come anticipate AHMADINEJAD at COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY with me

whoa! when?

I was wondering when someone would post. The right's been going batshit for days.

Columbia visit ---- > assassination ----> Intern'tl Incident ----> WWIII

Nice knowin' y'all.

http://www.superunicorn.com/erik/uploaded_images/beatlemania-783942.jpg

You just know he'll be hitting on undergrads at the reception.

i know i would be

JEWBILATION

http://www.nysun.com/article/40142?page_no=2

that was last year

the holocaust denier bit is weird to me, as if that takes precedence over the fact that he wasn't like, you know, THE PRESIDENT OF IRAN or anything important like that.

well, I guess they're trying to establish a general principle for unacceptable speakers? but yeah.

BAN PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD

"unacceptable speakers"

i don't mean to call you out on a phrase but you'd think that the distance between what is and what should be re: the president of the middle east's largest democracy would demand more open dialogue and communication, not less

no, I agree; I was just trying to get at the motivations of those who didn't want Ahmedinejad to speak. I didn't mean to endorse the idea that there are acceptable and unacceptable speakers.

Here’s Columbia law student Ruven Ellberger, proving himself something of a demagogic simpleton:

“I think there's four things to say about that. The first is that when Americans talk about free-speech rights, we're talking about a constitutional right that all U.S. citizens have. Ahmadinejad is not a U.S. citizen. He's a U.S. enemy. So he doesn't have anything close to a free-speech right.

The second thing is that only the government has to give people free speech. The government cannot restrict free speech. Columbia University doesn't have to give a soapbox to every lunatic in the world.

The third thing is that even if we want to hear minority opinions, dissenting opinions, things like that, I can understand giving it to somebody who just doesn't have the access to the media. Ahmadinejad is probably one of the most publicized people in the world today. He has a microphone wherever he goes. He can conduct his own press conferences. He is routinely interviewed on ABC and CBS. He will be speaking at the U.N. He has the media to convey his messages. We don't need to be the ones giving it to him.

And the fourth thing is that it just lowers the standards of Columbia University. Even if after all of this, you make the case that he has a free-speech right, you shouldn't just go around giving a platform to everybody. You're supposed to exercise judgment. Basically, Columbia University wouldn't find anything wrong with giving Stalin or Hitler a platform to speak, based on that rationale. I think Columbia owes it to itself and its students to exercise a little more judgment.”

so there's no such thing as an unacceptable speaker?

I'm curious, as well as knowing under what terms a speaker would be unacceptable.

you would be an example of one, i'm sure

that ms jacobsen and her "campus scholars for peace" sound like a nasty piece of work

my students agree!

we had Deepak Chopra a few years ago -- talk about excitement.

Basically, Columbia University wouldn't find anything wrong with giving Stalin or Hitler a platform to speak, based on that rationale

ah yes, shining examples of the dangers of too much free speech

the thing about speakers who espouse some abhorrent views is that they usually end up getting schooled by audience members which is awesome. not saying this example is in any way equivalent, but dinesh d'souza came to my college to speak on affirmative action and proved himself a total douche and it was profoundly satisfying. there was a protest against the administration for inviting him, but it was way better that he said his piece and was taken to task for it.

yes my thoughts exactly, but from some of the stuff posted on this thread you wonder if columbia students will be up to the task. hopefully bollnger will be up to it.

I agree. The protests from the right willfully ignore the fact that the U.S. has, in fortifying Shiia militias in Iraq, has indirectly been strengthening the hand of Tehran. As for recent history, I'm sure there's some imans who remember Bud McFarlane, a birthday cake, and salutations from the Gipper.

i don't recall anybody protesting when ahmadinejad was on CSPAN but i might not have been paying attention.

on an unrelated note was it nixon or reagan who was willing to debate students in the street? was it chile? mexico? does anybody remember what i'm talking about? they don't build americans like that anymore.

It may have been when Nixon was veep.

As for this Hitler analogy: god, how stupid. Maybe we'd have less Holocaust deniers had Hitler gotten an audience before American Jews in 1941.

you're right, i think it was his visits to peru + venezuala i'm thinking about ... i have one of those time/life photos of the 20th century books that has a great picture of him debating some guevara looking dude in the street as cops try to pull them apart.

looking for info on this reminded me that nixon debated khruschev in 1959!! can you imagine bush doing something like that?

i tell you, it's a fucking sad state of affairs when we're talking nostalgically about nixon.

Thing is, as far as the standard gray area about academic spaces and the meaning of speakers goes -- you know, the difference between having a speaker as an endorsement and the academic claim that speakers are there for critical observation -- Ahmadinejad is a fairly good claim toward the latter: he's the nominal leader of a country that's been made one of the most important issues in our foreign policy (and this is the context in which he's speaking, not as some kind of "dissenting voice" in a Holocaust conference), and it's really hard to argue that students wouldn't get some educational benefit from having him at an event! Especially if you count getting riled up and offended and engaged as an "educational benefit," which it basically is.

Either way, though, this part strikes me less as a moral or political issue (anyone who acknowledges that he's important is basically affirming the reason he's fair game as a speaker) and more as just whether Columbia feels like having him or not. The only part that galled me as a political matter is that the NYPD offered a fairly neutral justification for why he can't lay a wreath at Ground Zero (public safety, logistics, etc.), and Bush felt the need to do a little political twist and ascribe to them the motivation that Ahmadinejad is, you know, against us instead of with us.

nabisco, you can be one of the audience member's taking him to task, yes?

members

xpost to "nostalgically about Nixon" -- during a long McLaughlin Group discussion of Ahmadinejad this morning, in and around Buchanan going "I wrote toasts for Nixon to give in China," there was this great nuclear-history reversal where Clift and Page were all "well Mutual Assured Destruction with Iran might be a better plan than pre-emptive war," and then Tony Blankley of all bastards is like "well, Jimmy Carter said in 78 that nuclear proliferation is the biggest danger we have, and everyone laughed at him then, but NOW YOU'LL SEE" -- i.e., freaking Tony Blankley is retroactively on the side of the CARTER presidency

the thing about speakers who espouse some abhorrent views is that they usually end up getting schooled by audience members which is awesome. [...]

-- horseshoe, Sunday, September 23, 2007 11:20 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

yeah, that'll totally happen.

"well Mutual Assured Destruction with Iran might be a better plan than pre-emptive war"

what i don't get is that isn't this already on the table?

yeah, that'll totally happen.

-- That one guy that hit it and quit it, Sunday, September 23, 2007 10:49 PM (1 minute ago)

if they don't get tasered first, amirite

xpost - I have to work tomorrow :( Plus I think you had to register for spots online far in advance, so I will probably settle for being annoyed by protests on the walk to the subway. It'll be a mess up here, I'm sure.

xpost again re: "yeah, that'll totally happen" -- hahaha we're talking about college students, the ghost of Mother Theresa could be speaking and they'd be flipping through Hitchens's book for zingers to throw at her before getting tazered (haha xpost!)

The only person who can safely speak on a first-tier college campus without getting shit is basically Dane Cook circa 2003

The problem: a lot of college students dress like Ahmadinejad.

lotta beards at columbia too

you all know not wearing a tie is part of khomeini-era revolutionary dogma, right? it's the equivalent of bush's denim shirts + carhartt jackets.

WHY AHMADI-NIJAD DRESSES LIKE HE DOES

i wrote a research paper on iranian graphic design a couple years ago that had a section on revoultionary fashion

a lot of college students dress like Ahmadinejad

He tucks his shirt in, so no.

Plus it's early in the year, so the kids still all look like a really slutty American Idol audition. (It's better the last week in August, when you get freshman boys trying to pull off every "cool" piece of clothing they own at once.)

naw i'm sure they'll chuck zingers at him. he was interviewed on british tv (channel 4) by jon snow (as close as you'll get to a left-wing news anchorman) recently and snow threw heat re. the holocaust, etc, and ahmadinejad listened.

what i'm snarking about is the idea he'll get schooled.

this is partly cos i once interviewed a very famous (not as famous as this guy, i can't front) person when i was 19 and figured i could school them.

I don't know; I think he could get schooled.

I am not 19.

ahmadinejad's not a genius, but hes not dumb. hes also totally batshit insane, which works in his favor with stuff like this.

well, sure, he'd never calmly acknowledge that he'd been schooled, fair enough.

seriously: he is not going to get schooled.

max is otm, he is a total menk but he is able to make simple equivalence arguments, so: why shouldn't iran have weapons if the US does; why shouldn't iran intervene in iraq if the US does; why shouldn't iran take an interest in the future of israel if the US does, etc etc.

these kinds of arguments go over big with students so mayhbe he'll be a hit.

I’m curious, as well as knowing under what terms a speaker would be unacceptable.

I, too, happen to think Ahmadinejad could carry his own pretty well if attacked by some supercilious freshman. Not the least as his not speaking English very well (at all?) means he can wilfully misinterpret any biting attack and steer every topic straight to his stump speech.

yeah ahmadinejad is boosted by the fact that you dont really have to be mr. peabody right to notice/point out the fact that US is a giant self-interested hypocrite doing some really shitty awful things all over the world

(xpost)

Re: Bat-shit insane - i've heard that he secretly belongs to the Hujjatei movement of the shi'ites which wants to, hasten the coming Armageddon, much like american "left-behind" protestants

I've heard he killed Madeleine McCann.

remember LJ, we're talking about getting schooled re: holocaust denial and "destruction of israel" comments, not about US influence in the middle east.

hujjat the bahai dude? vahid to thread lol

the president of the middle east's largest democracy

um. i mean, by the standards of the middle east i guess iran qualifies as a democracy, but using that phrase casually like that gives it a bit too much of an endorsement. we can all debate exactly how "democratic" western democracies are, but iran is several orders of magnitude less so. it's a theocratic state with some degree of democratic participation.

which is no reason not to invite ahmadinejad to speak, if he wants to. pissing and moaning about him (or, last year, chavez) just makes the u.s. seem insecure and childish.

xpost actually i don't know anything about a hujjat'i sect of islam!! this is the first time i've ever heard of anything like that (i'm a pretty shabby baha'i though)

so you're saying that treating iran's democratic institutions like democratic institutions weakens them?

the obvious question to ask is whether he's willing to allow Iran's universities a similar kind of free inquiry.

the president of the middle east's largest democracy would demand more open dialogue and communication, not less

-- moonship journey to baja,

Democracy? Are you kidding?

x-post

democracy? LOL! how dare these turks!

I don’t think words such as “insane” or “lunatic” are very informative when discussing a religious leader from the other side of the globe, assuming he is rational in the most basic sense (i.e. that we can count on his not doing anything that would bring about his own annihilation).

remember LJ, we're talking about getting schooled re: holocaust denial and "destruction of israel" comments, not about US influence in the middle east.

-- moonship journey to baja, Monday, September 24, 2007 12:26 AM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

sure. he doesn't think the history of the holocaust is based on evidence. the interviewer i saw said quite directly that there will be people watching this whose families died in it and ahmadinejad said, you know, there are so many unanswered questions and they won't let us study it... i don't think he'll get schooled on that score.

i'm not sure what his stock answer is re. destruction of israel.

xpost

jeb i'm fine calling western world leaders insane too.

There is nothing rational about any religious person.

stop ruining my thread

shouldn't you be at a mensa meeting, dally

oh for fuck's sake

xpost

jeb he's not a religious leader, he's a political leader

like george bush.

assuming he is rational in the most basic sense (i.e. that we can count on his not doing anything that would bring about his own annihilation).

1) i dont think this is a great test of "rationality" and 2) i think ahmedinejad would fail it anyway

LJ i gotta say you've got a pretty cynical view of debate. if i'm reading you right, you're not ascribing to the viewer very much self-efficacy in interpreting the result. it seems like your definition of "getting schooled" revolves around ahmadinejad having a speechless breakdown or conceding a point and not much else.

and holy shit can we put every capn save a dawkins on a rocket ship and blast them the fuck off the planet so we never have to hear this tired bullshit about religious people being "idiots" or "retards" or whatever dumb shit chris hitchens writes on slate every week

I wonder about this democracy in Iran. According to the US right when Khatami was President he was just a puppet of the Ayatollahs, yet when Ahmadinejad gets the job he is the new-hitler-who-will-destroy-israel-with-his-nuclear-eyeballs.

jeb he's not a religious leader, he's a political leader

WAHT.

ahmadinejad is way more conservative than khatami even by iranian standards

The Constitution defines the President as the highest state authority after the Supreme Leader. The President is elected by universal suffrage, by those 15 years old and older[1], for a term of four years. Presidential candidates must be approved by the Council of Guardians prior to running. The President is responsible for the implementation of the Constitution and for the exercise of executive powers, except for matters directly related to the Supreme Leader. The President appoints and supervises the Council of Ministers, coordinates government decisions, and selects government policies to be placed before the legislature. Currently, 10 Vice-Presidents serve under the President, as well as a cabinet of 21 ministers, who must all be approved by the legislature. Unlike many other states, the executive branch in Iran does not control the armed forces. Although the President appoints the Ministers of Intelligence and Defense, it is customary for the President to obtain explicit approval from the Supreme Leader for these two ministers before presenting them to the legislature for a vote of confidence.

what part of that says "religious leader"??

and holy shit can we put every capn save a dawkins on a rocket ship and blast them the fuck off the planet so we never have to hear this tired bullshit about religious people being "idiots" or "retards" o

um, Hitchens (much less the much less splenetic Dawkins) have never implied as such, but yeah go ahead, make your easy point.

i mean unless we're defining "religious leader" in the kind of ambiguous sense that would include political leaders who happen to be devoutly religious?

"Supreme Leader" sounds Palpatine-esque.

Where can I buy Iranian Revolutionary clothing in NYC?

the terms are pretty slippery in a theocracy like Iran, no? Ahmadinejad needs to clear most matters of state with the mullahs.

why are we arguing over whether he's a religious leader or not. unless we're saying the pope's not important enough to be allowed to speak at columbia, or that we never had (brits + americans alike) had a mixed democracy at any point in our history

dude ahmadinejad is the president, not the supreme leader--the supreme leader is a political and religious position occupied by khamenei right now

i mean unless we're defining "religious leader" in the kind of ambiguous sense that would include political leaders who happen to be devoutly religious?

-- max, Monday, September 24, 2007 12:53 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

hahaha oh come on "happen to be"!!

i'm curious to know whether anyone on ilx actually thinks he shouldn't be allowed to speak

Yes, the's the political leader of the a country whose official title is the Islamic State of Iran, where, before a potential president is even permitted to run for office, he (always he) must be approved by an upper eschelon (Council of Guardians) to be sure he is in line with the values epsoused by the Islamic Revolution. It's not a deomcracy. And then there's the treatmens of women, homosexuals (who are regularly executed), non-Shi'as...

Hey, I'm all for him speaking, but I'm sorry, he's not rational, nor does he preside over a democracy.

The powers of American democracy blasting Ahmadinejad into submission.

http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/f/f0/Palpatine_sidious_deformed.JPG

jeb he's not a religious leader, he's a political leader

Yes, I know. But he is a religious political leader. Also, where does religion end and politics start if your career depends on the whims of a couple of capricious mullahs?

