Man throws shoes at Bush

[faceless]

Down with cheesy wotsits! haha

Great article.

[luke]

Tumult in Iraqi Parliament Over Shoe

BAGHDAD — A session of the Iraqi Parliament erupted in an uproar on Wednesday as lawmakers clashed over how to respond to the continuing detention of an Iraqi television reporter who threw his shoes at President Bush during a Baghdad news conference earlier this week, people attending the parliamentary meeting said.

As Parliament began to discuss legislation on the withdrawal from Iraq of armed forces from nations other than the United States, a group of lawmakers demanded that the legislature instead take up the issue of the detained journalist, Muntader al-Zaidi, 29. After his shoes narrowly missed Mr. Bush’s head at the news conference on Sunday, Mr. Zaidi was subdued by a fellow journalist and then beaten by members of the prime minister’s security detail.

The legislative session became so tumultuous that it prompted the speaker of Parliament, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, to announce his resignation, according to The Associated Press. A spokesman for Mr. Mashhadani, Jabar al-Mashhadani, refused to confirm whether the speaker had tendered his resignation, although he would not deny it. Some in Parliament say the government should release Mr. Zaidi immediately, while others say the judiciary should decide his fate.

How badly injured Mr. Zaidi was by members of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s security detail is not clear. He has not appeared in public since his arrest, and his family members and his legal representatives say they have not been permitted to visit him. On Wednesday, Mr. Zaidi was scheduled to appear before a judge, but it was unclear whether that happened.

Dhiya al-Saadi, one of Mr. Zaidi’s lawyers, said Wednesday that he was not sure whether Mr. Zaidi had appeared before a judge. As part of the Iraqi legal system, a judge typically determines whether bringing formal charges against a suspect is warranted, criminal lawyers in Iraq said. Mr. Zaidi faces up to seven years in prison if he is charged with and convicted of offending the head of a foreign state.

from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/18/world/middleeast/18shoe.html

---

Nobody threw shoes at Brown – but his guilt is still undeniable
The Prime Minister shares in the responsibility for the crime that is Iraq

At least this time there was no ballistic footwear. The last time Gordon Brown made a surprise visit to Iraq to announce troop withdrawals, he was whacked so hard on the head by the giant DM attached to his own left leg – and if nothing else, you had to admire his Nadia Comanecian elasticity of movement – that it took this unfolding economic catastrophe to rouse him from the ensuing psephological coma.

That was in October 2007 when he torpedoed a reputation for straightness, as skillfully nurtured as it was ill deserved, with an act of political opportunism so cretinously transparent that it beggared all belief. The chump flew to Basra and announced troop reduction figures that proved, after 0.37 seconds of the barely numerate's inspection, what is known to professors of political science as a whopper, but which I guess, in honour of the week's hilarious shoe theme, we should know as arrant cobblers.

That suicidal nonsense, allied to the inheritance tax bribe George Osborne delivered at the Tory conference it was designed to overshadow, led to the abandonment of the snap election. "Oh my God," yelped my wife as the penny dropped – like many, she had developed quite a crush on the old bruiser in his first months in power. "I thought the whole point to Brown was that he didn't play stupid games like Blair." Well, I said gently as she sniffled in sombre acceptance that the light of love had forever been extinguished, he's never exactly been a stranger to spin himself.

The only gymnastics the Prime Minister will perform this time will be verbal. This time, the fact that Britain will withdraw her remaining troops from Basra early next summer is the simple truth, and all the gyroscopic action – albeit no more opaque than those October 2007 fake figures – will concern why. Indeed he's started already.

"It is important to remember we have been engaged in the most difficult and challenging of work," he said yesterday in Baghdad.

"The tasks of overthrowing a dictatorship, the task of building a democracy for the future and defending it against terrorism. We have made a huge contribution and of course given people an economic stake in the future of Iraq. I am proud of the contribution British forces have made. They are the pride of Britain and the best in the world."

Are they though? I never understand that latter claim, regardless of what inspires it. Growing up in the 1970s, we often heard that our police, Royal Family, health service, system of justice and our Parliament were the best in the world too, but you don't hear so much of that fading post imperial power-in-denial smugness any more.

Our army, on the other hand, retains the reverence it has always inspired. How you directly compare its performance with the armies of other nations, in the absence of an official ranking system like the one used for tennis, is beyond me.

