Iraqi shoe throwing journalist to receive death sentence

He won't really receive the death penalty, at least we hope he won't, but he is nursing broken bones after being tackled by Iraqi security guards.

When I was studying journalism, they said that the pen was mightier than the sword. They clearly forgot about footwear. This guy was thinking laterally - nice work!

You don't hear this very often, but to his credit George Bush Jr really outdid himself during this incident. If only more of these types of situations had popped up in the last year or so of his term, the Republicans may not have been so soundly flogged (figuratively, not literally a-la Guantanamo) at the polls.

The incident, which I think should be referring to footwear of mass destruction, as they stopped being mere "shoes" when they were thrown at the "leader of the free world", has been celebrated and immortalised in a number of novel ways - link to Wired magazine.

update

It's been a long time since we posted, and it's not because America has suddenly picked up it's game. On the contrary, I've been so engrossed in the pre-election circus over there, I've hardly had time to think about how insane the whole thing is and write it all down.

After all, since we lost John Howard, all we have is George Bush, and even he's been pretty quiet.

The parties over there sure put a lot of money, effort, bile etc into competing against their own people, then as soon as a winner is announced, it's all forgotten and the other party are the bad guys again.

Hopefully American's will pull their fingers out and put in a representative vote this time. Once the Democrats are in we can all go back to picking on TV Evangelists, paedophiles and fast food chains (not necessarily in that order).

Newsflash! George Bush got it wrong

How strange that the "democratically elected"leader of the so-called "free-world" has got it wrong yet again.

In the case of Iraq, Bush's own people told him that there were no WMDs. The ensuing invasion and occupation that occurred despite this information failed to uncover the fictitious stockpiles used as justification for the devastation of an entire region.

Now to Iran. Again Bush has banged on and on about the Iranian weapons program.

"A new assessment by American intelligence agencies concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains frozen, contradicting judgment two years ago that Tehran was working relentlessly toward building a nuclear bomb."

By no means is this a reason to breath a sigh of relief in the comfort that Bush won't decide to invade. After all, there is an election coming up, and Americans tend to vote for war mongers.

As long as Iran is enriching Uranium for civilian purposes, there is always enough doubt to justify a unilateral preemptive strike.

On the other hand, Americans could come to their senses and head Bush off, vote him out, get some Democrats in, and end the latest Western tyranny of our times, just like we did in Australia.