Todd Bookman, First-year SIPA student.
Primary sources
For information please contact:
Was it worth it? Do you feel that you learned something important as a result of Ahmadinejad's visit?
Do you think Ahmadinejad answered questions more directly or less directly than an average U.S. politican would have?
Do you think Ahmadinejad should have been allowed to visit and speak at Columbia?
A note on the polls
Labels
- photos (42)
- the speech (29)
- ahmadinejad (27)
- protests (19)
- students (15)
- bollinger (12)
- outside coverage (10)
- audio (8)
- speakers (6)
- blogs (5)
- broadcasts (5)
- media coverage (4)
- video (4)
- Columbia University (3)
- msm looking for help (3)
- reactions (3)
- Iranian President rally coverage (2)
- NYPD (2)
- broadway (2)
- commute (2)
- rally coverage (2)
- slide show (2)
- 60 minutes (1)
- A view from 116th and Broadway (1)
- Daniel Boorstin (1)
- Iranian President (1)
- Jewish students (1)
- Jim Gilchrist (1)
- access (1)
- alumni (1)
- chancellors (1)
- firstpost (1)
- freedom of speech (1)
- funny (1)
- hillel (1)
- iran (1)
- law dean (1)
- map (1)
- media circus (1)
- pelley (1)
- pseudo-event (1)
- publicity (1)
- rally (1)
- security (1)
- sitings (1)
- vans (1)
- war (1)
Google News
Blog Archive
Contributors to the blog
42 comments:
Alright, we have liftoff. Our first photo of the day is up. Thanks Kate Dailey.
(Undergrads got first photo up at 8:41 A.M. this morning.)
Agreed. Free speech is easy to support when it's someone you agree with or respect. But it's a much larger umbrella, which includes douche bags and assholes.
The pricks who hung nooses under the tree in Jena, LA are protected, just like any other asshole. It should work, even when it makes us puke.
The persons in Jena, LA are NOT protected under the First Amendment because their action infringes upon the rights of others. You can't threaten someone's life, incite riots and violence against others, or portray a false emergency (e.g. yelling "FIRE" inside a crowded building)
he's no "dousche bag" ... listen to what he said about the genocide that is going on today in Palestine, carried out by Israel... a Palestine that had nothing to do with Jew trouble in Europe
OPEN YOUR EYES, AND STOP LISTENING TO A BIASED JEW-CONTROLLED MEDIA
you're on the money there anon, don't listen to a biased jew-controlled media - listen to an anti-semitic holocaust denier who called for Israel to be "wiped off the map"... oh wait.
nah i think those are incorrect translations.
Anonymous is right, don't listen to anonymous.
I speak Urdu, Farsi and several other dominant middle-eastern dialects, I am a Christian male born and raised in the United States. The translations that say Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be "wiped out" are blatant mistranslations, "erased" is more appropriate. He did not say the Holocaust was a "complete fabrication" he said it was "incomplete eradication." Duh get your shiznat striznaight.
Just today at Columbia he hedged his answers to the Holocaust questions with "if it is a reality ..." Check out the transcript.
So I'm not buying all the mistranslation arguments, it's pretty clear that he advocates the position that the Holocaust's authenticity is in doubt.
The translation "wiped off the map" comes from official Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, as can be found right here: http://www.iribnews.ir/Full_en.asp?news_id=200247
As long as a perfect son of a bitch says what you people like, freedom of speech is good, and as soon as a perfectly logical person says something that you people can't digest, you come up with banners like these....
shame on you...
And these comments just go to show you how stupid everyone on the internet really is.
Allowing someone to speak does not mean condoning his/her ideas, behavior, or policies. Freedom of speech is complex, but not a principle I believe should be compromised in this case. I would hope this event could further educate and inform by providing a forum for healthy debates and demonstrations-engaging the public.
Communication can be a first step in cultivating greater understanding across cultural, moral, and political gaps. It is up to us to use the tools and engage.
Awesome sign.
