Tuesday 25 September 2007

Ahmadinejad Goes To America

There is something of 2002 in the air as an American President tries to demonise a Middle East leader and beats the war drums. What is different now is that the man being painted as the bogeyman this time around has landed slap bang in the middle of America to fight his corner.
Where as Saddam was unable to be anything but a face on the TV screen and helpless to defend himself against the accusations aimed at him, Iranian President and latest Bush nemesis Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has no intention of being steamrolled by the man who beats the war drum the loudest to the tune of 9/11=Afghanistan=Iraq=War on Terror=Iran.
Ahmadinejad has been putting the Iranian side of events on US Television interviews, at US Universities and the United Nations, waving an olive branch and in a brilliant piece of propaganda, making it look as though the only person talking about starting yet another Middle East is the same man who started the last one.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is making sure he will not be an unseen, or unheard, bogeyman however much we abhor his views on the holocaust, homosexuality or the unethical way he runs his own country.
As for his embarrassingly toe curling statement that there are no homosexuals in Iran, i think a certain Joseph Massad, author of the book , Desiring Arabs, may be keeping his head down for a while considering he has been pushing that same line for years now.
Who is Mr Massad? Only a professor at Colombia University.

17 comments:

Paula said...

Hahahahaaaaa! Good find, Lucy. :)

Dubya doesn't have do do anything to paint Nutjob as a fiend though, as the Iranian Prez does a good job slapping the paint all over himself.

Kos said...

Ahmadinejad is a scary motherfucker, to be blunt. I'm a hell of a lot more frightened by him than I ever was by Hussein. Then again, I'm a hell of a lot more frightened by Bush than I ever was by Hussein...

Cody Bones said...

"waving an olive branch and in a brilliant piece of propaganda, making it look as though the only person talking about starting yet another Middle East is the same man who started the last one"

I don't think we must have been watching the same coverage. I saw him as an enormous nutjob, who did nothing but inflame public opinion against what little support he might have had. I can only speak for myself, but holocaust denial makes me ill. Here are a few nuggets and tidbits that didn't go over so well on this side of the Atlantic

1."who was truly involved" in the 9-11 attacks. I know, it was radical Muslim extremists, mostly from Saudi Arabia.

2. "Women in Iran enjoy the highest levels of freedom," Yeah, and monkeys might fly out of my butt.

3."If the Holocaust is a reality of our time, a history that occurred, why is there not sufficient research that can approach the topic from different perspectives?" he asked. For the same reason that there is not more research about whether WW2 happened. THE HOLOCAUST HAPPENED, MEN LANDED ON THE MOON, YOU ARE A CRAZY UNHINGED
PSYCHOPATH.

4. "In Iran, we don't have homosexuals, like in your country."

Oh Yeah!!! If that's true, than who stars in the Iranian version of "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy"

Lucy, I don't know what the coverage was in the U.K, but I can say that everyone that I know and talked to, thought that he is a first rate lunatic. I go along with Columbia University's president who said he "exhibit[s] all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator." The thought of him with a nuclear weapon scares the hell out of me.

Anonymous said...

1."who was truly involved" in the 9-11 attacks. I know, it was radical Muslim extremists, mostly from Saudi Arabia.

I wish more people payed attention to that.

"Women in Iran enjoy the highest levels of freedom," Yeah, and monkeys might fly out of my butt.

By your standards and mine, absolutely true. By Muslim standards? I'd have to look at it. They can be pretty strict.

3. Yada Yada (sorry, that's REALLY long for a quote type situation)

That's one of the main problems I see with all religions. They promote belief over fact, dogma over research. Of course the holocaust happened. I saw the Belzen films 18 years ago and I'll never forget them. I liken that to the Christian insistence on the geocentric model of the solar system that persisted until the 1990s. Why can't people all over the world get used to the idea that some of what they think they know is bullshit, and open their minds to new possibilities. I recently read a poem that says that hatred "gives birth itself to the reasons that give it life". Here's an example, to be sure.

4. "In Iran, we don't have homosexuals, like in your country."

Well, that's just funny. We should send Fred Phelps there. He could finally relax.

The thought of any of those folks having an a-bomb scares me, too (as does the thought of Cheney ever getting near one), but all I have for information on this guy is the word of people who I know for a fact are opportunists, liars, and boys that cry wolf. I hear a lot of cries of "lunatic" from people who aren't mental health professionals and haven't listened to what he said (and I know because at the time I was hearing these things he hadn't spoken yet).

Yet on that basis I hear people saying that we should forgo all diplomacy and plunge straight into war, with our military already stretched too thin and our own soft, white underbelly sparking in the sun. I'm not sure about that.

One thing I can say - if he did have the opportunity to pull some crap, we'll know who provided the opportunity, right? It sure as hell wasn't Sadaam.

Cheezy said...

Juan Cole wrote this week:

"There is, in fact, remarkably little substance to the debates now raging in the United States about Ahmadinejad. His quirky personality, penchant for outrageous one-liners, and combative populism are hardly serious concerns for foreign policy. Taking potshots at a bantam cock of a populist like Ahmadinejad is actually a way of expressing another, deeper anxiety: fear of Iran’s rising position as a regional power and its challenge to the American and Israeli status quo. The real reason his visit is controversial is that the American right has decided the United States needs to go to war against Iran. Ahmadinejad is therefore being configured as an enemy head of state."

