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Nov 24 2008 1:29PM EST

Conrad Black Enjoying His Life as a Jailbird

Prison hasn't done anything to curb Conrad Black's sense of self-righteousness, or his orotundity.

The former Hollinger International chairman, serving a six-and-a-half year sentence for fraud and obstruction of justice, took advantage of the unrestricted media access in his low-security hoosegow to write a "prison diary" for Spear's Wealth Management Survey. (Spear's aptonymic editor in chief, William Cash, used to work for Black at the Daily Telegraph.) Black reports that he has been spending his time teaching English to fellow inmates and writing a book about his "persecution" at the hands of the U.S. government, to be published next spring.

Oh, about that: "Given the putrification of the US justice system and the correlation of forces between the American government and myself, it is an unsought but distinct honour to fight this out as I am and to have already won 85 per cent of the case and 99 per cent of the financial case."

Fortunately, adds Black, "I enjoy some aspects of my status as a victim of the American prosecutocracy." Clearly! (Specifically, he says he enjoys the many letters of support he receives and takes "grim pleasure" watching the companies he used to run suffer without him.)

"Obviously, the bloom is off my long-notorious affection for America," he says.

"I would be distinctly consolable if the United States really was in decline, and I have more legitimate grievances against that country than do the Guardian or the BBC, but it is still a country of incomparable vitality, even as its moral, judicial soul atrophies and reeks.

"Those of us who are appalled by some foibles of the United States do not do ourselves a favour by announcing an American sunset two centuries prematurely."

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