You rock, Todd.
ok, so the holocaust happened, but why is it more important, and why does it get more press than darfour? or Cambodia? or the spanish inquisition? or any other similar events throughout the history of man kind? Why does this one seem to matter more than the others?
check some other pics:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/matuka/sets/72157602139724558/
He does have the freedom to speak there and he should have.
However I think its wrong to see this man as a good guy. Did you not see his "We have no homosexuals" in Iran bit? According to an article on 365gay.com at least 4000 homosexuals have been killed in Iran since the Ayatollahs took power in 1979.
YES, they are protected. The act of hanging the nooses was not akin to "fighting words", etc. Take a law class before spewing what you heard from someone pretending to be educated. The onus is on YOU to control your reaction when the speach is offensive. E.g., people can rant all they want about pro- or con- abortion even though it certainly tends to get people angry enough to throw a fist or snipe a doctor or bomb a clinic. Either the freedom exists or the tiny nibble you take out of it today will provide the toehold for whiners to eventually erode that freedom to nothing by arguing social etiguette and contemporary sensibilities (i.e., that crap people call political correctness).
free speech is every US citizens right. however, a forum to speak is not.
Anon
Other atrocities do not get the attention that the Holocaust receives for a multitude of reasons in my opinion (none of which I intend to be offensive)....first, there is a large and wealthy group of jewish people who are holocaust survivors or their childern/grandkids who happen to be in many places of power and influence across this country, Europe (Israel too of course) and it is only natural that this group forward its agenda's such as the maintenance of the state of Israel and the defense against racially motivated attacks on their people throughout or own country and the world. Constant reminders to the world that more or less abandoned their entire race to death in the Nazi occupation of Europe is effective means of justifying many different aspects and actions of the larger Jewish community. I also believe that the government of the USA often makes justifications for wars that simply aren't true and one of the justifications (right or wrong who cares) of WWII after it was fought was the cause of helping out the suffering Jews in Europe. .. the government (and I do mean gov't, the majority of people in USA are good people just like everywhere else in the world..Iran, N.Korea, Syria etc.) does not nor has it ever cared for the human rights of people anywhere and its involvement in the European theatre of WWII is more connected with the economics and oppurtunites associated with post-war Europe and stopping Russia from reaping these benefits first. I don not mean that WWII was an unjust war by any stretch and that Americans as awhole would not have or did not care about the jewish plight....I just mean it was not fought to save the jews...like the Civil War was not fought to 'save to the negro' or the current war in Iraq was not fought to give those poor bastards freedom or to find WMDs...finally, I believe also that the holocaust is used as a component of control through fear...if it can happen to them why not you?...if you can associate the ppl in Iran to that of the unquestioned villans of WWII you will have an easier time going to war with them to get oil or spread to spread western culture...the poor blacks of Africa (any of them, not only Dafur), and the people like the Cambodians won't get the attention they need b/c they don't have money, anything the USA really wants or a vocal group in the USA to push their agenda in the gov't. This appears to be a sad fact of American policy
P.S. I didn't mention that we remember it often b/c it was a horrible, horrible nightmare that invokes almost unique images or labor camps, human ovens, gas chambers and smoke stacks spewing remains into the atmosphere and any number of other horrible images associated with it b/c I figure you are smart enough to know that already ;)
This guy shouldn't be allowed in our Country, let alone have the Right to Free Speech! He's not an American Citizen and shouldn't have our freedoms. Send him back to his own country!
Why aren't varying views of the Holocaust allowed to be expressed?
Why the special treatment?
Why do people lose their brains when someone doesn't toe the party line and expresses an alternate view?
Sounds like censorship.
stop whining about what "disaster" got/gets more press. this just proves your bleeding heart whining-always-the-victim-i-need-help-i-wish-i-lived-in-communist-russia attitude.
for your brain:
5.95 million jews were killed.
70,000 killed in darfur.
600,000-900,000 in cambodia.
spanish inquisition, right.
i believe *that's* why it gets more press. why would you even ask such a ridiculously ignorant question?
