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  • Ahmadinejad heads to Columbia in NY

    Ahmadinejad heads to Columbia in NY
    By MICHAL LANDO, JERUSALEM POST CORRESPONDENT
    NEW YORK



    Barred by police from visiting Ground Zero, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may find more of a welcome at Columbia University, where he has been cleared to speak on Monday at the school's annual World Leaders Forum despite outrage expressed by New York area Jewish leaders.

    Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, makes his way to deliver a report of his activities on Iran's fourth development plan during an open session of parliament in Teheran, Iran, Tuesday.
    Photo: AP

    Columbia University President Lee Bollinger has vowed to used a planned question and answer session to challenge Ahmadinejad's denial of the Holocaust, call to destroy Israel and Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons.

    The New York Police Department Wednesday denied a request by Ahmadinejad to tour the site of the 9/11 disaster during his visit to New York for the start of the UN General Assembly's 62nd Session. The Iranian president is due to arrive in the city on Sunday.

    A slew of US diplomats, and presidential candidates blasted a request by Ahmadinejad to "lay a wreath" at Ground Zero as an attempt to turn the site into a "photo op."

    New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly initially caused confusion, after announcing the Iranian president's request without saying whether the police department would allow the visit. Later Kelly rejected the request because of ongoing construction at the site, though it remains unclear whether police would be able to legally prevent Ahmadinejad from visiting the area.

    The US has not had diplomatic relations with Iran since 1980, and members of the Iranian Mission are limited to travelling within a 40-kilometer radius of Columbus Circle in Midtown Manhattan. However, Ground Zero falls well within that radius.

    Getting to speak at Columbia proved far easier, however, with the university agreeing to a request by the Iranian Mission to the UN for Ahmadinejad to speak on campus Monday.

    "Opportunities to hear, challenge, and learn from controversial speakers of different views are central to the education and training of students for citizenship in a shrinking and dangerous world," the dean of the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), John Coatsworth, said in a statement. Ahmadinejad will open a series of lectures and events about Iran.

    Bollinger is scheduled to introduce Ahmadinejad to an audience that will be made up exclusively of Columbia students, faculty and a few invited guests.

    In a statement released Wednesday, Bollinger said it is a "critical" premise of freedom of speech "that we do not honor the dishonorable when we open the public forum to their voices."

    "It should never be thought that merely to listen to ideas we deplore in any way implies our endorsement of those ideas, or the weakness of our resolve to resist those ideas, or our naiveté about the very real dangers inherent in such ideas," said Bollinger.

    Bollinger agreed to host Ahmadinejad under the condition that he divide his time equally between delivering remarks and responding to audience questions.

    Bollinger said he will pose a series of "challenges" that include the Iranian president's denial of the Holocaust; his public call for the destruction of the state of Israel; his reported support for international terrorism that targets innocent civilians and American troops; Iran's pursuit of nuclear ambitions in opposition to international sanction; his government's widely documented suppression of civil society and particularly of women's rights; and his government's imprisoning of journalists and scholars, including one of Columbia's own alumni, Dr. Kian Tajbakhsh.

    One year ago, after initially okaying a request by Ahmadinejad to speak on campus, Columbia University later withdrew the offer.

    Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, hopes Columbia will withdraw again.

    Hoenlein wrote Bollinger Wednesday: "While I respect academic freedom and the importance of diverse views being heard, it would not violate those principles to deny a platform to someone who persecutes his people, denies freedom of speech in his own country, violates the UN Charter with threats to destroy other states, and is the leading state sponsor of terror," he wrote.

    Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti Defamation League, called Columbia's decision a "perversion of the First Amendment." "If Bollinger wants to communicate with him let him send him a letter; there's no imperative to let him speak," said Foxman.

    The Conference of Presidents is sponsoring a protest to take place outside the UN on Monday, when Ahmadinejad is scheduled to speak at the General Assembly.

    Likewise, the Columbia-Barnard Hillel is organizing a demonstration to take place on the Columbia campus. It hopes to include a wide range of campus groups, including those that promote women's rights, the rights of gays and lesbians, and diverse political and cultural bodies.

