Man throws shoes at Bush

[faceless]

haha, excellent - Iraqis have more access to show their contempt of Bush than his own citizens... how peculiar.

[Aja]

now that made me smile

[eefanincan]

"Just do it!"

[faceless]

Muntadar al-Zaidi stood up and shouted "this is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog," before hurling a shoe at Mr Bush which narrowly missed him. With his second shoe, which the president also managed to dodge, Mr Zaidi said: "This is for the widows and orphans and all those killed in Iraq."

---------------

the man's a hero!

[Colston]

Superb reactions from W....

[Mandozilla]

I love it, not often there are people in a crowd like that with a genuine reaction to the suffering he has caused in their country.

I am heading out to buy up all he old shoes in charity shops in case Tony goes for a stroll in my neck of the woods.

Mandozilla

[faceless]

They're checking to see if anyone paid him to do this? Of course, the idea that a single individual would take the opportunity to show contempt for Bush is unimaginable...

[Mandozilla]

Paid him! That is just brilliant. As i thought, he is a terrorist.

[Brown Sauce]

as is usual dubya doesn't quite get it .. throwing a shoe in an Arabic country is about as strong as it gets insult wise. Yet another thing that passed over dubya's ignorant head.

[faceless]

apparently you're supposed to shoot at the shoes, not Bush.

[luke]

Finally, A Journalist We Can Look Up To!
A Hero of Our Time: Muntadar al-Zaidi

When Iraqi journalist Muntadar al-Zaidi heaved his two shoes at the head of President George W. Bush during a press conference in Baghdad, he did something that the White House press corps should have done years ago.

Al-Zaidi listened to Bush blather that the half-decade of war he had initiated with the illegal invasion of Iraq had been "necessary for US security, Iraqi stability (sic) and world peace" and something just snapped. The television correspondent, who had been kidnapped and held for a while last year by Shiite militants, pulled off a shoe and threw it at Bush—a serious insult in Iraqi culture—and shouted "This is a farewell kiss, you dog!" When the first shoe missed its target, he grabbed a second shoe and heaved it too, causing the president to duck a second time as al-Zaidi shouted, "This is from the widows, the orphans, and those who were killed in Iraq!"

I’ll admit, listening to Bush lie his way through eight years of press conferences, while pre-selected reporters played along and pretended to get his attention so they could ask questions which had been submitted and vetted in advance, I have felt like throwing my shoes at the television set.

Al-Zaidi, who paid for his courageous act of protest by being brutally beaten by security guards, is a hero of the profession. He stopped taking the president’s BS and called him what he is: a murderer and a criminal, with the blood of perhaps upwards of a million Iraqis on his hands. Al-Zaidi used what was supposed to be a staged photo-op for the president as an opportunity to speak up for those whose lives have been ruined by this president—the ones our suck-up journalists routinely ignore.

I’m not suggesting that journalists should routinely leave presidential press conferences in their stocking feet. We have different ways of expressing our sentiments to people we feel have insulted our intelligence than throwing shoes at them, but it would be nice to see a journalist or two flip the president the bird when he lies so blatantly to them. Or they could all get up and just walk out, leaving him standing alone at the presidential lectern.

It’s time for the press corps to stop treating presidents like royalty. If he accomplished anything at all in eight years in office, President Bush has demonstrated that, to the contrary, the president is a very ordinary—and in his case a rather less than ordinary—man. The office of president deserves no more respect than that of the mayor of Detroit, or of Wasilla.

My suggestion is that the press corps use the remaining five weeks of the Bush administration to develop a new relationship with the presidency—one in which they drop all the phony propriety and tradition and start acting like boisterous newshounds of old, barking questions, laughing cruelly at inane answers, demanding follow-ups when they are given the run-around, and, where necessary, walking out, or perhaps tossing the occasional shoe.

The journalism profession was a full-blown disaster and an utter disgrace during the Bush administration, and with all the crises facing the country and the world, in part because of that failure on their part, we cannot afford to have them continue that failure into the Obama administration.

With the Bush administration reduced to a running joke at this point, it gives the journalism profession a chance to redeem itself by using these few remaining weeks to establish a new tradition for presidential press conferences and photo-ops—one that can continue on into the new presidency.

Meanwhile, I’m suggesting that my alma mater, the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, hire al=Zaidi to teach a class in press conference journalism techniques. They should make it a multi-year appointment, because if he left after just one year, his would be difficult shoes to fill.

NOTE: Speaking of shoes and the White House, Skip Mendler of Honesdale, PA has a great idea. He suggests that everyone who is disgusted with the outgoing Bush/Cheney administration send a shoe to the White House. Just imagine a pile up of a million smelly old running shoes in the White House mailroom! I think he's got something. Spread the word!

[luke]

Bush's Iraq assailant has broken arm, ribs: brother

BAGHDAD (AFP) — The Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at US President George W. Bush has a broken arm and ribs after being struck by Iraqi security agents, his brother told AFP on Tuesday.