I believe he should be allowed to speak

dally OTM above.

ok dally you win, from now on i will refer to iran as an islamic semi-electoral theocracy

now go away

ok ok yes guys i get that he is a religious person who occupies a political position in a theocracy! but he is not a mullah and he is not an ayatollah and his opinion on religious matters does not carry the same weight as iran's koranic scholars and clerics!

i'm curious to know whether anyone on ilx actually thinks he shouldn't be allowed to speak

itsatrap.jpg

so lets not bandy about the term "religious leader" (xpost to myself)

max, didn't you read what dally posted? If he were as independent of influence as you imply, why then tolerate the treatment of women, gays, and the non-existence of free speech?

were arguing at cross-purposes

I might feel better if nabisco or somebody allowed Ahmadinejad to post on ILE.

my problem is not with claiming that ahmadinejad is religious (he is) or that hes under the direct influence of the ayatollahs (he is, but not as fully as everyone seems to assume), but with the implications of calling him a "religious leader," i.e., the misguided idea that hes speaking at columbia as a major muslim cleric or something rather than as the iranian equivalent of gwb!

No one's arguing that point!

right, which is why i said we're arguing at cross-purposes--i was specifically responding to jeb's point and then everyone decided that i was in <3 ahmadinejad's homosexual death regime

i <3 with, i mean

Were someone to ask him tomorrow, "Why do you regularly hang homosexuals?" he'd either dither like Dubya or cite Sharia, likely the latter. We have to acknowledge that lines blur.

uh, yeah, in this country as in his. but it DOESNT HELP to label middle eastern POLITICIANS "religious leaders"

the assassination of the non-democratically elected theocrat adolf hitler by the coward winston churchill

xpost alfred he'd say "because it's what my constituents want"

I don’t think words such as “insane” or “lunatic” are very informative when discussing a religious leader from the other side of the globe, assuming he is rational in the most basic sense (i.e. that we can count on his not doing anything that would bring about his own annihilation).

-- Jeb, Sunday, September 23, 2007 1:41 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

uh, yeah, in this country as in his. but it DOESNT HELP to label middle eastern POLITICIANS "religious leaders

I'd be more comfortable accepting this if its leaders didn't identify/ally themselves with branches of Islam.

In the democracy of Iran, they actually either stone homosexuals or collapse walls on top of them.

dang those butterfly ballots.

so now that you picky pedants have seized center stage, please, some suggestions for fostering democracy in nondemocratic iran

I'd be more comfortable accepting this if its leaders didn't identify/ally themselves with branches of Islam.

THANK GOD NONE OF OUR POLITICAL LEADERS IDENTIFY WITH BRANCHES OF CHRISTIANITY

sssh, no posting in all caps, you'll drown out dally's reasoned (from a position of pure atheistic logos) views on improving the situation in nondemocratic iran

THANK GOD NONE OF OUR POLITICAL LEADERS IDENTIFY WITH BRANCHES OF CHRISTIANITY

Remind me the last time Baptists sent suicide bombers into Connecticut to kill Presbyterians.

but since I'll probably be accused of "privileging" Christianity over Islam (when I have no time for either), I'll shut up.

Moonship and Max: It's not my fault you both seem to be apologists for one kind of religious extremist (AHMADINEJAD) and not another (GWB).

The current US regime is on the verge of being a two-tiered non-Democratic imperial government - the first tier a corporatocracy and the second a theocracy. I don't think such an administration has any business calling out other countries for being undemocratic (though posters here certainly do.)

I listened to a bit of Ahmadinejad's 60 minutes interview on my way home tonight. His tone was relatively calm and conciliatory all things considered, although it's obviously politically expedient for him to appear that way. I think it's pretty clear that he wants to avoid war with the US, whatever his reasons. It's strange how I can't even muster up that much anger at him for being a holocaust denier and for wanting to wipe my wife's country of origin off the map (in whatever sense he meant that). When he insisted Iran does not want a nuclear weapon, I almost wanted to believe him, just because I'm so weary of our own government and its war-mongering and big lies. And I also think that if you consider the context of the nations they come out of, Bush is a much bigger relative turn for the worse for the US than Ahmadinejad is for the post-revolution Iran.

xpost it's important, before engaging in either diplomacy or discussion, to establish who is at fault. that way, one can argue from a position of moral superiority, thus creating the necessary conditions for dialogue.

as every good manager, politican or teacher knows, it's a waste of time to look for the win-win solution when the win-lose alternative is staring you right in the face.

why engage in listening when you can engage in confrontation? everyone knows that an animal backed up against a wall doesn't fight, it rolls over!

every logical discussion of US foreign policy begins with a listing of the ways in which client states are inferior, thus, we avoid the fatal trap of apologism.

I'm sorry, he's not rational, nor does he preside over a democracy.

Ok, the rationality thing is a bit of a hot-button issue when it comes to these Islamists, and it’s easy to see why: it pretty much defines your stance toward them. With Ahmadinejad, he’s either rational (= we can deal we this guy) or he’s mad as a hatter (= let’s bomb the place to smithereens before he does something ill-considered). My stance is that he is rational. Not many who make it to the top are irrational, actually. (Stalin, yes — and a bunch of others. But mostly, no.)

Oh, and I herewith apologize for my equivocal reference to a political leader that also happens to be religious. Henceforth, I shall be more considerate.

before we consider the political implications of various events, we must first establish whether the players are good people or not.

my stance is that he is merely one more bearded tentacle of the nondemocratic islamist octopus. chop off enough, and the stump will die!!

vahid wtf are you talking bout

oh you know. i'm just mad about the depth of racism in this country.

so now that you picky pedants have seized center stage, please, some suggestions for fostering democracy in nondemocratic iran

gee i don't know maybe ask him.

instead of actually talking about the middle east, most discussions about the middle east basically just devolve into people arguing about the moral superiority of the west and even whether or not middle eastern people are actually thinking political subjects capable of acting in rational self-interest.

it really shakes, you know, ideas of basic human dignity that i take very seriously.

see, and even now, tipsy basically can't answer my question in any meaningful way other than just to list more things iran's done wrong.

and i say all of this stuff speaking, as always, as someone whose family is in exile from iran (they took all my grandparents shit) and whose parents had friends executed by the regime.

who in this discussion has invoked the "moral superiority of the west"? my only objection was to the cavalier description of iran as a "democracy," something i've heard other politically-progressive americans do recently. the fact that american foreign policy is an unmitigated short-sighted bloodsoaked disaster being directed by malevolent ideologues and mercenary corporate interests (including corporate mercenaries) does not by itself turn our "enemies" into good guys.

which of course doesn't mean that the quasi-democratically-elected president of a theocratic state with some democratic trappings should not be invited to speak at a university.

On the Hujjatiyah movement:

When in 1978 (1357 AHS) Imam {i.e khomeini} declared celebrations of Sha'ban 3 and 5 forbidden by religious law in protest to the crimes of the Shah's regime, the Hujjatiya Association entered the arena in all earnest to end the protest. According to their reasoning, ideological decadence, inappropriate and negative analyses with regard to the awaited Saviour and circumstances surrounding the appearance of Hazrat Mahdi' (may God hasten his renewed manifestation), had reached the stage where any kind of endeavour or political struggle to establish national sovereignty of the Righteous was condemned since it would cause a delay in the appearance of the Imam of the Age. Thus it goes without saying that in the light of such logic, submission to oppression would have been encouraged whereas the Khurdad-I uprising and lmam's awakening cries would have been condemned.

(xpost i mean, one of the interesting things about ahmadinejad is that he actually wants to have some kind of dialogue, even if it's mostly for the purposes of explaining the moral superiority of his own system. his semi-wacky letter to bush was too idiosyncratic not to be heartfelt. so great, bring him over. put him on charlie rose, whatever.)

sounds like you're pretty burnt out on this dialogue and diplomacy bullshit!! call me when you've identified "the good guys".

i actually cannot believe you guys are so obtuse and idiotic that youd believe that the line between "president of iran" and "muslim cleric" are "blurry"

In no way is Ahmadinejad a shi'ite cleric, unlike Khatami before him

THANK YOU--people are welcome to refer to khatami (who was far more liberal than ahmadinejad, btw) as a "religious leader" because he IS a religious leader

sounds like you're pretty burnt out on this dialogue and diplomacy bullshit!! call me when you've identified "the good guys".

the only thing i've said on this thread is that "democracy" is an inappropriate way to describe iran. but if it's easier for you to pretend you're on freerepublic or something, have at it.

you: "iran is the largest democracy in the middle east."
me: "not really."
you: "OH WELL IF YOU LOVE GEORGE BUSH SO MUCH WHY DON'T YOU MARRY HIM?"

tipsy mothra otm up and down this thread.

Moonship and Max: It's not my fault you both seem to be apologists for one kind of religious extremist (AHMADINEJAD) and not another (GWB).

i should mention:

IM NOT DEFENDING AHMADINEJAD YOU BAG OF DICKS IM POINTING OUT THAT HES NOT A FUCKING MULLAH, NO MATTER HOW BLURRY YOU AND LORD ALFRED SEEM TO THINK THAT THE LINE BETWEEN POLITICIAN AND CLERIC IS

the only thing i've said on this thread is that "democracy" is an inappropriate way to describe iran. but if it's easier for you to pretend you're on freerepublic or something, have at it.

-- tipsy mothra, Sunday, September 23, 2007 8:27 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

the fact that american foreign policy is an unmitigated short-sighted bloodsoaked disaster being directed by malevolent ideologues and mercenary corporate interests (including corporate mercenaries) does not by itself turn our "enemies" into good guys.

-- tipsy mothra, Sunday, September 23, 2007 8:03 PM (43 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

and? do you have a problem with any of those statements? the second one was one of several caveats and conditionals inserted into my various posts to try to avoid kneejerk 'OH WELL IF YOU LOVE GEORGE BUSH' responses from people who seem to think that calling iran undemocratic is equivalent to signing on to the plan for a new american century. but i guess it didn't work. let me try this:

IM NOT DEFENDING DICK CHENEY YOU BAG OF DICKS IM POINTING OUT THAT IRAN IS NOT A FUCKING DEMOCRACY, NO MATTER HOW BLURRY SOME PEOPLE SEEM TO THINK THAT THE LINE BETWEEN DEMOCRACY AND THEOCRACY IS

biter

RE:Democracy, do you guys think the Iranian people would elect someone on "legalize homosexuality" platform if the approval-by-clerics process were removed?

It might help if, after their removal, more Larry Levan comps were readily available in Tehran markets.

gay-rights candidates can't get elected in alabama either. but i still wouldn't want alabama candidates to have to be approved by the southern baptist convention.

Professor Griff to thread.

and Richard Land.

haha OMG dudes, I typed "one of the leaders" this afternoon mostly because I thought I could smell some kind of dust-up coming

the main reason Ahmadinejad won't get successfully "schooled" or anything is that he, like a whole lot of government officials and functionaries in the area and around the world, is very skilled at the politician's trick of knowing his audience (haha especially in different languages) and saying things in flowery circuitous ways that don't sound too awful to the people in the room. we have all watched ambassadors sit there with beautiful oily grins and do affronted Lil' Ol Me? routines about how their nations are So Misunderstood and how Geez Guys It's for Nuclear Power and We Only Detained Them for Their Own Safety and on and on forever -- you can ask the guy point-blank about the Holocaust and he's not going to start barking that it never happened in the middle of New York! he's going to put his hands up in a "relax, baby, be cool" pose and say something weaselly that makes the issue seem like an arcane misunderstanding.

^^^

this is true and ahmadinejad, if you couldnt tell already, is one hell of a politician

ahmadinejad saying "relax baby, be cool" is the funniest mental image i've had all day.

especially if he's wearing his butterfly collar and Sears, Roebuck tan slacks.

your problem with Iranian system of govt. seems to be with their sex laws rather than the system itself

Under their system you can't much of any sex.

shi'ite men are allowed to bugger women

qed

Max: He's not a Mullah but he's 100% beholden to them.

Moonbeam: How does pointing out that Iran is not a democracy equal support of GWB's policies? No one here has said he shouldn't be allowed to speak at Columbia. I am all for it. And sorry, but you needed to be corrected on that point, and I must question your thoughts on this subject overall if you're beginning from that extremely serious misconception.

Hatemonger Mahmoud Ahmadinejad landed in a hornet's nest of outrage yesterday as Columbia University prepared to welcome him with open arms today and stuck by a dean's outrageous assertion that it would let Adolf Hitler speak, too.

(a) a seance with Hitler would be invaluable for WWII scholars and a real coup for Columbia

(b) VERY bad morning to go fill out some forms in the admin office

dally:

1. whether or not ahmadinejad is "beholden" to iranian mullahs, he is emphatically NOT a cleric and should NOT be called a religious leader.

2. ahmadinejad is "beholden" in the sense that all of his decisions must be approved by the supreme leader & assembly of experts, but he is not 100% in agreement with them, and has clashed on several occasions

Max: you're also forgetting that, by and large, the term "religious leader" as used in the USA is (inexplicably, by my lights) a term of credibility and respect. Our public commentary is (sadly) dominated by religious leaders, in fact.

uh, ok. thanks for reminding me?

OK, is this thread really going to be an endless string of people attempting to save face by pretending they meant "religious leader," as opposed to the clear and not-complicated meaning "religious leader" has to the rest of the universe?

"Lending him legitimacy", hmmmmmm.

He is a freely elected head-of-state. He could, without question, ask for and be granted time to speak to the United Nations General Assembly. He is not, so far as anyone is suggesting, a genocidal criminal, or engaged in any activity not commonly engaged in by dozens of other heads of state, including those of many western nations.

And some people believe that without an invitation to speak at a US ivy league college he would appear illegitimate in the eyes of the world? These people are not thinking clearly.

The guy's scum, the country he presides over makes the likes of China and Pakistan seem like civil rights paragons and he is trying to get nukes. That said, let him come and speak-better the devil you know...

It's kind of under-reported in the news that he's speaking as part of a World Leaders Forum -- it would seem kind of shitty and unscientific to have a World Leaders Forum where all the world leaders were good.

You know, kind of like having a Holocaust conference of people who aren't entirely sure the Holocaust ever happened.

Yahoo is carrying the speech live:

http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?rn=49750&cl=93596&ch=77808&src=

He continues to teach graduate and PhD courses on a weekly basis? Interesting.

he's a huge John Updike fan.

also thinks Britney should be cut a little slack as a young single mom

arrrgh i can't get the sound to work

No, I mean, that's interesting that he's still teaching while president of his country. That's trivial?

Was that gay remark meant as a joke?

live blogging/article update here as well:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/nation/5160007.html

I'll allow The Corner this bit:

"Ahmadinejad says that 1) Israel was created as a result of the Holocaust, but 2) the Holocaust didn't happen."

Well, not exactly - he says that Israel was created as a result of the "myth" around the holocaust. He still basically denies the holocaust, but his position is consistent.

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

He's old-fashioned that way.

yeah,maybe now bush will like him..

i only caught the last minute or two, which was mostly expressions of gratitude and invitations to visit

Eric, Ahmadinejad made a gay remark? Like, about the Marcia Brady book?

someone post a transcript

"He still basically denies the holocaust, but his position is consistent."

Great, he's my new hero. Let's hear it for consistency.

"He still basically denies the holocaust, but his position is consistent."

lolz

"Bush still thinks the war is a good idea, but his position is consistent."

I thought his position on the Holocaust was--if it justifies the creation of a Jewish state, why isn't that state in Germany?

lolz intended, believe me

"I thought his position on the Holocaust was--if it justifies the creation of a Jewish state, why isn't that state in Germany?"

Oh, ok, great. What a mensch.

I thought his position on the Holocaust was--if it justifies the creation of a Jewish state, why isn't that state in Germany?