    In a related development, Ali Reza Moaiyeri, who heads Iran's mission to the United Nations in Geneva, was denied entry to the United States because of allegations he was among those who held American diplomats hostage for 444 days shortly after Iran's revolution.

    Moaiyeri had wanted to attend next week's ministerial meeting of the UN General Assembly in New York.

    However, Iranian diplomats rejected the US assertions. "He was never and in no way part of the group of students who took the US embassy," Kourosh Ahmadi of the Iranian mission in Geneva told The Associated Press
    In the realm of spirit, seek clarity; in the material world, seek utility.

    Leibniz

  • #2
    To think of this loathsome and vile creep standing on the edge of Ground Zero (another of New York's landmarks that he has expressed interest in seeing), looking at what fellow terrorists wrought and SMIRKING that he actually got us to put up with that kind of in-your-face, cocky effrontery makes me hope somebody kills him right there on the spot.

    EDIT: I just read that New York has absolutely refused to allow it. Cool.
    Last edited by Bluesman; 21 Sep 07,, 05:25.

    Comment


    • #3
      AND Columbia is going back and forth on allowing this killer of American troops to appear on its campus, where, it should be noted, ROTC has not been allowed since 1969.

      Seems like an easy call to me, but then, I'm not a liberal, AND my moral compass still operates.

      Comment


      • #4
        Or...maybe he SHOULD be allowed to speak.:))

        This from Mark Steyn:
        In a world of perfect karma, Ahmadinejad would be captured by American "students" and held hostage for over a year, paraded before TV cameras and threatened almost daily with death.
        GAWD, that would be so AWESOME!!!

        Comment


        • #5
          From Michael Barone:
          Just a random thought on Ahmedinejad speaking at Columbia.

          Columbia doesn't host ROTC or (I think) military recruiters on campus, because it would be just too offensive to do so, because the military obeys the law passed by a Democratic Congress and signed by Bill Clinton which bars open homosexuals from serving in the military. OK.

          But Columbia does host Ahmedinejad who heads a government which executes homosexuals for the crime of being homosexuals.

          So it's obnoxious beyond belief to exclude homosexuals from military service, but it's not obnoxious beyond belief to hang them from the neck until dead.

          I'm inclined to think that Congress and the military should rethink their policy of barring homosexuals from military service. It's a long argument, which I'll omit from this post. But I don't have any trouble joining the 99.99% of Americans who oppose execution of homosexuals for homosexual acts. And who think it's a barbaric act, incapable of being supported by any decent argument.

          Why does Lee Bollinger think a man who heads a regime that executes homosexuals--not just excludes them from military service, but hangs them by the neck until dead, in public ceremony-- should be honored with an invitation to speak at Columbia?

          Comment


          • #6
            i wish the NYC public authorities did it QUIETLY.

            the whole point of a-jad's charade was to shore up public support back home. to the iranian conservatives, they just love it when they see america doing anything that could be construed as an insult to iran- gives them a good chance to start screeching 'death to america'. to the liberals, it's meant as a sign as "well, i tried being all conciliatory and compassionate, but..."

            a-jad's a jumped-up tinpot puppet and doesn't deserve the print space given to a craigslist ad.
            There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov

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            • #7
              I would imagine he'll be recieving an icy Fáilte, eh?
              Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.
              - John Stuart Mill.

              Comment


              • #8
                I would treat him like any other passenger, except make everything really slow.

                "Can I see your passport please sir?"

                **stares at it for 10 minutes while eating a messy sandwich.**

                (splutters food everywhere) "Everything appears okay sir."

                When he gets to the front of a queue, say, "Sorry sir, wrong queue. Go to that one." Then gets sent right back. Repeat until sick.

                And of course, put on loud Western pop music when he comes, along with scantily clad Playboy bunnies. Okay, that's not 'any other passenger', but an honoured guest.
                HD Ready?

