And the Iranian Propaganda Hits Keep on Comin’ Thanks to America-Hating Democrats at Columbia University

Ahmadinejad lauded in Iran for “Lion’s Den” visit
Reuters – Wednesday, September 26
TEHRAN – President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may have faced ridicule in the United States by suggesting there were no homosexuals in Iran, but he won praise at home on Wednesday for taking his country’s case to “the Lion’s Den”.
Generally, politicians and media in the Islamic Republic — even some who have previously criticised the president — described Ahmadinejad’s visit to New York as a triumph and denounced the university president who called him “a petty and cruel dictator”.
But one pro-reform newspaper said that, although the president told his U.S. audience he respected academics, that was not always how it seemed at home.
Ahmadinejad, who often rails against the West, travelled to the United States at a time of escalating tension between the two foes over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions and the war in Iraq.
The president spoke at Columbia University on Monday and on Tuesday addressed the U.N. General Assembly, where he told world leaders the issue of Iran’s nuclear ambitions was “closed” and that military threats and sanctions had failed.
“By fearlessly and courageously walking into the ‘Lion’s Den’ … he is sure to become even more of a hero in the Arab-Muslim street than before,” the daily Iran News wrote.
Iran denies U.S. accusations it is seeking atomic bombs, saying it wants to generate electricity. It also rejects accusations it is violating human rights and muzzling critics.
LAUGHTER
Around 200 lawmakers hailed Ahmadinejad’s “historical and memorable” stay in New York, saying in a statement his “courageous” speech on Monday had made Muslims happy while angering Iran’s enemies like Israel, the Mehr News Agency said.
Others condemned the way Ahmadinejad was treated at Columbia University, where he criticised Israel and the United States and provoked laughter and jeers by saying Iran had no homosexuals.
Homosexuality is a crime punishable by death in Iran.
Introducing Ahmadinejad, Columbia University President Lee Bollinger said he acted like a dictator and his Holocaust denials showed he was “brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated”.
One Iranian MP described Bollinger’s remarks as insulting.
The head of Iran’s judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi- Shahroudi, who has in the past criticised Ahmadinejad, said he had defied hostile “plotters” to deliver his speech.
But the reformist newspaper, Aftab-e Yazd, contrasted his comments in New York on how Iran respects its academics with the way some of them were being treated in the country.
The daily referred to a harshly worded response by some officials to an open letter in June signed by 57 economists criticising the government’s economic and foreign policies.
“No doubt, Ahmadinejad’s logic and composure in the face of the Columbia University head’s disgracing remarks is a cause of pride for all Iranians,” it wrote. “However, history will remember this behaviour only if … he can prove that he trusts all academics and in all affairs.”
http://beta.malaysia.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20070926/twl-uk-iran-usa-ahmadinejad-13abf6c.html

And the Iranian Propaganda Hits Keep on Comin’ Thanks to the Democrats at Columbia University

