February 11, 2012 - No. 6

Agenda of the Harper Government

Arbitrary Powers Cannot Be
Used Arbitrarily Courts Rule

Agenda of the Harper Government
• Arbitrary Powers Cannot Be Used Arbitrarily Courts Rule - Enver Villamizar
• Canada's "We Oppose Torture Unless It Is Useful to Save Lives" Position - Pauline Easton
• Only the Imperialists Have Ever Put Nazis into Power in Iran - Hilary LeBlanc
• Government Uses Blackwater Mercenaries to Train Special Forces

Pseudoscience in the Service of Imperialism
• Myth of the "Aggressive Gene" - Dougal MacDonald

For Your Information
Use of Information Obtained from Torture
• Parliamentary Exchanges
• Pragmatic "Policy Debate" in the Media

Agenda of the Harper Government

Arbitrary Powers Cannot Be
Used Arbitrarily Courts Rule

- Enver Villamizar -

One of the features of the Harper government which infuriates Canadians is the repeated use of the prerogative powers of the Prime Minister and other Ministers to impose whatever they want in a manner such that nobody can hold them to account. The fact is that the prerogative powers, despite being arbitrary -- which means they are exercised on the basis of the discretion of the minister -- are not supposed to be exercised in a manner which extends beyond the bounds of the authority conferred by law.

In one example, on January 19, the Federal Court of Canada ruled that Minister of Public Safety Vic Toews used his arbitrary discretionary powers arbitrarily -- he did not provide reasons for his decision to deny a request for transfer to Canada of Richard Goulet, a Canadian citizen convicted of drug trafficking who is imprisoned in the United States. The Minister's denial of the request without giving reasons contradicted a risk assessment by a Correctional Service Canada Director that indicated Mr. Goulet had no criminal record in Canada, no identified ties to an organized crime group and no history of sexual crimes and was also found to be unlikely to reoffend. The Court ruled that the Minister had 45 days to reconsider the request for transfer "on the merits and in accordance with the requirements of the Act." In other words, through its ruling, the Court upheld the position that Ministers cannot operate with impunity. They must provide adequate reasons for their decisions so that a court can review them if needed and determine if they are in line with the rule of law.

The Court's ruling in this and similar cases shed light on a number of the changes to the International Transfer of Offenders Act in Bill C-10 that is currently before the Senate. The most important is that the purpose of the Act is changed to one of "public safety" from one of rehabilitation and the administration of justice. On the basis of this new purpose, the proposed legislation would also replace mandatory considerations that currently must be applied in determining offender transfer requests with optional criteria that the Minister may consider.

The Minister would also be permitted to consider any other factor believed to be relevant in denying a request for transfer, without providing proof. This arrangement would effectively remove judicial oversight as a check against abuse of the ministerial prerogatives and provide impunity from the law.

These cases reveal that the modus operandi of the Harper government is not merely to implement a "tough-on-crime" agenda. Its invocation of "public safety" is a new raison d'etat -- a justification which claims that for the state to carry out its duty to defend public safety, its ministers must be able to act with impunity which requires that the role of the courts to hold the executive in check for abuse of power must be eliminated. In this case, the Minister claims that his denial of the request is a reasonable defence of public safety. He gives no reasons but the suggestion is that because the man is a convicted drug dealer that is enough. One can even extend the facts to suggest that his mom-and-pop operation amount to organized crime.

Under current law, personal belief is not sufficient argument to deny a request. The report of the Director of Corrections Canada contradicts the Minister's personal belief in this case in favour of objective criteria hitherto established by lawfully mandated public bodies. It is the resort to publicly mandated objective criteria which is to be sacrificed in the changes the Harper government is enacting. Changes will remove current checks on the use of the prerogative powers of the Prime Minister and government Ministers. Thus far, it is understood that the constitutionally sanctioned arbitrary powers of the Prime Minister and other government ministers must not be exercised arbitrarily. The Harper government is saying, however, that from now on they can be. This is a very dangerous situation. Senators, no matter what political faction they belong to, owe it to Canadians to oppose the passage of this bill.

Summary of the Goulet Case

The detainee requesting transfer in the case in question is Richard Goulet, a Canadian citizen and a federal inmate serving a sentence of seven years and three months at the Allenwood Low Security Correctional Facility in White Deer, Pennsylvania for the offences of conspiracies to distribute and to import marijuana into the United States. He was caught in a sting operation organized by U.S. Immigration and Customs agents.

On July 10, 2008, he applied under Canada's International Transfer of Offenders Act for a transfer to a Canadian correctional facility. On December 8, 2010, the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Vic Toews denied Goulet's application, despite Goulet meeting the criteria for a transfer according to the law. In his denial, the Minister alluded to Goulet being part of a criminal organization because Goulet had worked with three other people in organizing deliveries of marijuana to the U.S. Toews, however, did not present proof to justify his defamation of Goulet which basically suggests that he is part of organized crime. The Minister's decision was based on the following:

"...[I]n February 2006, Larry Bowen was arrested with 191 pounds (86.6 kilograms) of hydroponic marijuana in his vehicle. Mr. Bowen informed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents that he had made 10 trips during 2005 and 2006 to [Eric Tetreault] and that the source of the marijuana was Richard Goulet. Mr. Bowen agreed to participate in a controlled delivery of marijuana to Mr. Tetreault. Mr. Goulet instructed Mr. Bowen on the delivery of the drugs to Mr. Tetreault, who was arrested as he attempted to take possession of the drugs. On June 2, 2006, Mr. Goulet was arrested. Another accomplice, Stéphane Ruel, who also acted as a driver in deliveries initiated by Mr. Goulet, was implicated with this transaction."