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by Bluesman View Post
                  Or...maybe he SHOULD be allowed to speak.:))

                  This from Mark Steyn:

                  GAWD, that would be so AWESOME!!!
                  Knowing our college students, Ahmad de Nutjob will be treated like a celebrity, wined and dined with 72 college chicks for a year.
                  "Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    I find it ironic that people who are supposed to be well educated are some of the biggest idiots walking the earth.
                    Originally posted by GVChamp
                    College students are very, very, very dumb. But that's what you get when the government subsidizes children to sit in the middle of a corn field to drink alcohol and fuck.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by Expat Canuck View Post
                      I find it ironic that people who are supposed to be well educated are some of the biggest idiots walking the earth.
                      Educated, certainly. Intelligent, maybe. Indoctrinated, definitely. That is pretty much the state of our "elite" colleges these days.
                      "Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Ahmadinejad's visit to the USA is a good opportunity for some unfortunate "traffic accident" to occur in New York City which would result in the "unfortunate death" of Ahmadinejad due to injuries sustained in such an "accident". Unfortunately this accident probably will not happen.

                        President Ahmadinejad's visit to Columbia University is his tacit recognition of the widespread support he receives from the American Socialist dominated higher education system and this visit is the consummation of a marriage of ideology after a courtship period (2001 to 2007) between American Socialists and Muslim Fascists.

                        What American socialists love so much about President Ahmadinejad is his hatred of Jews and Christians and they admire his drive to destroy Israel. In the months and years to come American Socialists will solidify what amounts to an alliance with Iran to spread it's Fascist ideology of a new world order under which Jews and Christians are considered threats to "world peace" which would require all responsible world powers to persecute, round up, imprison and kill all Jews and Christians.

                        It is interesting to note, that Persia changed it's name to Iran after a similar marriage of ideology between Adolf Hitler, Germany and Persia.

                        Now you see a frighteningly similar alliance with the roles reversed, with President Ahmadinejad, as a Fascist Hitler, forming an alliance with socialists in the USA (modern day worldwide organisations working towards a New Age order under which all Christians and Jews will be destroyed). After President Ahmadinejad's visit to Columbia University, Socialists will be greatly encouraged and will become increasingly radicalized in they're support of President Ahmadinejad's Fascist ideology.

                        This will backfire badly for American Socialists, once Muslim Terrorists commit their first Nuclear Terror attacks. Also, this whole situation is not without similar precedent in American History, in September 1814, after the British Army burned Washington DC to the ground, Federalist Politicians in the North Eastern and New England States of the USA contacted the British government with the proposal to restore the USA as colonies in the British Empire. After the British defeats in Baltimore and New Orleans and the Treaty of Ghent, these American Federalist Politicians and they're families, who had contacted Great Britain were exposed to be the traitors and were driven out of American Society. Just as these present day American Socialists will be after there’re treason will no longer be tolerated once hundreds of thousands of Americans and Europeans have been killed by terrorists sponsored by Iran and President Ahmadinejad.
                        Last edited by JMH; 23 Sep 07,, 15:15.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Here we go again

                          JMH your techincal know how I'm told is quite impressive but your understanding of sociological affairs and real world politics is quite the opposite. This is by no means to be taken as an insult as each person has different talents and understands different problems at different levels. However when you allow your lack of understanding to translate in a public forum into baseless assumptions presented as fact and insults directed at people merely because they believe differently to yourself then theres a problem. Allow me to highlight the points most in need of another look from your post and what is out of order with them.

                          President Ahmadinejad's visit to Columbia University is his tacit recognition of the widespread support he receives from the American Socialist dominated higher education system and this visit is the consummation of a marriage of ideology after a courtship period (2001 to 2007) between American Socialists and Muslim Fascists.
                          You have suggested that the majority of the 3rd level students in the U.S. would be supporters of the Iranian president and therefore his ideology. You have also suggested that socialism and a new brand of Fascism (according to you) would be getting on very well. The first part unless you can prove it should have been presented as opinion. As for the second part assuming that Ahmadinejad is some sort of neo Fascist then Socialists would want nothing to do with him (the 2 ideologies are opposite). Now if you have decided that a person believing in social equality who oppose's a war against Iran must therefore want to join Iran that is a patently missleading argument. The old "with us or against us" line isn't proof of anything beyond ones own doggedly narrow view of the wolrd (which is vastly more complex than that)
                          What American socialists love so much about President Ahmadinejad is his hatred of Jews and Christians and they admire his drive to destroy Israel. In the months and years to come American Socialists will solidify what amounts to an alliance with Iran to spread it's Fascist ideology of a new world order under which Jews and Christians are considered threats to "world peace" which would require all responsible world powers to persecute, round up, imprison and kill all Jews and Christians.
                          Eh this i really don't know where to start, aside from lacking even a shred of evidence for any of your claims including your wild flight of fancy "what if" scenario for the future you also seem to think that socialist thinking revolves around destroying Jew's and Christian's. The only thing which comes close to that is absolute Communism which in case you didn't know has no room for any religion whatsoever (Islam included). Example circa 1916 is the Irish proclamation of independence and I quote

