Ahmadinejad: "..liberal capitalism and transnational corporations have caused the suffering of countless women, men and children in so many countries"

Miscellaneous Current Events
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Ahmadinejad blames capitalism for global woes

By the CNN Wire Staff
September 21, 2010 – Updated 1550 GMT (2350 HKT)

United Nations (CNN) – Attending a United Nations session on alleviating world poverty Tuesday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blamed capitalism for the world’s woes.

“The demanding liberal capitalism and transnational corporations have caused the suffering of countless women, men and children in so many countries,” Ahmadinejad said at a U.N. General Assembly session on the Millennium Development Goals.

“It is my firm belief that in the new millennium, we need to revert to the divine mindset, to our true nature for which man was created and, indeed, to the just and fair governance,” he said.

At past global conferences, Ahmadinejad’s strong words against Israel have prompted world leaders to walk out. But the hard-line Iranian leader’s comments Tuesday were relatively tempered.

“Now that the discriminatory order of capitalism and the hegemonic approaches are facing defeat and are getting close to their end, all-out participation in upholding justice and prosperous interrelations is essential,” he said.

Ahmadinejad is on a public relations offensive this week in New York, addressing the session on tackling world poverty, giving interviews and speaking again Thursday in the assembly’s general debate.

On Wednesday he will appear on CNN’s “Larry King Live.”

His visit coincides with the homecoming of American Sarah Shourd, who was accused of spying against Iran and detained in a Tehran prison for 14 months.

Ahmadinejad has suggested the Obama administration ought to return the humanitarian gesture by releasing Iranians he says were illegally arrested and detained in the United States. The United States says the cases are not related.

Ahmadinejad shared the stage Tuesday with world leaders, among them Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

His appearance at the United Nations comes just three months after the Security Council imposed tough new sanctions on Iran to try to force it to suspend its nuclear program. Iran is also under global scrutiny for alleged human rights violations in a crackdown on dissent following last year’s disputed elections that returned Ahmadinejad to the presidency.

The summit on the Millennium Development Goals is assessing the successes of eight measurable goals set a decade ago that were intended to help halve extreme poverty and alleviate hunger and disease by 2015.

As global leaders try to figure out how to get those anti-poverty goals back on track, protesters have been voicing their opposition to Ahmadinejad.

Outside his hotel, critics want the management to kick him out of his room. “Blood on his hands, blood on your pillows,” an online petition publicizing a protest there said. A major demonstration is planned for Thursday.

So much irony.

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None of us who doesn’t speak Farsi knows what Ahmadinejad ever actually says.

It’s always translated so loosely by international media that “a new chapter in the pages of history” becomes “wiped off the map”, for heaven’s sake. (If what some Farsi scholars in America say is true)

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I do, give the quote and I’ll translate. I honestly don’t want to hear a huge speech from him, I don’t have the patience for the bastard.

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بايد از صفحه روزگار محو شود

That’s one phrase in Farsi.

Whole of it is something like een rezhim-e eshghalgar-e qods…bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad…

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Suprise, suprise. A divine-revelatory fundamentalist has a problem with humanist ideals.

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Bayad az safheh ye ruzgar mahv shavad, roughly means something like “We have to abolish them from history”. Safheh means column, page or section. Roozgar means time, or days. Mahv means to abolish or eliminate. It’s hard to give a literal translation, cause farsi has such different connotations for words then english.

Een rezhim e esghalgar e qods: This regime of (fancy words for Jerusalem).

So in total: This regime in Jerusalem must be eliminated from history.

He’s saying that Israeli regime should be toppled in a very fancy, poetic, political way. He’s acting as the demagogue that he is.

From what I remember, I’ve heard a while ago he was quoting Khomeini, so there’s probably a bit more to it.

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In short, the idea that Iran establishment thinks it can or would use military force to completely destroy Israel is pure political propaganda.

But of course, a certain Milton Rosenberg of WGN radio is now insisting that sections of Shi’ite theology are about raining a fire of destruction from heavens onto all their enemies, armageddon style, as if nuclear weapons were conceived of in the ancient Middle East.

