in a word: yes

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Such a damn genocidal shame people don't have the time or inclination to look more closely than the "grammar" splashed across their favorite websites and MSM outlets.

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love, 99
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a better world order

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Oh! I'd love it.

Iran, Venezuela leaders seek 'new world order'
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI, Associated Press Writer

TEHRAN, Iran – The leaders of Iran and Venezuela hailed what they called their strong strategic relationship on Wednesday, saying they are united in efforts to establish a "new world order" that will eliminate Western dominance over global affairs.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and visiting Venezuelan counterpart, Hugo Chavez, watched as officials from both countries signed 11 agreements promoting cooperation in areas including oil, natural gas, textiles, trade and public housing.

Among the agreements, Venezuela's state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA said the South American country was forming a joint shipping venture with Iran to aid in delivering Venezuelan crude oil to Europe and Asia. It said in a statement that the agreement for a joint venture also would help supply Iran "due to its limited refining capacity."

Both presidents denounced U.S. "imperialism" and said their opponents will not be able to impede cooperation between Iran and Venezuela.

Iran's state TV quoted both Ahmadinejad and Chavez as calling their relationship a "strategic alliance" that would eliminate the current global order.

"Iran and Venezuela are united to establish a new world order based on humanity and justice," Ahmadinejad said, repeating his predictions that those who today seek "world domination are on the verge of collapse."

Chavez said this is a time of "great threats" that make its necessary to swiftly "consolidate strategic alliances in political, economic, technological, energy and social areas," according to the state-run Venezuelan News Agency.

Details of the latest accords were not released, and Chavez said some agreements went beyond those put on paper. He said a Venezuelan delegation will soon travel to Iran to follow up on the agreements.

Iran has become the closest Middle East ally to Chavez's government as the left-leaning leader has sought to build international alliances to counter what he sees as U.S. economic and political dominance.

"Imperialism has entered a decisive phase of decline and ... is headed, like elephants, to its graveyard," Chavez said, according to the Venezuelan state news agency.

Chavez has staunchly defended Iran's nuclear energy program, siding with Tehran by insisting it is for peaceful uses and not for nuclear bombs.

U.S. officials have worried Iran may be using its civilian nuclear program as a cover to develop atomic weapons. Four rounds of U.N. sanctions, as well as broader severe U.S. and European Union sanctions have not persuaded Tehran to halt the program.

Chavez also has plans to develop a nuclear energy program in Venezuela and last week signed an agreement for Russia to help build a reactor.

Without mentioning the countries' nuclear ambitions, Chavez said his government demands respect for Iran's sovereignty and that "those who think they are most powerful and want to impose their will on the world respect Iran."

Chavez's trip to Iran was his ninth as president. Before coming to Tehran, he made stops in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Later Wednesday, Chavez arrived in Syria, and is due to travel next to Libya and Portugal.

Iran and Venezuela both belong to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. In recent years, the two oil-producing countries have also set up joint ventures to produce cars, tractors and bicycles in the South American country.

Yep. I would.

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love, 99
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a rock star in lebanon

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Wow. Franklin Lamb did a FINE job of putting us straight on the matter of Elvis Ahmadinejad's visit to Lebanon. jo6pac put me onto it, but I went and hunted it down to its source. Much better at this link. Pictures and video along with a great article. I loved the part where the Lebanese merely locked-on to the Israeli provocation with a missile to drive it off and proceeded with their festivities. Viva Lebanon. Viva freedom fighters.

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love, 99
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i love max keiser

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I really, really do.

Ahmadinejad really poked a hole in their big bubble. Fox News has gone apeshit over all the applause he got, and so has Genghis Ponzi Yoo. Like I say, the truth hurts... but it is the number one most important thing in the world.

Time we got to it. It's the weekend, you have the time to do some homework.

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love, 99
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the truth hurts

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But I love it the most of anything.

Here's a snippet of the speech....

Here's a video of the entire speech....

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love, 99
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snap out of it

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I just ripped out the bulk of the propagandistic blather from a rather long AP piece on Ahmadinejad's outrageously intelligent take on the root cause of poverty. You can go read the whole thing, but, I'm not kidding, they're just tickling every outright FALSE idea ever implanted in your unsuspecting mind and this is the bit that actually says something important:

UNITED NATIONS — Iran's president on Tuesday predicted the defeat of capitalism and blamed global big business for the suffering of millions....

The clash of visions at the U.N. anti-poverty summit drew a line under the stark differences on easing the misery of the one billion people living on less than $1.25 a day.

[Ignore for the moment the egregious understatement of the egregious problem.]

More than 140 presidents, prime ministers and kings are attending the three-day summit which started Monday to assess and spur on achievement of U.N. targets set by world leaders in 2000. The plan called for an intensive global campaign to ease poverty, disease and inequalities between rich and poor by 2015.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ... took aim at capitalism and called for the overhaul of "undemocratic and unjust" global decision-making bodies, which are dominated by the United States and other Western powers. While Ahmadinejad didn't single out any country, he said world leaders, thinkers and global reformers should "spare no effort" to make practical plans for a new world order — reform of international economic and political institutions.

"It is my firm belief that in the new millennium, we need to revert to the divine mindset...based on the justice-seeking nature of mankind...now that the discriminatory order of capitalism and the hegemonic approaches are facing defeat."

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And to be replaced by Beelzebub himself... I mean, face it, you want a job done right, you gotta do it yourself.

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BE AFRAID....

