Misc

...

This documentary is pure horseshit!

The huge mess

that Jimmy Carter made still haunts Iran and the world. The Shah was the US's best and Carter paid him back with betrayal. The idiot JC then put his support behind "holy" Imam who would be a new "Gandi". The good Imam repaid JC with the prolonged hostage crisis and wrecking of his reelection. To this day JC is not man enough to admit how badly he screwed it up. Now he wants to go around and give Obama advise on how to wreck the world some more.

Iran

How is day to day life in Iran these days with these lunatic Mullahs offering 8th century ideas and clamping down on individual freedoms ? Israel and Iran were friends and had diplomatic relations before the 1979 revolution before James Earl Carter threw the Shah to the wolves. The U.S. and Israel support the Iranian people. I only wish the U.S. had a stronger leader who would publically back the Iranian people

Samer Jan

I really thank you for your kindness and honesty.  You are a good guy and I second FB's post. Being generous and understanding is the way to friendship. Thank you.

VPK

Samar jan :)

You are a gentleman ;)  And yes, the fish is excellent!

Persian Gulf

Hastily written; it is always the Persian Gulf, and the fish are very tasty!

 I hate the BBC!!!!

Samer Jan

"Gulf based"? You mean Persian Gulf :-) Seriously we need to get over this Gulf business. Down the ages it has been the Persian Gulf until Nasser came along and make up the other name. We don't call the Arabian Peninsula "Persian Peninsula" do we? So lets get the names right. Will generate good will all around

Just see who is pushing the "Gulf" it is the BBC! Do you think BBC is friends with any of us? Of course not so lets not fall for their divide and conquer ploy.

VPK of was it "the VPK"!

deleted

deleted

Iranian support to Hezbollah

Guys, I know this issue generates a lot of controversy among Iranians, but for the first time I was reading today a comment by a Gulf-based research center, and they said Iranian support to Hezbollah financially amounts to between 100 to 200 million dollars anually.

Of course, they said Hezbollah is not totally reliant on Iran and receives donations too from Lebanese, exiles (and from all denominations, not just shii's). I actually know of a Christian lady who donates part of her pension to them because they liberated her village in the south. This is a meager amount, but is enough to make Hezbollah a much-needed deterrent force against Israel. It is peanuts to what Israel is receiving in military and financial aid!! but at least is actually makes a difference to the lives of people on the ground.

I saw another interesting statistic from a Lebanese poll in 2008 finding that 80% of Christians in Lebanon support Hezbollah, as do a similar amount of Sunnis. Perspectives of the group have changed significantly since the 2006 war, I knew a lot of Christians supported them, but I did not think the figure was that high. Thanks for your comments, it is interesting to put things into perspective and compare them to the accusations of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction that they throw at our region.

$3.5 Billion

The handout has a built in increase which will take it up to $3.5 billion by the end of 2012.

And yet there are over 30 million uninsured individuals in US, plus millions and millions of children who go to bed hungry EVERY and EACH night.

-YT 

samer

beautifully said. if i am not mistaken, the current figure is $3 billion a year.

Peace

BBC

the shrill warnings of BBC would have a bit more credibility if:

1) It didn't have such a prominent hand in raising  Khomeini to power in the first place.

2) They did not have the shameful Iraqi WMD lies propaganda behind them.

No one with an iota of brain takes BBC seriously.

The BBC is the propaganda arm of the UK government. Plain and simple. Its thinly veiled pretense at neutrality went out with Andrew Gilligan. Thank Tony Blair for totally politicizing it.

Samar, my sincere thanks to you

I salute you for your fairness and insight.

I just quote one section in relation to 'charges' against Iran and Syria, but I agree with every single point you have made so brilliantly.   

"In this same BBC report they mentioned that each year Israel is receiving $2 billion in weapons grants from the US -- so Israel can be armed to the teeth, but the Lebanese have no right to arm to defend their land and their homes when Israel invades them?? What kind of logic is that? These people are sick". 

load of crap

What a load of crap. I am increasingly starting to dislike the BBC; this is all fabricated nonesense about Iran, they are just trying to set the groundwork for attacking, just like they did with Iraq. They drowned us with 3 years with false superficial propaganda about Iraq, and Saddam's regim, in the end, did not have a single weapon to their name. Hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis died under crippling UN sanctions throughout the 1990s, and then to add insult to injury they invaded and bombed their country, and occupied them. What an Orwellian nightmare.