I guess the Hezekiah vs. Arsaces is a match that must be settled, whether Arsaces wants to play or not. Obviously, since Nebuchadderezzar became raving mad and died, after Americans invaded and punished Nebuchadderezzar, Hezekiah wants to make up for it by having somebody else with whom to play.

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@Jackson

Is liberalism really a humanist ideal? Italian humanism itself was about creating an absolute state and justifying one’s greed, materialism, and desire for power.

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In short, the idea that Iran establishment thinks it can or would use military force to completely destroy Israel is pure political propaganda.

The establishment bankrolls proxies(Hezbollah,Hamas,PIJ) that are committed to attack citizens of Israel (aside from attacks on the Israeli establishment.)

Unless I have been grossly misinformed.

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You’re in India, right? We may be using the same word for two different things. I’m not familiar with the “Italian Humanism” you are referring to. This is what I was referring to:

Secular Humanism

Essentially, the offspring of Enlightenment principles. Replacing the Divine as law-giver with Man, or Humanity, as law-giver.

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Ahmadinijad loves using religious rhetoric. He talks about Israel for the same reason a lot of other middle eastern demogogues do, sympathy for Palestinians. Most Muslims sympathicize. But it doesn’t mean anything. When’s the last time any middle eastern government actually sent aid to the Palestinians? How’s anything he does Islamic? It’s all just empty words.

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Wait a minute… a CNN story about Iran’s Ahmadinejad? Did they also add the phrase “Worse than Hitler” underneath his picture?

No, seriously: Ahmadinejad is mostly a figurehead spouting confused propaganda and even then most of what he says is usually bent out of shape by Western media trying to present him as the next coming of Saddam Hussein. He holds no true power in Iran: that lays with the leading ayatollahs. Vladimir Putin knows this and during his last visit of State as President of Russia insisted to meet them face to face (in private) to discuss the most critical issues of the moment.

The problem is the Western media cannot present a bunch of reclusive, frail looking and taciturn old men as the next Third Reich. They need a more “media-friendly” type of tyrant. And what better than the flamboyant, mostly powerless Ahmadinejad?

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It’s all a circus and the “global leaders” are the clowns, with the US politicians taking the role of ring-leader. Unfortunately for us, these clowns happen to be armed to the teeth and command armies.

Clayton -

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@nirgrahamUK

Do we really believe Hezbollah, Hamas, and PIJ can “wipe off the map” Israel, a country with nuclear weapons and a military establishment armed to the teeth?

But rather, do we believe Iran believes that?

And in fact, do we believe Iran, which doesn’t even have enough uranium to build a single missile to test, can attack Israel with that?

Libertyandlife just indicated that Iran couldn’t care less about what goes on Israel and Palestine, which is certainly indicated by statements given by the Ayotollah and Ahmadinejad, who think it’s a purely regional matter about Mediterraneans, and they don’t care about it, other than thinking they could probably hold a referendum.

And lastly, even Israel probably doesn’t believe it - else why hasn’t it taken action and bombed all of Iran’s nuclear reactors (the way it did with Iraq in the 1980s)? It has complete capability and could do it anytime. It does not.

I was watching Netanyahu on Hannity in YouTube. Hannity kept putting words in Netanyahu’s mouth, and Netanyahu reluctantly just kept nodding to it. Netanyahu also has indicated some times on other media that he has to handle the double jobs of handling regional crises and doing it without hurting PR, because America, a larger nation, can bully Israel into towing its line any time it wants to do so. I am amused that the Butcher of Pakistan, Barack Obama, dares lecture Netanyahu on his very moderate handling of Palestinian issues.

“Yes, yes, fine, Iran is evil and wants to do bad things. Can I go now?..I have a pressing matter back in Israel, I am a prime minister GOSH, why am I taking orders from Fox News on what to do here? Please, just let me go.”

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Ahmadinejad is mostly a figurehead spouting confused propaganda and even then most of what he says is usually bent out of shape by Western media trying to present him as the next coming of Saddam Hussein. He holds no true power in Iran: that lays with the leading ayatollahs.

I enjoy of how I know this is how it is, and how I was to answer my AP Comparative Gov’t exam contradicts this- AP gov’t was saying that he had some control de facto, but they had it de jure- yeah public education! and getting me credits for college I wouldn’t need anyway, making it pointless.