Iranians Condemn US Reception of Leader
Sep 25 11:30 AM US/EasternBy NASSER KARIMIAssociated Press Writer
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) – Iranians on Tuesday called the combative introduction of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by the head of Columbia University “shameful” and said the harsh words only added to their image of the United States as a bully.
In a region where the tradition of hospitality outweighs personal opinions about people, many here thought Columbia University President Lee Bollinger’s aggressive tone—including telling Ahmadinejad that he exhibited the signs of a “petty and cruel dictator”—was over the top.
“The surprising point of the last night meeting is the behavior of the university president,” state-run radio reported, describing Bollinger’s introduction as “full of insult, which was mostly Zionists’ propaganda against Iran.”
The chancellors of seven Iranian universities issued a letter on Tuesday to Bollinger saying his statements were “deeply shameful” and invited him to Iran.
In the letter, they asked him to respond to 10 questions ranging from: “Why did the U.S. support the bloodthirsty dictator Saddam Hussein during the 1980-88 Iraqi-imposed war on Iran?” to “Why has the U.S. military failed to find al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden even with all its advanced equipment?”
Ahmadinejad’s visit to New York to attend the U.N. General Assembly has created a stir and thousands have protested his there.
Despite calls to cancel Ahmadinejad’s question-and-answer forum at Columbia, Bollinger said the hardline leader, known for his anti- Israel and U.S. rhetoric, should be allowed to speak.
Ahmadinejad smiled at first in response to Bollinger’s words, then decried the “insults” and “unfriendly treatment.” In his speech, Ahmadinejad portrayed himself as an intellectual and argued that his administration respected reason and science. He even drew audience applause at times, such as when he bemoaned the plight of the Palestinians.
But the Iranian also found himself drawn into the type of rhetoric that has alienated American audiences in the past. He questioned the official version of the Sept. 11 attacks and defended Holocaust revisionists.
While Ahmadinejad likely expected at worst a hostile grilling by the audience, Bollinger’s sardonic comments reflected a blatant disregard for the tradition of hospitality revered in the Middle East. His comments may deflect some of the U.S. criticism he got for issuing the invitation to the Iranian president, but it could also backfire by drawing sympathy for Ahmadinejad, even in quarters where he would normally be sharply criticized.
“I don’t know why he (Ahmadinejad) stayed there and did not leave the meeting. Their attitude was an insult to the nature of the meeting. They should not treat him as a suspect,” said Mahmoud Rouhi, a nurse, in Tehran. Though state media did not broadcast Monday’s event live in Farsi, state-run TV showed a recorded version on Tuesday.
“The meeting and their approach showed that Americans, even in a cultural position, are cowboys and nothing more,” said Rasoul Qaresi, shopping at a grocery store in Tehran.
Ahmadinejad’s international allies have also taken his side. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who is expecting a visit from Ahmadinejad later this week, said he spoke by phone with the Iranian leader on Monday after his tense showdown at Columbia.
“I congratulate him, in the name of the Venezuelan people, before a new aggression of the U.S. empire,” Chavez said, adding that it seemed Ahmadinejad was the subject of “an ambush.”
Ahmadinejad is set to address the U.N. General Assembly later Tuesday. Thousands of people protested Ahmadinejad’s visit Monday and more were expected to rally in the streets Tuesday when the Iranian leader attends the meeting for the third time in three years.
Tensions are high between Iran and the U.S. over Washington allegations that Tehran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons and supplying Shiite militias in Iraq with deadly weapons that kill U.S. troops. Iran denies both claims.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel threatened tougher sanctions against Iran if it remains intractable on the dispute over its nuclear program.
Merkel said she intends to make clear in her address to the General Assembly later Tuesday that an Iranian nuclear bomb would have devastating consequences not only for Israel and the whole of the Middle East, but for Europe and the rest of the world.
“For this reason, the international community must not let itself become splintered” in dealing with Iran, Merkel said.
“The world should not have to prove to Iran that it is building a (nuclear) bomb, but Iran must convince the world that it doesn’t want to build a nuclear bomb,” Merkel told reporters in New York.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8RSIK983&show_article=1

Iranian Dictator Ahmadinejad Speaks in Building Funded by Jewish Philanthropist

Ahmadinejad Speaks in Building Funded by Jewish Philanthropist
Monday, September 24, 2007 2:12 PM
NEW YORK — When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad takes the stage at Columbia Monday, it will be in a building funded by a billionaire U.S. Marine pilot who gave generously to Jewish causes.
Alfred Lerner Hall, the main student center, was named for the late Jewish philanthropist and Marine hero who gave the school a $25 million donation.
It is an “obscenity” that the Iranian is speaking there, said Rabbi Gerald Skolnik of Forest Hills Jewish Center in Queens, to which Lerner also gave.
“To have a Holocaust-denying, nuclear-aspiring hatemonger speaking in a hall that bears his name in the interest of `free speech,’ it’s just the wrong person in the wrong place,” Skolnik said. Lerner, who died in 2002 at 69, was born in Brooklyn to Russian immigrants. He graduated from Columbia in 1955 and served in the Marines as a pilot. A successful businessman, he became chairman of MBNA Corp., the second-largest credit-card issuer in the world.
Lerner owned the Cleveland Browns football team, where he created a fund to help survivors of responders who were killed on Sept. 11, and donated substantial sums to the Cleveland Clinic. He also gave generously to the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, which assists the aging unsung heroes from World War II who helped save Jews during the Holocaust and educates teachers about the genocide.
http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/Ahmadinejad_Lerner/2007/09/24/35208.html

