To all anti-free speech censorship bullies, now read this:

Iran president in NY campus clash
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has clashed with the head of New York's Columbia University while making his controversial appearance at the campus.
Columbia President Lee Bollinger described Mr Ahmadinejad as a "cruel dictator" who denied the Holocaust.

In response, Mr Ahmadinejad called the remarks "an insult", adding that more research was needed on the Holocaust.

He again defended Tehran's nuclear ambitions and said it had every right to pursue a peaceful programme.

Washington accuses Iran of seeking to build a nuclear bomb and arming insurgents in Iraq - Tehran rejects the charges.

Many Americans said the Iranian leader should not have been invited to speak at Columbia University.

In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

His appearance sparked protests in New York, with demonstrators saying it provided a platform for hate.
Mr Ahmadinejad has been denied a visit to the site of the 11 September attacks in New York in 2001, with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice saying that "it would have been a travesty".

"This is somebody who is the president of a country that is probably the greatest sponsor - state sponsor - of terrorism," Ms Rice told CNBC television.

'Brazen'

Mr Ahmadinejad was invited to Columbia University to address its students at the university's World Leaders Forum.

He received a hostile welcome from Mr Bollinger, who described the Iranian leader as "a petty and cruel dictator".

"You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated," Mr Bollinger told Mr Ahmadinejad, referring to his denial of the Holocaust.

In response, Mr Ahmadinejad said that Mr Bollinger's remarks were "an insult to information and the knowledge of the audience".

Addressing the Holocaust issue, Mr Ahmadinejad said he simply wanted more research to be done.

He also said the issue was abused by Israel to justify what he said was its mistreatment of the Palestinians.

"Why is it that the Palestinian people are paying the price for an event they had nothing to do with?" Mr Ahmadinejad asked.

Asked about executions of homosexuals in Iran, Mr Ahmadinejad replied: "In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country."

Reacting to laughter and jeers from the audience he added: "In Iran we don't have this phenomenon, I don't know who you told this."

'Evil has landed'

The New York Daily News's front page headline on Monday read "The Evil Has Landed", while the New York Post described Mr Ahmadinejad as "Madman Iran Prez".

Dozens of protesters gathered outside the university on Sunday with placards saying: "Don't give a platform to hate," and calling the Iranian leader a "Hitler wannabe".

Mr Ahmadinejad has called in the past for an end to the Israeli state and described the Holocaust as a "myth".

Mr Bollinger defended the university's invitation, saying it was a question of free speech and academic freedom.

Tickets to the event were snatched up within an hour of becoming available.

The Iranian leader is in New York to attend the UN General Assembly, where he is due to speak on Tuesday.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/7010962.stm

Published: 2007/09/24 21:03:59 GMT

© BBC MMVII

See, there's nothing to be afraid of. We don't want to hear people like Ahmadinejad or Musharraf because we think they're great, we want to hear them so we can point out just how wrong they are, and perhaps point out the one valid point that they might have. Isn't that better than censorship?

This is a bit long but worth the time (about twenty minutes, maybe not even):

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070924/cole_lobel

Any questions?

Sure it is; it's working to keep us bogged down in Iraq indefinitely. Here's what the BBC say:

Iraq surge brings few political rewards
As two top US officials prepare to report on the country's military strategy in Iraq, BBC Arab Affairs analyst Magdi Abdelhadi examines failed national reconciliation efforts on Iraq's political front.

There is a popular Iraqi song that sums up the mood of distrust many Iraqis feel towards their beleaguered government.
The song, by Hossam al-Rassam, says "no-one can tell the difference between the thief and the policeman any longer".

It is an apt metaphor for what Iraqis - particularly the Sunni Arab minority - feel about their security forces.

They are accused of being controlled - or at best infiltrated - by Shia militias, which are blamed for a great deal of the sectarian violence during the run up to the surge.

Purging the security forces of militias was one of the 18 benchmarks laid down by Washington for Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's government, which it has apparently failed.

The idea behind the surge was that quelling sectarian violence would create an environment conducive for Iraqi politicians to putting the sectarian genie back in the bottle.

Genuine desire to make compromises and reach national reconciliation appears sorely lacking in politicians on both sides of the sectarian divide


So far, it appears that the surge has broken the cycle of the tit-for-tat killing, but the political dividends have failed to materialise.

On the contrary, the gap between the Sunni Arab and the Shia political leaders has widened with the withdrawal of all Sunni parties from the government, leaving Mr Maliki scrambling for new partners without much success.

The leader of the Iraqi Islamic party - one of the Sunni parties that pulled out of the government - Usama al-Tikriti, told the BBC why his party left the government.

"We need a strong non-partisan government, unlike the current one. Most of the members of the current government work for their organisations, not for Iraq," he said.

