After leaving prison, Muntadar al-Zaidi went straight to al Baghdadiya – the TV station he was working for at the news conference where he threw the shoes.
Addressing his own news conference, he said he had been tortured: “At the very moment that the Prime Minister Mr al-Maliki was on TV saying he wouldn’t rest until he was sure I was sleeping on a comfortable bed, I was being hideously tortured.
“I was being given electric shocks, and being hit with cables and steel roods… I was left handcuffed and immersed in water until dawn in cold weather. I demand that Mr al-Maliki apologise for concealing the truth.”
An advisor to the prime minister told the BBC that the torture allegation should be investigated.
And a spokesman for the ministry of human rights told us they do not believe he was tortured in the jail where he spent the past nine months, as it is a “detention centre with acceptable human rights standards”.
They concluded that, if he was tortured, it must have happened soon after he was arrested and before his trial.
At his news conference, Mr Zaidi offered an explanation for his shoe-throwing protest.
“I’m not a hero,” he said, “but when I saw the war criminal Bush, I wanted to show my resentment – after six years of occupation, this killer came to my country smiling and bragging about victory.”
He went on: “When I saw the pictures of the dead, it kept me awake at night.”
He also addressed objections that journalists should throw questions at presidents, and not shoes: “If I gave the profession of journalism a bad name, I apologise,” he said.
So Israelis are not on the edge of their seats hoping that President Barack Obama can, despite all the difficulties, create a new peace process or revive an old one. Instead they are sceptical, and cynical about anything other than more of the same.
Most people are much more concerned about Iran and its nuclear plans than about Palestinians, who are a known, containable commodity. The Iranians are much more worrying.
I am sitting writing this in the shade of some pine trees in the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba in the occupied West Bank. All the houses around me are illegal under international law.
If anything, the Palestinians who think all of this occupied land should be theirs are even more cynical and sceptical about peace than the Israelis.
Many Palestinians are convinced that history’s lesson is that Israelis are out to steal their land. Not just the soil and rock, but the water underneath it too.
Plenty of Palestinians say that they prefer it when seemingly harder-line right-wingers like the current Israeli prime minister are in power.
The left, they say, are good at deceiving foreigners but they are just as determined to take land as the rightists.
For more than 15 years, on and off, Palestinians have watched leaders on the TV talking about peace.
The foreign ministers of Iraq and Syria have met for talks in Turkey to defuse tensions following a diplomatic row.
The neighbours recalled their envoys last month after a series of bomb attacks in Baghdad that killed nearly 100 people.
Iraq alleged that Syria was harbouring the attacks’ masterminds.
Turkey has been acting as broker between the two, who only revived diplomatic links in 2006 after more than 20 years of mutual hostility.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said there was “determination to co-operate in uncovering all facts behind these barbarian attacks against the Iraqi government and people”.
Near-simultaneous bomb attacks struck the finance, foreign and defence ministries in the heart of Baghdad on 19 August 2009.
Baghdad summoned its envoy home after airing a taped confession that linked two Syria-based Iraqi Baathists to the bombing campaign. Damascus followed suit.
Syria is ruled by a rival branch of the Baath party, which was overthrown in Iraq by the US-led invasion and subsequently banned.
Hundreds of former Baathists are thought to have taken refuge in Syria since the 2003 collapse of Saddam Hussein’s government.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has alleged that 90% of foreign “terrorists” who infiltrate Iraq do so via Syria and has asked the United Nations to investigate the bombings.
Iraq says it has evidence that groups based in Syria orchestrated the bombings in Baghdad, a claim Damascus has dismissed.
Kandahar has the symbolic importance of being the spiritual centre of the Taliban movement and also the place of its origin. The supreme Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, made the city his headquarters when the Taliban came to power in 1996. Top al-Qaeda leaders, including Osama Bin Laden, preferred it to the country’s political capital, Kabul.
As such, the control of Kandahar province is a matter of great prestige. The first suicide attacks in Afghanistan took place in Kandahar in 2005-06, and were linked to al-Qaeda. Kandahar has seen some high-profile jailbreaks and assassination attempts, including one on President Karzai.
The Afghan government has prevented the Taliban from seizing control of any significant district centre or town. International forces have large bases in the airport area as well as at the former residence of Mullah Omar in the western suburbs of Kandahar city.
But the Taliban have a strong presence in the countryside, especially in southern and eastern areas along the border with Pakistan. Afghan and Western officials have in the past said the Taliban have used Quetta, the capital of the Pakistani province of Balochistan, as a major hideout as well as other Pakistani towns along the Kandahar border.
