What Ahmadinajad said at Columbia

& I’m afraid you are correct.

i watched both the press club and columbia presentations and was impressed by his performance. however, from what i have read, he holds no real power in iran,so who knows what the truth is. and of course the powers that be in the us could care less what was said, they have their own agenda,ie to fuck over any nations who dare to oppose the almighty empire.

Well, at least not all Americans are hopelessly xenophobic. Thank you, Pat Lang, and thanks, Larry, for posting this.

(Chris Matthews was also very good on this today. He was embarrassed. He said this was not a proud day for Gotham. Pat Buchanan, as much as I heard of his remarks, seemed to concur.)

Rep. Duncan Hunter [R-CA] wants legislation denying federal funds to Columbia for Bollinger’s decision to invite Ahmadinejad to speak. Because, god forbid, people should be allowed to express opinions in America. Especially when the person in question is the latest in a long string to be demonized by the Bushies.

My thought, after listening to the interpreter for the entire speech and the part afterwards was, what an intellectual lightweight.

He is clearly not an intellectual, nor is he to be feared for his charisma. He is merely one of the Iranian revolutionaries who floated to the top of a pool that didn’t have much talent in it.

Somewhere in Iran, there are a thousand men and women far more intelligent and far more capable of leading that country than this man. He must have skills more akin to Stalin than anyone else. He must have the ability to coerce others to bully others on his behalf. That he is a figurehead for a movement is puzzling–why go with someone who can’t lift the water?

That he would drone on and on about science is not surprising. That he would claim that we need to be able to use science and then claim there is no homosexuality in Iran was all the proof anyone would need to see that he clearly cannot think on his feet–he should have given an answer that balanced the scientific certainty of homosexuality with his beliefs as a Muslim. Instead he made himself a laughingstock.

Perhaps this man can be controlled by others and that’s why he sits where he sits, a powerless fool.

Only a wingnut would fear such a boob.

o’ fear itself, where is thy grasp on my sensibility?

I am not remotely surprised to hear that M.A. ran laps around his detractors. The American political culture has become thoroughly insipid and panders to the mental laziness of the public; in so doing, it becomes subject to its own mental laziness, a laziness and vacuous character which comes to govern our political world.

M.A. is a product of a very rough system, I believe, that promotes on the basis of competence and intelligence. I may or not ultimately agree with M.A. on this or that issue, but, frankly, the reaction he’s faced in the US – no visit to 9/11 ground zero, snotty, poof-headed academicians deriding him with empty attacks to his face, a media that basically drowned him in a vat of non-representation and distortion of anything he might have said – is a reaction of fear, not strength.

The US when it comes to mid east and central asian policy is governed by lunatics, military and oil companies, the Israel Lobby, all manner of nefarious and indefensible characters and parties. Wile E. Coyote could have outrun the critics at Columbia today and M.A. is so far beyond Wile E. Coyote that it must have been ultimately true that M.A. left the US with even less respect than he came here with.

I mean, Jesus – you bring here the head of state of a foreign nation like Iran, on the eve of what might be a war with Iran, over which parties will have hegemonic domination of Central Asia and the Greater Middle East – and you quiz him on gay rights?! The media reports his commentary on homosexuals?

Personally, I think we all need to take a deep breath, relax, and try to understand just how embarassed we should be, after today. For a “10 cent dictator”, M.A. looks a hell of a lot more serious than we do -

The US political culture is being defined by O’Reilly-like gasbags. It’s a chest-beating contest. Anyone halfway serious about meeting us in a debate, if insufficiently insulted to cease at once, will end up looking smarter.

