quote:

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Asked what it would take to begin talks to resolve the standoff, Ahmadinejad told the station Iran was "ready to engage in dialogue with anybody."

"But if someone points a weapon at your face and says you must speak, will you do that?"

Ahmadinejad also continued his verbal attacks on Israel — last year he said the Jewish state should be "wiped off the map" and questioned whether the Holocaust was a myth — calling it a "a tyrannical regime that one day will be destroyed."

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Juan Cole already deconstructed this meme that has been repeated ad nauseam in the media to the point where it has become fact. The actual quote is is quite different:

quote:

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The misquotation of Ahmadinejad, who actually quoted Khomeini as saying, "This occupation regime over Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time," now seems all by itself to be producing visions of nuclear war!

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Rather he was saying that the Zionist regime should vanish one day, just as did the Soviet Union. As his letter made clear, he wasn't talking about the people, but about the regime.

quote:

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He repeated earlier allegations that European countries were driven by anti-Semitism when they decided after the Holocaust to establish a Jewish state in the midst of Muslim countries. They wanted the Jews out of their own backyard, he said, and by surrounding them with their enemies paved the way for their ultimate destruction.

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As he sees it, he can't fathom why the Palestinians had to suffer because of Europe's genocide.

quote:

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Originally posted by ohara:
Ya I think we should all trust Ahmedinejad. After all he is just a bit odd and certainly does not want to nuke Israel only the Zionist entity. It amazes me what some people will choose to believe.

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quote:

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Originally posted by ohara:
Ya I think we should all trust Ahmedinejad. After all he is just a bit odd and certainly does not want to nuke Israel only the Zionist entity. It amazes me what some people will choose to believe.

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What? Like Ahmedinejad is a homicidal maniac who would waste his nukes on Israel the minute he got them?

quote:

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Originally posted by Papal Bull:
You mean Russia, right? It has more warheads than all of the other nations (plus USA) combined. The United States just have the majority of their 9000 or so warheads armed. The Russian Federation has about 1/3 of their estimated 15'000+ weapons armed.

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I guess the numbers I saw were armed. Thanks for the info, but I think the question still stands. We don't assume Russia is going to nuke anyone. Why should we assume Iran is going to?

[ 13 May 2006: Message edited by: B.L. Zeebub LLD ]

quote:

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Originally posted by B.L. Zeebub LLD:
Only one state has ever used atomic weapons against civilian or military targets. That state still has more atomic weapons than all other states combined, and yet we don't seem to worry that they are going to nuke everyone they have a beef with. Are Americans more rational than Iranians?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Boom Boom:

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Wasn't there something in the news recently about the USA threatening to use nuclear 'bunker busters' against underground Iranian nuclear facilities?

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There was no specific threat. As I recall, the prospect that Pentagon planners had considered it (you always consider everything you are capable of in military planning) was raised by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker. Hersh downplayed the possibility, and it was suggested that military planners rejected the idea based on the overall balance of risks and rewards while the White House didn't want to take it off the table. Furthermore, significant allies such as Britain (also nuclear-capable) called the idea "preposterous".

From where I'm sitting, there have been any number of threats to the United States far greater than a non-nuclear capable Iran (which is the status-quo) and nuclear weapons have never been used. The notion that they are deranged enough to toss a nuke into the middle of the Muslim world seems a little far-fetched to me. These guys like to seem crazy, but in the end, much of what they do is carefully calculated.

So it looks like theatre to me, but do you believe they would? Why or why not?

[ 13 May 2006: Message edited by: B.L. Zeebub LLD ]

quote:

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Originally posted by nister:
Would you applaud formal dialogue between Iran and America, ohara?

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Edited to add: or maybe Iran's nut is only a nut because he is all talk and no actio while the Israeis are actively engaged in ethnic cleansing.

