Word: surrounds
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Hopefully, the same thing that my campaign has told the American people about me. That I think through big decisions, I get a lot of input from a lot of people and that, ultimately, I try to surround myself with people who are about getting the job done and who are not about ego, self-aggrandizement, getting their names in the press, but are focused on what's best for the American people...
Though no match for the missile launchers and shock troops that surround Beijing's Bird's Nest, security has been stiff at Hong Kong's Shatin complex. A tight knot of privately contracted guards have staked out the venue for the 2008 Olympics' equestrian events, as spectators watch horses undergo "dressage" and other genteel equine pastimes...
...Beijing and still be in China. In fact, there is little to indicate one is still in China. Most of the people in this desert town are Uighurs, an Islamic minority group that has clashed again and again with rule of China's majority Han ethnicity. The land surround the city is brown and bare save for irrigated orchards and fruit fields. The white caps of the Pamirs loom in the distance. Women walk through the streets in headscarves, sometimes fully covered from the hot sun and blowing sand. Men wearing skull caps greet one another with handshakes...
...Mongols were the sultans of siege. They'd take their time. Surround a city. Build belching, black-smoke bonfires and roast horses for dinner. Pound drums day and night and force their enemies to dream of death. Soon they'd erect a white tent - a signal to surrender now and be spared. Next, they'd pitch a red tent. That meant only the men inside the village would be slaughtered. If the gates still remained closed, up came the black tent - the slaughter of everyone. By this time, the people under siege were sick with fear, starved...
...schlemiel may be, must be, grievously acted upon by the always malevolent world. But he can never be permitted to act effectively against that world. At the end of his adventures he must, somehow, triumph over the forces of darkness that surround him - but only accidentally so. That's why we identify with him; if he is one of us, we know perfectly well that we wouldn't last a minute against all those men in black wielding highly advanced weaponry. In that spirit of genial fantasy, we permit out surrogate that utter self-confidence, that sublime sangfroid, with which...