Author Topic: Dinner with Ahmadinejad  (Read 34556 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Henny

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1075
    • View Profile
  • Liked:
  • Likes Given: 0
Dinner with Ahmadinejad
« on: September 26, 2007, 11:12:56 AM »
Wednesday, Sep. 26, 2007
My Dinner with Ahmadinejad
By Richard Stengel

The invitation was on creamy stationery with fancy calligraphy: The Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran "requests the pleasure" of my company to dine with H.E. Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The dinner is at the Intercontinental Hotel ? with names carefully written out at all the place settings around a rectangular table. There are about 50 of us, academics and journalists mostly. There's Brian Williams across the room, and Christiane Amanpour a few seats down. And at a little after 8pm, on a day when he has already addressed the U.N., the evening after his confrontation at Columbia, a bowing and smiling Mahmoud Admadinejad glides into the room.

This is now an annual ritual for the President of Iran. Every year, during the U.N. General Assembly in New York, he plots out a media campaign that ? in its shrewdness, relentlessness, and quest for attention ? would rival Angelina Jolie on a movie junket. And like any international figure, Mr. Ahmadinejad hones his performance for multiple audiences: in this case, the journalists and academics who can filter his speech and ideas for a wider American audience.

The format of the evening is curious. In his calm and fluent voice ? "dear friends," he calls us ? he requests that we not ask questions, but make statements, so that he can react to them in a form of dialogue. The academics are not shy. They make statements not only about the need for dialogue and reconciliation, but castigate the Iranian government for chilling press freedoms and for arresting Iranian-American scholars who were only trying to foster better relations between America and Iran. Throughout, Ahmadinejad is courtly, preternaturally calm, and fiercely articulate.

After an hour, he is ready to respond. He does so first with a half-hour ode to the relationship between man and God that might have been dictated by the Iranian poet Rumi. "I believe that Almighty God created the universe for mankind. Man is God's most important creation and it is through him that we appreciate the beauties of the universe. God has sent man here on a mission." That mission, he says, is to pursue love, justice, kindness and dignity. In fact, he repeats those works so often that it begins to sound like a mantra: Love. Justice. Kindness. Dignity. He speaks with the quiet zeal of a not-very-flamboyant televangelist. "The pursuit of justice through love and kindness and human dignity can end all conflicts on earth," he says. "Inshallah."

When it comes time for him to address the comments, he does so by citing each speaker by name ? 23 in all, he notes. In contrast with what he calls the lack of respect and dignity accorded to him at Columbia ? where, he says, he found it odd that an academic institution which prizes tolerance would treat him without any ? he addresses each person carefully and patiently. Some highlights:

- Iran has not violated any of the rules of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Ahmadinejad says. He has proposed a multilateral uranium enrichment program with different nations, and can't understand why no one has taken up his offer.

- The US and Iran can play a positive role together in Iraq. "If the US withdraws from Iraq, good things will happen," he says. "I believe that the Iraqi people can rule themselves."

- In the Middle East, Ahmadinejad says the world must allow the Palestinians to decide their future for themselves: "That is the human solution to sixty years of instability." He refers to Israel only as "the Zionist regime" and does not mention the Holocaust.

- Ahmadinejad claims there are thirty newspapers published in Iran that are opposed to his government, citing that as evidence of press freedom in Iran.

- In answer to a question about how he viewed Hitler's legacy, he says, "I view Hitler's role as extremely negative, a despicably dark face."

- He notes that Americans don't understand Iranian history, saying that the movie 300 ? with which he seems intimately familiar ? was a "complete distortion of Iranian history." Iran, he says, has never invaded anyone in its history.

Finally, in response to a question about whether war with Iran was growing more likely, he says, "Mr. Bush is interested in harming Iran. But I believe there are wise politicians in America who will prevent such a war. We hate war. We would not welcome it. But we are prepared for every scenario. Yet I don't think war will happen."