                          The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally, and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien government, which has divided a minority from the majority in the past.
                          This is a snippet from a document which was signed to by a number of Socialist thinkers (who were also the leaders of that same rebellion) including one James Connoly. It clearly guarantees equal rights both religious and secular to all people (ALL) and would be considered politically a socialist document and so you see socialist ideology is a long way off from what you are suggesting.
                          Oh by the way on a personal note despite being Christian I have sometimes from the study of history felt that religion (most major kinds) have led to more wars than I care to mention and so in a nutshell despite all having the right to worship freely religion has been a threat to world peace and will continue to be as long as zealot's, bigots and sectarians are allowed to do as they please (the north of Ireland troubles are an example of what I mean).
                          It is interesting to note, that Persia changed it's name to Iran after a similar marriage of ideology between Adolf Hitler, Germany and Persia.

                          Now you see a frighteningly similar alliance with the roles reversed, with President Ahmadinejad, as a Fascist Hitler, forming an alliance with socialists in the USA (modern day worldwide organisations working towards a New Age order under which all Christians and Jews will be destroyed).
                          The 1st statement is again unsupported, really when there is evidence to support that 1st point (took me 5 seconds to locate it) have you not bothered to do so. making wild statements with any backing tends to make people ignore you. Don't mistake this for support given there is also evidence to the contrary as well. The second part however is more of your infamous speculative shoehorning of facts. Its also fear tactics which is most commonly found on the large scale in a police states internal propaganda machine. The key to gaining the support and backing of the public at large is to put them in fear of something big and bad. As a study of this one should read 1984 specifically the parts relating to the war that Oceania is fighting. Also the people who seem to be most interested in wiping out the Jew's in American society are (and I use the term very very loosely) Christians. They are right wing radicaly christian (by ideology) and are known as the KKK. They are not left wing (socialist) but are very extreme right wing. Or are they just pretending to be right wing nuts to confuse us:)) .

                          In closing how many times must I highlight the glaring holes in your pharsical arguments before you start to provide even a little bit of proof or backing?

                          D
                          they have us surrounded, the poor bastards.

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by Recon_sgt View Post
                            JMH your techincal know how I'm told is quite impressive but your understanding of sociological affairs and real world politics is quite the opposite. This is by no means to be taken as an insult as each person has different talents and understands different problems at different levels. However when you allow your lack of understanding to translate in a public forum into baseless assumptions presented as fact and insults directed at people merely because they believe differently to yourself then theres a problem. Allow me to highlight the points most in need of another look from your post and what is out of order with them.
                            That sounds so liberal, even I wouldn't be ashamed of saying it

                            Also the people who seem to be most interested in wiping out the Jew's in American society are (and I use the term very very loosely) Christians. They are right wing radicaly christian (by ideology) and are known as the KKK. They are not left wing (socialist) but are very extreme right wing. Or are they just pretending to be right wing nuts to confuse us:)) .
                            [sarcasm]No, no, no, they're secret communists they're trying to polarize American society from within so that revolution is easier to achieve.[/sarcasm]

                            On a more serious note, I'd listen to what he has to say. At least it would give me grounds for formulating a personal opinion of him.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Very nice!

                              That sounds so liberal, even I wouldn't be ashamed of saying it
                              Really Feanor but didn't you know being liberal is an evil godless way to exist and to be so you must hate all things Jewish and Christian but for some funny reason not be able to get enough of those cuddly terrorists .

                              I know that was a low blow but I just had to have some fun;)
                              D
                              Last edited by Recon_sgt; 31 Oct 07,, 04:06.
                              they have us surrounded, the poor bastards.

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