Presenting the "reasons" for his ruling, Toews stated:

"The Act requires that I consider whether, in my opinion, the offender will, after the transfer, commit a criminal organization offence within the meaning of section 2 of the Criminal Code. In considering this factor, I note that, in addition to the offender, at least three accomplices were involved in the commission of the offence, a sophisticated operation involving large quantities of marijuana. There is information on file that identifies the applicant as a senior participant of the drug smuggling operation, and the individual who engaged, directed and paid others for helping smuggle the drug shipment. Furthermore, there is information on file indicating that the applicant has coordinated and organized drug trips in the past, purported to typically involve approximately 100 pounds (45 kilograms) of marijuana. The applicant's accomplice has testified that the applicant's family members may have accompanied the applicant on these trips and his daughter allowed her house to be used to store and transfer the drugs. Furthermore, two accomplices testified that large amounts of money were involved in the drug transactions that were transported back to the applicant. In this case, the applicant was involved in the commission of a serious offence that, if successfully committed, would likely have resulted in the receipt of a material or financial benefit by the individuals and the group of individuals involved in the transaction."

Toews did admit that Goulet met the normal mandatory requirements for transfer, saying:

"The Act requires that I consider whether the offender has social or family ties in Canada. I recognize the family ties of the applicant in Canada, including the fact that the applicant's parents, brother, sister, and wife remain supportive.

"The Act also requires that I consider whether the foreign entity or its prison system presents a serious threat to the offender's security or human rights. I note Mr. Goulet's medical condition, specifically his bipolar disorder and the significant weight loss that appears to have taken place since he was incarcerated."

Issuing his decision, Toews stated:

"Having considered the unique facts and circumstances of this application and the factors enumerated in section 10, I do not believe that a transfer would achieve the purposes of the Act."

In response to the application by Mr. Goulet for a judicial review of his decision, the Minister submitted that "it is possible to understand the basis of the decision from the reasons provided and that [the Minister's] discretion is sufficiently broad that judicial deference is owed." (Emphasis added.) However, the Court did not agree. The purposes of the current act in deciding on a request for transfer are rehabilitation of the offender and the administration of justice. The Minister clearly does not address how these purposes are not met in the Goulet case. His argument did not withstand the scrutiny of judicial review and he was asked to reconsider his decision "on the merits and in accordance with the requirements of the Act."

The Court's Ruling

In its review of the Minister's decision the Court ruled that the Minister acted unreasonably in denying Goulet's transfer and was eliminating any ability for the Court to review his decision by not providing any real justification for his decision. This is significant, as it shows that the Harper government is already operating on the basis of the changes it has put forward in Bill C-10 that would allow the Minister to determine, based completely on his personal belief rather than on the basis of objective criteria determined by public bodies to establish reasonable grounds or evidence, if the transfer would be a threat to "public safety." The Court ruled that Toews had to re-consider the request according to the statute and provide reasons for his decision so the Court could consider them to determine if they conformed with the statutes concerned.

In its ruling the Court stated: "In public regulation of this sort there is no such thing as absolute and untrammeled 'discretion,' that is that action can be taken on any ground or for any reason that can be suggested to the mind of the administrator; no legislative Act can, without express language, be taken to contemplate an unlimited arbitrary power exercisable for any purpose, however capricious or irrelevant, regardless of the nature or purpose of the statute. Fraud and corruption in the Commission may not be mentioned in such statutes but they are always implied as exceptions. 'Discretion' necessarily implies good faith in discharging public duty; there is always a perspective within which a statute is intended to operate; and any clear departure from its lines or objects is just as objectionable as fraud or corruption. Could an applicant be refused a permit because he had been born in another province, or because of the colour of his hair? [T]he legislature cannot be so distorted."

In addressing the apparent contradiction in the Minister's ruling and the facts, the Court stated: "The information given to the Minister almost entirely favoured Mr. Goulet's transfer to Canada. The Minister was seemingly concerned with the circumstances of the crime but even those details were not connected to any of the considerations set out in the Act. The Minister left Mr. Goulet with a recitation of some of the relevant facts and a bare conclusion that ran contrary to the overwhelming weight of the evidence."

Addressing the significance of Toews' refusal to provide reasons for his decision the Court stated:

"The Act specifically imposes a duty on the Minister to give reasons. Those reasons must be sufficient to allow a reviewing Court to understand why the decision-maker made his decision and to determine whether the conclusion is within the range of reasonable and acceptable."

The ruling concluded: "In short, one of the purposes for reasons is to allow for meaningful judicial review. It is not enough to say that the statutory factors have been considered. Some assessment of the evidence is necessary for the Court to determine if the ultimate conclusion is reasonable in the sense that it was actually based on the relevant statutory considerations. The acceptance as sufficient of a bare conclusion would immunize every decision from effective judicial review and permit administrative decisions that are arbitrary or capricious."