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love, 99
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if we must be so warlike, could we at least focus it on the real enemy?

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Indeed, good sir, there are very many, a big majority, of rational men who have no wish to attack Iran, but there are a few, a despicably powerful few, who can make it happen anyway.

There was a piece of total fabrication in the NYT yesterday that I didn't have the strength to bring up and debunk bit by bit, the real POINT being only that the NYT is doing precisely what it did with the run up to the Iraq invasion, only not using Judy Miller's byline this time. There's one visitor to this blog who thinks the whole bit with Iran is only saber rattling, and indeed I have had to take refuge in that thought quite a few times, but what it really is is our government and other servants of the controllers incessantly trying to create a casus belli that could turn the world population in favor of attacking Iran.

As I've said before, and was confirmed in the interview I linked yesterday, there is the small matter of the missing nuke that in a pinch may yet be made to serve, depending on the pressure to get this done. I saw yesterday, too, that there were about five bits of "news" aimed again specifically at dehumanizing Iranians, especially the Iranian regime, to the point where it might be okay with us to nuke them to save them from all that.

So today I find this Reuters piece and I'm simply leaving out all the paragraphs in it that were lies and convenient allusions to facts not in evidence, just sticking to their reportage on the Russian official's material. It's more informative and less dangerous this way.

Russian official: U.S. hindering resumption of talks with Iran

The comments, made to a discussion group of Russia experts, appeared aimed at nudging Washington towards restarting stalled UN-backed talks to provide Iran with nuclear fuel for a Tehran research reactor.

By Reuters

A senior Russian government official said on Monday that the United States was hindering the resumption of talks with Iran on a fuel swap deal aimed at easing concern over the Islamic Republic's nuclear ambitions.

The comments, made to a discussion group of Russia experts, appeared aimed at nudging Washington towards restarting stalled UN-backed talks to provide Iran with nuclear fuel for a Tehran research reactor.

"I am concerned by the fact that the United States slowed down the process," the senior government official told the Valdai group of Russia experts when asked about the fuel deal.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

... the Russian official said Western demands that Iran give up making low enriched uranium were futile and that major powers should instead focus on preventing Tehran getting fuel that could be used for a nuclear bomb.

"It is not realistic that Iran will give up the enrichment up to four percent," the official said. "The international community should focus on preventing the further enrichment to 20 percent."

... Russia welcomed a statement last month by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who said work to make higher-grade uranium would stop if it got assurances on nuclear fuel supplies for the Tehran research reactor.

At that time, Russia also called for a meeting as soon as possible to discuss such supplies.

... The Russian official said Moscow did not want Tehran to have nuclear weapons but warned that rash decisions over Iran could lead to a tragedy for the Middle East.

...Russia voted for a UN Council sanctions resolution against Iran in June but Moscow has criticised tougher additional sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union.

The Russian official said the tougher unilateral sanctions imposed by Washington and Brussels were unacceptable.

"If we agreed on something we shall not allow any step to the left or right of the basic document," the official said.

We have PERFECTLY CLEARLY refused to accept every acceptance of our offers to Iran to settle this matter peacefully, and there's only ONE reason for that. The powers that be don't want the matter settled. They want to use it as an excuse to attack Iran, and they are not giving up mindfucking us, keeping the masses stupid enough so that a false flag will work like a charm.

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love, 99
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impossible to discern exactly what is up

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But I cannot even yet bring myself to believe that Russia and China are, in fact, any part of even watered down sanctions... even though that seems to be what the cognoscenti have made of Clinton's OUTRAGEOUS response to the news of the deal between Brazil and Turkey and Iran that ought to quell any rational person's irrational fears of Iran and nukes of any kind. I think those cognoscenti were as dumbfounded by it as everyone else was and put it together by means of the same almost completely nonexistent nonresponses I'd found to arrive at the possibility that Russia and China had agreed to let her SAY that in exchange for sanctions that do not sanction Iran, that everyone's just going about the business of plugging each and every wild excuse to harm Iran being generated by Washington DC as calmly and gently as possible so as not to alarm the eight-hundred-pound psychotic gorilla in the room.

So. What I think actually happened is that Clinton just lost it. It shocked everyone. Then they decided that this was their opportunity to turn our extreme sanctions thing into no-sanctions-at-all sanctions... and Ahmadinejad is now helping them deliver on this exploitation of her outrageous blunder. If we make a peep in the Security Council, Hillary's pants will be pulled down. Maybe you want to think of it as them helping us not sanction Iran despite the dictates of AIPAC, giving the administration political cover for not starving Iranians before nuking them, but, well, fine.... Whatever.
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we disgrace ourselves

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Over and over and over and over. I swear, it's every bit as embarrassing to be an American now as it was through the entire Dubya administration.
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busy, busy boy

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I can't help it. I admire him. And not only is he sticking up for Iran's dignity on the nukes score, but he's getting real on our psychedelic propensity for black ops to terrorize everybody.

Ahmadinejad urges Ban to probe 9/11 attacks
(AFP) – 9 hours ago

TEHRAN — Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has written to UN chief Ban Ki-moon, asking him to launch an investigation into the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, news reports said on Monday.

"The minimum expectation from your excellency is to set up an independent and trusted fact-finding group to comprehensively investigate the real factors behind September 11," Ahmadinejad said in the text of the letter carried by official news agencies.

They did not say when the letter was sent.

The hardliner, who in March dismissed 9/11 as a "big lie," said in the letter that the attacks "were the main pretext for attacks" by NATO on Afghanistan and Iraq.

