Hypocrisy at its Best

Mahmoud wants to lay a wreath at the WTC in honor of the 9/11 victims.

I almost fell out of my chair after reading this one.



news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070920/ap_on_re_us/ahmadinejad_ground_zero



This is the same as going into a blind rampage of killing innocents and going "whoooops did I do that?" after they're all dead.



What an amazing manipulator this man is. He's better than Bush and his delusions about the war in Iraq.

SANCTIONS NOW

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/05/24/iran.nuclear.ap/index.html

Forget rhetoric. There are lunatics manipulating operations in Iran. This has Ahmadinejad's extremist mastermind plan written all over it.

This man clearly has propaganda proliferation down to a science. Recently he started threatening that if Israel were to attack Lebanon, then he would send orders to rain destruction on Israel. Where did he start this new assumption? Israel has been retaliating with aerial assaults in Gaza due to recent attacks from Palestine and all of a sudden he's getting defensive on Lebanon. Yet another tangent ladies and gentlemen.

Isn't it SO obvious?

http://www.swissinfo.org/eng/international/ticker/detail/IAEA_says_Iran_building_up_atom_programme.html?siteSect=143&sid=7851435&cKey=1179932009000

Obvious to sum up that this could be where Iran is headed..destruction. I still hope that sanctions will wake up the entire country and get off Ahmadinejad's tainted agenda but is it enough?

This is scary stuff.

What for democracy?

Here's what it comes down to. In a year, America will be electing a new president. This president will bear the biggest burden of responsibility in easing the country out of this huge mess in the Middle East. More soldiers will die, more people will die and oil prices will fluctuate like a mother. Americans will get blamed more. And for what. It's sad that our country is in this mess that's been going on for centuries. And it's substantially more tragic to see the reality that a majority in the Middle East still just can't hold their peace. Do the Iraqi majority really want democracy? Seems like for a time, Saddam Hussein had sectarian violence fractionally under control. But he was a dictator and did get his hands bloodied by killing many innocents while in the process of quelling unrest. Now that he's gone and the U.S. military has gotten involved, we might as well have painted bullseyes on our soldiers' foreheads. Look at Lebanon. After 20 years, they're at it again. Last summer's war is proof that there are more people living there who have no strength in upholding economic or social progress, undecided and at the brink of another civil war. Two years after Hariri's murder, their government is deadlocked into moving towards a tribunal that was supposed to prosecute those involved in his untimely demise. Let's see what it's government and divided people will do next to set the country back another twenty years when elections come around. As for Palestine, Hamas and Fatah just broke their truce again. So far eighteen Palestinian people died after three days of fighting and Israel was also taunted into this clash by causing an airstrike since it took place along their border. People here are so disillusioned that it's futile to hope that this eye for an eye strategy is clearly doing excessive damage. This is not a holy war. This is about power and the use of religion to proliferate propaganda over nothing more than a struggle to shift power to other selfish politicians. Sad it is that Bush and Cheney arethe worst people to carry out diplomatic missions on our behalf but one thing's for sure. These men don't have a mind sick as that of Ahmadinejad who will twist things around to benefit his agenda. Yes, his agenda. What makes me so ill that the Muslim community is blind to his politics. Doesnt anyone see his predominantly Shiite agenda? He is Shiite, people. Who doesnt see Iran's involvement in smuggling arms to Iraqi insurgents and to Hezbollah(who are predominantly Shiite) in Lebanon? Iraq's future will literally disintegrate if it fails to make a decision on its alliances. They dont have to love Americans; they just have to understand that we are not out to get them the way Iran has plans to manipulate and conquer them. I dont see Iran proactively helping to quell the violence in Iraq. Did they deploy troops trying to quell the sectarian divide? NO. This concludes my latest entry. No disrespect to Shiites on my last comment. But anyone like Ahmadinejad who has a lofty agenda and is Shiite is highly likely to take advantage of his religious status to gain votes. In the end, if Shiites continue to follow him blindly, they'll realize he is no longer the man for the masses like he originally claimed.

