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 Posted: Wed Oct 06, 2004 12:41 pm Post subject: The Dogs |
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WELCOME!
The Dogs:
The News from Ireland and Other Stories
Hardcover
By William Trevor
| Quote: | | Henry Garvey was a large, slow man of forty, known in the neighbourhood for his laziness and his easy-going nature. His uncle, Odd Garvey, had outlived both of Henry's parents, and the two lived together in the farmhouse which the whole Garvey family had once occupied. Odd Garvey, small and wizened in his old age, had never married - due to meanness, so it was locally said. He was reputed to be affected in the head, though this impression which he gave was perhaps no more than another reflection of a miserly nature. The farmhouse he occupied with his nephew was in need of considerable repair, its roof leaky, its walls wet with rising damp. Henry spent as little time as he could there, preferring to ride his mother's ancient bicycle into Rossaphin every monring and to remain there until it was time to fetch the heifers in. He laid bets, and drank in a number of selected public houses while waiting for the afternoon's racing to begin. He bet on greyhounds as well as horses, and had been known in one bar or another to offer odds on a variety of propositions, including the year of his uncle's dicease. A permanent smile split his sunburned face, the easy, lazy smile of a man who was never in a hurry. (From The Property of Colette Nervi at p. 95) |
| Quote: | Felicia's Journey
DVD
William Trevor, one of the greatest writers ever to have graced the rough insides of a common tree. Irish, of course. We cannot, however, find anything good to say about Frostback Atom Egoyan's dull movie version of Felicia's Journey, despite an excellent cast. |
| Quote: | Irish Short Stories
Audio Cassette
Edited by Irish novelist Colm Toibin
Narrated by celebrated Irish voices Kate Binchy, Aidan Gillen,
Anthony Jackson, and Fiona Shaw
Among our many favorite Trevor stories is one included on this EXCELLENT! audio compilation, a heart-rending tale about a poor farmer who does not realize that he has wagered away his youngest daughter to a predatory publican for an especially fertile section of farmland. Not to be confused with another Irish work entitled |
| Quote: | The Field
VHS
Oh, it's alright but nowhere near as good as Trevor, not by half. |
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| Posted: Tue Oct 19, 2004 7:47 pm Post subject: Greyhounds |
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Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life
Hardcover
By Roald Dahl
| Quote: | It was a pleasant leisurely life entailing about four hours' work a day, seven days a week. I enjoyed it and I now realise how fortunate I was in being able to come up with a new plot whenever I needed one. This routine of four hours a day and never any more left me plenty of time for messing around with other things. This messing around very soon took on a particular shape because I met (I have forgotten exactly how or where) a man of my own age called Claud. Claud was married, with two small children, and he lived in a dark and dingy flat in Old Amersham. He worked behind the counter in a butcher's shop in that town and he was not in the least interested in writing. In fact, he had difficulty in composing a sentence of much more than four words. But Claud and I had other things in common.
We both had a passion for gambling in small amounts on horses and greyhounds. As well as that, we shared a love of trying to acquire something by stealth without paying for it...Poaching pheasants and tickling trout and going to the flapping tracks -- these were the three things that absorbed and thrilled us most of all.
Flapping tracks are unlicensed greyhound race meetings held in some farmer's field where six dogs chase a stuffed white rabbit which is pulled along on a cord by a man at the far end of the field who is frantically turning the pedals of an up-turned bicycle with his hands. These meetings are frequented by gypsies and spivs and all manner of unsavoury characters who bring their dogs to race. Shady bookmakers set up their stands along the side of the hedge and a great deal of betting goes on. This sort of thing was made for a man like Claud. It was also made for me, and it wasn't long before I was buying and breeding my own greyhounds for flapping tracks. Claud and I would train them and at one time I had more than twenty dogs housed in kennels just outside Amersham, and we looked after them together. In spite of the fun of poaching pheasants, I think we probably had more fun plotting and scheming to get a winner at the flapping track than we had with anything else. (From the Preface) |
| Quote: | Playboy
Proud publisher of Roald Dahl stories for adults
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German Edition
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Our favorite profile of the author:
| Quote: | The New Yorker
Magazine Subscription
The Candy Man
What children see in Roald Dahl
By Margaret Talbot
July 11 & 18/05
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| Quote: | ... Dahl’s books regularly show up on the American Library Association’s list of titles that patrons ask to be restricted from young children or removed from the shelves. In 1995, a mother attempting to expunge Dahl from elementary-school libraries in Virginia told the Washington Post that in his books “children misbehave and take retribution on adults, and there’s never, ever a consequence for their actions.” According to this surprisingly common critique of Dahl, to defy one adult—no matter how bad a person—is to defy us all.