That's not a position, it's a rhetorical question, and a stupid one.

I think Ahmadinejad should have an honorary place in the Greatest Beards thread.

hey, even a stopped clock, etc etc.

He asked of the United States: “If you have created the fifth generation of atomic bombs and tested them already, what position are you in to question the peaceful purposes of others who want nuclear power?"

re gays: ... no, probably not meant as a joke... (NY Times blog)

In response to a question about the treatment of homosexuals in Iran, Mr. Ahmadinejad was initially evasive, instead talking about the death penalty, which, he pointed out, exists in the United States: “People who violate the laws by using guns, creating insecurity selling guns, distributing guns at a high level are sentenced to execution in Iran. Very few of these punishments are carried out in the public eye.”

Pressed by Dean Coatsworth on the original question about the rights of gay men and lesbians in Iran, Mr. Ahmadinejad said: “In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country. We don’t have that in our country.”

The audience booed and hissed loudly. Some laughed, uncomfortably.

“In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon,” Mr. Ahmadinejad continued, undeterred. “I do not know who has told you that we have it. But as for women, maybe you think that maybe being a woman is a crime. It’s not a crime to be a woman. Women are the best creatures created by God. They represent the kindness, the beauty that God instills in them. Women are respected in Iran.”

Ahmadinejad is usually very careful in his wording about the Holocaust. He would not simply say "The Holocaust never happened," but something more like, "If the Holocaust really happened, how does it justify..."

Which is of course calling the Holocaust into question, which is pretty close to a flat denial. Because no one says things like "If the American Civil War really happened..."

I have a problem with this quote from the Yahoo story on the speech:

"We're here today to send a message that there is never a reason to give a hatemonger an open stage," New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said.

Apparently she was protesting his appearance. I completely disagree with this. I think giving the hatemongers a stage shows perfectly how idiotic they are. I'm glad this asshole was given a forum to speak.

i'm denying the existence of his beard

"Women are respected in Iran.”

This guy should be on Last Comic Standing. What a howler.

China says it has no homosexuality as well.

xp

Christine Quinn is, if I may call our first lesbian council speaker such a thing, a douchebag.

Isn't he right in a twisted way? Because homosexuals are not openly recognized, they don't "exist" - they do their "deviant" behavior in secret but they're not a real group like here where they share apartments and go out together and form lobbying groups and such.

Umm Iran does better w/r/t women than plenty of the region, though that's obviously not saying a great deal; the level of economic modernization helps with that

There's none so blind, etc. etc

Sorry, I was wrong: the Chinese government only denied the existence of AIDS, not of homosexuality itself.

2002: In AIDS prevention, our people and government have taken a long and arduous road thus far: In the past, we have denied the existence of AIDS or people with AIDS.

omg lolz @ "no homo" inanity

There's just something depressing about seeing a one-hour speech boiled down to the biggest zing. It's like we're waiting for that minute when reality and The Simpsons overlap, the moment that's the easiest one to mock, and that's that.

That said, I think he was implying that th Jews (or someone other than Osama, at least) was behind 9/11.

excelsior syndrome

Well, we could instead turn to "the US has no moral authority about the nuke developments of others" as a moment of clarity. Except that sort of isn't what he said.

someone just post a transcript already

I thought his position on the Holocaust was--if it justifies the creation of a Jewish state, why isn't that state in Germany?

That's not a position, it's a rhetorical question, and a stupid one.

Well, I did write that as a question, but, as I remember it, the position was something like "the Israelis say the Holocaust justifies a Jewish state, but the Palestinians didn't enact the Holocaust, so they shouldn't suffer for it. The land should have been taken from the people who (insert weaselly qualifying language) committed the crime."

Well, the Europeans never would have allowed a Jewish state to be created in Germany. So take that, Ahmadinejad!

but that's totally a rhetorical question and he knows it - there are other reasons why Israel is where it is, deep historical religious-tradition-bullshit reasons, and he's well aware of them.

Sure, it's more of an attack on the use of the Holocaust.

Which isn't at all consistent with denying the Holocaust.

So, therefore, he's no Bush.

Except for sharing the habit for hypocrisy.

he's no Bush.

yeah, Mahmoud can form complete sentences.

did nobody post this article that ran in today's times? explains a lot about the iranian state structure and ahmadinejad's place in it...

September 24, 2007
Memo From Tehran
U.S. Focus on Ahmadinejad Puzzles Iranians
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN

TEHRAN — When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was first elected president, he said Iran had more important issues to worry about than how women dress. He even called for allowing women into soccer games, a revolutionary idea for revolutionary Iran.

Today, Iran is experiencing the most severe crackdown on social behavior and dress in years, and women are often barred from smoking in public, let alone attending a stadium event.

Since his inauguration two years ago, Mr. Ahmadinejad has grabbed headlines around the world, and in Iran, for outrageous statements that often have no more likelihood of being put into practice than his plan for women to attend soccer games. He has generated controversy in New York in recent days by asking to visit ground zero — a request that was denied — and his scheduled appearance at Columbia University has drawn protests.

But it is because of his provocative remarks, like denying the Holocaust and calling for Israel to be wiped off the map, that the United States and Europe have never known quite how to handle him. In demonizing Mr. Ahmadinejad, the West has served him well, elevating his status at home and in the region at a time when he is increasingly isolated politically because of his go-it-alone style and ineffective economic policies, according to Iranian politicians, officials and political experts.

Political analysts here say they are surprised at the degree to which the West focuses on their president, saying that it reflects a general misunderstanding of their system.

Unlike in the United States, in Iran the president is not the head of state nor the commander in chief. That status is held by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, whose role combines civil and religious authority. At the moment, this president’s power comes from two sources, they say: the unqualified support of the supreme leader, and the international condemnation he manages to generate when he speaks up.

“The United States pays too much attention to Ahmadinejad,” said an Iranian political scientist who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. “He is not that consequential.”

That is not to say that Mr. Ahmadinejad is insignificant. He controls the mechanics of civil government, much the way a prime minister does in a state like Egypt, where the real power rests with the president. He manages the budget and has put like-minded people in positions around the country, from provincial governors to prosecutors. His base of support is the Basiji militia and elements of the Revolutionary Guards.

But Mr. Ahmadinejad has not shown the same political acumen at home as he has in riling the West. Two of his ministers have quit, criticizing his stewardship of the state. The head of the central bank resigned. The chief judge criticized him for his management of the government. His promise to root out corruption and redistribute oil wealth has run up against entrenched interests.

Even a small bloc of members of Parliament that once aligned with Mr. Ahmadinejad has largely given up, officials said. “Maybe it comes as a surprise to you that I voted for him,” said Emad Afrough, a conservative member of Parliament. “I liked the slogans demanding justice.”

But he added: “You cannot govern the country on a personal basis. You have to use public knowledge and consultation.”

Rather than focusing so much attention on the president, the West needs to learn that in Iran, what matters is ideology — Islamic revolutionary ideology, according to politicians and political analysts here. Nearly 30 years after the shah fell in a popular revolt, Iran’s supreme leader also holds title of guardian of the revolution.

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s power stems not from his office per se, but from the refusal of his patron, Ayatollah Khamenei, and some hard-line leaders, to move beyond Iran’s revolutionary identity, which makes full relations with the West impossible. There are plenty of conservatives and hard-liners who take a more pragmatic view, wanting to retain “revolutionary values” while integrating Iran with the world, at least economically. But they are not driving the agenda these days, and while that could change, it will not be the president who makes that call.

“Iran has never been interested in reaching an accommodation with the United States,” the Iranian political scientist said. “It cannot reach an accommodation as long as it retains the current structure.”

Another important factor restricts Mr. Ahmadinejad’s hand: while ideology defines the state, the revolution has allowed a particular class to grow wealthy and powerful.

When Mr. Ahmadinejad was first elected, it appeared that Iran’s hard-liners had a monopoly on all the levers of power. But today it is clear that Mr. Ahmadinejad is not a hard-liner in the traditional sense. His talk of economic justice and a redistribution of wealth, for example, ran into a wall of existing vested interests, including powerful clergy members and military leaders.

“Ahmadinejad is a phenomenon,” said Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a former vice president under the more moderate administration of Mohammad Khatami. “On a religious level he is much more of a hard-liner than the traditional hard-liners. But on a political level, he does not have the support of the hard-liners.”

In the long run, political analysts here say, a desire to preserve those vested interests will drive Iran’s agenda. That means that the allegiance of the political elite is to the system, not a particular president. If this president were ever perceived as outlasting his usefulness, he would probably take his place in history beside other presidents who failed to change the orientation of the system.

Iranians will go to the polls in less than two years to select a president. There are so many pressures on the electoral system here, few people expect an honest race. The Guardian Council, for example, controlled by hard-liners, must approve all candidates.

But whether Mr. Ahmadinejad wins or loses, there is no sense here in Iran that the outcome will have any impact on the fundamentals of Iran’s relations with the world or the government’s relation to its own society.

“The situation will get worse and worse,” said Saeed Leylaz, an economist and former government official. “We are moving to a point where no internal force can change things.”

I remember reading an article (maybe in the Atlantic) about how Ahmadinejad had become the champion/voice of the men who, as children and teens during the Iran/Iraq war, were sent unarmed into the battlefield basically to draw fire and trigger land mines so that the actual troops could advance. They're called the Martyr Brigades or something. Ahmadinejad may or may not have been a commander of one of these brigades. Anyway, the ones who survived have a somewhat exalted and uneasy position in Iranian culture. They seem to make up the bulk of these citizens groups who run around arresting women for improper dress. They are Ahmadinejad's "base" and a lot of what he says seems meant to please them.

well now everyone has heard of Columbia

Did we ever talk about this? http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/06/19/universities-condemn-professors-israel-boycott/

In response to a question about the treatment of homosexuals in Iran, Mr. Ahmadinejad was initially evasive,

Ahmadinejad did pretty good. As predicted, the ignorant students were no match for him, and neither was that Bollinger guy. “You exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator.” Ha ha, I bet he speaks of president Bush the same way, only thrice as irascibly. The most revealing thing about this whole to-do is the way it has exposed yer average Joe’s highly questionable take on freedom of speech: “he should be arrested when he comes to Columbia University, not speak at the university, for God’s sake,” said Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who noted that his mother is a survivor of Auschwitz. “I call on New Yorkers to make the life of Ahmadinejad as he is in New York miserable.”

it's the students who are ignorant here

I think Ahmadinejad came off very well, and made some pretty strong points (obviously, the whole "there are no homosexuals" think was stupid, but focusing on that whil;e ignoring everything else he said is equally as stupid.. not that I expect much more from our media). The President's "introduction" was petty, rude and unprofessional. If you invite someone to be a keynote speaker you should treat them with some sort of respect, regarless of whether you disagree with their politics. Using the introduction as a platform to hurl attacks (some were truthful, I guess, but not all of them) reflfects very poorly on Bollinger and Columbia U itself.

Those CNN anchors were really pissing me off as well.

The MSNBC anchor drove me nuts this morning. She kept rolling her eyes and making little asides when she talked about the upcoming Columbia speech.

Just to clarify, I'm not an apologist for Ahmadinejad or his regime (obviously Iran is not a true democracy, and there are lots of human rights issues that need to be sorted out there, etc.), I just think that the situation is being misrepresented.. and the way people are spinning his speech is a prime example of that.

"it's the students who are ignorant here"

Yeah, you come across as a real genius.

"misrepresented" -- gimme a break.

Yeah no shit. Brainwasher, you've got to be kidding.

"and there are lots of human rights issues that need to be sorted out there, etc."

YOU THINK??!!!!

ORWELL COME SAVE US.

Those last few comments read like any internet forum where the majority opinion is faced with someone looking at a situation with more subtlety.

seriously, where the fuck am i, digg?

thats true for basically this whole thread

xpost i mean

Wait, what's the majority opinion here?

Its the one you are bravely defiant of.

Ach, it's not "misrepresentation," it's that the guy has happily set himself up for the grand role of thorn-in-the-side-of-the-West, despite being no more interesting a thorn than any other sub-standard regressive crappy leader in nations we haven't made really crucial to our international objectives -- and the US press has all too happily dug into the idea of having a MADMAN of PURE EVIL to get riled up about and put scowly pictures of on everything ever, rather than doing the actual journalistic work of pointing out that in most ways he is not so very different from any number of leaders around him, some of them our friends and allies

And if/when the US makes its next stupid policy decision about Iran -- meaning not just war but stupid policy decisions in general -- it may or may not be generally acknowledged that the paper-selling ad-placing "he's like HITLER but with a BEARD which is WORSE" melodrama played out over the guy is doing a better job than Cheney ever could of misinforming Americans about the world

true that

"it's the students who are ignorant here"

Yeah, you come across as a real genius.

-- Bill Magill, den 24 september 2007 21:14 (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Actually, he does. Now “genius” is a word one should use sparingly, but as I take it you use it to denote someone of admirable intellect, he qualifies.

it's that the guy has happily set himself up for the grand role of thorn-in-the-side-of-the-West

Although, I bet loads of people in the West would view him quite favorably if you cut away the homophobia and the anti-sionism/anti-semitism. Not that the West is nearly the cultural monolith it used to be, of course.

sounds like a reason not to let him speak, nab.

i accidentally clicked on the wrong tab and thought this was the heroes thread for a second

whoops

srsly where is transcript

"Although, I bet loads of people in the West would view him quite favorably if you cut away the homophobia and the anti-sionism/anti-semitism. "

Yeah, and if my aunt had a dick she'd be my uncle.

That sounds to me like a perfect reason to let him speak as part of an academic forum that would bore 95% of Americans, without tabloids running huge shifty-looking pictures of him with headlines like "THE EVIL HAS LANDED."

I don't know if people in the west would view him favorably without those things, but I definitely think that without comments about the Holocaust and Israel people wouldn't have enough specifics about him to get outraged -- "repression of women and homosexuals" would probably not work up too much guy-specific anger among the public, to be perfectly honest

lol Bill, "if"

He'd be Chavez with a beard.

(xpost)

xpost - The difference once again being that Ahmadinejad has done a lot of public grandstanding and intentional annoyance over those things (international Holocaust "conference," for god's sake), unlike the (surely) plenty of officials in the area who just think it and use it to play to "appropriate" bases and know not to start in on it in any kind of international setting

yeah you know like all good americans i hate america but this guy strikes me like an evil motherfucker.

And if/when the US makes its next stupid policy decision about Iran ...

my wife's wacky right-wing cousin this morning was gloating to me about how "iran's gonna get dusted."

We're going to fart on Iran and then run away?

no he means PCP

If he wasn't the president of one of the most theocratic, repressive, and hateful regimes in the world, I'd probably find him entertaining.

xpost

He's president of France, too????

x-post Nabisco

Yeah, even the leaders of Hezbollah refuse to publicly give an opinion about the Holocaust because they don't want that issue to affix itself to them.

I hate to say this, but unless you're counting back toward the height of the revolution, I get the feeling Iran is only "one of" the most repressive nations on the planet as part of a depressingly large club.

The following was part of the interview Scott Pelley conducted with Ahmadinejad for 60 Minutes. It didn't make the broadcast I saw in California but was in the transcript.