With that, Ahmadinejad says he has an early morning appointment the next day, and that he welcomes greater dialogue like this evening. And then, still composed, and with the same slightly mysterious smile that never leaves his face all evening, he bows deeply and heads upstairs.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1665579,00.html

sirs

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 27078
    • View Profile
  • Liked:
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Dinner with Ahmadinejad
« Reply #1 on: September 26, 2007, 11:22:36 AM »
- The US and Iran can play a positive role together in Iraq. "If the US withdraws from Iraq, good things will happen," he says.

*snicker*.....reminds me of his answer regarding Homosexuals, that there isn't any in Iran, which begged the follow-up, because you had them al executed perhaps??  Of course good things will happen, if the U.S. pulls out prematurely.....for Iran
"The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal." -- Aristotle

hnumpah

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2483
  • You have another think coming. Use it.
    • View Profile
  • Liked:
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Dinner with Ahmadinejad
« Reply #2 on: September 26, 2007, 11:26:40 AM »
I read an article in this morning's paper that the Iranian people - even those opposed to Ahmadinejad - are surprised at his reception here. This isn't the same article, but popped up on the internet search, and makes some of the same points.

D.C. Area Iranians Criticize Reception Of Ahmadinejad
Hostility Counterproductive, Some Say

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 26, 2007; Page A11

Many Iranian Americans in the Washington area describe President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a provocateur, a hypocrite and an embarrassment to Iran. Yet some are disturbed about the hostile reception Ahmadinejad has received this week during his visit to the United States.

Students, professionals and academics in the region's Iranian emigre community said yesterday that they were frustrated and disappointed that the visit has focused on sensational issues such as Ahmadinejad's denials that the Holocaust occurred and that homosexuality exists in Iran.

Instead, they said they wished that the rare encounter between a senior Iranian official and the U.S. public would raise issues that they consider more pressing to residents of Iran-- such as the oppression of women, the quashing of political dissent and the social control exercised by the country's real powers among the conservative Shiite Muslim clergy.

"I agree that Ahmadinejad is a despicable human being, but he is not a dictator. He cannot dictate anything," said Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, director of the Persian Studies Center at the University of Maryland. The Iranian president was introduced Monday as a "petty and cruel dictator" by the president of Columbia University, which had been pressured not to let him speak at the New York City campus.

"Technically, he is a nobody in Iran's system, but he likes to make inflammatory comments," said Bijan Ganji, an Iranian-born law student at George Washington University. "He has nothing to say on the issues that really matter to most Iranians: human rights, the lack of political and social freedoms inside Iran. It's especially hard for us here, because we have to keep explaining why we have such a pathetically embarrassing president."

There are thousands of Iranian Americans in the Washington area, many of whom are exiles who fled after the Shiite revolution of 1979. They include surgeons, lawyers, developers and carpet importers. Some are monarchists who long for the return of the pro-Western Pahlavi dynasty, some are secular progressives and others are devout Shiites who think women should be covered in public.

But none of those interviewed yesterday expressed support for Ahmadinejad, 51, a layman with anti-Western views who was elected two years ago on a populist platform. His post is subordinate to those of the country's senior Shiite leader and his clerical advisers. He has called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" and has denied that millions of Jews were killed by the Nazis. He has strongly asserted Iran's right to develop nuclear power for peaceful purposes, but U.S. officials fear that Iran has military nuclear ambitions.

This week, instead of using his U.S. appearances to repudiate his more provocative comments, Ahmadinejad either repeated or softened them. He also provoked more incredulity by denying that there are homosexuals in Iran.

"He had a chance to show a different face of the Iranian government, but he missed the opportunity," said Sam Khazai, a developer in Northern Virginia who moved to the United States from Tehran in 1984. But Khazai, like other emigres, also said it was a mistake for several of Ahmadinejad's hosts and interviewers in the United States to present him with a "laundry list of charges made by the Bush administration," as if they were speaking for the government.

Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council in Washington, said the hostile atmosphere surrounding Ahmadinejad's visit has been "very counterproductive because it enables him to play the victim card and present himself as a defender of freedom of expression. We need to have dialogue with Iran over serious issues, not the kind of exchange that fuels polarization and becomes a game of insults," Parsi said.

Some Iranian American scholars, puzzling over the president's comments on homosexuality, said Persian culture has historically included the practice of powerful men who keep young boys for sex but are not considered gay. But younger Iranian Americans said there is a gay culture in today's Iran, although it is suppressed by Shiite authorities.

"He probably meant to say that there are pedophiles in Iran but that the country does not recognize homosexuality as an orientation," Karimi-Hakkak surmised. He said Ahmadinejad is unable to relate to such contemporary issues. "He is a genuinely premodern man in postmodern circumstances," Karimi-Hakkak said.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/25/AR2007092502448.html
"I love WikiLeaks." - Donald Trump, October 2016

Christians4LessGvt

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 11139
    • View Profile
    • "The Religion Of Peace"
  • Liked:
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Dinner with Ahmadinejad
« Reply #3 on: September 26, 2007, 01:50:47 PM »


"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" - Ronald Reagan - June 12, 1987

yellow_crane

  • Guest
Re: Dinner with Ahmadinejad
« Reply #4 on: September 26, 2007, 02:08:28 PM »
I read an article in this morning's paper that the Iranian people - even those opposed to Ahmadinejad - are surprised at his reception here. This isn't the same article, but popped up on the internet search, and makes some of the same points.

D.C. Area Iranians Criticize Reception Of Ahmadinejad
Hostility Counterproductive, Some Say

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 26, 2007; Page A11


' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' '



"I agree that Ahmadinejad is a despicable human being, but he is not a dictator. He cannot dictate anything," said Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, director of the Persian Studies Center at the University of Maryland. The Iranian president was introduced Monday as a "petty and cruel dictator" by the president of Columbia University, which had been pressured not to let him speak at the New York City campus.
 


This then begs several questions.

If he is not a dictator, why did the president of this prestigious university call him one?  

Is it that Columbia's president is a not an academic, but is instead, like University of South Florida's president Judy Genshaft, a bitch of the shark frenzy business world, appointed by Jeb Bush in accordance with Neocon plans to roust our universities of academics and intellectuals and replace them with rightwing CEO types?  

Or is it that he was just ignorant of the facts, and became a parrot of propaganda?  Talk about negative role-modelling for university students--it's president inaccurate in fact because of loose-cannon zeal.  It is one thing to censure him for bellying-up to the berserker Sharon Jews, a theory to which I subscribe, but is quite another thing for him to become a witting but careless clone for Neocon spin.

I think it simply reveals to the incredible extent of just how gullible MOST Americans are to the political truths of the world.  It is disturbing that the president of a leading university is not beyond rightwing spin and is unable to be more accurate than Sean Hannity in describing the leaders of the world.

I have another question of the president of Columbia:

Many say that Ahmadinejad is simply a powerless puppet in his government:  is he more or less a puppet in his government than George W. Bush is in his?





Henny

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1075
    • View Profile
  • Liked:
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Dinner with Ahmadinejad
« Reply #5 on: September 26, 2007, 02:27:08 PM »
This then begs several questions.

If he is not a dictator, why did the president of this prestigious university call him one?  

Is it that Columbia's president is a not an academic, but is instead, like University of South Florida's president Judy Genshaft, a bitch of the shark frenzy business world, appointed by Jeb Bush in accordance with Neocon plans to roust our universities of academics and intellectuals and replace them with rightwing CEO types?  

Or is it that he was just ignorant of the facts, and became a parrot of propaganda?  Talk about negative role-modelling for university students--it's president inaccurate in fact because of loose-cannon zeal.  It is one thing to censure him for bellying-up to the berserker Sharon Jews, a theory to which I subscribe, but is quite another thing for him to become a witting but careless clone for Neocon spin.

