President Ahmadinejad of Iran was asked this afternoon at Columbia University about the rights of homosexuals in Iran. First he evaded the question and then he responded:
“In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country. We don’t have that in our country.â€
The audience booed and hissed loudly. Some laughed, uncomfortably.
“In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon,†Mr. Ahmadinejad continued, undeterred. “I do not know who has told you that we have it. But as for women, maybe you think that maybe being a woman is a crime. It’s not a crime to be a woman. Women are the best creatures created by God. They represent the kindness, the beauty that God instills in them. Women are respected in Iran.â€
This is why I’m glad he was allowed to speak at Columbia – so we can see what an idiot he is.
Yes, I absolutely support letting the man speak. I don’t think he is quite the threat the White House wants for him to be; I think they are desperately in search of a new enemy we can all hate together in order to rally some sort of support, since the one enemy we do all actually hate (bin Laden) seems beyond our grasp, for some reason. That said, I also don’t think we should underestimate Mr. Ah….whatever. He’ll come here and say perfectly pragmatic things (well…except for this, apparently) in front of the western media, and then go home and chant “Death to Israel!”
His public speaking skills remind me of Bush. Except George Bush only speaks in front of carefully screened audiences of supporters.
Of course they don’t have homosexuals in Iran. They’re either forced into the closet or executed…
I read a comment….”Hitler with a bad hair cut” Amazing how when we alow people to speak the system works and they are exposed as the idiots they are, why must we stage everything? Oppps never mind I think I answered my own question
His public speaking skills remind me of Bush.
Really? I mean, I don’t speak — I presume it’s Farsi? open to correction here — but I kind of had the sense that he was speaking in complete sentences that, while detached from reality, were at least coherently offensive. Is Iran’s children learning?
The best part of the speech, for me, was when he chastised the crowd for being rude: “In Iran, when you invite a guest you respect them. This is our tradition required by our culture, and I know that American people have that culture as well.”
That said, i don’t recall the police/fbi breaking up any student-inspired hostage-taking plot during his visit to NYC.
The man is a liar.
rob@egoz.org