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January
30, 2002
Michael
Ratner
Memo
to Bush: Adhere to
the Geneva Convention
Jay Moore
Proud
to be an American?
Susan
Block
The
Great Pretzel Swallower
and Guantanamo Porn
January
29, 2002
Gary Leupp
Why
This War Was, and Remains, Utterly Wrong
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Birds of Kandahar
Patrick
Cockburn
Afghan
Opium Trade
Back in Business
January
28, 2002
Larry
Chin
Brosnahan
for the Defense
Mokhiber/Weissman
Tyranny
of the Bottom Line
George
E. Curry
Civil
Rights Nominee Called Affirmative Action "Racist"
Sen. Russ
Feingold
Campaign
Finance Reform?
Think Enron
John Chuckman
Liberal?
Media?
January
27, 2002
Mokhiber
and Weissman
Enron's
Drip, Drip, Drip
Tom Turnipseed
MLK
Jr.'s Dream Perverted
January
26, 2002
Norman
Madarsz
Adieu,
Bourdieu
January
25, 2002
National
Lawyers Guild
Know
Your Rights
Alexander
Cockburn
You
Call This Terrorism?
CounterPunch
Wire
Cal
Energy Crisis Hoax:
It Wasn't A Shortage,
It Was a Shakedown
Tariq
Ali
Kashmir,
Klinghoffer,
the Kurds and Chomsky
Nadine
Strossen
Protecting
MLK Jr.'s Legacy:
Justice and Liberty After 9/11
January
24, 2002
Robert
Fisk
Turkey
Targets Chomsky
Dean Baker
Lying
on Top:
Ken Lay One of Many
David
Vest
Idiot
Wind
January
23, 2002
Terry
Waite
Guantanamo
Prisoners:
Justice or Revenge?
Molly
Secours
The
Case of Abu-Ali:
Racism and the Death Penalty
Robert
Jensen
Speak
Out, Get Slimed
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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Published Oct. 15, 2001
8-Page Special Issue
War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
Search
CounterPunch
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How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
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Reviews of Gore:
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January
30, 2002
American Journal
"They
blurred the boundaries between
dogs and humans, with fatal consequences."
Killer Dog,
Weird Couple
By Alexander Cockburn
West of the Rockies people may pretend an interest
in Enron, the treatment of the Al Qaeda prisoners in Guantanamo,
even the volcano in the Congo but where their attention is truly
fixed is an LA courtroom where the dog-maul trial is in its opening
throes.
Since day one, which was almost exactly
a year ago, the case has always been a show-stopper: killer dogs,
a lesbian with her throat torn out, impenitent dog owners, UNNATURAL
ACTS, plus porn photos mailed to a con nick-named Cornfed, roosting
in California's toughest prison. No wonder people skip past the
Enron stories.
The case got moved to Los Angeles from
San Francisco because Judge James Warren agreed that the dog
owners, lawyers Marjorie Knoller (46) and her husband Robert
Noel (60) couldn't get a fair trial in the Bay Area. The San
Francisco DA, Terence Hallinan, has charged them both with involuntary
manslaughter, with Knoller also facing a second degree murder
rap. Unable to make bail now at $1 million each, they've been
in jail since last spring, As jury selection proceeded last week,
there was a torchlight vigil in San Francisco, remembering Diane
Whipple, 33, the lacrosse instructor and runner, who had her
throat ripped out by the late Bane, a presa canario dog weighing
120 pounds, about the same as her victim.
In Knoller's carefree estimation Bane
and another presa canario, Hera, who's currently on Death Row,
all appeals exhausted and awaiting execution, were "no more
dangerous than chihuahuas". It's one of the remarks that
has created the widespread public impression that Knoller lacks
contrition for Bane's conduct. And in truth, she could have handled
things better. Suppose, for example, when she returned to her
apartment in the high price neighborhood of Pacific Heights,
saw Bane ripping the throat out of the blood-spattered naked
body of Whipple, she had screamed with horror, fought to pull
Bane off, then rushed to call 911. Such conduct might have found
favor with the public, or with a jury. As things stand, she took
in the scene, dug around in her purse for her keys, went inside
and didn't dial 911. The neighbors made the emergency call.
