The opportunity came, and I took it |
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| By: markfromireland Tuesday September 15, 2009 12:28 pm | |
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.
Read al-Zaidi’s speech in full at this link: What Iraqi journalist who threw shoes at Bush had to say | McClatchy
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9 Comments
An eloquent, magnificent speech. Thank you for posting it here.
It is a wonderful speech (and a very good translation). Arab speeches can be really tough to translate because by Western standards the prose is very flowery. I really do encourage all readers to go and read the full thing.
The translation was done by Sahar Issa, one of the International Women in Media Foundation’s 2007 Courage in Journalism award winners. If you’re in the mood for speech reading, here’s her acceptance speech for that award. She’s a writer for McClatchy and her pieces posted at Inside Iraq are vivid and passionate. If you can’t already tell, I think she’s the bee’s knees.
thank you!
I’m glad al-Zaidi has been released from prison and upset that he was tortured. Truth to power.
I assumed he was speaking directly in English, largely for that reason. Usually, translations from Arabic sound stilted in English. As in “mother of all battles”, that sort of thing. Either this man has an elegant speaking style, or someone did a great translation.
Thanks for this link.
Recommended. Thank you, markfromireland.
In another report I read that the Iraqi people had built a statue of a big shoe in his honor. IMO, that shoe is a more honorable and precious monument than George W. Bush’s huge library on the campus of Southern Methodist University, filled with lies and blackened pages of history which behind all that ink tell of extended oppression, unjustified invasion and massive death and destruction to a sovereign nation.
From generation to generation Iraqi parents will tell their children of Muntadhar al-Zaidi and his brave act which spoke out for so many. And what will the generations of Americans tell their children of The Shoe Man’s target? That he was the man who made war criminals of our once great nation?
markfromireland, it’s time to do a follow up to this diary. Today’s rawstory reports that a mentally ill Iraqi man threw a shoe at US soldiers in Fallujah and they shot him dead. Excuse was they thought it was a grenade attack.
Same story reports that al-Zaidi has flown out of the country “fearing for his life”.
al Jazeera reports that al Zaidi went into hiding after his speech, then was flown to Syria and will go to Greece for medical treatment. The report states that he was injected with some chemicals while in prison and suffers pain. I just hope the medical treatment he receives is the real kind and not that the CIA administers.