In Iraqi’s Shoe-Hurling Protest, Arabs Find a Hero

BAGHDAD — Calling someone the “son of a shoe” is one of the worst insults in Iraq. But the lowly shoe and the Iraqi who threw both of his at President Bush, with widely admired aim, were embraced around the Arab world on Monday as symbols of rage at a still unpopular war.

In Saudi Arabia, a newspaper reported that a man had offered $10 million to buy just one of what has almost certainly become the world’s most famous pair of black dress shoes.

A daughter of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader, reportedly awarded the shoe thrower, Muntader al-Zaidi, a 29-year-old journalist, a medal of courage.

In the Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, people calling for an immediate American withdrawal removed their footwear and placed the shoes and sandals at the end of long poles, waving them high in the air. And in the southern Iraqi city of Najaf, people threw their shoes at a passing American convoy.

In street-corner conversations, on television and in Internet chat rooms, the subject of shoes was inescapable throughout much of the Middle East on Monday, as was the defiant act that inspired the interest: a huge and spontaneous eruption of anger at President Bush on Sunday in his final visit here. Some deplored Mr. Zaidi’s act as a breach of respect or of traditional Arab hospitality toward guests, even if they shared the sentiment. (Mr. Bush, having demonstrated his quick reflexes, then brushed it off as an expression of democracy.)

“Although that action was not expressed in a civilized manner, it showed the Iraqi feelings, which is to object to the American occupation,” said Qutaiba Rajaa, a 58-year-old physician in Samarra, a Sunni stronghold north of Baghdad.

The Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at US President George W Bush has apologised to Iraqi PM Nouri Maliki, the prime minister's office says.

Local TV reporter Muntader al-Zaidi wrote a letter to Mr Maliki asking for forgiveness over his "ugly act", prime minister's spokesman Yasin Majeed said.

Mr Zaidi has been in custody since he threw shoes and shouted insults at Mr Bush during Sunday's news conference.

His actions have made him a hero in some quarters of the Arab world.

Iraqi officials have described the incident as shameful.

Mr Zaidi has been charged with "aggression against a president", which carries a prison sentence of up to 15 years.

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Gus: PRESIDENT BUSH apologises for having mucked up the lives of most people, beg forgiveness from the Iraqi people and annouces that next time a pair of shoes is thrown at him, he will not duck: he will send Barney to bravely face it instead...

Their deployment as a makeshift missile robbed President George Bush of his dignity and landed their owner in jail. But the world's most notorious pair of shoes have yielded an unexpected bonanza for a Turkish shoemaker.

Ramazan Baydan, owner of the Istanbul-based Baydan Shoe Company, has been swamped with orders from across the world, after insisting that his company produced the black leather shoes which the Iraqi journalist Muntazar al-Zaidi threw at Bush during a press conference in Baghdad last Sunday.

Baydan has recruited an extra 100 staff to meet orders for 300,000 pairs of Model 271 - more than four times the shoe's normal annual sale - following an outpouring of support for Zaidi's act, which was intended as a protest, but led to his arrest by Iraqi security forces.

Orders have come mainly from the US and Britain, and from neighbouring Muslim countries, he said.

Around 120,000 pairs have been ordered from Iraq, while a US company has placed a request for 18,000.

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Iraq delays vote on troops exit over shoe row

By Kim Sengupta
Monday, 22 December 2008

The ratification of the agreement underpinning Britain's exit strategy from Iraq was delayed once again when the parliament in Baghdad became embroiled in a row over shoes being thrown at President George Bush instead of voting on the issue.

The MPs had rejected on Saturday a draft law proposed by the Iraqi government under which the UK, and a number of other countries (not including the US), would cease military operations by 31 May and withdraw all but a handful of its forces of 4,100 by the end of July.

It had been expected that a compromise would lead to the draft law being passed today. But, instead, a number of MPs insisted that the British withdrawal could not be discussed until matters were resolved over the action of the speaker, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, over the 14 December shoe-throwing incident.

The speaker had repeatedly clashed with a number of MPs during a debate on the arrest of the journalist Muntasar al-Zaidi who faces a possible 15 year jail sentence for throwing his shoes at President Bush during a news conference. His trial is due to be held on 31 December.

see toon at top. 

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From Chris Floyd

After flinging the shoes at Bush – who ducked behind the protective hand of his puppet, Iraqi PM Nouri al Maliki – Zaidi was set upon by Iraqi security forces, who dragged him into a nearby room, where his cries could be heard for several minutes, as McClatchy reports. Later, a reporter for a television station run by Maliki's party said that Zaidi had been kicked and beaten until “he was crying like a woman," the New York Times reports. He's now being held in one of the Green Zone government's notorious prisons where the local goon squads, having learned from two stern masters – the Bush Family's old protégé Saddam Hussein and Bush's very own handcrafted torture program – subject detainees to horrible abuses. Zaidi's employers, who are based in Cairo, have called for his release, and up to 100 lawyers from across the Arab world have offered to defend him.

