Major hattip to TMV co-blogger, Holly in Cincinnati/Holly Robinson for the heads up that someone’s persuaded Canada that the U.S. and Israel are not countries that might potentially torture or abuse prisoners. The original TMV post on the topic is here.

From Ha’aretz:

Canada’s foreign ministry, responding to pressure from close allies, said on Saturday it would remove the United States and Israel from a watch list of countries where prisoners risk being tortured.

Both nations expressed unhappiness after it emerged that they had been listed in a document that formed part of a training course manual on torture awareness given to Canadian diplomats.

Of course, the factual questions still remain: what methods of interrogation are used and do they or don’t they constitute torture or abuse? As most people know, in regard to pretty much anything - poverty, education, quality of life - being on a list often has no real meaning beyond the very specific methodologies used by the list-maker.

Do you agree with the inclusion or the exclusion of the U.S. and/or Israel from the Canadian Foreign Ministry’s torture awareness manual?

A U.N. special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, has held talks with the totalitarian regime in Burma and has also met with Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel laureate and one of the leaders of the pro-democracy movement in that country:

[Gambari] had waited four days to see Gen Than Shwe before the chairman of Burma’s State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) made himself available.

No details have emerged but Mr Gambari was intending to urge the general “to cease the repression of peaceful protest”, release detainees and embrace democracy and human rights, a UN spokesman said before the talks.

The US called on the UN envoy to press upon the military the need for a “real and serious political dialogue with all relative parties”.

The SPDC — i.e., the totalitarian military junta — has no interest in democracy and human rights. As I and many others have argued before, it will take tough international sanctions and above all the support of China and India, the two major powers propping up the SPDC, for any such pressure to work, that is, to bring about real change.

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And what of the monks? They are being rounded up by the thousands — those who haven’t been murdered — and “sent to prisons in the far north of the country”. Some are trying to flee Rangoon, a city of fear and tension, but may not be getting very far.

Said one Rangoon resident to a BBC correspondent: “I really want change, but they have guns and we don’t, so they’ll always win.”

Sad, but true. For now.
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