Durgham Zaidi was unable to say whether his brother Muntazer had sustained the injuries while being overpowered during Sunday's protest against Bush's visit or while in custody later.

He said he had been told that his brother was being held by Iraqi forces in the heavily fortified Green Zone compound in central Baghdad where the US embassy and most government offices are housed.

"He has got a broken arm and ribs, and cuts to his eye and arm," said Durgham.

"He is being held by forces under the command of Muaffaq al-Rubaie," Iraq's national security adviser, he added.

Zaidi, 29, a journalist for the private Iraqi television channel Al-Baghdadia, was swiftly overpowered by Iraqi security forces after he threw the shoes at Bush in a gesture seen as the supreme mark of disrespect in the Muslim world.

An AFP journalist said that cuts were visible on his face as he was led away into custody.

---

Free Muntather al-Zaidi
Please Sign the Petition Now!
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/iwffomuntatharalzaidi/index.html

[faceless]

There's not many petitions I'll sign, but this man is a genuine hero.

[luke]

with this game you get to throw shoes at bush

http://www.addictinggames.com/sockandawe.html

[luke]

Mark Steel: To George Bush, his critics are just lone difficult schoolboys
It's impossible for the President to acknowledge his failure in Iraq

If only he could have done it a week earlier, Muntazer al-Zaidi's display of hurling shoes at George Bush would have been unbeatable in the vote for Overseas Sports Personality of the Year. It was especially brilliant given that one of the ways international security has tightened at potential targets is to check for explosives hidden in people's shoes. Now in Baghdad the security forces will grabbing people and saying, "Can I look inside your bag of semtex, to check you're not using it to conceal a pair of sandals."

Film of the incident is the most popular clip in the world, and confirms Bush's presidency as ending in humiliation, as if he's some foul old relative that's round for Christmas, and all of America is muttering, "How much bloody longer is he staying? Another five weeks? Can't we drive out to Alaska and leave him with a pack of seals? Surely THAT can't be unconstitutional."

To reinforce his image, his response to the thrown shoes was to suggest that Mr al-Zaidi was "just trying to draw attention to himself." Yes that's it. He might say it was a protest about the war and occupation, but really he's an exhibitionist who was turned down for Iraq's Got Talent so he threw the shoes as a desperate attempt to get on the telly.

But in a sense what else can Bush say or think? He believed he'd be welcomed as a liberator, but after five years is despised to the point where a man throwing shoes at him has become an instant national hero. He can't acknowledge this failure, so Bush responds as if he's been confronted by a lone difficult schoolboy.

If he saw a suicide bomber drive into a convoy and blow up half the barracks he'd say, "Honestly, it's your own time your wasting you know." Maybe that's why the occupation's been more awkward than he thought, the whole place has Attention Deficit Disorder, or they've been eating too many Cheesy Wotsits.

The attention-seeking al-Zaidi has been charged with a "barbaric and ignominious act". Which could be considered ironic, given that his complaint is that Bush has caused a million deaths, ethnic cleansing and swiped the bulk of the country's resources. Whereas al-Zaidi threw shoes and called Bush a "dog". It's like if Josef Fritzl's daughter said, "You've been a pig to me Dad," and he replied "Oh how barbaric. I know we've had our differences but there's no need for language like THAT."

But in one sense Bush can be forgiven for his surprise at being disliked in Baghdad, which is that like all politicians to visit the place, he only sees the absurdly protected bit in one surreal corner. Then from behind billions of dollars' worth of security they pronounce everything's going nicely. They're like someone going to a holiday complex in Tangiers and saying, "Well I've been to Africa and I can tell you all this stuff about some of them starving is complete nonsense."

They're so protected from genuine opinion that when they accidentally encounter the wrath that so many feel for them, they have to write it off as a piece of nonsense. Hated rulers throughout history have behaved like this, from Louis XVI to Ceausescu in Romania, believing that the people screaming at them are a handful of unrepresentative idiots. When Mussolini was being strung up, he probably thought, "Let them get this out of their system and I'll be back to normal by half past three".

Many of the same journalists now accept the line that the occupation is working because things are "getting better". But that's because the killing and ethnic cleansing unleashed by the occupation is mostly complete. You might as well say, "There's excellent news from the hospital. Grandad's not had that pain in his stomach for over a week now. They do also say that's because he's dead, but it proves he's getting better."

So Muntazer al-Zaidi has been arrested, and could face several years in jail, despite the fact that he's supported by vast numbers of demonstrating Sunnis and Shias, in a country that has been "given back to the Iraqis". The man should be hailed Man of the Year. And if politicians really want to reconnect politics with the people, his example should be copied. If some tedious orchestrated press conference with Jack Straw or George Osborne was likely to end with them diving under the podium to shelter from a volley of Dr Martins, a few more people might bother to watch.