Shoes hurled at President Bush as he departs Iraq - President Nouri Kamel al-Maliki unmoved

At a press conference marking the end of President Bush's visit to Iraq , a clearly enraged Muntadar al-Zeidi, a correspondent for Iraqi-owned Al-Baghdadiya television based in Egypt, shouted "this is the end" and forcefully threw both his shoes at President Bush as he effctively ducked and they flew past him. The impassive President Maliki looked calmly on as his guest was insulted and offended as deeply and with as much humiliation is possible, without stabbing the bastard there and then. Great fun.

Entertaining video clips are available on the BBC News site.

When the statue of saddam Hussein was knocked down in Firdos Square the crowd beat it with their shoes. This is an Arab . Sufi / Muslim custom of "cleansing" and is a gesture of utter contempt and disrespect. - the beaten thing is below the lowest part of the body - the foot and therefore an extreme insult.... don't expect Dubya to understand that ... and don't expect anyone to tell him either.

At the 902nd Plenary Meeting of the UN General Asssembly on 12th October 1960 the furious premier of all the Russias Nikita Kruschev banged his shoe on the desk. His daughter later explained that because he had new shoes which piched he had removed them and when baging his desk his glasses fell off and in retreiving them he picked up one of his shoes.

The rest is ..er .. well.. history.

Among the most famous Lashkar-e-Taiba alumni is the remarkable "shoe bomber" Richard Reid, who was supposed to be trying to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight in late 2001, who was also said to be connected to Sheikh Mubarak Ali Shah Gilani a spiritual leader of an obscure Muslim militant group named Jamaat ul-Fuqra .

Reid (AKA Tariq Rajah , Abdel Rahim)apparently went to the British Embassy in Brussels, falsely claiming to have lost his passport - which he has used when passing through Egypt, Israel, Turkey, Pakistan, Belgium, the Netherlands, France and possibly Afghanistan . He applied for and received a spanking brand new British passport which was issued on 7 December 2001 which he used to board Flight 63.