Before reading the articles about Mr. Ahmadinejad's day, take a look at some pictures of his day!!
"Ahmadinejad Meets Clerics, and Decibels Drop a Notch" by LAURIE GOODSTEIN
[So on his way out, the demonizing rhetoric dropped, huh?
Thanks, war-mongering shit MSM!]
After two days of prickly confrontations with critics at Columbia University and the United Nations, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran held a friendly, even warm, exchange yesterday with Christian leaders from the United States and Canada convinced that dialogue is the only way to prevent war.
[Like it is something that can't be believed, 'eh, reader?
Like Ahmadinejad is a monster, not a human being!]
The session, held under tight security at a chapel across the street from the United Nations, was a reminder that Mr. Ahmadinejad is a religious president of a religious nation who relishes speaking on a religious plane. He spent his 20 allotted minutes at the start of the two-hour meeting recounting the chain of prophets central to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and the commonality of their messages.
He took questions from a panel that included a Quaker, a Catholic, an Anglican, a Baptist and a representative of the interfaith World Council of Churches, some of whom separately said they had been criticized by other religious leaders for sitting down with the Iranian president. Given the furor over Mr. Ahmadinejad’s earlier appearances, there was no advance publicity.
The gathering, which included an audience of about 140 other religious leaders, was organized by the Mennonites and Quakers, churches known for their commitment to pacifism.
[I like this group, and am glad they met with his Excellency!]
The organizers said that they had pressed hard to find a Jewish leader to join the panel of questioners, but that those invited declined because they could not win support from Jewish organizations.
[Then they didn't look hard enough!!]
“My heart was broken that there was so little support from other religions to be here,” said Mary Ellen McNish, general secretary of the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group that helped sponsor the event. “If we don’t walk down this path of dialogue, we’re going to end up in conflagration.”
Mr. Ahmadinejad’s smile at times turned to a grimace as the panelists prodded him, politely, about his record on the Holocaust, human rights abuses, Israel and nuclear weapons development. Also politely, he conceded nothing, and often deflected the inquiries by turning the spotlight on the policies of the United States and Israel.
[Good! That's where the focus should be!]
Mr. Ahmadinejad: “Who are the ones that are filling their arsenals with nuclear weapons? In the United States they have tested the fifth generation of atomic bunker bombs, missiles that go as far as 12,000 kilometers. Who is the real danger here?”
[ABSOLUTELY!!!!]
Though Mr. Ahmadinejad’s answers differed little, the tone of the session was a marked contrast to the verbal pummeling he received at Columbia University on Monday.
[Good!]
At the clerics’ meeting, Albert Lobe, executive director of the Mennonite Central Committee, said pointedly, “We mean to extend to you the hospitality which a head of state deserves.”
[Good! Mending relations, and proving not all Amurkns are assholes!!!!]
The session was part of a concerted push by these religious leaders to increase political support in the United States for talks with Iran. Some of these religious leaders also met with Mr. Ahmadinejad last year in New York and in February on a trip to Iran.
One critic said that these religious leaders were well intentioned, but naïve.
Malcolm I. Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said in a telephone interview: “They’re not going to convince him. Their very presence there gives him respectability.”
[Know what? We don't hear you, anymore, shitter!
Assholes like you have brought us to this point with your SHITSTINKING LIES!]
Ms. McNish, of the American Friends Service Committee, said the reverse was true: “The more we isolate him, the more support he gets at home.”
[That's Bushworld for you: Everything FUBARed!!!!]
But even the Bahais, a minority religious group that has suffered persecution in Iran, said they supported these efforts at dialogue with the Iranian government. They had been invited to the prior meetings, but the Iranian side refused to come if Bahais were there, said Kit Bigelow, director of external affairs, National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahais of the United States.
[Well, if their victims support the talks, then who the fuck is AmeriKa (or the shitstink state for that matter) to say no talking?!]