And take Noel. He hasn't won too many
fans either, in part because of letters found in the cell of
Paul "Cornfed" Schneider, 33, adopted as a son by Noel
and Knoller not long after the fatal mauling, and currently residing
in Pelican Bay Prison on a life sentence for aggravated assault
and attempted murder. Schneider and another Pelican Bay inmate
had organized the training of Bane and Hera as part of a business
venture, selling presa canarios as guardogs, probably to drug
gangs.
One letter from Noel to Schneider expresses
amusement at an attack by Bane on a blind woman. Another ridicules
Whipple as "a mousy little blonde", who was terrified
of Bane after an earlier confrontation. And business seems to
have had a slightly unusual alliance with pleasure. In one letter,
Mr Noel alluded to sexual arrangements of an unspecified nature
between the various dramatis personae. "I wanted to thank
you," he graciously informed Schneider "for the thoughts
expressed about your feelings about how comfortable you would
feel about Marjorie and I inhabiting your body and mind."
Hmm.
Similarly unalluring was Noel's speculation,
installed in a lengthy letter to DA Hallinan after Whipple's
death, suggesting that Whipple had brought about her own
demise because her perfume had given off pheromones that whipped
Bane into a frenzy. Knoller expanded on this theme in her grand
jury testimony, cited by the prosecution, in which she said Bane's
initial interest in Whipple appeared to be sexual. "He was
sniffing, he was acting agitated," Knoller testified, adding
she had never seen Bane respond that way to a human being. "He
was sniffing her and acting peculiar" Also, "He put
his head in Miss Whipple's crotch" and responded to her
as he would to a "bitch in
heat."
Of course the defense is desperate to
persuade Judge Warren to shield the jury from insinuations of
bestiality between Knoller, Noel, Bane and Hera. California juries
have so far refused to convict owners of killer dogs of murder.
Most defense lawyers quoted in the press agree that even in this
case it might be hard to nail Knoller on second degree murder
or even on involuntary manslaughter, particularly Noel who wasn't
even present. But if they get painted as dog fuckers all bets
are off.
The prosecutors are similarly eager to
get dog perv innuendoes in front of the jury. James Hammer, from
the DA's office, argued for admission of sex-related materials
into the trial last week, and though he didn't directly level
charges of bestiality, he argued that "any evidence, if
it exists, regarding any inappropriate sexual conduct by the
dogs" would be relevant and should not be excluded."
Then he rolled out the magnificently melodramatic assertion that
"They blurred the boundaries between dogs and humans, with
fatal consequences."
Nedra Ruiz, Knoller's lawyer, furiously
battled such slurs and maintained that the only sex-related incident
with the dogs, Bane and Hera, happened when the animals ran into
Knoller and Noel's bedroom while they were having sex. It was
probably that pheromone thing again. Ruiz dismissed the "boundary-blurring"
stuff as "specious filth", albeit adding prudently:
"Your honour, there is no sex in this case, in terms of
the touchy-feely stuff that that word normally invokes."
This careful phraseology might be Ruiz's
way of coping with what an AP story describes as letters from
the couple to Schneider detailing sexual activity among Noel,
Knoller and Bane, along with photos of a naked Knoller. The defense
has managed to get these letters and photographs suppressed.
One rumor suggests Knoller was giving Bane a blowjob. It's all
more sedately put in the late J.R. Ackerley's book My Dog Tulip,
bible of British pooch lovers and now a big hit over here.
The defense has scheduled 35 character
witnesses, many of them eager to attest to the late Bane's gentle
disposition, and is also trying to suppress non-sex related material
such as photographs of Bane's teeth. As defense counsel Hotchkiss
put it in a court filing. "All large dogs have big teeth
and are capable of killing a human. Malice cannot be implied
by mere possession of a large dog."
All California's large dog owners say
Aye to that, including me, who espies on a daily basis the shining
fangs of the 75-pound Jasper, part Irish wolfhound with genetic
reminiscences of border collie, lab and maybe Airedale, chomping
eagerly on bones (left-overs, I hasten to say), or chewing with
less relish his Dr Hill's Science Diet (lamb and rice mix). Just
the other day I got a note from Pacific Gas and Electric giving
me the meter-reader's schedule and reminding me that recent changes
in California's statutory code make owners liable to felony charges
if their dogs injure any one. Jasper, a stray who was plucked
off the streets of Laytonville, narrowly missed the lethal needle
and then lucked out, gets stern lectures these days about the
need to keep his mouth shut, particularly in the presence of
meter readers.
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