[ 13 May 2006: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

quote:

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In the last week of April 1948, combined Irgun-Haganah forces launched an offensive to drive the Palestinian people out of the beautiful port city of Jaffa, forcing the remaining inhabitants to flee by sea; many drowned in the process. My aunt Rose, a teenager at that time, survived the trip to begin her life in exile on the Lebanese coast. Each Palestinian refugee family grows up hearing again and again the stories of those final moments in Palestine, the decisions, the panic, as we live in the midst of their terrible consequences.

Throughout 1948, Jewish forces expelled many thousands of Palestinians from their villages, towns and cities into Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of others fled in fear. The purpose was to create a pure Jewish state, ethnically cleansed of the original inhabitants who had lived there for centuries. The creation of the state of Israel was the heart of this cataclysmic historical event for the Palestinians - the mass forced expulsion of a people; the more than 50 massacres carried out over the summer of 1948 by various armed Jewish forces; the demolition of villages to ensure the refugees could not return - all this is summed up in a single word for Palestinians: nakba, the catastophe.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1773020,00.html

And how about today?

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With this report, Israel would have committed 37036 violations of the ceasefire declared by Palestinian factions in February 8, 2005. During these violations, Israeli forces killed 276 Palestinians and injured 1822 as well as establishing 6160 roadblocks, arresting 6480 citizens and expropriating 36,411 dunums of Palestinian-owned lands for the sake of constructing the Apartheid Wall, while settlers assaulted Palestinians during this period 685 times.

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http://www.ipc.gov.ps/ipc_new/english/details.asp?name=15928

And more:

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Hunger and poverty have descended on the West Bank where Palestinians are struggling to survive as financial curbs imposed on the Hamas-led government make it harder for families to put food on the table.

Many Palestinians are resorting to strict measures like baking their own bread.

One woman, Hind Ahmad, is a school principal who has not been paid her $450 a month salary in more than two months. She bakes bread for her family in a makeshift clay oven in her yard.

"I have to use this primitive method to save money and feed my children," she said, her face flushing red and hot as she leans down to shove dough into the flaming oven.

"Every time I bake bread, my face turns as red as a tomato, not to mention being tired from inhaling the smoke."

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http://www.knx1070.com/pages/34906.php

And for what? Believing the Israeli and US lies about democracy. That'll teach 'em.

And on that, of course, there is this:

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Danny Rubenstein, Haaretz's veteran West Bank correspondent, notes a perhaps unanticipated result of the Bush administration's campaign for democracy in the Arab world. The Bush policy to starve Hamas financially is tacitly supported by unelected Arab regimes resisting Bush's calls for democratization.

"In their view, the successful functioning of the Hamas government sends a message of encouragement to opposition groups in their countries, proof that an Islamic government can rule," Rubenstein says.

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As though those Arab states had any real fear about the US exporting democracy. Silly dictators.

Oh, I forgot about this:

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Some 46 percent of Israel's Jewish citizens favor transferring Palestinians out of the territories, while 31 percent favor transferring Israeli Arabs out of the country, according to the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies' annual national security public opinion poll.

In 1991, 38 percent of Israel's Jewish population was in favor of transferring the Palestinians out of the territories while 24 percent supported transferring Israeli Arabs.

When the question of transfer was posed in a more roundabout way, 60 percent of respondents said that they were in favor of encouraging Israeli Arabs to leave the country. The results of the survey also reveal that 24 percent of Israel's Jewish citizens believe that Israeli Arabs are not loyal to the state, compared to 38 percent who think the Arabs were loyal to the state at the beginning of the intifada.

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Haaretz

Transfer. What a nice way to say ethnically cleanse.

[ 13 May 2006: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

quote:

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Originally posted by ohara:
I would urge you to cut the rhetotic. As bad as the situation may be in the PA to suugest what you have is basically ridiculous. Yes there will be those of like mind that will cling to your position but the vast majority will never compare Israel to Iran. They know better.

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The pot is drunk and calling the kettle names again, I see.

One thing is true, it really is "ridiculous" to compare the empty threats of Ahmedinejad to the concrete reality of Israel's ethnic cleansing and oppression of the Palestinians. I mean, the two aren't even in the same moral universe.