Here’s what As’ad AbuKahlil said about the appearance:
Neither Bollinger, Nor Ahmadinajad. I watched some of Ahmadinajad show at Columbia University. It was carried live on MSNBC. I don’t know where to start and I don’t have the time. But let me first say something about the university president Lee Bollinger. The same Zionist hoodlums who just yesterday were attacking Bollinger, will be praising him tomorrow morning. They will express their pride in one of the most demagogic college presidents in the US. As one commentator on MSNBC (and FOX News) said: he succeeding in making Ahmadinajad look good on US TV. He allowed Ahmadinajad to score points, among the international audience in particular. Bollinger always came across, not as president of a university, but like a typical sleazy politician who is willing to say anything, to pander to any crowd, provided it kept him in his job, or propelled him to a better job. He came across as small and presumptuous: especially when he claimed to speak on behalf of the civilized world. Bollinger has proven at Columbia to be the enemy of free speech: and when a professor at his university (Joseph Massad), was coming under attack from Zionist hoodlums around the country, he in fact spoke in favor of restricting freedom of speech, and said that freedom of speech applies in public institutions. And this Bollinger tries to grandstand: would he also have the courage to call King Abdullah (of Jordan or of Saudi Arabia–take your pick) a dictator? I can see him personally bestowing honors and awarding honorary doctorates to dictators provided they contribute to Columbia’s endowment, and provided they follow US foreign policy orientations. As for Ahmadinajad: I don’t understand why students (presumably leftists? or pro-Palestinian activists?) were applauding him. For what? Ahmadinajad is not a leftist and he does not even deserve the support of advocates for Palestine. If those who were applauding were just pleased to hear praise for the Palestinians and criticisms of Israel–rare indeed in the US–they should know that fascists and Nazis are often critical of Israel–but from their own anti-Semitic perspective. There is nothing worthy of leftist support in Ahmadinajad: the economic policies of his administration have squeezed the poor further, and his economic policies are not popular with the Iranian masses. More importantly, those who may sympathize with Ahmadinajad should note that his stupid and ignorant statements on the holocaust have hurt the Palestinian cause and not helped it. Ahmadinajad is the greatest gift to Zionist propaganda since Ahmad Shuqayri in the 1960s.

Each time we turn around, the face America presents to the world is more stupid, more bullying, more like some bunch of braying hyenas. It’s embarrassing.

But Delia! CNN is playing Bollinger as a mini-Churchill, for his empty braying! What matters is not what you or I can see – a naked emperor showing off his new threads – what matters is the megaphone and the insipidly dumb American media consumer. Bollinger is just like Bill O’Reilly. Can you see that? He plays well to people now programmed to be mentally lazy and to believe that obnoxious belligerence is the same as victory. Can you see this? Bollinger was O’Reilly, and O’Reilly heads up Columbia University now -

I rather like MA. Far from not being intellectual he is the most remarkably subtle, yet challenging political speaker I have heard for some time.

And let us be clear, it is well known by intellectuals that the holocaust did not exist as it presented. In fact the sheeple have been served up World War II propoganda. This is not to say that the NAZI regime did not purge the Jews. The peril for the those who insisted they were (or were branded) Jewish was at the hands of nature and heeded by the NAZI oppressors. As with the situation in St Helena about the Boer War, peoples in concentration camps became very sick and died.

It would be interesting to learn that Valeriano Weyler Nicolau, who has been attributed to inventing the concetration camp for his Cuba campaigns was Jewish. But by all accounts he was Prussian.

I digress. In many ways I think Ahmadinajad can’t win. His people think he is too left wing, while the American politicians are determined to wage war on Iran. I don’t know, perhaps Israel can step up and act as mediator. Any thoughts?

……..the holocaust did not exist as presented? what are your references on that? (i realize that all history is written by the victors, so i’m just asking,not attacking)

Anon, who is As’ad AbuKahlil? Good remarks. I think he was quoting Chris Matthews re Bollinger making Ahmadinajad look good.

Why does the far left applaud Ahmadinajad? Solely because he’s anti-American and anti-Israeli. That’s one of the big problems with the far left — they’ll laud anyone, even cruel dictators (as Amy Goodman does with Aristide), so long as they’re either anti-American or perceived to be persecuted by the U.S. or, even better, anti-Israeli.

The far left is as knee-jerk anti-American as the far right is knee-jerk pro-American in this country.

As`ad Abu Khalil is a professor of political science at Stanislaus State University and UC Berkeley in California. He is a Lebanese-American of a mixed Sunni-Shia family. He is a very independent thinker, and speaks his mind without regard to what others are going to think.

He has a blog at angryarab.blogspot.com.

Pale Rider

You realize that the speech was translating in real time right? Real time translations often seem to be rambling because it is difficult for the interpreter to both listen, translate and speak at the same time.

I think he was graceful and very intelligent. His veiws on homosexuality are obviously just empty rhetoric, but, from what i hear it is fairly standard to deny the existance of homosexuality in the muslim world. Considering he had to put up with a 15 minute almost purely ad-hominem attack at the introduction, i think he came off as very polite and reserved. I have a big problem with a supposed academic heavyweight calling the democratically elected leader of a country a dictator. What a classless piece of shit (excuse language).

since when was aristide a cruel dictator? Again i’m going to have to defer to the fact that he was elected, in the first undisputed democratic election in haiti with over 60% of the vote. He may have been slightly incompetent, but “cruel” is a pretty big overstatement, especially considering those we replaced him with (in a coup, the first step of future dictators).

