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...
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...
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. 
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