But those who understand these things and are reliable judges assure us that the British Army is still top drawer, and given that its senior officers tend to be a million times more eloquent, sensible, clever and humane than the politicians who manipulate them for personal advantage, I suspect that's the truth.

Lions they may well be, but that they have been led by prize asses is not in doubt. Those donkeys, led now by Eeyore Brown and supported by his auxiliary army of useful idiots at The Sun, will mercilessly bray forth the fiction that the mission in Iraq ends in triumph.

In fact, the few military personnel still hunkered down behind barbed wire at the airport will leave defeated, if not humiliated, having luminously failed to crush the counter-insurgency in Basra and having been obliged to sit back and watch in the spring when the Americans showed how it was done.

It's not the soldiers' fault, but then it never is. The blame belongs in its entirety to a Cabinet that sent a grotesquely inadequate compliment of poorly equipped troops to the city, and as a powerhouse figure in that obnoxious group, Gordon Brown, despite reprising his much loved party turn as McCavity back then, takes a full and indivisible share.

There is, needless to say, a much larger slice of infamy that belongs to him, and we can only pray that history takes vengeance because only history now can. The war soon to end for Britain was as shocking an act of international criminality as we have seen from western democracies in at least a generation.

Throwing footwear at the front man for the perpetrator-in-chief, the limitlessly disgusting Dick Cheney, is a splendid way to express revulsion and let off steam. Next to sticking Messrs Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Mr Tony Blair in a dock at The Hague, however, and banging them up for the rest of their days, it doesn't quite cut it.

In that naive but heartwarming fantasy, Gordon Brown would be in Holland with them. Any sane reading of collective responsibility, not to mention what Nuremberg decided about the efficacy of obedience to orders as a war crimes defence, would ensure that he and everyone else who rubber-stamped this neo-imperial adventurism take equal responsibility for the crime itself and for the horrors that stemmed from it.

"We leave Iraq a better place," our Prime Minister declared yesterday, doubtless sending his good eye on a search mission for incoming loafers. Yet while he rightly paid tribute to the 178 British dead whose lives he could so easily have saved, by resigning before the invasion and ousting Mr Blair, he had nothing to add about Iraqi fatalities. No one knows precisely how many there have been, but a recent estimate of 650,000 seems far from outlandish.

I know it's tedious to rehash so fatigued a line, and if you're already fingering the corner of the page I understand. But it seems to me a moral imperative to carry on railing against the absence of any properly independent public enquiry – a monumental scandal in itself – into how Mr Blair and his poisonous little cabal of sofa-dwelling hoodlums kidded Parliament and the country into this invasion; and how Mr Brown and the other pliantly, cravenly gave their imprimatur.

To allow overfamiliarity with these arguments to inure us into a shoulder-shrugging, c'est la vie accommodation with the wickedness is to dishonour the casualties of whatever nationality, and their loved ones, with the apathy of the faux sophisticate. To avoid the clodhoppingly simplistic conclusion that Gordon Brown's collusion should automatically have debarred him from the office to which he clings is to betray our most deeply held convictions about the minimum requirements of any society that affects to regard itself as civilised.

If the mild embarrassment of restating the bleeding obvious ad infinitum is the cost of sustaining the righteous fury that is Mr Brown's due for supporting the war back then, and for spinning such poisonously mendacious gibberish about victory now – and possibly in the future, if and when increased troop numbers leave Afghanistan defeated – so be it. It is the tiniest price to pay when numbers literally beyond counting have already paid, and a myriad more have yet to pay, with their lives.

[taiwan4lee]

how twisted have we become? a real man stands up to a mafia prick patsy, now that man resides in a jail with injuries that were inflicted upon by the very people he was chucking shoes for, how backwards can we contort ourselves? a mass murderer has a red carpet rolled out for them whilst a common man who thinks about the untold lost ones gets bars. something is seriously wrong with the way we think.

[faceless]

SHOE PROTEST TOMORROW, FRIDAY 19 DECEMBER, 1PM, US EMBASSY
Muntadar Al-Zaidi, the journalist who hurled his shoes at George Bush in
protest at the destruction of Iraq, has not been seen since his arrest. The
international federation of Journalists and Journalists Sans Frontieres have
called for his release.

Media Workers Against the War will be handing a letter of protest at the US
embassy and we will be sending a farewell gift to Bush, a box of old shoes!

FRIDAY 19 DECEMBER, 1PM
US EMBASSY,
GROSVENOR SQUARE
LONDON

I'd like to be there for this - I'm sure the local charity shops will run out of shoes before 10am!