Canada's "We Oppose Torture Unless It Is
Useful to Save Lives" Position

- Pauline Easton -

Canadians demonstrate against any Canadian involvement with torture in Canada or abroad.

There have been three exchanges in the last week during Question Period between opposition MPs and Government Ministers on the use of information obtained through torture. These come following news that in December of 2010 the Harper government through its Minister of Public Safety Vic Toews issued a directive to the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) to use information gained from torture. The directive issued to CSIS read: "...in situations where a serious risk to public safety exists, and where lives may be at stake, I expect and thus direct CSIS to make the protection of life and property its overriding priority, and share the necessary information -- properly described and qualified -- with appropriate authorities."

The exchange in the Parliament frames a "policy debate on torture" to reverse well-known positions making torture unacceptable under any circumstances. It is an issue that was sorted out under the international rule of law following humankind's experience with nazi-fascism. Despite the fact that the verdict on the unacceptable use of torture no matter what the circumstances was already rendered, the covert agencies of the U.S. imperialists, the British and other former colonial powers and the dictatorships they established in various parts of the world to do their bidding have always used these nazi techniques. Now that they are on the offensive on the world scale, they have made this covert use of torture overt official policy or, at least, the topic of a "policy debate." The aim of such a debate is to allegedly look at the pros and cons of this or that practice and quote public safety as the justification for the immoral declaration that the end justifies the means. The stand humanity has already taken that No Means No! is not even acknowledged. Instead we are placed into the moral turpitude which asks you to eat a fellow passenger in a lifeboat or to let your mother die in order to let your children live. After all, it is argued, she has already lived her life but they have their lives ahead of them. Similarly workers are asked to make concessions to the demands of the monopolies for unfettered management rights. They are told to look at their situation as if it is a fire and you have to decide which children you should save in the fire. You are told that it is better to save some than none at all. The fact that no fireman worthy of the name goes to fight a fire calculating which children he or she should save is not even considered. A modern fireman goes to fight a fire with a well-organized contingent well-equipped and trained to save people first, building second and so on. On this basis, the firefighters perform miracles. Should their starting point be what the ruling elites are suggesting in their so-called policy debates, then the time is not far off when individual firemen get to wander about wondering whether they should go to the fire at all lest they themselves be injured.

Those who demand respect for the rule of law and rejection of torture are nonetheless led to argue for expediency -- that they cannot reject information which could save lives wondering if it comes out of torture. Clearly, what constitutes rule of law has been badly eroded and unless this is given due consideration, upholding an abstraction called rule of law will only give rise to frustration in the form of hopelessness, helplessness and humiliation. The policy debate must be rejected and the stand No Means No! must guide all considerations on this issue.

For the government to think that Canadians will accept its "We oppose torture unless it is useful to save lives" doubletalk is unbelievable. Canadians are left to wonder how the government gets away with such a position which it puts forward as its new raison d'etat -- the justification that these things are needed to safeguard the state against internal and external threats. According to the logic of the ruling elite which controls the state to increase their wealth in competition with all others of like kind, the state is permanent and must be defended in perpetuity while citizens come and go. It is not the citizens that define the state and its role, but the state that defines the citizens according to whether they fit in to the conception of national interest which serves the ruling elite. To defend these interests the executive power puts police powers at its disposal, including the intelligence agencies which operate at home and abroad. The logic which was said to inform this practice at one time was that these agencies were to be permitted to commit crimes in the line of duty, so long as the crimes had what is called "reasonable limits" which is to say that they were to be engaged for purposes of impeding the commission of a greater crime and for that purpose only. However, as time goes by, the world has witnessed public authorities engaging in revenge-seeking, as well as public servants, special forces and publicly paid private contractors acting with impunity. This then is how torture is also justified. Two principles are said to contradict one another: the opposition to torture and the saving of lives in which the saving of many lives trumps the damage to one life -- the one being tortured.

In the political opinion of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist- Leninist), Canadians should speak out against this pragmatic rendering of what it means to uphold the international convention against torture. It is irrational and pushes medieval morality lectures to justify what cannot be justified. Arguments about exceptional circumstances used to promote crimes against humanity will never provide security to the state, no matter how many people are tortured in the name of the greater good. The entire premise is irrational, immoral, self-serving and nothing short of nazi. That was the verdict of history. There is no need to revisit it.

Only the Imperialists Have Ever
Put Nazis into Power in Iran

- Hilary LeBlanc -

On February 5, the Globe and Mail monopoly media printed an article describing how Canada's Foreign Minister John Baird compared statements by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini to Adolf Hitler's 1925 book Mein Kampf, in which Hitler outlined his plans to take over Europe. Khameini had allegedly compared the state of Israel to a "cancerous tumour" and Iranian officials followed by stating that Iran would defend itself against any aggression directed against its own sovereignty. The latter statement was in reference to the continuing threats being made against Iran by the U.S. imperialists and Israel, including nuclear threats. U.S. President Obama entered office in 2008 pledging "to use all elements of American power to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon." Israel continues to make similar threats. For example, on January 17, 2008, Israel declared that "all options at Israel's disposal are legitimate in crippling Iran" and that a missile tested by Tel Aviv was "capable of carrying an 'unconventional payload,'" an obvious reference to the nuclear warheads Israel is known to possess.