Iranian-American Investigated and Detained in Tehran

Esfandiari is an academic for pete's sake and visited her old mother occasionally. How more extreme do acts have to get before Iranians wake up to the reality that their government is treading into far worse levels of extremism? http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/05/15/iran.academic.reut/index.html

They are at it again

Hezbollah builds a Western base
Link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17874369/

This is just another example of sickness corrupting the minds of frustrated Lebanese. This has Iran's involvement all over it. But I wouldnt stop to limit just them or Shia Muslims. The ambiguity of Lebanon's societal makeup increasingly covers the tracks of where these generally prejudiced bastards come from. You'll see them from those who immigrated back in the 80s to escape civil war and who still harbor the bitterness of leaving their motherland. No one told them to leave and yet they blame others instead of facing their conscience and defending their own country. Where's the nationalism in that?

Sanctions now

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6538957.stm

Why wait until the end of May? They can continue to increase nuclear fuel production but the U.N. member countries need to apply sanctions now. Who ever said it was easy dealing with people who are out of touch with reality? This isnt about the West anymore, this is about insane political deviants who are blowing things out of proportion and shifting attention towards themselves because of past grievances and more importantly because of extremist sectarian issues that have nothing to do with the welfare of its people anymore. If Iran really wanted peace defying other possible resolutions and suppressing its society is not the way to prove it.

300

Iran is angry. Again. At Hollywood, at the U.S, at anyone. This is a movie people. If anything shouldnt they be angry with the Greeks who came out looking noble in this depiction of the battle at Thermopylae? It's not the point. This is a movie. But I suppose anything to point fingers at the U.S. ... Here's a thought. You dont like it? Dont watch it. Tell your other friends. And let them make their own decision. It's called freedom of speech.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17599641/?GT1=9145

Iran aiding Lebanon and Sectarian alliances

Came across this article on Time. Yes it's several months old but it's kick-you-in-the-head great to read how hypocrisies that Azadeh writes about dont get published in mainstream news often enough.

So where do Iranians and Lebanese stand? Who knows. There has to be a direction right? Not in the conflict-riddled Middle East. The clear message these days is that sectarian divisions are clearly fueling the fire for more unrest and confusion.

I highlighted my favorite sections..;-)


Thursday, Aug. 31, 2006
The Backlash Against Iran's Role in Lebanon
By Azadeh Moaveni
This is the first installment of Lipstick Jihad, a regular column by Azadeh Moaveni, TIME's Tehran correspondent and author of Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America and American in Iran.
One very early morning this week, the people in my neighborhood who wanted fresh bread for breakfast congregated outside the local bakery, wondering why the doors were locked and the stone oven cold. Fifteen minutes later, when it became clear there would be no bread that day, people began speculating why a bakery that has been open every weekday for literally decades should mysteriously be shut. The small crowd swiftly concluded the worst: the Iranian government had sent all the country's flour to Lebanon.
By noon, when I was up and contemplating a sandwich, word had spread around the neighborhood. Everyone blamed the dearth of fresh bread on the government's over-generous aid to the Shi`ites of Lebanon, displaced in the recent fighting between Israel and Hizballah. I should point out that my neighborhood is split between religious and secular families, and that the most pious of the bread-deprived were just as quick to shake their heads with resentment. No one said "let them eat cake," but it came pretty close.
Two days later, a gleaming new counter arrived outside the bakery. The baker was remodeling, and as far as he knew, there had been no massive delivery of grain to Lebanese Shi`ites. But as is so often the case in such matters, the truth is almost less relevant than what becomes the prevailing belief. That people so readily accepted that their government would forsake their daily loaf for a distant Islamic cause just speaks to the overwhelming bitterness these days in Tehran. Most people are convinced the government is spending outrageous sums on the Lebanese, and ever since the Iranian government declared a "victory" for the militant group Hizballah, rumors of what the Lebanese are 'getting' have been flying. Free SUVs? Plasma televisions? Nothing seems out of the question. Nightly news broadcasts that Iranians watch on their illegal satellite dishes have shown Hizballah doling out thick stacks of cash, courtesy of Iran. "Did you see the cash? They're giving each family ten thousand dollars!" one of my relatives phoned to tell me.
For the majority of Iranians who are barely scraping by, such news is infuriating. In fact, unpopular government spending on a faraway Arab community brings out a rather ugly Persian chauvinism. One story has Mrs. Nasrallah, the wife of Hizballah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, receiving a gift of Iranian caviar, and thinking it some sort of jam. There is no jam that looks like tiny eggs, I told the friend who repeated the story to me. Her look told me I was being obtuse. The fact is, the more President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his government pander to public sentiment in the Arab world, which is ecstatic over Hizballah's defiant stand against Israel, the more Iranians feel neglected.
The government of former President Mohammad Khatami was much more sensitive to Iranians' feelings, in particular their ripe tendency to fume when state money is spent outside Iran's borders. It underplayed the amount of cash and aid Iran pumped into Afghanistan after the removal of the Taliban. As a result, Iranians had no idea that for once, their government played a noble role in rebuilding a war-ruined neighbor. But it also saved them from resentment. Earlier this week, a front page headline in an Iranian newspaper read: "In Arab countries, they call the president Mahmoud." Iknow the president is popular in the Arab world. My Arab friends grin like Cheshire cats when he appears on Al-Jazeera, fire breathing his revulsion for the U.S. But would they like him to appoint him as honorary head of the Arab League? I hardly think so.
The main reason Iranians dislike the government's Islamic generosity is because in general, they believe their leaders use Islam as a cloak for their own economic greed. When police started confiscating illegal satellite dishes earlier this month — ostensibly satellite is banned for its impure Western content — in about two days the whole city knew exactly why. The story went like this: the son of a prominent regime-connected ayatullah had recently begun importing small, laptop-size satellite dishes. If the government rounded up the ungainly, rooftop dishes, and flooded the market with the discreet little one, everyone would be forced to buy the ayatullah's son's dishes. This connection between regime piety and corrupt wealth dominates how Iranians see the world — the little events that transpire in their daily lives, from bread shortages to satellite raids.