Ambassador John Bolton rips Columbia for inviting Ahmadinejad

Protesting Ahmadinejad at Columbia

Isreali President blasts Columbia University for hosting Iran dictator

Peres blasts U.S. school for hosting Iran leader
Tue Sep 25, 2007 8:47am EDT
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli President Shimon Peres on Tuesday criticized a U.S. university for hosting Iran’s president, comparing the event to attempts to engage Adolf Hitler in dialogue before World War Two.
During his speech at Columbia University in New York on Monday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad attacked Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and denied his country’s nuclear program was aimed at building atomic weapons.
Ahmadinejad has come under international criticism for saying that Israel should be “wiped off the map” and has questioned whether the Nazi Holocaust that killed 6 million Jews actually took place.
Introducing the Iranian president, Columbia University President Lee Bollinger said Ahmadinejad behaved as a “petty and cruel dictator” and that his Holocaust denials suggested he was either “brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated”.
Bollinger asked a string of pointed questions, most of which Ahmadinejad ignored in a speech that dwelt at length on science as a gift from God and the importance of using knowledge and learning purely and in a pious way.
But Peres said Columbia’s invitation to the Iranian leader did not fall under the umbrella of free academic expression because Ahmadinejad “simply stood up and lied”.
“I think that Columbia University made a mistake … With Hitler there was a dialogue. (British Prime Minister Neville) Chamberlain went to talk to him. What did it help? It helped cover the fact that Hitler prepared concentration camps and death camps,” Peres told Reuters.
Israeli government officials have long invoked memories of World War Two in lobbying against Iran, generally as part of appeals for the West not to allow a “second Holocaust”.
“I don’t accept the university’s explanations, because if a university is a platform where lies are permissible, then it is not academic … So all of yesterday’s show was wretched,” Peres said.
Israel, which is believed to have the Middle East’s only atomic arsenal, has hinted it could resort to military strikes to prevent Iran from attaining nuclear weapons, but says it favors economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL2510361920070925?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews&rpc=22&sp=true

Liberal Democrats at Columbia University Give Iran a Perfect Propaganda Opportunity

‘Amid standing ovation of the audience’…

IRI President addresses students at Colombia University
New York, Sept 25, IRNA
Despite entire US media objections, negative propagation and hue and cry in recent days over IRI President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s scheduled address at Colombia University, he gave his lecture and answered students questions here on Monday afternoon.
On second day of his entry in New York, and amid standing ovation of the audience that had attended the hall where the Iranian President was to give his lecture as of early hours of the day, Ahmadinejad said that Iran is not going to attack any country in the world.
Before President Ahamadinejad’s address, Colombia University Chancellor in a brief address told the audience that they would have the chance to hear Iran’s stands as the Iranian President would put them forth.
He said that the Iranians are a peace loving nation, they hate war, and all types of aggression.
Referring to the technological achievements of the Iranian nation in the course of recent years, the president considered them as a sign for the Iranians’ resolute will for achieving sustainable development and rapid advancement.
The audience on repeated occasion applauded Ahmadinejad when he touched on international crises.
At the end of his address President Ahmadinejad answered the students’ questions on such issues as Israel, Palestine, Iran’s nuclear program, the status of women in Iran and a number of other matters.

http://www2.irna.ir/en/news/view/line-24/0709252616013529.htm

Democrat Spokesman Mahmoud Ahmedinejad’s Columbia University Speech Sparks Protest

One democrat protester says, “Ahmadinejad is bad. Bush is worse.”

