'Dictator's cut'

Translated from Farsi in the February issue of Harper's, an Iranian journalist's reaction to director Oliver Stone's interest in shooting a documentary of President/nut job Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

In light of the history of measures by Western media against Iran's Islamic system and the dominant influence of global Zionism on that media empire, being optimistic about Oliver Stone's request or hoping that he refrains from deliberate manipulations would be an irreparable mistake.

Oliver Stone is the director of the film Alexander, about Alexander of Macedon. Because of Alexander's overthrow of the Achaemenid dynasty and the savage mass killings carried out by his army, he is hated by Iranians. Throughout his film World Trade Center, Stone tried to show 9/11 as an attack by the world of Islam against the West. The Doors commemorated one of America's most perverted, half-mad singers, who enjoyed urinating on the heads of his fans during concerts. ]FK drew a picture of John F. Kennedy as a political saint, as ordered by America's Democratic Party. The film played an undeniable role in Bill Clinton's successful run for the White House. In Nixon, an overthrown and warmongering president who initiated several conflicts is shown as an innocent and blameless individual. All these facts leave no room for doubt concerning Oliver Stone's allegiance to America's key policies, even if some groups, out of ignorance, call him an independent filmmaker.

How can we voluntarily go under this filmmaker's knife? The outcome of such a venture will not be a realistic portrayal of Ahmadinejad the intellectual and peacemaker but a portrait of Ahmadinejad according to Stone, Hollywood, and global Zionism.

Yeah, if Ahmadinejad looks bad, it's the Jews fault. That lovable old dictator is really a pretty decent guy ...

A love song for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Last weekend, there was all kinds of concern about Columbia inviting the crazy president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to speak to students while here to address the United Nations about his country's illicit nuclear program. I too shared the concern, but the "petty and cruel dictator" opened his mouth and said, "In Iran, we don't have homosexuals, like in your country."

This was great fodder for all, and thank you to "Saturday Night Live" -- which on a rare occasion I was DVRing tonight because King James is hosting -- for taking advantage of the opportunity. They just pilloried Ahmadenijad with a brilliant serenade from Andy Samberg, who loves Mahmoud's "silly brown eyes, butter pecan thighs and hairy butt."

Samberg, who is both Jewish (sorry, Mahmoud) and half of the "Dick in a Box" team, had some other choice lyrics:

They call you weasel
They say your methods are medieval
You could be the Jews
I'll be your Jim Caviezel

You're crazy for this, Mahmoud
You can deny the Holocaust all you want
But you can't deny there is something between us

The digital short is online here and embedded below.

Ahmadinejad's public rest stop

Does Larry Craig wear Birkenstocks? Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can say whatever he wants, but we know the truth.

To a Muslim leader, Israel is 'Satan'

"God's Warriors" begins tonight on CNN. But on Saturday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (everyone's favorite) let us know who he thinks is Satan's warrior: "The Zionist regime is the standard bearer of invasion, occupation and Satan."

In honor of Ahmadinejad's statement, Slate posted a two-year-old explanation of what the Muslim Satan is like.

What does he look like? Muslims don't have a clear iconography for Iblis, and there's no Shaitanic counterpart to the red-skinned, pitchfork-wielding demon of Christianity. During the hajj, Shaitan is represented by a featureless stone pillar or wall. Pilgrims "stone Satan" by throwing rocks at the wall.

In Iran, where the Ayatollah Khomeini first dubbed the United States "the Great Satan" in the late 1970s, the words might evoke the divs, or devils, of Persian mythology. These were often depicted as gnarly-looking creatures with horns, dark skin, and protruding teeth. (Ancient literature describes the invasion of Persia by a particularly nasty monster called the White Div.) Posters from the Iranian revolution sometimes depicted Jimmy Carter or Uncle Sam in a demonic guise. In this one, a figure representing Israel and America stands over the shah, who is intertwined with a serpent.

