Around the Arab world, if you want to escalate a situation, by saying for example "I'm going to thump you", add the words "with a shoe" and you're adding serious insult to the threat of possible injury. It's that cultural significance that has added real sting to the assault by an Iraqi journalist against US President George W Bush at a Baghdad news conference.
In Arab culture it's considered rude even to display the sole of one's shoe to a fellow human being. Certainly, crossing one's legs ankle-on-knee style should never be done in a public place for fear of offending the person next to you. The sensitivity is related to the fact shoes are considered ritually unclean in the Muslim faith.
39 comments:
I would have paid good money to see one of those loafers connect.
hey HLF, if you don't respect the man, respect the office.
after all thats what you are asking me to do for Obama
as seems to be pointed out over and over again, the office, the man, one and the same.....prepare ye the way of the king!!!!
Let's decapitate him and televise it
What do you expect. He's just a dick.
Idiot, childish people really need to find a better way to vent their frustrations than through violence, even if that violence be relatively harmless and petty.
This is bullshit. And what is even worse is the calls in Iraq to free him as if he'd done nothing wrong.
He physically assaulted a head of state. How in the hell could you possibly call for his release? He needs to be punished for his stupid, idiot act as I would be if I were to throw my shoe at ANYONE, must less the President of these United States, or by comparison for my case, the President of Iraq.
I was a bit impressed with Bush's reflexes. He is not a young man, but even if the shoe had been thrown true, it would have missed him, because he dodged quickly out of the way.
It sould be considered more than an insult. 'Airport friskers' consider shoes potential leathal explosive weapons.
Stink-bombs?
I meant HLF is a dick.
And shoe bomber wannabee should have his head cut off.
I hope that is clearer.
nuke 'em all NOW
Dear Blue,
If, after 8 years of Obama, we've doubled the debt, started a war based on his lies, and he's led us into the worst financial nightmare in 100 years, you can hope he gets knocked out by a shoe. Fair?
No wait, that already happened under bush and the REPUBLICANS. Nevermind.
Or maybe you think we should show our respect by blackmailing him over his sex life, hunting him for 8 years about a bogus land deal investigation that morphs into charges due to the phone call between two airheads taped by a total, f'ing, evil bitch. What was that piece of shit's name? Oh yeah, Linda Tripp. What a good little republican naziscum. Taking taped private conversations and using them to create a scandal out of someone else's sex life. Can humans sink any lower?
Of course they can! They can be other MEN blackmailing a guy over his sex life.
Besides, who ever said I wanted or cared if you respected Obama? I don't care. We know we won't win you savages over. Your greed and ignorance has blinded you to reason.
"Idiot, childish people really need to find a better way to vent their frustrations than through violence, even if that violence be relatively harmless and petty",
says the savage who supported the invasion of another country, resulting in the death of over 30,000 people, the destruction of generations of families, and drove the best and the brightest from the country.
Fruedian slip?
HLF said...
Dear Blue,
If, after 8 years of Obama, we've doubled the debt, started a war based on his lies, and he's led us into the worst financial nightmare in 100 years, you can hope he gets knocked out by a shoe. Fair?
LOL! Stupid liberal.
Read it again, Einstein.
I meant it exactly as I wrote it. You're the one with the reading comprehension problem.
"If"... "When"...
The point is dumbass - you expect...
Never mind. (That will be easy for you.)
Someone tell our liberal toy that a guys sex life becomes everyone's business when it's done in OUR White House! Typical low-rent liberal.
As for Bush, you must admit the guy has good reflexes, something i can't say about his security detail.
Yeah, I hope he gets better security so nothing happens to him.
I could almost hear your buttcheeks clench when you spouted that nonsense about thinking you can pass judgement on a President's personal, LEGAL behavior out of some bizarre sense that you "own" the White House as a taxpayer.
Sometime, just think about the things you believe. Really think about them. It will make you sick.
Legal behavior? Is that why he lied and got impeached? How would a commie like you understand the fact that it's "the peoples house", not some hit-and-run motel for trailer-park trash who con their way into public office. And the only things that make me sick are liberals.
yea, well, he was still impeached and none of your liberal whining can ever change the history books.
none!
it may mean nothing to your liberal morals, but to me, lying under oath to a grand jury is a big deal
maybe if Monica had been some hot babe instead of a liberal pig I'd think different
Apparently liberal are changing the history books all the time.
Our Founding Fathers, I mean "Framers" are rolling in their graves.
and facts mean nothing to liberals. HLF is a case study.
That's why they so desperately want the constitution to become a "living document".
Living meaning; flexible, able to manipulate, change, and tweek at will.
Back on topic .. maybe Bush should have countered by throwing back a pork chop.
Oh, my...
...saw the other day where it was Monica Lewinsky's 35th birthday. Seems like only yesterday that she was crawling around on the floor of the Oval Office.
Pass out the cigars
...out of some bizarre sense that you "own" the White House as a taxpayer.
Um, Freakee--we do. Libs seem to forget that the government, and ALL in it, work (in theory, anyway) FOR US. We do not report to them, or seek their approval.
Problem is how long you have to wait to try and fire 'em.