As’ad Abu Kahlil pretty much nailed it. If Bollinger had just shut up and let Ahmadinejad talk, the A-man would have floated away on his own intellectual helium. Instead, Bollinger gave him some tie downs to hang on to.

Our problem is that Ahmadinejad isn’t in charge, a fact that seems to be lost on the news media who are grasping to fill 24 hours a day. Instead of this feckless smokescreen, we need to be getting inside the heads of–and dealing with–the people who actually run the country. We could do this but for the statesmanship shortcomings of our own political leadership.

Retired, you are correct that Ahmadinajad does not have any real power, particularly when it comes to foreign and military matters. He is also, it seems to me, more extreme than the ones who do have power. Not only that, but some of the most popular “outrageous quotes” from him are things he did not really say, but are malicious or just plain wrong translations by the infamous MEMRI.

(MEMRI, for those who do not know, is a very militant group of Israeli racist extremists whose raison d’etre is to take a fine toothed comb through the Arabic and Persian media looking for anything they can find to show how evil and dangerous Arabs and Muslims are. They do not hesitate to take things out of context, or to maliciously translate or just plain blatantly mis translate words or phrases in order to make a quote sound irrational or scary or evil. An example is their recent translation of a Palestinian children’s show in which which they changed certain words and phrases in a way that utterly changed what the characters on the show were saying. Another example is their very bad translation of Ahmadinajad’s most infamous quote in which he supposedly said Israel should be wiped off the face of the earth – that is not what he said.)

I wonder. Does Lang believe “the die is cast” because the military will blindly obey the orders of the executive branch in lieu of congressional sanction, or because an enfeebled congress will acquiesce in yet another monstrous crime against the peoples of the mideast?

I’d ask him myself, but the thin skinned colonel 86′d me from his blog months ago.

I will try and dig out the names (bear with me), but there are at least 2 historians in jail in Austria for daring to publish the truth. I guess once a NAZI, always a NAZI (sic)

Thanks Shirin, I suspected as much all along. Words were being bent to match a purpose elsewhere.

The ruler of Iran played coy about using the same kind of inflammatory rhetoric Bush does at the same time.

It’s surprising Bush did not proclaim him the family values leader in his war against extremists, what with Ahmen’s stand against the gays…

is our bigots learning?

Remember this, when Iran was ‘protesting’ for TV cameras during a hostage crisis, the multinational Asian marketing HQ of IBM was right around the corner, a stones’ throw away and nary a window was broken or effigy burned there.

Follow the Money. People in the Middle East and everywhere else want to live a good living standard, with today’s technology and media and entertainment for the most part.

Baywatch was one of the highest rated programs in the region leading up to the invasion of Iraq.

Bush himself tried to use the words of Gibran in his first speech after 9-11(IMO the efforts of Richard Clarke chose those passages).

We’re not that far apart on a lot of items. The only thing keeping us apart is a willful instinct to control market access to many items on both sides of the East/West divide. This greed is cloaked within a dual layer of ignorance and bravado.

Both sides playing tough guy or lowest common denominator in efforts to maintain tension of status quo for furthering their own aims.

The ruler of the supposed axis of evil is using Bush’s own campaign tactics of heated rhetoric to further his own political viability. One is by splitting the opposition, tacking to the right of many strident wingers in his own political spectrum in terms of bellicose wording. The other is to tack against the biggest image of an evil outsider his country can identify, and that happens to be us, vis-a-vis Palestine. Many rulers in the region actually like those tensions to remain so they can export unrest and to mitigate the attention paid to the shortcomings of many an OPEC state’s grant of rights and opportunity.

Sanctions and isolation have hurt his land also, enough for critics to blame him solely for the side affects his economy bears for such reasons. Dissect those critiques and you see the same people driving the original isolation policy, to a polity.

The Kissinger and Baker factions now want engagement. Iran can shoulder much of the new demand in its region for authority and security. It is already friends with China. The Chinese call the shots, only Cheney stands in the way, his wanting to hold our entire Executive Branch hostage, along with our own over-extended troops, and Iran as a whole, including the regional client states we have developed in Saudi Arabia and Israel.

We plausibly used isolation vs. Iran to further China’s market entry there. Mission accomplished. Putin plausibly provides a bigger item in triangulation with the region his influence borders, and with his careful tight wire act vis-a-vis Israel and his use of that to try and develop his other interests(pipelines past Turkey come to mind).

There’s no yes/no answer, no simple solution regionally, but there is still a demand on all sides for growth and development to new levels. Thus the postmodern era of the Bush Sr. diplomatic corps. most accomplished members wanting to see engagement made material.

