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From the monthly archives:

April 2010

At Night Through Armed Checkpoints

“You no speak okay?” I nodded my head and slouched lower in our wreck of a Toyota Corolla shuddering up to the checkpoint. Snow sleeted down the mountain slope to lash through the yellow of the headlights. “Say nothing okay. Nothing.” I’d already had a lot of practice at this already, about a dozen times [...]

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Torturers and Torture Chambers I Have Known

A few years ago I was splitting a bottle of Dewar’s Scotch with one of the most senior drug control police officers in the Afghan government, (drinking is an activity more common than you would think in that Islamic nation,) when the conversation turned to torture. There had just been a sensational case involving the [...]

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Eyes Clenched Shut — A Tale of Driving in Four World Cities

I cannot remember the last time in Calgary that I used my car horn. I am not even sure that it works. I do know that if I did use the horn here it would be taken as a deadly insult worthy of gestures and incoherent rage. That is in hornless Calgary. Elsewhere, things are [...]

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