This fag must be french
"Bush Shoe-ing Worst Arab Insult"
I thought beheading innocent people or flying airplanes into buildings killing thousands of innocent people would be considered a worse insult....
Allah must think different
No, invading a country and killing tens of thousands of people to make an idiot shoe-target feel like a big man is a bigger insult.
Ironic considering the shoe-target spent his military service strapped to that gurney in an Alabama rehab clinic.
Annie - respectfully request permission to track down HLF & make him eat his own shit.
I promise that this will not hurt him or the environment
HLF:
So you were ok with the genocide saddam practiced on the iraqi population prior to the war?
speaking of "loafers" How's the cheese line?
Claiming genocide under Saddam as a way to excuse the behavior of a third actor (the US) is fallacious at best.
The US did NOT invade Iraq to end this supposed genocide any more than they did in WW2. It's a weak attempt by the pro-war factions to claim some moral high ground which, unfortunately, is impossible considering what they've done.
NEXT!
Fuuny to see people whose ideology has destroyed this economy cavalierly talking about "cheese lines". Such arrogance is astounding but expected.
If Obama were astute he would whip the masses into a frenzy of hateful violence directed at the republicans whose poilices led us to this place.
I still hold out hope that he and the dems will grow the balls to do so.
I'd gladly live through a Depression to witness that.
HLF, geez dude , lighten up
to say you would put the USA in a depression to humiliate your political opponents is basically un-American
but then why I am surprised that a libel is spouting un-american ideas ?
So, HLF, I'm curious...
Why do you think we invaded Iraq, then?
This is honest-to-God curiosity, nothing more.
Out of arrogance that we could convert another culture to being as shallow, materialistic and vapid as we are. To impose our brand of destructive capitalism on another country. To begin a domino theory-like cascade of converting the whole Middle East. The ultimate goal is gaining control over the governments that control most of the world's petroleum.
Liberation was not even an afterthought.
Kreskin
"Out of arrogance that we could convert another culture to being as shallow, materialistic and vapid as we are."
As opposed to stone age, oppressed and hateful? Give me arrogant and shallow any day. However, i cannot help but agree that you cannot bomb a people into democracy. Any benefit that they recieved by our presence will always be underscored by the number of mother's sons, brothers, etc that were killed in this process. That is why I think we need to leave as soon as is possible and strategically sound. There will always be this underlying tension, from a group that, as a people, one would think that they would be grateful to be rid of Saddam, but on an individual basis, could have every reason to hate our guts for killing their Dad, mom, sister, etc.
"To begin a domino theory-like cascade of converting the whole Middle East. The ultimate goal is gaining control over the governments that control most of the world's petroleum."
This is possible. Do you think that the fact that every intelligence service in the western (and also the eastern) world reported that Saddam had, and was developing, WMD programs, including nuclear and biological weapons programs had anything to do with it? How about the 14 (if memory serves) UN resolutions that had an "or else" at the end that were being ignored by Saddam's regime? I wrote early on that I felt that there may have been an underlying message to the UN from the Bush Administration, which was to say that "if you won't do what you say you're going to do, we'll do it for you" in either an attempt to bolster the power of the UN, or to expose it for a paper tiger. I never could put my finger on which one it was. What do you think about those items/ideas? Distractions from the arrogant oil-mongering thing you mentioned earlier, or possibly valid reasons? In conjunction with the oil-mongering? Possibly an excuse to go a-mongering?
"Liberation was not even an afterthought."
Agreed. If we truly cared about the oppression of the downtrodden enough to invade a country, then why not the Sudan as a result of Darfur? There are certainly enough terror targets there to justify it under the War on Terror. Why not Zimbabwe? Why not North Korea? The people in these countries are suffering far more than the people in Iraq were suffering, so why, if liberating the downtrodden was our goal, not the other handful of countries whose people fit the bill much more nicely than Iraq's.
Personally, I think it was a combination of a bunch of these different things. Sans any one of them, we don't go to war. I think that that is why the stated goal of the war kept shifting; we never had a solid, stated goal from the outset, it was a bunch of smaller goals. As some of them were removed (ie, not finding WMDs) the administration just focused on another one fo the many goals in order to keep moving forward.
Whenever someone repeats the lie that everyone thought Saddam had WMDs, they conveniently leave out the work of Hans Blix and the UN weapons inspectors who allowed in right before we invaded and determined there were NO WMDs in Iraq. Remember how bush quickly pulled them out and invaded anyway?
For that alone he deserves to be punished. I'd like to say what I want done to that evil subhuman garbage but I don't want a visit from the Secret Service.
To recap: HANS BLIX AND THE WEAPON INSPECTION TEAM DETERMINED THERE WERE NO WMDs IN IRAQ WHEN WE INVADED.
And no, they didn't magically move underground to Syria either.
Out of arrogance that we could convert another culture to being as shallow, materialistic and vapid as we are. To impose our brand of destructive capitalism on another country. To begin a domino theory-like cascade of converting the whole Middle East. The ultimate goal is gaining control over the governments that control most of the world's petroleum.
Liberation was not even an afterthought.
No, actually the reason the US invaded Iraq was what we called in the psychiatric hospital racket, "a sincere delusion."
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