Not surprisingly, Baird made his Nazi-related comments in Tel Aviv, where he was ending a week-long visit to the aggressor state of Israel. During the Israel visit, Baird crowed like a little schoolboy that Canada is "Israel's staunchest ally" and "greatest friend," indicating that no matter what crimes the state of Israel commits against the Palestinian and other peoples of the Middle East, including a nuclear attack against Iran, the warmongering Harper dictatorship will not raise a single word of criticism. Israel acquired its first nuclear weapons in 1967 and is believed to currently possess up to 400 nuclear warheads. Israel has a long history of war crimes and since 1955 has been cited in 42 resolutions passed by the United Nations, all of which have been vetoed by its funder and protector, the United States. Israel's recent airstrikes on the Gaza Strip alone represent blatant violations of international humanitarian law as defined in the Geneva Conventions, both in regard to the obligations of an Occupying Power and in the requirements of the laws of war. These include collective punishment, targeting civilians, and disproportionate military response.

Baird's mention of Nazis in relation to Iran is straight falsification of history because the only Nazis ever put into power in Iran were placed there in 1953 by the U.S. and British imperialists. In 1951, Iran's oil industry, then controlled by British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now British Petroleum), was nationalized by the Iranian Parliament. Britain instigated a world-wide boycott of Iranian oil and blockaded the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, just as the U.S. imperialists are doing today. According to the CIA's own declassified documents, the CIA bribed street thugs, clergy, politicians, and Iranian army officers to launch a propaganda campaign against democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh and his government, staging riots, and marching on his residence. Other CIA-paid men were brought to Teheran in buses and trucks and took over the streets, just like Nazi brownshirts. Over 800 people were killed as a result.

On August 19, 1953, U.S. and British intelligence agencies orchestrated the overthrow of Mossadegh and installed Mohammad-Reza Shah Pahlavi as monarch, who remained in power until he was overthrown in a popular revolt in 1979. Nazis and fascists played a major role in the coup. Mossadegh was replaced as Prime Minister by known Nazi collaborator, General Fazlollah Zahedi, who held that office until August 1955. Zahedi had attempted to establish a pro-Nazi government in Iran during the Second World War. Bahram Shahrokh, a trainee of Joseph Goebbels and Berlin Radio's Persian-language program announcer during the Nazi rule, became director of propaganda. Mr. Sharif-Emami, who also had spent some time in jail for his pro-Nazi activities in the 1940s, assumed several positions after the 1953 coup, including Secretary General of the Oil Industry, President of the Senate and Prime Minister (twice).

Baird's disinformation about the Nazis is an obvious attempt to paint Iran as an aggressor state. This is part of the imperialist plan, led by the U.S., to demonize Iran and influence world opinion in order to justify an imperialist attack. The main target of the propaganda is disinformation about Iran's nuclear program. To set the record straight, first, there is no evidence that Iran's program is directed toward building nuclear weapons. Second, Iran has the right to develop whatever weapons it chooses in order to defend itself from aggression. Third, the United States, which sets itself as the "moral arbitrer" of the world, is the only country ever to use nuclear weapons against another country (i.e., the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan) and possesses over 5,000 nuclear warheads. The U.S., along with its agents in Canada and elsewhere, is trying to instigate a military confrontation with Iran, sending additional warships and special forces into the region, using drones in Iranian airspace and numerous other provocations. Iran has not invaded anyone for hundreds of years, and both the U.S. and the International Atomic Energy Agency admit that Iran has no nuclear weapons. All this notwithstanding, the constant barrage of war propaganda against Iran by Baird and others, which is itself a crime against the peace, is unending.

Government Uses Blackwater Mercenaries to
Train Special Forces

There are many things Canadians need to know about what is taking place in Canada and abroad but little attention is paid to them or their significance. One of these things is the Harper government's justification for the use of a private company to train Canadian special forces. This private company gained its notoriety under the name Blackwater, but changed it to Xe to distance itself from the infamy connected to what it does. It is notorious for its use of illegal methods to achieve results which favour the private interests it represents. The government's justification for using Blackwater is that it must give Canadians the best training there is. It immediately raised the bogeyman that anyone who opposes this decision opposes the safety of Canadian forces. This use of sophistry makes it impossible to have a rational discussion on the fundamental issue -- what these special forces do and why they do it.

Demonstration in San Diego, California, against a Blackwater training facility, September 13, 2008. The demonstration also marked the first anniversary of a massacre committed by Blackwater mercenaries in Nisour Square, Baghdad, in which 17 Iraqi civilians were killed. (OBRag.com)

For the Harper government there is no problem. It likes the results and it likes the methods. For the Opposition there is a quandary. Does the Opposition want the results of what the special forces do, but not the methods used to get these results? They will have to sort out this quandary for themselves.

For Canadians, there is no quandary. They do not like the results and they do not like the methods used to attain those results. Canadians want peace, they want security and they want the rights of all to be upheld. If that is the starting point of consideration, there are ways to achieve those results. It cannot be done by keeping the fundamental issue of whose interests are served and who decides in the shade and then asking people to support one side or another which they have had no role whatsoever in setting.

Printed below is the exchange in the Parliament on February 1 which produced the Harper government's justification.

