Sunday, September 27, 2009
Friday, September 18, 2009
Muntazer al-Zaidi | Why I threw the shoe
( source )
I am free. But my country is still a prisoner of war. There has been a lot of talk about the action and about the person who took it, and about the hero and the heroic act, and the symbol and the symbolic act. But, simply, I answer: what compelled me to act is the injustice that befell my people, and how the occupation wanted to humiliate my homeland by putting it under its boot.
Over recent years, more than a million martyrs have fallen by the bullets of the occupation and Iraq is now filled with more than five million orphans, a million widows and hundreds of thousands of maimed. Many millions are homeless inside and outside the country.
We used to be a nation in which the Arab would share with the Turkman and the Kurd and the Assyrian and the Sabean and the Yazid his daily bread. And the Shia would pray with the Sunni in one line. And the Muslim would celebrate with the Christian the birthday of Christ. This despite the fact that we shared hunger under sanctions for more than a decade.
Our patience and our solidarity did not make us forget the oppression. But the invasion divided brother from brother, neighbour from neighbour. It turned our homes into funeral tents.
I am not a hero. But I have a point of view. I have a stance. It humiliated me to see my country humiliated; and to see my Baghdad burned, my people killed. Thousands of tragic pictures remained in my head, pushing me towards the path of confrontation. The scandal of Abu Ghraib. The massacre of Falluja, Najaf, Haditha, Sadr City, Basra, Diyala, Mosul, Tal Afar, and every inch of our wounded land. I travelled through my burning land and saw with my own eyes the pain of the victims, and heard with my own ears the screams of the orphans and the bereaved. And a feeling of shame haunted me like an ugly name because I was powerless.
As soon as I finished my professional duties in reporting the daily tragedies, while I washed away the remains of the debris of the ruined Iraqi houses, or the blood that stained my clothes, I would clench my teeth and make a pledge to our victims, a pledge of vengeance.
The opportunity came, and I took it.
I took it out of loyalty to every drop of innocent blood that has been shed through the occupation or because of it, every scream of a bereaved mother, every moan of an orphan, the sorrow of a rape victim, the teardrop of an orphan.
I say to those who reproach me: do you know how many broken homes that shoe which I threw had entered? How many times it had trodden over the blood of innocent victims? Maybe that shoe was the appropriate response when all values were violated.
When I threw the shoe in the face of the criminal, George Bush, I wanted to express my rejection of his lies, his occupation of my country, my rejection of his killing my people. My rejection of his plundering the wealth of my country, and destroying its infrastructure. And casting out its sons into a diaspora.
If I have wronged journalism without intention, because of the professional embarrassment I caused the establishment, I apologise. All that I meant to do was express with a living conscience the feelings of a citizen who sees his homeland desecrated every day. The professionalism mourned by some under the auspices of the occupation should not have a voice louder than the voice of patriotism. And if patriotism needs to speak out, then professionalism should be allied with it.
I didn't do this so my name would enter history or for material gains. All I wanted was to defend my country.
Muntazer al-Zaidi is an Iraqi reporter who was freed this week after serving nine months in prison for throwing his shoe at former US president George Bush at a press conference. This edited statement was translated by McClatchy Newspapers correspondent Sahar Issa www.mcclatchydc.com
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Kanye West on Patrick Swayze
( source )
Even as the buzz on Twitter, Facebook, and the universe of entertainment news outlets is humming with the discussion of the hip-hop star’s outrageous antics at the MTV Videao Music Awards, Kanye West doubled down on his image as an outspoken and no-holds-barred loudmouth yesterday.
During a service being held to remember the life and career Patrick Swayze, West barged his way into the pastor’s pulpit, comandered [sic] the mic and launched into a tyrade [sic] on the ’80s star’s death and funeral.
After seizing the platform from the startled reverend West said, “I’m happy for your Patrick and I’ll let them finish your service in a minute but I just wanted to say that Michael had one of the best funerals ever!”
Swayze was unavailable for comment.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Selective Free Speech ?????
Well the Danish cartoons have been brought up again. I personally couldn't care less, not that they aren't offensive or anything it's just that I really don't expect anything less from the "civilized world". I mean the double standards and the amount of self righteousness and denial they use to defend free speech and their "way of life" is sooo stupid and flabbergasting. What's even dumber is the trail of idiotic closet-atheist/secular Arabs/Muslims who parrot their propaganda; thinking that parroting their colonial masters makes them civilized by association.
But what really surprised me was that the Dutch Danish* prosecutors are now prosecuting an Arab/European lobbying group ( AEL ) for publishing images that debate the true number of Jews killed in the holocaust; "because it offends Jews on the basis of their race and/or religion", while at the same time defending the initial publication of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH ) cartoons and continuing to defend its republication, do you know why ? Because a group of old white men and women, who think that the prophet (PBUH) is a terrorist pedophile ( as if he was an Evangelical or something *joke* ), think that the Danish cartoons were not offensive to Muslims in general.
The really funny thing,though, is that the AEL published a disclaimer underneath the image saying that they did not support the views of the cartoons it uses. Not only that but the head of the AEL said that they used the cartoons to "illustrate with cartoons the double morals of the West during the Danish cartoon affair." I mean the guy is tipping them not to get provoked; but racism sure is blinding.
As I said it's flabbergasting !
sources (1, 2) and hattip to music lover for sharing the the first source ;).
* Thanks to the the anonymous in the third comment for pointing out the typo.