"Maliki has shown that he's incapable of doing what he came into office for and which the parliament voted for.

"He has achieved nothing - no national reconciliation... no reform of the army, no reform of security bodies, no services. He failed in each and everyone of them."

'Sense' of progress

This harsh verdict cannot be easily dismissed, because it is strikingly similar to what the non-partisan report by the American Public Accountability Office, which was released earlier this week, has concluded.

One of the few achievements Mr Maliki's government has managed was to draft, after months of wrangling, a new bill on sharing oil wealth among Iraq's three main regions.




But that has yet to be approved by parliament, and it is far from clear it will be, because of strong opposition to the power it gives foreign oil companies over the country's oil resources.

Plans to hold a summit last month to persuade Sunni Arabs back into the government never materialised. Instead, the four parties remaining in the cabinet - two Shias and two Kurdish - announced a new alliance.

They apparently wanted to create the sense of political progress, while in reality there was none. And the move failed to show Washington that Mr Maliki was doing his best to reach out to Sunnis.

One of the key political benchmarks that Iraq's government has failed to meet is amending the controversial law removing former members of the ruling Baath party from office, a process known as de-Baathification.

Changing that law has been a key demand for Sunni politicians to rejoin the political process.

US Congressman Joe Sestak, who was in Iraq in April, told the BBC that Mr Maliki's government still believes that allowing former Baathists back into public life is "an appeasement to the Sunnis and not important".

"If that was the mindset of the political leadership in Baghdad, it was not surprising [that] no progress had been made in the political benchmarks," Mr Sestak said.

'Waning fortunes'

There was no progress either on another crucial issue - revising the constitution, a long-standing demand of Sunni Arabs and another political benchmark that Washington has set for the Iraqi parliament.

Sunnis are worried that constitutional provisions for the federal structure of the state could leave them with little power or influence over the future of Iraq, and may even lead to the break-up of the country.

But that revision has not yet happened.

Mr Maliki made yet another attempt to breathe new life into the moribund political process when he said he was considering a government of technocrats and protecting the country's holy sites, the scene of much carnage over the past few years.

It is unlikely that these last-minute measures will reverse Mr Maliki's waning political fortunes.

The question is whether renewed pressure on his government - or even new benchmarks - are likely to deliver results when genuine desire to make compromises and reach national reconciliation appears sorely lacking in politicians on both sides of the sectarian divide.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/6985436.stm

Published: 2007/09/08 23:26:09 GMT

© BBC MMVII

Your move Mr. Bush.

US frees seven Baghdad Iranians
US forces have released seven Iranians who were detained in a swoop on a hotel in Baghdad, Iraqi officials say.
The men were seized overnight from one of the main hotels in the capital and led away blindfolded and in handcuffs.

The Iranian embassy in the city said the men were helping rebuild electricity power stations in Iraq.

The Iraqi government helped secure their release early on Wednesday, a spokesman for Prime Minister Nouri Maliki told the BBC.

The group was detained at the Sheraton Ishtar Hotel. Video footage showed soldiers leading the men out of the building.

'Murderous activities'

Other soldiers were seen carrying what appeared to be luggage and a laptop computer bag.

The BBC's Mike Wooldridge in Baghdad said Tehran insisted the men were technicians from the Iranian electricity ministry and had been helping fix a power station in Najaf.

The arrests followed a speech by US President George W Bush in which he criticised Iranian interference in Iraq.

Tensions between the US and Iran are running high - with the US accusing Iran of providing arms, money and military training to Shia insurgents in Iraq.

Iran's actions threaten the security of nations everywhere - we will confront this danger before it is too late
US President Bush

President Bush stated that he had authorised his military commanders in Iraq to confront what he called Iran's "murderous activities" in the country.

"Iran's actions threaten the security of nations everywhere. We will confront this danger before it is too late," Mr Bush said.

The president also said the entire region would be under the shadow of a "nuclear holocaust" if Iran developed nuclear weapons. Tehran insists its nuclear programme is peaceful.

Earlier, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said US power in Iraq was on the verge of collapse and this would lead to "a huge vacuum" which Iran would be willing to fill.

In January, five Iranians - who the US say are linked to Iran's Revolutionary Guard and were training militants in Iraq - were captured in the northern city of Irbil. They remain in US custody.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/6967850.stm

Published: 2007/08/29 05:49:13 GMT

© BBC MMVII

I can't wait to hear the rest of this.

Is the father of Alberto Gonzales still alive? Would he agree with the following quote from his son?

"I have lived the American dream. Even my worst days as attorney general have been better than my father's best days."

Really. Several of AG Gonzales' days have featured him being exposed to the whole country as an inept bumbler and a liar (a poor liar at that). His dad's best day was worse than that? That must have been one lousy life.