Another democrat protester says, “I can’t disagree with [Ahmadinejad] if I don’t actually know what he thinks…I want to actually, like, hear what he has to say.”

Legislatures May Deny State Aid to Columbia University

Legislatures May Act on Columbia

Silver Warns of Impact on State Aid
BY JACOB GERSHMAN – Staff Reporter of the SunSeptember 24, 2007URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/63232
As the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, prepares to address Columbia University today amid a storm of student protest, state and city lawmakers say they are considering withholding public funds from the school to protest its decision to invite the leader to campus.
In an interview with The New York Sun, the speaker of the Assembly, Sheldon Silver, said lawmakers, outraged over Columbia’s insistence on allowing the Iranian president to speak at its World Leaders Forum, would consider reducing capital aid and other financial assistance to the school.
Lawmakers warned about other consequences for Columbia and its president, Lee Bollinger, who has resisted campus and public pressure to cancel Mr. Ahmadinejad’s appearance today, arguing that Columbia’s commitment to scholarship requires the school to directly confront offensive ideas.
“There are issues that Columbia may have before us that obviously this cavalier attitude would be something that people would recall,” Mr. Silver said. “Obviously, there’s some degree of capital support that has been provided to Columbia in the past. These are things people might take a different view of … knowing that this is that kind of an institution.”
Mr. Silver faulted Columbia for “attempting to legitimize this individual,” saying, “We have an obligation because of the U.N. to allow him to come to this country. It doesn’t mean we have to make him welcome. We don’t have to give him a forum.”
The speaker said he was infuriated by comments made on Saturday by the acting dean of the School of International and Public Affairs, John Coatsworth, who said in a television interview that it would have been proper for Columbia to extend a speaking invitation to Hitler in 1939. Mr. Coatsworth’s school is sponsoring the event.
“What makes it more outrageous is the fact that some dean yesterday said he would have invited Adolf Hitler. It’s totally outrageous. This is not a matter of academic freedom. This is a matter of legitimizing people, one who was the perpetrator of the Holocaust and one who denies its existence,” Mr. Silver said.
“He’s clearly responsible for the deaths of Americans both in Iraq and elsewhere. And he remains as much a threat to the world as anybody today. I don’t understand what this dean and Columbia are thinking,” Mr. Silver said.
Mr. Silver’s criticism of Columbia was echoed by other elected officials, who argued that Columbia was lending its name and prestige to a leader of a terrorist-sponsoring dictatorship who denies the existence of the Holocaust, vows to eliminate Israel, preaches Islamic extremism, and aspires to build nuclear weapons.
“Bollinger made a big mistake, and there should be consequences for him for making that decision,” the chairman of the New York City Council’s Finance Committee, David Weprin, said in an interview. “We should look at everything involving Columbia, whether it be capital projects, city and state, or other related things that we do in the city for them,” he said.
Mr. Weprin was one of several elected officials who joined Jewish leaders, Columbia students, and alumni yesterday at a demonstration at the Morningside Heights campus to protest Mr. Ahmadinejad’s talk.
“It’s not going to go away just because this episode ends. Columbia University has to know … that they will be penalized,” an assemblyman of Brooklyn, Dov Hikind, who also attended the rally, said. The lawmaker said Mr. Ahmadinejad should be arrested when he sets foot on campus.
Speaking at the rally, a New York City Council member, James Gennaro, urged university donors to withhold their dollars from the institution, while Rep. Anthony Weiner, a potential mayoral candidate in 2009, said Columbia’s reputation was taking a “brutal beating.”
