Bloodthirsty Liberal

Editor’s note: The correct translation of the protest chant quoted below should read “Death to the snot-nosed, punk-ass, shrimp of a dictator with smelly armpits and holey underwear.!”

SPIEGEL: Ayatollah Kadivar, what did Hossein Ali Montazeri mean to you, and what role did he play for the Iranian people?

Kadivar: He was my teacher, my spiritual guide, my father — the most important person in my life. I studied as a young man under him when he was the Revolutionary Leader’s deputy. I admired the way he fought along side Khomeini, but then also for his candid criticism of him. I cried when Khomeini repudiated him. For Iran, Grand Ayatollah Montazeri was a true beacon of light and, in the end, a spiritual leader for the green opposition.

SPIEGEL: The authorities prevented independent media coverage of his funeral. People spoke of a provocation and rioting. What really happened last Monday in Qom?

Kadivar: My relatives were part of the funeral procession, which included hundreds of thousands of people, including a nephew of Khomeini’s. From them I know that the Basij militias attempted to provoke peaceful mourners to commit violence. They didn’t do them this favor. But they did shout out slogans that had never been heard before in Qom, Iran’s most conservative city: “Death to the dictator! Our leader is our shame!” On that day, the people were particularly angry at supreme religious leader Ali Khamenei.

SPIEGEL: Why?

Kadivar: Khamenei said in his message of mourning that Montazeri had failed at a crucial point in his life. Everyone knew that he meant Montazeri’s confrontation with Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic. Khamenei did not speak in the “I” form, but rather in the “we” form, as if he were the voice of Allah on forgiving Montazeri’s mistake in hereafter. That upset people. After all, the mourners said, only God can decide who failed and at which turning point in the Islamic Republic. Khamenei is not God.

SPIEGEL: Montazeri succeeded in recent months in uniting the religious and secular wings of the opposition. Has his death weakened the dissident movement?

Kadivar: The exact opposite is true. The mourning will actually strengthen the opposition’s determination. The Shiite Ashura (a religious holiday to take place on Sunday), which is symbolically about justice, will provide a further boost for the protest. The authorities are not able to ban this ceremony, which coincides with the seventh day after Montazeri’s death.

I’m getting a little tired of waiting for the next Iranian revolution. I’d like it to happen, I think the world desperately needs for it to happen—but I’m not holding my breath.

Hey, maybe President Obama will send in the choppers, like Carter did!

Nah, maybe not.

Close enough:

On Wednesday, November 24, Iranian demands that female nurses don the hijab in response to Iran’s providing $1.2 million for funding of the new El Alto city hospital in Bolivia sparked a national outcry among women’s rights advocates within Bolivia. In an international teleconference in La Paz held between Bolivian President, Evo Morales, and Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to celebrate the hospital’s opening, nurses were shown wearing hijabs as part of their new uniform regulations.

Don’t believe it?

He who pays the piper calls the tune. And Ahmadinejad isn’t likely to call for Feliz Navidad.

Do you know what rhetoric is?

It is language intended to misdirect and disguise—which is why President Obama is so good at it:

On Wednesday, President Obama told the United Nations General Assembly that “if the governments of Iran and North Korea choose to ignore international standards . . . then they must be held accountable. The world must stand together to demonstrate that international law is not an empty promise, and that treaties will be enforced.”

A day later, the president chaired a session of the U.N. Security Council. He turned it into a summit of heads of state and chose the agenda. He insisted — in the words of the advance American “concept paper” — that “The Security Council Summit will focus on nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament broadly and not focus on any specific countries”.

So, he had already named the two worst offenders, but then refused to address their offenses.

Okay, just checking. Next:

Obama pushed hard for the adoption of a new Security Council resolution, which was passed unanimously, and which never mentions Iran or North Korea. Upon pounding the gavel, the president proclaimed:

The resolution we passed today will also strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty [NPT]. We have made it clear that the Security Council has both the authority and the responsibility to respond to violations to this treaty.

…

Let me be clear: This is not about singling out individual nations. . . . [W]e must demonstrate that international law is not an empty promise, and that treaties will be enforced.

However, speaking today in Pittsburgh, Obama admitted that

yesterday in Vienna, the United States, the United Kingdom, and France presented detailed evidence to the IAEA demonstrating that the Islamic Republic of Iran has been building a covert uranium enrichment facility near Qom for several years. …

…

In other words, when President Obama addressed the General Assembly and Security Council he already knew that Iran was ignoring international standards, and its latest violations endangered international peace and security more than ever before. And yet he deliberately refused to put Iran on the agenda of the Council summit — the same Council that he claimed bore responsibility for responding to such threats.

