New York's reaction to the president of Iran.

What do you think?

I believe that he's kind of out of his mind, but:
_He made some reasonable points about the U.S. policing the world (especially the middle east), that the U.S. was the only one to use nuclear energy to do harm, and his point on the suffering of the Palestinian. The media failed on just purely commenting on his ridiculous "no gays in iran" statement
_The president of the University's insulting remarks were uncalled for. It's not gonna help the U.S image. The comparison with Osama Bin Laden did not make much sense.
_Not being allowed on ground zero to pay tribute to the 9/11 victims makes things more complicated, though I have the feeling he asked permission knowing that he would be denied and use that for political reasons at home.

I think this was a huge diplomatic bust and would only give fuel to the neo-con machine to bomb Iran.



Edited by Zitro - September 30 2007 at 08:17

He was so informative.  Who knew that Iran is the only country in the world that doesn't have homosexuals?  I  did  not  know  that!

Chicapah wrote: He was so informative.  Who knew that Iran is the only country in the world that doesn't have homosexuals?  I  did  not  know  that!

Edited by rushfan4 - September 30 2007 at 10:22

jimmy_row wrote: Blacksword wrote: The whole thing is a publicity stunt on the part of Washington. The man is a lunatic, and Washington knows it. One could say it takes one to know one etc.. The purpose of the visit was to bolster support, among the US electorate for an attack on Iran. We did the same in the UK. Channel 4 news conducted a pointless interview, designed to make the Iranian leader look evasive and look like a liar, which of course he is. That said I do not want to see war with Iran. I'm not sure people realise how serious that would be, in terms of the damage to global security, and global economics. Still, as Britney Spears once said, we sould trust Bush. He knows what he's doing. I found that reasurring.. The irony in this situation is that the pro-war neo-con media was completely outraged at the gesture...almost as if they're too damn stupid to even see that such a gesture is swinging the sheep around to their agenda.     I think he should have been received politely and treated like a human: allow him to make an ass of himself before jumping on him - did the school president really need to come down with his contrived moral hammer?  As if we might actually allow Ahmadinejad to convince the student body to become terrorists.  Gimme a break!  There was so much self-righteousness in the air that you could smell it through the tv set.  Having said that, there is no way a man who denies the Holocaust and hangs homosexuals is "misunderstood", he is a lunatic, but lunatics deserve a certain level of humane treatment.

Apparenrtly there are no homosexuals in Iran, according to Armoureddinnerjacket...

There would probably have been some trepidation in Washington about what effect his visit may have had on the nations student population. Of course the fears were ill founded, but it's quite offensive how little credit Bush gives Americas youth.   

Blacksword wrote: jimmy_row wrote: Blacksword wrote: The whole thing is a publicity stunt on the part of Washington. The man is a lunatic, and Washington knows it. One could say it takes one to know one etc.. The purpose of the visit was to bolster support, among the US electorate for an attack on Iran. We did the same in the UK. Channel 4 news conducted a pointless interview, designed to make the Iranian leader look evasive and look like a liar, which of course he is. That said I do not want to see war with Iran. I'm not sure people realise how serious that would be, in terms of the damage to global security, and global economics. Still, as Britney Spears once said, we sould trust Bush. He knows what he's doing. I found that reasurring.. The irony in this situation is that the pro-war neo-con media was completely outraged at the gesture...almost as if they're too damn stupid to even see that such a gesture is swinging the sheep around to their agenda.     I think he should have been received politely and treated like a human: allow him to make an ass of himself before jumping on him - did the school president really need to come down with his contrived moral hammer?  As if we might actually allow Ahmadinejad to convince the student body to become terrorists.  Gimme a break!  There was so much self-righteousness in the air that you could smell it through the tv set.  Having said that, there is no way a man who denies the Holocaust and hangs homosexuals is "misunderstood", he is a lunatic, but lunatics deserve a certain level of humane treatment. Apparenrtly there are no homosexuals in Iran, according to Armoureddinnerjacket... There would probably have been some trepidation in Washington about what effect his visit may have had on the nations student population. Of course the fears were ill founded, but it's quite offensive how little credit Bush gives Americas youth.

No homosexuals in Iran?  That would probably be a blessing to said homosexuals....the truth is that they live in fear and if their secret ever comes out, there is terrible punishment (ie. they are hanged, tortured, etc.).

jimmy_row wrote: not to sound hostile

Not at all.

jimmy_row wrote: I think this is going a bit too far.  A shrewd politician would be Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan...knowing the public and marketing your goals and beliefs to gain a following.

Sounds like that's what Ahmadinejad is doing to me, with all his comments about Zionism and American imperialism. Using them as smokescreens to distract the Iranian people from domestic issues. Just as the Reagan administration talked utter rubbish about Nicaragua being only a few days away from Texas, all the while supporting a vicious terrorist campaign against Nicaragua.

jimmy_row wrote: Ahmadinejad is a violent dictator, there's no masking the torture and suffering that he causes

Not really a dictator, per se. He was voted into power after the real power of Iran excluded the candidates he didn't like. Iran is really a theocracy with mild democratic pretensions.

As for torture and oppression. Yes, that's rife in Iran, and Ahmadinejad is partly to blame for not doing anything about it, though it must be said, with much of the legal system under the control on clerics he has little influence in this area.

No matter what the suffering in Iran, not inconsiderable as I've said, it pales in comparison to what has happened in Iraq and Afghanistan, and should I say the West Bank and Gaza, all of which the Bush adminitration is in some way responsible for.

jimmy-row wrote: and the absurd things he says...

Sure, he says absurd, sometimes provocative things, I wasn't aware that claiming Iran has no homosexuals makes one less of a shrewd politician (given the demographic he's aiming to sway) and a cause of more suffering than an adminitration that started a war of aggression that has claimed over 1,000,000 lives.

jimmy-row wrote: he's clearly more ridiculous than American neo-cons and politicians.