Honestly, this whole "free speech thing" confuses me in this instance. It's not like Columbia's refusal to invite the douche bag would in any way invoke the First Amendment (I mean, he's not even a citizen -- he's a douche bag). More accurately, the question is one of whether Columbia gives the douche bag a platform from which to speak. I think people could be legitimately conflicted about that decision.
I am a white American male born raised and educated in the USA. For reasons not worth going into, I speak and understand Farsi and Urdu fluently. Although I am no fan of Ahmadinejad, the truth is some of the comments attributed to him are not accurate, for reasons of both incorrect translation of the information being given to him, and incorrect translation of his responses. That doesn't mean I wouldn't enjoy seeing him rot in hell. But fair is also fair, and free speech is the tool we can use to expose asshat dictators like him.
What's so ironic to me is that these derelict dictators just love to come to the US and spout their venomous spew while claiming it is free speech. Talk about free speech - something sorely missing in their own countries. They claim to have 100% approval ratings in their home countries because anyone that disagrees finds themselves in jail or dead. That sounds like Freedom to me alright. I guarantee that the president of Columbia University better cancel his future travel plans to Iran. If he ever went over there he would come back in a box - now how polite is that?. I'll take "rude Americans" and their free speech over that any day!
I agree with the Anonymous post made on Sept 24th 7:52. ALL symbolism and speech is protected. No matter how vulgar or subjectively horrible we as individuals find it.
Also: I do not understand why everyone is so ready to accept the victors numbers of the jews executed. I am sure the numbers are exaggerated, its not like one less or 100 less or a million less deaths justifies the others. Even one is an atrocity.
yo dawg u jus gotta chill, sit back, n roll a fattie. word g-unit
Holocaust survivors act as if only Germany is the only nation to have murdered its own citizens in its history.
Wake up people! Even America has put millions of its own citizens to the sword for no just reason throughout our history. Not to mention the Armenian genocide in Turkey, Cambodia, The Congo, China, Cuba...
if a country meddled in our affairs the way we have in Iran's history, we would have started a war. o wait, we did, the American Revolution. we have been a pain in their asses, talking out both sides of our mouth, for better or worse. it's just the way it has been. we suck for that. he sucks for his flaws, and they are many. we shouldn't waste our time discussing to what level he believes in past events with the Jews. he doesn't believe, oh well. the Palestinians? where were the Arabs before the Jews were around? i believe THEY were treating them like second class citizens. so why should we expect the Jews to do any different? i mean, i think they should but i can police how any of these people act. the real question... will Iran build the bomb? will they flip with the Jews bomb their facilities? will they throw the world into a oil spin and threaten world economics? i would like to think that evey one would just chill but there's always somebody in the room who thinks their smarter than everybody else... like me.
Ahmadinejad certainly has a right to speak here -- just let him speak from a soap box on a street corner.
Why does he ned to speak from a podium before an audience at Colombia? And, yes, he is certainly entitled to say what he wants. But must he be given the full credibility and legitimacy that an invitation to Colombia bestows?
Especially when his primary objective is have people back home see their leader addressing an esteemed audience at a major U.S. university listening to his moronic ramblings and unvarnished lies without opposition or refutation.
fuckin' word
Lets get the Jena 6 behind bars where they belong. Assaulting someone to the point of long term physical harm is unacceptable in this society. There is a difference between playing a practical joke and beating someone almost to death with a deadly weapon.
If it wasn't for his compulsive habit of referencing everything back to Islamic law, I would say without blinking that "A" is a more capable, credible, and classy leader than almost any we have here in the U.S.
But, owing to that nasty, nasty habit, he comes off as just another clever barbarian who has somehow maneuvered himself into being the leader of a nation through sheer charisma, vitality, chutzpah, adorned with religious / xenophobic rhetoric.
(Luckily nothing like that is going on in OUR country! [wave flag], [hum a few bars of TSSB])
And as for the whole "Israel" thing: it's just a big misunderstanding. Can't we all just get along?