Areas on the Pakistan side stretching north-eastwards along the border from Quetta to the town of Zhob are inhabited by Pashtun tribes.
Mullah Omar is thought by some to be hiding in Kandahar or Helmand. Others suspect he is in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
Taliban activity in Balochistan is largely related to operations inside Afghanistan and is of no immediate concern to Islamabad.
Afghanistan’s Zabul province lies to the north of Kandahar, along the Toba Kakar mountain range that separates it from the Pakistani districts of Killa Saifullah and Killa Abdullah. The mountains are remote, and have been largely quiet except for a couple of occasions when Pakistani security forces scoured them for al-Qaeda suspects.
Reports from Afghanistan say militants use the area in special circumstances. In early 2002, Taliban militants fleeing US forces in Paktia and Paktika provinces took a detour through South Waziristan to re-enter Afghanistan via Zabul. Occasionally, Taliban insurgents use the Toba Kakar passes when infiltration through South Waziristan is difficult due to intensified vigilance by Pakistani and Afghan border guards.
Zabul provides access to the Afghan provinces of Ghazni, Oruzgan and Kandahar. There are few Afghan or foreign forces in the area, except on the highway that connects Qalat, the capital of Zabul, to Kandahar in the south-west, and Ghazni and Kabul in the north.
Taliban activity along parts of this highway has forced government officials, aid workers and journalists to give up travelling on this road.
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But there have been counter-arguments that call the army’s declared reasons into question.
First, the terrain in the north-eastern parts of South Waziristan, which is envisaged to be the main theatre of war, is not as difficult as that in Malakand.
Thick forest cover and lots of water made nearly the entire Malakand region suitable for militants to create hideouts and to lie low there for longer periods.
But South Waziristan is an arid zone, with no forest and little water.
Second, the likely war zone in South Waziristan is sparsely populated, and most of the population has already left the area, effectively cutting the possibility of civilian casualties.
Third, the troops deployed in the South Waziristan region are more than twice the numbers that conducted the Malakand operation, even though the area of the combat zone is smaller
The militants also suffered setbacks. Former Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud was killed in a suspected US drone strike in August.
His death led some security analysts to suggest that there was now no need for a full-blown operation, and that small-scale, localised action would take care of the menace.
But despite army rhetoric about why a timeframe could not be put on any South Waziristan assault, the authorities have decided that now is the time to attack the militants in their stronghold.
Recent years have seen the re-emergence of the hardline Islamic Taliban movement as a fighting force in Afghanistan and a major threat to its government.
They are also threatening to destabilise Pakistan, where they control areas in the north-west and are blamed for a wave of suicide bombings and other attacks.
The Taliban emerged in the early 1990s in northern Pakistan following the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan.
A predominantly Pashtun movement, the Taliban came to prominence in Afghanistan in the autumn of 1994.
It is commonly believed that they first appeared in religious seminaries – mostly paid for by money from Saudi Arabia – which preached a hard line form of Sunni Islam.
The Taliban’s promise – in Pashtun areas straddling Pakistan and Afghanistan – was to restore peace and security and enforce their own austere version of Sharia, or Islamic law, once in power.
In both countries they introduced or supported Islamic punishments – such as public executions of convicted murderers and adulterers and amputations of those found guilty of theft.
Men were required to grow beards and women had to wear the all-covering burka.
Pakistan has repeatedly denied that it is the architect of the Taliban enterprise.
But there is little doubt that many Afghans who initially joined the movement were educated in madrassas (religious schools) in Pakistan.
Pakistan was also one of only three countries, along with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which recognised the Taliban when they were in power in Afghanistan from the mid-1990s until 2001.
It was also the last country to break diplomatic ties with the Taliban.
But Pakistan has since adopted a harder line against Taliban militants carrying out attacks on its soil.
The attention of the world was drawn to the Taliban in Afghanistan following the attacks on the World Trade Centre in September 2001.
There have been protests in the Afghan capital, Kabul, over allegations that foreign troops in the country burnt a copy of the Koran.
Hundreds of Kabul University students led the latest protest, burning an effigy of US President Barack Obama.
The US-led Nato force has denied the claims, saying it has investigated the incident in Wardak province and found the allegations to be groundless.
The local authorities there have so far supported Nato.
They say they did find evidence that a Koran had been burnt, but blamed drug addicts and said the Taliban may be spreading rumours that foreign troops were responsible to provoke anti-American unrest.
On Sunday, a crowd estimated in the high hundreds marched through Kabul – chanting “Death to America” – to protest at the alleged desecration of the Islamic holy book earlier this month.