Ahmadinejad says stuff that's crazy. But he also has a talent for tossing annoying news and obvious past failures in the faces of American leaders and journalists. Pelley was combative and strident with him and it only succeeded in making Ahmadinejad look better than he is. One of the worst parts was when Pelley asked him what he admired in George W. Bush, a kind of kiss-the-ring loaded question you knew the guy was going to sneer at. And he was circuitous in his reply but was successful in conveying his disdain for the president. The question gave Ahmadinejad an opportunity to point out the obvious again -- that a majority of Americans don't at all care for their president or the war in Iraq. Then he asked Pelley what he admired in Bush and Pelley replied to the effect that George W. Bush was a religious man. This gave Ahmadinejad an another opportunity to look good by giving an answer that sneered at the idea of GWB being such a fellow. And it allowed the audience to frame in their minds, "This is what the journalist thinks is great about our President? All he can think of is that 'he's a religious man?'"

Sort of, if all you can think of to say about a can of green paint is that it's green, then ...

Pelley, in trying to be so tough with the guy, gave him a series of opportunities. And he took those opportunities to frame a discussion in which Ahmadinejad came out looking better than he was.

60 Minutes left the following on the floor -- a long statement in which Ahmadinejad insinuated a majority of Americans don't know who was behind 9/11 and later that the US government knew of it before hand. Now, why they would leave that out in favor of footage showing how tough and brave and bellicose Scott Pelley could be, I'm not sure.

To wit:

AHMADEINEJAD: Well, you shouldn't speak on behalf of the American people. I can speak on behalf of the Iranian people, but you cannot speak on behalf of the American people. Why do you insist on doing that?
Why do you not allow the American people to speak for themselves? Why? Let them speak for themselves. The people gathered around the White House a couple of days ago. They spoke whatever was in their
hearts and minds. Are they not American citizens? Hundreds of thousands of people have rallied against the war. Are they not citizens? Our government at the time expressed its condemnation. We issued an official communiqué condemning that incident. How can you, in your mind, accuse and condemn others? Well, if an Iranian person for that matter had done the same thing, it would have been shameful, and it would not have been fair. So, again, this is not fair. Maybe this is your point of view or also perhaps your editor's point of view. And you are saying that the American people are saying these things. The American people still don't know who was behind the bombing of the Twin Towers. Many books in
the U.S. have been written about the incident., and there are questions circling in your society. Once you go back, go to the streets, ask the local people who was behind this, what were the reason for that? And, again, I fail to see why you continually say “the American people.“ I
have the latest surveys. Eighty percent of the American citizens say that the American government knew about the attack beforehand. They had information.
==========

On Salon, Glenn Greenwald pointed out today that Ahmadinejad is the new Hitler for government-controlling crazies in the US who actively are trying to provoke/start a war with Iran. He adds that the mainstream Beltway journalists are in line with this.

And I do believe they will certainly try to start a war with Iran before Bush is out of power.

Having Ahmadinejad come to this country and speak, I think, goes some way to make this harder to instigate, even if only slightly. The first part of his speech rambled, something about science and scholars and researchers and this and that. He sounded confused before CNN cut away for a few minutes to supply some more handwringing from guests and their commentators.

"it's the students who are ignorant here"

Yeah, you come across as a real genius.

-- Bill Magill

why thank you

(that was me comprehending sarcasm as well as you do)

xpost - The guy has nothing like a monopoly on bad regimes -- he's just relatively key to one that happens to have money and resources and modernity and exert some hegemonic power over a region we're profoundly interested in (which is kinda what happens when you knock off the governments of a given country's neighbors)

The reason I am kinda insisting on this point is because I can very clearly remember the beginning of this decade, when you could talk to everyday Americans about Iraq and they would say "well, one thing we do know is that Saddam is a REALLY BAD GUY, so I can see the argument in favor of invading" -- hopefully people will increasingly understand that the world is chock full of leaders who are incredibly shitty guys, by our standards, and it is frightfully easy for government and media to get riled up about one in particular until it seems like we should be going to war over it. Frightfully easy and frightfully dumb.

(Would my joke have gone over better if I'd used Colombia? ;_;)

Let him speak so he's on record. Let him speak 'cause that's the right thing to do in a liberal democracy. If he's a homophobic, holocaust negationist, with a desire to see Israel wiped off the map, let him continue to say such things 'cause barring him won't make those opinions disappear, countering them might, and to appear to be discourteous only feeds into nutjobs' persecution complexes. Like it or not, he is the elected president of a major regional and cultural power. The fact that a dude who thinks all this stuff and is a twelver to boot can out-manouever Bush, the IAEA, etc., leads me to think that it's not just that he's clever but that a lot of the U.S's and Europe's approach up to now has been diffident, condescending and yet impotent.

xpost
Though Ahmadinejad comes off as a buffoon, I think it'll be harder to sell him as the new Sadaam/Hitler. There's no real incident to point to in his past like the gassing of the Kurds. They'd have to indict Iranian society as a whole rather than just one guy.

Yeah, because if there's one thing the USA shies away from, it's the blanket indictment of an entire society.

"he can sometimes say some reasonable things, too bad about the religious fanaticism and jew-hating and all that"

^^ why doesn't this run the other way?? don't his bad qualities make you question the "reasonableness" of the soft cuddly shit he says? like "you have so many nukes, why can't we have a couple?" or framing really awful shit about 9/11 or the holocaust in this passive aggressive mode of "free inquiry" and free expression.

he's got no real power, calling him a dictator is a pretty big compliment, but he is a canny operator, and his public statements seem carefully designed to scramble credulous Western brains.

fully aware i sound like podhoretz or somebody here, but jesus this seems pretty clear to me

this guy is just david duke with a beard and better suits

Haha: there's a level on which US expectation is for the Evil Other to be some kind of frothy-mouthed madman, yelling from a balcony, and people have yet to adjust to our new side-thorns being totally relaxed and slick and smug and -- as I was saying upthread -- very "who, me?" and "relax, baby, be cool" (and once video of this event is on YouTube, I guarantee I can find the guy doing at least one arm motion that clearly translates to "relax, baby, be cool")

lol, Andree 3000 as international dictator

nabisco is 100% totally OTM and i hope bill and dally and alfred are paying attention to what he's writing

http://viewfromiran.blogspot.com/2007/09/why-are-questions-for-president.html

uh, I've agreed with everything nabibsco and tipsy mutha have said.

what I've been against is cant and equivocating.

I am pro-cant and pro-equivocation, so one of the above statements is false.

Though Ahmadinejad comes off as a buffoon, I think it'll be harder to sell him as the new Sadaam/Hitler. There's no real incident to point to in his past like the gassing of the Kurds. They'd have to indict Iranian society as a whole rather than just one guy.

That's not such an obstacle. There's an entire cadre of policy advisors, pundits and journalists who have been working to convey the necessity of another good war. Use of poison gas wasn't necessary to get everyone to jump in line for Iraq. Just all the ephemeral bullshit and frauds in Colin Powell's speech to the UN Security Council. The day after, all of the usual people still writing for the Post and the NY Times jumped on board over the rightness, certitude and compelling truths of Powell's testimony.

The same experts who gave you the Iraq war and the reasons for it are still around, now ready to recommend war with Iran on the basis of shaped charges in Iraq and the nuclear program.

except that war with Iran is totally infeasible and the American military is incapable of waging it.

Not a campaign of strategic bombing.

Most Americans believed that if we removed a few guys--Sadaam and his sons--that Iraq would thank us and go about its freedom-ivities. I don't think we can buy Ahmadinejad as something similar.

which would accomplish nothing (take a look at Iran's geography sometime) besides garnering int'l sympathy and drawing Iran into further attacks on US troops in Iraq, essentially strengthening their hand. Its not gonna happen, no matter how much Cheney et al want it - there are too many practical and logistical problems.

x-post

no no shakey it would STUN THEM into ACQUIESCENCE

The reason I am kinda insisting on this point is because I can very clearly remember the beginning of this decade, when you could talk to everyday Americans about Iraq and they would say "well, one thing we do know is that Saddam is a REALLY BAD GUY, so I can see the argument in favor of invading"

and of course that was the second time in a decade that saddam was suddenly discovered to be worse than hitler. the first time was easy because most americans hadn't even heard of him. yeah, the ability of washington to suddenly discover that Dictator X is worse than hitler -- and to get the media for the most part to trot along -- is pretty depressing. it's all about tapping into tribal affinities, i guess, like there's some part of every society that's always just waiting for a Bad Guy to be identified so they can bang the drums, wave the flags, and start calling people traitors. more or less any Bad Guy will do in those situations, and of course there are always plenty of Bad Guys around. what's really brazen about the current bomb-iran drive is that it's happening while the last one is still blowing up in our face. (which is also the reason i think we won't really have a war with iran, at least not right now, however much dick cheney would like one.)

This thread is important because we all have received a lot of practice in spelling "Ahmadinejad."

Nabisco is pretty otm about the whole "he is only ONE OF the world's terrible evil leaders." I mean, remember Kim Jong Il anybody? I remember back 2004 I was being told he was like a little pocket-sized Stalin, except more evil. I think Americans kind of love the idea of there being only one Big Bad Guy and if we defeat him the world will be safe forever.

But with a media this supine -- Brian Williams signed off the Columbia segment with the anodyne "A controversial day involving a controversial leader" -- it's so much easier to create one enemy:

http://copyrightad.com/__oneclick_uploads/2007/02/cobra-commander.bmp

xpost

There are no logistical problems that haven't already been planned for. The geography isn't an obstacle. The strategic bomber force doesn't have to operate out of other Middle Eastern clients to wage it. It can base straight from the continental US, Diego Garcia, Guam, a couple other places, the same as it did against Afghanistan.

And I agree with you, the war wouldn't be practical for an entire book of reasons. However, the Pentagon can conduct a crushing campaign against the infrastructure of Iran. It's certainly one worth not fighting or getting into -- for reasons which are rather obvious in terms of national popularity and goals in the so-called war on terra.

Whether it will happen or not, I don't know.

There's also a possibility that war won't break out with the onset of one massive strike but that it will be something that we'll get into by pieces, people finding bits in their morning news about operations to destroy terrorist training camps over the border or places said to be transit points and key logistical sites for Iran's alleged support of attacks on American troops in Iraq.

I don't think much action is feasible, either, but it's still awkard to be living through an exact repeat of one of the stages we went through with Iraq -- the one where a vague national conversation develops about whether we could go to war, or just what it would be like hypothetically ...

It's weird: I really do recall so many conversations five years ago with smart, well-meaning people (just not international-news junkies) who'd take that attitude -- "well, I've been seeing a lot of news lately, and he seems like a really horrible guy, he oppresses his own people, etc." And it felt awful and cynical to respond with lines with "well so does practically everyone" or "yeah, and we used to lend him material support in doing all of that." (It took a bit of hindsight to realize that the better thrust of those arguments wasn't the cynical one, but to kind of point up the manipulation inherent in it: why is this guy being brought to your attention as the one to be worked up about, right now?)

What I do worry about is the Bush administration doing something before the end of this term that escalates or cements an antagonism on this front, deliberately forestalling or sabotaging any efforts anyone else might be planning to wind things down.

bushco seems to be playing off the idea that ahmadinejad is responsible for many of our troubles in iraq, plus he wants to wipe out israel. not that we're having any trouble in iraq or anything!

fwiw, kim jong il and north korea both seem to be so so so so much worse than anybody

there's also the unavoidable problem that some number of people -- i don't know if it's 25 percent, 33 percent, 52 percent, what -- really WANT an excuse to have a bad guy to go after. i mean, my wife's cousin who i mentioned above (a perfectly nice guy in other aspects of his life, doting father of two, etc.) really sounded gleeful at the prospect of war with iran, and i remember him sounding the same about iraq. there is a mindset that sees this stuff as kind of a necessary activity of nation-states, and that gets impatient when we go too long without a war bandwagon to jump on. it's something that strikes me again and again on right-wing blogs or talk radio, they sound like football fans or something. and anyone who makes the obvious points about the horrors of war is immediately consigned to pansy pacifist status. and yes, that mindset does serve assorted parochial interests and is manipulated for those reasons, but it obviously goes deeper than that. (some of what rene girard has written about sacred violence, the scapegoat, etc. gets into this, in illuminating if also sort of depressing ways.)

http://www.psychohistory.com/htm/eln06_war.html

In immigrant circles pacifism, or better, indifference, often denotes ingratitude. It's an attitude I've dealt with time and again in Miami: if this country accepted us, we owe it to "them" to support our president. Never mind that it's partly due to U.S. perfidy that this country had to accept Cubans, but that's another story.

^^^ raaaaaacist

"had to accept cubans"

that's how my parents see it: thanks to U.S. involvement in the Fidel coup, the U.S. "owes them." This would seem to negate their patriotism, but whatever.

nabisco is 100% totally OTM and i hope bill and dally and alfred are paying attention to what he's writing

-- max, Monday, 24 September 2007 22:24 (Yesterday) Link

Max: I don't get what your problem is. I said 1) Iran is not a democracy
and 2) Ahmadinejad is not rational. Sorry, but if someone does not believe the Holocaust happened in spite of the mountains of evidence to the contrary, they are not rational.

I'll say it a third time: I'm all for him speaking at Columbia.

So, again, what's your problem?

fuck it i give up

Also, it's interesting to see several people treating his (murderous) homophobia dismissed by several ILXors as incidental, given the amout of hand-wringing that goes on here when a hip hop, metal, or Jamaican artist expresses the same attitudes.

fuck it i give up

-- max, Monday, September 24, 2007 9:51 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Smartest thing you've said on this thread thus far.

I think I can honestly say that yes, that is one of several regards in which I have higher expectations of American rappers than Iran's political officials.

Also: if/when Ahmadinejad drops a five-mic record, I will be the first one on ILM arguing that the anti-gay slurs are totally not the most interesting thing about it.

as I remember it, the position was something like "the Israelis say the Holocaust justifies a Jewish state, but the Palestinians didn't enact the Holocaust, so they shouldn't suffer for it. The land should have been taken from the people who (insert weaselly qualifying language) committed the crime."

Well, the Europeans never would have allowed a Jewish state to be created in Germany. So take that, Ahmadinejad!

-- mulla atari, Monday, 24 September 2007 19:58 (Yesterday) Link

but that's totally a rhetorical question and he knows it - there are other reasons why Israel is where it is, deep historical religious-tradition-bullshit reasons, and he's well aware of them.

-- Shakey Mo Collier, Monday, 24 September 2007 20:01 (Yesterday) Link

Sure, it's more of an attack on the use of the Holocaust.

-- mulla atari, Monday, 24 September 2007 20:06 (Yesterday) Link

Which isn't at all consistent with denying the Holocaust.

-- mulla atari, Monday, 24 September 2007 20:07 (Yesterday) Link

First of all, yes, it's very consistent. He's insinuating that Jews blew the holocaust out of proportion, exaggerated the number killed or some such, to serve their purposes. Which is more or less a denial.

Second, don't you think it's a bit absurd to refer to the use of the holocaust as a justification as "exploitation"? Like doesn't it make more sense that Jews just genuinely wanted a state because they didn't feel safe in Europe anymore? I mean you can argue with the creation of the State of Israel as a solution, but wtf, "Hey guys, I really want to grab this resource-poor sliver of land in the Middle East - I know, we can use the Holocaust as an excuse."

Third, the Holocaust was NOT the impetus for the creation of Israel, it just sped up the process a lot (and maybe convinced a lot of not already convinced people that it should be created). It's not like a bunch of Jews just showed up the day after the Holocaust and kicked all the Palestinians off their land. Much of the history is still ugly, but it's a bit more complicated than that.