Several times Ahmadinejad has questioned the accepted version of the Al-Qaeda strikes on New York and Washington which killed nearly 3,000 people.

In January, he branded September 11 "a suspicious affair" similar to the Holocaust, which he dismissed as a "myth" in 2005, drawing widespread condemnation.

Ahmadinejad's latest remarks come with Iran locked in a standoff with world powers led by the United States over Tehran's controversial nuclear programme, and risking tougher sanctions over its defiance.

In his letter, he also asked Ban to condemn Sunni militant Abdolmalek Rigi and those who backed him.

Rigi, head of the rebel Jundallah (Soldiers of God) group, was captured by Iranian intelligence agents in February. According to officials in Iran, he had lived in Pakistan from where he launched attacks inside the Islamic republic.

"Based on the legal and humane duties of the secretary general, we want outright condemnation of Rigi's crimes and defence of the Iranian nation's rights as a victim of terrorism," Ahmadinejad's letter said.

He demanded "condemnation of NATO backing for this regional terrorist and impeachment of the criminals who backed him."

Iran touted Rigi's arrest as a major success and a blow to the United States and Britain, and state television showed what it said was Rigi confessing that he had received US backing.

Rigi reportedly spearheaded several bloody insurgent attacks in southeast Iran's Sistan-Baluchestan province, which borders both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

That was no coerced lie confession: The criminals who backed Rigi are the U.S. government.

I think theocracy is a big mistake, but it really seems to me sometimes that these particular theocrats are about the only ones left on the planet who are trying to deal with the real... sort of digging their heels in and insisting on it, no matter how menacing we get to back them down from it. That is beautiful. That is bodhisattva stuff. And the stakes have not been low. And they have suffered badly, and quietly, to keep us out of WWIII. So. Well. I do so wish people could find some gratitude for it... some gratitude for their staying strong even in the face of the silver-tongued Barack W. Cheney, staying strong despite his charming eyelash-batting offers for them to just lighten up and let us dominate Iran again, and despite all this lethal skullduggery too....
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and while i'm on the subject of more wonderful than ours

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I gotta mention Iran's. If you can find yer objectivity for a moment, Ahmadinejad makes Obama look like a preening dope.
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ten times the president we've got

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Iran's Ahmadinejad: Sept. 11 attacks a 'big lie'
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI (AP) — TEHRAN, Iran

Iran's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Saturday called the official version of the Sept. 11 attacks a "big lie" used by the U.S. as an excuse for the war on terror, state media reported.

Ahmadinejad's comments, made during an address to Intelligence Ministry staff, come amid escalating tensions between the West and Tehran over its disputed nuclear program. They show that Iran has no intention of toning itself down even with tighter sanctions looming because of its refusal to halt uranium enrichment.

"September 11 was a big lie and a pretext for the war on terror and a prelude to invading Afghanistan," Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying by state TV. He called the attacks a "complicated intelligence scenario and act."

The Iranian president has questioned the official U.S. version of the Sept. 11 attacks before, but this is the first time he ventured to label it a "big lie."

In 2007, New York officials rejected Ahmadinejad's request to visit the World Trade Center site while he was in the city for a U.N. meeting. The president also sparked an uproar when he said during a lecture in New York that the causes and conditions that led to the attacks, as well as who orchestrated them, still need to be examined.

At the time, he also told Iranian state TV the attacks were "a result of mismanaging and inhumane managing of the world by the U.S," and that Washington was using Sept. 11 as an excuse to attack others.

He has also questioned the Sept. 11 death toll of around 3,000, claiming the Americans never published the victims' names.

On the 2007 anniversary of the attacks, the names of 2,750 victims killed in New York were read aloud at a memorial ceremony.

He sounds just like the hero Aaron Russo....
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get over it 2.0

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Confirmed and reconfirmed and reconfirmed and reconfirmed....

Believe me, I know how it feels to loathe the president... and his enforcers... but if I were Iranian I would loathe the people behind the ugly ruse that caused SO much trouble, SO much heartache, even more....
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splendid idea

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But the part about this that rocks the most is hearing of the solidarity between Iran, Syria and Hezbollah. My fist shot into the air! I'm probably still high from listening to the Progressive Dullards of America coming out strongly for unity with "paleo-conservatives" and libertarians, but, dammit, peace and freedom fighters the world over have my undying love and admiration.
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After all, we ARE talking about some of the worst murderating fucks of all time.
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and this one MEANS it

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Another uncomfortable contrast to contemplate.
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CONGRATULATIONS IRAN!

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I'm much relieved and happy to report that the Iranian Revolution has celebrated its 31st anniversary, with no big ugly stink from the reform movement, and the happy news that they have enriched some uranium to 20%... which means they will be able to produce their own medical isotopes now, that Iranian cancer patients can be saved. This is great news.

I know many will not wish to view it this way.

I'm checking out of my postage stamp this morning and will be plugging in at my mother's house tonight. Stay out of trouble while I'm away, please. xoxoxox
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we are not going to give up iran because mr mousavi has lied

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Frontline's completely bogus account of Neda's murder contained but a few precious lines from Press TV's Nader Mokhtari, and they were all it contained that square with what we have worked so hard to know already about this filthy travesty. They included much more from the justice-obstructing "doctor" who showed up in Iran days before and left so swiftly after Neda's murder. He couldn't look into the camera, nor his interviewer, eyes doing that sort of diffuse wobble in sync with reaching for the right spin. For instance, his story originally was that he went to the Iranian authorities about it, but left the country the next day out of fear of becoming a suspect. Here, no mention of talking to Iranian police, and couching his disappearing act in terms of choosing his integrity. A doctor who isn't a doctor but a publisher with a business in Tehran even though he lives in England... just got there six days before and decides to capitulate to his employees' wishes to go out and protest, just to keep them out of trouble... oh... I could poke holes in that shit all week....

