[Marxism] Has Ahmadinejad ever read Kinsey?

[Steffie Brooks]

I watched it gavel to gavel on MSNBC, and then the follow up coverage.

Bollinger launched a tirade against Ahmedinajad, including claims that
he denied the Holocaust, wanted to wipe Israel off the face of the
earth, and was a petty dictator.

Ahmedinajad was relatively good in content (aside from the ludicrous
claim that homosexuality doesn't exist in Iran). And extremely good in
style -- insisting on the importance of respectful academic dialogue
and inviting Columbia faculty and students to tour and speak to any
university in Iran.

His answer to the Holocaust denial charge was that he was defending
European academics imprisoned (in Germany, I think, although he didn't
specify the country but Germany has laws against Holocaust denial) for
questioning the numbers of Jewish victims and that academic inquiry is
never out of order -- for example, paradigms in mathematics have been
successfully challenged.

He said straight out that the Holocaust is a historical fact. But that
Palestinians were not responsible for it but they are the ones who are
suffering for it.

On Israel and Palestine, he proposed a referendum by all Palestinians
on what kind of state they wanted. This was a very successful answer
-- he got some applause.

But after the fact MSNBC kept saying he was a Holocaust denier and
wanted to wipe Israel off the map.

Does anyone remember or, better, have a link to the actual statements
by Ahmedinajad on the Holocaust and on Israel. As I recall, his
argument for sponsoring the Holocaust conference was "academic
freedom," and his statement on Israel was not that different from the
positions of all of us who oppose a Zionist state in Palestine.

Hopefully, FAIR will mince and dissect the coverage of this speech,
but it would be helpful if marxmailers who have this on the tip of
their minds would remind the rest of us what Amedinajad has actually
said, not what's been ascribed to him.

Thanks.

Steffie Brooks

On 9/24/07, Louis Proyect <lnp3 at panix.com> wrote:
> Walter Lippmann wrote:
> > gave a report on the meeting. She says that the president
> > of Columbia gave a fourteen minute tirade against the
> > Iranian leader, which Ahmadinejad described as an attempt
> > to vaccinate the students before he began his remarks.
>
> I listened to some of Bollinger's remarks on Rush Limbaugh this
> afternoon. Limbaugh was beside himself raving about how great Bollinger
> was. Bollinger accused Iran of killing American soldiers, quoted
> Petraeus and generally sounded like an ignorant, rightwing shit. I guess
> he is competing with Bob Kerrey for university president/moron of the year.
>
> ________________________________________________
> YOU MUST clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.
> Send list submissions to: Marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu
> Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism
>