Thus spoke Ahmadinajad. Let us not dance around it: Ahmadinajad is a reactionary anti-Semite. I watched the speech live and something about him bothered me: he seemed so sincerely and feverishly religious, and that is scary for me. You see we in the Arab world are accustomed to fake shows of piety on the part of leaders (see the bunch above for example). The theological part of the speech does not really differ from the world view of Bush and Palin, with the exception of the references to the safe "and healthy" return of the 12th Imam. He invoked the word love that I thought he was quoting Lennon. His ascetic posture fit into the descriptions of St. Augustine in City of God. I hate this insistence of translationg "Allah" in Persian or Arabic as....Allah in English. How silly is that? And they annoy me by insisting on pronouncing it as: Allaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh--and they do it in a scary tone as in boooooooooooo. Weird. Make no mistake about it: the speech will go well among Arabs and Muslims: because they will notice that he dares to rail against Israel and US while their leaders are too afraid to do so. Even the Syrian presidnet: when he speaks about Israel and US he adds more nuances and qualifications than US Democratic presidential candidates in answering any question posed to them. But the repugnant part of the speech was his references to "Zionist" control over various aspects of the world. The fact that he used Zionist did not mask the anti-Semitic feature of that view. And I hated his attack on animal instincts: what is wrong with animal instincts? So much of our pleasures are from animal insticts: and animal instincs give me more pleaures than, say, human insitincs like colonization, rape, global domination, racism, concentration camps, domination-in-the-name-of-liberation, and misogyny. Finally, I have one question to the Zionist hoodlums demonstrating in New York City, including Hillary Clinton: do they think that we don't notice Israeli WMDs when they rail about possible Iranian nuclear weapons? Do they require us to suspend memory to believe their warnings? And do they also want us to forget that Israeli leaders threaten (and manage to actually kill) Arabs daily?
PS Shortly after the speech, I received a call from Al-`Alam (Iranian) TV from New York City. They asked me to comment on Ahmadinajad's speech. I told the reporter that I would but that I would be critical of him. He thanked me and said goodbye.