There was another Press TV journalist on camera quite a bit. She says she quit her job with the state English language station because she couldn't bear to do that anymore... we are led to believe she did this before she was shot in the knee with a plastic bullet. I don't believe that. I can believe she would have done that after, but not before. I'm assuming she's saying all this stuff on camera because she's not in Iran. Neda's friend who is also on camera quite a bit is in Turkey. There are emails to Frontline from Neda's sister... and they have a woman saying her lines in English from those... or at least that's what we're supposed to think. Sadly, Frontline has gotten so bad I don't trust that they spoke to anyone who knew her, but you don't have to be that suspicious to see this as propagandist bunk.

Frontline's interviewees deem the Supreme Leader's injunction that reformers continuing to incite such unseemly protesting, rioting, would be responsible for the consequences as announcing that the authorities would just go ahead and kill people. Since it is very clear that the protesters were responding to continued calls from Moussavi and Karroubi and Rafsanjani, it seems really that the man was trying to tell them their lies would cost innocent people too much. But... no, no... he's a vicious dictator who kills innocent rioters for innocent reformers with innocent helpers on roofs above quiet alleys.

Frontline suddenly has Neda returning to her car from the protest, when all other accounts have her being killed but a few steps from leaving her car... on a street where there was no protest taking place. Indeed, they show a shot from high above that has, they say, Neda and her music teacher alone on the street, but we can't do anything but think so because the man has the same color shirt on. Then we are shown a bunch of crowd scenes where we catch glimpses of a gray-haired man in this same distinctive blue and white striped shirt and a few glimpses of the "woman" with him who is wearing a baseball cap and a black chador. We never do see his face in any of it until we are shown him supposedly giving forced testimony, very much thinner, that he saw no Basij at the scene. And there is no baseball cap on or even falling off the dying young woman on the street... and no chador.

Only now do we hear all this stuff about her having made all kinds of valorous proclamations about her conscience sending her into the streets. We hear malarky about some Basij guy pleading he didn't mean to kill her and getting beaten and stripped by the crowd... where there was no crowd... then they say about twenty people... but they let him go and just published his ID card on the internet... when it's very clear from the video of her death this was no drive-by... and from earlier accounts. Even here you can see the huge splat of blood from the exit on the street directly in front of her feet as she is falling backward, is being helped to fall gently backward by both her music teacher and this "bystander" doctor. They're applying the pressure to a wound directly below her neck, high on the sternum, and Neda's eyes are following the cameraman from in front of her, to the side of her and sort of sticking sideways as he moves behind her and the men holding her exit wound. All of this is perfectly consistent with a bullet entering from above and behind... a fucking sniper... the same one who got out the image of her and her music teacher alone in the street... and bystanders who were just so amazingly right on the spot so instantaneously she had not yet had the time to crumple all the way to the street from such a massive injury and within about a second of hearing the shot.

Give me a goddam break.

And good grief but we do get here a bunch of very chic pictures of this beauty we have never seen before, and hear how she spoke of her love of travel. Appears she did quite a bit of traveling, especially to Turkey, but we hear, too, that she always swore she would leave Iran even if it were her last day alive. You'll pardon me if I ponder the incongruity of such a thing when she appears to have been leaving frequently to beautiful places. If she were so determined to leave, what was wrong with any one of those trips?

So, anyway, Nader Mokhtari got in a couple lucid phrases on the final cut, taken and cleverly edited from the EDITED version of the transcript of their whole interview with him that they put up on their site, and I wanted to highlight here because most people out there will be missing this information.

[What was your view of the election and its aftermath?]

... Mr. [Mir Hossein] Mousavi is not a reformist by any stretch of the imagination. He is responsible for some acts abroad, overseas, which gave Iran a fairly bad reputation in the 1980s. His hands are bloodied. And he represents a camp which in any other society would be called the nouveau riche. They are the people who were the poor before the revolution, and they became rich through the deals they made through the black markets in the war, and they want to hang on to the wealth in the country.

And everybody has mentioned that the revolution or this uprising or these demonstrations were north of Vali Asr Square, and this is the rich part of Tehran. South of Vali Asr Square nobody came out. The real demonstrations, the popular demonstrations took place within two to three days after the presidential vote, where you had lots of people out. They were just average, ordinary people.

Now, among this came a third group that nobody knew, and they all appeared. Nobody knew who they were. ...

We know a certain amount of shooting was done by the Basij [government paramilitary force]. Part of the story was shown on Western TV. You imagine someone trying to set fire to a military base in the middle of London. You can imagine the reaction from the security forces here, and a bunch of people just broke away from the main demonstration of people who were asking for reform and started attacking this station, the 117th Basij station or volunteer force station with Molotov cocktails and tried to set it alight. ...

What happens is the ordinary people, the people who were out to demonstrate and thought that the vote had been fiddled with, pretty much gave up after three or four days, but a hard core of people stayed on the streets.

And in the first week something like 20 or 30 firearms were --

Uncovered.