Included in this is an opportunity to fuel China, which would leverage markets in the West and EU(thereby Putin can be placated with his Eastern regional energy dominance).

This makes India even more west friendly out of its needs, and can help surround Pakistan with new client states ready to employ containment and support.

The huge debt and rebuilding tasks for Iraq can be met by Iran’s new dollars growth and introduction anew to the world community. Using the Iranian energy dollars boom and help they can leverage macroeconomic scale debt in new ways to tweak markets and growth in ways only Soros can fully envisage at this time, aside from Baker. The same levers can accelerate investment to said purposes.

The new era of micro credit can meet macro functions, micro debt relief will become a new way of accelerating market factors to gain competitive leverage regionally and across the board.

The diplomatic solution is also a fiscal finding of value in new models. Engagement can occur to new levels in the new inter-connective model.

More on this soon, on items brought together. Continually there is an interconnection of items seemingly unrelated.

One of the reasons 9-11 changed everything is because everything was already changing, and much of the planet was not paying attention or notice to the level necessary.

That has changed to a great extent.

Just received this forward. I can’t vouch for it, but to ponder:
———
The following is a copy of an article published in a Spanish newspaper on 5-22-07.

By Sebastian Vilar Rodrigez(*)

I walked down the street in Barcelona, and suddenly discovered a terrible truth – Europe died in Auschwitz. We killed six million Jews and replaced them with 20
million Muslims. In Auschwitz we burned a culture, thought, creativity, talent. We destroyed the chosen people, truly chosen, because they produced great and wonderful people who changed the world.

The contribution of this people is felt in all areas of life: science, art, international trade, and above all, as the conscience of the world. These are the people we burned.

And under the pretense of tolerance, and because we wanted to prove to ourselves that we were cured of the disease of racism, we opened our gates to 20 million Muslims, who brought us stupidity and ignorance, religious extremism and lack of tolerance, crime and poverty, due to an unwillingness to work and support their families with pride.

They have turned our beautiful Spanish cities into the third world, drowning in filth and crime. Shut up in the apartments they receive free from the
government, they plan the murder and destruction of their naive hosts.

And thus, in our misery, we have exchanged culture for fanatical hatred, creative skill for destructive skill, intelligence for backwardness and superstition.

We have exchanged the pursuit of peace of the Jews of Europe and their talent for hoping for a better future for their children, their determined clinging to life because life is holy, for those who pursue death, for people consumed by the desire for death for themselves and others, for our children and theirs.

What a terrible mistake was made by miserable Europe.
——-

You realize that the speech was translating in real time right? Real time translations often seem to be rambling because it is difficult for the interpreter to both listen, translate and speak at the same time.

No, I thought the interpreter was fine; he spoke fast so I can’t really fault her.

What I meant was, his speech was empty of any insight and was standard boilerplate Holocaust denial and standard boilerplate anti-Zionist posturing.

The easiest way for such a person to ingratiate themselves with an audience that might give their argument a hearing is to point out that the Palestinian people had nothing to do with the plight of the Jews and World War II. Heard it all before.

As I said, he is a lightweight. THere is infinitely more talent in Iran that goes untapped. Were Americans to hear from the actual intellectual community in Iran and what they really think, I believe we’d be shocked out of this pro-war situation very quickly. Iran is not an enemy; the oppressive regime that temporarily controls Iran is the last vestige of a revolution that is, de facto, dead. When the Revolution is older than more than half of the people, the Revolution is dead.

The President of Columbia University? Typical academic. Not worth commenting upon. This is the Ivy League? Jeeezus…

You know, for just a second there, I thought you were referring to President Bush.

Ahmadinejad’s appearance at Columbia was one of those hyped up media events that, as expected, did not produce anything new. Instead, it was show time for both sides: A. got a prominent stage to basically repeat what he has said so many times–admittedly without ever losing his cool; Columbia’s Bollinger demonstrated his commitment to the university as the venue of free speech and, at the same time, appeased the critics of the event by attacking Ahmadinejad before the invited guest had said a single word. These two parties got what they wanted as did the protesters and, of course, the media. But otherwise it was a pseudo event that never produced a real debate.

Thanks Shirin -

I’ve been a fan of the Angry Arab News Service for quite some time – I hate the comments section of his web log, its filled with fanatics and idiots – but As’ad himself is quite thoughtful and maintains high integrity.

Headline news:
There are no gays in Iran!!
What? is it something they put in the water?

The pre-emptive hate and denouncement in this fiasco has really been quite remakable. Columbia’s Bollinger was similar to the National Press Club performance carried on CSpan just prior. The invitations to M.A. were dis-ingenuous. Mi casa AIN’T su casa.

