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David Cronin
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Friday, 19 March 2010 09:16 |
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Inter Press Service
BRUSSELS - Equipment designed for torturing prisoners is still being exported from European Union (EU) countries despite a four-year-old ban on such trade, according to a new report by Amnesty International.
The human rights group has found that companies active in several of the EU's 27 states have exploited loopholes in controls aimed at putting an end to the selling of instruments of torture.
The EU rules - in force since 2006 - need to be widened to cover a number of devices that remain outside their scope, Amnesty has argued. It highlights how Nidec, a company trading from Spain, has been dealing in 'stun cuffs' in the past few years. Intended for restraining a detainee by placing them around his or her limbs, such cuffs inflict a painful electric shock. Unlike similar "stun belts", the cuffs are not explicitly banned by the EU's rules.
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Patrick J. Buchanan
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Thursday, 18 March 2010 08:15 |
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Creators
Actually, Joe set himself up. From the moment he set foot on Israeli soil, our vice president was in full pander mode.
First, he headed to Yad Vashem memorial, where he put on a yarmulke and declared Israel "a central bolt in our existence."
"For world Jewry," Joe went on, presumably including 5 million Americans, "Israel is the heart. ... Israel is the light. ... Israel is the hope."
Meeting Shimon Peres the next day, Joe confessed that when he first visited at age 29, "Israel captured my heart."
In Peres' guestbook, he wrote, "The bond between our two nations has been and remains unshakeable."
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Daniel Levy
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Thursday, 18 March 2010 08:11 |
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Guarduan, UK
There was a moment of rare clarity this week for America's efforts to advance Israeli-Palestinian peace. The US vice-president Joe Biden was on a visit, ostensibly a charm offensive to an Israel that has been heretofore neglected by the Obama administration's most senior echelons, and an opportunity to discuss broad regional issues, notably Iran. By coincidence, Biden's trip coincided with special Middle East envoy George Mitchell's launching of indirect, or proximity, talks, between the Israelis and Palestinians. Perhaps less coincidental, Biden's presence was greeted by announcements of dramatic new plans for Israeli settlement expansion in East Jerusalem. A crisis in the relaunched Israeli-Palestinian peace talks had apparently arrived a little earlier than expected – day zero to be precise. Not that those resumed negotiations were being greeted by much more than scepticism anyway. For most observers and even participants, the customary and polite suspension of disbelief that normally accompanies a new round of peace talks was barely on display.
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Thomas Farrell
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Tuesday, 16 March 2010 10:01 |
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Kim Sengupta
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Monday, 15 March 2010 00:59 |
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US fury at ex-MI5 chief's claims that Jack Bauer inspired interrogation techniques
By Kim Sengupta – The Independent, UK
American officials have reacted with dismay to the charge by the former head of MI5 that US authorities deliberately concealed mistreatment of terror suspects from their British colleagues. The unexpected public statement by Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller is said to have significantly added to the strains in the relationship between the two countries on intelligence matters.
At the same time, the former secret service chief faced criticism from human rights groups who expressed scepticism about her claims of being kept in the dark by Washington. Amnesty International said it was "extremely surprising" that she and her organisation were unaware of the allegations of abuse which were being widely aired.
The Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said Dame Eliza's "revelations make an unanswerable case for a judicial inquiry into the alleged mistreatment and torture by security services".
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