Of course the Palestinians should not be "punished" for the Holocaust. But the solution is that Israel should stop treating the Palestinians the way it does and stop occupying the territories, not cease to exist.

Nabisco: Nothing "interesting" about his homophibia, even in light of the body count?

phobia

xpost - I'd also note that acting as if this guy (and others like him) question the Holocaust based on some kind of irrational delusionary state that keeps them from properly weighing evidence is ... bizarre. It's basically a mixture of entrenched conspiracy theory and just purposefully being dicks.

xpost - I dunno, Dally, send me the CD and I'll tell you

PS you managed to miscomprehend a 30-word sentence in two different major ways: congratulations

yeah the "rationality" conclusion seems to come before the analysis of the ways in which ahmadenijad benefits from being anti-israel

Yeah, it's like saying the Southern Strategy is "irrational" because actually black people are great -- it's not crazy, it's just smug and dirty and mean.

From AP:

Signs in the crowd displayed a range of messages, including one reading: "We refuse to choose between Islamic fundamentalism and American imperialism."

Wow @ hurting

me: hey mom, did you watch the president in NYC?
mom: president of who? president of what? president of a bunch of monkeys, that's what.

transcript:

http://tangibleinfo.blogspot.com/2007/09/ahmadinejad-at-columbia-university-full.html

What a crappy, petty introduction speech, Columbia dude.

http://www.nysun.com/article/63232?page_no=1

Yes, that is the answer. Less money for edumacashiun = more money for war! Yay!

lee bollinger is a clown

ahmadinejad is an even bigger idiot than i thought - he really is a joke, isn't he

this whole event was shameful and ill-conceived from the very beginning

If the Sun, a rag that is only read by middle aged right-wing jews in the tri-state area (all 13 of them), can get published in New York why can't a genuine Left of Center newspaper?

Excerpts from speech

On the Holocaust:

Why is it that the Palestinian people are paying the price for an event they had nothing to do with?

On Holocaust deniers:

My question was simple: There are researchers who want to approach the topic from a different perspective. Why are they put into prison? Why isn't it open to all forms of research?

On Israel as a Jewish state:

We are friends of all the nations. We are also friends with the Jewish people. There are many Jews in Iran living peacefully with security ... in our constitution and our laws and the parliamentary elections for every 150,000 people we get one representative in the parliament. For the Jewish community one-fifth of this number they still get one independent representative in the parliament... What we say is that to solve this 60-year problem, we must allow the Palestinian people to decide about its future for itself.

On nuclear research:

Some big powers create a monopoly over science and prevent other nations in achieving scientific development as well. This, too, is one of the surprises of our time. Some big powers do not want to see the progress of other societies and nations... Regretfully, they have not been trained to serve mankind.

On 9/11:

If the root causes of 9/11 are examined properly - why it happened, what caused it, what were the conditions that led to it, who truly was involved, who was really involved - and put it all together to understand how to prevent the crisis in Iraq, fix the problem in Afghanistan and Iraq combined.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/401EF371-16B9-4809-8BAD-786CB2C26DF1.htm

"Well, yeah, but..."

Haaretz: "we've been pwnd :-((("

Why is it that the Palestinian people are paying the price for an event they had nothing to do with?

how would you answer this question if asked? I don't know how I would answer it.

in a recent bbc interview Ahmadinejad was asked to clarify his "wiped off the map" comments wrt Israel and he answered by saying that the Soviet Union had been wiped off the map; the use of the phrase does not necessarily imply total annihilation...some ppl have chosen to interpret this way as it is in their interests to do so....

Why is it that the Palestinian people are paying the price for an event they had nothing to do with?

how would you answer this question if asked?

Tell them to look up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_Land_of_Israel and point out that this hasn't exactly started with WWII.

(that and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism )

no obv it hadn't, but WWII still changed it from being little more than a romantic notion to reality.

"I don't agree with his anti-gay policy; but I do approve of his anti-Girls Aloud policy!"

<i>If the Sun, a rag that is only read by middle aged right-wing jews in the tri-state area (all 13 of them), can get published in New York why can't a genuine Left of Center newspaper?</i>

because you need an owner with loads of cash that he won't mind losing in order to start a new newspaper? these people are few and far between in general -- on the left they are even rarer

no obv it hadn't, but WWII still changed it from being little more than a romantic notion to reality.

-- Grandpont Genie, Tuesday, 25 September 2007 11:18 (2 hours ago) Link

This is quite an exaggeration. The process of the creation of Israel was very much in motion once the British had control of Palestine after WWI.

On Holocaust deniers:

My question was simple: There are researchers who want to approach the topic from a different perspective. Why are they put into prison? Why isn't it open to all forms of research?

The prison thing aside (I don't really like that myself), this is an utterly ridiculous question - these are not legitimate scholars asking legitimate questions that he's talking about, they're people setting out to deny history. Would it be legitimate to hold a conference on slavery in which you invited scholars who said that slaves were actually treated very well and very few of them died of anything but natural causes? Would it be legitimate to hold a conference in which one side of a "debate" was arguing that Stalin had only caused a few thousand deaths?

The Columbia thing was really a travesty - Bollinger came off looking pointlessly belligerent and at the same time failed to ask genuinely tough questions.

That Haaretz piece is (surprisingly) RONG.

comment boxes at haaretz are always 0_0

comment boxes at haaretz are always 0_0

-- gff, Tuesday, September 25, 2007 2:36 PM (25 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

Careful hurting, or moonbeam and max will accuse you of racism.

Comment boxes at Haaretz usually make me loathe humanity for a few minutes, until I realize it's just the same 15 people posting on every article.

haha, Lee Bollinger. He was president when I was still at Michigan, and you could always expect entertaining loopy wtfness from whatever he was going on about.

bollinger is such an ass. how did this guy get to be president of a major university?

Ahmadinejad is such an ass. how did this guy get to be president of a major country?

This dude seems like the kind of guy that would befriend Indiana Jones at the beginning and help him find the lost cavern where Jesus's underwear were hidden, but then in the second half he would give Indiana up to the Nazis and say "I'm sorry, my friend....but things have become more complicated," and hop into one of those cool Nazi cars laughing

Can I ask: Why does holding a few irrational positions make someone an irrational person?

I would say that he's fairly rational and his actions, goading America but not actively provoking them to bring about his own destruction is evidence of that. Saddam Hussein wasn't rational because despite not having WMDs he liked pissing the US off too much with the threat of having them, hence was responsible for his own downfall. Ahmadinejad isn't as stupid I don't think.

Ahmadinejad is such an ass. how did this guy get to be president of a major country?

Elected in a dubuious way, kinda like...?

“Americans are outraged by the situation in Burma,” President Bush told the U.N. General Assembly today.

OH YAH, HE MEANS MYANMAR, ETHEL

It doesn't matter whether he's "rational" - wtf does that even mean? Rational =/= will act in a predictable way.

Is Bush "rational"? Was Johnson "rational"? How about Nixon?

MYANMAR
CAPITAL: YANGON
MONETARY UNIT: KYAT
REFINING CAPACITY: 32,000 B/CD
OIL PRODUCTION: 15,000 B/D
OIL RESERVES: 50 MILLION BBL
GAS RESERVES: 10 TCF

“Americans are outraged by the situation in Burma,” President Bush told the U.N. General Assembly today.

OH YAH, HE MEANS MYANMAR, ETHEL

-- Dr Morbius, Tuesday, 25 September 2007 15:50 (2 minutes ago) Link

lots of institutions in the west - including the bbc - still refer to myanmar as burma so as not to give legitimacy to the regime. of course, it's complicated as the burmese people are the dominant ethnic majority of the country, but only one of many groups, so calling it burma is somewhat insulting to non-burmese, but whatever. it's complicated.

i was wondering about that, actually, stence, thanks. all the news i read yesterday was off the wire, so it was called myanmar, but my roommates' read stuff on the bbc.

there was disagreement

this is an utterly ridiculous question - these are not legitimate scholars asking legitimate questions that he's talking about, they're people setting out to deny history.

I would say that he's fairly rational and his actions, goading America but not actively provoking them to bring about his own destruction is evidence of that. Saddam Hussein wasn't rational because despite not having WMDs he liked pissing the US off too much with the threat of having them, hence was responsible for his own downfall. Ahmadinejad isn't as stupid I don't think.

It doesn't matter whether he's "rational" - wtf does that even mean? Rational =/= will act in a predictable way.

I think that's a fairly lousy and overly value-oriented definition of rational. I would simply say that rationality is prioritising the preservation of your own position above all else.

And of course it matters being a crucial factor in the level of the threat we may or may not think he represents.

He might WANT a nuclear bomb but is never going to actively seek to get one because he knows that to do so would be an act of self-sodomy.

which doesnt exist in his country

Or he might seek one believing that having one would make Iran more difficult to attack.

While stalling the West with denials.

I mean either could be seen as "rational"

ahmadinejad /= hussein, in one really really important way: saddam actually ran the country of iraq

mr. a's rationality or lack thereof is more or less irrelevant. what he says has no bearing on what the iranian government is doing or wants to do.

I'm defining irrational as belief in something despite a mass of evidence to the contrary. GWB is also irrational--I consider him nearly every bit as backwards, superstitious, and dangerous to the world's well-being as Ahmadinejad and the Mullahs in Tehran who pull his strings.

Actually, more so...

x-post

Then why does everyone keep asking him whether or not he's trying to get a nuke if it's nothing to do with him anyway?

Actually, if I were in control of Iran, I *might* take a gamble on seeking a nuclear weapon, believing based on recent history that there seemed to be a good chance the United States would attack whether or not I had one.

because you can? xpost

And if it IS something to do with him then his rationality or lack thereof is relevant. At least under my definition, no so much dally's which is either too narrow or too broad, I'm not sure which.

If your definition of rational were sufficient, every chess match would end in stalemate

matthew yglesias:

Part of the tragedy here is that the American public really ought to know more about the Iranian government's perspective on the issues of the day. The US and Iran have outstanding conflicts over nuclear issues, Iraq, and Afghanistan but also some potential for common interests on some of these topics. And most of the Iranian officials -- Ali Larijani from the National Security Council, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani from the Assembly of Experts, foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki -- aren't prone to rants about the non-existence of the Holocaust and all the rest. They're not nice men as such, but they really are people such that it's worth hearing what they have to say about the various issues in play. Unfortunately, both Ahmadenijad and America's Iran hawks have an interest in pretending that Ahmadenijad's a key actor and his goofier ideas are the center of the dispute. Why Bollinger wants to re-enforce this I couldn't say. For attention, I guess.

dally, stop referring to "the mullahs" of iran as though they're an ideologically unified group with a common agenda, and stop saying that they "pull" ahmadinejad's strings!

My definition is based on realist international relations theory. May not apply in every area of life but is the definition most relevant to this discussion.

I wouldn't say he was "irrational" for denying the holocaust, I would just say he's an idiot.

Well, I think realist international relations theory is dumb.

But I kind of agree with you about basing any kind of judgment about his foreign policy decision-making process on his views of the holocaust. That use of the word "rational" is pretty much equivocation.

dally, stop referring to "the mullahs" of iran as though they're an ideologically unified group with a common agenda, and stop saying that they "pull" ahmadinejad's strings!

Well, I think realist international relations theory is dumb.

I haven't read all of this, but I think Bollinger had a good idea here - this guy's visit should be a forum for and demonstration of intellectual discourse (and attention to SIPA, though I don't think he intended the level of attention, and was only partly naive in misjudging what a circus it would be) - and executed it poorly. While he made the right point in the context of what he intended the event to be - that that Ahmedinejad's take on the holocaust, whether uninformed or simply demagogic (hint: the latter), is anti-intellectual - he didn't do it clearly enough for public consumption, perhaps swayed by the need to take a belligerent tone to respond to the hoopla (and/or his own feelings).

I am still a bit of a fan of his

and after all this I still don't know how much Ahmedinejad is just playing press secretary in not answering the questions, i.e. if he wants to persuade the liberal American public of his great humanitarianism (and not persuade the undifferentiated American public that they hate gays more than they like Jews or something), playing word games isn't gonna cut it

I am still a bit of a fan of his

Bollinger's, that is

Even if we assume the conceit of "rationality," isn't it awfully simplistic to assume the only rational motive is immediate self-preservation? What about power, regional influence, etc.? Wouldn't it be rational for Iran to want a long term strategy to increase its power so it doesn't have to prostrate itself before the US?

anderson coopers 'keeping them honest!!!' bit last night was lolz - apparently the holocaust actually DID happen

your move, mr ahmaddinejad!

Of course he wants power etc etc But the point is that you won't commit suicide to achieve those things. And he won't.

This isn't about what the west thinks, it's about what they think at home. And there they think the guy has balls for going straight into the lion's den and getting out untouched. They also think that GWB wouldn't do something like that, so Ahmadinejad has won in more ways than one.

the lion's den

ahem

GWB is also irrational--I consider him nearly every bit as backwards, superstitious, and dangerous to the world's well-being as Ahmadinejad and the Mullahs in Tehran who pull his strings.

http://www.postmodernclog.com/rop/archives/ahmadinejad_lg-14_002.jpg

http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/EPH/8130~George-W-Bush-Monkey-Posters.jpg

http://www.hunsberger.org/lions.gif

xxpost: "ahem" ? Isn't "the lion's den" the correct expression?

“Americans are outraged by the situation in Burma,” President Bush told the U.N. General Assembly today.

OH YAH, HE MEANS MYANMAR, ETHEL
-- Dr Morbius, Tuesday, 25 September 2007 15:50 (2 minutes ago) Link

lots of institutions in the west - including the bbc - still refer to myanmar as burma so as not to give legitimacy to the regime. of course, it's complicated as the burmese people are the dominant ethnic majority of the country, but only one of many groups, so calling it burma is somewhat insulting to non-burmese, but whatever. it's complicated.
-- hstencil, Tuesday, 25 September 2007 15:56 (36 minutes ago)

I just like the idea that Ethel, Mrs. Middle America, is at home saying to her husband "What's he saying we're outraged." "Burma." "Burma?" "Myanmar." "Oh, Myanmar! That gets my goat!"

Ahmadinejad should have stopped by the Lion's Den, had a few chicken wings, chatted with some undergrads about the Holocaust and where they got their fake IDs

xpost - Stan, you made an unintentional joke -- Columbia = Lions

(and actually oops the undergrad bar I'm thinking of is called the Lion's Head, I think)

Ah, :-) thx

the lions won their football game this week!

Of course he wants power etc etc But the point is that you won't commit suicide to achieve those things. And he won't.

-- Upt0eleven, Tuesday, September 25, 2007 12:31 PM (8 minutes ago)

I just don't see that it would necessarily be suicide. If Iran could develop the bomb undetected, once it had the bomb it would be much harder for the US to attack. Meanwhile, Iran might perceive the US as bent on attacking Iran regardless, so the bomb at least might give them a prayer. I'm not saying they're developing a bomb, I'm just saying there might be rational reasons to do so (after all, we invaded non-nuclear Iraq, we did not invade nuclear North Korea, and we're good buddies with nuclear Pakistan)

Pakistan is a colossal disaster waiting to happen

not relevant

(true - sorry!)

way xp

yeah, I mean my point was -- I have no idea what's going on in Burma. So much American outrage over it, you can't escape it!

