One of my heroes is running for office

Submitted by gjohnsit on Wed, 05/02/2018 - 12:29am

I didn't even know his name. I have no idea what his political platform is.
But I can say with absolute certainty that I support him.

Muntazar al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at former President George W. Bush in 2008, is running for parliament in Baghdad, BuzzFeed News reported on Tuesday.
"This is a farewell kiss from the Iraqi people, you dog," Zaidi yelled in Arabic while throwing both his shoes at Bush during a visit by the 43rd president. “This is for the widows and orphans and all those killed in Iraq.”
Zaidi was arrested and sent to prison. He was released early for good behavior after nine months and left Iraq in 2009.

In 2011, he returned to Iraq but kept a low profile and focused on his foundation that worked to help children who had lost their parents during the American occupation of Iraq, BuzzFeed News reported.

The election will happen next week.

Tags:

iraq

Muntazar al-Zaidi

Vote

Comments

Submitted by The Liberal Moonbat on Wed, 05/02/2018 - 3:17am

YES! Love that dude!

One of my V For Vendetta-style assassination fantasies most definitely involves rope, pulleys, and a shoe the size of a grand piano.

Or maybe something more in the vein of either Random Task from Austin Powers, and/or better yet, American Maid from The Tick.

—

In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

Submitted by Cant Stop the M... on Wed, 05/02/2018 - 4:27am

Good for him. I hope things go well for him.

—

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Submitted by dkmich on Wed, 05/02/2018 - 7:42am

That's plenty to know.

Hope he wins.

—

"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

Submitted by Mark from Queens on Wed, 05/02/2018 - 8:41am

One of the best moments during the Dunce's reign.

Learned that in Middle Eastern culture taking off one's worn shoes and throwing them at someone is regarded as one of the highest insults.

I remember a great signature line of someone's just after this great and courageous episode (which was during the time of yet another farcical aspect of the fake pageantry, that is the building of the obligatory, vainglorious Presidential Library):

Send your old shoes,
to the new Bush library.

Pardon the pun, but his nomination should be a shoe-in. Heh...

—

"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"

- Kurt Vonnegut

Submitted by Anja Geitz on Wed, 05/02/2018 - 1:43pm

I think we were all that guy

@Mark from Queens

Throwing our shoes at Bush. At least in our minds. Best video ever. Pity Cheney wasn't standing by him, I would've enjoyed seeing a twofer in the flying shoe show.

—

There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

Submitted by Amanda Matthews on Wed, 05/02/2018 - 9:54am

The guy was smart enough to see an

opportunity to make a brilliant ‘statement’ and had the courage to see it through.

I’ve always admired that guy. Now I know his name.

EDIT: added a ‘

—

I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

Submitted by DonMidwest on Wed, 05/02/2018 - 10:03am

war on tribalism continues - like Native Americans

US is stupid when it comes to understanding tribalism

Or maybe, they are no smarter than Europeans whose colonization of the Americas, North and South, led to the death of 43 million

Book published in 2013 "The Thistle and The Drone"

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the United States declared war on terrorism. More than ten years later, the results are decidedly mixed. Here world-renowned author, diplomat, and scholar Akbar Ahmed reveals an important yet largely ignored result of this war: in many nations it has exacerbated the already broken relationship between central governments and the largely rural Muslim tribal societies on the peripheries of both Muslim and non-Muslim nations. The center and the periphery are engaged in a mutually destructive civil war across the globe, a conflict that has been intensified by the war on terror.

In The Thistle and the Drone, the third volume in Ahmed’s groundbreaking trilogy examining relations between America and the Muslim world, the author draws on forty case studies representing the global span of Islam to demonstrate how the U.S. has become involved directly or indirectly in each of these societies. The study provides the social and historical context necessary to understand how both central governments and tribal societies have become embroiled in America’s war. Beginning with Waziristan and expanding to societies in Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and elsewhere, Ahmed offers a fresh approach to the conflicts studied and presents an unprecedented paradigm for understanding and winning the war on terror.

The Thistle and the Drone How America's War on Terror Became a Global War on Tribal Islam

Submitted by DonMidwest on Wed, 05/02/2018 - 10:13am

Iraq was a war for Oil and some new insights

People have known forever that the war on Iraq involved Oil.

But, I didn't know that Israel interests were front and center. There was an oil pipeline from Iraq to Israel that was shut down in 1948 after the Zionists took over and moved 700,000 people out.

There was a lot of effort from names we remember to get the pipeline started up again so Israel could save money. Oil and money do mix, they mix up governments and the earth ...

When the US invaded, oil infrastructure was not bombed. Except the pipeline to Syria that could send oil to the Mediterian. At the last minute the terminal was bombed.

The oil agenda I discovered and experienced was to supply Iraq oil to Israel. The players were the neoconservatives in the Bush Administration, their favorite Iraqi – Dr Ahmed Chalabi and the Israeli government. One of the motives was because Israel was paying a huge premium for its oil imports and this premium had just started in the late1990s. The agenda called for the reopening of the old Kirkuk to Haifa pipeline and its significant expansion. When this pipeline plan became unattainable in the 2nd half of 2003 then Chalabi took other actions to get inexpensive Iraqi oil to Israel.

A much more credible explanation for intentionally destroying the Syrian export pipeline than what Secretary Rumsfeld told the NY Times was found in the British press. The Guardian, a London newspaper, quoted a retired CIA agent just after the Syria pipeline attack. “It has long been a dream of a powerful section of the people now driving the Bush administration and the war in Iraq to safeguard Israel’s energy supply. Rebuilding the old Kirkuk to Haifa pipeline would transform economic power in the region, cutting out Syria and solving Israel’s energy crisis at a stroke.”

When Iraqis figured out about plan to send oil to Israel, they bombed the pipeline and shut it down.

Read about characters we know: Mark Rich, Scooter, and others. And how some of them made hundreds of million on Iraq oil.

Book written by a naive engineer who spent 70 months in Iraq thinking deluded that he was doing good work. It has taken him years to unravel what happened by reading foreign press and a wide range of sources.

In this short article one finds

The pipeline carried oil from the Red Sea Israeli port of Eilat to the Mediterranean port of Ashkelon. This secret pipeline was constructed in 1970 and Marc Rich transported Iranian oil through this pipeline for over 20 years, until the mid 1990s. He moved the oil through Israel to his customers in the Mediterranean and Israel received what oil it needed – at a discounted price. This arrangement stopped sometime after 1994 when Rich was forced out of the company he founded. The original company was called Marc Rich & Co, AG and located in Switzerland. The name was changed to Glencore in 1995 after Rich was bought out.

Both Marc Rich and Scooter Libby developed a very close relationship to the Israeli government and especially the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence group. The former British foreign secretary from 2001 to 2006 was Jack Straw. Straw said of Scooter Libby, “It is a toss up whether he is working for the Israelis or the Americans on any given day.

And Marc Rich was one of Clinton's buddies....

Iraqi Oil for Israel? 15 Years later, new Light on the Iraq War

Submitted by thanatokephaloides on Wed, 05/02/2018 - 10:21am