Find this article at:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1515755,00.html

Obvious viewpoints that dont get enough press

-Religious propaganda in the Middle East has long gone out of control.
-Iran and Syria are Hezbollah's puppet masters.
-Syria is involved in Lebanon's political turmoil.
-Lebanon is just as involved and responsible for its own political turmoil.
-Conflicts in Lebanon are largely about ethnic origin, not just land.
-Lebanon is likely to turn into a Shia Muslim majority constituency.
-Iraq is in a state of civil war.
-Lebanon could revert back to civil war if the people dont take responsibility for their own weaknesses in establishing a more cohesive message.
-U.S.'s level of involvement in Iraq could have been executed differently but now that they're in deep, there's no turning back.
-Many people criticizing the U.S. for their involvement in the Middle East, are from the Middle East and comfortably living in the U.S.
-While Iran criticizes the U.S. for its 'Western' culture, lack of religion and political agenda in the Middle East, many of its own people are suffering from secular and gender discrimination and are cloaked in secrecy over their own involvement with countries like Lebanon and Syria.

Dear Mahmoud

Good gosh. If there was a contest on how to best execute a tangent it would have to go Iran's President Ahmadejinad.
After writing an 18-page letter in May to his friend G.W.B. , he writes yet another letter stating again not only the obvious in the Middle East but this time he additionally mentions that many victims of Hurricane Katrina are still suffering and that there are countless more living in homelessness and poverty. Duh?
Big Duh. Coming from the same guy who says the Holocaust never happened and that Israelis should be wiped off the face of this earth, it's hardly reasonable to accept such a comment of concern for people coming from a man of harsh words. And the tangent, WOW. The gist of his letter was to point out that supposedly the U.S. governs from coercion.
Two things. First of all, compared to Iran, the U.S. is far from governing from coercion given that people can vote without fear of persecution, and that there are hardly issues where education is stifled because of radical views of religion. And if Ahmadejinad were griping about how the U.S. wants to stifle its nuclear program, it's because there are reasons to suspect its activities. Second, how does pointing out poverty and homelessness drive to the point that the U.S. runs its government with an iron fist? These are issues of neglect at best and even if it's glaringly obvious that more could have been done in the aftermath of Katrina, his comment is so far fetched that it just reflects how he's been taking cheap shots at criticizing the U.S. on anything he can find. Bush is no phenomenal speaker either so any response on our end could very well come out looking like a petty squabble between an old married couple.