"Leaving on a jetplane...
Don't know when I'll be back again......"
Peter, Paul & Mary- Dec 1969: their own bit of Bush-ism

A columnist, Mahmoud al-Mubarak, has written an interesting column in the daily alhayat . He titles it "When the Guest is an Idiot." No, he is not writing about Ahmadinejad as a guest of Columbia University- he is writing about another leader, another guest, on another visit just about to start. Now, if the two ever meet, it might be hilarious.

Elaph notes that the Israelis are receiving Mr. Bush (not with flowers, but) by intensifying the expansion of settlements in the occupied territories of the West bank.

The same site also headlines a report that "Arabs Lose 50% of Their Brains Each Year". My first reaction was extreme worry at the thought that all are becoming half-wits and then worse every year. In that case, and using some version of half-life analysis (the power of e exponential and all that), at some point in time the brain power of the Arab world will approach zero- but of course it will never get to zero- the mathematical function won't allow it. The curve will be asymptotic to the zero-line. I believe that will be much worse than the case is now- unless they lose 50% of the leaders each year, to voluntary retirement of course. Of course.
But not to worry, the report was not as revolutionary as that.

Now the mystery is cleared- perhaps this is why they don't let them drive over there. A Saudi woman in Cairo drove her Hummer into a taxi and killed three (so far). Some Cairo press reports claimed that she was a princess, but in Cairo any Gulf woman is a princess or a shaikha- many like being thought of as such, except for the real ones. Some Saudi media outlets were quick, in tribal Gulfie fashion, to declare that the (Saudi) woman is of an Egyptian mother- as if a personal accident casts a pall over Saudi Arabia, and an Egyptian mother somehow spreads the blame among the tribes....er....countries. Had the woman won a gold medal, or mor likely given birth to a kid with two sets of eyes, a holy sign in some circles, everybody would be scrambling to claim her...100%, and the other tribe be damned.
A richness of alibis: the lady claimed she was trying to dislodge her son who had slipped between the seats and that her brakes failed at the same: in the old days the Zionists would have been blamed as well- but that was the Old New Middle East...before the birth pangs that rained death over Southern Beirut and killed so many people in the Summer of 2006- Ok, OK, arguably those explosive birth pangs were initially invited by the Hezbollah action of kidnapping two Israeli soldiers, before they got out of hand.
Cheers
Mohammed