Basically, it amounts to inviting someone with which many of us have known differences (ok fine, we knew that already), claiming he’s invited to a free and fair open forum; then leading him to a boxing ring and coming out punching.

It’s pretty clear this is based on fear combined with self-righteousness; and also clear that running with this combination will send a negative message to the world. If it’s really so true that M.A. is as bad as claimed, why not just give him rope to hang himself?

How short is our memory? How about when M.A.’s more moderate predecessor Khatami propossed an Iranian U.S. collaboration against the common enemy AlQaeda following 9/11? Instead of even so much as politely giving a rain-check, Bush admin gave him the smac-down and labeled Iran part of the ‘Axis of Evil’. From the Iranian perspective, is it really any surprise they responded by electing Ahmadinejad?

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter.

What the US wanted was for M.A. to come here, say some incredibly dumb things as he has in the past, and then they could have spent the next several weeks using it as fodder to build the emotional case for America to “bomb,bomb,bombbomb Iran”.

As it turned out, he didn’t co-operate very well. All they could get was that his country had institutionalized prejudice against gays. Well, that has nothing to do with M.A. himself, as that was the policy in Iran (and in fact almost, if not every, Arab nation, as it has been since the dawn of history).

It is amusing to see that SUDDENLY, all the conservative MSM pundits are saying how bad it is that Iran is prejudiced against gays. HAHAHAHA – who is looking stupid now?

Anyway, it turned out to be a dud – M.A. didn’t deliver any verbal bombshells. Most likely the Ayatollah told him to watch his big mouth, not embarrass him, and not to say anything that would result in bombs being dropped on Iran.

So the conservative smear machine will have to find something else – I have feeling standing up for gay rights in foreign countries isn’t going to exactly energize their base…

“From the Iranian perspective, is it really any surprise they responded by electing Ahmadinejad?”

Hardly! In addition, I am convinced that Bush flapping his big mouth just before the Iranian elections contributed to his being elected. Bush, thinking that people in the world actually took him seriously as “leader of the free world” (or whatever) “spoke” to the Iranian people and urged them to make the “right choices” in their upcoming election. The election of Ahmadinejad was very surprising to most people, looked to me and a number of other people a lot like the Iranians giving the middle finger to Bush for presuming to tell them how to vote.

….His veiws on homosexuality are obviously just empty rhetoric, but, from what i hear it is fairly standard to deny the existance of homosexuality in the muslim world….

Not just in the Muslim world. Italian TV has several hosts that are clearly transvestites. You can tell Italians (mostly those who remember WWII) that so and so female celebrity is really a man and you will get no response at all. Just a blank stare like they didn’t hear a word you said. This is total denial by Roman Catholics who believe staunchly that homosexuality is unnatural and a mortal sin. Apparently, Ahmadinajad, even though he’s younger than this group, espouses the same beliefs — and he doesn’t care what anybody else thinks about it.

Yeah, the comment section is a cesspool, and I have told As`ad that. A few years ago I used to comment there a lot, but now I rarely do, and I have told him that too. But he is not interested in doing any kind of monitoring, either himself, or having someone else do it. It’s a shame because the knowledgeable, thoughtful people get drowned in the sea if childish, fanatical, filthy blather.

It’s good to know what he had to say, because now I know for myself.

this is fucking bullshit!

Sept 25…WASHINGTON (AP) – Congress signaled its disapproval of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with a vote Tuesday to tighten sanctions against his government and a call to designate his army a terrorist group.

The swift rebuke was a rare display of bipartisan cooperation in a Congress bitterly divided on the Iraq war. It reflected lawmakers’ long-standing nervousness about Tehran’s intentions in the region, particularly toward Israel—a sentiment fueled by the pro-Israeli lobby whose influence reaches across party lines in Congress.

“Iran faces a choice between a very big carrot and a very sharp stick,” said Rep. Tom Lantos, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “It is my hope that they will take the carrot. But today, we are putting the stick in place.”

The House passed, by a 397-16 vote, a proposal by Lantos, D-Calif., aimed at blocking foreign investment in Iran, in particular its lucrative energy sector. The bill would specifically bar the president from waiving U.S. sanctions.

Current law imposes sanctions against any foreign company that invests $20 million or more in Iran’s energy industry, although the U.S. has waived or ignored sanction laws in exchange for European support on nonproliferation issues.

In the Senate, Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., proposed a nonbinding resolution urging the State Department to label Iran’s military—the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—a terrorist organization.

The Bush administration had already been planning to blacklist a unit within the Revolutionary Guard, subjecting part of the vast military operation to financial sanctions.