There were some clashes with security forces, and Afghan police fired in the air to scatter the crowd.
But protesters said they would not give up.
“We are demonstrating because American soldiers burned our holy Koran in Wardak province,” said one man. “We will keep going to embarrass the Americans for their actions.”
In this very religious country, any allegation like this has an incendiary affect.
Four years ago, almost 20 people were killed after riots erupted in several Afghan cities following a US news magazine report that the Koran had been desecrated by American interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.
The magazine later withdrew its report, but by then the damage had been done.
At the time, many believed growing disenchantment among Afghans with the foreign community and its performance had helped fuel the violence.
Four years on, that record is under even greater scrutiny.
The Liberty Nickel series makes a challenging, yet very doable, series to complete. The Liberty Nickel, commonly known as the “V” nickel for the Roman Numeral “V” on
the reverse was officially produced from 1883 to 1912.
Before you embark on your mission of completing a set of this series, you must first decide what type of collection you want to assemble and what your budget will be.
For example, a complete collection of all coins from 1883 to 1912 (33 coins) retails for around $1000.00 in G4 condition. Up the condition to XF-40 and expect to pay
over $4500. Up the collection to MS60 and the retail price is nearly $8,500. If you just want the best quality, then look for MS65 which would retail for $62,000. That
is quite a range. While it is unlikely that your set will contain each coin in the exact same grade, this does give you an example of how much increasing the quality
can cost. In the XF-40 range, 4 or 5 of the coins will set you back $100 while the majority of the coins can be had for under $30.00. If budget is an issue, you could
collect the majority of the more common coins in a higher grade and acquire the keys in a lower grade and then upgrade as your budget allows.
You could also attempt to put together a collection of just proof coins. This set would consist of 31 coins and would retail for about $20,000 in MS65 condition.
Collecting proofs in the Liberty Nickel series can be tough yet rewarding. Proofs were minted for every year of existence for the “V” nickel. Proofs in PR65 condition
can run in the $500 plus range for most years with the 1885 running upwards of $1500. Production usually numbered in the thousands for each year, which was an
unusually high number for the period.
For this article, we will assume you have a tight budget and like most collectors you will need to sacrifice quality for the pricier coins. So, how do you get started?
The easiest and fastest way is to start with the common dates. This can give you some instant satisfaction that you are on your way. Within the Liberty Nickel series,
the dates from 1897 to 1912-D can be had for around $2.00 or less in G4 but will cost $30.00 a piece in the XF-40 range. If you are after the low cost coins simply
buying a roll of nickels will most likely yield all but a few dates from 1897 to 1912-D thus lowering your price per coin with a few left over. You can also find deals
such as Starter Sets that will include a certain number of different coins. These will commonly be in AG-3 to VG-8 grades. Beyond this, it is unlikely you will find
unsearched hoards so you will need to buy coins outside of this range individually.
In order to complete the series, three coins may give you trouble. The 1885, 1886 and 1912 S are the lowest mintage. The 1885 had a mintage of over 1.5 million but
will still set you back at least $500 in a grade around G4. The 1886 had a mintage of 3.3 million and will cost around $250 in a G4 grade. The 1912-S specimen had the
lowest mintage by far of just 238,000. As this was the first Liberty Nickel from San Francisco, as well as the last of the series, it was probably saved a little bit
more than the older issues as it may have been recognized for its low mintage. Even with a mintage of just 1/6 of the most expensive 1885 piece, the 1912-S can be had
for around $150 around a G4 grade.
Finding these tougher dates may prove to be somewhat challenging depending where you look. Surprisingly, there are very few dealers advertising Liberty Nickels in
national publications such as Coins Magazine. Those that I did find were asking above retail for 1885 and 1886 type coins. A quick search on the internet did yield
several dealers that had the scarcest dates in stock. Yet again, they were asking above retail for the scarcest dates. I suspect if I walked into my local coin dealer,
s/he would also be asking above retail for the 1885 and 1886 issue. So what does that leave you? If you are a gambler, there is always eBay. A quick search of eBay
yield several 1885 specimens to choose from. Please see my article on eBay buying tips if you are an eBay novice to prevent getting ripped off. While the coins on eBay
are typically overgraded, you can still get what you want if you are careful.
Collecting Liberty V Nickels can be a truly rewarding experience. In just a few short years, every coin in this series will be at least 100 years old bring extra
pleasure to the collector knowing that s/he has something that is a small part of history of the United States of America.
Happy Collecting!
