Latest Updates: Ahmadinejad RSS

  • johnpi 5:46 am on September 24, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Ahmadinejad, ,

    CAIR representatives will meet with Ahmadinejad to seek release of three American hikers.

    Representatives from an American Muslim organization will meet Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday to seek the release of three American hikers who were detained in Iran after apparently straying across the border, PR Newswire reported on Wednesday.

    The Council on American-Islamic Relations said today that it hoped Ahmadinejad would release the three young Americans as a “humanitarian gesture” to create a more positive atmosphere for constructive dialogue between Tehran and Washington.

    The Washington-based Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization had previously requested the release of the three hikers, in a 24 August letter to Ahmadinejad.

    Shane Bauer, Joshua Fattal and Sarah Shourd were detained on 31 July, while hiking along the poorly marked border in northern Iraq.

     

  • buzz 7:09 pm on September 23, 2009 | 18 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Ahmadinejad, ,

    firebrand

    love him: hate him
    He is always an interesting and provocative politician. And who worse to interview him than news lightweight Katie Couric. He might just as well been interviewed on Regis or The View. Anyway….

    When asked about the elections, Couric showed a picture of Neda dying graphically on the streets of Teheran. An embarassing and awkward moment for some. For Mahmood, an opportunity. He apologized for the death, expressed his regret and then said western media had provoked people in Iran to protest. Then he showed Couric a picture of Marwa El Sherbini, the woman in Germany who was stabbed and killed in court over a hijab issue. He summed up saying the western politicians do not want American people to see what goes on around the world.

    He also responded to the holocaust denial saying 60 million people in WWII were killed. Why do we focus just on these people? Aren’t they all human beings? He’s got a point.

    Can’t wait for tonight. Should be interesting.

    CBSNEWS has video and transcript of the Couric interview.

     

  • buzz 7:43 pm on September 21, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Ahmadinejad, , ,

    downwithisraelHe’s at it again. I really don’t mind either. While Israel has a right to exist in peace in my book, sans expansion, they are a pain in the ass. Who else gives them this much attitude? Can’t wait til Weds. 

    ps. love the woman in the front with the “burcappa” on. An alternative to the burqa, it is a cap with a brim so big, it covers all immodest areas of a woman’s body. Or maybe she is going trout fishing after the protest.

    TEHRAN, Iran – Iran’s president said Monday he is proud to stoke international outrage with his latest remarks denying the Holocaust as he heads for the United Nations this week — showing he is as defiant as ever while his country comes under greater pressure to curtail its nuclear program.

    Mahmoud Ahmadinejad takes the world stage with a speech Wednesday to the U.N. General Assembly. He appears intent on showing he has not been weakened by three months of turmoil at home, where the pro-reform opposition has staged dramatic protests claiming Ahmadinejad’s victory in June presidential elections was fraudulent.

    source: AP

     

  • abunoor 12:15 pm on September 21, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Ahmadinejad,

    As’ad Abu Khalil linked to these surprising (shocking to anyone following western media coverage) results of a poll of Iranians:

    Most Iranians express acceptance of the outcome of the Presidential election. Eighty-one percent say they consider Ahmadinejad to be Iran’s legitimate president, and 62 percent say they have a lot of confidence in the declared election results, while 21 percent say they have some confidence. Just 13 percent say they do not have much confidence or no confidence in the results. In general, eight in 10 (81%) say they are satisfied with the process by which authorities are elected, but only half that number (40%) say they are very satisfied.

    Among the 87 percent of respondents who say they voted in the June presidential election, 55 percent say they voted for Ahmadinejad. Only 14 percent say they voted for Mir Hossein Mousavi, the leading opposition candidate, and 26 percent refused to answer. Asked how they would vote if the election were held again, overall 49 percent say they would vote for Ahmadinejad, 8 percent for Mousavi, 13 percent say they would not vote, and 26 percent would not answer.

    “The extremely high number of people refusing to answer questions about their voting preference–something not found in response to any other questions–suggests that people have some discomfort with this topic,” says WPO’s Kull. “Thus these findings on voting preference are not a solid basis for estimating the actual vote.”

    Eight in 10 say Ahmadinejad is honest but slightly less than half – 48 percent — say he is very honest. Asked about the institutions that make up the government of the Islamic republic, large majorities express at least some confidence in major institutions. The president is viewed most favorably, with 84 percent of respondents expressing a lot (64%) of or some (20%) confidence.

    Overall most Iranians express support for their current system of government. Nine in ten say they are satisfied with Iran’s system of government, though only 41 percent say they are very satisfied. Six in ten approve of the system by which a body of religious scholars has the capacity to overturn laws they deem contrary to the Koran, while one in four express opposition. A modest majority (55%) says that the way the Supreme Leader is selected is consistent with the principles of democracy, though three-fifths say they are comfortable with the extent of his power.

     

  • johnpi 8:16 pm on August 2, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Ahmadinejad, , , populism, ,

    Sarah Palin and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have a surprising amount in common.