[faceless]

Maker of shoes thrown at Bush swamped by orders
AFP

The maker of the shoes that an Iraqi journalist hurled at US President George W. Bush has had to take on 100 extra staff to cope with a surge in demand for his footwear, he said on Monday. "Between the day of the incident and 1:00 pm today we have received orders totalling 370,000 pairs", Istanbul-based Serkan Turk, head of sales at Baydan Shoes, told AFP.

Normally the firm sold only 15,000 pairs a year of the model that Muntazer al-Zaidi threw at the US president at a press conference in Baghdad on December 14 to become an instant hero across the Arab world, he said. Turk said orders had initially flooded in from Iraq, followed by other Middle East countries and finally from the rest of the world, including for 19,000 pairs from the United States.

Formerly prosaically dubbed Model 271, the black polyurethane-soled shoes have been renamed Bush Shoes, he said. Turk insisted the company was not profiting from the soaring demand to up the factory price from the 27 dollars (19.30 euros) it had been charging, while adding that it was "delighted from all points of view" at its unexpected success.

Throwing shoes is considered a grave insult in the Arab world, but Turk indicated that they would probably not have done Bush much harm had they hit him. "They look heavier than they are," he said. "They only weigh 300 grammes (10 ounces)."

Zaidi, 29, has been charged with "aggression against a foreign head of state during an official visit," an offence that carries a prison term of between five and 15 years under Iraqi law. He is to go on trial on December 31, an investigating judge said Monday, rejecting allegations by the journalist's family that he had been tortured in custody.

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

haha, brilliant

[luke]

Sweden: Shoe hits Israeli ambassador

A shoe was thrown at Israel 's ambassador to Sweden, Mr. Benny Dagan, when he was giving a speech at Stockholm University today. The shoe hit its target. It was followed by two books and a note pad, all hitting the severely embarrassed ambassador.

The two protesters, a young woman and a young man, shouted "Murderers!" and "Intifada!" while pelting Dagan with the objects. They are currently under arrest, suspected of assault and public disturbance.

The lecture was organised by the Foreign policy association at Stockholm university. The ambassador was supposed to talk about the upcoming elections in Israel , but turned quickly to issues of Hamas and Iran and developed a lengthy defence for Israel 's recent actions in the Gaza Strip.

Some 20 minutes into the lecture, a woman stood up in the audience, threw a red shoe at the ambassador and shouted "Murderers!". The shoe hit Dagan in his stomach. Another protester then joined in and hurled two books and a note pad.

Dagan was dumbstruck and paralysed, but returned to his lecture shortly after a few minutes – only to face shouts and other verbal protests from the audience. The meeting ended in chaos, while the two protestors were taken to custody.

The boycott movement in Sweden has gained momentum during the last weeks, not the least since Veolia lost its Stockholm metro contract, worth some 3.5 billion euro a year, after a long campaign against the company's notorious involvement in the Jerusalem tram project. The movement is now taking aim at the Davis Cup tennis match between Sweden and Israel scheduled in Malmö 6-8 March.

[faceless]

excellent stuff - and that's great to hear that the metro company lost out on such a big contract because of its connection to Israel. Ha!

[luke]

"An Iraqi journalist hailed as a hero in the Arab world for throwing his shoes at former US President George W Bush has been jailed for three years"

[faceless]

That's shocking - 3 years for what exactly? Doing what every decent person would want to do?

[luke]

yeah its shocking, although in our other exported democracy things appear even worse ... Student facing 20 years in hell - His crime? To download article on women's rights

[faceless]

That one case alone proves that the last 8 years of war have been completely pointless as far as the average Afghani is concerned.

I must admit though, when I read that the article was about women's rights, I actually read it as women's tights and clicked on the link wondering what the hell it was all about...

I need glasses.

[modern]

3 years? A complete disgrace, he should be given the freedom of Baghdad!

[major.tom]

Yep, freedom's alive and well in Iraq, where protesters can feel free to speak against those who shamelessly violate international law with impunity. Wait a second ...

Do you think he'll serve the whole term or will there be enough pressure brought to bear on the puppet gov't to free him?

[pirtybirdy]

He should have got the book thrown at him, never mind a shoe. He should have been made an example of and got the max 15 years. I can only hope someone makes him their bitch while in there....

[faceless]

Yes, we can't have THE LEADER mocked, can we?