One impressive thing with these Middle-Eastern people is that despite being born and raised in countries where free debate is at best frowned upon, they still more than hold their own when it comes to rhetorics. I disagree with whoever it was that argued some Iranian taxi-cab driver would have mangled this guy if given the chance. Unlike Bush 43, who wouldn’t stand the ghost of a chance in an ad-lib head-to-head, Ahmadinejad clearly knows his shit.

well duh Persian tradition of rhetoric/debate WAY older than America's obvy

just because it was developed in a religious/judicial context and not a democratic one doesn't make it any less effective

Education education education

There are plenty of exiles or dissidents from Iran who could have played out a much more interesting Q&A -- and one that would be a million times more valuable and instructive to students. (It just would have played as slightly more arcane for cameras and the outside world.)

Also, that's completely backwards: countries where "free debate is at best frowned upon" are like the WELLSPRING of careful and circuitous rhetoric that only insinuates exactly as much as it's safe to insinuate in the moment!

MYANMAR
CAPITAL: YANGON
MONETARY UNIT: KYAT
REFINING CAPACITY: 32,000 B/CD
OIL PRODUCTION: 15,000 B/D
OIL RESERVES: 50 MILLION BBL
GAS RESERVES: 10 TCF

BTW this is not very much oil.

I'm not saying there aren't rational reasons for developing the bomb. The fact that Israel's got it is the main one.

But he knows the general threat of destruction from Israel is less than the threat of destruction from America if he actively seeks one.

xpost - I mean, Americans have the luxury of blundering around boldly yelling things in crude, shouty terms -- ask people in repressive regimes about politics all night long, they have the unsurprising skill of talking forever without actually saying anything that will get them executed and/or admit that they execute people and/or whatever

What makes you think you can calculate Iran's perception risk percentage of damned-if-they-don't vs. damned-if-they-do?

can't stand bollinger mainly because when i worked for the columbia record and had to go to him for quotes he never failed to give me the dryest, most preternaturally boring quotes he could and i somehow had to work them in, because that's the way it goes at the record

myanmar is a potential bonanza for offshore gas - they're selling off exploration blocks to both india and china, right in the middle of the demonstrations

I mean, Americans have the luxury of blundering around boldly yelling things in crude, shouty terms

Can you keep George Galloway next time he's over there then

I mean, Americans have the luxury of blundering around boldly yelling things in crude, shouty terms

cf this thread

more nasty stereotypes on display here than a whole afternoon of iranian state television

moonbeam=race police

dally=shitty troll

"well duh Persian tradition of rhetoric/debate WAY older than America's obvy"

Well that tradition's come to an inglorious end. 300 political dissidents gassed (or shot or stoned to death) since January. What a liberal haven.

political dissidents stoned to death?

Dan: I'm a troll because I don't think Iran is a democracy? I'm still trying to figure out what I said that has upset max and moonbeam so.

i don't think that means that the persian tradition of debate is over, bill magill

I mean, Americans have the luxury of blundering around boldly yelling things in crude, shouty terms

cf this thread

-- moonship journey to baja, Tuesday, September 25, 2007 1:20 PM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Yeah, free speech for all, even the rude and crude, is such a drag.

(xxpost) They'll never forgive you for what you did to dilly.

Bill does an uncanny impression of an old conservative watching cable news and dropping zingers.

"i don't think that means that the persian tradition of debate is over, bill magill"

It sure ain't a good sign.

I'm about as conservative as Ahmadinejad is a Zionist.

In ILX terms, if you don't blame the majority of evil on the world on the US or say anything critical about the value systems of non-western countries, you are a conservative.

goddamn you're stupid

I was against Ahmedinejad speaking at Columbia: not because I want his speech suppressed, but because I don't see why a major American university should be giving credence to the nutjob's opinions. I've pretty much changed my mind, though - he had his say and, from everything I've read, got a mixed reaction at best.

He didn't seem so tough or evil at Columbia. But then, neither did the Nazis hanging out in the Auschwitz SS compound in those photos Der Spiegel recently released. The banality of evil, indeed.

dally=shitty troll

-- dan m, Tuesday, September 25, 2007 1:53 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

goddamn you're stupid

-- dan m, Tuesday, September 25, 2007 2:12 PM (28 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

This is what you've added thus far to this thread, and I'm the troll?

Careful mike, those Nazi comparisons really set the apologists off.

<i>300 political dissidents gassed (or shot or stoned to death) since January. What a liberal haven.</i>

And college professors rounded up earlier this year. And gays hung in the public square. See, this is why I can't stand the Bush/Ahmedinejad moral equivilence of "one is just as bad as the other." I'm no huge fan of Bush, either, but somehow his worst critics are allowed to go on living...

the nazi thing is a relevant comparison

I know, Godwin and all that. I'm just making the point that the most evil people don't usually seem that evil in person. Hitler probably seemed like a short, wimpy guy out of uniform.

absolutely

i agree w/ your point about moral equivalence mike but at the same time let's not pretend that giving a speech at columbia confers moral or intellectual equivalence on anybody

"say anything critical about the value systems of non-western countries, you are a conservative"

I'm critical of the President of a country where homosexuals are oppressed, dissent is violently stifled, women are treated like animals and one of history's most disgusting acts of genocide is seen as a lie. Then call me a conservative.

...and I hate Bush, and I'm glad the guy was allowed to speak at Columbia. Kick-ass conservative credentials.

But Bill, you're privileging the West by imposing your values on this misunderstood leader of the largest democracy in the Middle East!

I didn't say you were a conservative, Bill.

I said your rhetorical style reminded me of someone's uncle lobbing cracks along with Fox News.

There may be a lesson on this when I start I Love Reading Comprehension.

i don't quite get who bill and dally are tilting against. there's been a lot of stupid shit said on this thread, and a lot of wierd irrelevant wrangling about "rationalism" but nobody has really stood up for ahmadinejad, have they?

To wit:

- This guy should be on Last Comic Standing. What a howler.
- Yeah, and if my aunt had a dick she'd be my uncle.
- How did this guy get to be president of a major country?

Fair point.

Iran is pretty comparable to the governments of Pakistan or Saudi Arabia in terms of oppression and human rights abuses. Where Iran differs most is that those other governments fall more closely in line with US foreign policy and align themselves with US interests. So, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia get a free pass.

Ahmadinejad's worst crime is not Holocaust denial, nearly so much as making Iran an active tool against Israel through Hamas and other proxies, while having enough oil revenues to be fairly effective at this deadly game and enough oil reserves to earn some indemnity against western sanctions. But the USA has used similar proxies from Nicaragua to Afghanistan to Angola. His Holocaust denial is stupid and ugly, but he could be another Idi Amin and, if he played things the USA way, he'd be tolerated far better than he is.

FFS, even Saddam Hussein used to be the USA's buddy, before he got off the reservation and invaded Kuwait. When Saddam famously gassed the Kurds with nerve gas in the 1980s, the US barely scolded him over it.

they also have very different political systems

Pakistan, in the long run, is more of a danger than Iran. The regime waiting in the wings there makes the Taliban look like ILXors.

And the US is entirely complicit in the fundamentalist takeover of Iran. The US trained the Savak, who were so awful they bought about Kohmeini's regime.

dally=shitty troll

i think it should be remembered that nobody voted for musharraf or the house of saud

I think it should be re-stated that you can't even run for office in Iran unless the Mullahs say you're Islamic enough.

The Turkish prime minister always has the generals hanging over him, does that make him a "figurehead", "not the real power in his country" etc.?

well yes, dally, it's an islamic republic, why do you keep pointing out the obvious

i mean, they swung right from rafsanjani toward khameini, they swung right from khameini to ahmadenijad. why is iran voting increasingly ultraconservative? that's an important question that you don't have to ask if you're looking at saudi arabia or pakistan, and it puts the leaders in a different position than the leaders of saudi arabia or pakistan, so you can't very well answer the question "why do they act the way they do?" unless you consider that point (unless you're just shooting for snappy one-liners like "no religious person is rational")

and before you point the finger and say "the mullahs!! the mullahs!!" you need to realize that the mullahs approved centrist-conservative and normal-conservative islamic candidates, and the people picked an ultraconservative. why are iranians becoming increasingly ultraconservative?

it's a bit like having conversations about conservatism in america where people can't stop with "b-b-but cheney owns diebold!!"

Pakistan, in the long run, is more of a danger than Iran. The regime waiting in the wings there makes the Taliban look like ILXors.

http://elizabeta.blogg.se/images/medium_champagne_pop_1136067689.jpg

well it's also inarguable and even uncontroversial that you can't be elected president of the united states without proving that you're christian

I don't know why Iranians vote so conservative, do you? The only Iranians I knew growing up called themselves Persians and fled the country when the fundies took over, and they seemed equally as baffled. I remember in 1979 that everyone seemed very shocked that the Irainians voted in a theocracy in such a short time span. I bet fear of repression has something to do with it, that and (yes here comes your favorite word) irrational nationalism.

(Religion is inherently irrational. Do you consider the belief in a celestial deity who crated the earth, takes an active interest in the actions of human beings, directs/alters the course of events, keeps a scoreboard on people's behavior, and who deeply cares what we eat and who we sleep with to be rational, especially when there is reams of evidence to the contrary?)

why is iran voting increasingly ultraconservative?

why is iran america germany france voting increasingly ultraconservative?

Because the armies of Yahweh and Allah are totally fucking the world up, and people are frightened.

sam harris + roger adultery

all for different reasons gabbneb

more like bertrand russell x louis jagger

when did Kissinger last speak at Columbia?

http://i21.tinypic.com/10frns4.jpg

It was quite hilarious to see a war criminal like Kissinger condemning the Ahmadinejad speech.

Do you consider the belief in a celestial deity who crated the earth, takes an active interest in the actions of human beings, directs/alters the course of events, keeps a scoreboard on people's behavior, and who deeply cares what we eat and who we sleep with to be rational, especially when there is reams of evidence to the contrary? /= religion

http://www.talkingpix.co.uk/Article_Metropolis.html

Aww, are you "spiritual," shakey?

are you a "troll"?

I'm just sayin... read some books, religious experience is a lot more varied than that.

Yes, I know, religious people have transcendent moments and sometimes do nice things for the community.

Good lord who cares: if being a theist makes a personal across-the-board "irrational," then irrationality is about as significant a thing to point out about a person as that he has organs

PS Dally is trying to smirk his way through a stupid semantic argument that he has already been lost to millions of Buddhists

I bet fear of repression has something to do with it

-- dally, Tuesday, September 25, 2007 7:03 PM

"gosh honey, i'm afraid our government is becoming an abusive police state"

"don't worry dear, we'll elect the ultraconservative with strong ties to the paramilitary secret police and everything will be OK"

Nabisco: your point is moot, I'm talking about today's monotheists, believers in what Blake called the Nobadaddy. Buddhism is not contingent on the belief in a supreme, creator being (though, in practice, Buddhism does have quasi-fascist elements, especially in ashrams, which are rife with sexual abuse, coercion, and militaristic enforcement).

Moonship: Why do you think Iranians are voting conservative?

fwiw one of the big reasons ahmadinejad won is that hes considered something of a populist who promised sweeping economic reforms, none of which have really worked--in fact one of the big reasons he's become such a critic of american policy is that its one of the few ways for him to retain support in iran

also nabisco i would <3 it if you started the "IL Reading Comprehension" board

sounds more like future noize thread

Add to those points a general "I'm gonna straighten out the administrative end of this government" line, to which the administrative end of the government has evidently said "umm, no, son, no you're not"; he has no domestic accomplishment to rest on

dally's point about nationalism (rational or no) is a good one. there are a lot of devoutly islamic people in iran who look at american-style religious freedom and think "oh, you mean like in egypt or saudi arabia? NO THANKS".

why is iran voting increasingly ultraconservative?

If this is true, it might have something to do with the country's history. It's been mentioned in other threads on ILE but Iran's entire history is littered with meddling and bad business at the hands of foreign powers.

Maybe American's don't remember but the CIA overturned the Iranian government and installed the Shah at the behest of the British which had used Iran's oil as the personal fuel tank for the Royal Navy without actually sharing much of any profit with the country.

The mullahs overturned the Shah and shortly afterward Iran was invaded by Saddam Hussein. When Hussein's army stalled and it looked like Iran might win, the US took the side of Iraq and essentially used the USN to hammer the Iranian navy in the Persian Gulf for the rest of the war under the rationalization that it was protecting shipping.

Now Iran has US military bases on all sides of it and a huge USN presence in the Persian Gulf.

If one reads Dilip Hiro's The Longest War, an account of the eight year long Iran-Iraq war, he makes it very clear that threats and the perception of threats make the country more conservative. War or the threat of it unite the country behind the mullahs and the theocracy. This is the direct opposite of the US administration/crazies working for a war with Iran that just pre-emptively attacking them or ratcheting up the pressure will bring down the regime because Iranians are just waiting for someone to do it for them.

Incidentally, if you can find a copy of The Longest War, it's a painless to understanding relatively recent history of Iran.

yes, there is genuine concern about US influence in the region and it's not just based on history, it's also based on current events and a good long look at the US's local allies. the average iranian on the street, believe it or not, regards riyadh and kuwait city with the same uneasiness (shading to outrage) that we have about iran, and the veils + burkas which come w/ their brands of islam with the same feelings we have about headscarves.

you might as well ask why hugo chavez got elected. i mean, look at the strides US intervention made in nicaragua and chile!

one reason ive heard for iran is getting more and more conservative is that the leftist revolutionaries who helped instigate and fight the revolution are dying off and their children are mostly apathetic (or addicted to drugs)

as a counter-argument, there are still a great number of student protests in tehran. i dont know really that im entirely convinced that iran is actually getting more conservative rather than just more anti-american (and therefore more likely to vote in hard-line candidates), and i cant say i blame them on that count. in the end its probably a combination of a number of factors rather than one single all-encompassing reason that got ahmadinejad in office.

or maybe its just that all iranians are irrational

and on the nuclear issue in particular, even a lot of reform-minded iranians think iran has a right to have a nuclear program (and of course quite rightly think the u.s. is a major-league hypocrite on the issue, particularly with our recent special deal with india).

Gerge: Interesting side note: the Savak was trained by Gen. Schwartzkopf's father.

Max: you could use some reading comprehension yourself.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article1290331.ece

oh wait that's like a thousand months old

dally im too busy defending ahmadinejad to all the "conservatives" that ive thusly-labeled due to their unwillingness to criticize the west

Well if you can show me where I said all Iranians are irrational, I'd be interested to read it.

Incidentally, if average Iranians saw the 60 Minutes interview with Ahamdinejad, I would bet they would have taken Scott Pelley's insistence that Iran owed George W. Bush because he removed Hussein as something of an insult.

The question only showed how Pelley and his editors and producers were working at being wretched journalists. It was one of a couple questions which seemed purely designed to get Ahmadinejad to kiss the ring of our great country (which, of course, was not fucking likely), or at least cause him to lose his composure.

In any case, the LA Times coverage today essentially focused on Ahmadinejad's homosexual remarks and how he discredits himself without any help. Interestingly, the photo of the protest seemed to show more people protesting Ahmadinejad in front of Columbia than any recent pictures I've seen of Americans protesting war in DC. We can't get it up to get out in the street over a war the vast majority of us want ended but we sure can get it up to protest an Iranian bozo. The LAT said schools were busing in their students to be part of the demonstrations as class trips.

NYT

September 25, 2007
A Campus Buzzes With Protest and Political Debate
By KAREN W. ARENSON

Fatemeh Farsh, a slender woman with long dark hair, stood outside Low Library at Columbia University yesterday afternoon, holding a huge green, white and red Iranian flag, and talking earnestly to two students from Korea about homosexuality in Iran.

Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had just finished speaking in the campus center, where he asserted, among other things, that Iran had no homosexuals. Speakers in a student-organized forum were still parading to the microphone in front of Low Library. And gaggles of students were deep in conversation across campus.

“Look at all the dialogue,” said Ms. Farsh, a graduate student in film who was born in Iran and came to the United States at age 4. “On a regular day, I wouldn’t be talking to them,” she said, gesturing at the two Korean students. “And they wouldn’t be talking to me.”

It was hardly a regular day. Columbia, which faced harsh criticism over its invitation to a political figure despised by many, closed its grounds to anyone without university identification for the speech. All day, the campus was percolating with political debate as students turned out to protest, listen to and dissect the talk, and argue about the sharp remarks by Lee C. Bollinger, Columbia’s president, in introducing the Iranian leader. Many students expressed distaste for Mr. Ahmadinejad, although opinions were more divided on whether he should have been invited.

“I feel invigorated,” Alexander Statman, a Columbia student from Los Angeles majoring in history and philosophy, said in the late afternoon after the speech. “It is exciting that interesting and important things are happening here.”

By early morning, the campus was covered in fliers criticizing Mr. Ahmadinejad, although some others focused on democratic advances in Iran. Protesters roamed the grounds with signs like “Shame on Columbia” and “Why does the religion of peace need a religious police?”

Outside the campus, a demonstrator held a poster with a cartoon of Mr. Ahmadinejad bent into the shape of a swastika, and others had placards with a photograph of the shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, with the words “Long Live Iran.”

By noon, hundreds of students, some waving American flags, had amassed in front of Low Library, the administrative center of the campus, for a program organized by students representing all political views, including pro-Israel groups, gay and lesbian rights groups, Iranian student organizations, the Bahai Club and the college Republicans and Democrats.

Although many speakers discussed Columbia’s decision to invite Mr. Ahmadinejad, some took up other issues, like the experiences of Jews in Iran. One student read the names of children on death row in Iran.

Sheenah Shirakhon, an Iranian Jew who grew up in San Francisco, took off the blouse and red skirt she had worn while speaking at the podium, revealing a silver bikini top that had “NO WAR” painted across it and shorts with “IN IRAN” painted across the back. Scores of campus security officers, New York City police officers and Secret Service officials stood guard around campus. Outside on Broadway, crowds gathered.

As students waited in the glaring sunlight for the speech, some banged on trash cans, some played accordions and ukuleles, and some sang “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Others wore T-shirts saying “Ahmadinejad Fest ’07.”

The crowds grew larger — there were estimates of 2,000 or more — to watch Mr. Ahmadinejad on a huge video screen. More than 600 people heard him in the Roone Arledge Auditorium in the campus center.

There were cheers when he spoke about the situation of the Palestinians, and again when he invited Columbia students and faculty to visit Iran.

Afterward, students said they found his links between science and religion ridiculous.

“It was utterly disgraceful, and it was an utter waste of time,” said Sara Aries, a 21-year-old senior in studying forensics. “The man did not answer any of the questions that were posed to him.”

Nora Ganley-Roper, 21, a physics student, agreed. “For Columbia to stick out its neck, it would have been much more helpful if he answered the questions.”

But students also criticized Mr. Bollinger’s introduction of Mr. Ahmadinejad, in which he said that the Iranian leader exhibited “all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator” and that in denying the Holocaust his statements were either “brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated.”

A group approached Mr. Bollinger at 4 p.m., on his way to the class he teaches on free-speech issues. One, who declined to give her name because she lives and works in Iran, said she was insulted by Mr. Bollinger’s harsh language.

He responded, “These are very important things that have to be said.” Then he rushed off.

But Elie Lehmann, a junior from Boston majoring in religion, said he approved of Mr. Bollinger’s remarks. “Many people were upset with President Bollinger’s issuing the invitation,” he said. “His remarks gained him a lot of respect back.”

Amital Isaac, 18, who was wearing an anti-Ahmadinejad T-shirt, said that she was glad to hear from Iran’s president and that she thought the speech raised interesting questions.

“He began the speech with religion, and everyone on the lawn was rolling their eyes,” she said. “They knew it was propaganda.” But, it got people talking, “and that doesn’t happen every day.”

“I was rather proud,” she added. “I consider this the beginning of my political student career.”

Leora Falk, Annie Correal and Roja Heydarpour contributed reporting.

When I was a kid, I thought the Shah looked like James Mason in Heaven Can Wait.

There is nothing rational about any religious person.

-- dally, Sunday, September 23, 2007 4:45 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Link

Most Iranians are Muslims; 90% belong to the Shi'a branch of Islam, the official state religion, and about 8% belong to the Sunni branch, which predominates in neighboring Muslim countries. 2% Non-Muslim minorities include Zoroastrians, Jews, Bahá'ís, Mandeans, Christians and Yarsan.

Afterward, students said they found his links between science and religion ridiculous ... “It was utterly disgraceful, and it was an utter waste of time,” said Sara Aries, a 21-year-old senior in studying forensics. “The man did not answer any of the questions that were posed to him” ... “He began the speech with religion, and everyone on the lawn was rolling their eyes,” she said. “They knew it was propaganda"

fucking blue staters

it might've been more fruitful to have him at BYU or something

"God, it's disgraceful that the deeply religious president of a theocratic government would begin his speech by talking about religion. They never do that on CSI."

Should I even try to read the Columbia Spectator coverage of this, or just not risk it with the head-exploding?

Max: That's not the same thing, and I'd be willing to bet there are more Iranians who have grave doubts about religion than you think. Unfortunately they are not allowed to express such doubts for fear of repression.

you know them so well

Well not so long ago everyone said there were hardly any atheists in the US, and I think the last year or two has discredited that urban myth.

O RLY

Rly. Tell me, how would one go about criticizing Islam in Iran without putting oneself and one's family in grave danger?

hey you're the expert

I grew up next to and went to school with a community of Persians who'd all fled after the Islamic revolution. These were educated folks, however, mostly doctors and teachers, who had the means to leave, definitely not the man-or-woman-on-the-streed but they were very critical of religion and its place in Iraninian life.

As any intelligent person would be.

and I'd be willing to bet there are more Iranians who have grave doubts about religion than you think.

I know a couple of people of Iranian extraction, and they pretty much echo this if you substitute “religion” for “repressive state-religion.”

Jeb: Fair enough. First things first, after all.

I grew up with Persian ex-pats in the neighborhood. one of them was murdered - shot in the doorway of his own home - for reasons I never quite understood.

not that this has anything to do with anything

Well maybe you should have talked to some of them, Shakey, you might have learned something.

In the early 90s, Iranian death squads travelled the world, murdering prominent dissidents. I don’t know what they are up to nowadays.

YEAH shakey, WHOS THE RACIST NOW??

"Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator. If it were up to me, I'd chain your arms to the back of my car and drag you through the worst streets of Morningside Heights, then I'd beat you senseless with an aluminum bat, then I'd strip off your pants and fuck you in the ass in the middle of the street, come on your face, beat you some more with the aluminum bat, cram a dreidel down your throat, then dump your wretched body in the Hudson River.

"But, unlike you, I'm a civilized man who lives in a civilized country. So bite me."

http://dennisperrin.blogspot.com/2007/09/booga-booga.html

Many of them are back in Iran working for the Ministry of Intelligence, formerly SAVAMA, before that they were called SAVAK.

dood dally TROLL HARDER

Why the fuck am I trolling? By not agreeing?

i think shakey just doesnt understand the way your SUPER-RATIONAL brain works

he probably believes in god

Please tell me why I am trolling. You and moonie got upset a few people pointed out, correctly, that Iran is not a democracy, and you've been freaking out ever since.

Ban the unfunny funsters

The banning/trolling thing is just a meaningless and tedious in-joke.

I'm still failing to see what's so racist or wrong about saying the man is irrational.

Oh, like that excelsior/trekkie stuff?

Yeah, it’s kind of like a “ok, but can you walk the walk?” thing.

These were educated folks, however, mostly doctors and teachers

This time I had to zing myself on reading comprehension -- I was misunderstanding the point of that "however" and about to go off on how "educated folks" were EXACTLY who left after the revolution. I apologize for what I figured-out-before-posting anyway.

(It wasn't just about having the means to leave, it was also about having positions in society that couldn't escape the notice and pressure of the regime. The last place anyone should want to be after a revolution is, say, teaching or studying politics or history at a university; at least a farmer has some shot at keeping his head down and acting uninvolved.)

(Anyway, taking the US's crop of 1970s exiles as representative of Iran's public is like taking Miami exiles as representative of Cubans -- only a million times more so, cause I think a lot less of the Cuban exiles have ever been tortured)

the reason that the revolution was successfully was that people with western attitudes towards religion (liberal muslims, agnostics, bahai's like myself, jewish iranians, the upper-middle and upper-class in general, etc) were outnumbered 5 to 1 or 10 to 1 by the rest of iran

the revolution was also, while largely islamic in nature, composed of a lot of different groups from across the political spectrum; shariati (to name the most prominent example) != khomeini polticially except insofar as they were both devout, intelligent, and wanted to depose the shah

and in any event, with a lot of (mostly left-wing) iranian revolutionary thinkers, islam was (arguably) less about their own devout religiosity and more about finding grounds for a non-western, non-"persian" (in the way the shah defined it at any rate) critique of western colonialism/imperialism (like shariati's "marxism and other western fallacies")

yeah, it provided a theoretical framework for self-determined nationalism in the same way that various strains of communism did for indigenous anti-western/colonial movements elsewhere. so many americans just have no comprehension of the level of (completely rational) nationalist resentment in iran toward the west.

which, again, is why this whole nuclear issue looks so different from the point of view of the average iranian than it does from our end.

i mean, they swung right from rafsanjani toward khameini, they swung right from khameini to ahmadenijad. why is iran voting increasingly ultraconservative? that's an important question that you don't have to ask if you're looking at saudi arabia or pakistan, and it puts the leaders in a different position than the leaders of saudi arabia or pakistan, so you can't very well answer the question "why do they act the way they do?" unless you consider that point (unless you're just shooting for snappy one-liners like "no religious person is rational")

-- moonship journey to baja, Tuesday, 25 September 2007 18:52 (3 hours ago) Link

are you confusing khameini with khatami here? he was president before rafsanjani, khatami and ahmadinejad...

The Columbia Queer Alliance speaks out (via Daily Dish):

We condemn the human rights violations perpetrated by the Iranian government under the administration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. We admonish the policies that make same-sex practices punishable by torture and death, as well as those that restrict the freedoms and self-determination of women. We stand in solidarity with our peers in Iran, but we do not presume to speak for them. We cannot possibly claim to understand the multiple and diverse experiences of living with same-sex desires in Iran. Our cultural values and experiences are distinct, but the stakes are one and the same: the essential human right to express our desires freely. Moreover, we would like to strongly caution media and campus organizations against the use of such words as "gay", "lesbian", or "homosexual" to describe people in Iran who engage in same-sex practices and feel same-sex desire. The construction of sexual orientation as a social and political identity and all of the vocabulary therein is a Western cultural idiom. As such, scholars of sexuality in the Middle East generally use the terms "same-sex practices" and "same-sex desire" in recognition of the inadequacy of Western terminology. President Ahmadinejad's presence on campus has provided an impetus for us all to examine a number of issues, but most relevant to our concerns are the complexities of how sexual identity is constructed and understood in different parts of the world.

oops, thx hstencil!

IOW yes

http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/homepage/hp9-25-07mm.jpg

I expect him to be all "Heyyyyy..."

scholars of sexuality in the Middle East generally use the terms "same-sex practices" and "same-sex desire" in recognition of the inadequacy of Western terminology.

see he's not a homophobe, he just doesn't know any "gay" people!

only ponces

the columbia queer alliance is on point!!

The Columbia Queer Alliance's statement is incredibly gutless. It's the same old quibbling over terms that has done nothing but diminish the power and revelence of the left since the early '90s.

I mean they should have stopped at "...the essential human right to express our desires freely."

The rest is thoroughly cowardly.

why do you think that, dally?

Because had they ended there they could have taken a strong yet humble stand instead of degenerating into 1) an admonition concering what language to use 2) a cop-out, to the point where they actually say "let's not call them gay people." It almost sounds like they're agreeing that there are no gay people in Iran. I understand they're saying they're not "gay" as we know it in the west, but to me that is moot in this context whilst scores are dying, and this over-eagerness to appear culturally sensitive comes off as patronizing and ultimately renders the statement inadvertantly complicit. Then it thoroughly grinds to a halt with "things are so complex." Well, no shit.

what's wrong with admonishing people to use sensitive language? what's the danger of being too eager to be culturally sensitive?

what's wrong with calling gay, lesbian or homosexual people uh gay, lesbian or homosexual people no matter where they are?

i am sincerely asking, as i don't understand why this is an issue.

there's the thinking that sexual oppression is rooted in beliefs and practices that assume there is a single, universally correct sexuality. using terms like "gay" across cultures cements the problem to some extent.

i don't see anything in that statement about being culturally sensitive. i only see a statement about how national news organizations should conform to the academic standards of complexity laid down by queer- and queer-friendly ivy leaguers and adopt what they understand to be idiomatically correct language from an iranian perspective in presenting a story to an american audience. never mind that the american audience's reaction to purportedly academically and idiomatically correct euphemisms like "same-sex practices" would be "WTF."

you're not part of the american audience, gabbneb? maybe they wrote that statement for intellectuals like yourself.

i'd think the opposite. using a term like "gay" that is actually used by, y'know, gay people seems to acknowledge that there isn't a "single, universally correct sexuality," not to mention it isn't as pablum as "same-sex desires" or whatever. that phrase makes gay iranians sound like male animals who dabble in fucking each other when they're not breeding with females of their species. also using "gay" or at least "homosexual" also implies - in my mind at least - an acknowledgment that while the burdens and signifiers of being gay in different cultures are, duh, different, there is a universal solidarity in not being hetero.

but then i'm just a hetero dude so it's not up to me anyway. once it gets into that "same-sex desire" territory, the statement just sounds kinda pablum.

last post was an xpost.

We stand in solidarity with our peers in Iran, but we do not presume to speak for them.

we think it's wrong to torture and kill our fellow gays in Iran (or at least we "admonish" those policies), but we would never be so insensitive as to suggest that they feel that way too

oh fuck i used pablum twice. dammit.

maybe they wrote that statement for intellectuals like yourself.

they said "we would like to strongly caution media"

just in case they were listening

"we do not presume to speak for them" doesn't mean that, gabbneb

"same-sex desires" ... that phrase makes gay iranians sound like male animals who dabble in fucking each other when they're not breeding with females of their species

that's funny. that's not what i thought when i read that phrase.

maybe you should get checked, hstencil

j/k

we would like to strongly caution media and campus organizations against the use of such words as "gay", "lesbian", or "homosexual" to describe our brothers and sisters on the d.l.

but then i'm just a hetero dude so it's not up to me anyway. once it gets into that "same-sex desire" territory, the statement just sounds kinda pablum.

