The time has come, the Walrus said,
To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing wax—
Of cabbages—and kings…
Lewis Carroll
M. Shahid Alam
These kleptocrats throw themselves at the feet
of Western plutocracies: they spurn
the real source of power – their own people –
seeking clientage under Western boots.
Lesser rogues gravitate to bigger ones:
this is the law of global hegemony.
This tendency emerges again and again
as long as its victims stay hidebound.
These lesser rogues – Zardari, Karzai,
Abdullah, Mubarak, Abbas –
will get their marching orders from DC,
hold down their own people for a fee,
unless the people, every one of them,
pick up their shoes, sandals, chappals
(any old footwear will do),
and point them at these scoundrels,
a shot across the bow of their kleptocracies.
If this does not work (and it might not),
ask the shoe-throwing Iraqi.
He knew better what to do with a shoe.
I think referring to the western powers as plutocracy gives the reader a jolt, because everywhere they have seen or heard it referred to as a democracy, which is false. In fact, it is important for people to wake up from their delusion. The poem is printed at a good time because our Iraqi shoe-throwing hero is just out of prison, or about to be released. He made the right response to the rhetoric of the mass murderer, the grand puppet of the global cabal of evil, Mr. Bush…after all, isn’t it an insult to humanity to clap for the likes of him?