The panelists on Wednesday included the Rev. Drew Christiansen, a Roman Catholic who is editor in chief of America, a Jesuit weekly; Karen A. Hamilton, a Canadian Anglican who is general secretary of the Canadian Council of Churches; the Rev. Chris Ferguson, also a Canadian, who represents the World Council of Churches at the United Nations; and Glen Stassen, a professor of Christian ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary, an evangelical institution.
[Great people, whom are promoting love, folks!
These individuals are God's TRUE REPRESENTATIVES!]
Mr. Stassen, who has helped to prod American evangelicals to take on issues including global warming and torture, said he and other evangelicals would soon circulate a document intended to broaden support for dialogue with Iran, based on the model of dialogue with North Korea.
[Good!]
Mr. Stassen asked President Ahmadinejad, if the United States could guarantee no aggression against Iran, “could there be an Iranian guarantee of no violence against Israel?”
Mr. Ahmadinejad responded by asking for a three-minute break “for the interpreter.” After the break, he said that it was the United States and “the Zionist regime” that had nuclear weapons, while Iran was seeking to enrich uranium only for “fuel purposes.”
The impetus for these talks came not from the Americans, but from the Iranians, said Ed Martin, Iran consultant for the Mennonite Central Committee, a group that has done aid work in Iran."
[Well, HOW 'BOUT THAT, huh?
The "war-like" Iranians WANTED to TALK!]
"Iranian warms to spotlight in NYC; Ahmadinejad draws crowds, mixed reaction" By Farah Stockman/Boston Globe September 27, 2007
NEW YORK - This city has had its share of vilified people walking the streets, but few have elicited the strange mixture of fascination and anger that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran brought out in the Big Apple this week.
He was called "Mad Man" and "Evil" on the front pages of New York tabloids, with a New York Post columnist even attacking him as having a terrible haircut. Yet, even as they protested him with signs comparing him to Hitler, New Yorkers swarmed to get a look at Ahmadinejad, stampeded one another to ask him questions at a press conference, and snapped up all tickets to his speech at Columbia University minutes after they were offered online.
Yesterday, Ahmadinejad's whirlwind, five-day media-filled tour ended when a convoy swarming with security escorts took him to the airport. In town for an annual UN General Assembly meeting, the Iranian leader capped off his New York trip with an interfaith meeting yesterday at the chapel across from the United Nations.
Iranian officials heralded his trip as an unmitigated public relations success: He appeared on "60 Minutes," "The Charlie Rose Show," on a videolink with the Washington Press Club, and at the heavily publicized Columbia event.
[Yeah, it was. He won me over big-time. This guy a threat? Puh-leeze!]
Gary Sick, a Columbia University professor who attended a private dinner Ahmadinejad hosted for academics and opinion-makers:
"He was on nonstop, and washed out virtually every other nation's leader who was in town. People become fascinated by celebrities, by people who are eccentric or different and who represent a remarkable point of view. . . . From a PR point of view, anybody would have to consider that a tremendously successful event. Whether that accomplished anything more than making him a celebrity or a curiosity, I can't say."
[I just wanted to hear what he had to say -- FOR HIMSELF, not through the lying, misquoting, mistranslating Zionist press!]
Amid the headlines, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg decided that it was "too incendiary" for the Iranian to be allowed to lay a wreath at the site of the former World Trade Center. And a story in The New York Times quoted a rabbi in Brooklyn whose synagogue was defaced with swastikas. The rabbi said the Iranian leader's visit "brought out the hate-mongers."
[I wouldn't be surprised if some Zionists did that themselves!
They have quite a record in that regard.
After all, CUI BONO, reader?
Gets the SYMPATHY flowing for the Zionists, doesn't it?]
Despite the bad press, Ahmadinejad seemed to glow under the constant hum of publicity. "I wish I could take all of your questions," he told reporters jockeying for his attention at a press conference yesterday, during which he issued a blanket invitation for everyone to travel to Tehran.
[Wow, they admit they jobbed him.