Ahmadinejad's Israel whoppers

Libby Purves, a fan of The God Blog, has compiled a top-30 list of Iranian President Ahmadinejad's "jaw-dropping quotes" on Israel. Here's the top eight:

1. "Israel must be wiped off the map … The establishment of a Zionist regime was a move by the world oppressor against the Islamic world . . . The skirmishes in the occupied land are part of the war of destiny. The outcome of hundreds of years of war will be defined in Palestinian land."
October 26, 2005
(In an address to 4,000 students at a program titled, 'The World Without Zionism')

NB The translation of this quote is debated and has also been read as "Israel must disappear from the page of history"

2. "The Zionist regime is an injustice and by its very nature a permanent threat. Whether you like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation. The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm."
April 14, 2006
(In a speech at the opening of the "Support for the Palestinian Intifada" conference on April 14-16 hosted in Tehran)

3. "Today, they [Europeans] have created a myth in the name of Holocaust and consider it to be above God, religion and the prophets … This is our proposal: give a part of your own land in Europe, the United States, Canada or Alaska to them [Jews] so that the Jews can establish their country."
December 14, 2005
(Speaking to thousands of people in the Iranian city of Zahedan)

4. "The Zionist regime is the flag bearer of violation and occupation and this regime is the flag of Satan. …It is not unlikely that this regime be on the path to dissolution and deterioration when the philosophy behind its creation and survival is invalid."
August 18, 2007
(Address to an international religious conference in Tehran)



5. "A new Middle East will prevail without the existence of Israel."
August 4, 2006
(as quoted by Malaysian news agency Bernama website)

6. "In parallel to the official political war there is a hidden war going on and the Islamic states should benefit from their economic potential to cut off the hands of the enemies."

7. "Some European countries insist on saying that Hitler killed millions of innocent Jews in furnaces.... Although we don't accept this claim, if we suppose it is true, our question for the Europeans is: Is the killing of innocent Jewish people by Hitler the reason for their support to the occupiers of Jerusalem? If the Europeans are honest they should give some of their provinces in Europe -- like in Germany, Austria or other countries -- to the Zionists and the Zionists can establish their state in Europe."
December 8, 2005
(While speaking to journalists at an Islamic summit in Mecca)

8. "The Zionists are the true manifestation of Satan . . . Many Western governments that claim to be pioneers of democracy and standard bearers of human rights close their eyes over crimes committed by the Zionists and by remaining silent support the Zionists due to their hedonistic and materialistic tendencies."
February 28, 2007
(to a meeting of Sudanese Islamic scholars in Khartoum)

Global warming: Israel wipe out

Will global warming beat Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the job of wiping Israel off the map? Jewish groups long have been concerned about the consequences of global warming, but, according to the Forward, they're now framing that debate around the catastrophe global warming would spell for Israel.

In a series of briefings last week on Capitol Hill and with Jewish organizations, a team of experts from Israel presented data indicating that if action to stop global warming is not taken immediately, moderate regimes in the Middle East might collapse and tensions between Israel and its neighbors might rise due to a decrease in rainfall, loss of water sources and increase in extreme weather phenomena.

Already, according to Israel’s Ministry of Environmental Protection, rainfall is down and summer is getting hotter. (That sounds a lot like Los Angeles.)

The main changes, the Israeli experts predicted, would be a drop in the water supply — already a scarce commodity in the Middle East — and an expected rise in temperature that will make it even more difficult to replenish water sources. According to the information presented this week, if action is not taken, then Israel might be facing a loss of up to 100 millimeters of rain a year — almost 20% of the country’s annual rainfall.

For Israel, water shortages could influence not only its population but also the future of its relations with neighboring countries. Israel is already facing difficulties fulfilling its agreement — as part of its 1994 peace treaty with Jordan — to transfer water to the Hashemite kingdom, and will face great problems when trying to work out water arrangements with Palestinians in a final status agreement. The Jordanian monarchy, which is based on support of the agricultural communities, might be in danger. The same is true for the Palestinian leadership, which might encounter an uprising of extremists who will feed on the poverty and despair caused by the collapse of agriculture due to lack of water.

In Egypt, the expected rise of the Mediterranean Sea level could flood rich areas in the Nile’s Delta and lead to food shortages, which could destabilize the regime.

What does evil look like?