I think it simply reveals to the incredible extent of just how gullible MOST Americans are to the political truths of the world.  It is disturbing that the president of a leading university is not beyond rightwing spin and is unable to be more accurate than Sean Hannity in describing the leaders of the world.

I have another question of the president of Columbia:

Many say that Ahmadinejad is simply a powerless puppet in his government:  is he more or less a puppet in his government than George W. Bush is in his?

I think he was under immense pressure from "the powers that be" both inside of Columbia and out. He wasn't going to revoke the invitation again, but he had to say something to make it look better. I imagined Bollinger taking Ahmadinejad aside and saying, "Man, I'm sorry, but I've got to say this about you..."

sirs

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 27078
    • View Profile
  • Liked:
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Dinner with Ahmadinejad
« Reply #6 on: September 26, 2007, 02:46:53 PM »
I think he was under immense pressure from "the powers that be" both inside of Columbia and out. He wasn't going to revoke the invitation again, but he had to say something to make it look better. I imagined Bollinger taking Ahmadinejad aside and saying, "Man, I'm sorry, but I've got to say this about you..."

That I'd thoroughly agree with
"The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal." -- Aristotle

yellow_crane

  • Guest
Re: Dinner with Ahmadinejad
« Reply #7 on: September 26, 2007, 03:14:36 PM »
This then begs several questions.

If he is not a dictator, why did the president of this prestigious university call him one?  

Is it that Columbia's president is a not an academic, but is instead, like University of South Florida's president Judy Genshaft, a bitch of the shark frenzy business world, appointed by Jeb Bush in accordance with Neocon plans to roust our universities of academics and intellectuals and replace them with rightwing CEO types?  

Or is it that he was just ignorant of the facts, and became a parrot of propaganda?  Talk about negative role-modelling for university students--it's president inaccurate in fact because of loose-cannon zeal.  It is one thing to censure him for bellying-up to the berserker Sharon Jews, a theory to which I subscribe, but is quite another thing for him to become a witting but careless clone for Neocon spin.

I think it simply reveals to the incredible extent of just how gullible MOST Americans are to the political truths of the world.  It is disturbing that the president of a leading university is not beyond rightwing spin and is unable to be more accurate than Sean Hannity in describing the leaders of the world.

I have another question of the president of Columbia:

Many say that Ahmadinejad is simply a powerless puppet in his government:  is he more or less a puppet in his government than George W. Bush is in his?

I think he was under immense pressure from "the powers that be" both inside of Columbia and out. He wasn't going to revoke the invitation again, but he had to say something to make it look better. I imagined Bollinger taking Ahmadinejad aside and saying, "Man, I'm sorry, but I've got to say this about you..."



I see you trying to rescue Bollinger.

But, suppose you imagine correctly--it hardly redeems Bollinger.  One turd dropped directly on top another.  Imagine the slouch he would posture in saying such a thing.

This seems to echo the plight of Colin Powell.  In going before the UN, Powell too caved to rightwing pressure to present the Neocon truth rather than the real truth. 

I would venture that the fate of the two is much the same--thoroughly discredited in the eye of the world despite the rescuers.

The guy or lass I am looking for is the one who, when presented with this package, instructs the would-be pressurer to place the lie where the sun don't shine.

These people have to stand up and rebel against this insidious pressure--the rightwing Neocon pressure here at home and the one extended from Tel Aviv . . . come to think of it, why should I separate them?

Henny

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1075
    • View Profile
  • Liked:
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Dinner with Ahmadinejad
« Reply #8 on: September 26, 2007, 03:18:30 PM »
I see you trying to rescue Bollinger.

But, suppose you imagine correctly--it hardly redeems Bollinger.  One turd dropped directly on top another.  Imagine the slouch he would posture in saying such a thing.

