, except that many of these supporters are present in the comments section following his column. Some share his prose style — “A corrupt judicial system has as its first line of defence the suppression of all due process of an illuminatory and reform nature” — some his difficulty with the proper use of a semi-colon: “Wonderful to read Lord Blacks [sic] commentary; from history to today’s difficulties.” All are doing him a disservice. They are joined by such prominent co-dependents as Mark Steyn and Barbara Amiel, who you’d think would have an interest in hastening the prisoner’s return to society.

Will Baron Black of Coleman eventually face a parole board? (I confess to being less knowledgeable about the prison system than he.) If so, someone should remind him that a show of remorse and acknowledgment of misdoing is usually a necessary condition of early release. Meantime, I beg my sometime bosses at the Post to help this man by taking his column away. Perhaps, if you really feel obliged to employ him, because he started the paper or whatever, he could review new DVD releases or live blog episodes of “Lost.” Anything to end his filibustering for the defence. And if you’ve really become attached to this Dispatches from the Big House idea (it does have a certain frisson to it — kind of like having Jean Genet write for you), well, Phil Spector is now available. He knows a lot about music. And he’s so bat-shit crazy, he’ll probably never be rehabilitated.

Naomi Klein characterized the trial of Conrad Black as class war. Elsewhere it was posited as a case of dueling tax systems (Canadian v. U.S.) or legal systems (ibid.)

I’d say, though, it was a broader culture clash than that, between the populist traditions of the United States (of whom prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, working-class Irish kid made good, is an avatar) and the seigneurial system that still lingers in Canada, and which Black so avidly embraced. That Black has been brought low by the very nation he offered up as a model to self-effacing Canada — and which, perhaps, he disastrously misunderstood — is the bitterest irony of the affair.

I’ve never shared others’ high estimation of him as a writer and thinker. I was once given an essay by him to edit for Saturday Night. Thinking it abysmally written, I returned it to my superior heavily marked-up for revision. Of course, it ran as written. (I was later told Black also found the fact-checking process irritating and put in a call to have it stopped; there’d be no questioning of the proprietor’s knowledge.)

Still, I take no pleasure in today’s results. Like a lot of Canadian journalists (but certainly not all), I benefited from Black’s adventuring in media — his keeping Saturday Night alive for a time, and creating The National Post. Whether readers benefited as much is still debated fervently — it probably depends on which reader and which publication you’re talking about — but there is no doubt he changed the Canadian newspaper landscape permanently.

And he was a massive, anarchic force in our country: vexing the natural governing party, giving our own grey-lady, The Globe, a run for its establishment money, and demonstrating that Upper Canadian business could be about something more than, say, collecting life insurance premiums. He even subverted the international order of things by putting luminaries like Henry Kissinger and Margaret Thatcher on the Hollinger board, and hence on its payroll — the only assertion of preeminence available to a colonial pup.

Alas, it turns out some of the money he used to do this wasn’t his to use. The Canadian system of justice, such as it is, might have looked the other way, but there was no way the Americans would. Black’s right about one thing, then: we do have a thing or two to learn from the U.S. But I can’t enjoy today’s verdict. Canada needs all the provocateurs it can get, and this one’s going to get locked up.

Monday’s New York Times contained an article with the hed Trial of Black Raises Conflict Issue, about the game of Twister that Maclean’s has gotten itself into trying to cover the proceedings. It noted that Lady Black is the magazine’s star columnist, and both main trial correspondent Mark Steyn and publisher and editor-in-chief Kenneth Whyte are former employees of Black’s (not to mention editor Mark Stevenson, managing editors Dianne de Fenoyl and Dianna Symonds, and, for all I know, members of the janitorial staff). And Whyte, of course, just finished up a stint as a witness for the defence, filling in the glamour quotient as best he could, given that Donald Trump wasn’t called to testify after all.