In a piece about the war criminal's best friend, Jacques Verges, the NY Times Magazine asks today what evil looks like, and passively dismisses belief in God as passé:

For much of history, when an ironclad trust in a divine maker still prevailed (however many plagues or earthquakes he might have arranged), the question of “evil” was contained by one of two rationales: that people deserved it because of wicked behavior or that it was part of a larger, unknowable celestial plan. That attitude, gullible as it now seems, had the benefit of keeping this particular epistemological dilemma outside the human purview. It held steady until the emergence of a philosophical tradition that, beginning with Immanuel Kant’s questioning of God’s pivotal position and reaching an apogee of unbelief with the arrival of Nietzsche, put the concept of evil right in our laps. As Susan Neiman says in “Evil in Modern Thought,” from the Enlightenment on there have been two views: “The one, from Rousseau to Arendt, insists that morality demands that we make evil intelligible. The other, from Voltaire to Jean Améry, insists that morality demands that we don’t.”

Hannah Arendt predicted that, post-Auschwitz, the problem of evil would be a primary focus of contemporary life. And it might have been, except for the fact that, in a destabilized and reflexively ironic age, we are always checking to make sure we haven’t overlooked a mitigating circumstance or an admirable principle gone wrong. Fearful as some of us are about exhibiting a too-primitive and “demonizing” attitude — the kind of macho Us-versus-Them, Axis-of-Evil line of thinking that has made Bush and Company figures of easy derision — we have become increasingly tentative about assigning this stark designation. (In “The Myth of Evil,” Phillip Cole says that his book “asks the question whether evil exists at all and one possible answer I take very seriously is that it does not.”) Few of us would be hesitant to use the word to describe the genocidal regimes, for example, of Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot and Milosevic. But for the most part, we post-Manichaean postmodernists are more like Neville Chamberlain hoping to win over Hitler with a bit of coaxing than like Winston Churchill, who committed his country to fighting him. Given our a tradition of broad civil tolerance, it makes uneasy sense that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the half-buffoonish, half-demonic leader of Iran, was invited to speak at an ivy-towered bastion of learning, where he gave voice to his hate-mongering views.

A Christian toast to Israel

They poured into the Beverly Hilton like young politicos at a national convention, in awe at the feet of religious icons and ready to go forth from the Jerusalem Prayer Banquet to promote the gospel of God's love for Israel.

Talking last Thursday about God's chosen people, comparing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Hitler and lamenting the indifference others express about Israel, these 300-plus Christians each spent at least $125 to pray for peace in the Holy Land and commiserate with Jews about the seemingly never-ending threats to Israel's existence.

(skip)

"God has ordained Israel as a favored nation, and it is important for us to support it," said Fred Broling, a 72-year-old evangelical Christian who flew with his wife from Chicago for the dinner and donated $5,000 to Eagles' Wings Ministries, the organization that hosted the event, placing the couple in the Guardian circle, alongside televangelist Pat Robertson. "God has told us we will be blessed by the fact that we support his people."

Where do the Christian Scriptures say that?

"I don't know," Broling replied. "Somewhere, I'm sure."

That's from a story I wrote this week about the evangelical Christian love affair with Jews -- or at least Israel. Read more about it here and here.

She loves Huckabee

From the Department of Uncomfortably Hilarious Satire:




Previously in God Blog videos:

The Chronic(whats?)cles of Narnia

A Love Song for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Borats Anonymous

Obama Girl's Coulter Crush

Hagee says the darndest things

In the wake of the "controversy" surrounding the Rev. John Hagee's endorsement of John McCain for president -- comparisons have been made to Farrakhan's desire for a black president, a veiled endorsement that Barack Obama repudiated -- The Forward offers a run down of some of Hagee's most explosive comments.

On Hurricane Katrina: “All hurricanes are acts of God, because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that… I believe that Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans.”

On the Catholic Church: “Most readers will be shocked by the clear record of history linking Adolf Hitler and the Roman Catholic Church in a conspiracy to exterminate the Jews.”

On Muslims: Asked whether he believes that Muslims have a mandate to kill Christians and Jews, Hagee replied, “Well, the Koran teaches that. Yes, it teaches that very clearly.” On women: “Do you know the difference between a woman with PMS and a snarling Doberman pinscher? The answer is lipstick. Do you know the difference between a terrorist and a woman with PMS? You can negotiate with a terrorist.”