In 1972, the Horn Book, a journal of children’s literature, published a screed against Dahl by Eleanor Cameron, a children’s-book author. “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” she charged, was “one of the most tasteless books ever written for children.” The book was not just about candy; it was candy, “in that it is delectable and soothing while we are undergoing the brief sensory pleasure it affords but leaves us poorly nourished with our taste dulled for better fare.” Dahl reviled television, but his book provided the same easy satisfactions: it was a fast-paced, plot-driven celebration of empty calories. The science-fiction author Ursula K. LeGuin wrote in to second Cameron’s criticism, though she had to admit that “children between eight and eleven seem to be truly fascinated” by Dahl’s books. Indeed, one of her own children, she regretted to say, “used to finish ‘Charlie’ and then start right over from the beginning (she was subject to these fits for about two months at age eleven). She was like one possessed while reading it, and for a while after reading she was, for a usually amiable child, quite nasty.” The books, LeGuin concluded, “provide a genuine escape experience, a tiny psychological fugue, very like that provided by comic books.”
In the nineteen-eighties, feminists lambasted Dahl for his supposed misogyny, focussing on “The Witches” (1983). In 1985, one critic called the book “a dangerous publication,” which bore a “striking similarity” to the “misogynistic” fifteenth-century witch-hunting text “Malleus Maleficarum.” It was a bizarre comparison. Dahl does write in “The Witches” that a “witch is always a woman”—but not that a woman is always a witch. The strongest, most appealing character in the book is the boy narrator’s cigar-smoking, tough-minded, and immensely loving grandmother.
Anti-Dahlism has been further fuelled by a 1994 unauthorized biography, by the British writer Jeremy Treglown, which presents a complicated, domineering, and sometimes disagreeable man. Dahl was “a war hero, a connoisseur, a philanthropist and a devoted family man who had to confront an appalling succession of tragedies,” Treglown writes. “He was also . . . a fantasist, an anti-Semite, a bully and a self-publicizing trouble-maker.” When his first wife, the actress Patricia Neal, suffered a severe stroke at the age of thirty-nine, he adopted a cruel-to-be-kind strategy—bullying, goading, and sometimes humiliating her into acting again. He was prone to eruptions of pique. In 1981, Robert Gottlieb, who was at the time the editorial director of Knopf, Dahl’s American publisher, severed ties with Dahl, citing his “abusiveness” to the staff. More than once, Dahl offered up anti-Semitic remarks; in 1983, he told a journalist that “there’s a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity . . . I mean there is always a reason why anti-anything crops up anywhere; even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on them for no reason.” (Such noxious sentiments, it must be said, cannot be found in his work for children.) And, in 1989, Dahl, who had no trouble waxing indignant about attempts to ban his own work, denounced Salman Rushdie as “a dangerous opportunist” after the fatwa was issued against him. Dahl’s personal reputation is justifiably tainted, but his work has been unfairly assailed. When it comes to literature for adults, we’ve mostly stopped judging a work by its author’s personal morality. Why should we hold children’s writers to a stricter standard? |
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| Posted: Sun Jan 09, 2005 3:29 pm Post subject: |
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Experience
Paperback
By Martin Amis
| Quote: | ... I took the A-level, rather precociously, at the age of fifteen or sixteen. And despite the fact that I fell down the stairs in plain view of three hundred young people, half of them girls, as I approached the examination room, I came out of there full of confidence. The difficulties associated with this A-level lark, I said to myself, had been much exaggerated. 'Martin!' my mother shouted up the stairs as I lay reeking in bed one morning in a house on the Fulham Road. My mother usually called me Mart. The full Martin was always a ...'You failed.' Not even an E. An F.
