Ahmadinejad NY speech

[DKW 86 7,444]

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N24285534.htm

"We aint got no queers..."

NEW YORK, Sept 24 (Reuters) - Vilified as a Holocaust denier, a supporter of terrorism and a backer of Iraqi insurgents, the president of Iran was actually able to make New Yorkers burst into laughter -- but not at a joke.

"In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said at Columbia University on Monday in response to a question about the recent execution of two gay men there.

"In Iran we do not have this phenomenon," he continued. "I do not know who has told you we have it."

Loud laughs and boos broke from the audience of about 700 people, mostly students at the Ivy League school whose garb included "Stop Ahmadinejad's Evil" T-shirts

Excuse me if I dont hold my breath waiting for the lib-gay community to decry him. I bet they dont say a word. I read the Du for verification. The stuff was too ignorant to post. They tried to counter that

1) Ahmadinejad didnt mean what he said...predictable

2) That they only oppose men in femme roles in Iran. All evidence to the contrary.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070925/D8RS6TN80.html

Denies Holocaust

NEW YORK (AP) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defended Holocaust revisionists and raised questions about who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks in a tense showdown Monday at Columbia University, where the school's head introduced the hard-line leader by calling him a "petty and cruel dictator."

Ahmadinejad portrayed himself as an intellectual and argued that his administration respected reason and science. But the former engineering professor, appearing shaken and irate over he called "insults" from his host, soon found himself drawn into the type of rhetoric that has alienated American audiences in the past.

...

"You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated," Bollinger told Ahmadinejad about the leader's Holocaust denial. "Will you cease this outrage?"

[AURaptor 1,126]

And the Left still thinks Bush is the big, bad evil in the world ??

[WAR EAGLE!!! 0]

I still don't understand why he was brought in to speak. I know it is a leftist "if we can show we love everyone and we are open minded, they won't be so mean and hate us" tactic...but why does the host insult him immediately? I just don't understand what the point of him speaking to a university was?!?

[DKW 86 7,444]

I still don't understand why he was brought in to speak. I know it is a leftist "if we can show we love everyone and we are open minded, they won't be so mean and hate us" tactic...but why does the host insult him immediately? I just don't understand what the point of him speaking to a university was?!?

Free speech is a bitch. It cuts both ways. I know I have been flamed by Tex a few times in this forum. But he has forced me to look harder at my own believes and to check my facts much better. I bet he would say the same too. Free speech is the freedom to ardently disagree, without violence. Now watch as the President of Columbia dies a violent death a week from now...

[tiger88 934]

To the educated he revealed his backwards thoughts and inadequacy to lead anyone including himself. The question is will he be able to use this appearance to bolster his image among the uneducated back in his home?

To clarify, thats not a knock on Iranians and middle easterners, but a knock on the backwards thinking segments of those communities.

[autiger4life 3]

Bollinger said those arguing that the event should never have taken place were “reasonable.” He insisted, however, that the event had nothing to do with the “rights of the speaker”—who he termed “a petty and cruel dictator”—but was rather motivated by the maxim that “one should know thine enemies” and should “have the intellectual and emotional courage to confront the mind of evil.”

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/sep2007/iran-s25.shtml

[CircleDrill 178]

I still don't understand why he was brought in to speak. I know it is a leftist "if we can show we love everyone and we are open minded, they won't be so mean and hate us" tactic...but why does the host insult him immediately? I just don't understand what the point of him speaking to a university was?!?

I don't know if it was indeed a leftist tactic, but I think the outcome has been one that favors President Bush. People have heard so much mundane crap in the news for so long about how "the reason other nations hate us is because we are bad" and if we don't strike against anyone, then there will be all this peace, love and prosperity in the world.

The main problem with this way of thinking is that it means you think everything revolves around you, as if everyone in the world wants to please you. If you don't bother them, then they will do the right things and they won't bother you. We saw this is not true when they crashed airplanes into our buildings, killing 3,000 people just because they went to work one day.

It's interesting to get a chance to hear from the horse's mouth that he doesn't care what we do, he's going to pursue his own course of action, no matter what. Sanction him, talk to him, do what you will. The only way to deal with somebody like this is at the most basic level.