Award-winning journalist unleashes cliches of doom on Harper's China visit

The Ottawa Citizen has been a newspaper longer than Canada has been a country. It went through various ownerships over the decades and eventually ended up a Conrad Black property. In spite of that, it's never been able to transform itself into the country's "newspaper of record."

No wonder.

In one of the shrewdest moves of his ill-fated career Conrad Black unloaded his newspaper empire on the hapless Izzy Asper for top dollar just as the internet was making ink and paper obsolete. Izzy's Canwest media empire floundered aimlessly for a few years before going tits up.

Then lo and behold, a crew of finance sharpies backed by Goldman Sachs bought control of Canwest from the reciever for pennies on the dollar, and set up a "new" company; Postmedia. As a titular figure-head they brought in Paul Godfrey to dignify the exercise. Godfrey had in an ealier life made himself wealthy by launching the Toronto Sun tabloid.

The exercise wasn't about saving newspapers; it was about breathing life back into all that Canwest corporate debt they bought for pennies on the dollar. Nevertheless, they have to keep flogging newspapers to make their financial dreams come true.

And nothing moves papers like a bit of controversy.

Which brings me to Terry Glavin's opinion piece in the Citizen today.

Glavin has written a series of articles about the China menace. Seems the wily commies are taking over the world. Today he continues to work readers into a froth about the upcoming  Harper visit to China, which after the obligatory bullshit about our concern for human rights, will be nothing more and nothing less than a full-on grovel to beg the Chinese to buy our dirty oil.

In Glavin's article China's state-owned oil company is both "absurdly corrupt" and a "ravenous behemoth."

Its president is "aggressive and ambitious." If that isn't bad enough, "Sinopec provides the sanctions-busting revenues to allow the delusional mass-murderer al-Assad to hang on in Damascus."

But wait a minute! Then it gets "really ugly". Turns out those commies are now Iran's number one customer for Iranian crude! OH. MY. GOD!!!!!

So that's the big fear, that Harper is keen on doing business with people who still do business with Iran?

That's not a big story, my friend. Israeli companies do as much business with Iran as they can get away with. (see for example Achieving Peace on Earth one embargo defying deal at a time right here on this blog.)

Glavin goes on to claim that China now co-authors Canada's foreign policy, at which point I think it's fair to say he's given up all claims to any measure of credibility.

A company whose president is aggressive and ambitious? God forbid!

A major oil company that is a ravenous behemoth? Huh? There's been one that wasn't?

As for absurdly corrupt, I think in China they still make a practice of hanging their white-collar criminals.

Here we applaud them when they buy media empires for pennies on the dollar and bail them out when they get too big to fail.