Now with Iran, they are trying to make us believe that it is a threat. So what if Hezbollah is armed with some missiles from Iran and Syria? In this same BBC report they mentioned that each year Israel is receiving $2 billion in weapons grants from the US -- so Israel can be armed to the teeth, but the Lebanese have no right to arm to defend their land and their homes when Israel invades them?? What kind of logic is that? These people are sick.

They make Hezbollah out to be a terrorist group, yet the only one terrorizing the Middle East is the US and Israel. If Israel did not occupy south Lebanon for 20 years, then Hezbollah would not have been formed to fight back and defend their lands.And Hezbollah is only one part of the Lebanese resistance, many Lebanese from other denominations including Christians and Druzes also fought alongside Hezbollah to liberate the land and end the Israeli occupation.I don't care if they call them terrorists, they liberated the land and brought back freedom and 1 million south Lebanese back to their homes and lands. Their cause is just and Israel will not be able to harm them.

Say whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat??????????????

Where on earth did I ever say you called anyone names????

'Warmongering Wuss' is a coinage of my own, gleaned from many comments from many people about and to him which I read over the past couple of days, yours eminent among them, but for which I owe the immediate inspiration solely to Niloufar. lol

Obviously I could say a lot

Obviously I could say a lot of things better. In fact I could do a lot of things better. But if I wanted to keep going over and redoing things I never get anything done. Regarding Malachi I never called him any names. Please don't put words in my mouth.

I just rather focus on Iran's problems. I told Malachi and will say again: the real victims of IRI are Iranians not US or Israel. I do get tired of US obsession with this made up nuclear threat. I am also tired of the totally worthless American main stream news. I am old enough to remember when there was real news. Walter Cronkite and that kind of people. But now all the news is total garbage and people believe the non stop drumming of war against one imaginary foe after other.

VPK, let me try to put this in a different perspective for a

moment. I am a non-Zionist Ashkneazi Jew by choice. I was raised in a Zionist family. I am also the person who apparently knew more about that AN/Khomeini quote than anyone here. And I am also one of the people--and I don't think you know this--who with a dedicated core group, fought tooth and nail at its beginnings to build this community when it was in absolute chaos. Over two plus years, I have had very good relationships on and/or offsite with people from various ends of the political spectrum ranging from Marge to Ayhab to Q to Niloufar to The Publisher to David to Jamshid to Kadivar to Bijan AM to Farhad Kashani and more. I myself consider myself a moderate Socialist.

Now, I watched this, quietly and VERY attentively, and it hurt ME. As a Jewish American of Zionist upbringing. It hurt ME to watch what I perceived as ULTIMATELY abusive behavior to this guy, this mainstream Jewish American guy seeking information about the Israel/Iran situation because he DOESN'T WANT IRAN TO BE ATTACKED but he's AFRAID of IRI rhetoric. Something went a little wrong, and I know where. And then got worse, and then the worst, and I saw why. Step by step. And now he is gone.

In a certain way it doesn't really MATTER whether all of you are in fact the TOOTH FAIRY and Malichi is the Antichrist. If what I saw hurt ME you can be sure it would hurt MANY other Jews a thousandfold more.

So I'm your litmus test. You can care about that or not, believe it or not believe it, but you ever want to win over a single Jewish (or pro-Israel) heart or mind to the pacifist cause vis a vis Iran (and/or Gaza) on this medium, imho I think you should.

__________________

So here's the Pepsi Challenge, VPK: granting you that you were FABULOUS and so were most of the others until a very specific point when things started to go wrong, and then, disaster heaped upon disaster, and thanking you so much for the wonderful beginning, and for all your efforts in dialoguing IN 3D SPACE with Israelis,

right here on this thread, is there not one single solitary thing VPK, that in looking over what happened from that specific point on (The Mud Puddle Afair) where things started to go wrong, where you could say that you weren't completely justified? One thing that you said that would've been better if you'd not said or said differently? Even just a little better, a little differently? One thing that you didn't say that it might've been better if you had said? Even just one word. To anyone. Malichi or anyone else on this thread? So that I wouldn't've felt hurt while the Warmongering Wuss was dealt with?

