The European Union urged the governor of Texas on Tuesday to halt all executions before the U.S. state carries out its 400th death sentence since reinstatement of the penalty in 1976.
"The European Union notes with great regret the upcoming execution in the State of Texas," the Portuguese presidency of the 27-nation bloc said in a statement.
Society's Child
Libya on Saturday denounced a decision by Bulgaria's president to pardon six medics from life jail terms in an AIDS case as a "betrayal" and an "illegal procedure."
"The detainees should have been detained upon their arrival (in Sofia), and not freed in this celebratory and illegal manner," Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel Rahman Shalgham told a news conference in Tripoli.
"The detainees should have been detained upon their arrival (in Sofia), and not freed in this celebratory and illegal manner," Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel Rahman Shalgham told a news conference in Tripoli.
Bulgaria may write off the $54 million debt Libya owes it, Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev said Wednesday.
He said the move must not be seen as the Bulgarian government's response to Libya's decision to release five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, now a Bulgarian national.
He said the move must not be seen as the Bulgarian government's response to Libya's decision to release five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, now a Bulgarian national.
A peace divorced from history and the real world is no peace at all.Book review of The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace by Dennis Ross HarperCollins, New York, 2004.
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| ©Signs of the Times |
Today I read the article Overcoming the conspiracy against Palestine, and I began thinking about the "Cyprus problem" and the "Palestinian problem", the sad stories behind them and the conditions that currently prevail in each country.
You see, when an army invades a country, confiscates the land and kills and imprisons the people, suddenly the whole sum of these people that have been killed, imprisoned and kicked out of their homeland become a "problem". The psychopathic leaders that caused the suffering have the gall to claim that the oppressed and beleaguered people of an invaded nation are the "problem". These psychopaths fume at the idea that their victims would dare to demand their rights, dare to talk of freedom and raise up their voices and arms towards their oppressors. Apparently those that survived the onslaught of the psychopaths in power should be grateful that their lives were spared.
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| U.S. General Dan McNeill, Commander of NATO's forces in Afghanistan, |
A girl accused of killing her parents and younger brother says she was still traumatized by their vicious deaths when she accepted a jailhouse marriage proposal from the much-older man she blames for the murders.
The 13-year-old, on the witness stand at her trial Wednesday for the second straight day, was grilled repeatedly about her actions in the hours and days after her family members were slaughtered in their Medicine Hat home.
Crown prosecutor Stephanie Cleary asked during her cross-examination why the girl would agree to marry her boyfriend Jeremy Steinke, 23 at the time, if she was as horrified by her family's deaths as she testified she was.
"My psychologist says it's post-traumatic stress disorder," the girl practically whispered to the court.
The 13-year-old, on the witness stand at her trial Wednesday for the second straight day, was grilled repeatedly about her actions in the hours and days after her family members were slaughtered in their Medicine Hat home.
Crown prosecutor Stephanie Cleary asked during her cross-examination why the girl would agree to marry her boyfriend Jeremy Steinke, 23 at the time, if she was as horrified by her family's deaths as she testified she was.
"My psychologist says it's post-traumatic stress disorder," the girl practically whispered to the court.
A former U.S. Army private charged with taking part in the gang rape of an Iraqi girl and murdering her and her family should be sentenced to die if he is found guilty, U.S. government prosecutors said on Tuesday.
Well-known brands in the West have been linked to unpaid Chinese prison labour in a Sky News investigation.
Both Coca-Cola and the giant US retailer Wal-Mart have been implicated in the prisons practice of forcing inmates to work - although the Chinese Embassy in London denies the claims.
Businessmen in Zhejiang Province in southern China told Sky News that finding prison labour was not a problem.
The private companies pay the authorities; the jails provide the labour; and the prisoners are paid nothing.
Human rights groups have condemned the use of forced labour in China's jails, which has been likened to modern-day slavery.
Briton John Sims was sent to prison in Ningbo last year on what he describes as trumped up charges. He found himself on a prison production line making Coca-Cola-branded Christmas decorations.
Both Coca-Cola and the giant US retailer Wal-Mart have been implicated in the prisons practice of forcing inmates to work - although the Chinese Embassy in London denies the claims.
Businessmen in Zhejiang Province in southern China told Sky News that finding prison labour was not a problem.
The private companies pay the authorities; the jails provide the labour; and the prisoners are paid nothing.
Human rights groups have condemned the use of forced labour in China's jails, which has been likened to modern-day slavery.
Briton John Sims was sent to prison in Ningbo last year on what he describes as trumped up charges. He found himself on a prison production line making Coca-Cola-branded Christmas decorations.
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| ©Mike DuBose, UMCom |
| A Palestinian child swings over the rubble of the family home, demolished by Israeli bulldozers in a valley east of Hebron. |
The Forward, which bills itself as "the Jewish daily", had an article this week on American Jews who choose to become illegal settlers on occupied Palestinian land. The "difficulties" they face are illustrated by the following comment:
"'Before we found Neve Daniel, my husband told me, 'I love you and I want to live in Israel, but I'm very materialistic and if I don't have a nice house, we're not moving,' said Lara Kwalbrun, a peppy mother of six, as she gave a tour of her luxurious new home while toting a baby in her arms."As long as moving into an illegal settlement meant life in a mobile home, a large number of American Jews weren't interested. They left it up to their more pioneering and violent brethren to go out and "colonize" the area, to actually confront the owners of the land with clubs and guns and chain saws and bulldozers. Now that the out and out outlaws have "claimed" the land, so to speak, and the base can move into a gated community fed by water siphoned away from the Palestinians and policed by troops paid for by American taxpayers, these new settlers can move in and never have to come into contact with the people they have displaced. You know, the ones walled up in the concentration - uh, refugee - camps out of sight and out of mind.
Comment: To be better able to understand and be better equipped to answer the question that the author poses, it is well worth reading the book "Without Conscience" by Robert Hare. See also the article at cassiopedia on psychopathy.