-- hstencil, Wednesday, September 26, 2007 5:01 AM

isn't this just like another version of white guys bitching about not knowing whether to call their coworker african american or black or negro?

xposto apropros

like what if the statement was this:

We condemn the human rights violations perpetrated by the Iranian government under the administration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. We admonish the policies that make same-sex practices punishable by torture and death, as well as those that restrict the freedoms and self-determination of women. We stand in solidarity with our peers in Iran, but we do not presume to speak for them. Our cultural values and experiences are distinct, but the stakes are one and the same: the essential human right to express our desires freely. President Ahmadinejad's presence on campus has provided an impetus for us all to examine a number of issues, but most relevant to our concerns are the complexities of how sexual identity is constructed and understood in different parts of the world.

way less weird and wishy-washy to me.

anyway, wahtever.

xpost vahid you don't think that sounds really clinical? as if these gay iranians were like spotted in the wild or something? that's how it reads to me.

xxpost whoa dude. hold on just a minute.

"we do not presume to speak for them" doesn't mean that, gabbneb

if you want to know what i really think it means, it's "we're not completely sure we know what we're talking about and are afraid of getting called out"

but then i'm just a hetero dude so it's not up to me anyway. once it gets into that "same-sex desire" territory, the statement just sounds kinda pablum.

-- hstencil, Wednesday, September 26, 2007 5:01 AM

isn't this just like another version of white guys bitching about not knowing whether to call their coworker african american or black or negro?

xposto apropros

-- moonship journey to baja, Wednesday, September 26, 2007 5:07 AM (48 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

that's kinda incredibly shitty of you.

esp. when i've already posited that it's not up to me.

dude, you're the one rolling your eyes at the columbia queer alliance!!

dude, i'm just musin' on a very minor part (imo) of the statement. i got no beef with the columbia queer alliance, they probably throw some of the best parties on that godforsaken campus.

i'm still nursing a grudge over madonna's no-show at the aids benefit

lady miss kier, whoop-ti-do

i can't pretend to speak for any gay people but i have a hunch that some might find the parts of the statement i find weird as weird as i do. maybe.

some might, i agree!

if you want to know what i really think it means, it's "we're not completely sure we know what we're talking about and are afraid of getting called out"

-- gabbneb, Wednesday, September 26, 2007

is there anything wrong with that? didn't foucault get in trouble by assuming the iranian revolution was just a manifestation of his own ideas?

yeah for christ's sake gabbneb why are you bitch about americans taking a step back and saying "hey maybe we don't know everything and shouldnt presume that we do!"???

why are you bitching

also stence i think yr question (what's wrong with calling gay, lesbian or homosexual people uh gay, lesbian or homosexual people no matter where they are?) is answered in the statement itself: The construction of sexual orientation as a social and political identity and all of the vocabulary therein is a Western cultural idiom. As such, scholars of sexuality in the Middle East generally use the terms "same-sex practices" and "same-sex desire" in recognition of the inadequacy of Western terminology.

but that's the opposite of what they're saying - they're saying we americans know more about gay iranians than you americans because we americans are gay (and in an academic environment)

We stand in solidarity with our peers in Iran, but we do not presume to speak for them. We cannot possibly claim to understand the multiple and diverse experiences of living with same-sex desires in Iran. Our cultural values and experiences are distinct, but the stakes are one and the same: the essential human right to express our desires freely.

We cannot possibly claim to understand the multiple and diverse experiences of living with same-sex desires in Iran.
We cannot possibly claim to understand the multiple and diverse experiences of living with same-sex desires in Iran.
We cannot possibly claim to understand the multiple and diverse experiences of living with same-sex desires in Iran.
We cannot possibly claim to understand the multiple and diverse experiences of living with same-sex desires in Iran.

It's worth pointing out that saying "we cannot possibly claim to understand the multiple and diverse experiences" SPECIFICALLY LEAVES OPEN THE POSSIBILITY that some ppl in Iran might want to use terms like "gay" or "lesbian" to describe themselves--the statement doesn't shut down the idea that there are lesbians in Iran, just that calling them "lesbians" is enforcing a set of largely western cultural ideas about sexuality and sexual behavior that don't necessarily apply in these cases.

sorry that should read: the statement doesn't shut down the idea that there are lesbians in Iran, just that calling them women who have sex with women "lesbians" is enforcing a set of largely western cultural ideas about sexuality and sexual behavior that don't necessarily apply in these cases.

also stence i think yr question (what's wrong with calling gay, lesbian or homosexual people uh gay, lesbian or homosexual people no matter where they are?) is answered in the statement itself: The construction of sexual orientation as a social and political identity and all of the vocabulary therein is a Western cultural idiom. As such, scholars of sexuality in the Middle East generally use the terms "same-sex practices" and "same-sex desire" in recognition of the inadequacy of Western terminology.

-- max, Wednesday, September 26, 2007 5:35 AM (46 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

yeah i understand that but i'm not sure it's really relevant when one is trying to make some sort of solidarity statement in the west with those elsewhere. ultimately, the uh nuts-and-bolts of what we in the west i guess call "being gay" is the same everywhere, whether in kandahar (have you seen those colorized pictures? they're so cute) or in chelsea, ie. gettin' down with the same sex. but that's it. i mean is anybody really thinking there's pride parades in downtown tehran? no. so why <i>not</i> call gay iranians gay? esp. if you're trying to highlight the human rights abuses against them? they're not getting stoned or hanged for anything <i>besides</i> their sexual orientation and how they act on it. not to mention that equal rights for gays isn't exactly a done deal in the west, either!

xpost - i disagree, if anything using gay or lesbian to denote a whole range of differences in culture - while still being homosexual and subject to the discriminations that go with it - might actually universalize things.

but anyway it's getting late and this is all fairly theoretical for me.

Kandahar is actually infamous for pederasty

that's why i included it as an example!

Heave Ho ftw

being gay is adult men lusting after boyarse?

there you go again, speaking for the gays

xpost

ultimately, the uh nuts-and-bolts of what we in the west i guess call "being gay" is the same everywhere, whether in kandahar (have you seen those colorized pictures? they're so cute) or in chelsea, ie. gettin' down with the same sex.

But I'd argue that this is not really true--being attracted to people of the same sex in Kandahar, having sex with people of the same sex in Kandahar, being attracted to people of the same sex in Chelsea, and having sex with people of the same sex in Chelsea, are four different things, even if the behaviors are similar or overlap in certain respects. This is all pretty well-trodden territory; but the end point is that "gay" is a term that's pretty much only useful (and even then not very useful) in the west where (for you, and a lot of people) it encompasses both a behavior (well, sort of) and an orientation. This isn't exactly true elsewhere in the world (and not really that true in America, where we still have a great number of straight-identified men engaging in same-sex sexual behavior).

This isn't just a question of cultural variations all categorizable under the umbrella of "homosexuality." The very idea of "being homosexual" as a lifestyle/essential part of being/subculture is a pretty specifically western one (and one that's only arisen over the past two centuries), and as such not particularly useful (and in some ways maybe harmful) way of thinking about sexuality in Iran, not to mention the rest of the world.

I do think I see your point though--how can you claim solidarity with a group of people who you simultaneously acknowledge you don't technically have anything in common with except maybe you've both had a few dicks or clits in your mouth. That, I don't really know, but I thought the CQA or whatever it's called did a pretty admirable job of it.

i don't think i did a very good job representing my point and its probably riddled with all sorts of inconsistencies and errors, so im just gonna go to bed

http://caosblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/DragTaliban-4_72dpi.jpg

these guys both have beards, maybe they're of age. kind of a bummer that the only one of these portraits i could find is on some shitty conservative blog. they were totally fantastic and beautiful portraits, wish they were online somewhere.

anyway did the alliance get really mad when everybody laughed at ahmadinejad saying there were no gays in iran? like they were pissed he didn't say "people of same-sex desires" or something?

xpost

But I'd argue that this is not really true--being attracted to people of the same sex in Kandahar, having sex with people of the same sex in Kandahar, being attracted to people of the same sex in Chelsea, and having sex with people of the same sex in Chelsea, are four different things, even if the behaviors are similar or overlap in certain respects.

no, what i've been saying is that these are different things, but the ONE THING they have in common is what's important.

xxpost no worries i should turn the computer off and read that "manhatta" piece dammit.

worth pointing out too that i think yr question is sort of one of the major questions of postmodern gender/sexuality theory, i.e., "now that we've asserted the uselessness of categories & distinctions, how can we fight oppression against those categories?" or something similar. and, uh, i dont know.

those guys are just dolled up for the picture stence, not necessarily gay

yeah the problem is 'gay' means a lot more than same-sex desire, because 'same-sex desire' in the 'west' means a lot more than 'same-sex desire.' it fits hand-in-glove with a lot of other opaque things about the west that make measuring or identifying 'gay' in a different cultural setting a harder thing to do than it seems. doesn't mean there shouldn't have been a challenge of sorts by the alliance. in fact i think it should have been a lot more assertive, like stence is saying, but with a different focus--something recognizing the legitimacy of 'same-sex desire' in a scientific sense and leaving open the question of what that might mean? but that's difficult cuz you might have problems with 'scientific,' and there you are. what the alliance should have done was tried to do their fucking homework, i.e. making some contacts over there and talking to actual people before making their condescending-in-it's-lack-of-condescension statement.

uh-oh, major x-posts

and really i think people should 'speak for' someone instead of sticking their head in the sand with a 'can't speak for' cop-out, it's just 'speak for' is so much better when you 'speak with,' you know? god i'm stoned, sorry

no, that's nice, "speaking with" is very important

http://peacecorpsonline.org/messages/jpeg/deaf.jpg

As is the case with so many campus organizations, the CQA's statement seems more concerned with policing language and not offending than it does with making an actual stand. 2/3 of the damn thing is about terminology and has a pathetic, patronizing "we're not worthy of understanding" feeling.

As such, scholars of sexuality in the Middle East generally use the terms "same-sex practices" and "same-sex desire" in recognition of the inadequacy of Western terminology.

I have to wonder where this came from and if it's even true. Or perhaps scholars use that term because gay, lesbian, and homosexual are so unacceptable.

when I hear the word "diversity" I reach for my revolver.

As such, scholars of sexuality in the Middle East generally use the terms "same-sex practices" and "same-sex desire" in recognition of the inadequacy of Western terminology.

I have to wonder where this came from and if it's even true. Or perhaps scholars use that term because gay, lesbian, and homosexual are so unacceptable.

________________________

I think they mean that they use a terminology specific to the conditions in the Middle-East when discussing the situation over there. An equally “Western terminology,” obviously, so my guess is that what they meant was “Western terminology as understood by the public at large.”

I'm not at all a fan of Maureen Down, but her column today is pretty good.

That was a pretty good article. Plus I would like to nail Ms. Dowd.

she's pretty pricey, bill.

when I hear the word "diversity" I reach for my revolver.

-- Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Wednesday, 26 September 2007 13:05 (48 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

What the hell?

dally, terminology can be pretty important.

"Terrorist" vs "criminal", or "warlord" vs "tribal leader", etc etc.

Stop playing dumb.

ILXors stay up late.

I agree with Alfred. "Diversity" has been poisoned by the Birkenstock / NPR crowd. We need a new synonym.

sub "the Columbia lingo-obsessed queers" for Birk/NPR if you like.

I work for the student affairs division at my public university, and believe me, "diversity" is an onerous thing.

"We cannot possibly claim to understand the multiple and diverse experiences of living with same-sex desires in Iran. Our cultural values and experiences are distinct, but the stakes are one and the same: the essential human right to express our desires freely."

this is pretty feeble.

"The construction of sexual orientation as a social and political identity and all of the vocabulary therein is a Western cultural idiom."

also amazingly lame.

as a show of solidarity it's a washout.

good for you guys for identifying the real problem here - the columbia queer alliance!

the problem is jargon-inflected English, dude.

President Ahmadinejad's presence on campus has provided an impetus for us all to examine a number of issues...

http://www.iranfocus.com/uploads/img42e22f8585ae5.jpg

...but most relevant to our concerns are the complexities of how sexual identity is constructed and understood in different parts of the world

"she's pretty pricey, bill."

I just got a bonus, I'm good to go.

gff are you saying that the second part of that quote is ridiculous in light of that photo?

because i think unless you deal with the second part of that quote, you're never gonna be able to deal with that photo

"deal with" who gives a fuck, at the present? first things first. doesn't it just look kind of ridiculous? "most relevant to our concerns..." thanks much.

make a statement that torturing and hanging young people for sex crimes is completely unacceptable and give the intramural academic shit a rest, just for a little bit.

let's see gff, their statement begins: "We condemn the human rights violations perpetrated by the Iranian government under the administration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. We admonish the policies that make same-sex practices punishable by torture and death, as well as those that restrict the freedoms and self-determination of women."

how wishy-washy eh?

i mean god forbid somebody talk about iran in terms that go beyond black and white

the problem is jargon-inflected English, dude.

-- Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Wednesday, 26 September 2007

so i imagine you don't have time for the law school, the engineering school, the physical sciences or the business school?

as if the SALT treaty (or whatever int'l treaty you want to point a stick at) isn't filled with jargon

so basically GFF you would just let the abortion debate boil down to who's got the more graphic photos?

i mean why the fuck are we standing around haggling about WORDS?!?

we should KILL THEIR LEADERS and force them to convert to SECULAR HUMANISM

i imagine you don't have time for the law school, the engineering school, the physical sciences or the business school?

Don't change the subject – this situation demands clear, forceful English. I don't know what's so hard to understand.

business "English" makes me want to kill, yup

me neither, Alfred, Lord Sotosyn:

"We condemn the human rights violations perpetrated by the Iranian government under the administration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. We admonish the policies that make same-sex practices punishable by torture and death, as well as those that restrict the freedoms and self-determination of women."

for the OCD-impaired, you could just stop right there!

what's hard for me to understand is that you don't seem to understand that very little in the adult world happens via clear, forceful english?

the use of words specific to gender studies by a group of queer academics at columbia university is indefensible, and should be condemned!

i mean THAT is the issue amirite???

xxpost or rather alfred that clear, forceful english != the "trenchant" "wit" of the political blogosphere

i don't get why the next 300 words swing away from the subject at hand (other people getting hanged) back to the domestic self (the limits of our knowledge about the experience of people who may end up getting hanged). it seems self-regarding, to me, in the end.

we should KILL THEIR LEADERS and force them to convert to SECULAR HUMANISM

-- moonship journey to baja, Wednesday, 26 September 2007 15:03 (4 minutes ago) Link

While more secular humanism would be a great help to Iran, I don't believe anyone has suggested that. You're quite reactionary, moonship. Why do you and rex feel the need to caricature everyone who doesn't agree with you? Considering your appeals throughout this thread for the west to stop simplifying the character and temperment of the president of Iran, you do not seem willing to extend this courtesy to your fellow internet jockeys.

At any rate, I think that all the quibbling over words that has preoccupied the academic left since the early late '80s has more or less undercut any effectiveness it might have had in the culture-at-large.

yes, we all know the culture-at-large has swung hard to the right, what with the repeal of the model penal act and the recriminalization of homosexuality

after all, the APA's decision in 1973 to remove homosexuality from its list of psychological disorders had very little effect on the culture-at-large

i caricature you in the open because

1) you're a jackass
2) it's more honest than your caricature of ("the academic left", "irrational religion", etc etc)

the use of words specific to gender studies by a group of queer academics at columbia university is indefensible, and should be condemned!

-- Tracer Hand, Wednesday, September 26, 2007 11:09 AM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

No one's condemning the statement, I'm just saying it's lame. In fact, when I first read it, I thought it was satire.

Moonship: I said since the late '80s; in the early '70s the academic left did have some influence, and I agree with you that it was a good thing.

the academic left since the early late '80s has more or less undercut any effectiveness it might have had in the culture-at-large.