[Q] From Bob Arnold, USA: “We are indeed separated by a common language! A report on the BBC Web site on 31 May about the European Community included this: “With 25 countries and 455 million people to govern, it simply isn’t enough to spatchcock together a bunch of rules at short notice.” Could you enlighten me about spatchcock?”
[A] To spatchcock in this figurative sense is indeed mainly British. It means to stuff things together inappropriately, to interpolate or insert something in a forced or incongruous manner. Another example, from the Independent newspaper in 2003, will help to give the idea: “But far from being some grand, thoughtful programme, it was only a spatchcock of improvisation and platitude.” — World Wide Words
FOCUS | Aid Diverted to Iraqi Torture Units
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/070305X.shtml
Afghanistan?
The article goes on to say that “it’s not all bad news”. Well, that’s a relief.
Far be it from me to question the worthy susanhu but I beg leave to submit the following definition from the Free Dictionary the following:
spatch·cock Pronunciation (spchkk) n. A dressed and split chicken for roasting or broiling on a spit; v. prepare for eating if or as if a spatchcock; “spatchcock a guine hen”; tr.v. spatch·cocked, spatch·cock·ing, spatch·cocks 1. To prepare (a dressed chicken) for grilling by splitting open. 2. To introduce or interpose, especially in a labored or unsuitable manner
Even the link notes the older sense of the word: a split chicken, is the most common.
Therefore, one must conjecture The august BBC – and January, Feburary, March, April, May, June, July, September, October, November, and December, to boot – is refering to the fact one split chicken does not stretch to nourish 445 million people when having them over for even a light supper. The concluding phrase, I deign, was mistakenly – how oft does Homer nod! – tacked on from a different article.
Get your cat near your computer, and open this Web site.
how cute. one of my cats actually came to the door to hear it as I replayed it over and over.
to clearify the door was to my office…:o)
I played it again when my daughter came over so she could see the cat react to that sound! It was fun.
Ohhhh … i just went over to my daughter’s place to see the five kittens and mom. We moved them out of my garage on Thursday and into my daughter’s large kitchen and pantry area. She has a better set-up than I.
They are soooooooo cute. They’re trying to crawl. And the mom is looking so much better. She purrs constantly. She is NOT feral, which we’d been told. She was just scared. And who wouldn’t be after living in the shrubbery near Wal-Mart for at least three years that we know of.
We’re feeding her extra-nutritious food, including kitten formula — which she loves, and fairly high quality wet and dry food from a pet food store.
We hope it helps her kittens thrive. This is the third batch of kittens we’ve helped with from the same mother.
In the last litter, there were two kittens who it was impossible to socialize and who will probably be stuck at the pet shelter the rest of their lives. It made me wonder if their mental development might have been hampered by the mother’s poor nutritional status.
I just wish we’d had the mother when she was pregnant so we could have fed her then. Kindly people fed her, but it was that c-r-a-p food from Wal-Mart.
Democrats need to get one in order instead of just blasting Bush’s military only strategy.
Books will be written about the crimes of the Bush administration. Even more books will be written about how they avoided every legal pitfall while breaking all the moral codes. But today, in Iraq, children are dying of cholera, a doctor/journalist was killed by a US sniper, and the list goes on.
Political Strategy for Iraq from Talking Points Memo, written by

Anne-Marie Slaughter
Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. An international lawyer and expert on international institutions and American foreign policy.
Slaughter does not recommend US military leaving Iraq, she wants there to be political policies for Iraq instead of only military strategy. Her idea of building civilian power at the same time as building security seems like a workable solution. The world needs to regain the trust of the Iraqi people and it will not be done by military means or by military giving candy to Iraqi children. Expecting NGO’s to go into Iraq under present conditions is too much but working through the Arab League and the Red Crescent and other arab agencies, it might be possible to rebuild civilian life.
Her conclusion:
Five Ways to Win Back Iraq
Here’s the one I agreed with the most:
Sybil, I really like the work you’re doing here. Talk about constructive! (And we in the U.S. need some constructive advice. Badly.) Maybe diary it?
Thanks Susan. I will be on the look out for anything written on Iraq strategy.
I just read Biden on Brookings and was not impressed. It is more of a military strategy, “3000 troops from NATO to defend the Iraq/Syria border.” What country wants to send cannon fodder over there first? There’s a lot of bloviating in his report almost all of his discussions in Iraq were with US military brass. It’s like the man says the Democratic strategy for Iraq is Bush lite.
Happy Fourth of July tomorrow!
Outrageous Outtakes at The Nation
** Politics is once again shamelessly spilling over into sports. Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA), who chaired the showboating steroid hearings for Major League Baseball, now wants to prevent George Soros from buying the Washington Nationals. Davis and other Republicans have threatened to revoke the league’s antitrust exemption if the deal goes through, even though Soros isn’t even the leading partner in the bid. Rival bidder Fred Malek, however, is a former Richard Nixon aide and major GOP donor. Thus far, Davis has denounced Soros as “pro marijuana,” an “out of towner” and “some multinational.” Pssst Tom, he’s also a Jew!