President Obama knew that if the magnitude of the Iranian threat were revealed yesterday, the emptiness of his resolution would have been embarrassingly obvious and his cover blown.

But this makes no sense! I mean, what… how could… who… it just makes no sense!!

Why did the president not present this same evidence to the Security Council, the body with “the authority and the responsibility to respond”? Why did he not challenge world leaders to deal with the same Iranian threat that he privately was pressing upon U.N. bureaucrats?

There is only one possible answer: President Obama does not have the political will to do what it takes to prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb.

Well, that’s not exactly a surprise. But why the airy-fairy platitudes? What does he gain by hiding and ignoring the truth, by putting this country (and a few others) at risk, by this absurd and dangerous buck-and-wing performance?

I thought he wanted to be president. Well, dealing with this s**t not only goes with the job, it is the job. If you won’t do it, kindly do us the favor of driving a car containing you, your VP, the Speaker of the House, the president pro tempore of the Senate, your Secretary of State, and your Secretary of the Treasury off a bridge (your old buddy Ted Kennedy probably mentioned something about it). I have some faith in your Secretary of Defense. Not much, but some.

Because there is still room for truth at the UN:

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen…

Nearly 62 years ago, the United Nations recognized the right of the Jews, an ancient people 3,500 years-old, to a state of their own in their ancestral homeland. I stand here today as the Prime Minister of Israel, the Jewish state, and I speak to you on behalf of my country and my people.

The United Nations was founded after the carnage of World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust. It was charged with preventing the recurrence of such horrendous events. Nothing has undermined that central mission more than the systematic assault on the truth.

Yesterday the President of Iran stood at this very podium, spewing his latest anti-Semitic rants. Just a few days earlier, he again claimed that the Holocaust is a lie.

Last month, I went to a villa in a suburb of Berlin called Wannsee. There, on January 20, 1942, after a hearty meal, senior Nazi officials met and decided how to exterminate the Jewish people. The detailed minutes of that meeting have been preserved by successive German governments.

Here is a copy of those minutes, in which the Nazis issued precise instructions on how to carry out the extermination of the Jews. Is this a lie?

Go read the rest, or watch the clip. I will give this man my bandwidth any time.

Funny, innit, that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Al Franken are confirmed in their respective recounts on the same day.

In both cases, no alleged irregularities were actually discovered to void the elections.

So President Bush has indeed successfully brought American style democracy to the Middle East. Now, if we can only get a little of it back.

Except you can see only one face:

What’s that on your finger, Mr. President? Blood?

And isn’t it sad that even in a corrupt s**t-hole like the Islamic Republic (ha!) of Iran, they make you prove your identity and physically mark you to prevent you from voting more than once?

Here, President Obama deploys his goons before the vote:

Much more efficient, Mahmoud. You might try it next time.

PS: I’m not the only one who finds the phrase “Islamic Republic” an oxymoron:

Iran’s Clarifying Election
No longer can anyone pretend theocracy and democracy are compatible.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a rock star, no doubt about it. Just as Tom Jones, Mick Jagger, and the Beatles used to have adoring fans tossing their frilly undergarments on stage, so too could Mahmoud and the Filthy Microbes open a haberdashery with all the articles of clothing hurled their way:

A shoe was recently hurled at Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad while he was in the city of Urmia, an Iranian Web site has reported.

…

Urmia News, the Iranian site, reported that Ahmadinejad was in a car en route to an election rally when the shoe was thrown. Ahmadinejad was traveling to a local stadium where he was meant to deliver a speech ahead of upcoming presidential elections.

According to the report, a hat was also thrown at the Iranian president before his convoy sped away from the scene.

Please God, let it have been one of these bronzed battleships from Bob Lanier:

It looks like Presidents Bush and Ahmadinejad are not the only ones to be gifted with footwear:

What’s the ideal gift for a basketball-obsessed president? Try a size 23 sneaker personally autographed by Shaquille O’Neal.

What an insult!!!

But I’m with Shaq. Obama is such an unmitigated disaster as president, he can’t have enough shoes thrown his way. (BTW, Kobe Bryant also sent a shoe, but the glass slipper broke in transit.)

Hey Sasquatch! Got any spare wingtips hanging around?

Who you gonna believe Morey Ahmadamsterdam, or your own lyin’ eyes?