Uncovered by the security forces. Now, the thing is that the firearms, they come through the Kurdistan border, and they're not that hard to come by to Iran, but it is very unlikely for ordinary people to keep such arms because it carries really heavy fines. ...

As with Neda Agha Soltan's shooting, … the bullet is not any of the calibers that are supplied to Iranian security forces. That at least we know. ...

I suppose one of the most powerful images to emerge from the weeks after the election was exactly that video, Neda getting killed. [Is it] unfortunate, do you think, that this has become one of the defining images of the conflict?

I feel unfortunate when anyone's killed in my own country within an election event. The polls conducted before the election -- even CNN polls -- gave Ahmadinejad a 2-to-1 majority. That's taking the Iran countryside into account. So when Mr. Mousavi went two hours before the count had started and declared himself the winner, well, we all thought there was something very, very weird going on over there.*

And an hour after the early results from the little townships and villages started to come in, which were overwhelmingly pro-Ahmadinejad -- they generally are because they've been helped out a lot by his government -- he declared that there had been widespread fraud in the elections.

And you see, he's an ex-premier of Iran. He's in a responsible position. He can't just go out and make claims like that willy-nilly unless he has clear, clear evidence of this happening.

No evidence has been presented. ... He had observers at every single polling station, and he said these observers had been thrown out. Now, one person was shot in Tehran, and three mobile cameras captured this. How could it be that on the night of the vote, his representatives get thrown out of 30 stations and we don't have a single second of footage of this happening? Simply because it didn't take place.

Do you feel that we've got the wrong idea in Britain and the U.S. about the level of Ahmadinejad support inside Iran?

Yes. He's the first president in Iran that did not concentrate the budget for the country purely on Tehran. We have 700 miles of motorways, 200 miles of tunnels, 40 new factories. We have three new ports. We have all sorts of projects to help people out of unemployment back to work in the countryside.

You have to know Iran. In Iran, if you want to build a road 10 kilometers long, it could take up to 10 years. He managed to do in four years what many presidents haven't managed to do in 30 years. So the level of support and the level of assistance given to the farmers, to the average folk, rank and file, was huge.

And these, I call them the nouveau riche -- I'm sorry; I do this because I come from a very old family in Iran -- they were actually the conservatives. They wanted to preserve the wealth within their own clique. Ahmadinejad is a blacksmith's son, and he is at heart a socialist. He wanted to be able to help the people, and so an awful lot of people, as you know, voted for him. It's perfectly natural.

And what really upsets me about this is that even the polls before the election conducted by reputable foreign news agencies confirmed that he was 2-to-1 ahead. Now, immediately after this claim, you know, he was vilified out of all proportion. ...

What impression, then, do you think the media coverage in Britain and the U.S. has given the average viewer in these countries about what happened in Iran during the elections?

They have given the exact opposite of what actually went on. I have lived through a revolution where a majority wants a regime out, and we had Chieftain tanks freshly supplied by Britain during the 1979 revolution every 200 meters. People would clamber up one and down the other to get to the demonstration, and the shah's Imperial Guard was just standing back, amazed at this wave of humanity going because they were determined.

And when you had an uprising or a demonstration in one town, you had it in every town. This just didn't happen. It happened in Tehran. It happened slightly in a couple of other major towns. There were minor demonstrations there, and then it died down. So the ordinary people realized they'd been fooled to a certain extent, and they went home, but a hard core stayed. ...

What about the argument that the demonstrations were not large enough because in the smaller cities it's easier to destroy the demonstration? ...

Yes. But then again, as I put it to you earlier, a majority revolution does not abide by such rules. A majority revolution is even in the smallest village. You get people coming out, regardless.

The shah's soldiers at the end did not fire in a mass scale against people, whereas it seems that, especially on the Saturday, June 20, there did seem to be mass violence against people.

In November 1978, 32 people in Tehran University died in front of my eyes in just one shooting spree by the Imperial Guard of the shah. You have no idea that during that time, about 30 people a day died across Iran, on average, during the revolution.

If the majority were unhappy with the status quo, this government would have gone, and that simply is not the case.

The people who got rich in the revolution, during the revolution and the 30 years since, their offspring, the youth, they had the money, so they want to have access to a Western way of life. They don't want to be pigeonholed into a strictly Islamic culture. It is natural for them to want more from life because they have access to it through their wealth, whereas the majority in Iran are not wealthy, so for them Islam will suffice for the time being. Do you appreciate what I'm trying to get at?

There's lower expectations in those parts of society, there's a higher expectation among the Westernized class, and therefore this is some kind of cultural struggle?

It is a cultural struggle, but it is induced in a sense. Iranians can sit there and talk to you for hours about Zoroastrianism and its offspring, Metrism, which is very close to Christianity. They can talk for hours about that, but the moment they feel threatened, they run into a mosque. Islamic culture has been with the country for 1,400 years.

So what would be a more accurate view of what happened in Iran during the elections, in your opinion?

... Mousavi is not very popular because he was Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's golden boy, and he is not psychologically very stable. During the war, where 1,000 kids were dying every day at the battlefront, he would have a tiff with Ayatollah Khomeini, he would go into his house, shut his door, and he would not come out for a few months. He was the prime minister of the country, and the children were dying at the battlefront. These aren't the actions of a person who has a stable mind.