Glenn Greenwald nails Scott Pelley’s disgusting “60 Minutes” interview:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/09/24/ahmadinejad/print.html

What I meant was, his speech was empty of any insight and was standard boilerplate Holocaust denial and standard boilerplate anti-Zionist posturing.

Come on. He said the holocaust happened at least 3 times. Me thinks some people dont know what deny means.

at least the article inlcudes the sentence which would be unheard of a year ago: “a sentiment fueled by the pro-Israeli lobby whose influence reaches across party lines in Congress.”

One wonders, though, if the powers that be in Iran are putting the A-man out on point because they are fascinated at how seriously we seem to be taking him. If so, this is a miscalculation on their part, because I believe that our own government is not so much taking him seriously as using him to make a case for their own objectives.

As far as MEMRI is concerned, as a retired intel officer, I have to grant them some gruding degree of credit for a well-planned and executed covert action operation that correctly identified and measured the ignorance and bias of their target audience and then exploited same. The parallel of this skill with that of Josef Goebbels is cruely ironic.

I’m waiting for the day when the rabid Hunter finally chews through his restraints and bites someone. Rumor has it he may soon have some ‘DeLay style’ corruption charges looming. Thank God he’s never going to be president.

Come on. He said the holocaust happened at least 3 times. Me thinks some people dont know what deny means.

You’re not even in the ballpark. He does not recognize the legitimacy of the Holocaust as an event which justifies the existence of Israel.

No wonder he fooled so many–his rhetoric was just clever enough to get you thinking he was “saying that it happened at least 3 times.”

Did you miss the part where he called for “more research?”

What will “more research” lead to? It’s a clever way of saying what he doesn’t want to say, which is, if someone keeps researching and researching the events surrounding the Holocaust, they will somehow, someway, find enough contradictions and inaccuracies that will further the cause of Holocaust denial.

They seek to tear it down, one detail at a time, and this is just one of the methods they use. If you can’t spot it, don’t find fault with those of us who can.

I don’t know exactly what you’re saying here. It manages to be both vague and provocative. Maybe that’s the idea. I don’t know if this is this place for a Holocaust thread, but I’ve certainly read enough about it by first rate historians to know what the outline of the events are, as well as the issues of the historiography. There’s really no serious room for argument about those events and it really doesn’t help those of us who would like to calm down this present situation to have Holocaust deniers come in to stir the pot.

He does not recognize the legitimacy of the Holocaust as an event which justifies the existence of Israel.

nor do i for that matter. Nor would i think any seriously objective person. (not that im saying hes objective). Zionism started way before WWII, and i think any serious zionist would agree that it had nothing to do with the holocaust, besides being an outrageous propaganda tool. Really, i find the exploitation of the holocaust for Israel’s political gain to be more repugnant, just as I find bush’s exploitation of 9/11 to be repugnant.
Do you think we should stop studying the romans? or the bible? these things happened thousands of years ago, and people still debate the details. the holocaust is only 60 years old, how can we seriously claim that the book is closed as Bollinger would have us believe. That said, i don’t support revisionism or those that claim the number of deaths is off by a few million, don’t get me wrong (inevitably you will).

This sounds to me like a fake. The NRO crowd all thinks Europe is being overrun in this manner. Probably one of them wrote it. I have some old college roommates who have gone rightwing and I occasionally get these anti-Muslim or pro-American, pro-GWOT forwarded emails from them. This sounds like something I’d get from one of them.

Our problem is that Ahmadinejad isn’t in charge, a fact that seems to be lost on the news media who are grasping to fill 24 hours a day.

You are so very right, Retired.

Pardon me for being lazy and linking back to a previous post instead of stating the case here, but I’m beat – I just got home from vacation a little over an hour ago.

(Shirin, perhaps you would give it a look and hopefully I will be slightly redeemed in your eyes? The last time we talked, I had embarked on a hormonal rant under the influence of outrage in the middle of a heat wave. I was not at my, shall we say, most reasonable?)

Really, i find the exploitation of the holocaust for Israel’s political gain to be more repugnant, just as I find bush’s exploitation of 9/11 to be repugnant.

Ah. There’s where it reveals itself.

I haven’t seen that one before, but I doubt whether you have the skill to pull it off.

Equating the Holocaust with Bush’s invasion of Iraq–wow.

You are quite the…”intellectual” and quite the…”deep thinker.”

Well if you were going to demand the imposition of international borders upon a state for the trespass of humanity that was Nazism, do it where the trespass occurred. Why should Palestinians, who gained no wealth from the exploitation, garnered no seized assets, and profited nothing from the outcome, nor took direct part in the killing, why should they pay the penultimate price of losing international sovereignty?

