Canadian (former) media giant CanWest has filed for bankruptcy. The company’s troubles began in 2000 after its bought the media empire of another Canadian, Conrad Black, (whom letter was imprisoned) for $3B and did not properly finance it. The firm has been nearing bankruptcy for months and the day finally came.

The firm is owned by the Asper family; and CEO Leonard Asper, son of late founder Israel Asper, stated that the firm filed for bankruptcy in order to manage its debt and that the family company intends to stay in business and remain a viable media company after restructuring. The firm will engage in a major sell-off of several assets in order to pay down debt. CanWest has or had a near monopoly in Canada, and a presence (or did) in the United States and an even stronger one (or did) in Australia.

CanWest has already sold some holdings in America and Australia and is about to sell more: Sun-Times Media Group Inc., which owns the Chicago Tribune ect; the Houston Chronicle, Nortel Networks and Ethernet. ‘O those are assets hard to break with. But Ha! (you’ll understand why bellow).

Until recently it owned the neo-conservative/liberal political journal The New Republic, but sold it in an effort to start repaying debt. Marty Peretz, probably foreseeing CanWest’s looming bankruptcy, had initial sold his shares to the firm but bought them back in late September in an effort that may have been - this is speculation - intended to spare his ostensibly prestigious publication from the tarnish of bankruptcy.

The Asper’s held an unhealthy hold on Canadian media, owning roughly 100 papers in every major city or just about. Further, CanWest was the main media network outside of the CBC. You can’t say that about any huge American media company since all there are five as opposed to one giant.

Many of those papers may now become locally owned. That is good for media competition and diversity of opinion in the press since the Asper’s had mandated pan-Canadian editorials in their papers. So this is a good day for believers in competitive and diverse media. We should celebrate the fall of the once mighty Aspers.

But, more importantly for me, this is good for the Palestinians and their supporters. Why? The Aspers are fanatical supporters of Israel who often silenced criticism of Israel in their papers. Because they were so powerful in their ownership of so many papers, many Canadians were denied a Palestinian perspective from the media. And not just in editorial content:

Veteran Montreal Gazette [CanWest-owned] reporter Bill Marsden has said that the Aspers “do not want any criticism of Israel. We do not run in our newspaper op-ed pieces that express criticism of Israel and what it is doing.” A study released in 2006 by the Near East Cultural and Educational Foundation of Canada found that the National Post was 83.3 times more likely to report an Israeli child’s death than a Palestinian child’s death in its news articles’ headlines or first paragraphs. In 2008 Canwest launched a lawsuit against the Palestine Media Collective for producing a newspaper parody of The Vancouver Sun that satirized this bias. In 2004, the Reuters news agency protested after Canwest altered newswire stories about the Iraq war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, such that Reuters felt it had inserted Canwest’s own bias under Reuters bylines. The changes were apparently made in accordance with a Canwest policy to label certain groups as terrorists.

So the Aspers blocked not just criticism of Israel, but actually news that could make Israel look bad. And even modified wire stories to make Palestinians and Arabs in general look bad. This is a family not just biased [the family the owns The New York Times is equally biased] but engages in shameless lying, mis-editing, and outright censorship in order to promote an agenda. This isn’t journalism, but the definition of propaganda. That is why it is proper to say the Aspers own a media, rather than journalistic, company.

So I am so happy today to see my enemies and the enemies of the Palestinians to have fallen. ‘O how the rich have fallen. I take absolute joy in seeing their so-worked-hard-for business come apart, for them to now sell it bit by bit after spending so much time and money to build it in order to pay off debt. This isn’t even schadenfreude. I am not the least bit shameful to be taking great joy in the misfortune of the Aspers. No shameful joy here. Happy, happy, and happy. The Aspers never showed even the slightest bit of concern for Palestinians and dismissed their deaths. So I will not show any concern for them or their ilk. Good riddance.

And in the field of the declining press, this is the third bit of good news for Palestinians. So I am even more happy to hear this news after hearing the first two because, as they say, third times a charm.

First, the vulgar, extreme Zionist (they make Aspers look decent) New York Sun filed for bankruptcy earlier this year (or, maybe, late last year). This paper spewed unabashed hatred against Palestinians and Arab and Muslims in general. It launched a McCarthite attack against Palestinian Columbia Professor Joseph Massoud all because he believes Zionism is racism (he recently was awarded tenure and Zionists went crazy. Ha!!!). It launched another attack against an Arabic-language school named after Christian Arab-American poet Kahlil Gibran (or Jubran Khalil Jubran) all because of the racist fear that if Americans learn Arabic they will - the nerve! - have some sympathy for Arabs. It was such a smug daily. But it ran out of money and finally shut up shop. It now just publishes online.

And then there is the fall of The New Republic. No need to explain its content it is simply the magazine form of the New York Sun. TNR used to be the nation’s preeminent political journal. But since 2000 it has lost roughly 40% of subscribers, and even earlier from the 1990s, its influence has declined, it now just publishes biweekly, and is losing money. The reason Peretz sold to CanWest is because he did not want to keep pouring money in to TNR to cover its debts (Murdoch, on the other hand, has money to pour into The Weekly Standard whose benefits come from the influence the weekly has). But Peretz was never that rich or rich at all (he bought the magazine in the early 1970s from money his wife inherited) and even less so since he lost so much money with. . .Bernie Madoff. Peretz is an unabashed racist and his blog offers nearly daily proof. He genuinely believers Arabs and Muslims to be inferior humans, even if even considers as humans. So for the all-but-fall of TNR and the lost wealth of Peretz: Double HA!!!

Ha! to CanWest, to New York Sun, and to The New Republic, and to Marty! May you be joined with fellow lying, hateful, fanatical pro-Zionist papers/magazines and fellows.