The King of Spain told Venezuelan strongman, Hugo Chavez, to "shut up" at a conference on Saturday. It was civility, in the form of the king, answering rudeness, Chavez.
Chavez, used to jailing, shouting down or strong-arming anyone talking back to him, did not call on police to arrest the king.
More on the exchange from EDUARDO GALLARDO, AP at Breitbart:
The king of Spain told Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to "shut up" Saturday during a heated exchange at a summit of leaders from Latin America, Spain and Portugal.
Chavez, who called President Bush the "devil" on the floor of the United Nations last year, triggered the exchange by repeatedly referring to former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar as a "fascist."
Aznar, a conservative who was an ally of Bush as prime minister, "is a fascist," Chavez said in a speech at the Ibero-American summit in Santiago, Chile. "Fascists are not human. A snake is more human."
Spain's current socialist prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, responded during his own allotted time by urging Chavez to be more diplomatic in his words and respect other leaders despite political differences.
"Former President Aznar was democratically elected by the Spanish people and was a legitimate representative of the Spanish people," he said, eliciting applause from the gathered heads of state.
Of course, Chavez was not about to take this with lips zipped.
Chavez repeatedly tried to interrupt, but his microphone was off.
Spanish King Juan Carlos, seated next to Zapatero, angrily turned to Chavez and said, "Why don't you shut up?"
Thank God King Juan Carlos was not carrying a protest sign.
This just in: nature abhors a vaccuum. Film at 11.
No real news to write about? No problem.
If you're the creative type, you play a game of 'what if' and get someone to comment on it. The result: hot copy ready to serve up to readers.
That's a recipe used to put together the following story. Reporter A has to write about something, but instead starts day-dreaming. What if they put on a peace conference and something concrete came out of it. What if Israel would decide to withdraw from the West Bank? What if...well you get the story.
And so did Report A, who dug up a quote from a ranking Hamas official to comment on the scenario. There were no surpises: the Hamas leader said, in effect, "You leave, we move in". More of the usual in the Middle East from Yahoo News:
A top Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip warned on Friday that the Islamist movement would seize control of the West Bank if Israel withdrew from the occupied territory.
"Israel says the party in power in Ramallah (Fatah) serves its interests and if Israel withdraws from the West Bank, Hamas will take control. That's true," Mahmud Zahar told a party rally in Jabaliya, in the northern Gaza Strip.
Hamas wants land held by Israel? How can that be? The story continues
He called on Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah party to "learn the lesson of what happened in Gaza" -- where nearly five months ago Hamas routed the moderate leader's loyalists and security officers in the coastal enclave.
Zahar also said an international meeting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that the United States is preparing to host later this month would fail.
Little Green Footballs has this to say about the peace conference-party crashers from Hamas:
Here’s an alternative opinion from Hamas on the upcoming Annapolis “peace conference” between Israel and the Fatah party, at which Israeli PM Olmert seems determined to make serious concessions on the issue of withdrawing settlements in the West Bank: Hamas says it will seize West Bank if Israel withdraws.
This was a story that had to written--on a slow news day. As a slow news day in the Middle East usually means a day without a bomb blast and death, so that's not a bad thing.
This story could have just as easily been filed under "science" with the headline, "Nature Abhors a Vaccuum". by Mondoreb [image:usaidmaps]