One word? One thing? Anything?

I care less for IRI and

I care less for IRI and what it has done on iternal affairs.

We have lost perhaps few hundred invaluable lives during recent years' conflicts in Iran. If there is a war, there will be >1000,000 lives lost. Can someone do the math?

Israeli selfish politicians think that Iranians are like Arabs and if they humiliate them, they will go under blanket and hide.

They truly do not understand that Irani psyche is different!

All this propaganda and animosity is brewed is against interest of USA and Iran.

Let's vote for peace and humiliate war mongers!

Rosie

These questions have been answered many times.

In Persian "death to" means "down with" i.e. is an indication of lack of support. It does not mean they want to kill anyone. There have been cries of: Death to China; Death to Russia; Death to Dictator; Death to Khamenei. But you chose to ignore what does not fit your preconceived notion. This is just want happened with Malachi. He/She came looking for frothing at the mouth nuts. Instead he got reasonable responses. Not being satisfied he/she resorted to the already planned fake offsnce and went of stomping. 

This behavior is a very typical Western attitude. I have seen it in old interviews by Mike Wallace and in recent interviews to this day. 

They ask a question; get an answer; pretend they did not get the answer; then ask it again. They end it with a smug smile pretending to have "won" the argument. Then stomp off all the while being cheered on by pre orchestrated fans and supporters. It is the equivalent of laugh tracks on sitcoms.

Debra Cagan's porno tapes discovered

She can even watch these in her office at the Pentagon.

Lucky her. Here is the lovely woman who hates Iranians in all her glory here.

//images.quickblogcast.com/80987-70899/Pentagons_Debra_Cagan.jpg 

your welcome vildemose, capt,

and the rest who engaged in dialogue with me. i'll be back i'm sure. i won't hold out for long. i felt that i overstepped my limits, my tact, and good form in a repartee involving shahenshaesmail in a thread on correcting ignorance a few days ago.

i hope by then i'll learn more technique for embedding links (thanks dk)

keep peace among yourselves, and i will try to put more energy for positive change in my neck of the woods, where many many people are rooting for you. they are silent, lazy, scared, or preoccupied, unlike your own brave youth.

with deep respect

I do not consider him useles 'IRI',

and he is no more known to me than you are. I am very calm now, thank you.

This olive branch you extend is all well and good, but it doesn't address any of my in my opinon crucial points, both implicit and explicit:

Why didn't you answer his simple, earnest question about whether or not people here thought IRI was developing a bomb, or for that matter whether Iranians like tofu, instead effectively telling him to go home and you'll take care of yourselves?

Why then did you feel entitled to do a post mortem accusing him of not answering questions, followed by a propagandistic harangue about Imperialism, after such a display of hypocrisy, and say in your title that all this proves you (and yours) are 'cultured'?

Why did you write a post thrown in willy nilly about how Zionists plan how to bomb babies at dinner tables with their grannys in clear reference to someone whose simple question you wouldn't answer, and which was asked because he said he's TORN and he DOESN'T WANT WAR but he's AFRAID of IRI's rhetoric?

Why do you think that post may have been deleted?

Why do you assume he's useless when he came to find out whether he should support a bombing of Iran and now he's gone? Do you feel it is unimportant to sway individuals in the US and Israel against this action?

Why did you find him angry? Can you show me exactly where this first became apparent to you?

If you do feel it could be important to sway people about this, issue, do you think someone who found this place through another Iranian website and took his time to come here might be someone who might take positive action?

Why do you appear to assume he's useless as a human being?

Why do you assume I have no money, and why do you assume that having it would be the key to my happiness?

__________

I accept the branch, but no tree til you give me one single substantive statement about something I consider important here that sounds reasonable to me from a 'critical' point of view, to use your own word.

Israel is a failed state. It is a pointless state. It missed it.

Israel has done nothing to help Jews. It has done everything to destroy the Middle East and drive it into conflict. Anti-Semitism is a European sentiment that fueled the Holocaust. 

I would also like to add that Israel must return all US Tax Payer money. We should not be paying for them to build ugly Jerusalem apartments when people are homeless in the USA.

They are ineligible for US Welfare Checks since they are nuclear armed, refuse IAEA inspections, and won't sign NPT.

It has no right to attack Iran, a sovereign nation. Screw Israel. 

