meehawl

all that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned

2 Responses

  1. Anonymous says:
    2005-08-08 at 10:11:12

    Limerick’s modern history is of a city brutalised by urban criminality more in common with the most deprived pockets of London and Glasgow than that of a city amid the rolling fields of Ireland.

    Residents admit that petrol bombings, torture, drive-by shootings and gang feuds have dominated the city to such an extent that democracy has been threatened. Witness intimidation has caused trials to collapse. People are too petrified to perform jury duty. Among the estates that encircle Dolores’s IRP105,000 bungalow, experts blame a ‘significant underclass’ for its endemic violence. So numerous are the inhabitants who carry the white wormy scar from a knife blade that Limerick’s enduring monicker remains Stab City.

    Yet even that sobriquet is at risk of being superseded following an alarming rise in firearms being supplied to the mean streets. Judiciary sources told The Observer last week that AK-47s, sub-machine guns and long-range rifles have all recently been found in estates just a 10-minute walk from The Track. In the weeks before Dolores’s world was so dramatically turned upside down, hand grenades were hurled at Limerick homes in daylight while multiple shootings have been reported on estates. A recent survey found 92 per cent of Limerick residents fear being attacked.

  2. Carlo Marx says:
    2005-08-09 at 10:11:12

    Surprised you haven’t posted this yet. Contains two recent topics du jour for you. Guantanamo and Harry Potter.

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Harry Potter has bewitched detainees at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, where tales of the young wizard and mysteries by Agatha Christie top the list of most popular books, a prison librarian said on Tuesday. “Harry Potter is a popular title among some of the detainee population,” said the librarian, a civilian contractor identified only as “Lorie” who works at the prison camp for foreign terrorism suspects at the U.S. naval base in Cuba. Lorie said the popularity of the best-selling Harry Potter books, which recount the adventures of a boy wizard as he triumphs over the powers of evil, was matched only by the prisoners’ passion for Agatha Christie, some of whose murder mysteries are set in the Middle East. The Guantanamo Bay prison — which has come under fierce attack by human rights groups for its treatment and indefinite detention of prisoners — holds about 510 suspects from 40 countries. Most are from Afghanistan and Arab states. But even this remote prison has not escaped the world-wide frenzy over the escapades of Harry Potter and his friends at the Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft. The sixth book in the series by author
    J.K. Rowling, which went on sale last month, is the fastest-selling book of all time. “We have Harry Potter in four languages, English, French, Farsi and Russian. We have it on order in Arabic. We do not have books 5 and 6 in the series, at this time. We have had several detainees read the series,” Lorie said in a written response to questions from Reuters. “One prisoner has requested the movies,” she said. Overall, the library contains 1,200 books, 164 magazines and 40 videos.

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