Psst...Torture's OK. Pass It On.

Vic Toews, Minister of Torture and Morality

We've always known that the Tories mission is to makeover Canada into a far-right Republican spa resort by stealth, since most Canadians hold values to the left of their lunacy. So, they change tax rules for film financing here and chip into same sex marriage by removing it as a right for foreigners there. Bit by bit until next thing you know we're a vacation paradise for Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum after they lose the Republican nomination.

Well, here's another tasty treat of Tory hypocritical fuckery to enjoy. Minister of Public Safety, Vic Toews, quietly told CSIS that it was OK to use "information" obtained under torture to "make the protection of life and property its overriding priority."

Will this be effective? Of course it will. Why, if some Tory banker sticks bamboo under my nails and attaches electrodes to my genitals I'll confess to keying his or her Rolls Royce - even if I didn't do it. In fact, I'll tell you anything you want to hear. Isn't that great? It's like a way to get information from anyone on anything. In fact, to really protect life and property we ought to find volunteers to be like those bald people in the jacuzzi in Minority Report's department of pre-crime. It could be an internship opportunity to serve their country for budding young conservatives - like Ezra Levant - to help us find out wherever in the world evil is being done and to stomp it out with our now highly funded Armed Forces.

Or maybe that information extraction technique only works on brown people of the Muslim persuasion. Unfortunate for them that they have to save Canadian lives and property by surrendering their um... lives and property.

No matter, what's important is that this stuff is an excellent opportunity to protect our way of life. While we're at it maybe we could use torture to defend the traditional definition of marriage by discovering those who are about to threaten it - a cause dear to Vic's heart. And maybe through the creative use of torture we could find out exactly when an embryo becomes a human so we know when to ban abortion and imprison women who seek it out - maybe even before they seek it out. Or is it hypocritical and unChristian to degrade the sanctity of human life in order to protect the sanctity of human life? Perhaps we can torture someone to find out. Or, better yet, ignore the problem and just head on to the gay bathhouse with Vic "Minister of Family Values" Toews for a little two on one fun.

Now the Minister of Family Values has struck again, this time making an appearance a couple weeks ago on "Co-ed night" with another young lady at a Winnipeg Gay Bathhouse called "Aquarius" . Toews arrived with the woman while wearing a hat and sunglasses and the couple rented a room where Toews stayed in the entire evening while his young lady friend cruised the bathhouse looking for playmates. We are told a husband and wife couple joined Vic and his friend in their room for over an hour before Toews left on his own a couple hours later. We don't know the details of what went on in that room......we will leave that to your imagination.

Ottawa tells spies to use possible torture info in ‘exceptional’ cases - The Globe and Mail:

'via Blog this'

Canada Wikileaks Releases: Tories & Liberals Lie All The Time

Lies on wheels: Harper on "Arctic sovereignty"... and everything else

Our government lies to us, they do it constantly and they do it without blinking. That's the only conclusion that can be drawn from the revelations contained in the U.S. diplomatic memos leaked by Wikileaks in April and May.

During the election campaign it was easy to overlook these nuggets of insight into how our government works - and how it is thought of by U.S. diplomats and state department officials. But it's a good lesson is in what we ought to expect from both the Liberals and the Tories.

Revealed in these memos is the honest truth about the fact that back in 2003, on the same day that Chretien was accepting kudos for supposedly refusing to join the US invasion of Iraq, the highest level Canadian officials were meeting with their U.S. counterparts. They were offering Canadian military assistance in whatever "discreet" way was possible.

As the briefing note describes the message coming from the Liberals:

"Following the meeting, political director Jim Wright emphasized that, despite public statements that the Canadian assets in the Straits of Hormuz will remain in the region exclusively to support Enduring Freedom, they will also be available to provide escort services in the Straits and will otherwise be discreetly useful to the military effort.

"The two ships in the Straits now are being augmented by two more en route, and there are patrol and supply aircraft in the U.A.E. [United Arab Emirates] which are also prepared to 'be useful.'"

And the double-dealing methods of the Liberals were inherited gleefully by the Stephen Harper Conservatives. Harper made a name for himself as the defender of the Canadian Arctic, promising increased defence spending to maintain Canadian interests. This chest-thumping is part of a wider "cold war" in the Arctic in response to the fact that climate change is creating the potential to not only access massive suspected reserves of oil but also the possible Northwest Passage from Europe to Asia, dreamed of at least since John Cabot made an effort to find it in 1497. Control of the passage would be of massive strategic and commercial value.

But while Harper talked big, he has done little, a fact that didn't go unnoticed to U.S. Ambassador at the time, David Jacobson. He joked that while Harper said "the issue has never been more important to our country... one could paraphrase to state 'the North has never been more important to our party" since it helped the Tories win the 2006 election. However, while Harper talked big in public, he did nothing in private leading a diplomatic memo to state:

"That the PM's public stance on the Arctic may not reflect his private, perhaps more pragmatic, priorities, however, was evident in the fact that during several hours together with Ambassador Jacobson on January 7 and 8, which featured wide-ranging conversations, the PM did not once mention the Arctic."

And in a move strongly reminiscent of Jean Chretien's on Iraq, Harper has worked behind the scenes to try and find a way to extend the mission in Afghanistan beyond the promised end date of 2011. The documents state that as far back as March, 2009 the Tories were "putting all options back on the table" with regards to extending the mission. A senior advisor to Harper, in a meeting with U.S. officials asked for patience while "public rhetoric" caught up with reality.

And, during a meeting with NATO chief, General Rasmussen, in January 2010, Harper promised to consider the option of keeping troops on, only noting that America's withdrawal was "unhelpful" to him making the case for extension. He also noted that they needed to "manage" the public message and, from Harper's perspective deal with the political difficulties generated by the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. By the end of 2010 Harper had agreed to extend the "non-combat" mission, though there will still be Canadian soldiers on the ground.

Lastly, the Wikileaks memos note that Harper did an "about face" on the question of an elected senate. The Tories and before them the Reform Party have had a strong position of support for senate reform, to make the body elected. Yet, even though the Tories have been in power for five years they have made no moves to implement this platform. In fact, the first thing that Harper did upon receiving a majority in the recent election was to appoint three Conservatives who lost to the Senate. Back in 2008, a U.S. diplomat noted wryly:

"[The appointment of 18 senators is] a major about-face for a PM and a party that long campaigned for an elected upper chamber. The cost of the eighteen new senators also conflicts with political messaging about the need for official belt tightening."

What all this reveals is that from the point of view of the Wikileaks memos, the Tories and the Liberals are harder and harder to tell apart. In fact, with the revelation that CSIS continues to secretly and illegally deliver the names of "terror suspects" to U.S. authorities - a process exposed by the plight of Maher Arar - it is clear that our elected politicians are in good company in engaging in dirty politics, unaccountability and a lack of transparency.