That’s the point.

It’s like saying if someone else was robbed at another time and place your property could be seized for their recompense, and you lose sovereignty over title, deed, Constitution, and elective representation.

This returns to original charters of the United Nations and its predecessor the League of Nations.

Always the attempt to solve the problems of emerging ethnic groups across borders was to move the problem of sovereignty elsewhere. Move the claim to Rights from Europe back to the Holy Land, as if the crusades were being fought anew.

Ever since the breakup of the Ottomans and the Pakistan/India border partitions, this has been ongoing.

Much of our present strife in Iraq and Afghanistan is a rehash of prior efforts at imposing western borders across the landscape of history and culture, already one with the persons of lands they were drawn over.

I saw Glenn’s essay and I posted a thank you. It’s excellent, as his work always is. I also sent an irate letter to 60 Minutes, comparing Pelley’s interview unfavorably to Mike Wallace’s.

When I look at the incessant drumbeat for another war when we’re drowning in the two we’ve got; when I look at the level of public discourse in the wake of Ahmadinejad’s visit, this boorish imbecilic braying that apparently passes for intelligence in most quarters including the floor of the Senate these days, I can only reflect on my favorite aphorism of Nietzsche: “Power makes stupid.”

And power can’t stick around stupidity forever.

It’s like saying if someone else was robbed at another time and place your property could be seized for their recompense, and you lose sovereignty over title, deed, Constitution, and elective representation.

No, it’s not.

Over six million people were murdered in a Europe that was already simmering with Anti-Semitism. Not only did the Nazis unleash the Holocaust, they institutionalized Anti-Semitism throughout the areas of Europe that they occupied.

No matter how many cheap generalizations you want to make, comparing apples to oranges, there is no historical precedent you can cite that adequately meet this situation.

Now, the Palestinian problem is not something to be glossed over or dismissed. How much of a problem it is is up to interpretation. I suspect that if the Palestinians had taken any of the offers of peace made by Israel, and that if the outside agitation of Arab governments of the Palestinians, while doing little or nothing to help them, their problem would be different today. And by different, I mean significantly less. How much of their problem can be laid at the feet of a megalomaniac and kleptocrat like Yassir Arafat always escapes comment or consideration.

When over 6 million Palestinians are marched into the gas chambers, I’ll be the first to say that they should have their own homeland far from where the crime took place.

The “Final Solution” was the culmination of entrenched and systemic anti-semitism that had been overt and punitive since the Inquisition.

Pale Rider, as per usual, you pull the tablecloth away and reveal the elephant in the living room. Good on ya.

When over 6 million Palestinians are marched into the gas chambers, I’ll be the first to say that they should have their own homeland far from where the crime took place.

I should say, I hope it never happens to anyone anywhere. I believe we are negligent in stopping genocide in Darfur, we were negligent in the 1990s with Rwanda, and we should always stand against any attempt to displace or eradicate people, no matter who they are.

“Palestinians, who gained no wealth from the exploitation, garnered no seized assets, and profited nothing from the outcome, nor took direct part in the killing…”

No direct part? That implies that they took an indirect part. What part DID they take, then?

I don’t think you understand the history of the so-called “Palestinian problem”.

May I recommend that you begin with Israeli historian Ilan Pappe’s recently published The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine?

OK, fine. And what does THAT have to do with the Palestinians? They played no part in that, so why do they have to pay the price for it?

Then why are you allowing – no, assisting – the continued displacement and eradication of the Palestinian people by Israel?

The Palestinians should have their own homeland. They should have every right to contest territory in Israel. They should have the right to live in peace and prosperity.

And yet, time after time, they were led into debacle after debacle by the likes of Arafat, who continually placed his own kleptomania ahead of the interests of the Palestinian people. Where are the hundreds of millions of dollars, Mrs. Arafat? Why do they continually follow people who sell them out?

And why use suicide bombs to further the debate?

I fault radicals like Netanyahu for their part in all this, but where would we be today if Arafat had taken the deal?

1. The Palestinians HAD their own homeland for centuries.

2. What territory in Israel have the Palestinians contested?

3. Are you suggesting that everything is the Palestinians’ fault for following `Arafat? Are you suggesting that the Israelis have been sincere in seeking an equitable peace, that their actions have been in that direction, and that they are in no way culpable, but only the Palestinians are?