The trouble was that I didn't like working because I had no powers of concentration. Concentration was a fortress it never occurred to me to scale; and I remember gaping through hours of tuition without a thought in my head. I didn't like working. What I liked was bunking off school and hanging out with my friend Rob and betting in betting shops (not the horses: the dogs) and mincing up and down the King's Road in skintight velves and grimy silk scarves and haunting a coffee bar called the Picasso, and smoking hash (then 8 pounds an ounce) and trying to pick up girls. (From the chapter entitled, Rank, at p. 13) |
It's especially fun to see samples of the family photo album, including an especially youthful photo of Amis pal, Christopher Hitchens, now a chain-smoking, shorter, balder and less composed version, yet he is probably scaring the bejabbers out of Henry Kissinger, which can only be a good thing, in our view:
The Trial of Henry Kissinger
Hardcover
By Christopher Hitchens
not to be mistaken for:
The Trials of Henry Kissinger
DVD
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| Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2005 2:34 pm Post subject: |
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The Girl in Blue
Paperback
By P.G. Wodehouse
| Quote: | | 'You were right, though, in saying you wouldn't go to the dame and tax her with her crime,' he resumed. 'That wouldn't get you anywhere. All she'd have to do would be to deny it what's the word, begins with a c, categorically,' said Chippendale, modestly proud of the scope of his vocabulary, 'and then where would you be? Where's your evidence? But searching her room, that's another matter. When Bill suggested that, he was talking sense. And as you probably won't want to do it yourself, you not being used to that sort of thing, what you do is hand the job over to me. And you're in luck, because I'm an experienced searcher. Had a lot of practice when I was a nipper. Whenever Father won a bit on the dogs, he'd hide the stuff around the house so that Mother couldn't get her hooks on it, and Mother would pay me a small royalty on any of it I could find, and I always found most of it. It won't take me long to locate that miniature, whatever a miniature is, sor a small picture, isn't it; they had some in the drawing-room of a house I was staying at last year, kept 'em in a glass case. I'll spot it all right. Just a matter of keeping one's eyes open. We now have to ask ourselves,' said Chippendale, this having been disposed of, 'a very important question. Is Bill good for two hundred quid? It's a lot of money, but from the tone of his voice he seems to be a man of substance. These rich blokes get a sort of something into the way they talk. Kind of an authoritative note, if you know what I mean, like a referee sending someone off the field at a football match. So we'll take it the two hundred's there all right and we can go ahead.' (Crispin Scrope takes counsel from the broker acting the part of butler in an effort to keep up appearances for the manor's paying guests, who mustn't suspect the embarrassing truth of the Scrope finances, at pgs. 85-86) |
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| Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2005 3:16 pm Post subject: |
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The Economist
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Greyhound racing
Gone to the dogs
July 16/05
| Quote: | | The main problem, moan the dogmen, is other forms of gambling. Internet betting is hurting a bit, but punters are being wooed away by casinos and lotteries. Payouts for greyhound racing seem low. A $5 bet on Tailwaggin Tiff, a relatively unfancied dog at Cross Lanes, paid out just $15 when he won. And unlike the glitzy casinos, greyhound tracks offer a sad world of sticky escalators, grubby walls and horrible food. Discarded programmes and half-eaten nachos litter the smoky halls of Cross Lanes. An old man shuffles past, his unbelted sagging trousers revealing a derriere which is distinctly less pert than those on display on a Vegas chorus line. (Cross Lanes, West Virginia, and Phoenix, Arizona, A working-class sport in need of money, more punters and a makeover at p. 29) |
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| Posted: Tue Aug 02, 2005 4:39 pm Post subject: |
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Heavy Weather
Hardcover
By P.G. Wodehouse
| Quote: | 'Clarence, you're insane!'