    Above all, both are populists who claim to represent the little people against wily and unscrupulous elites, and against pampered upper-middle-class yuppies pretending to be the voice of democracy. Together, they tell us something about dangerous competing populisms in an age of globalization.

    Juan Cole’s insights after delineating the similarities:

    Right-wing populism, rooted in the religion, culture and aspirations of the lower middle class, is often caricatured as insane by its critics. That judgment is unfair. But it is true that such movements often encourage a political style of exhibitionism, disregard for the facts as understood by the mainstream media, and exaltation of the values of people who feel themselves marginalized by the political system. Not all forms of protest, however, are healthy, even if the protesters have legitimate grievances. Right-wing populism is centered on a theory of media conspiracy, a “my country right or wrong” chauvinism, a fascination with an armed citizenry, an intolerance of dissent and a willingness to declare political opponents mere terrorists. It is cavalier in its disregard of elementary facts and arrogant about the self-evident rightness of its religious and political doctrines. It therefore holds dangers both for the country in which it grows up and for the international community.

    Palin is polling well at the moment against other Republican front-runners such as Mitt Romney, and so, astonishingly, is a plausible future president. At least Iranians only got Ahmadinejad because of rigged elections, and they had the decency to mount massive protests against the result.

     

  • johnpi 9:32 am on July 5, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Ahmadinejad, , US-Iran negotiations

    Forum for soundbites and posturing.

    Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he wants to engage President Obama in “negotiations” before international media, a semi-official Iranian news outlet reported on Saturday.

    (via)

     

  • johnpi 11:07 am on June 25, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Ahmadinejad, , ,

    Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who stands accused of stealing the recent election in Iran, lashed out at Barack Obama, Juan Cole writes. He demanded an apology from the White House for what he termed interference in Iranian affairs, and said Obama had started talking like George W. Bush. He said that Obama’s current stance was not a promising basis for going forward with direct talks, a clumsy threat to refuse to cooperate with Washington in any way.

     

  • johnpi 6:00 pm on June 22, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Ahmadinejad, , ,

    Another broadside from the HMS Wingnuttery.

    This time it’s some peon at National Review laying down the nuts and bolts of a theory of Obama’s secret preference for Ahmadinejad:

    The fact is that, as a man of the hard Left, Obama is more comfortable with a totalitarian Islamic regime than he would be with a free Iranian society. In this he is no different from his allies like the Congressional Black Caucus and Bill Ayers, who have shown themselves perfectly comfortable with Castro and Chàvez. Indeed, he is the product of a hard-Left tradition that apologized for Stalin and was more comfortable with the Soviets than the anti-Communists (and that, in Soros parlance, saw George Bush as a bigger terrorist than bin Laden).

    Because of obvious divergences (inequality for women and non-Muslims, hatred of homosexuals) radical Islam and radical Leftism are commonly mistaken to be incompatible. In fact, they have much more in common than not, especially when it comes to suppression of freedom, intrusiveness in all aspects of life, notions of “social justice,” and their economic programs. The divergences between radical Islam and radical Leftism are much overrated — “equal rights” and “social justice” are always more rally-cry propaganda than real goals for totalitarians, and hatred of certain groups is always a feature of their societies.

    Riiiight…

     

  • fathima 10:05 pm on June 18, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Ahmadinejad, , , , , tucker

    Iranian Woman Protesting June 2009

    While it makes for stirring photography, articles like Diane Tucker’s “Iranian Women: We Feel Cheated, Frustrated, And Betrayed” are misguided for several reasons. First, it ascribes one unanimous opinion to all Iranian women, regardless of class, educational, or religious background. That opinion, conveniently enough, is one wholly in line with American pseudo-feminist liberation rhetoric, the kind of rhetoric that fueled the drive to the war on Afghanistan and, not so long ago, calls to bomb Iran. Second, it constructs a false binary between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi, in which the latter is presented as the liberator of Iranian women. In fact, Mousavi’s politics resemble Ahminejad’s in many ways (cf. his human rights abuses). It’s vital that we recognise that we can protest Iranian state aggression without having to immediately support Mousavi, just because he’s not Ahmadinejad. In fact, many Iranians have been doing just this. But their boycotting of the elections was given no exposure in the media — presumably because Western media is fixated on the notion of pretty women voting as the epitome of democracy and civic engagement. Furthermore, the protests themselves are complicated affairs, with allegations of inner-party sabotaging. And then there’s the hypocrisy of Washington supporting protests in Iran, and of the hysteria — fed, in part, by reductivist articles like Tucker’s — of Western media.

     

  • manas 3:41 pm on June 18, 2009 | 5 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Ahmadinejad, , , ,

    What’s happening worries me. I do not support moral policing, so perhaps I should be sympathetic with Mousavi.

    However, I urge you to not take a stance on Iran protests. Unless you know what’s going on there. The reasons are-

    1. We don’t know what’s going on
    2. West supports Mousavi. Doesn’t look good on him.
    3. It makes the region seem unstable, and legitimizes outside interference.

    The last thing I want to be is an useful fool. I am quite sure the Iranians can take care of themselves, and I hope they’ll be allowed to.