Mr. Mousavi is not liked. He has no popularity within the real forces, and he didn't win on the economic front also. The other thing that he could have done -- he could have kept this going -- easily applied for permission for peaceful demonstrations at the stadium, Azadi Stadium in Tehran or other places away from businesses, whereas the people who assembled in front of the presidential office were mainly the merchants, because their living was being hit so hard by the demonstrations. ... They put maximum pressure on the government. So in this case, during the revolution, the bazaar, the economics of the country was behind the revolution, whereas here they were totally against it because they were losing money. So this was another problem for Mr. Mousavi and his team, another angle that they had not worked on. ...

We saw some very shocking images of violence in the streets after the election that were shot by ordinary people on their phones or whatever. How do you respond to those?

You have street clashes there, and, you know, in a place as peaceful as London, you have G-20 demonstrators and a policeman suddenly flies off the handle, pushes someone, kills someone. ...

People got killed. People get killed in situations like this. When you have an ex-premier as irresponsible as Mr. Mousavi going and claiming that there's been rigged elections, that's rabble-rousing, and they pour onto the streets, and they start burning up people's property. And this happens. It's overreaction. ...

Now, there are a number of very prominent Iranians who are on trial at the moment on charges of trying to start a velvet revolution with foreign help.

Yes.

Britain specifically, North America, Israel. Do you feel that the protesters were influenced by foreign forces and foreign funds?

Yes, yes. This was just far too well planned for there not to have been. I'm not saying at government level in any way; I'm not trying to implicate perhaps British government, Israeli government. But at some level there had been very, very precise planning for what was going to happen. ...

What's the available evidence we have that this was far too well planned in advance?

The evidence does exist. I've seen some of the paperwork. I wasn't allowed to keep any of the paperwork. But ... the level of planning was not the sort of level of planning you're used to seeing in Iran. It's as simple as that. ...

Fars News had a report on its Web site that said that he'd won with 63 percent of the vote. That was about 10 p.m. on [election night].

Right. Why did Mr. Mousavi, before even the vote count had started, then claim he was the president? I have no idea. I mean, you're asking me questions which are so hypothetical I couldn't answer you.

Why did Mr. [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei come out on Saturday when canvassers were supposed to have 72 hours to register their complaints and come out so much in favor of Mr. Ahmadinejad at a moment when the supreme leader is supposed to be above this?

What difference would it have made after the vote if he'd said who he supported? It's important for the leader not to show his support before the election for his favorite.

But he'd said five weeks before the election that Mr. Ahmadinejad should act as if he has another five years in power.

I haven't heard the comment directly, so I can't comment on that. ...

[There were] allegations saying that [BBC correspondent Jon] Leyne has been giving money to the sniper who shot her dead. You yourself talked about the caliber of bullets used. More recently there have been reports that Caspian Makan, the fiance or boyfriend of Neda, is being pushed to make a confession that she was killed by [the Mujahideen-e Khalq].

Nobody knows who killed Neda. That's the bottom line, and I wouldn't like to comment on that. I couldn't say, would it be the security forces? Why would they fire on someone in a street where there isn't a demonstration, someone out just getting some air, walking out of the car? I couldn't tell you who did it because I don't know. ...

Have you ever seen anyone shot with a high-caliber rifle?

I haven't seen, but ... the bullet goes through the person because of the high velocity it has, and the blood splash is along the direction of where the bullet traveled through the body. If you examine the video of the footage, the blood splash is immediately by her feet at the front, so the bullet hit her at the back, and it exited through the front. ...

And the bullet got her heart and her lung. Now, had the bullet just gone 3 millimeters to the side, it would have just got her lung, and she would have stayed alive; she would have lived. But it was also cut through her heart because it was a tough-caliber military bullet that was designed to kill. ... I don't see how [a] Basiji could carry a weapon of that caliber in his pocket, simple as that.

And then the problem is that the Dr. [Arash] Hejazi, who was supposed to have given her there the kiss of life, showed up to Iran five or six days just before the disturbances and he was there on the spot. And he disappeared immediately afterwards. So, you know, there are lots of questions to do with lots of things that happened in Iran.

Do you think that Dr. Hejazi was an agent provocateur?

No. But if you'd like to put together conspiracy theories, he could very well have been a conspirator if you're going to say that. ...

Dr. Hejazi has come out and he says, yeah, you know, there were two Basijis on a motorbike, I think as far as I remember, and one of them pulled out a weapon out of his pocket and shot Neda. Well, how the hell did he do that? What kind of weapon do you have that you can carry in your pocket that can fire that kind of round? So if we want to go into conspiracy theories about Neda Agha Soltan, we could talk for hours.

The fact is the video is there for sure. You see the blood splash, the moment the bullet exits the front of her chest in front of her feet and she falls backwards and she dies within seconds, and it's a terrible thing to watch someone die. ...

But I put this down: You know, within the chaos on Tehran's streets, anything can happen. Maybe my generation is slightly tougher and more used to this because we have seen an entire generation die in a war, in the eight-year war. I think it's a terrible thing to happen, but really, if you come down and get down to the base of this, ... if he [Mousavi] had not said the election had been rigged without any evidence, substantial evidence, none of this would have happened. Nobody would have died. ...

Is there anything else you'd like to add, anything we haven't covered in the interview?

Yes. I'd like to say this: that during the times of the simple reformists like [former Presidents] Mr. [Mohammad] Khatami and Mr. [Ali Akbar Hashemi] Rafsanjani, Iran's relations with the West were not on the up. They were not. Iran and the West did not move in a direction to meet eye to eye.