***

Ms. Christine Moore (Abitibi-Temiscamingue, NDP): Mr. Speaker, the Department of National Defence has awarded over half a million dollars in contracts to the mercenary group Xe Services, formally known as Blackwater, whose reputation was so tainted that its management had to change its name. That is not all. Xe Services also received $1.8 million in contracts from the public works department. Blackwater often made the headlines for its many violations of international law and human rights.

Can the minister confirm and justify the awarding of those contracts?

Hon. Peter MacKay (Minister of National Defence, CPC): Mr. Speaker, the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces take all necessary steps to ensure that the men and women of the Canadian forces have access to the best training forces available and the best training facilities, and that includes, typically, providing our own trainers. However, sometimes it does involve contracting outside trainers when it is the most cost-effective option.

The type of training provided by Xe is highly specialized. It is operationally essential. In fact, it allows Canadian personnel deploying on international missions, including military police, special forces and army operational support, to have that best training possible.

Christine Moore: Mr. Speaker, we are talking about $2.4 million in taxpayers' money that was given to a private enterprise with a dubious reputation. The government should be ashamed of itself for using the services of a mercenary group that seems to think it is above the law. Our armed forces are among the best in the world and we are recognized around the globe for how well our soldiers are trained.

Why is the government employing a group with a reputation as cowboys to train our troops, when we should be training our soldiers to promote Canadian values like obeying international law?

Peter MacKay: Mr. Speaker, that kind of histrionics is absolutely inaccurate.

As I mentioned a moment ago, we give our Canadian Forces the best possible training to prepare them for mission success, to prepare them for very complex, dangerous overseas missions in some cases. When it is our special forces and our military police, we want to ensure they are best prepared to take on those challenges.

I will never apologize for providing the necessary resources to give them that best opportunity to succeed and come home safe to their families with the pride and the support of this government and the Canadian people behind them every time.

(Hansard)

Pseudoscience in the Service of Imperialism

Myth of the "Aggressive Gene"

- Dougal MacDonald -

The monopoly media recently made much to-do of a study published in a European philosophical journal which concluded that the main cause of war is not imperialism but a genetically determined male warrior instinct. The study's pseudoscientific conclusions originate in research by Nazi biologists conducted to justify the Reich's murderous policies at home and in the occupied territories. The author's field of study, known as evolutionary psychology,[1] emerged from the study of animal behavior or ethology, which was established as a separate branch of biology in the 1930s by Austrian biologists, notably Konrad Lorenz. Lorenz joined the Nazi Party in 1938 and accepted a university research chair in genetics under the Nazi regime.

Basic genetic research was important for the Reich's National Socialist ideology, which Lorenz fully supported. In his application for Nazi membership, Lorenz wrote: "My whole scientific work is devoted to the ideas of the National Socialists." Lorenz's research openly supported ideas of racial hygiene, i.e., state-sanctioned policies mandating that only certain groups of individuals should be allowed to procreate in order to create and maintain a "superior race." One of his main theoretical assumptions was that all human social behavior is instinctually directed toward species preservation, i.e., the preservation of the so-called Aryan race, a blatant attempt to justify Nazi aggression.

The myth of an aggressive gene is a recurring theme of imperialist propaganda. In August 2006, a New Zealand scientist claimed that the indigenous Maori people of New Zealand carried an aggressive or warrior gene, an attempt to explain away the Maori people's continuing fight for their hereditary rights. In 2008, California biologists purportedly showed that in the course of history, the most aggressive group was "singled out by natural selection," i.e., was "superior," providing a pseudoscientific rationale for U.S. domination. In 2009, a notorious psychology professor from University of Western Ontario, speaking at a racist U.S. conference on "Preserving Western Civilization," stated that Muslims have an aggressive personality and are less amenable to reason, clearly implying that state attacks on Muslims are necessary and inevitable.

The imperialists also propagate a "more reasonable" view that genes do not determine behavior but do create a predisposition.[2] In 1992, a researcher suggested that an XYY chromosome anomaly in males caused criminal behavior, a genetic connection long sought by eugenicists. This claim was later retracted but was then recycled in the watered-down form that genes may not determine criminal behavior but predispose for it. This is more pseudoscience. In fact, assumptions that a specific gene or genes affect, cause, or pass down behaviours of any kind to the next generation are nonsense. As three leading U.S. biologists commented: "No one has ever been able to relate any aspect of human social behavior to any particular gene or set of genes and no one has ever suggested an experimental plan for doing so. Thus all statements about the genetics of human behavior are purely speculative."[3]

Konrad Lorenz continued his Nazi-inspired research and publishing after the Second World War, partly funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. Others took a similar path.[4] Lorenz supposedly regretted his Nazi past but his fundamental ideas of innate aggression and species preservation at all costs never changed. In the prologue of his 1963 book, On Aggression, Lorenz wrote: "The subject of this book is aggression, that is to say the fighting instinct in beast and man which is directed against members of the same species." In his 1973 book, Civilized Man's Seven Deadly Sins, Lorenz declared that "Our sympathy with the asocial defective...endangers the security of the non-defective," a view that ultimately points toward concentration camp extermination of "asocial defectives." In 1973, in recognition of his long and loyal service justifying the crimes of Nazism and imperialism, Lorenz was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Notes

1. "Evolutionary psychology" (EP) falsely assumes that all human nature is the product of a set of genetically inherited behaviours that have proven useful to human survival. EP is a form of genetic determinism, the idea that genes decide everything, especially what humans "must" do in order to survive. EP is based on the naturalistic fallacy that what animals do is necessarily good, which is also the foundation of eugenics, the pseudoscience that declares that human beings can be improved through controlled breeding.

