Mr. Lee Bollinger
Columbia University President

We, the professors and heads of universities and research institutions in Tehran , hereby announce our displeasure and protest at your impolite remarks prior to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent speech at Columbia University.

We would like to inform you that President Ahmadinejad was elected directly by the Iranian people through an enthusiastic two-round poll in which almost all of the country’s political parties and groups participated. To assess the quality and nature of these elections you may refer to US news reports on the poll dated June 2005.

Your insult, in a scholarly atmosphere, to the president of a country with a population of 72 million and a recorded history of 7,000 years of civilization and culture is deeply shameful.

Your comments, filled with hate and disgust, may well have been influenced by extreme pressure from the media, but it is regrettable that media policy-makers can determine the stance a university president adopts in his speech.

Your remarks about our country included unsubstantiated accusations that were the product of guesswork as well as media propaganda. Some of your claims result from misunderstandings that can be clarified through dialogue and further research.

During his speech, Mr. Ahmadinejad answered a number of your questions and those of students. We are prepared to answer any remaining questions in a scientific, open and direct debate.

You asked the president approximately ten questions. Allow us to ask you ten of our own questions in the hope that your response will help clear the atmosphere of misunderstanding and distrust between our two countries and reveal the truth.

1- Why did the US media put you under so much pressure to prevent Mr. Ahmadinejad from delivering his speech at Columbia University? And why have American TV networks been broadcasting hours of news reports insulting our president while refusing to allow him the opportunity to respond? Is this not against the principle of freedom of speech?

2- Why, in 1953, did the US administration overthrow the Iran’s national government under Dr Mohammad Mosaddegh and go on to support the Shah’s dictatorship?

3- Why did the US support the blood-thirsty dictator Saddam Hussein during the 1980-88 Iraqi-imposed war on Iran, considering his reckless use of chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers defending their land and even against his own people?

4- Why is the US putting pressure on the government elected by the majority of Palestinians in Gaza instead of officially recognizing it? And why does it oppose Iran ’s proposal to resolve the 60-year-old Palestinian issue through a general referendum?

5- Why has the US military failed to find Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden even with all its advanced equipment? How do you justify the old friendship between the Bush and Bin Laden families and their cooperation on oil deals? How can you justify the Bush administration’s efforts to disrupt investigations concerning the September 11 attacks?

6- Why does the US administration support the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) despite the fact that the group has officially and openly accepted the responsibility for numerous deadly bombings and massacres in Iran and Iraq? Why does the US refuse to allow Iran ’s current government to act against the MKO’s main base in Iraq?

7- Was the US invasion of Iraq based on international consensus and did international institutions support it? What was the real purpose behind the invasion which has claimed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives? Where are the weapons of mass destruction that the US claimed were being stockpiled in Iraq?

8- Why do America’s closest allies in the Middle East come from extremely undemocratic governments with absolutist monarchical regimes?

9- Why did the US oppose the plan for a Middle East free of unconventional weapons in the recent session of the International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors despite the fact the move won the support of all members other than Israel?

10- Why is the US displeased with Iran’s agreement with the IAEA and why does it openly oppose any progress in talks between Iran and the agency to resolve the nuclear issue under international law?

Finally, we would like to express our readiness to invite you and other scientific delegations to our country. A trip to Iran would allow you and your colleagues to speak directly with Iranians from all walks of life including intellectuals and university scholars. You could then assess the realities of Iranian society without media censorship before making judgments about the Iranian nation and government.

You can be assured that Iranians are very polite and hospitable toward their guests.

Source

http://youtube.com/watch?v=7OCVG32sKmU

Word of the German government’s slight relaxing of its asylum policy has gotten round in the Middle East. Human traffickers smuggled fivefold more Iraqis into Germany during the first six months of this year than the same period in 2006.

Takwa Ali Zuker, 19, a physics student from Baghdad, still clearly recalls her first impressions of Germany: darkness, cold and a biting wind. The young woman, with dark rings around her eyes, was hiding in a park with her parents and two brothers — without blankets or sleeping bags to ward off the mid-September chill.

It was early morning and Ali Zuker, her brothers and her parents, both teachers, were trying to buy train tickets at the station in the western German city of Trier. But their plans to travel on to Sweden, their destination of choice, fell apart when the police asked the five foreigners for identification — and promptly detained them.