The incident has been played down in most of the corporate American press – especially Zaidi's motivation. The New York Times noted only that he had "bad feelings about the coalition forces," but of course gave no reasons why he might have such feelings. It's the same old "motiveless malignancy" that we are told drives every critic of American power – they are just "evil," or "extreme" or "unhinged," etc.; their reactions never have the slightest thing to do with U.S. policy. Yet McClatchy, as usual, digs deeper and reports that Zaidi had been especially affected by the American bombing of the thickly populated civilian areas of Baghdad's Sadr City during one of the brutal pacification operations of the "surge" earlier this year. As Juan Cole notes:

It has indeed. It is virtually an un-reported story in the mainstream press.

read more of Chris Floyd....

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.

Muntadar al-Zaidi had pleaded not guilty as his trial resumed in Baghdad, telling the judge: "My reaction was natural, just like any Iraqi."

Hitting someone with a shoe is a grave insult to Arabs. Zaidi could have been jailed for 15 years for the assault.

Mr Bush, on a farewell trip to Iraq in December, shrugged off the incident.

The head of Zaidi's defence team Dhiaa al-Saadi described the sentence as "harsh and is not in harmony with the law" and said he would file an appeal.

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In all intent and purposes, Bush should be the one serving 20 years behind bars for embezzlement of public goodwill and this heroic fellow should be promoted to editor in chief of the new magazine "SHOO-IN".  But justice has a glass eye, when it suits the crooks to rule the world of us...

The Iraqi journalist jailed for throwing his shoes at former US president George W Bush has had his sentence reduced to one year.

Last month a Baghdad court sentenced Iraqi Muntazer al-Zaidi, 30, to three years in prison for assaulting a visiting head of state.

But the charge against him has been changed to insulting a foreign leader, which carries a 12-month jail term.

Zaidi is actually set to be released on September 14 because of the three months he has also served and because, under Iraqi law, only nine months are actually served for each year of a sentence.

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Ticket parade for the only hero who did what billions of people wanted to do (and more). see toon at top.

International court for Bush, Blair and Howard...

As his size 10s spun through the air towards George W Bush, Muntazer al-Zaidi – the man the world now knows as the shoe-thrower – was bracing for an American bullet.

"He thought the secret service was going to shoot him," says Zaidi's younger brother, Maitham. "He expected that, and he was not afraid to die."

Zaidi's actions during the former US president's swansong visit to Iraq last December have not stopped reverberating in the nine months since. Next Monday, when the journalist walks out of prison, his 10 raging seconds, which came to define his country's last six miserable years, are set to take on a new life even more dramatic than the opening act.

Across Iraq and in every corner of the Arab world, Zaidi is being feted. The 20 words or so he spat at Bush – "This is your farewell kiss, you dog. This is for the widows and orphans of Iraq" – have been immortalised, and in many cases memorised. Pictures of the president ducking have been etched onto walls across Baghdad, made into T-shirts in Egypt, and appeared in children's games in Turkey.

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The Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at former US President George W Bush has found himself on the receiving end of a shoe-throwing attack.

Muntadar al-Zaidi was speaking about Iraqi war victims at a news conference in Paris, but managed to duck in time.

Media reports said the attacker was an exiled Iraqi journalist who defended US policy and accused Zaidi of "working for dictatorship in Iraq".

After a brief scuffle in the audience, Zaidi quipped: "He stole my technique."

The AP news agency said Zaidi's brother, Maithan, chased the attacker in the Paris audience and pelted him - with a shoe - as he ran from the room.

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Well it’s a bit more than a year now and signs of Bush’s rehabilitation are beginning to pop up. One is literally a sign, a billboard that appeared recently on I-35 in Minnesota. Occupying the right side (from the viewer’s viewpoint) is a picture of Bush smiling genially and waving his hand in a friendly gesture. Occupying the left side is a simple and direct question: “Miss me yet?” The image is all over the Internet, hundreds of millions of hits, and unscientific Web-based polls indicate that more do miss him than don’t.

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Yes... even we, cartoonists, could miss Dubya: it's easier to lampoon a complete idiot that having to pussy-foot with an under-achiever... But really we don't miss Dumbell at all. We did not like him then and we still don't now... see toon at top...

In December 2008, Al-Zaidi caught the world’s attention when he hurled both of his shoes at Bush during his visit to Iraq. Bush managed to duck twice to avoid what Al-Zaidi called “a farewell kiss from the Iraqi people.”

A decade later, Al-Zaidi is making headlines again. Saying he is standing up for the interests of his fellow countrymen on the political arena, he is running for parliament in the next elections, due to take place May 12.

Having closely observed the Iraqi situation as a journalist, Al-Zaidi says he’s come to the conclusion that, in the last 15 years, the Iraqi government members have failed to change the fate of the country. In an interview with local paper Al Bawaba News, he pledged to put an end to corruption, to stop wasting public money, cut pensions for Iraqi officials and defend the rights of ordinary citizens. 

Al-Zaidi seems to be swiftly gaining supporters, too, among like-minded Iraqis who help him in his election campaign, posing with his posters. 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/425670-iraqi-parliament-shoe-al-zaidi/

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