Whereas as I speak to you today, ... Mr. Obama has decided to scrap the plans for the missile shield, and the United States and Iran are going to start talking to each other. And that has happened during Ahmadinejad's time in office. So a bit of strength does pay off. ...

I do believe that we are entering a very, very special period, and I do believe that in the near future the relations will expand between Iran and the West, and they will improve simply because the interests of the West and regional interests of Iran are coming so close to each other that there is no alternative.

But maybe at the expense of people's human rights?

If you watch Iraq, Afghanistan and the events over the last eight years since Iraq's illegal invasion by the U.S.-led forces, I don't think human rights mean that much in the West.

I'm sure that's a double standard, but we're talking about human rights towards your own citizens.

Right. Towards your own citizens? Well, I could go into that also, but I'll spare you. ...

[Was the 1979 revolution the first velvet revolution?]

'79 was not a peaceful revolution. It was a very, very violent affair on a daily basis. I went on my bicycle to the Tehran University in November, and I was just watching -- I was 13 years old, 14 years old. They were trying to pull down a shah's statue. ...

The next thing it was like little chirps around my ears, and somebody shouted, "They're shooting," and then there was the sound of fireworks. We all lay on the floor, and then the sound of fireworks stopped, and we got up, and when we got up a large number of people didn't get up. ... Thirty-two people died on that single day on the east corner of Tehran University.

We have fought for this revolution, and we have paid heavily, and we are going to see it through to the end. And eight years of war and a million dead have toughened us up.

If this is the price we have to pay to get our own way in the region, we are prepared to pay it. There are some people who may not be prepared to pay it, but they are not the majority. If the leader goes up and calls to arms, ... he can have 20 million men under flag, and they will not ask for a penny. This is our generation.

We are not going to give up Iran because Mr. Mousavi has lied, and we're not going to give up Iran because an extremist organization has planned some kind of a coup within an election. We will not give up Iran because we paid such a heavy price to have it, and this is the voice of the majority of Iranians.

I may appear harsh. This is my country; it's my patch of land. It's all I have in this world, and I will fight for it. Accusations fly, you go to jail for three weeks, go for three years, go for 30 years. I am not going to give up my country.

* Emphasis mine. Another time this salient bit has hit the cutting room floor rather than chance it getting into the mainstream consciousness here. I really wish I could hear the entire, uncut, version of their interview with him.

Nobody's going to want to listen to him though. He's the guy who reported on the Israeli slaughter in Gaza last winter.... Uhm... you know... told the truth... on that very station for which his co-worker featured in this piece of tripe could no longer bear to work....

You can now stack this up next to the nefarious mosques and office tower and the nukes they don't have and CNN's glee over the bombs we will be using to rid Iran of its revolution once and for all.

[Note from next morning: Sorry, but I had to watch the damn program twice and the video of her death quite a few times to make sure of my impressions and what we can see actually took place, while my head was swimming from needing to sleep, so there have been some revisions this morning from what I posted last night. I actually woke up this morning thinking it could very easily be that Neda was not killed at all, that it's all just a very cruel hoax, and who could really even tell for certain, SO determined is the wealthier and better-educated sector of Tehran against the rest of their countrymen. If she wanted out of Iran that badly, what a great way to split, fake her own death.... Maybe I just hope too hard that she was in on it with the others... everyone entirely too convenient to this public relations miracle got away unharmed. Her music teacher appears to have lost about fifty pounds between the day and whenever he was taped telling the world he saw no Basiji. That might mean they didn't feed him while keeping him in some dungeon to make him confess, or it could mean it wasn't him from the git and he just came out to do the "confession" out of fear. I have no clue beyond the marked loss of bulk and the different shades of gray hair from clip to clip...? So, I'm probably just trying to comfort myself, and maybe I've been watching too many movies and seen too many photoshopped images... but, truly, from all the obvious bullshitting going on around this, it's just about as likely she helped stage it, and is happily honeymooning with her "not political" lover somewhere, as that she died on a side street in Tehran.]

a particularly clear articulation of the problem

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The writer is obviously not a native English speaker, who doesn't suck on the sax, so I just did a few teensy edits for clarity's sake, but I think this is a pretty good articulation of the insanity holding the day in the Middle East.

Who is a Jew?
by Gilad Atzmon
6 October 2009

The question of "who is a Jew?" has been debated in Israel since it attained statehood. In the Jewish state the authorities, Rabbis and the media would dig into one’s bloodline with no shame whatsoever. For the Israelis and orthodox Jews, Jewishness is obviously a blood related concept. However, Jewishness and blood concerns are becoming a subject of a growing debate in the UK. In the last few days The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian are trying to decide whether Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a “self hating Jew” or just an ordinary antisemite. Like the Israeli Rabbis they both dig into his bloodline.

Ahmadinejad is revealed to have a “Jewish past” said the Daily Telegraph on Saturday. According to the paper, a photograph of the Iranian president holding up his identity card during elections in March 2008 “clearly” suggests that his family had Jewish roots. The Telegraph even found the “experts” who suggested that “Mr Ahmadinejad's track record for hate-filled attacks on Jews could be an overcompensation to hide his past.” Needless to say that Ahmadinejad has never come on record with a single anti-Jewish “hate- filled” attack as the Telegraph suggests. He is indeed extremely critical of the Jewish state and its raison d'etre. He is also highly critical of the crude and manipulative mobilisation of the holocaust at the expense of the Palestinian people.

