mparent7777_1

• 
• • Peter Tatchell
  • guardian.co.uk,
  • Monday September 29 2008 19:30 BST
    

Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has made a remarkable announcement. He's admitted that Iran might agree to the existence of the state of Israel.

Ahmadinejad was asked: "If the Palestinian leaders agree to a two-state solution, could Iran live with an Israeli state?"

This was his astonishing reply:

If they [the Palestinians] want to keep the Zionists, they can stay ... Whatever the people decide, we will respect it. I mean, it's very much in correspondence with our proposal to allow Palestinian people to decide through free referendums.

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This is best that America can do?

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

"The dignity, integrity and rights of the American and European people are being played with by a small but deceitful number of people called Zionists. Although they are a miniscule minority, they have been dominating an important portion of the financial and monetary centers as well as the political decision-making centers of some European countries and the US in a deceitful, complex and furtive manner. It is deeply disastrous to witness that some presidential or premiere nominees in some big countries have to visit these people, take part in their gatherings, swear their allegiance and commitment to their interests in order to attain financial or media support.

This means that the great people of America and various nations of Europe need to obey the demands and wishes of a small number of acquisitive and invasive people. These nations are spending their dignity and resources on the crimes and occupations and the threats of the Zionist network against their will."

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Once again, U.S. politicians, including both Sarah Palin and Barack Obama, pile on the Iranian president. Why does Larry King (!) sound like the adult in the room?

By Juan Cole

Sep. 24, 2008 | Sen. Barack Obama responded with outrage to the remarks made Tuesday by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad before the United Nations General Assembly, expressing regret that the quirky little president was even allowed to speak. Obama's denunciation was mild compared with that of Gov. Sarah Palin, who accused Ahmadinejad of dreaming "of being an agent in a 'Final Solution' -- the elimination of the Jewish people." In contrast, "Larry King Live" carried an hourlong interview with Ahmadinejad in which the Iranian was allowed to speak for himself and repeatedly denied any violent intentions. King thus reinforced the trend whereby entertainment television, whether Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show" or King's own dog-and-pony interview hour, conveys reality-based news while politicians continue to paint inaccurate and even fantastic scenarios that are harmful to U.S. foreign policy.

In his speech, Ahmadinejad said "the American empire ... is reaching the end of the road" and accused the U.N. Security Council of allowing "Zionist murders" because of "pressure from a few bullying powers." Obama issued a statement saying, "I strongly condemn President Ahmadinejad's outrageous remarks at the United Nations, and am disappointed that he had a platform to air his hateful and anti-Semitic views." He added, "The threat from Iran's nuclear program is grave." Obama then called on his rival in the presidential race, Sen. John McCain, "to join me in supporting a bipartisan bill to increase pressure on the Iranian regime by allowing states and private companies to divest from companies doing business in Iran." He slammed McCain, saying that the senator was playing partisan politics by declining to join Obama in this divestment campaign.

In the heat of the campaign, Obama surely overreached himself in appearing to advocate barring leaders of member states from addressing the United Nations because their views are obnoxious to Americans. He also fell into the trap of declining to make a distinction between anti-Zionist views and anti-Semitic ones. If a policy of exclusion had been adopted by past administrations, Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev could not have announced from that podium the reduction of Red Army forces in Eastern Europe in 1988. And if anti-American statements should trigger the denial of a visa to come to New York, should Nelson Mandela, who called the United States the "most dangerous country in the world," be excluded, too?

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America focuses on the worsening economy while Congress focuses on Jewish cemeteries and Kristallnacht.

Related
Top Ten 2008 and Career Recipients of Pro-Israel PAC Funds


11 hours ago

CLEARWATER, Florida (AFP) — Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Tuesday condemned Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's anti-Zionist and anti-US remarks in his speech at the UN General Assembly.
"I strongly condemn President Ahmadinejad's outrageous remarks at the United Nations, and am disappointed that he had a platform to air his hateful and anti-Semitic views," Obama said in a statement.

"The threat from Iran's nuclear program is grave. Now is the time for Americans to unite on behalf of the strong sanctions that are needed to increase pressure on the Iranian regime," Obama said.

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Ahmadinejad talks Holocaust on CNN
Wed, 24 Sep 2008 10:38:29 GMT

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and CNN's Larry King

Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has shed light on his views about the Holocaust in an interview with CNN's Larry King Live.

