Posted on 11/03/2009 2:06:21 PM PST by naturalman1975
POLICE in England are questioning a student after he hurled a work boot at the head of former Prime Minister John Howard during a speech at the prestigious Cambridge University.
The male student, believed to be Australian, threw the boot after verbally abusing Mr Howard, branding him a racist and a disgrace, from the moment the former leader entered the room.
"Go home, you racist, I am ashamed to be an Australian," the man then continued to yell as Mr Howard began his speech on leadership in the next generation, to about 400 students in the chamber.
The man then removed his boot and hurled it at Mr Howard only to have it intercepted and caught by Union Senior Officer Andrew Chapman.
"He threw it with some force but I managed to catch it," Mr Chapman, a cricketer, said yesterday.
"It was a regretful incident. We invite prominent people to this chamber for reasonable debate, rationale dialogue and reasoned discussion and from time to time we have people who do have or had unpopular policies or are controversial but we have never had an incident like this. It was isolated."
Mr Chapman, a 20-year-old third year politics student, said Mr Howard took the incident with "good grace and humour" and after laughing off the incident went on with a very well received speech and question and answer session.
"Mrs (Jeanette) Howard thanked me for stopping the work boot and said 'you must be a cricketer'," Mr Chapman said.
(Excerpt) Read more at heraldsun.com.au ...
Be very careful. These people will escalate unless you make an example of the ring leaders!
Wouldn’t an Assault charge be warranted here?
Yes - and one is likely.
Do they have to register their shoes as weapons now?
In my experience, most “students” who wear work boots have never actually used them for work. They wear them out of some infantile pseudo-Marxist notion of “showing solidarity with the working class”.
It is not only assault, but the use of “fighting words” is a justification for physical response — or it used to be. Unfortunately, the US courts have undermined the doctrine, and have protected all manner of aggressive, offensive speech which in the past would have been cause for arrest, and would have been a mitigating factor for someone who punched the foul-mouthed speaker in the snout.
I do think that if someone throws something, they should be knocked to the ground and pinned down, for one never can tell what they might throw next. Gratuitous hitting probably would be out-of-order, but when tackled people just happen to hit the ground hard, and it certainly destroys any heroic pose the perp may have been trying to project. Let him end up on the bottom of a pile of vigilant citizens. They all thought that he might have been about to throw a bomb or something.
When not hurling verbal abuse and shoes what else are they up to?
Kangaroo shot with arrow at Queensland university
THE RSCPA was yesterday forced to destroy an adult kangaroo that was suffering in agony after being shot with an arrow on Rockhampton’s Central Queensland University campus.
The kangaroo, which stood about six feet tall, had suffered in pain for up to three days days after the arrow lodged in its leg.
After putting the animal out of its pain yesterday, RSPCA Central Queensland senior inspector Shayne Towers-Hammond said the attack was the second of its kind in recent weeks.
What? I thought this was the most clever and wonderful form of political speech ever invented.
After all didn't the guy who threw a shoe at Bush get a Nobel prize, a new Ferrari, a job at the NY Times and a date with Maureen Dowd?
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