at the end of this video, is the crowd shouting ‘nazi nazi nazi’?

Posted by: annie | Apr 21 2009 15:37 utc | 4

Better than any Ratzinger speech I’ve seen.

Posted by: biklett | Apr 21 2009 17:01 utc | 6

Said ages ago the US would not, in the end, participate. (Too many Muslims! to make it short.)
Obama’s open- and even- handedness could never stretch that far.
Moreover, he delayed as long as possible with nominating a rep. to the UN and an ambassador to Switz, so all the bodies involved in organising, pre-planning, etc. had no one to talk to.
– The excuse was, he was too busy with the ‘ekonomi’ so everyone had to rush around accommodating the US as best as can be, at super late dates and without any feed in, perpetually on tenterhooks. (my summary from swiss press)
Now this anti-racist conf. is of minor importance in the sense that it only writes guidelines, statements of principle – nothing binding. So it becomes a theater for acting out, a platform for pols to grab points with their home constituents, reported in press with great fanfare.
Nevertheless, it is an emanation of the UN, much of its work, committees, etc. and having it fail diminishes the UN’s credibility, usefulness, etc. Bolton was disgusting ..but at least he was always present!
Israel has recalled it’s ambassador to Switz.
Here we see power plays in open yet symbolic skirmish.
How do blacks in the US take to not particpating in ani-racist conferences?

Posted by: Tangerine | Apr 21 2009 18:56 utc | 8

On Newsnight last night, Jeremy Paxman challenged UK Ambassador Peter Gooderham and obtained the information that the walkout had been agreed upon by EU states before the session, ie before they heard a word Ahmadinejad had said. They did not have a text in advance.
This stunt was a combination of the pompous and the immature that had Miliband written all over it.
hhttp://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/04/that_ahmadineja.html

Posted by: Anthony | Apr 22 2009 2:33 utc | 10

different translation of his speech @ haaretz as translated by the Presidency of the Islamic Republic of Iran News Service:

Posted by: annie | Apr 22 2009 3:42 utc | 12

shit, everytime i preview it eats my text.
again, the walkout had been agreed upon by EU states before the session
like..duh. copy of leaflet urging people to walkout.

Posted by: annie | Apr 22 2009 3:50 utc | 14

Juan Moment
Up is down; evil is good and good – evil; everything you say while being waterboarded is true; everything true is false; day is night and night is day; the police are here to help you; presidents don’t get blowed by 21 year-old interns; fox news is fair and balanced; Americans are the good guys; nobody killed by the U.S. government is innocent; everybody israel kills is a terrorist and on and on…
We’ve fallen through the looking glass into an alternate reality that’s really rotten; or even worse, this could be the way the world really is.
I couldn’t believe the NPR story about the speech I wonder how much you have to pay an news entertainer to read a story like this and say how the americans were worried about the anti israel language in the proposal and then say in almost the next breath how they were worried the document would “limit free speech” Huh? At least most of the comments make sense.
Is it just me or is it becoming easier to find reasons to be angry at our country’s leadership? What a bunch of flecks of feces humans! Rrrrgh!

Posted by: DavidS | Apr 22 2009 4:36 utc | 16

@DavidS #16
Perhaps this is how…
NPR’s president is State Dept-CIA veteran
NPR’s president since 1998, Kevin Klose, comes right out of State Department-CIA media sometimes known as Operation Mockingbird.
Voice of America, Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty, Broadcast Board of Governors, Washington Post, Harvard, etc.
That’s our boy.
Here’s his CIA propaganda biography taking over NPR just before the April ’99 NATO bombing of Kosovo which is probably why he moved over to NPR-

For immediate release
November 11, 1998
NPR Announces New President and CEO
Washington, DC – The Board of Directors of National Public Radio® (NPR®) announced today its selection of veteran journalist and international media executive Kevin Klose as the next President and Chief Executive Officer of NPR, effective in mid-December. Klose, 58, a former editor and correspondent at The Washington Post, is currently Director of the U.S. International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB), the U.S. global, non-military radio and television system.
…..
Klose has led the IBB since April 1997, responsible for the Voice of America, Worldnet Television and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, and broadcast support for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia.
…..
“It is very difficult to leave the Bureau, the oversight board, and the staffs just at the moment broadcasting has achieved the status of a separate federal agency,” Klose said. “But the work that must be done to implement independence is in good hands under the chairmanship of Marc B. Nathanson, and the Broadcasting Board of Governors.”
Broadcasting Board chairman Nathanson said, “It is a distinguished opportunity for Kevin – hard for us to lose him, but so positive for NPR and its mission. He will do a tremendous job for NPR.”
Before joining IBB, Klose was president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a private, non-profit multi-national radio news organization that broadcasts to Central Europe and the former Soviet Union.
A veteran reporter and editor at The Washington Post, Klose was Moscow Bureau Chief (1977-81), Midwest correspondent (1983-87) and Deputy National Editor (1987-91) during his 25-year career there.
He is the author of Russia and the Russians: Inside the Closed Society, an account of life in the Soviet Union that won the Overseas Press Club’s Cornelius Ryan Award (1985).
A graduate of Harvard University with an honors degree in English literature, Klose served two years in the U.S. Navy. He was born in Toronto and grew up in Red Hook, New York. His parents, Woody and Virginia Taylor Klose, were radio producers and writers during the Golden Age of Radio in the 1930s and 1940s.