Following are excerpts from an interview with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which aired on Channel 1, Iranian TV on December 2, 2008.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: The events of 9/11 were dubious. They served as a pretext to attack Iraq.

[…]

[T]he operation in India was a savage terrorist operation, in which, according to reports, more than 200 people were killed. These people had nothing to do with events [in the region].

…

In my opinion, it must have been planned and carried out by people from out of the region. It is impossible for such acts to have been carried out by people living in the region – whether in Pakistan, India, or Afghanistan. Without a doubt, it was planned from outside.

Of course, he’s not the only one to say so—as we reported yesterday:

We have no doubt this was [the result of] a joint plan by Israelis, Americans and Indians - in other words, this was a joint plan by Western Zionists and Hindu Zionists; in it Israelis are directly involved, there is involvement of Mossad.

Hindu Zionists, hell; I blame the Unitarians. Those bastards are always up to no good.

Finally, Barack Obama throws someone under the bus who deserves to be there:

Since Barack Obama’s victory, the concept of “talking to Iran” has be come Washington’s flavor of the month.

Talking to Iran, of course, was one of candidate Obama’s main foreign-policy planks. It sounded both intelligent and attractive. After all, if one could achieve all those desirable results just by talking to the mullahs, why not?

There’s a hitch, however.

Obama appears to be having second thoughts about the wisdom of an idea announced largely as a means of strengthening his anti-Bush message rather than dealing with a dangerous foreign foe. All indications from him since his election are that he’s in no hurry to open talks.

…

Obama no longer talks of “meeting them anywhere, anytime.” Instead, he speaks of engaging Iran “at a time and place of my choosing.” His initial idea of talking to Ahmadinejad is also gone. Now, he says he’d talk to “appropriate Iranian leadership” (whatever that means).

Clearly, he has toned down the concept of “unconditional talks.” He talks of “careful preparations,” while his advisers say that he won’t seek talks with Tehran until after the Iranian presidential election next summer. The idea is to deny Ahmadinejad a breakthrough with America that would bolster his re-election bid.

Lord knows we have been critical of the Messiah-elect, but you don’t hear any of that “he’s not my president” bilge that the Left couldn’t say often enough of President Bush. I’ll even go further and say this: if Barack Obama stares down Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, I will say publicly in this space that he very much is my president.

I’ve done it before, with Bush himself, after 9/11.

Estimates on when Iran will finally develop an atomic weapon range from as long as a year or two to as soon as last Thursday. If America (or Israel) is to deny the Islamic Republic nuclear armed missiles that can reach Europe and elsewhere, there isn’t a lot of time to waste.

Obamabots claim their guy has a mandate—here’s his chance to use it. If only Nixon could go to China, then only Obama can nuke Tehran.

Some people got it tougher than others

A FEW WEEKS ago, the leaders of Russia, Iran and Venezuela were gloating gleefully that the financial crisis would depose the United States as the world’s leading power. Yet as the price of oil dropped below $65 last week — or less than half its peak price last summer — it was looking more likely that global economic turmoil would produce a quite different result: the substantial weakening of those countries’ challenge to U.S. interests in Europe, the Middle East and Latin America.

Unless oil prices quickly recover, Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are likely to face even tougher domestic economic challenges in 2009 than the next U.S. president. According to independent estimates, both countries need an average oil price of up to $95 a barrel to fund the populist subsidies and social programs they have launched in recent years — not to mention billions of dollars in arms purchases from Russia. Venezuela has been furiously importing food to fill empty shop shelves, while Iran heavily subsidizes domestic fuel. Even if Mr. Chávez and Mr. Ahmadinejad manage to continue those politically sensitive programs, they may find it harder to sponsor foreign clients — from Hamas and Hezbollah in the Middle East to Cuba’s Castro brothers. Already Mr. Chávez has stiffed Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, to whom he had promised a $4 billion oil refinery.

Delicious:

Mr. Chávez was notably disturbed when both Barack Obama and John McCain pledged in their final debate to eliminate U.S. dependence on Venezuelan oil within a decade. The caudillo quickly appeared on television with an appeal to the candidates that “instead of saying that they are going to free themselves [of Venezuelan oil], what we have to do is sit down and talk and come to an agreement because we need each other.” Is that the “Bolivarian revolutionary” suddenly seeking rapprochement with “the empire?” If so, it may not be the last such offer that the global economic crisis delivers to the next president’s desk.

Can’t we just talk?

Double Ha-Ha.

- Aggie