Charles Burton, a frequent anti-China ranter in the pages of the Globe and Mail, was at it again yesterday. Four paragraphs in, the reader is treated to this bit of speculation, "...the unlikely coughing canary in the coal mine of potentially cataclysmic global strife lies in China's recent diplomatic blitz against our plucky Commonwealth cousins in Australia."
There follows a list of "achievements" our plucky cousins have scored in their campaign to alienate their most important trading partner, a self-defeating policy if ever there was one. Charles recommends we show our own pluck by standing in solidarity with our cousins by buying Australian wine over the holiday season.
Burton is advertised as a Senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, an outfit financially supported by a bevy of A-list Big Pharma and Big Oil multinationals, a variety of foundations, and the governments of Latvia, Japan, Taiwan, and the US. Its influence in Canadian media is deep and broad. There's rarely a day goes by when one or more MLI "fellows," "advisors," or "experts" don't have their China-bashing or Russia-bashing articles published in the Globe and Mail or on the CBC, or both.
Here's a timely rebuttal to Burton's warmongering by Tony Kevin, a former Australian diplomat, and one of the few Aussies with the pluck to speak out against the prevailing US driven anti-China hysteria: Australia sabotaged its own interests in China relations.
Since we're flirting with "potentially cataclysmic global strife," maybe we should call a time-out on the trash talk and take a moment to consider a point of view you'll not find at the CBC and the Globe and Mail. Maybe it will help us avoid the cataclysm.
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