This seems to echo the plight of Colin Powell.  In going before the UN, Powell too caved to rightwing pressure to present the Neocon truth rather than the real truth. 

I would venture that the fate of the two is much the same--thoroughly discredited in the eye of the world despite the rescuers.

The guy or lass I am looking for is the one who, when presented with this package, instructs the would-be pressurer to place the lie where the sun don't shine.

These people have to stand up and rebel against this insidious pressure--the rightwing Neocon pressure here at home and the one extended from Tel Aviv . . . come to think of it, why should I separate them?

Actually, I was not trying to rescue Bollinger. Somehow, this scenario seems even worse than if he honestly meant what he said.

gipper

  • Guest
Re: Dinner with Ahmadinejad
« Reply #9 on: September 26, 2007, 03:33:47 PM »
What, praytell, is the "truth" about Ahamdinejad that you so covet and complain? It seems to me that in an extremely awkward moment Bollinger found an extremely awkward way out, but one that he had to traverse. Making scapegoats of Jews in this day and age on the heels of the worst atrocity in human history is simply damnable, viewed from a rightie or a leftie perspective.

Michael Tee

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 12605
    • View Profile
  • Liked:
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Dinner with Ahmadinejad
« Reply #10 on: September 26, 2007, 03:41:57 PM »
gipper, "scapegoating" is what happens when innocents are picked on and made responsible for things they had nothing to do with.  Fortunately for the Jews and perhaps unfortunately for some others, they are no longer innocent and powerless bystanders but players and actors who have a lot of guns and muscle and have done stuff that might legitimately be resented by lots of people.  I'm against scapegoating but I don't think their former victim status gives them a Get Out of Jail Free card.

gipper

  • Guest
Re: Dinner with Ahmadinejad
« Reply #11 on: September 26, 2007, 04:03:02 PM »
Nor does it give any opponent a "distort-with-impunity" card.

Michael Tee

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 12605
    • View Profile
  • Liked:
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Dinner with Ahmadinejad
« Reply #12 on: September 26, 2007, 04:10:43 PM »
If anybody's views are being distorted, it's Ahmadinejad's, by the Western MSM.  That "wipe Israel off the map" thing is still being attributed to him, despite Juan Cole and others pointing out that "erased from the pages of history," a more passive vision and less violent vision of Israel's ultimate fate, is the better translation.  Similarly, the "Holocaust denier" label seems to be a very simplistic label to apply to him, when his views on the subject appear now to be more nuanced.

I have a lot of problems with him and the regime that he represents, but I don't think that unconditional demonization is the answer.  I think we oughtta listen to him a little more carefully and respectfully.

gipper

  • Guest
Re: Dinner with Ahmadinejad
« Reply #13 on: September 26, 2007, 04:19:54 PM »
You're setting up strawmen, Tee, and I'll have none of it. Additionally, your nuances, in context or out, are absurd. I have no interest in distorting anything about the Middle East, but downplaying the very existence of the Shoah is the worst kind of demagouery. There are villains here (including Germany and Christian Europe) who have not been called to account in any meaningful way, there are victims turned defenders and aggressors (the Israelis) and there are victims turned terrorists the Palestinians), all three groups hanging onto jaded views of history protecting their prerogatives when history has passed them by. It's a mess, and Ahamdinejad makes it considerably messier, invoking hate not compassion and reason.

Henny

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1075
    • View Profile
  • Liked:
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Dinner with Ahmadinejad
« Reply #14 on: September 26, 2007, 04:54:17 PM »
What, praytell, is the "truth" about Ahamdinejad that you so covet and complain? It seems to me that in an extremely awkward moment Bollinger found an extremely awkward way out, but one that he had to traverse. Making scapegoats of Jews in this day and age on the heels of the worst atrocity in human history is simply damnable, viewed from a rightie or a leftie perspective.

I should rephrase my statement.

I meant that I believed Bollinger to be disingenious in his opening remarks.