But does anyone believe for a moment that, if the roles were reversed, any of them would hesitate to intervene?''

The newspaper, which also advocates freedom for Al-Jazeera to operate from Canadian soil, said that despite courts in Canada and the US approving the Nortel sale Tuesday, the government should use the Investment Canada Act to stop the deal.

Nationalism entered the Nortel sale last week after the BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) was shut out of the bidding process for refusing to sign non-disclosure agreements with Nortel.

BlackBerry co-CEO Jim Balsillie turned it into a nationalist issue, saying that the sale of Nortel's the next-generation wireless technolgy - called Long Term Evolution or LTE - to foreigners was not in the national interest.

Praising him, the Toronto Star said, 'Give Jim Balsillie credit. The BlackBerry billionaire has certainly caught the attention of the politicians.''

(Gurmukh Singh can be contacted at gurmukh.s@ians.in)