Anonymous said...
he's no "dousche bag" ... listen to what he said about the genocide that is going on today in Palestine, carried out by Israel... a Palestine that had nothing to do with Jew trouble in Europe
OPEN YOUR EYES, AND STOP LISTENING TO A BIASED JEW-CONTROLLED MEDIA
Right, yeah, um this also the guy who said that the holocaust never happened, and 9/11 didnt either. Look he's a douche bag, he is just an asshole waving his nuclear powers in our face b/c he knows that we won't and the world won't tolerate a nuclear holocaust of the world
This has nothing to do with the 'Jews' controlling the media, this is just you getting made that someone called it like they saw it, and you don't like that, I don't support your opinion of Ahmadinejad not being a douche bag, but I am not going to flame you for it
Excuse me, but displaying a hanging noose is a threat of violence, it is no more protected free speech than me waving a gun in your face, which is what I want to do to you after reading your assinine comment, but I won't, because it's illegal.
Anon said, "displaying a hanging noose is a threat of violence, it is no more protected free speech than me waving a gun in your face".
Is the display of a potential weapon the same as a person waving a gun in your face? If you come into a house with a sword or gun over the mantel, is that a threat? What if it's outside on the porch? Without context, it's hard to say. All most of us know is that this happened in the South. Heck, I don't even know if the rope in question was like real hangman's rope or a bungie cord. Clearly, doing this in the South is offensive and indefensible--and may well HAVE been intended as a threat. But saying that a piece of rope with a knot on it automatically is a threat seems a bit much.
the guy s a liar.
Do you think the libs would EVER give George Bush the stage to say what ever he wanted to about HIS GOD?
ibetthefucknot.
so true, but at least you have some free speech
I'm glad that the speech went ahead and those that would much prefer to never hear or see the man got to listen to what he had to say. That's freedom of speech, and the people that did endure him are brave people celebrating speech, which is a beautiful thing.
It's always best to let horrible people speak. That way the world can judge who they are. Trying to stop them from speaking both violates freedom of speech, and denies the world crucial insight into the real monsters that plague it.
If we didn't let Bush speak at every available moment, we'd never know him to be the fumbling fool that can barely carry a conversation. The same for Ahmadinejad; if he was prevented from speaking, we would never have learned that he thinks homosexuals don't exist in Iran, despite the fact that they do and that they are executed for being gay. Now we know that he can't be honest with us, nor even himself, and that he is likely delusional, or in denial.
Nor would we have learned that the man speaks always to reveal that he questions the existence of crimes of humanity in Iran and the holocaust of WW2. This is crucial information to know about a leader, because you have to take special care when dealing with the delusional lunatics. Every time he speaks he erodes confidence in himself all the more, so let him speak whenever possible.
'Excuse me, but displaying a hanging noose is a threat of violence, it is no more protected free speech than me waving a gun in your face, which is what I want to do to you after reading your assinine comment, but I won't, because it's illegal.'
Please. A knot in a rope is not anymore threatening than a gang graffiti on a wall. So don't try and compare apples and oranges here. Do you fully understand what happened at Jena? Your comments lead me to believe you don't. So read up on it a little more on a 3rd party site (like wikipedia) before you make yourself out to be more of a fool.
Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant!
SATAN AMERICA
"Satan America" so did
Iran´s great flabbergaster
Khomeini measure out his quid
Pro quo, with words to plaster
Realm of his co-religionists
("Islam" as it is called
If errantly), and shake his fists
With dudgeon high appalled--
His bile against the USA
Could not have spewed more rabid,
And while I loathed the crude wordplay,
Was glad that I inhabit
A land where even odious tracts
May be disseminated;
Where truth-seekers might find their facts
Not censored, implicated.
Alas, it is no more today,
For that was long ago,
For we prefer what people say
Be left unheard. Ah, so...
The government may let us see
Some tracts of flagrant bile,
As Ayatollah Khomeini
Could see and only smile;
But facts more subtle in their nature
We keep but making cuts,
Enthralled in falsehood´s nomenclature
For we are idiots.
It was before a pride to show
Friends in another country
That we did treasure free speech so
On which none took a bounty--
Alas today the world is changed:
Americans, my brethren,
You feed their fantasies deranged
As would declare you heathen.
Post a Comment