On the Antichrist: “He’s going to make a seven-year treaty with Israel and set up his image to be worshiped in Israel. And that is where I’m convinced that a Jewish person who understands who he is shoots him, because the Bible says he’s wounded in the head and recovers wondrously, emulating the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. At this point in time when he comes back to life he has the personality of a Hitler. He now pursues the Jewish people. The Jewish people then go to Petra, which is a place in Jordan that is a natural fortress. And that God is going to provide for them there protection from him. And as he gets ready to pursue him, the Bible says that he, the Antichrist, hears tidings from the east that disturb him. The tidings from the east is that… the Chinese army is marching up the Euphrates River, 200 million of them, and they’re moving toward the battle of Armageddon, because they want the oil that will make them a superpower.”

On the Israeli-Palestinian peace process: “When the Annapolis Conference was being planned and the topic of dividing Jerusalem came up, one man asked me, ‘Where do you stand on this based on the Bible?’ I responded that ‘the plan of the Antichrist is to divide Jerusalem.’ If America puts pressure on Israel to divide Jerusalem we are following the blueprint of the Prince of Darkness. Amos 3:2 states that any nation that divides the Land of Israel will come under the severe judgment of God.”

Hagee, the head of Christians United for Israel, will speak next week at Stephen S. Wise Temple in Los Angeles.

Previously in Outlandish Opinions, The God Blog mentioned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Israel whoppers. And here's a kid saying the darndest thing.

Holocaust denial or alter kaker row?

Loyal readers know that I wasn't raised Jewish and that my strongest association with Jewishness is with experiencing anti-Semitism. The potent embodiment of that is the Holocaust. My belief -- based on 4,000 years of history -- is that the world does not care if you practice Judaism if your last name is Greenberg. To anti-Semites, you're a "Jew."

I say this as a preface to what will follow, because I have no interest in spurring Alan Dershowitz to start a campaign to deny me tenure at The Journal. I am not a revisionist. I know the Holocaust happened, and I lament the fact so many Jews my generation want to separate themselves from the guilt of that memory -- lest we forget.

And I understood the concern of eastern Ventura County Jews this week as they dealt with what they believed was a Holocaust denier who had used a public facility to spread his hate. From today's Jewish Journal:

The way Jews in the Conejo Valley describe it, Joseph Goebbels would be proud of the propaganda proffered as academic discourse at the Goebel Senior Adult Center last month. That's when John Bravos, a commissioner of the publicly funded facility, focused a lecture in his comparative religion series on the Holocaust. The first question asked by a flier for the event was: "Did it happen?"

When about a dozen seniors showed up, Bravos began by talking about deniers who use the phrase "so-called Holocaust," comparing the atrocities of World War II to other genocides and saying that far fewer Jews were murdered by the Nazis than historians have long believed.

"I was devastated and irate and just very insulted and offended," said Honey Bencomo, a 67-year-old Jewish woman from Agoura Hills who attended the lecture with her husband, who is Catholic. "He was talking about something that is a very significant part of Jewish history and was saying it didn't happen."

But when I talked to Bravos, I wasn't sure he had been understood correctly. What I heard were the words not of a Holocaust denier, or "revisionist," but of a confused octogenarian.

And from the rancor exhibited at Tuesday's meeting -- a meeting of more than 200, where Jews attacked the motives of other Jews who defended the accused -- it seems that no matter what his intent was, the damage to the Conejo's Jewish community has been far more substantial than the pain of hearing a "nutcase" (Bravos' word) like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad call the Holocaust a myth.

The soccer player's Israel boycott

My colleague Karmel Melamed, an Iranian-American Jew who loves writing about any topic with even part of one of those three words in it, has a post over at his blog about an Iranian-born German soccer player who refused last week to play in the European Under-21 Championship in Tel Aviv. I guess he picked up where the British academics left off.

It is not only unsportsmanlike for any player to wage a private boycott against a country including Israel, but especially insulting when a player from Germany of all places with its history of anti-Semitism displays this type of behavior!