In the interest of full disclosure I should mention that I, too, have been an employee of Black’s, when I worked as an editor for Saturday Night for two stints in the late ’90s. I also freelanced for both SN and The National Post during Black and Whyte’s tenures there. (I still do so for the latter.) The difference between me and those others is this: they got paid way more, and I live on a small island off the coast of BC and so don’t have to worry about running into any of these people at a cocktail party.

Whyte told the Times, “Mr. Steyn has informed me that he plans to prove his journalistic integrity by treating me twice as harshly as other witnesses.” I’m sure we can enjoy a good chortle right along with the two of them. But the best that Steyn has been able to come up with in the way of criticism of Whyte has been to assay that “in Thursday’s testimony Ken was a bit too rueful and self-deprecating and that, in response to Ms Ruder’s dimestore dominatrix style of cross-examination, something a bit more combative might be more called for.” In other words, Whyte was just too nice a guy, and why did that mean Ms. Ruder have to pick on him? And this was after the Times had raised the issue of their chumhood.

Of course, the skein of mutually supportive relationships identified in the Times is just standard practice for the clusterfuck known as the Toronto media. Or, as Kelly McBride, a “journalism ethics specialist” at the Poynter Institute, helpfully explained it away: “A lot of journalists marry other journalists, are children of other journalists, and it looks very suspicious to outsiders.” Don’t it just. McBride goes on to suggest that, in order to judge the impartiality of a journalist who’s writing about friends and associates you should look at what’s on the page. But that’s only one measure of impartiality. The other is what isn’t on the page.

For example, how is it that neither Steyn nor anyone else, as far as I can see, has asked what Ken Whyte was doing taking $100,000 from Conrad Black in 2003? This was almost two years after Black had completely divested himself of his ownership of the Post, but before Whyte had been fired as editor by its new owners, CanWest Global. In his testimony, Whyte first described this as a “performance bonus” (paid out 18 months late?), then later acknowledged that it was also paid because Black wanted to maintain their relationship. (Hmm, I wonder if that would work with my wife: “Wanna maintain our relationship, honey? It’s gonna cost ya.”) Whatever; let’s give Black the benefit of the doubt and say that he just felt bad about selling the Post and leaving Whyte to twist in the wind. $100,000 worth of bad. But what was Whyte, as editor of the Post, doing accepting any money, much less a hundred grand, from a highly newsworthy and controversial public figure whom his paper would almost certainly be covering? Is that the way he runs Maclean’s?

I don’t say that either Whyte or Black had anything but the purest, most filial of intentions in making the deal. I just say that it was a highly dumb move on Whyte’s part. Steyn writes, vis-a-vis the New York Times story, that “all this media navel-gazing about ‘conflicts of interest’ ignores the obvious: as I’ve said before, I have no financial interest in defending Conrad and nor does Ken. He signed our paycheques, but that was long ago now.” Well, that $100,000 wasn’t no paycheque. And exactly when does the statute of limitations on financial interests run out?

In contrast, this minority government has no friends at all. Whatever chance they had of getting things done has been scuttled by their appalling lack of courtesy and consistent disrespect of democratic process. Earlier this week The National Post revealed that some of Harper’s pals are supplied with a handbook of “dirty tricks.” And today the Post describes a shameful scene where three standing committees are crippled because of Conservative filibustering and lack of leadership. The picture painted of whiny Conservatives blaming the other parties for ganging up on them is truly pathetic. Bleat, bleat. I am not a huge fan of The National Post, but they sure know how to make people look silly.

The CBC reports that the Conservative government has been blocking votes and motions from all opposition parties by filibustering in the Senate as well as in committees. Apparently tempers are fraying: Liberal MP Marlene Jennings accused Treasury Board President Vic Toews of advising her to “take your medication”; Toews defended himself by accusing Jennings of yelling and screaming.

Yelling and screaming, however, isn’t on a par with calling another member a “slut” or a “dog,” which is a favourite insult Convervative men chuck at female members. Come to think of it, it was also a Conservative MP who called the only Black member of parliament “Sambo.” Nice. Kind of puts yelling and screaming in context, does it not?