One may wonder how come a Western media outlet happens to selectively engage with issues to do with the racial or ethnic origin of the Iranian president. At the end of the day, digging into peoples ethnic past and family bloodline is not a common practice you expect from the Western press. It is something you tend to leave for racists, Nazis and Rabbis. For one reason or another, no one in the so called free press tried to dwell on the close ties between multi billion swindler Bernie Maddof and his tribe. This “free press” saved itself also from dealing with Wolfowitz’s ethnicity, in spite of the fact that the Zionist war he brought on us has cost 1.5 million lives by now. If you wonder how it is that the Western free media is reverting to “pathology” in order to deal with a Muslim president, the answer is simple, not to say trivial.

The so called “liberal West” is yet to find the answers to President Ahmadinejad within the realm of reason. It lacks the argumentative capacity to address Ahmadinejad. Instead, it insists to spin banal racially orientated ideas that cannot hold water, "By making anti-Israeli statements,” says The Daily Telegraph, “he is trying to shed any suspicions about his Jewish connections.” The truth of the matter is clear. Ahmadinejad has already managed to re-direct a floodlight of reasoning and skepticism just to enlighten our darkest corner of hypocrisy. He somehow manages to remind us all what thinking is all about.

It is pretty much impossible to deny the fact that Ahmadinejad’s take on the holocaust and Israel is coherent, consistent and valid. He seems to have three main issues with the narrative:

1. Around sixty Million died in WWII, the vast majority of them were innocent civilians. How is it, asks Ahmadinejad, that we insist to concentrate on the particularity of the suffering of one very specific group of people i.e. the Jews?

2. The Iranian president rightly maintains that this historical chapter must be historically examined. This would mean as well that every event in the past should be subject to scrutiny, elaboration and revision. “If we allow ourselves to question God and the Prophets, we may as well allow ourselves to question the holocaust.”

3. Regardless of the truthfulness of the holocaust, it is not a trivial fact that the suffering of the Jews in Europe had nothing to do with the Palestinian people. Hence, there is no reason for the Palestinians to pay for crimes committed by others. If some Western Leaders feel guilty for crimes committed against the Jews by their ancestors, which they seem to claim, they better allocate some land for the Jews within their territories rather than expect the Palestinians to keep upholding the Zionist murderous burden.

As much as it is obviously clear that the above points raised by Ahmadinejad are totally valid, it is also painfully transparent that the West lacks the means to address those issues. Instead we seem to revert to supremacy and pseudo scientific discourse dwelling on blood, pathology and lame psychoanalysis.

As embarrassing as it may seem, in just three moves Ahmadinejad manages to expose the current deceptive Western mode of discussion. He, in fact identifies the holocaust as the core of our hypocritical stand, a tendency that has managed to shatter our ethical judgment. The holocaust was there to divert the attention from the colossal crimes committed by the allies: Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Dresden are just brief examples of institutionalised genocide at the hands of the English Speaking Empire. The holocaust has successfully matured into a new religion. Yet, it lacks theology. It doesn’t allow any form of criticism or reformism. It is in fact an anti-Western religion inspired by hate and vengeance. It is dark, it is blind and it lacks mercy and compassion. It is a faith that declares an assault on any form of doubt. It is a crude brutal belief system that stands in opposition to the notions of liberty and goodness. As if this is not enough, those who subscribe to this religion are complicit in an ongoing assault against grace and peace.

As things stand at the moment, The British media is yet to decide whether Ahmadinejad is a “Jew rebel” or just a “Meshugena Goy”. The Guardian was very quick to publish its own take on the subject refuting the Telegraph’s account. However, one thing is clear, neither the Guardian nor the Telegraph, nor any other so called “free media” outlets are free enough to address the questions raised by Ahmadinejad.

1. Why only the Jews?

2. Why do you all say NO to scrutinizing the past?

3. Why do the Palestinians have to pay the price?

Instead of engaging in these crucial elementary questions. The British main papers succumb to racially orientated bloodline digging.

Rather than following the banal Zionist query Who is a Jew? I suggest that we take the discourse one step further and ask a very simple question: What does Jewishness stand for?

when the air is hollow

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I'm sorry I'm being so boring today. I have too much craziness going on in my life and too little ability to hang with anything flashing in front of me by way of news. I'm a whippy, fizzy wreck today. My Zen went surfing or something and I only hope it will be back tomorrow.

Just in case you were dying to know, though, Ahmadinejad is not Jewish....

I'm sure that's a load off everyone's mind....

And Apple withdrew from the US Chamber of Commerce because of their anti-environmentalist activity... and so guess who's glad she's a Mac freak?

not rattled enough yet?

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Despite a thousand proofs that Ahmadinejad is not "Anti-Semitic", not a "Holocaust Denier", never even came close to threatening to wipe Israel off the map; despite experts admitting that his economic strategies are beginning to work; despite all indications and all analysis from our very best analysts that he actually won the election; despite apparently real efforts by the ayatollahs to check the veracity of the election results, and much more fairly and comprehensively than we have ever done here; despite our ability to check his claims of interference from Western covert ops and agents provocateurs; despite actually impeccable adherence to the NPT -- despite all reason, our fascists, Iranian expats and Iranian intellectuals have succeeded in vilifying Ahmadinejad to the point where it's okay with most of Western "civilization" if we nuke Iran.

Nice goin'....

Old Uncle Dave points out that anyone can learn to build a nuke.... Maybe that would be a good protest? Everybody put this book on the bestseller list?