In a recorded Tuesday interview with the renowned TV host, President Ahmadinejad said that Zionism blocks research on the Holocaust.

“They (Zionists) don't allow anyone to freely discuss the historical events that happened. They just say this is our account of history, this is what happened and everybody else must just accept it,” said Ahmadinejad.

Larry King then asked the president if, from his point of view, the Holocaust did not happen.

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http://www.un.org/ga/63/generaldebate/iran.shtml

If you missed it today, be sure and catch this speech..aired live on CNN and MSNBC, and hardly mentioned since. It is a truly moving speech.

Iran (Islamic Republic of)
H.E. Mr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President

23 September 2008

• Video: English | Farsi [RealPlayer - 28 min]
• Statement: English [PDF]
• Press Conference [RealPlayer - 1h04]
• Back to the list of speakers

Statement Summary

MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD, President of Iran, noted that the root of the world’s problems with peace and morality lay in one’s particular worldview as well as issues of freedom, obeisance to God and justice.

He then noted that the world was being deceived by hegemonic world and bullying Powers that attacked Iraq under the false pretext of uncovering weapons of mass destruction and overthrowing a dictator.  These Powers had insisted on imposing colonial agreements on Iraq by keeping them under Chapter VII of the Charter.  While this was going on, he said that Palestine had suffered 60 years of carnage and invasion by Zionists, even as United Nations resolutions that have addressed the plight of the Palestinian people had been relegated to the archives, unnoticed.

He pointed out that, in Afghanistan, the production of narcotics had multiplied since the presence of NATO forces along with myriad problems including terrorism.  He said the people of Afghanistan were the victims of the willingness of NATO member States to dominate the regions surrounding India, China and South Asia, and the Security Council could not do anything about it because some NATO members were also a part of the Council.

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September 07, 2008

The interview that Mike Wallace did of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 2 years ago was aired on C-Span recently, and a diligent blogger has reported on what "60 Minutes" cut out of the interview when it aired. When Wallace confronted Ahmadinejad with the "wipe Israel off the map" threats, Ahmadinejad said that "the solution is democracy" in Israel and Palestine, a suggestion that he favors a one-state solution. I agree with blogger Tom Murphy that "60"'s edits misrepresent Ahmadinejad's thrust, making him out to be far more confrontational than he is, especially after Wallace promised Ahmadinejad that he would listen to his complete answers to questions. And yes, that this amounts to "suppression of basic facts concerning Israel and the Palestinians."

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Iran leader upbeat on nuclear talks

July 28: Brian Williams, host of NBC's "Nightly News," previews his exclusive interview with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in which the Iranian president vows a "positive" response if the U.S. changes its policies.

VIDEO

Published on Thursday, July 3, 2008 by The Wiscasset Newspaper (Maine)

The Darkness of This House Has Got the Best of Us

by Christopher Cooper

I’m thinking old Mike Ahmadinejad may not be such a bad guy. I call him Mike (which he might not appreciate, either in its overfamiliarity or because his name is actually Mahmoud), because Mahmoud is hard for me to pronounce well, and because it seems reasonable to me that Michael just might be its English equivalent. And I wouldn’t mind if he were to call me some Iranian homophonic near-equivalent of my name, especially considering its obvious son-of-God derivation. I’d just hope it didn’t have any of those raspy, back-of-the-throat components they seem to like over there.

We do share a contempt for George W. Bush, which should be a good foundation for a relationship. And he always seems to wear a nice button-front shirt with a collar — no baggy sweatshirts, Arizona real estate developer golf shirts, or shapeless, unisex Middle-Eastern sack dresses. I like that. He seems neat and clean — casually collegiate; maybe an instructor or low-level assistant professor at a middling-quality state school. I could also see him reading beat poetry to a mostly empty coffeehouse on a weekday night. Nothing extreme about his haircut. And the man knows how to manage a beard: not for him or me either the nasty stubble of modern youth or a rat’s bed of an unreconstructed mountain man.