And he is a very warm man with a tremendous sense of humor.
I would definitely rather spend and afternoon with Ahmadinejad than Bush!]
In his private talks over the past four days, he seemed to go out of his way to portray himself as a reasonable man, even as he made unbelievable assertions. He told audiences that "there are no homosexuals in Iran" and flatly denied that his government had cracked down on dissidents.
[Well, HE HAD TO after all that BAD PRESS!!]
But he seemed intent on charming his listeners and defying their expectations.
[He defied mine. He handled himself with extreme grace and class!]
He smiled often and took care to learn to pronounce the names of the people he met.
[Oh, he TOOK CARE to get the pronounciations of people's names right, huh?
Unlike the asshole garbling shitter that occupies the White House right now!]
He insisted that although he views Israel as an illegal occupier, he is "friends with the Jewish people." On Monday, he met with Orthodox rabbis from the group Jews United Against Zionism, who presented him with a silver fruit bowl.
[Yeah, take a look!]
Ahmadinejad, who has achieved rock-star status in some developing countries by calling for the downfall of the American "empire," seemed confident that Americans would grow to love him, too.
[Here is one who does; however, I love all Iranians, as Christ commands!]
Protesters have so demonized him - with signs that placed his face on a body shaped like a swastika - that he looked stunningly harmless to some who saw him in the flesh: just a short, bespectacled man without a necktie.
[I know! I was surprised he didn't have blood dripping from fangs!]
"He's got this dark charisma," said Lisa Paul Streitfeld, a performance artist working near the United Nations. "I think he is really performing a role, and relishing in it. He's playing into people's projections of him."
[Yeah, he's not a real person. Sort of like the U.S.' phony shit president, huh?]
Throughout the week's whirlwind tour, Ahmadinejad's audiences searched for glimpses into the mind-set of a man who could help push Iran into an open conflict with the United States.
[Are they searching Bush's motivations, or... ?]
Before each appearance, he prayed for the arrival of Imam al-Mahdi, a messianic figure who Shi'ite Muslims believe will bring the end of the world, similar to Christians' belief in the return of Jesus.
[So what? I want him to come as well.
Because when the Mahdi returns -- sorry to say, Christians -- he is going to be the Christian Messiah as well!
This is your test, Christians: Will you FEED and CLOTHE the Muslim as Jesus asked you?
Or will you betray Jesus by continuing to support mass murder if them?]
Middle East specialists in the audience pricked their ears at the prayer, with some asserting that it was a routine expression of faith, while others saw it as a possible call for the apocalypse by the president of a nation that US officials accuse of making a nuclear bomb.
"You could speculate, if somebody believes that a Promised One will come soon, how that would affect his point of view, but that would just be speculation," said Juan Cole, a professor at the University of Michigan who specializes in the Shi'ite sect. "I don't think it is intrinsically different than American evangelicals or, for that matter, George W. Bush."
[Except that Bush and the Christian Rapturists are SCARY!!!!
After all, the guy with 7,000 nukes is George W. Bush, not Ahmadinejad! ]
Despite all the media blitz about Ahmadinejad, critical questions remained after he left: Do Americans suffer from misunderstandings about Iran - as Ahmadinejad insisted? Or do Americans understand Iran's intentions only too well?
[Stoo-pid fuck Amurkns don't understand shit!]
Barney Rubin, a New York University professor who also attended the dinner hosted by Ahmadinejad, said he felt that, despite the unprecedented access to the Iranian president this year, most people will continue to see what they want to see: either a man from a misunderstood country who can be reasoned with, or an evil dictator who must be confronted.
[Because he has done what? Said some bad words that were mistranslated?]
Rubin said Ahmadinejad probably accomplished his main mission here - to get attention for his views.
"He's a celebrity," Rubin said. "This is great for him."
[I think it was great for everybody! The man was humanized!
He's not the demon the Zionist press says he is!
If anything, Bush is the Anti-Christ!]
