Lord have Mercy. Did someone really wallop Silvio Berlusconi in public with a statue of Milan Cathedral? Yes indeed. Where were the bodyguards?

It’s the realest thing since Muntadar al-Zaidi threw a shoe at George Bush, curiously, around this time last year. That doesn’t make it clever. Massimo Tartaglia is now a marked man who would do well to watch his back forever. And if something like this happens to another head of state within the next six months or so, it will give them the excuse they need to shut things down and never venture into public.

Then again, if you were one of the millions of people who spent Sunday evening trying to escape the X Factor it definitely livened things up. Despite the overwhelming evidence, the whole mental illness part of proceedings still seems a bit convenient and obviously designed to protect Berlusconi’s, ahem, bruised ego.

It’s been an even more trying week than usual for our good old world leaders. In a bid to try and win the next election, no matter what anyone says about it being done and dusted a long time ago, Gordon Brown became the first British prime minister since Winston Churchill to sleep overnight in a war zone. Not a bad look at all. It’s especially clever as staying the night in Afghanistan with ‘our boys’ is precisely the kind of thing Britain’s favourite red would love to splash on its front page if it hadn’t recently switched allegiance to the Conservatives.

It’s even been a trying week for those who are trying to be a head of state.Mir-Hossein Mousavi, surely Iran’s answer to Al Gore, has warned his supporters and the protestors in general, that he fears arrest. It seems strange that it hasn’t happened already. Is it because Iran don’t want the obviously unwelcome international attention that will come with a complete clampdown on the resistance? Who knows? What is certain is that Ayatollah Khamenei and his higher ups can change their minds whenever they feel like it. It’s equally obvious that the online campaign to free student activist Majid Tavakoli – who supposedly tried to escape Tehran’s Amir Kabir university in a lady's dress – is the most inspired piece of protest seen for years.

The opposition deny he was wearing the hijab when arrested, but to show solidarity, millions of Iranians have posed online wearing hijabs. Who knows what the new year will bring?

The Copenhagen Climate Summit is causing many different world leaders headaches for many different reasons. Leaders from what is still insultingly called the ‘developing world’ have struggled to assert themselves adequately – so much so that they had to pretend to walk out earlier this week. They know their concerns will never be listened to in the same way as China’s or India’s, who want to postpone the carbon targets so it doesn’t mess with their economic growth. If anyone has gained from the summit, it’s those who want to deny that climate change exists.

Words: Russell Myrie
Photo: Flickr user The Edge Malaysia