Leaving aside the fact that I made no mention of him being absurd or not, what makes him more absurd than GW Bush?

Edited by Forgotten Son - October 05 2007 at 14:33

jimmy_row wrote: It gets a bit hazy here becuase Reagan's role in that whole plot is debatable (now, I'll admit that I am not as familiar with this point in history as yourself, because I wasn't alive yet) but, say it's an extreme case, I would say that Reagan was a corrupt leader and (obviously) a hypocrite if it's completely true....but his motives were probably somewhat different, as the Reagan administration wasn't particularly violent (although they surely did some questionable things and get entirely tooooo much credit for the whole USSR downfall).

Oh the Reagan administration was far more violent than Iran. The only war Iran has fought in the last few decades was a defensive war against Iraq in the 80s, and a revolution in 1979 otherthrowing the corrupt, oppressive Shah. During that same period the United States was supporting some of the worst regimes in the world, as well as carrying out military operations in Grenada, Libya etc.

jimmy_row wrote: I don't think that Ahmadinejad's goal is to win elections; he craves power in a different way, and he doesn't seem to put the betterment of his country above his own power, image, and 'legacy'.

This is true, Ahmadinejad craves power just like any politcian, and like most he has little real concern for bettering his country. He's still a shrewd politician, though, as he knows what buttons to push and how to distract people from domestic problems. Comparatively, though, he's not that bad.

jimmy_row wrote: true, but his position belies that of a "dictator" moreso than the president or prime minister of a democracy or republic, whereas a theocracy gives more power to one or a select few individuals - he may have been 'voted' in but he does very little to his people's will, and they still don't have some of the freedom's that any human being should have, even in a theocracy.

Sure they're different, but I'd really question whether the neo-cons were doing a lot for the will of the people. In fact they do the opposite of what a lot of Americans want and the reason they get away with it is shameless propaganda, a lot of which is being spread about Iran, to stop the American people intefering in the upcoming war.

jimmy_row wrote: Hazy again...this really depends on your opinion/perception of the war; if, for example, GW & crew went into Iraq believing it was the right thing to do, it doesn't make them bad people, just pre-emptive and hasty (along with all the other supporters at the time, including both political parties...they couldn't have all been fooled now could they?), even considering the terrible death toll, these things can be difficult to predict.

They are responsible, as Noam Chomsky points out, for the predictable conquences of their actions, many people warned that an attack on Iraq could be disaterous but they chose to ignore this evidence and attack, so whether or not their intentions were good or not (I doubt their intentions were good at all), they are reponsible for the carnage that resulted.

jimmy_row wrote: On the other hand, Ahmadinejad wishes to "wipe Israel off the map" and then denies saying it...then says similar things...then denies them.   As much as we don't like Bush, he isn't below this level.

Ahmadinejad never said he wanted to wipe Israel off the map, he quote Ayatollah Khomeini who said:

"The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time".

It's a prophetic statement which suggests that a regime will fall, it doesn't call for genocide, as is so unscupulously repeated by the Western media. Ahmadinejad, from what I can gather, supports a single state settlement, which is hardly lunatic or evil. Whether it'll work or not is another matter, but many intelligent people, including Israelis, also support such a settlement.

jimmy_row wrote: If denying homosexuality exists, while killing them for their "crime" is "shrewd" then I fear for the future of our planet (welll....I fear for it either way

As I've said, that's been the situation in Iran for some time, long before Ahmadinejad became President. To be clear, when I say shrewd, I don't mean to compliment the man. Shrewd =/= respecting human rights necessarily. Kissinger, for example, was a shrewd politcian, that doesn't make the things he did any less attrocious.

jimmy_row wrote: I believe I've answered this throughout...I'll have to admit to a slight bias because I sure as hell hope that the president of my country isn't farther off the deep end than Ahmadinejad, but GW Bush hasn't done anything as ridiculous as denying the Holocaust.

That was very much a political move on Ahmadinejad's part I think. He never outright stated that the Holocaust never happened, rather doubted the veracity of Western claims and rightly pointed out that, if the Holocaust was as bad as people say, that the Palestinians, and the Middle East generally, shouldn't have to suffer for the sins of Europe.

I read an article recently which suggested the reason why so many in the Middle East doubt the Holocaust is because it's used by Israel to justify some pretty barbaric things, and the people of the Middle East are used to hearing all sorts of wild apolagetics for Western colonialism, it could well be that Ahmadinejad is one of these people.

And yes, I think the Bush administration, and administrations before that, have made some far more ridiculous, offensive statements. A paralell example being the US government's refusal to acknowledge the Armenian holocaust.

another link about the rumor/propaganda of "Israel should be wiped off the map"

my opinions about him are negative and between the opinions of Forgotten Son and Jimmy Row. That makes him as bad as the Bush administration, not worse, not better.

And C'mon, this is the Frickin' United States, we can do better than this!


Edited by Zitro - October 07 2007 at 09:37

stonebeard wrote: To introduce him in such a poor manner is disgraceful. He carried out his arguments logically as far as I know. And wiping Israel off the map is not necessarily a military action.

He is just as much of an idiotic fundamentalist as our own Bush is. Probably even more of one. He's a holocaust denier. This is pretty much a sign of insanity.

So, given his record of anti-Semitism, the Israelis shouldn't be worried about his statements at all?

I BELIEVE THAT WAS BAD the discourse of the president of the University and was bad the discourse or responses of Mammoth Amadjihad....In Iran the discrimination against some  women rights  ,homosexuals(in the same status of criminals) etc is a consequence of  retarded  fundamentalist ideas of muslims