Call it "a tale of two tweets". In one, a NatPost scribe thanks America (but, really, when is a NatPost scribe *not* thanking America?). In the other, the same scribe is conjecturing, entirely without evidence, that the Biden admin inserted itself into a juridical process...
The tweets are at their most interesting when paired, but each is charming enough on its own. In the first, Canadian efforts to secure the release of the #TwoMichaels are damned by omission, even though we have zero info on what their impact was. Their nullity is assumed...
This is based on two dogmatic NatPost principles:

1) Americans are infallible, incorruptible supermen who are responsible for everything good in the world;

2) Canadians can't succeed except by accident or unless the US gives them the required instructions and/or gizmos...
NatPost scribblers may be able to apply logic to other matters. When it comes to the US, however, they're like 5-year-olds contemplating their dads. Americans are like gods to them. The very sight of the US flag deprives them of their senses; they swoon and rave...
The unsubstantiated guess made in the second tweet serves up an implied admission that political pressure was brought to bear in the Wanzhou case...
Including a condition regarding the hostages (which was irrelevant to her criminal case) at the behest of the Biden admin would certainly have constituted political interference in due process, of the kind so many pearls were clutched about during the SNC-Lav affair...
There's no evidence this happened, of course. I doubt if it did. What's important is that Gurney believes it did. He believes the process was politicised & that we should thank the US for politicising it.

BTW, the clearest evidence of politicisation is the DPA itself...
DPAs are usually offered early on in the process. The US DoJ took 3 years to offer it to Wanzhou. Is it plausible that good-faith prosecutors would take that long? Seems more a case of making the process itself the punishment, which is the definition of vexatious prosecution...
Thing is, once you admit that the resolution of this case was politicised--as our NatPost friend does--you admit that the whole process was politicised. Because there's no way the DoJ would allow politics to influence the disposition of a case it felt could & should be tried...
So, if it's political now, it's always been. Gurney knows this. Despite the sanctimonious platitudes about "due process" & "rule of law", the implied admission here is that the extradition request was political--and thus arbitrary...
To go back to the pair of tweets, then, Gurney is literally thanking the US for committing an arbitrary act that 1) perverted the course of justice & 2) put two Canadians through hell for 3 years...
It's because of this kind of self-abasing gratitude for the reckless infliction of pain that I'm perfectly comfortable using terms like "anti-Canadian" to describe right-wing media in this country. And I can't think of a euphemism that would be any less unpleasant...
Btw, I'm citing Gurney only because I happened to come across his tweets. He's not uniquely egregious. What I've said here applies straight across the broad expanse of right-wing media & indeed beyond, to more "objective" Canadian media.
The tweets in question.

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More from @Dred_Tory

25 Sep
My brand of Toryism is built on a rejection of two modern beliefs: 1) the perfectability of human nature & 2) the Whig version of history, which posits that civilisation progresses on a straight line via which, on average, things get better and people become wiser...
The latter belief implies that societies learn lessons.

Every day offers new proof that they don't. In today's example, we have Canadians, most right-wing but many claiming to be "progressive", begging to jump on America's Yellow Peril Cold War II bandwagon....
I guess they didn't learn (or can't learn) the lessons of the first Cold War. They seem unaware of the instructive power of the paranoid state repression & routine violations of basic civil liberties committed at home & the genocidal proxy wars waged abroad....
Read 5 tweets
23 Sep
I've been reading reviews of Gwynne Dyer's "Canada in the Great Power Game, 1914-2014" to see if it's worth getting. It seems to be. This (not entirely glowing) review puts things into perspective nicely.

londonpoetryopenmic.com/frank-davey-bl…
A excerpt:

"New agreements with the United States have brought about a situation in which the Canadian military have more confidential information about world security and US policies than Canadian government ministers are allowed to have...
..and the tail is beginning to wag the dog. Diefenbaker signs the NORAD agreement without knowing all that his military understand about it. During the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, a Canadian admiral, on the advice of his military, orders compliance with a US military request...
Read 8 tweets
23 Sep
Whenever the CPC loses & debate about the party's ideology resumes, one vocal segment of the base always argues some version of "We don't need two Liberal parties!" It's a truism that masks an absurdity...
Imagine if R.J. Manion's Tories had voted against Mackenzie King's declaration of war against Germany, instead moving a motion approving of Hitler's invasion of Poland & wishing him every success, merely to avoid being too much "like the Liberals"...
That's the kind of poltroonery you end up with if your raison d'être is founded on a negative dialectics whereby you premise your existence on a state of not-being someone else.

Maybe the CPC should focus less on not-being (i.e. other parties) & more on *being* something...
Read 6 tweets
4 Sep
Is there any evidence that O'Toole, as a Harper minister, ever objected (publicly or privately) to any of the cynicism, corruption, incompetence, or criminality of that dreadful regime? Did he object to Harper's attacks on the Supreme Court?...
Did he object to Harper's attacks on Elections Canada? Did he object to Harper's attacks on public servants like Linda Keen who were targeted for doing their jobs? Did he object to the flagrantly criminal In and Out scam?...
Did he object when Harper made mockery of his longstanding Senate reform commitment by making our history's most nauseatingly partisan Senate appointments & using Duffy as a party bagman?...
Read 8 tweets
3 Sep
Not sure we should let the CPC & media allies draw too great a distinction between them & the PPC, which could arguably be seen as embodying a "tendency" within the parent party. Important to recall that Bernier left the CPC only because he was burned by the leadership results...
It's not like he underwent some kind of public ideological metamorphosis. He may well represent what a "mainstream" CPC pol looks like when he's decided real power is out of reach & he has nothing left to lose. He's the guy who ridiculed Kellie Leitch as "Karaoke Trump"...
If it was possible for Bernier to devolve from anti-Trump, pro-globalisation mainstream neocon to barking MAGA clone within weeks, why wouldn't it be possible for any other CPC MP or candidate? I mean, Leslyn Lewis, Cheryl Gallant, & Rempel-Garner are halfway there already...
Read 4 tweets
3 Sep
I won't make election predictions. I learned my lesson last time, when I thought the Libs were toast. I'll just say two things. 1) If JT pulls this off with another minority (which is still a big "if" IMO), he'll need to be considered one of the best campaigners in our history...
Not one of the best PMs, of course, but one of the best federal campaigners. Think of all the minuses he both faced & created for himself going in: The electorate is fatigued & surly after 2 years of COVID, bad news for incumbents; the campaign began under the shadow of Kabul...
...about which the media slagged the government; he's faced hostile mobs at every event; he failed to set out a clear ballot question/campaign message & allowed his opponents to frame the debate. He's done everything you shouldn't do & faces an anti-incumbent environment...
Read 8 tweets

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