Rosie khanum calm down

There is no reason to go on and on and on and on about a useless and unknown individual who had intentions other than learning. Those who come to learn, come with critical minds not closed up and angry.

May god give us some patience and you some money so we can all be happy.

But Malachi's not Israeli, VPK, (Joe)

and for some reason it doesn't seem to bother you 'told' him and the world he was. That was arrogant to begin with, to not see it as such is even moreso. Imho.

(Now, here I am and I did the same thing to Joe about his ethnicity And I hold myself accountable for it. Certainly at least enough so as not to quote myself in a future post in bold as having called him 'white' to prove some other point, as you just did. What I did bothers me, but not all that much. Because, to put it in schoolyard brawl terms, Joe 'started it.' )

Prophet, you aligned yourself with Joe explicitly when you agreed with Joe about your both 'knowing' he's Israeli. You aligned yourself with the rest of his post IMPLICITLY by not recognizing its abusiveness. Of COURSE Malachi has an 'Israeli point of view'. This is nothing to suspect. It's a given. His view is that of the mainstream media, and he told you that til he was blue in the face.  I'm sorry, VPK, but when you show solidarity with an abusive post you're an abuser too. You really should stop defending this imho because it's wrong. To repeat, he stood alone.

It's good to know you've discussed this issue with Israelis, and in person I don't think you would've done it the way you did here. Cozying up to someone who spoke to them like that and then expecting some kind of wonderful outcome from the dialog. In c-space greater care towards an outsider has to be made than in 3D space. At the beginning it was. Your first post and a half were lovely. Truly. B. Your (unqualified) alliance with the abusive post simply should not have been. It was a terrible way to treat a guest.

On the one hand you seemed to want complete acquiescence from him. He was just supposed to accept at face value that Ahmadinejad's rhetoric wasn't belicose. He was asked for sources and provided them in about then minutes and respectfully submitted them. You told him to get them for you in Persian. Sorry to repeat myself but it appears to be necessary. So on the one hand he was a 'bad little boy' but on the other now your problem with him is that he didn't...put up his dukes.

sigh...

The reason he didn't put up his dukes was because he didn't come here to fight. He came to learn. If you find that to be a flaw, so be it. So he is both a warmonger and a wuss. (Niloufar seems to have the same persepctive on him). Which, pray tell, in your opinion, was his worse sin?

VPK, please. Be reasonable. I quote from your reply to Maliki's producing the sources for AN's belicose language (unfortunately not in Persian...). You quoted Malichi:

Add to these, the many rallies in Teheran with crowds chanting, "Death to America! Death to Israel!" I rest my case.  [this the last evidence from him, quoted by you].

You case fails due to inaccurate evidence. In recent times the Death to cries then to be "Death to dictator" meaning AN not to Israel or America. So keep up with the news. 

*(#&)#&*@!!!! His case FAILS due to inaccurate evidence?????????? Thirty years of this ingrained in people who use the mainstream media and his case fails due to INACCURATE evidence. Not even OUT OF DATE but INACCURATE???????????????????????????

He should keep up with the news? He came to you to find out the news.

How dare he, that warmongering wuss?

But seriously, Prophet, thank you for your continued patient efforts in dialoguing with me. :o)

humanbeing

I for one will miss your comments...........

Happy celibacy ;-)

-YT 

thank you humanbeing. It's

thank you humanbeing. It's good news.

elements in the likud posted ads against netanyahu's stand!

i'm in a celibacy period as per comments on ic. just wanted to add a bit to what vildemose said. all the israeli papers have full page ads by likud local leadership in many places begging netanyahu to change routes and go for peace.

further up in the thread vpk is right, dialogue is hard work, not for the thin-skinned.

i better mind my own business, so i'm off.

i miss the dialogue on this site.

We are ready to defend if necessary

جانشين فرمانده كل سپاه پاسداران انقلاب اسلامي، ادامه داد: هرگاه دشمن با ادبياتي خشن ملت ايران را تهديد كند، جمهوري اسلامي ايران نشان خواهد داد كه عزم و اراده جدي دارد تا واكنش هاي پشيمان كننده به تهديد آنها بدهد.

Capt: Great post. Netanyahoo

Capt: Great post. Netanyahoo is iredeemably corrupt and opportunistic. I hope the people of Israel vote him out soon.