Anyway, it was back in 1992 that a special advisory comittee to the Speaker recommended more meaningful deterrents for members who behave badly in Parliament, including substantial fines and suspensions. Members who persisted in breaking the rules would be subject to escalating penalties. Clearly, we need to proceed with this excellent suggestion, made 15 years ago. I would enjoy a significant fine being visited upon a rude politician. That would be fun. Maybe also we could supply diapers and a soother to the Conservatives next time they’re surprised to find that absolutely nobody wants to work with them.

And a soother each for Black and Radler, the squabbling duo of criminal masterminds. Their protestations of innocence are about as convincing as a toddler’s caught with his hand in the penny jar. And not at all endearing or cute.

Maclean’s gaily partisan coverage of the Conrad Black trial has now spread from Mark Steyn’s blog to what we thought was its straight news reporting (if there’s such a thing in Maclean’s anymore). “In a piece that cries out for a copy editor like a wounded seal pup for its mother,” writes Jordan Timm Chris Selley on their site today (see Comments below), “Allan Fotheringham expresses his disapproval of just about everything to do with the trial.”

One of the subjects of Fotheringham’s disapproval is Steyn’s coverage — hence the need to take him down a notch. However, before Maclean’s starts trash-talking other publications’ copy editing, it might want to go back and check one of Steyn’s dispatches from earlier in the month, in which he sounds, first, like Pancho Gonzales and then like Borat: “The Chicago boys may be right about the jury but I think Greenspan he’s the licensed bad cop . . . . It was tough going with a combative Radler, but eventually a drained witness was reducing to a series of weak monosyllables.”

Woowahweewah.

***

Update: We note that within hours of our posting the above, Steyn’s speaking in tongues had been corrected.

Backofthebook.ca: helping the big guys keep their copy clean since 2006.

Now that the Conrad Black trial has entered its Radlerian phase, with Black’s former capo taking the stand against him, it’s time once again to blog the poor bloggers (and columnists) consigned to Chicago’s federal courthouse.

Question: what is Mark Steyn without his trademark wit? Answer: the rather dull fellow we find currently blogging the trial for Maclean’s. Steyn’s anger at what he regards as the unjust treatment of his former boss guides his coverage — impartiality, apparently, is for wanks — and nothing is more certain to make you unfunny than righteous indignation. Alas, without the yuks, Steyn is just another information worker — and not a very reliable one at that.

His composure deserted him completely on Monday, as, along with the rest of the drama-starved courtroom live-ins, he salivated at the prospect of Radler’s arrival. “The day of the rat is here,” he wrote. “Renowned cheapskate and germaphobe David Radler, Conrad Black’s right-hand man turned government stool pigeon, is scheduled to begin testifying today.” That’s either four or five epithets, depending on whether you regard “right-hand man” as derisory. Perhaps just “rat cheapskate germaphobe” would have been enough.

But the greater problem with Steyn’s team loyalty is that it’s forcing him into some bizarre moral postures. Lately he’s taken to arguing this: the Hollinger directors signed off on documents referring to the non-compete payments that are at the heart of the prosecution’s case. Whether they knew they were doing so (they say they did not) is irrelevant; according to Steyn, that makes the payments all right. But, of course, it does no such thing — particularly in the case of the payment made by Horizon Publications, which Black and Radler partially owned. Even the rat cheapskate germaphobe could figure that one out. “Did you have any intention of competing?” prosecutor Eric Sussman asked Radler.

“No,” he answered.

Why?

“Because it would be like competing against one’s self.”

Meantime, over at Toronto Life, Douglas Bell continues to offer the liveliest coverage, thanks in no small part to those leaving comments on his blog. In response to Barbara Amiel’s latest Maclean’s column, in which she pulls an Elizabeth May and makes some inappropriate second world war allusions, one reader writes: “This self-righteous peaen to botox, collagen, cosmetic surgery, etc. is trying to compare her current predicament to the Holocaust???” Never mind that “paean” is misspelled; that’s personal invective worthy of Mark Steyn!