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German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier opposes French calls for European Union sanctions against Iran. He will back up his case with German Foreign Ministry data showing that leading French and American companies are conducting large amounts of business with Iran.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier is to oppose French calls for European Union sanctions against Iran and is planning to back up his case with evidence of French and American hypocrisy over sanctions against Iran.

According to information obtained by SPIEGEL, the economics department of the German Foreign Ministry has collected revealing data which Steinmeier will use to back up his argument against EU sanctions.

Several French companies in the automobile, energy and financial sectors — including Peugeot, Renault, Total, BNP Paribas and Societé Générale — have hardly reduced the level of business they do with Iran, according to the Foreign Ministry data. German exports to Iran, in contrast, have dramatically declined.

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For the first time since a demonstration in 1990, a group of Saudi women is campaigning for the right to drive in this conservative kingdom, the only country in the world that prohibits female drivers.

After spreading the idea through text messages and e-mails, the group’s leaders said they collected more than 1,100 signatures online and at shopping malls for a petition sent to King Abdullah on Sunday.

“We don’t expect an answer right away,” said Wajeha al-Huwaider, 45, an education analyst who co-founded the group. “But we will not stop campaigning until we get the right to drive.”

The kingdom follows one of the world’s strictest interpretations of Islam. Women in Saudi Arabia, a deeply patriarchal society, cannot travel, marry or rent lodging without permission from a male guardian.

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http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=773638342167920349&hl=en-GB

“Fuck off! You fucking racist! Get yourself out of my country!” To Robb WJ Ellis, a young white recently appointed policeman in Zimbabwe just after Robert Mugabe’s accession to power, it was soon made clear what the new potentates thought of him. At the same time that Mugabe was being lauded by much of the rest of the world, his secret armies were murdering thousands of his political opponents and the ethnic cleansing of the country’s white inhabitants continued. Kenneth Wallgren reviews Robb WJ Ellis’ e-book Without Honour, a unique documentation from within African politics in practice, published earlier this year in Swedish newspaper Folkets Nyheter.

“The war was over and Robert Mugabe was the new leader of the country as its Prime Minister.

Independence came and went. The family stayed. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Mugabe had addressed the nation and had offered a “hand of reconciliation”. He wasn’t interested in what colour you were. He wasn’t interested in who you fought for pre-1980… He didn’t even care who you voted for in the election — he had secured 63% of the voters in the election that brought him and his party to power.

If you wanted to stay, you could stay. He just wanted people who would help build Zimbabwe into the pride of Africa.

And do you know the strange thing about his speech? We all believed it. We all swallowed it — hook, line and sinker.”

Full story »

The group set up to develop a plan to tackle racism in Ireland says urgent action is needed in two key areas.

The steering group for the National Action Plan Against Racism says changes are needed in both the education and justice sectors.

It says education can help both young and old students integrate better and escape the poverty trap and new strategies are needed to ensure that happens.

It also says changes are needed in the courts and prison system to take account of the new multiculturalism in Ireland.

Source

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MG_OCgplmdg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHB1sBeyFMg

Here’s a brand new slap in the face. NBC news reports that “On the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, students at one high school were not allowed to wear clothes with an American flag. Under a new school rule, students at Hobbton High School are not allowed to wear items with flags, from any country, including the United States. The new rule stems from a controversy over students wearing shirts bearing flags of other countries.”

Hobbton is in Sampson County, North Carolina, one of the many small rural counties throughout America that have been almost completely overrun by illegal alien migrant workers employed on the surrounding corporate agribusiness plantations that have destroyed the traditional American family farm.

One of the many forms of blowback from massive illegal immigration is that the migrant workers, who pay no taxes, are flooding small public schools such as Hobbton to the point where the native white American population is badly outnumbered. Those relatively affluent whites who can afford to do so flee to private schools or out of the area altogether, thus further eroding the tax base. The middle class and poor whites who cannot afford to flee must send their children into hellhole schools almost as bad as those integrated with blacks. The “no flags of foreign countries” rule is a clear attempt on the part of the gutless school administration to stop the arrogant display of Mexican flags while still remaining politically correct.

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