4. “Why do they continually follow people who sell them out?” Tell me what their choices have been. Tell me what has happened to Palestinian leaders who had the potential to be truly effective. What do you know, for example, about the real history of the Oslo Accords? Do you have any idea how that process was manipulated to the detriment of the Palestinians by the Israelis and the Americans? Look what has happened to them as a result of electing people who would NOT sell them out. Look what has happened to them as a result of their electing people the Israelis and Americans do not like. Hint: It started with them being, as one light-hearted Israeli official put it “put on a diet” – i.e. starved by means of a blockade – and it has gotten continually worse since.

5. What “deal” are you referring to?

You are playing the game of “blame the victims”.

Graybeard,
Speaking of intolerance…thy name is Graybeard!

No, Bush was NOT elected, so it could not be about him LOL

On the other hand, PR did not mentioned that Ahamdinejad WAS elected.

And what PR knows about Stalin? that is, aside of rotten prop?

That’s one of the big problems with the USA liberals – they belive EVERETHING USA prop tell them

Aristide was NOT a cruel dictator, he was a popular elected leader, while USA for AGES supported REAL cruel dictators in Haity and then help to topple democratic leader there (and all over the world)

Yes, sure, how could the mass-murder of a million+ (WHO counts anyway, not the mass-murderers – USA invaders) Iraqis mean the same as a mass-murder murder of Jews?

(I am a Jew and I AGREE with Ahmadinejad – Palestinans should not pay for crime of Europeans)

It is funny. The first post of PR sounded innocent enough – after all, a lot of Americans could think the same because they do not know better. But then he (?) showed himself clearly as a Zionist and I lost all interest LOL

Yes, yes, we know. The Holocaust is THE sacred cow and no other event can possibly be mentioned in the same breath with it, let alone question any of the received wisdom that has been built up around it. Nor does one dare mention that Jews were not the only ones who were enslaved, tormented, experimented upon, and mass murdered by the Nazis.

As for the Armenian genocide – god forbid one should even suggest that it happened, let alone mention it alongside the Holocaust.

Get over yourself, will you? The Jewish Holocaust was an unspeakable horror among many, many unspeakable horrors. No doubt it stands alone in the lives and minds of Jews, as well it should, but stop insisting that it stand alone in the lives and minds of everyone else. Oh yes – and stop using it as an excuse for the commission of your own crimes and atrocities. Fewer and fewer people are buying it.

And by the way, does “never again” really mean “never again for us, and everyone else is on their own”?

Ah. There’s where it reveals itself.

what reveals itself? Who equated the holocaust with the Iraq invasion? For someone criticizing another’s intelligence, it helps your case to not write vague and unintelligible assertions. Reading comprehension might also be a plus. In fact, i usually take poorly veiled ad hominem attacks as a sign of my arguments being solid.

I have no doubt the Spanish column is legit. Spain has its own home-grown racist assholes. They supported Franco for 30+ years. I suppose it’s progress that the Christian zealots who expelled both Muslims AND Jews at the turn of the 15th-16th centuries, and who collaborated with the Nazis in the 20th, now think that Jews are OK and only Muslims (and gypsies) are still hateworthy. This idiot probably thinks his newfound pro-semitism is proof of how progressive he is. Forget the fact that 1/4 of his language comes from arabic and a huge part of his culture can be traced directly back to the 700 years of Muslim influence in Spain. Luckily, I think (hope) that his attitudes remain in the minority. It’s not a tiny minority, though.

I am not sure what your intention is delia. The holocaust theory is word for World War II American propoganda. Ernst Christof Friedrich Zündel and other historian have provided exhaustive information on the matter. There is absolutely NO evidence that the Auschwitz showers were used to gas Jews (other NAZI targets such as Romanies, the disabled, anarchists had no place there as the Jew take full responsibility for the limelight, apparently). There is a winded theory.

But I guess truth and integrity aren’t important, so we shouldn’t stir the pot. We should ignor the false pretext used for the Iraq invasion, because it might stir the pot. We should ignor the latest outbreak in Burma because some important folk might get offended.

Lady, I exist to stir the pot.

Robbie – Ernst Christof Friedrich Zündel and David Irving (a windbag) were jailed in Austria for being holocaust deniers. I am pretty sure there was another fine historian jailed there, but I cannot remember their name. Zundel is well researched and there a few others who have developed his opinions rather less agressively.

We are totally screwed bt the “bush” corrupt administration & ALL of his insane ideologies. Bush is the most inhumane person on this planet & he should be put on trial for all of his crimes & when found guilty we should build a gallows on the white house lawn & have a public hanging. I wish Mr. Vince Bugliosi complete & absolute success in his prosecution pursuit of geo.w. bush for MURDER