2. Rose, Steven, Lewontin, Richard and Kamin, Leon. Not in Our Genes. Penguin. p. 251.

3. A "gene" was originally conceived of as a particle that transmitted hereditary traits from parent to offspring. Later, it became clear that such particles did not exist but that such functions were performed by portions of DNA molecules.

4. One example is Robert Ardrey. In his 1961 book, African Genesis, Ardrey argued that war and interpersonal aggression was the driving force behind human evolution. In his 1963 book, The Territorial Imperative, he argued that both animals and man had an internal drive to take, hold and defend a particular area, a notion similar to the Nazi concept of lebensraum. In the 1980s, U.S. neo-Nazi groups actually initiated a movement called the Northwest Territorial Imperative which called on all neo-Nazis to move to five northern states and declare them an "Aryan homeland."

For Your Information
Use of Information Obtained from Torture

Parliamentary Exchanges

February 7, 2012

NDP MP Jack Harris said, "The public safety minister has directed CSIS to use information that has been extracted through torture. As long as there is a market for information derived from torture, torture will exist. Why is the government getting Canada into the torture business?"

Minister of Public Safety Vic Toews replied to the question with this stellar example of what is nowadays passed off as "ambiguity."

"[I]nformation obtained by torture is always discounted. However, the problem is whether one can safely ignore the information if Canadian lives and property are at stake," the not so apt Mr. Toews said.

Interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae then asked Minister Toews for "the exact nature and wording of the directive that [the Minister] issued to CSIS employees? Will he also explain how it is that the directive that he is putting forward is in any way compatible with Canada's obligations under international law and the ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada? It is critical that those two points be clearly made to the minister who just gave the answer."

Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, then came to the rescue of the maladroit Mr. Toews.

"Mr. Speaker, we need to be clear. Canada does not condone torture, we do not engage in torture and CSIS and its employees are bound by Canadian law. The minister of course clarified what I would hope the leader of the opposition and the third party would agree with, which is that, in situations where a serious risk to public safety exists and where lives may be at stake, CSIS should make the protection of life and property its overriding priority.

"Of course we oppose the use of torture but we believe that Canada's security agencies should prioritize the protection of life."

So, to be "very clear," Kenney "clearly " said that we "clearly oppose torture unless it is committed to save lives." (Emphasis added.)

February 8, 2012

Mrs. Nycole Turmel (Leader of the Opposition, NDP): Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives need to rein in their Reform Party wing, especially those in cabinet.

Yesterday, the Minister of Public Safety said, "information obtained by torture is always discounted. However...". What does he mean by "however"? There is no however and no but. People either condone or they do not. Which is it: no however, no if or no but?

Hon. Peter MacKay (Minister of National Defence, CPC): Mr. Speaker, Canada's position, the Conservative government's position, has always been clear. We do not condone torture. We do not engage in torture as a country. CSIS, its employees and all of our defence security officials are clear on that and they are bound by Canada's laws. Our government expects all of our officials to abide by those laws.

We will always protect Canada's security and Canada's human interests.

Nycole Turmel: Mr. Speaker, I must say that the minister's reply is interesting. If that is the case, will he withdraw his directive?

Not only is it immoral to obtain information by torture, but the information is often false or incorrect. We know that a person who is being tortured will say anything to make the torture stop. The minister has opened the door to abuse, torture and wrongdoing, as we saw in the Maher Arar case. Just a transfer to a country where torture is acceptable. No big deal.

Does the minister realize that this does not make sense? Again, will he withdraw the directive --

Peter MacKay: Mr. Speaker, I will repeat that Canada does not condone the use of torture and does not engage in this practice.

What the hon. member opposite appears to be indicating is that, under no circumstances, if information came into the possession of Canadian officials that would stop the death, a mass death perhaps, such as a bomb threat at the Air Canada Centre, that we would be forced to refuse to use any information that would save lives. That is not the position of this government.

Mr. Jack Harris (St. John's East, NDP): Mr. Speaker, the problem is that information from torture is unreliable. Has the government learned nothing from the Maher Arar affair?

We know there are countries and agencies that use torture as a matter of course but, instead of moving to stop this, the government turns a blind eye. That is what it really means when the Minister of Public Safety directs CSIS to use information extracted through torture.

Torture will continue if the information keeps being used.

Will the minister acknowledge, as his predecessor did as public safety minister, that torture is morally wrong and information extracted through torture is unreliable?

Hon. Vic Toews (Minister of Public Safety, CPC): Mr. Speaker, I cannot be any clearer. Our government does not condone torture and certainly does not engage in torture.

However, when we have information that Canadian lives are at risk we will act without delay. Canadians expect no less. The security of Canadians is paramount. We will use information that comes to our attention that may save the lives of Canadians, and we will do it without dispatch.