Mr. Silver’s warning of sanctions against Columbia is a highly unusual departure for a state leader who has seldom, if ever, threatened to use the power of the state purse to punish a private university.
A spokesman for the Senate Republicans, John McArdle, said the majority conference is “going to review the whole situation and decide on how, or whether, to proceed.”
Mayor Bloomberg, who visited the Flight 93 memorial site in Shanksville, Pa., yesterday told reporters he disagreed with Columbia’s decision to host Mr. Ahmadinejad but promised the city would “provide the protection to make sure that when he gets there, he speaks safely without any threats and leaves.”
Albany awards Columbia millions of dollars a year in student financial aid and also provides funding for smaller-scale capital projects. Last year, Albany awarded the school $10 million for nanotechnology center and $12 million for a cancer center in Washington Heights.
Columbia uses the state Dormitory Authority to borrow money at low interest rates. Mr. Silver could use his influence over the authority to weed out Columbia bonding projects before they are submitted for approval.
The school is also seeking approval from city lawmakers for its plan to expand into a 17-acre swath of land in West Harlem. Albany also has the power to use eminent domain to facilitate Columbia’s expansion.
Mr. Bollinger has defended his university’s invitation to Mr. Ahmadinejad, saying that in order to fulfill Columbia’s mission, he must respect the rights of faculty and deans to “create programming for academic purposes.” On occasion, he said, “this will bring us into contact with beliefs many, most, or even all of us will find offensive and even odious.”
A year ago, Mr. Bollinger rescinded Columbia’s invitation to Mr. Ahmadinejad to speak at the same annual forum, apparently overruling a former dean of SIPA, Lisa Anderson. Mr. Bollinger, at the time, said he couldn’t be certain that the Iranian leader’s presence at the school would “reflect the academic values that are the hallmark of a university event such as our World Leaders Forum.” An assistant to Ms. Anderson said the event was cancelled because of security and logistical concerns.
Inside the university, Mr. Bollinger yesterday faced criticism from several student leaders, some of whom supported the invitation to Mr. Ahmadinejad but said they were angry that they were not consulted by the administration.
“I’ve heard a lot of feedback already from people saying they don’t want to give money,” Elizabeth Goldhirsch, who graduated from Columbia’s school of journalism in 2002, said. “I will not make a donation if this stance is maintained.”
Mr. Bollinger, who has served as president since 2002, also was confronting signs of increasing division in his administration.
The dean of Columbia Law School, David Schizer, in a statement called Mr. Ahmadinejad “a reprehensible and dangerous figure,” and said it would be “deeply regrettable if some misread this invitation as lending prestige or legitimacy to his views.”
Mr. Ahmadinejad, who is attending the U.N. General Assembly, arrived in New York late yesterday. He is scheduled to speak at Columbia for an hour, beginning at 1:30 p.m., and will issue his remarks in Farsi with simultaneous translation, a university spokesman said.
Columbia officials say the Iranian leader will be escorted onto campus through the gate at 114th Street, which leads directly to Lerner Hall. He is scheduled to depart immediately after the event. Campus security, which is coordinating with local and federal authorities, is planning for more than 10,000 protesters to congregate outside the university’s gates.
Columbia distributed 600 tickets to the talk, where Mr. Ahmadinejad will field questions from Mr. Bollinger as well as faculty and students. The event is to be broadcast on televisions and lounges across campus.
Mr. Bollinger said in a statement that he would question the Iranian president on human rights issues, as well as his position that Israel should be “wiped off the map” and that the Holocaust did not occur.

