Fear (4.00 / 1)

The suppression of speech can always be traced back to fear. You can follow it all the way to Socrates if you wish. What autocrats fear is that their ideas will be shown up by letting people be exposed to other viewpoints.

This is why we have laws against pornography and have had laws against teaching birth control in the past. It is why various religions have banned books and killed dissenters. The word is a powerful weapon and those who depend upon blind faith can't take the chance.

In this case the fear is that Ahmadinejad might sound reasonable and thus the whole house of cards might come tumbling down. They don't have to worry. The students are already brainwashed and the faculty that knows what is going on in the Middle East isn't going to change their views because of a single speech.

The press has abrogated their role by becoming a tool of the fearmongers rather than that of a gadfly. This is to be expected since the media firms are now large industrial concerns and need the good will of the government for things like tax breaks and permission to increase consolidation. One hand washes the other. The only thing that suffers is democracy...

Policies not Politics

---

by: robertdfeinman @ Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 08:55:42 AM CDT

Having been to (0.00 / 0)

a recent-ish Gunther Grass reading, I feel confident in NY-ers abilities to adequately interrogate the man.

---

by: sb @ Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 09:04:27 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Apparently, they must (0.00 / 0)

not believe he's the crazy nutball he's made out to be, if they are in such a tizzy over him speaking at Columbia.

If he were a complete wacko, that would be shown at the Columbia gig, and their view of him as a nut would be solidified. 

The entire nutball theory arises out of his holocaust denial, but there is little else to support it.  And, I would imagine that holocaust denial, and anti-Israeli rhetoric does well amongst the Iranian electorate. (And I am not defending such statements, or anything of the sort)

Of course, I think you miss one other point about all this.  They are now actively trying to get the right-wing masses to believe that Ahmadinejad was really behind 9/11.  Just like they did with Hussein. 

Its an amazing feat of political artistry.  Iran and Iraq were arch-enemies.  bin Laden was absolutely opposed to Hussein's rule.  bin Laden is from Saudi Arabia, and is ideologically opposed to Iran (sunni vs shia and all that). 

Yet somehow, the right is on a quest to once again convince Americans that an avowed (or at least likely) enemy of bin Laden really supported him. 

And, of course, they totally ignore the aid, and intel, that Iran gave us in the time period following 9/11 in terms of our invasion of Afghanistan. 

At the same time, there is an intel black hole on Iran, in large part due to exposing Valerie Plame (and, as a result, all the other spies who worked with her, and her contacts within Iran).

Yet, they tell us that we can't allow Ahmadinejad lay a wreath at the WTC site as it would give Ahmadinejad a PR victory.  Yet, here they are, giving him a far bigger political victory than he could have imagined.

It's all about starting a war for Iranian oil. 

---

by: Jerry 101 @ Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 09:10:13 AM CDT

The Talking Points Are Out There (0.00 / 0)

Personally, I'm OK with Columbia's decision and more importantly, I think it's the university's decision, not mine, and not the decision of the elected officials of New York City.

There are absolutley times when a University can and should deny someone the right to speak.  Not lending the legitimacy of a major university to a pseudo-academic Holocaust-denier, for example, would not strike me as a stifling free speech.

That said, I feel like Lee Bollinger and Columbia thought this through.

I can't say the same for Council Member David Weprin.  He and Council Member Jim Gennaro protested at Columbia yesterday.  And as shown on NY1, NYC's excellent local TV news station, Weprin objected to the visit as an affront to 9/11 victims.

The right-wing neo-cons need that story to be out there if they are going to, as Matt described, build up a case for more military action.

And they need New Yorkers -- who in some way are keepers of the 9/11 national mythos -- to give that story credibility.

And now people like David Weprin are doing just that, using Ari Fleischer talking points to blur the real reasons to object to Ahmadinejad (and there are plenty of reasons to dislike the guy...we don't need to make more up).

Congressman Weiner's push to divest from Iran requires scrutiny -- again, there are good reasons to not support that country's actions, but let's make sure we don't use the reasons that Team Bush feeds us in hopes that we'll support another war.

---

by: Justin Krebs @ Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 09:26:03 AM CDT

And no one is out there asking (0.00 / 0)

of those officials the simple question:
"Why is it that you believe this to be an affront to 9/11 victims?"

"What did Iran have to do with 9/11?  How many of the hijackers were Iranian?  Does Iran fund Al Queda?  Did Iran train the hijackers?" 

The guy is a national leader, maybe not one that Americans are particularly fond of, but he's a national leader.

Why is that this is an "affront?"

Is it because he's a muslim?  He's not arabic, he's persian.

The hijackers were largely Sunni (IIRC) and Arabian.

Ahmadinejad is Shia and Persian.

Would it be an affront if King Abdullah spoke at Columbia? 

Or Prime Minister Erdogan?

What about King Abdullah II?

General Musharraf?

Prime Minister Siniora?

President Mubarak?

Some of those people, but not all, lead countries whose people were involved with 9/11 in a much more material manner than Iran.  But the President of Iran is the one causing the "affront?"

I condemn the attacks on Columbia for inviting the President of Iran to speak.

---

by: Jerry 101 @ Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 11:13:14 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

actually, seeing (0.00 / 0)

as how the hijackers learned to fly in the United States, that list of national leaders should perhaps include:

President Bush?

President Clinton?

(not sure when they started flight training, but it may have been during Clinton's term)

---

by: Jerry 101 @ Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 11:15:39 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Yep (0.00 / 0)

It's a great two-fer for the right, as you point out. (Did the Freedom Watch ad mention Ward Churchill, by any chance?)

Also, this is an instance of raising the stakes among the GOP primary field... the Columbia visit wasn't an issue while the Ground Zero visit was still the topic, but once every candidate under the sun (including all the Dems) condemned that visit, and once it was canceled, they moved on to this to try to draw a greater contrast and try to prove who wants to bomb Iran the most.

---

by: tparty @ Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 09:51:25 AM CDT

Hostages (0.00 / 0)

Many Americans still hold a grudge against Iran for taking our embassy personnel hostage and holding them over a year.  Nightline started as a nightly update of the situation with the message run for over a year "America Held Hostage: Day xxx."  The graphic was completed with a picture of a blindfolded American.  It may be almost thirty years but then the whole hostage situation really was motivated by the coup the CIA staged for the benefit of our oil companies in 1953.  That, too, was nearly 30 years before the ouster of the Shah by Khomeini.

For that reason, it would have been politically more palatable to have attacked Iran rather than Iraq.  I suspect that the Iraq mistake makes any war in the region much harder to sell.

---

by: David Kowalski @ Tue Sep 25, 2007 at 07:07:02 AM CDT