One should also bear in mind that although Ahmadinejad is the public face of Iran at the moment, his actual role in the the Iranian goverment is actually quite weak, kind of similar to US Vice Presidents (pre Cheney).

Although it's got its share of religiously-governed backwardness, this is not a 'mad' government full of 'madmen'.

The IAEA, actually on the ground in Iran, is reporting no evidence of underground production sites, or hidden radioactive substances, or a weapons program of any kind.

We didn't listen to them last time - and we've all seen the results... so one would think a little circumspection in dealing with the situation is now in order.

I doubt it will happen though. All too often in politics, 'reality' is what is sold, not what is actually happening.

Anne said...

i refuse to buy into the expected "faux news" response.
yes, he's a bit nutty, and he lies.
however, he is far less embarrassing than our smirking chimp.
plus, ahmadinejad had the balls to listen to rampant criticism, everywhere he went.
bush can't take criticism of any sort, the big baby. and there's plenty of it to go around.

Daniel said...

I think the truth of the saying that: "Few people can be happy unless they hate some person, nation or creed," (Betrand Russell) applies here.

Problem is that such hatred keeps us in a perpetual state of war which is good news for those who make money from it and those who are blatant imperialists (like America and Israel).

Falling on a bruise said...

I wasn't defending him or what he said, my point is that he is trying to be fitted up as the next recipient of Americas shock & awe and instead of cowering in fear, he landed slap bang in the backyard of his antagoniser and defended himself.
The fact that the right wing are concenterating on his homosexual comments and nothing he said regarding the nuclear issue is very telling.

Anonymous said...

Lucy,

Thanks for commenting one of my post. Ahmadinejad reply to homosexuality was correct because there are no homosexuals in any Muslim country who can take the risk of coming out openly. Officially there are no homosexuals in Iran.

Anonymous said...

The USSR made the same claim. People didn't lose control of their bowels over it.

Cody Bones said...

The same reason that the U.S.S.R. could make that statement, so could Germany during WW2, and Iran today is that if you kill all the homosexuals, then you won't have homosexuality. I'm sorry, but there is nothing about this guy I find cute or redemming. I'm not a fan.

Anonymous said...

Evidently, the response I posted this morning went somewhere else, so I'll try to re-do it.

Anyway, who the hell said anything about being a fan? Or CUTENESS? The fact is that people on the right are trying to keep anyone from listening to the guy by painting him as a dangerous madman. Perhaps he is, but SOME of us would like more than just Bill O'Reilly's opinion on the matter. Refusing to listen to him speak does nothing but prove that the biggest flag-wavers among us do NOT believe in the principles of free speech diplomacy. These are, by and large, the same people who were totally wrong about Iraq, and we're supposed to believe them AGAIN when they make unproven assertions and tell us that diplomacy is a waste of time? We're supposed to let them spread the military even thinner than it is now and continue screwing over the troops they give nothing but lip service to? I'll pass. It is going to take more than the words of Bushco's handpuppets to convince me that starting another war is a good idea. It will take more than excuses, which are far different than REASONS.

And the hand-wringing about homosexuals is as phony as a three dollar bill (not talking about you in particular, Cody, but the right in general). Denying rights to gays, who can still be denied access to jobs just for being gay in more than half the US, is a very visible part of the Republican platform. Are his statements about there being no gays actually worse than G.H.W. Bush's assertion that atheists should not be considered American citizens? Any worse than the American Christians like Phelps that want homosexuals executed HERE? There is no concern for the fate of Iranian homosexuals on the part of the right any more than there is concern for Iraqi women and children. They're just tools to help justify a war.

Falling on a bruise said...

Refusing to listen to him speak does nothing but prove that the biggest flag-wavers among us do NOT believe in the principles of free speech diplomacy.
And there we have the crux of the problem. The Iranians words were always going to be drowned out by some regardless of what he said.

Anne said...

well-said, joe.

Nigel Bird said...

No homosexuals in Iran? He doth protest too stongly. In the 17th century Homosexuality became known to the English as the “Persian” or “Turkish” vice.

This peculiar aspect of the Middle East has never entirely disappeared. The sight of men, even soldiers in uniform, strolling along a street hand in hand, strikes first-time visitors as extraordinary even today. The Moslem world enjoyed a reputation as a haven for sex with boys and men well into the twentieth century. The proclivities of many Western authors like Gustave Flaubert, Oscar Wilde, or Andre Gide, reflected the pederast and homosexual attractions of the Islamic world; the fascination continues in the “gay culture” of our own time:

I reacon Mahmoud looks a bit gay and nmrlikes a bit of the old pork sword himself, whoops I mean Lamb sword.

Stephen K said...

Yes, its a bit rich and also revealing that the intolerant religious right in the US is focussing so much on his statements about homosexuals and women.

Nigel Bird said...

Closets, the lot of um!