Long seen as reluctant to get deeply involved in the
Middle East conflict, Bush said he saw his role a driving
both sides along and holding them accountable.

Waving his arms, the president earlier told reporters
his aim was to keep the process moving, like a cowboy on
horseback herding cattle. 'I used the expression 'ride herd.' I don't
know if anybody understood it in the meeting today,' he said.

[http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/300347.hyml]

 
News of Rolls Royce's latest device,
a gun designed to launch dead chickens at the windshields of airliners
and military jets travelling at maximum velocity. The idea is to
simulate the frequent incidents of collisions with airborne fowl to test
the strength of the windshields.

American engineers heard about the gun and were eager to test it on the
fronts of their new high-speed trains. But when the gun was fired in
America, the engineers stood shocked as the chicken hurled out of the
barrel, crashed into the shatterproof shield, smashing it to
smithereens, blasted through the control console, snapped the engineer's
back-rest in two and embedded itself in the back wall of the cabin, like
an arrow shot from a bow.

Horrified engineers sent Rolls Royce the disastrous results of the
experiment, along with the designs of the windshield and begged the
British scientists for suggestions. Rolls Royce responded with a
one-line memo: "Defrost the chicken."

FROM JEREMY PAXMAN

 
Yesterday on C-SPAN I heard a Republican Congressman talking about Iraq. He said the U.S. was introducing Iraq to the concept of sewage treatment. Well, Iraq had sewage treatment plants in 1991 until the U.S. deliberately destroyed them, resulting in many thousands of innocent people--mainly children--dying from disease. He said that even though no WMD have been found, the invasion was still justified by the mass graves that have been found and the liberation of some kids from a children's prison. Well, what about the mass grave of thousands of Taliban soldiers who surrendered to the Northern Alliance and then were suffocated, roasted or executed under the supervision of U.S. Special Forces? And what about the kids who are imprisoned at Camp X-Ray, or the thousands of kids who are in U.S. jails or boot camps for drug offenses?

[http://www.strike-the-root.com/]

 
The man who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner; he to
whom
> every soil is as his native one is already strong; but he is perfect
to
whom
> the entire world is as a foreign land.
> Hugo of St. Victor, Didascalicon