     

  • johnpi 4:47 am on June 17, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Ahmadinejad, ,

    Description from an eyewitness of an Ahmedinejad rally:

    Compare this to the Ahmadinejad rallies that we have seen. Yesterday, Mother’s Day in Iran (an appropriate day given Ahmadinejad’s persistent claim to be the “defender” of the vatan, or motherland) the Ahmadinejad groups held their own rally and show of force in Vali Asr Square in central Tehran. Their numbers are not few—the crowd filled the square and stretched south for at least a kilometer. But this action is more organized, mobilization by memo as one observer put it. Word goes out in the mosques, bonyads, and ministries that there is to be a gathering and they come, organized by section and arriving in chartered buses and vans. Unlike the Mousavi rallies, their Great Leader is present both in person and in stereo. Audio equipment is set up to so that we might hear his message and the speakers tell the crowd where to go afterwards. The atmosphere is no less festive, no less family-oriented than the opposition rallies. But the numbers are less and the movement less sustained. There is, perhaps, less to lose for this group, less sense of outrage and danger.

     

  • johnpi 7:43 pm on June 15, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Ahmadinejad, , , , ,

    A new line of anti-Iran propaganda just in case Mousavi wins: He’s as much of a political demon as Ahmadinejad, according to this editorial in Investors Business Daily:

    Mousavi, of course, whose candidacy (unlike so many others) got the stamp of approval of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, is no moderate at all.he vowed during the campaign to continue Iran’s nuclear program.

    Moreover, as Thomas C. Reed and Danny B. Stillman note in their newly published history of nuclear proliferation, “The Nuclear Express,” “Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan first began to transfer uranium enrichment technology to Iran in 1987″ — in the midst of Mousavi’s 1981-89 tenure in power.

    Any Obama-Mousavi version of the Camp David Accords would have preserved Iran’s widely dispersed, tough-to-monitor nuclear program in some form, through which it can produce fuel for a bomb.

    A few things:

    1) Notice how the sole criterion for determining whether someone is a moderate or an extremist is his position on nuclear power.

    2) Notice the weight of preference is still for Ahmadinejad: “Any Obama-Mousavi version of the Camp David Accords would have preserved…” as though Mousavi has already lost.

    The rest of this editorial is a mess and looks like it was written by an inebriate: At one point it claims the Obama administration was “obviously” hoping Mousavi would win, and at another it claims Obama was “obviously hoping that a newly strengthened Ahmadinejad might come to Camp David.”

     

  • johnpi 3:27 pm on June 15, 2009 | 19 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Ahmadinejad,

    It appears that the US think tank The New America Foundation is leading the effort to ‘massage’ the US media/Western press into accepting Ahmadinejad as the victor in the likely fraudulent election in Iran.

    Earlier, we had The New America Foundation project Terrorist Free Future making arbitrary and unwarranted assumptions about the vote for Ahmadinejad based on their specious polling. Now another peon of that think tank has declared “Ahmadinejad won. Get over it” at the website Politico.

    It’s interesting to note that The New America Foundation is not a neoconservative think tank, which could be expected to support Ahmadinejad. It’s ranks appear to be salted with many former neoconservatives “who were mugged by reality” such as Francis Fukuyama and Fareed Zakaria. However the outlets they are publishing in are all pretty much hardline ‘war forever’ neoconservative propaganda sheets, such as the Washington Post and Politico.

     

  • Kawthar 8:22 am on June 10, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Ahmadinejad, , Persian Jews

    Iran’s Jews might vote for Ahmadinejad.

    “This is a vote for the lesser evil. In the past four years the president has mainly inflamed the internal public and infuriated the nations of the world. They feel that they know him and know what he is made of, the fear is of the unknown Mousavi, and the concern is that, instead of talk, he may take action.”

     

  • johnpi 9:02 am on June 5, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Ahmadinejad, , , , , , ,

    Neocons for Ahmadinejad.

    Who would Daniel Pipes vote for in the Iranian election?

    “I’m sometimes asked who I would vote for if I were enfranchised in this election, and I think that, with due hesitance, I would vote for Ahmadinejad.”

    Daniel Luban explains:

    A more moderate president would threaten to puncture the hysterical and apocalyptic atmosphere in which discussion of the Iranian nuclear program is currently conducted.

    And then there is this:

    Also of related interest is the right’s angry reaction to the release of Roxana Saberi — on display, for example, in this James Kirchick monologue. From the hawks’ perspective, of course, the ideal outcome politically speaking would have been for Iran to execute Saberi, preferably in the most brutal and medieval fashion possible.

    Typical neocons, expressing a fervent desire for everything to get worse. I just can’t trust these guys to run the country. If they knew of a pending terrorist attack, would they stop it, or let it happen because of all the opportunities it would create to advance their agenda?

     

  • aziz 9:02 am on May 21, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Ahmadinejad, amalek, , ,

    Iran as Amalek? yikes. I suppose we need to start talking about raving rabbis in the same breath as mad mullahs, now.

     

  • Kawthar 12:55 pm on May 4, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Ahmadinejad, ,

    Pre-Election polls place Ahmadinejad in the lead.

     

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