Needlenose

As you can probably tell from the paucity of posts, it’s been a busy holiday season for this humble correspondent. I did, however, catch this passage in an Associated Press story yesterday about the postponed trial of Muntadhar al-Zeidi, the Iraqi reporter who threw his shoes at Dubya during a press conference in Baghdad:

. . . in the most telling sign of the changes that are sweeping over Iraq, Tuesday’s second anniversary of Saddam Hussein’s hanging went by almost unnoticed — a near-forgotten footnote in a war that has claimed the lives of more than 4,200 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis.

The anniversary was not even marked in Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit, where the insurgency quickly took hold after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

Returning to the article’s main topic, the AP scribe (Patrick Quinn) then writes:

The trial of al-Zeidi was to begin Wednesday on charges of assaulting a foreign leader, which his defense team said carried a maximum sentence of 15 years. . . .

Last week, [Iraqi prime minister Nouri] al-Maliki sought to undermine the journalist’s popularity by saying he had confessed that the mastermind of the attack was a militant known for slitting his victims’ throats.

Al-Maliki said that in a letter of apology to him, al-Zeidi wrote that a known militant had induced him to throw the shoes. The alleged instigator has never been identified and neither al-Maliki nor any of his officials have provided a further explanation. The letter was not made public.

The journalist’s family denied the claim and alleged that al-Zeidi was tortured into writing the letter.

Guess it’s clear why there’s no reason to commemorate the death of Saddam.  His body may be out of power, but his spirit is thriving nicely.

The latest in novel renewable fuel sources – one for which the U.S. and Western Europe have vast reserves.

Over the holiday I was thinking how nice it would be to ‘get over’ the Bush years by having a fitting send-off for him before the inaguration – what about having a big shoe-in on 1/19?  Maybe we could do one in each big city, organize it through meetups?

I’m picturing having some big effigies of Shrubya and Dick.  Everybody could bring some old shoes from their closets and we could all fling our shoes at the effigies.  Sure, it wouldn’t be as gratifying as flinging them at the real guys, but there is a much lower chance of getting shot by an overzealous Secret Service guy.

What do y’all thinK?

For some time now I’ve been meaning to write an indepth, thoughful post describing the two possible models for alternative energy development in the U.S. – centralized power production in high-sun regions and shipping the power long distances versus decentralized power production using a ‘next generation’ power grid.

But in another proof that procrastination (sometimes) pays off, this nice SF Chronicle staff writer has already done the work – getting renewable power to the people.

Mohammed Hussein of the New York Times’ Baghdad bureau writes about the aftermath of this month’s famous shoe-throwing incident:

When traveling outside Iraq, I would sometimes hide my nationality by refraining from speaking in an Iraqi dialect. When Arabs would find out where I was from, I would be lectured about how Iraqis are too willing to accept the presence of American troops in our country. But after an Iraqi television reporter threw his shoes at President Bush during a news conference, other Arabs seem to have raised their opinions of us.

. . . “The Iraqi people are courageous people,” a taxi driver in Amman, Jordan, told me a few days ago. It was strange to hear this praise after hearing years of verbal abuse from Arabs in Jordan and Syria. When my uncle was shopping in the market in Amman recently he heard a voice yell: “Are you Iraqi?” In the past this would be followed by a speech about the war and the Americans. Instead the man yelled to my uncle: “You made us proud.”

As an Iraqi journalist, I’ve had a hard time understanding why Arab people are treating us with dignity now after this type of behavior. Throwing a shoe, especially at a guest, is a deep insult in our culture.

But many other Arabs don’t feel this way. In Amman, people would stop me and ask to hear more about the shoe throwing. “We heard the good news from Iraq,” a neighbor said. My Iraqi friends living in Syria and Lebanon say they have also all been praised.

. . . As an Iraqi, I am happy that our neighbors treat us with respect now. I just wish it was for something other than this. I wonder how our dignity could be so tenuous as to be linked to a pair of shoes.

I have nothing to add; just thought it was worth passing along.

Nobel Prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter died on Christmas eve.  From the obituary at the Huffington Post:

Harold Pinter, praised as the most influential British playwright of his generation and a longtime voice of political protest, has died after a long battle with cancer. He was 78.

. . . “Pinter restored theater to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue, where people are at the mercy of each other and pretense crumbles,” the Nobel Academy said when it announced Pinter’s award. “With a minimum of plot, drama emerges from the power struggle and hide-and-seek of interlocution.”

The Nobel Prize gave Pinter a global platform which he seized enthusiastically to denounce U.S. President George W. Bush and then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

“The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law,” Pinter said in his Nobel lecture, which he recorded rather than traveling to Stockholm.

“How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand?” he asked, in a hoarse voice.

. . . During the late 1980s, his work became more overtly political; he said he had a responsibility to pursue his role as “a citizen of the world in which I live, (and) insist upon taking responsibility.”

Pinter began his stage career as an actor, taking to playwriting in frustration at the inept dialogue he was forced to recite.  The photo above shows him in his final role, playing the title character in Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape in London in October 2006.  (Pinter’s declining health limited him to a wheelchair for much of the performance.)

RIP.

Swopa must be off doing something either more productive or more entertaining. Therefore I must post Cheney’s disclosure that he worked on the Plame press talking points.

From all-but-admitting that he was the force behind the waterboarding and Gitmo to casually almost admitting to this felony, Cheney is just laughing at us, knowing that he ‘got away with it.’

Back in September when Shrubya warned of economic doomsday if we didn’t immediately give $700 billion to the financial services execs with no-strings attached, Fubar smelled a rat.

Surely, our money is being put to good use?  Apparently, getting an accounting for the tens of billions spent to date is strictly on a need to know basis. 

However, rest assured that at least those poor financial services execs aren’t suffering!  Collectively they’ve received $1.6 billion in compensation for their stellar work:

Benefits included cash bonuses, stock options, personal use of company jets and chauffeurs, home security, country club memberships and professional money management, the AP review of federal securities documents found.The total amount given to nearly 600 executives would cover bailout costs for many of the 116 banks that have so far accepted tax dollars to boost their bottom lines.

See?  Knowing this, doesn’t it truly feel better to give than to receive?

*Update* Sadly, you won’t get the chance to tell any of these pillars of our financial services community how happy you are for them in a chance airport encounter – your tax dollars are still supporting their fleet of private jets.

Play the game!  Tip of the ‘Nose to Game Buddy.

Dubya checks what time it is.

From the Associated Press (via MSNBC):

President George W. Bush’s two terms in office have been marked by wars, a global financial crisis, and a steady stream of political opposition. But his official portrait, unveiled Friday at the National Portrait Gallery, shows him at ease and smiling, seemingly unfazed by eight years of tumult.

. . . Bush wanted painter Robert Anderson, a Yale classmate of the president’s, to give him a more informal look for his likeness at the National Portrait Gallery. Anderson painted the portrait to engage viewers with the president in a “personal and conversational manner,” according to an event program.

Isn’t it kind of curious that a president who was obsessed with presenting himself as a figure of unquestionable authority (a “war president,” the “decider,” endless self-references to being “commander-in-chief,” etc.) would suddenly decide to go casual for his official portrait?

Seems to me that the only times I’ve seen the Shrubster in shirtsleeves came when he was posing as engaged and working hard while touring the site of a natural disaster.  I guess maybe envisioning his legacy counts.

Watertiger, meanwhile, notes the special obstacle that the presidential artist had to overcome.