Another visitor notes that “Black’s claim that he left Radler to run the western Canadian and US papers never was very credible. For example, he weighed in publicly in labour disputes at their Calgary paper, at one point engaging in his trademark style of mudslinging when he described a priest, who supported the labourers, as a jerked up little twit, or some such charming Black epithet . . . . he must be hoping the prosecution doesn’t happen on the numerous accounts of his handling of that labour dispute.” One of which, come to think of it, you’ll find right here in backofthebook.ca.

In The Independent, Dominic Lawson quotes this telling passage from Black’s new biography of Richard Nixon “The American prosecutorial system encourages suborned or intimidated perjury, or at least spontaneous clarity of recollection . . . plea bargains are negotiated by threat and financial strangulation and reduction of penalties, as lower echelons roll over in sequence blaming higher-ups.” Adds Lawson: “For Richard Milhous Nixon, read Conrad Moffat Black.”

Many bloggers remarked on how hale and relaxed Radler appeared on the stand. “If they win their case, federal prosecutors might want to consider using Radler in a promotional video about the incentives to being a cooperating witness,” wrote Mark Brown in the Chicago Sun-Times. To Steyn, of course, this was evidence of self-satisfaction.
But it may just be that a little confession remains good for the soul.

And everybody seemed to buy Radler’s claim that he doesn’t know how to use e-mail. But as those of us who do use e-mail know, one should never commit to the cybersphere anything one wouldn’t want to see on the front page of the newspaper the next day. It seems to me just as likely that Radler — engaged in various shady transactions as he was — realized that the phone, not Microsoft Outlook, was his friend.

That lousy rat cheapskate germaphobe.

And now, to blog the bloggers and columnists on the Conrad Black Trial . . .

Even as Christie Blatchford engaged in some generous genital-licking of Mark Steyn as part of her coverage, referring to him as “a very funny columnist” (which is often true), she was also showing him how to do the job. Steyn, who was a favoured columnist at both The National Post and The Daily Telegraph when they were owned by Black, has been covering the trial in his Maclean’s blog with the alert air of a puppy who senses that his master might be in some sort of trouble. Blatchford is known to be just as much a Black patriot, but she knows better than to appear so.

And so while Steyn works the ad tanimens (“I sat behind [prosecution witness] Paris as he waited to take the stand and, to judge from the back of his neck, he’s been working on his tan”), Blatchford presents more equable, if tenuous, arguments supporting Black’s justifications: “After all, what good would a non-compete agreement be with a newspaper company if the owners — with, in Lord Black’s case, his larger-than-life personality and considerable experience — can just form a new company and open up shop the next day?”

Now, given that in once instance Lord Black sold American Trucker magazine and then agreed not to compete with it, this strikes me as tenuous indeed; the notion that he might turn around and start up a rival American Trucker magazine from his home on the Bridle Path Estates in Toronto seems pretty much risible. However, Blatchford is at least not stooping to examining the prosecution witnesses’ tanlines to determine their worthiness.

Elsewhere, Patrick Gossage (who I believe had something to do with the federal Liberals a long time ago, but I can’t be bothered to google it) takes the position in Toronto Life that the presence of Lady Black-Amiel in the courtroom is a liability, given the “irreversible perception of Barbara” as a, oh, whatever. The fact that the words “Barbara” and “Amiel” are as meaningless to Chicago jurors as “Peter” and “Mansbridge” is lost on Mr. Gossage.

Meanwhile, the best (if not the most aggrieved [Steyn] or most entertaining [Douglas Bell in Toronto Life]) blogger on the Black trial is Michael Miner in the Chicago Reader who writes: “Canadian reporters in Chicago should take note: Conrad Black, aka Lord Black of Crossharbour, is nothing we haven’t seen before. Black’s blunder was to take his company public, putting his vast vanity and indulgences on a short leash held by stockholders. Sam Zell is buying the Tribune Company to take it private, where goofy media moguls can do what they please.”