BRAVO, AHMADINEJAD!

Today's Toronto Star has this - the Iranian President's defiant speech at the UN, including a thumbs-down to Bush's speech, a prophecy about the 'end of days' for the American empire around the world, and of a growing abyss for the Zionist land-grab of Palestine, for which he presented to the UN Secretary-General a plan for a referendum to settle the Mideast horrors....

This is the same plan he has been trying to sell for the past few years, but the liars in North America including McCain and his Oxford-Harvard 'advisor' Niall Ferguson, Bush and his lunatic fringe of the GOP, Hilary Clinton wanting to out-Bush Bush, and most of the criminal American establishment have malevolently misrepresented as Iran's plans to wipe Israel off the map....

No amount of prayers and best wishes for such a plan to succeed will be sufficient, however, since the still-powerful American-Israeli axis will never let it....at least not in the near future......a few decades in the future things may be different...




Olivia Ward
Foreign Affairs Reporter

Taking a high moral tone, Iran's gadfly president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ridiculed the United States as a spent force in a speech to the United Nations yesterday, railing against Israel, and insisting that his country's disputed nuclear program was purely peaceful.

Ahmadinejad, whose visit to New York was marked by angry demonstrations, appeared calm and relaxed, wearing a grey tailored suit and a stylishly trimmed beard as he faced his critics across the podium.

Earlier in the day, he shrugged off a speech by U.S. President George W. Bush – who had named Iran as a supporter of terrorism – while turning a visible thumbs-down at the American leader, whose final UN exit lines were overshadowed by America's financial crisis.

"The American empire in the world is reaching the end of the road," Ahmadinejad told the General Assembly. "And its next rulers must limit their interference to their own borders."

Ahmadinejad's speech, with a rambling theme of God, justice and morality, stressed Iran's peaceful nature and love of "creativity, mercy, kindness, wisdom."

But he broke into a bitter condemnation of Israel similar to speeches made in the past: "Today the Zionist regime is on a definite slope to collapse and there is no way for it to get out of the cesspool created by itself and its supporters."

And he said, he would submit a "peace plan" to the UN Secretary General to solve the problems of the Palestinians. It would include "a free referendum under the supervision of international organizations," allowing them to decide on the type of government they want. Ahmadinejad dismissed the American occupation of Iraq as a failure. But he also aimed ridicule at Canada and other NATO countries in Afghanistan.

"NATO troops in Afghanistan are an expanding presence," he told reporters after his speech. "Ever since they arrived, illicit drug production and extremism have increased."

"Even if they increased military forces they wouldn't succeed," he added. "They are going into a well with their heads down. I feel sorry for them."

Although a confrontation looms over Iran's uranium enrichment program, which Western countries believe may lead to the production of nuclear weapons, Ahmadinejad smiled at suggestions that it was anything but peaceful.

Answering accusations by the U.S. and the UN's atomic energy watchdog that Iran was holding back on vital information on its nuclear program, he retorted that "as far as we are concerned it is resolved. The rest is propaganda."

Foreign ministers for six nations negotiating on Iran's nuclear program were scheduled to meet tomorrow. But Russia, one of the six, said that the week of speeches by world leaders at the UN was too packed "to make us toss everything else aside and urgently meet to discuss the Iranian nuclear issue."

Iran has benefited from the tensions between Russia and the U.S. over Moscow's invasion of Georgia last month – as well as Washington's economically weakened state and the end of Bush's term in power.

Russia said it opposed new sanctions against Iran for failing to accept a deal to halt its enrichment program in exchange for economic and energy aid. But it called on Tehran to co-operate with the International Atomic Energy Agency, a statement echoed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in a speech earlier in the day.

During his UN appearance, Ahmadinejad repeatedly denied Iran was in a race for a nuclear bomb.

"A few bullying powers have sought to put hurdles in the way of the peaceful nuclear activities of the Iranian nation by exerting political and economic pressures against Iran, and also through threatening and pressuring the IAEA," he said in his speech.

And he told reporters: "People who seek the use of nuclear weapons are backward. The time for the atomic bomb has come to an end. Whoever seeks it will lose in that pursuit."

But he warned threats against Iran would be disastrous, saying, "If there is a hand raised against our nation ... it would be cut immediately."

Responding to accusations of supporting terrorism, Ahmadinejad took a more tranquil tone, saying that "anyone who is ready to fight terrorism will find the Iranian people their partner."

Since Ahmadinejad made his first visit to the UN, he has become more confident and relaxed, chatting amiably with reporters and seemingly at home at the podium. In an earlier appearance in New York, he had brusque exchanges with the media and appeared tense and ill at ease.

"We seek relations based on justice and mutual respect," he told reporters yesterday. "Force is not a relationship, but an imposition."

And he said, the door was not closed to dialogue on Iran's nuclear program. "We are in favour of dialogue and talks, but we will not accept the language of force."

With files from the Star's wire services