JAKARTA, Indonesia – Scores of Islamic students staged protests outside Jakarta's parliament and in at least three other major Indonesian cities on Friday against President Barack Obama's upcoming visit to this predominantly Muslim country.

The students carried banners branding Obama as an enemy of Islam and an imperialist in downtown Jakarta as well as in the provincial capitals Padang, Yogyakarta and Surabaya.

They also threw shoes at large pictures of Obama's head. An Iraqi journalist was sentenced to a year in prison for throwing his shoes at U.S. President George W. Bush during a news conference in Baghdad in 2008.

Protest organizer Ahmad Irhamul Fikri, spokesman for the Coordinating Board for Campus Proselytizing Institute, said bigger rallies will be staged next Friday in more Indonesian cities ahead of Obama's March 20-22 visit.

Such demonstrations of hostility toward Obama are rare in Indonesia, where he enjoys widespread popularity because he spend part of his childhood in Jakarta while his mother was married to his Indonesian stepfather.

Local government officials allowed business people to erect a statue of a 10-year-old Obama in a Jakarta park in December. But it was shifted last month to a nearby elementary school that he attended after more than 50,000 people supported a Facebook campaign against it and court action was threatened.

Obama is expected to sign the statue's pedestal while in Jakarta.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100305/ap_on_re_as/as_indonesia_obama

" Scores of Islamic students"...to the mathematically impared that's as in 20's...rewrite "News org touts small insignificant numbers of America haters as news"...

You guys are scraping the bottom of the kettle....

Ummm, 'Middle', HuffPo is calling ... run see what they want, okay? Meanwhile, I'll be over here going thru your stuff ... Look, dude-ette, his own people despise The Littlest Communist ... name me one other reason they'd THROW SHOES at the HEAD of his image ... ? I can't wait to see if they throw REAL shoes at the 'REAL' 'him' ... maybe he'll bring Meeeeeeee-shell to protect him, 'cuz she's the one with the arms ... the dude's an empty suit, a poseur, a 'pretender' who despises the country that was tricked, gulled, and guilted into giving him the power he now uses to destroy the country he 'represents' ... his entire program is about DEstruction, not CONstruction ... he views the Constitution as 'just words, just speeches' ... he is hollow without his Leninist training and his slavish Alinskyite beliefs ... you're just a pale imitation of a shadowy poseur ... now go away while us adults talk about important stuff ...

Why do you care?


Indo is 90 gazillion miles away from you, with no resources the US could want.....they are all of 12 minutes away from us.....and we don't care if they choose to not like others.


I would throw more than shoes at some wanker bastard that demanded I must adhere to his despotic insanity!


Get a grip....or rather loosen the chicken chokehold.

Does 'gazillion' come after 'trillion' ... ?

That it does....and for you guys in the US...why would you give a rat's razoo what the Indo crew choose to believe in, they have no assets you guys want.

these people get a raging "one" whenever a news story contains the word islamic and the word Obama. I don't see this as a news story

Of course you wouldn't see it as news. Your brothers are bashing your hero.. It's a no win situation for you.. I guess that is nothing new..

my hero? i may defend obama on silly accusations but he's certainly not my hero. in fact i've been to sveral anti war rallies in washington and have sent numerous letters criticizing his foreign policies...plus i dont recall indonesia supporting him either. you just think it's newsworthy because you're in the 'i believe obama's a muslim' camp. i could be wrong but since the majority of your posts seem to try and link the two together, i'm certain my analysis is correct. My heros are the mujahideen who are fighting the israeli occupation not some two bit politician from america regardless of the letter next to his name

While we discuss the trees,,,checkout the forest,,,

"Such demonstrations of hostility toward Obama are rare in Indonesia, where he enjoys widespread popularity because he spend part of his childhood in Jakarta while his mother was married to his Indonesian stepfather."


I dont live in Indonesia, but I would gather, using common sense, that not EVERYONE there or EVERYONE in any country has ever supported an American president

Americans booed and protested Bush, impeached Clinton, made fun of Reagan,,etc,,,....its life, not news.

Nothing better to do than stir up the islamic poo pot many moons ago it was the christians, jews gays ect ect that that people turned against due to chinease whispers now its the media and others, i have better things to do than worry about a load of stupid students and stupid postings adding more fuel to the fire!!Anna x

why bother posting then? i dont go to the "look at me im jewish" threads just to tell them i don't like them. geeesh english rose

To make a point i think its called freedom of speach!! Anna x

What?! One of Obama's policies is unpopular?!

I say we PROTEST!



When residents of a small Saskatchewan town got sick of their provincial government's lack of attention to their roads, they decided to take off their clothes. The result was a calendar of the town's residents posing nude in and around potholes on Highway 32. One month featured a naked man in a canoe while another depicted a gent covering up with a hubcap. The stunt apparently worked — local news reports say funding for Highway 32 repairs was approved in October 2008.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1866667_1866668_1866656,00.html

Clever advertising,,lol.

They have one 'asset' we'd be more than happy to return to them, tho' ... can you guess which one ... ?

gee college students protesting a political figure,wow never heard of that before..maybe they all won't take a bath for days and do LSD so they can resolve their indentity crisis

Jakartastock

"Make opium not war"