[ 13 May 2006: Message edited by: B.L. Zeebub LLD ]

We know the War Party is jiggy with others doing the actual fighting, but he could at least weasel out in the first person.

[Sorry to hijack the thread]

quote:

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Originally posted by nister:
I'm taking your response to be "no talks", ohara, if you're able to read this with black
eyes.

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[ 13 May 2006: Message edited by: ohara ]

The Man from the Middle Ages: Michael Steinberg

quote:

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Some people knew exactly what to think about the letter Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent to U.S. President George W. Bush. Since they had already pegged Ahmadinejad as a Holocaust-denying, Israel-threatening, nuke-hungry lunatic, it was no stretch to see the letter as exactly the sort of thing a Holocaust-denying, Israel-threatening, nuke-hungry lunatic would write, even though it didn't deny the Holocaust, threaten Israel, or announce an intention to build nuclear weapons.

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_________________________________________
note: I've seen several spellings: ahmadinejad, ahmedinejad and the punctuation that I've used but "Ahi(whatever)" is a pretty revealing misspelling.

[ 13 May 2006: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]

quote:

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Tlaks as soosn as Ahi(whatever)like Fatah recognizes Irsael's right to exist as a Jewish state.

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The answer to that question would be amusing, that is, if the current consequences of what is considered Israel and what is not considered Israel for the Palestinians weren't so horrifying. I'm thinking, of course, of the 64 or so "Bantustans" in the West Bank that are impossible to administer by a truly independent Palestinian Authority.

Either on this thread or elsewhere I have dug up some comments about Ahmadi-Nejad by the left in Iran that make it clear that it is his administration that they associate with the death, by torture, of Canadian journalist Zahra Kazemi. Furthermore, the left consider many of the public statements by Ahmadi-Nejad (related to Israel) to be highly dangerous for their country and if Ahmadi-Nejad didn't deny the Holocaust, threaten Israel or look to develop nuclear weapons this time around he has certainly crossed the line in the past.

[ 14 May 2006: Message edited by: Papal Bull ]

But, we have to keep his threats in context, and honestly assess their merit. Iran doesn't even have nuclear weapons, and there is no convincing evidence that they are even close to having them. There is no logical reason to suspect that Iran wants nuclear weapons solely to attack Israel at the first possible moment, thereby assuring their own swift destruction. And yet the hysterics of the pro-Israel crowd are deafening. Why? In hopes of averting our attention from the crimes against the Palestinians and refocussing it on the supposed victimhood of Israel.

One might also wonder if all this noise is because Israeli officials see themselves in Iran's nuclear aspirations? They know better than anyone that Tehran's contention that they desire nuclear technology for non-military purposes is a sham to cover up a secret military nuclear program. Israel has their own secret nuclear weapons program, already operational and currently threatening their neighbours, including Iran. Guilty consciences tend to scream loudest, in my experience. Israel knows better than anyone the power of a nuclear arsenal and -- in good ol' Realist terms -- fear a threat to their own military dominance which is (in Middle Eastern terms at least) currently unchallenged. This military dominance is what - in part - protects their oppression of the Palestinians, and concomitant territorial expansion, from scrutiny. Their entire colonial project paradoxically hinges on keeping the natives from coming out of the same supposed techno-cultural "backwardness" that critics of Arab and Islamic society decry at regular intervals in their defense of Israeli crimes. The story is old and hackneyed: hate them for being primitive, but make every effort to keep them that way.

So what they fear is not the threat to their mere existence, but to their existence as the most technologically advanced military power in the region. They are cynically using the familiar trope of anti-semitic victimhood as a cover for old-fashioned raison d'etat. And what better cover could there be?

[ 14 May 2006: Message edited by: B.L. Zeebub LLD ]

quote:

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Originally posted by B.L. Zeebub LLD:

But, we have to keep his threats in context, and honestly assess their merit.

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