Indeed, it seems, as good a punchline as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is to us, some people actually take the guy seriously. (Yeah, I saw those Tehran U students protesting his presence). This also is not the first time an Iranian player has participated in such a boycott. Well, sports in Israel have been through worse.

'The Chronic(what?)cles of Narnia'

In honor of that hilarious "SNL" video skewering Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's profession that there are no gays in Iran, I've decided to embed a classic Andy Samberg digital shorts, "Lazy Sunday." Enjoy.

Islam's 'Jesus Christ Superstar' -- sort of

Jeffrey Fleishman is pretty much the only remaining reporter at the LA Times whose stories I have to read when I cross his byline. He carried the Column One Tuesday with a piece about an Iranian film that critically casts Jesus as a prophet and Christianity as a sham. (Click here to read about Jesus as a talk radio host.) Fleishman's article was titled "Jesus through the lens of Islam," and it delved into far more than just entertainment:

Jesus sat and peeled an orange as his companion, Nader Talebzadeh, began to speak, precisely, so as not to be misunderstood on a matter so sensitive. The Iranian director's new film is based on the Islamic version of the life of Jesus, depicting the man Christians believe to be the messiah and son of God as a tormented Judean prophet foretelling the coming of Muhammad, the founder of the Muslim faith.

One might imagine such a tale may not screen well in the red states of America. The film, nearly 10 years in the making, draws on the Koran and the putative Gospel of Barnabas, considered by many Western scholars a medieval fable. The premise of "Jesus, the Spirit of God" is that Jesus was compassionate and performed miracles, but was not crucified or resurrected from the dead. The message implies that Christianity, a faith of 2 billion people and the core of much Western philosophy, is based on a falsehood.

"I pray for Christians. They've been misled. They will realize one day the true story," said Talebzadeh, whose film has been screened at international film festivals and is being marketed for wider release.

"People might use this film as a strategy to further demonize Iran," he said. "They may succeed. But I hope once you see that the focus of the film is sacred, it will overwhelm. No one would have imagined that an Iranian would make a film to glorify Jesus."

Not to mention an Iranian who supports President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and believes 9/11 was partly a U.S. government conspiracy. "Someone masterminded something," he said. "And this is the cause for a lot of evil America is doing in this part of the world."

There is another irony. The actor who plays Jesus, Ahmad Soleimani-Nia, once was a soldier in the Iranian army and later a welder for Iran's Atomic Energy Agency, which the Bush administration accuses of pursuing nuclear weapons. Such footnotes don't seem odd when talking with Talebzadeh, who has kept Nia in Jesus character -- flowing hair, beard, mystic pose -- for seven years because he never knows when he might shoot new sequences for the film.

"Jesus, the Spirit of God" comes out of Iran at a time of hostile rhetoric between Washington and Tehran and a divide between Islam and the West that has produced jihad websites, DVDs on the apocalypse, editorial cartoons lampooning Muhammad and a recent Osama bin Laden tape condemning Pope Benedict XVI for a "new crusade" against Islam.

Religion has long been at the heart of tensions between East and West, but it is being swept into a wider cultural war played out on the Internet, film and satellite TV in which icons and sacred texts have been attacked and manipulated. A new Dutch film by a right-wing politician, who compares the Koran to Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf," depicts Islam as a violent faith. In response, a Saudi blogger posted a video suggesting that the Bible could be read as a document for war.

Talebzadeh knows that his Jesus walks on volatile terrain; one wonders, given the tenor of the times, how many fatwas would be issued if a Western director made a film suggesting that Muhammad, whose depiction is forbidden under Islamic tradition, was someone other than the prophet.

"There is so much wrong with this man's understanding of Jesus and Christianity," wrote an incensed Christian blogger, referring to Talebzadeh in a conversation about the film that is unfolding in cyberspace. "It's another piece of Satanic propaganda intended to accomplish no meaningful purpose in this world."

I don't doubt that conjecture of a double standard. Cartoons about Muhammad stir enough trouble, and we saw what happened when "Family Guy" tried airing a two-part episode about Peter's previous exploits with Islam's great prophet (at least, we saw the "South Park" rendition of "Cartoon Wars").

The film first hit Iranian theaters in January. Who knows when it will make it to Los Angeles?