'No, I am not insane,' retorted Lord Emsworth warmly. 'I know Parsloe. And Galahad knows Parsloe. You should read some of the stories about him in Galahad's book -- thoroughly well-documented stories, he assures me, showing the sort of man he was when Galahad used to go about London with him in their young days. Are you aware that in the year 1894 Parsloe filled Galahad's dog Towser up with steak and onions just before the big Rat contest, so that his terrier Banjo should win? A fellow who stuck at nothing to attain his ends. And he's just the same to-day. Hasn't changed a bit. Look at the way he stole that man Wellbeloved away from me -- the chap who used to be my pigman before Pirbright. Fellow capable of that is capable of anything.' (From Chapter Three at pgs. 37-38) |
About rat terriers, generally:
| Quote: | On the rat terrier:
The Rat Terrier is an American breed descended from the terriers brought over by English miners and other working class immigrants. These terriers probably included crosses between the Smooth Fox Terrier, the Manchester Terrier and the now extinct white English Terrier. These dogs were used as ratters, and gambling on their prowess in killing rats was a favorite hobby of their owners. Some of these dogs were crossed with Whippets or Italian Greyhounds (for speed) and Beagles (for hunting ability). Eventually, these tough little terriers evolved into today's Rat Terrier. The breed was popularized by President Teddy Roosevelt, who frequently hunted with his Rat Terriers. Many are still used as ratters and squirrel hunters, particularly in the South, where they are sometimes known as "Feists." The hairless variety appeared for the first time in a litter in 1972. (From Pocketpuppy.com. |
Makes Internet gambling sound relatively tame from our look-out.
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| Posted: Thu Jan 10, 2008 10:08 am Post subject: |
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Uncle Dynamite
Hardcover
By P.G. Wodehouse
| Quote: | Pongo stiffened. He did not actually say 'Ha!' but the exclamation was implicit in the keen glance which he shot across the table. His suspicions had been correct. His wife's loving sureillance having been temporarily removed, Frederick Altamont Cornwallis, fifth Earl of Ickenham, was planning to be out and about again.
'You ask me,' a thoughtful Crumpet had once said in the smoking-room of the Drones Club, 'why it that at the mention of his Unlce Fred's name Pongo Twistleton blenches to the core and calls for a couple of quick ones. I will tell you. It is because this uncle is pure dynamite. Every time he is in Pongo's midst, with the sap runing strongly in his veins, he subjects the unfortunate young egg to some soul-testing experience, luring him out into the open and there, right in the public eye, proceeding to step high, wide and plentiful. For though well stricken in years the old blister becomes on these occasions as young as he feels, which seems to be about twenty-two. I don't know if you happen to know what the word "excesses" means, but those are what he invariably commits, when on the loose. Get Pongo to tell you some time about that day they had together at the dog races.'
It was a critique of which, had he heard it, Lord Ickenham would have been the first to admit the essential justice. From boyhood up his had always been a gay and happy disposition, and in the evening of his life he still retained, together with a juvenile waistline, the bright enthusiasms and the fresh, unspoiled mental outlook of a slightly inebriated undergraduate. He had enjoyed a number of exceedingly agreeable outings in his nephew's society in the course of the last few years, and was pleasantly conscious of having stepped on these occasions as high, wide and plentiful as a man could wish, particularly during that day at the dog races. Though there, he had always maintained, a wiser policeman would have been content with a mere reprimand.
... Pongo knocked the ash off his cigar and took a sip of brandy. There was a cold, stern look on his face.
'Now listen, Uncle Fred,' he said, and his voice was like music to the ears of the Recording Angel, who felt that this was going to be good. 'All that stuff is out.'
'Out?'
'Right out. You don't get me to go to the dog races again.'
'I did not specify the dog races. Though they provide an admirable means of studying the soul of the people.'
Or on any other frightful binge of yours. Get thou behind me, about sums it up. If you come to me in London, you will get lunch at my flat and afterwards a good book. Nothing more.'