Jack Harris: Mr. Speaker, torture is prohibited under the Criminal Code of Canada and the United Nations Convention against Torture, to which we are a signatory.

The minister claims not to condone torture and then, however, he opens the door wide for other countries to use torture and for us to use that information.

In 2009 the Conservative public safety minister said, "If there's any indication...that torture may have been used, that information is discounted."

Why has the government flip-flopped and thrown open the doors to use immoral and unreliable information extracted through torture?

Vic Toews: Mr. Speaker, the member is someone who, if he knew there was a plane with some of his constituents on it, men women and children, and he obtained information which came from a questionable source, he would do nothing. That is the position of the NDP. The NDP would not take the appropriate action to ensure that the lives of Canadians were protected.

That is why those members are over there. They are not fit to be trusted with the security of Canadians.

February 9, 2012

Mr. Joe Comartin (Windsor-Tecumseh, NDP): Mr. Speaker, there is no compromising when it comes to torture. Either we are for it or we are against it. The government says that it does not employ torture, but it is okay if others do so. The Conservatives would use information obtained at any cost. The Conservatives cannot ignore international conventions. The government is not above the laws of Canada. The law is the law.

Where is this government's respect for Canadian law?

Peter MacKay: Mr. Speaker, our government has always obeyed the law, and our position is very clear: Canada does not condone the use of torture and does not engage in this practice. That is clear. CSIS and its employees are subject to Canadian law. That continues to be our government's position.

Joe Comartin: Mr. Speaker, that is not the message Canadians are getting.

Yesterday, the Minister of National Defence acted irresponsibly by suggesting that the Air Canada Centre was a prime target for terrorists. Then the Minister of Public Safety soon followed with his own hypothetical scenarios about planes full of Newfoundlanders being blown up. All of that to back up the government's irresponsible message to other countries that Canada is in the market for information based on torture.

The government should oppose torture, no question about it. When will it rescind the directive?

Peter MacKay: Mr. Speaker, let me be clear again, Canada does not condone torture and does not use torture. However, Canada will use information to save lives.

Let us talk about logic. Yesterday, the NDP justice critic stood outside the House and basically accepted the position of the government. Then he came back inside the House and tried to suggest some other high-handed position. That is something that confuses Canadians.

Our position is clear. Our position sends a strong message to those working in the defence and security sector and to our allies.

Joe Comartin: Mr. Speaker, it is not a message from Canadians. That is not where we are at. The Conservatives have lost their way on this point.

The government is now saying that torture is okay. So much for being the law-and-order government. In this case it may as well torture people right here in Canada by the message it's sending out.

Then yesterday, or the day before, the Minister of Justice was out publicly advocating for people to shoot warning shots. We heard that prisoners should hang themselves. We heard that from the Conservatives. People should shoot from the hip. Torture is okay. Those are the messages we are getting. This is not the Wild West; this is Canada.

Peter MacKay: Mr. Speaker, what a litany of misinformation and convoluted facts. The NDP justice critic's words yesterday were so twisted it would take a troop of boy scouts to try to figure out all the knots that he tied himself into.

The reality is Canadians know exactly where the government stands, so do our defence and security officials. That is what is important. That rhetoric coming from the member opposite is not helping to keep Canadians safe in Canada.

(Hansard)

Pragmatic "Policy Debate" in the Media

Walking the Moral High Wire Between Terrorism and Torture
- Andrew Coyne, Postmedia News, February 10, 2012 -

The general policy that Canadian security agents are, in the ordinary pursuit of their duties, forbidden to knowingly use evidence obtained by torture remains in effect.

The issue with regard to torture is not whether it is an evil, but whether it is a necessary evil. The depravity of inflicting terrible pain upon a helpless prisoner is self-evident. But the case against it is not only one of morals, but efficacy. Information given up under torture might well have been obtained by less repugnant means, while the information to which torture uniquely holds the key is as often as not unreliable: prisoners under torture, it is often observed, will say anything to make it stop.

But these are matters of empiricism. To seek refuge behind the claim that "torture doesn't work" is a moral evasion: for what if it did? Indeed, if torture never worked, it would seem strange that so many countries make use of it; possibly prisoners will say anything, including the truth. Conversely, to seek instead the comfort of the absolute, declaring that torture can never be justified even if does work, is to leave oneself exposed to the classic "ticking time bomb" defence. If you knew with certainty that by the use of torture you could save thousands of lives, it would be morally obtuse to refuse, and condemn those thousands to death. And let us not pretend in this day and age that such a grotesque scenario is inconceivable.

The answer to the "ticking time bomb" defence is rather that you could not know such information with certainty -- not before you'd actually tortured some poor soul. You might have the wrong guy. He might not talk. He might tell you a pack of lies. There might not be any ticking time bomb. It might have been stopped by other means. There are a hundred possibilities other than the one in which torture, and torture alone, yields the one indispensable piece of information without which the bomb would, without a doubt, have gone off. To cross as bright a moral line as torture, you need a lot more than a hunch.

But that is not the issue that confronts us in the controversy that has consumed Parliament for much of the past week: whether it is ever permissible to make use of information obtained by torture in other countries, as security forces were instructed in a recently unearthed government directive. To be clear, the general policy that Canadian security agents are, in the ordinary pursuit of their duties, forbidden to knowingly use evidence obtained by torture remains in effect. The directive instructs that "in exceptional circumstances," where the threat is urgent and there is not time to verify that the information received was not obtained by torture, they may nevertheless make use of it. It still wouldn't be admissible as evidence to convict someone in court, but it might be used, say, to evacuate a railway station.