Kevin Close is still there at NPR today using all those same ex-generals as Pentagon ‘message magnifiers’ like Robert Scales and CIA shills from the American Enterprise Institute that the rest of the CIA media is using to handle us during Vietnam II.
NPR’s Fair and Balanced Explanation
Kevin Klose’s current NPR biography now sells him in business language to friendly-up his work making the internet part of US psy-ops to ‘deconflict’ messaging as being frugally saving us money and improving efficiency-
This is how the Repressive State Apparatus (RSA)works…
A great Buddhist saying stipulates that Meditation is not what you think. Wishful thinking happens when you refuse to see how painful things are.~Unknown

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Apr 22 2009 6:21 utc | 18

Juan Moment (#11), I couldn’t have worded it any better than you did:
“It’s sad that it takes someone as extreme and bigoted himself as Ahmadi’nejad to spell out the truth about the brutal racism and lethal apartheid alive in Israel and condoned by its western supporters, that pack of hypocrites.”
I am sick to death of listening to Ahmadinejad playing the Israel Card to detract from his own miserable failings at home. I have my differences with many on this Blog who champion the SOB simply because he voices our other frustrations.
Yes, what he says about Israel is correct. But no, HE of all people is not the one who should be saying it.

Posted by: Parviz | Apr 22 2009 12:50 utc | 20

at no. 16: The limit to free speech was invoked, and insisted on, by the ‘West’ before, during, and now in a self-congratulatory fashion, after the meeting. This was done to remove all the proposed passages, articles, what not, that referred to demonizing, criticizing, or discriminating against a religion, put forward by Islamic and some African countries. (See Mohamet cartoons, etc.)
On the face of it, this is a fair argument: one must distinguish between racist speech -writing, pictures, etc.-, racist acts, and official racist policies. Of course, attempting to do so propels one immediately into the grey area of inciting to hatred / to violence .. which forms part of the confused legislation of many European countries. Yet, these murky matters were not brought up, and moreover no attempt was made to skirt them in an intelligent way by the ‘islam’ block (that is shorthand.)
(note 1)
The Islamic (plus some other) countries had, have, some very legitimate complaints, as we can all agree. However they did not manage to tailor them to fit UN/western/legal and so on criteria. They ignored racist policies (see note 1 again, I may have to amend all this, or refine it..) and simply concentrated on the dissing of a religion; I’m sure they thought that depersonalizing matters in this way was a delicate, legitimate, Western-friendly, non-Israel bashing way of proceeding.
In short, they held back, and aired their grievances in a way all of them could agree on. Islam is not fascist, it is not evil, Mohamet is not the devil, etc. They copied the victim-style discourse of Jews. They thought that would work…
Follows, quite naturally, Ahmajinedad’s speech saying what they did not, or could not, articulate, or get onto the agenda, but in the form of a speech, a very wide-ranging one. In this context, a speech is a triviality.
He was allowed to speak (free speech, again) so others could walk out.
He is the world version of the US Ron Paul or Kuchinich, lone voices that garner huge support, are allowed to exist to showcase plurality, so that they can be thoroughly marginalized and decried.
note 1. only from the swiss press, I haven’t had time to read all the texts, speeches, etc.

Posted by: Tangerine | Apr 22 2009 15:16 utc | 22

here is something of minor interest from wikipedia

Ahmadinejad, born Mahmoud Saborjhian was the son of a blacksmith, born near Garmsar in the village of Aradan in Talysh family on 28 October 1956. The name, which derives from thread painter, a once common and humble occupation, was changed into Ahmadinejad, meaning the race of Mohammed or the virtuous race. According to his relatives, it was for “a mixture of religious and economic reasons.” During the presidential campaign in 2009, political opponents have speculated that the name was changed in order to cover Jewish roots. In the 1950s, when he was still a baby, his family moved from Aradan to Narmak district in southern Tehran in search of more economic prosperity; It was during this time period that the Saborjhian family changed its name to Ahmadinejad.

wow! a self-hating jew leading an islamic republic. all kinds of conspiracy theories await me.

Posted by: dan of steele | Apr 22 2009 16:59 utc | 24

Dan of Steel (#24), wasn’t Hitler also part-Jewish?
The plot thickens ……………

Posted by: Parviz | Apr 23 2009 5:53 utc | 26