Lord Ickenham sighed, and was silent for a space. He was musing on the curse of wealth. In the old days, when Pongo had been an impecunious young fellow reading for the Bar and attempting at intervals to get into an uncle's ribs for an occasional much-needed fiver, nobody could have been a more synpathetic companion along the primrose path. But coming into money seemed to have changed him completely. The old, old story, felt Lord Ickenham. (From Chapter 2, pgs. 22-24) |
| Quote: | Uncle Dynamite
Hardcover
By P.G. Wodehouse
Audio CD
Narrated by our favorite Wodehouse voice, British actor Jonathan Cecil
Learn the language by studying its expressions of comedy. Of these, there can be none sunnier than the ones contained in the complete works of British humorist P.G. Wodehouse! This work represents but one example of the master in his prime. |
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| Posted: Tue Dec 23, 2008 11:19 am Post subject: |
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Pigs Have Wings
Hardcover
By P.G. Wodehouse
| Quote: | ... 'What's all this about your new pig?'
'What about it?'
'Clarence says you imported it from Kent.'
'Well?'
'A low trick.'
'Perfectly legitimate. Show me the rule that says I mustn't.'
'There are higher things than rules, young Parsloe. There is an ethical code.'
'A what?'
'Yes, I thought you wouldn't know what that meant. Let it pass. You are really proposing to enter this porker of yours in the Fat Pigs class at the Agricultural Show?'
'I have already done so.'
'I see. And now, no doubt, your subtle brain is weaving plots and schemes. You're getting ready to start the funny business, just as you used to do in the old days.'
'I don't know what you're talking about.'
Gally gave a short, hard, unpleasant laugh.
'He doesn't know what I'm talking about! I will ask you, Parsloe, to throw you mind back a number of years to a certain evening at the Black Footman public-house in Gossiter Street. You and I were young then, and in the exuberance of youth I had matched my dog Towser against your dog Banjo for a substantial sum in a rat contest. And when the rats were brought on and all should have been bustle and activity on Towser's part, where was he? Dozing in a corner with his stomach bulging like an alderman's. I whistled him...called him...Towser, Towser...No good. Fast asleep. And why? Because you had drawn him aside just before the starting bell was due to go and filled him up past the Plimsoll mark with steak and onions, thus rendering his interest in rats negligible and enabling your Banjo to win by default.'
'I deny it!'
'It's no good standing there saying "I deny it." I am perfectly aware that I am not able to prove it, but you and I know that that is what happened. Somebody had inserted steak and onions in that dog - I sniffed his breath, and it was like opening the door of a Soho chop-house on a summer night - and the verdict of History will be that it was you. You were the world's worst twister in the old days, a man who would stick at nothing to gain his evil ends. And ... now I approach the nub...you still are. Even as we stand here, you are asking yourself "How can I nobble the Empress and leave the field clear for my entry?" Oh, yes you are. I remember saying to Clarence once, "Clarence," I said, "I have known young Parsloe for thirty years and I solemnly state that if his grandmother was entered in a competition for fat pigs and his commitments made it desirable for him to get her out of the way, he would dope her bran mash and acorns without a moment's hesitation." Well, let me tell you that that is a game two can play at. Your every move will be met with ruthless reprisals. You try to nobble our pig, and we'll nobble yours. One poisoned potatio in the Empress's dinner pail, and there will be six poisoned potatoes in Queen of Matchingham's. That is all I wanted to say. A very hearty good afternoon to you, Parsloe,' said Gally turning on his heel. (-- pgs. 41-43) |
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| Posted: Tue Dec 23, 2008 12:10 pm Post subject: |
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A Star Called Henry
Volume One of The Last Roundup
Hardcover
By Roddy Doyle
| Quote: | Who was he and where did he come from? The family trees of the poor don't grow to any height. I know nothing real about my father; I don't even know if his name was real. There was never a Granda Smart, or a Grandma, no brothers or cousins. He made his life up as he went along. Where was his leg? South Africa, Glasnevin, under the sea. She heard enough stories to bury ten legs. War, an infection, the fairies, a train. He invented himself, and reinvented. He left a trail of Henry Smarts before he finally disappeared. A soldier, a sailor, a butler -- the first one-legged butler to serve the Queen. He'd killed sixteen Zulus with the freshly severed limb.