Isn't this just the "ticking time bomb" argument again? No. The fallacy there, remember, was that you could not know in advance whether by using torture you would find the ticking time bomb. But in this case the situation is the reverse: you've been handed the ticking time bomb, and are wondering if torture was the source. And if it was, well, the torture has already occurred. Someone else has already crossed that bright line. They could not know in advance what information their prisoner possessed, and as such were not justified in using torture to obtain it; but since they have done so, you are now in a position to judge its value. You'd still want to be careful how you used it, for the reasons discussed. But would you really just ignore it altogether? Really?

Not convinced? Let's leave the ticking time bomb scenarios out of it. Suppose, rather, we were talking about some life-saving medical advance. But suppose that this, too, was derived from torture. Actually, we do not need to suppose: exactly such a dilemma has confronted modern-day medical researchers with regard to the hideous human experiments carried out by the Nazis. These were almost unimaginably barbaric, and generally worthless: pseudo-scientific rubbish, performed with as little regard for scientific rigour as for human decency. Yet here and there, for example in the field of hypothermia, they seem to have yielded some genuinely useful data: information that could save lives. Are we obliged to discard that information altogether, because of its tainted provenance?

Of course, there's an important difference in the two situations: the Nazis are no longer with us, whereas today's practitioners of torture are very much in action, in countries around the world. It is legitimate to be concerned that Canada's willingness to use the information they produce would, in effect, create a "demand" for torture (though I rather doubt the supply would dry up in our absence) or indeed open the door to the sort of nod-and-wink outsourcing of brutality we have seen before. That would certainly be a concern if it were generally the practice to use such information, but it cannot be ruled out even in the more circumscribed policy the government has adopted.

Still, unless we are prepared to say that, having received word of a plot to, say, blow up a plane over Montreal tomorrow, we would do nothing with it on the off chance that it might have been obtained through torture, I think we have to live with that possibility.

Why Canada's New Torture-Friendly Policy Won't Work
- Thomas Walkom, Toronto Star, February 10, 2012 -

News that Canada has given its imprimatur to torture came and went with a minimum of fuss.

There was the usual one-day brouhaha in the Commons after The Canadian Press revealed last week that, in 2010, the government quietly reversed a policy requiring Canada's security agencies to stay away from information gleaned through torture.

Predictably perhaps, Amnesty International attacked the move. But in most newspapers, the story was back-page news.

Many Canadians seemed to tacitly buy the so-called ticking-time-bomb explanation - that torture is used only to prevent immediate catastrophes and that any security agency that refused to act on such information, however derived, would be derelict in its duty.

Which, in its own limited way, is true. If, for instance, Morocco's notoriously ruthless secret police told the Canadian Security Intelligence Service that a bomb was about to explode on Parliament Hill, it would make sense to evacuate the buildings first and ask questions about the provenance of that information later.

However, ticking-time-bomb cases are so rare as to be almost non-existent. Countries like Morocco that use torture employ it not just for exceptional threats but as a standard investigative technique.

Thus Syrian jailers tortured Canadian Maher Arar in 2002 -- not because they believed he was about to blow up downtown Damascus, but because that's what Syrian jailers do.

Naturally, Arar told his torturers whatever they wanted to hear. His "confession" was then passed on to Canada.

But, as Justice Dennis O'Connor's inquiry into the affair later discovered (and CSIS, to its credit, confirmed), the confession was useless -- because it just wasn't true.

And that is the practical problem with torture. It is unreliable.

Security agencies presumably understand this. But they want access to information obtained under torture anyway.

Why? I think the reasons are largely bureaucratic. Intelligence agencies must produce information if they are to justify their existence. Torture always produces information. Therefore torture is valuable.

The fact that all or some of this information may be incorrect is secondary.

In 2008, for instance, then-CSIS head Jim Judd warned the government that it would be impossible to prosecute so-called security-certificate cases against suspected terrorists without recourse to information from states that use torture.

Judd was using this argument to justify the practice. But his statement also revealed the paucity of real evidence CSIS had against five Muslim men then detained under security certificates that the agency wanted to deport.

Tellingly, the courts ended up freeing two of those men.

There's more.

As former Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobucci found when he headed a judicial inquiry into security, Canadian agencies have, at times, subcontracted intelligence-gathering to foreign torturers.

Thus the RCMP submitted questions to Syrian interrogators who were torturing Canadian citizen Abdullah Almalki in 2002. Around the same time, CSIS agents travelled to Egypt to get information about another Canadian, Ahmad El Maati, who was being tortured there. Iacobucci concluded that Canadian officials were complicit in the torture of both.

At first glance, the government's new policy appears to preclude this kind of mistreatment. Information obtained under torture is to be used only in "exceptional circumstances" when lives and property are at risk.

But who decides when circumstances are exceptional? Who makes the calculation that lives are at risk?

The answer is that the security agencies do. Just as they did with Almalki and El Maati, just as they always do. Torture lives on. It is official Canadian government policy.

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