Really, what’s not to like about M. Ahmadinejad, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran? (Look! The Islamic Republic of Iran and The United States of America have precisely the same number of letters — we could be “Sister Nations” or some such liberal feel-good designation, except his country is governed by a “radical Islamist” [some say], while ours is run by a “complete moron” [I boldly assert]). Yes, you say, but isn’t Iran a member of the “Axis Of Evil”? So said Geo. W. Bush, son of G.H.W. Bush, and personal sock-puppet to Grand Imperial Inquisitor Richard B. Cheney. But we invaded, destroyed, looted, freed and democratized one of that dread trio (Iraq) and made a vague, incomplete, unverifiable deal with the mental cripple leader (son, himself, of another nut — we’re not, apparently, the only nation that can’t get its business off the treadmill of inbrededness) of the second (North Korea). No more axis.

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Iranian Official: Ahmadinejad Was Target of X-Ray Assassination Plot

Monday , June 30, 2008

Foes of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad tried to kill the hard-line leader with X-ray radiation during his recent visit to Italy, Iran’s former ambassador to Rome told Russian news service RIA Novosti on Monday.

Ex-ambassador Abolfazi Zohrevand said the rising concentration of high-intensity radiation at Ahmadinejad’s temporary residence in Rome earlier this month led to the claims.

"We found out that the radiation was higher than normal and its intensity was rapidly increasing," Zohrevand told Iran’s IRNA news agency. He added that several devices were used to avoid potential error in readings, but they all showed the same results.

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Media: Iran president claims US assassination plot 

By NASSER KARIMI – 2 hours ago

TEHRAN,Iran (AP) — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday accused the United States of plotting to kidnap and assassinate him during a visit this year to Iraq, state media reported.

The hardline president told a meeting of clerics in the central city of Qom that Iran's "enemies" planned to kill him when he went to Baghdad in March, according to the president's Web site. Iranian leaders usually use the term "enemies" to refer to Western nations and the United States in particular.

The report on the presidential Web site did not specify the United States as the source of the plot. But state television reported that Ahmadinejad had "unveiled a shocking story" — that "Americans had intended to kidnap him during his trip to Iraq." 

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Ahmadinejad to OPEC: Dump weak dollar

Market full of oil, price trend fake: Ahmadinejad

Reuters

17 June 2008

ISFAHAN, Iran - The oil market is plentifully supplied and the rally to record high prices is "fake and imposed", Iran's president said on Tuesday, blaming a weak U.S. dollar which he suggested was being pushed lower on purpose.

"At a time when the growth of consumption is lower than the growth of production and the market is full of oil, prices are rising and this trend is completely fake and imposed," Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said.

"It is very clear that visible and invisible hands are controlling prices in a fake way with political and economic aims," he said when opening a meeting of the OPEC Fund for International Development in the central city of Isfahan.

With high fuel prices sparking protests worldwide, Ahmadinejad hit out at energy taxes in consumer nations. He said there was an "unfair" difference in income between energy exporting and importing countries.

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World Poll Finds Global Leadership Vacuum

June 16, 2008

Bush Widely Mistrusted, But No Other Leader Does Much Better

Only UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon Gets Moderately Positive Ratings

Click here to view Newsweek International's Cover Story About the Poll

Country-by-Country Summaries (PDF)
Questionnaire/methodology (PDF)
Press Release (PDF)
Full PDF Version

Related
Obama Admits Ahmadinejad Holds Little Power


Feinstein has taken heat over her financial killing on the Iraq war. Call this "covering your ass."

May 27, 2008, Bush 'plans Iran air strike by August' : Sens. Feinstein and Lugar will write an op-ed pice in the NYT "within days." "Proposed air strike as a limited action to punish Iran for its involvement in Iraq" within the next two months."

May 28, 2008
Senators say report of planned US strikes on Iran untrue

Obama says won't guarantee Ahmadinejad a meeting

Tue May 27, 2008 3:56am EDT By Caren Bohan LAS CRUCES, New Mexico (Reuters)

Democrat Barack Obama underscored his willingness to talk to leaders of countries like Iran that are considered U.S. adversaries but said on Monday that does not necessarily mean an audience with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Obama, the Democratic Party front-runner vying to face Republican Sen. John McCain in the November race for the White House, has said he was willing to meet with leaders of countries such as Iran, Syria, Cuba and Venezuela without preconditions. McCain has criticized that view, saying that sitting down with someone like Ahmadinejad would give the Iranian president a spotlight and send the wrong signal to U.S. allies such as Israel.

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