Word: electroshock
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...rights watchdog Amnesty International, businesses making these types of implements are flourishing in Europe and exporting their products in spite of an E.U. ban on the trade. In a report released earlier this month, Amnesty said firms in Germany, Spain, the Czech Republic and Italy were selling items like electroshock "sleeves" and "cuffs" capable of delivering 50,000-volt shocks, spiked batons and fixed wall restraints to at least nine countries, including Pakistan, China and the U.A.E. Amnesty, which co-published the report with the London-based Omega Research Foundation, says the companies are using legal loopholes to evade restrictions...
...tactic is to simply relabel torture implements that are on the E.U.'s list of banned products. For example, electroshock weapons like stun belts - which are placed around detainees' limbs and emit a shock if they get out of line - are sometimes renamed "stun cuffs," Amnesty says. Another scheme is to sell "dual-use" items, such as leg shackles and stick batons, which are allowed to be exported for policing and security purposes. The trade in dual-use products is meant to be closely monitored, but Amnesty says little is being done to make sure the devices are not being...
...official at one company known to produce such items, the Belgian firm Sirien, denied any wrongdoing in an interview with TIME. Sirien makes products like electric-shock stun shields and S-200 projectile stun guns - devices that export manager Erwin Lafosse insists save lives. "If you want to ban electroshock pistols, then policemen will have to use firearms to defend themselves," he says. "The problem with Amnesty International is that they only see the bad side to everything. Yes, these can be used to torture someone, but so can all sorts of ordinary devices like knives, forks and spoons." Nevertheless...
...central scene in Todd Solondz's 1998 drama Happiness was a bedroom conversation between a man and his 11-year-old son. Because the boy was frustrated that he hadn't achieved his first orgasm, and the father was a child molester, it hit audiences like a jolt of electroshock therapy. Eleven years later, Solondz returns to this extended family - three sisters and the men and kids in their lives - but with a new cast...
...neck. There are unexplained memory lapses, lost initiative, mood swings and depression - symptoms that eventually led doctors to a diagnosis of postconcussion syndrome. In time, the fire department placed Zachery on full disability, but not before a doctor assigned to his case by the city prescribed a course of electroshock treatments that left him unable to remember his own neighborhood...