http://www.nysun.com/article/63232

Yom Kippur at Columbia University

Yom Kippur at Columbia
New York Sun EditorialSeptember 24, 2007
Jewish students at Columbia who went to their computers after breaking the fast for Yom Kippur were met Saturday evening with a link on the Drudge Report to an interview with the dean of the School of International and Public Affairs saying that he’d have been happy to welcome Hitler to the campus. The interview, aired on Fox News, was with John Coatsworth. He is seen in the Day of Atonement broadcast chuckling like a veritable Mearsheimer or Walt. Could he be oblivious to the impact his words were going to have in a Jewish community already on notice that its sensibilities were of little rank to either the president or the faculty of the university? Columbia, it seems, is bound and determined to honor the president of Iran and provide him with a platform to agitate against our country, and Israel, in midst of a war in which our GIs are facing Iranian backed forces on the field of battle.
Dean Coatsworth seems to be laboring under the illusion that had Columbia actually hosted Hitler in the late 1930s, World War II and the war against the Jews might have been prevented. The dean appears to be ignorant of history. The archives of the New York Times disclose that in December 1933, Columbia’s president, Nicholas Butler, extended an invitation to Hitler’s ambassador, Hans Luther. A protest was made by the Social Problems Club, which, according to the report in the Times, said: “Inviting the Nazi envoy to lecture on the foreign policy of his government and giving him an official reception means not only failing in our duty to oppose the Nazi onslaught on culture and in our duty to defend our German colleague but signifies, if not an open endorsement of the Nazi actions, at least placing their principles on the same level with other viewpoints.”
In response, President Butler harrumphed something about how Columbia “does not ask what a man’s opinions may be but only whether he is intelligent, honest, and well-mannered in their presentation and discussion. There is no subject which a company of scholars such as that assembled on Morningside Heights, is not prepared to have presented to it by a man or woman of high intelligence and good manners, and to hear fully discussed and debated.” When the “well-mannered” Herr Luther made his appearance on Morningside Heights, it seems only to have whetted the Nazi lust — and to have established a precedent for abasement. It turned out that the only kind of intercourse the Nazis understood was the kind conducted by General Eisenhower, who not only liberated Europe but went on to Morningside Heights, where he brought great distinction to the presidency of the University.
Of how much damage has been done by the latest affair New Yorkers are only beginning to get a sense. Everywhere we called yesterday, responsible men and women in government — and in community institutions — were wrestling with the question of what to do about Columbia. The speaker of the City Council, Christine Quinn, sent a letter, prompting many to look at her in a new and admiring light. The chairman of the Council’s finance committee, David Weprin, was telling reporters that Mr. Bollinger “made a big mistake” and suggesting the Council would look at “everything involving Columbia.” Our advice would be that it start with Columbia’s little-noticed admission last week that the university did not initiate the invitation to Mr. Ahmadinejad but that the invitation was initiated by the Iranian embassy at the U.N. It is part of the same diplomatic service on whose premises in Buenos Aires the Amia bombing was plotted in Argentina.
Most ominously for Columbia, the speaker of the New York State Assembly, Sheldon Silver, has started thinking about the problems at Morningside Heights. “There are issues that Columbia may have before us that obviously this cavalier attitude would be something that people would recall,” Mr. Silver told our Jacob Gershman yesterday. “Obviously, there’s some degree of capital support that has been provided to Columbia in the past. These are things people might take a different view of … knowing that this is that kind of an institution.” Mr. Silver faulted Columbia for “attempting to legitimize this individual,” saying, “We have an obligation because of the U.N. to allow him to come to this country. It doesn’t mean we have to make him welcome. We don’t have to give him a forum.”
No doubt such warnings are going to be met with a lot of palaver about the First Amendment and how there is precedent for American law that — once governments are well-launched in funding private institutions they can’t withdraw already committed funding over disagreements on substance. Mayor Giuliani had his head handed to him when he tried to do that at the Brooklyn Museum, when it took an image of the Virgin Mary splattered with elephant dung and pornographic pictures and tried to palm it off as a painting. Columbia’s Mr. Bollinger is himself one of the premier First Amendment lawyers in the country. But presumably Mr. Silver and his counterparts on the city council will be aware of these suits and, in respect of Columbia, choose their battles carefully. Those who have tangled with Mr. Silver know he is one canny adversary when he feels the interests of his caucus have been placed in jeopardy.

http://www.nysun.com/article/63276