Was he just a liar? No, I don't think so. He was a survivor; his stories kept him going. Stories were the only things the poor owned. A poor man, he gave himself a life. He filled the hold with many lives. He was the son of a Sligo peasant who'd been eaten by his neighbours; they'd started on my father before he got away. He hopped down the boreen, the life gushing out of his stump, hurling rocks back at the hungry neighbours, and kept hopping till he reached Dublin. He was a pedlar, a gambler, a hoor's bully. He sat on the ditch beside my mother and invented himself. (-- p. 7) |
Henry Jr., age nine, making his way for himself and his brother in the world:
| Quote: | | I reinvented rat-catching. We didn't go after the rats; they came to us. We found their nests and took the babies, boiled them and rubbed the soup onto our arms and hands. (We never ate it. You can laugh or gag, but you've never been hungry.) The scent -- Jesus, the scent -- it drove their parents wild. We dangled our hands in front of their holes and they came at us as if, in their dreams, they'd just seen the dogs that were going to destroy them. They'd scream for the children they could smell on our hands as we dropped them into the sack. We carried the screeching, pounding sack to the betting men around the pit. They loved our rats. They paid me extra to put my hands into the sack. I always did it but I wouldn't let Victor risk his fingers. I loved watching the faces of the men around the pit; I read their contempt, pity and admiration. I stared at the rich ones, the ones I knew already felt guilty about being there, with the worst of the scum of the slums; I'd stare at them as I sank my hand into the sack and felt the fury in the rats' backs and the men would look away. I'd let them see the little boy being asked to maim himself for their entertainment. I'd leave my hand in there until I was ready to faint, I could feel my heart waiting for death; I'd feel the maddened rats sniffing for their children on my wrist and fingers, and I'd hang on just a few seconds longer -- before the rats knew that they were licking the hand of the killer. They were all looking at me, the men and boys around the pit; I was more important now than the dogs that were howling and digging into the ground. I loved the silence that I could make with my eyes. It was power. Even the dogs noticed and stopped still. Then I'd grab at the heat and pull out my fist with its screaming rat. I'd hold it over the pit, the rat breaking its back to get its teeth into my veins. Then they'd cheer. I'd hold it a while, looking around, letting them all know that I was the one who was giving them their night out. Then I'd drop the rat. I didn't care what happened after that. I had no interest in the dogs or the betting or kills. I never watched. The dog men paid me, the bookies paid me, the winners paid me. The rich men held out closed hands and let me take money from them. We walked back into the city through the dark, me and Victor. We remembered to wash the rats off our hands and arms before we went looking for a place to sleep. We lay together and I warmed us with my stories. I never slept until I knew that Victor was asleep. Then I joined him. We were in each other's dreams. (-- p. 66-67) |
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| Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 10:22 am Post subject: |
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Sam the Sudden
Hardcover
By P.G. Wodehouse
| Quote: | | Nor, though he was by nature a gregarious young man and fond of human society, did the fact that he was alone depress him. Much as he liked Hash Todhunter, he had not been sorry to part from him. Usually an entertaining companion, Hash had been a little tedious to-night, owing to a tendency to confine the conversation to the subject of a dog belonging to a publican friend of his which was running in a whippet race at Hackney Marshes next morning. Hash had, it seemed, betted his entire savings on this animal, and not content with this, had pestered Sam to lend him all his remaining cash to add to the investment. And though Sam had found no difficulty in remaining firm, it is always a bore to have to keep saying no. (From Chapter Three, Sailors Don't Care, p. 27) |
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| Posted: Sun Jun 07, 2009 1:45 pm Post subject: |
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From Guantánamo Gamblers:
The Punishment of Virtue
Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban
Hardcover
By former NPR reporter Sarah Chayes
| Quote: | Most important, for nearly all the Afghans I interviewed at the time, was (Hamid) Karzai's emphasis on negotiation. "He was telling the Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar, to hand over power peacefully and not to destroy the country," the (small-time opium) dealer told me. "From that we came to know he was a good person. By negotiations and by the help of the tribal elders and their councils, he came to Kandahar. With the people's consent, that's how he came. He did not enter Kandahar by force."
