The Periscope Post

The Washington Post

Tasers are meant to be a “last resort against dangerous suspects” not some sort of punishment. And what is more, they have too often proven to be fatal. The Washington Post criticised the recent Taser-inspired immobilisation of a teenage pitch invader at a Philadelphia Phillies baseball match and drew on some Amnesty International research, which found that 90 percent of US police Taser use is on “unarmed suspects” and that a staggering 334 people died after being Tasered between 2001 and 2008. Although narcotic intoxication played its part in many of these cases, Tasers, warned The Post, can be “lethal”.

The New York Times

It is time for a “strong and legitimate” government in Haiti, said The New York Times. The country’s current Parliament expires today; but nothing is due to replace it. The earthquake put paid to the planned February elections and this November’s presidential election remains mired in uncertainty. President René Préval, given emergency powers after the disaster, now has all the power. Don’t abuse it, warned the paper. Fair elections are mandatory for the country, especially given its turbulent history of one-party rule. The logistics aren’t going to be easy, but if it can happen in Iraq then it can happen in Haiti.

The Los Angeles Times

The International Whaling Commission is proposing to draw Japan, Norway and Iceland – the three “rogue” whaling nations – into a pact by setting an agreed-upon limit on their catches. All well and good, said The Los Angeles Times, but this move effectively endorses renegade behaviour and reverses the Commission’s blanket moratorium on the practice, which has been successfully operating since 1986. The demand for whale products in these three countries is diminishing and, in any case, they already tend to catch fewer whales than their own limits allow them to. The Commission needs to stand strong, said paper. A new policy would be “the wrong message to send to other nations that might consider striking out on their own.”

The Boston Globe

George Mitchell, President Barack Obama’s special envoy to the Middle East, is finally acting the role of go-between in (indirect) peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Now both sides have to follow the golden rule: Don’t allow “provocations from any quarter” to abort the talks. The “determined spoilers” (be they Hamas extremists or Israeli settlers) are the “enemies” of the peace process, warned The Boston Globe. The paper called for an approach adopted by the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin: “[N]egotiate as if there were no terrorism and fight terror as if there were no negotiations.”