During the days of pandemonium that immediately followed the Taliban flight, with the shoot-out over the cars by the almond merchants' warehouses, and the tug-of-war for the injured at the hospital, and looting all over town - humanitarian offices turned inside out, cars stolen, papers strewn, furniture carried off - Karzai's soldiers were praised for their comportment. They acted like public servants, people said, assisting the frightened population, refraining from pillage and theft. They seemed to represent the new Afghanistan the population so fervently desired.
America's other group of proxies, by contrast, Gul Agha Shirzai and his gun slinging acolytes, embodied precisely the kind of violent chaos Afghans dreaded.
Shirzai was also from a Kandahar family. His father had a reputation across the province as a champion dogfighter. He poured much of his energy into this passion, breeding the barrel-chested fighting dogs local nomads keep, organizing matches, tallying bets. In a country where a man is known by his lineage, by the deeds of his forebears, these were not auspicious roots for Gul Agha Shirzai.
When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, Shirzai's dog-fighting father also joined the resistance, calling up tribal followers and marshaling them into a rebel force. But according to the word spread by many in Kandahar, the Soviets lured him secretly to their side, and he served as a spy for the occupiers while pretending to fight against them.
Such betrayals and counterbetrayals were a feature of that bitter war... (From Chapter 8, A Choice of Allies 1980-2001, at pgs. 66-67) |
A compelling enough tale but based almost entirely on hearsay:
Arab News
US to Allow Hearsay, Coerced Testimony in Guantanamo Trials
By Barbara Ferguson
Jan. 20/07
| Quote: | The Pentagon unveiled new guidelines for trials of “war on terror” detainees that will allow hearsay and coerced information to be introduced as evidence if a judge considers it credible. The rule handbook, presented to Congress on Thursday, will apply to the special tribunals at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba set up to try the “enemy combatants” being held at the site. Defense attorneys will be able to see summaries of classified evidence against their clients, but the rules forbid the lawyers from revealing potentially favorable classified evidence until US government officials have a chance to review it. If a suspect is found guilty he could be executed by orders of the US president, though it would be up to the secretary of defense to determine how to carry that out. The goal “has been to design a system that meets our responsibility under (the Geneva Conventions) and that provides a fair trial,” said Brig. Gen. Thomas Hemmingway, the Pentagon’s legal adviser to the process.
The Pentagon’s completion of the hefty 238-page manual outlining procedures for terror trials has revived debate in Congress on the treatment of military detainees. Democrats said they were concerned that the manual — based on a law passed last year in the then Republican-run Congress — tramples on basic legal rights that should be afforded to military prisoners. This, they say, puts US troops at risk of mistreatment if captured.
Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., said he is working alongside Democratic Sens. Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin on a bill addressing flaws in the manual “that are impediments to the effective and credible prosecution of suspected terrorists.” But the Bush administration and GOP members say the tough standards are needed to ensure dangerous terrorists are convicted. “While ensuring the fair and full prosecution of terrorists, the military commissions manual preserves the ability of our war fighters to operate effectively on the battlefield,” said Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee.
Under the law, the president can convene military commissions to prosecute terror suspects so long as he follows certain guidelines, such as granting defendants legal counsel and access to evidence used against them. The law also for the first time provided specific definitions of abusive treatment of prisoners, prohibiting some of the worst abuses like mutilation and rape but granting the president leeway to decide which specific interrogation techniques are permissible. The new regulations lack some protections used in civilian and military courtrooms, such as the prohibition on using coerced or hearsay evidence. At a Pentagon briefing, Dan Dell’Orto, deputy to the Defense Department’s top counsel, said the new rules will “afford all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized people.” On hearing this, Rep. Ike Skelton, a Democrat and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said he planned to scrutinize the manual to ensure that it does not “run afoul” of the US Constitution. “I have not yet seen evidence that the process by which these rules were built or their substance addresses all the questions left open by the legislation,” Skelton said.
Officials think that with the evidence they have now, they could eventually charge 60 to 80 detainees, said Brig. Gen. Hemmingway. The Defense Department is currently planning trials for at least 10 detainees. There are almost 400 people suspected of ties to Al-Qaeda and the Taleban being held at the military’s prison in Guantanamo Bay. About 380 others have been released since the facility was opened five years ago. — With input from agencies |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=4366#4366 |
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