Thanks for advertising my blog, Michael. :->
For evidence of my love of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, you ought to have posted this one instead, in which I wax lyrically, citing no less an authority on love than Roland Barthes:
<blockquote>Here is a larger image of the same photograph of Ahmadinejad. In the 1979 photograph, Ahmadinejad, then 22 or 23, looks not like a theocratic bully but like a delicate Ernesto Guevara in his Motorcycle Diaries days. The face in the photograph is enchanting. What is the punctum in this photograph, an "element which rises from the scene, shoots out of it like an arrow, and pierces me" (Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, Trans. Richard Howard, NY: The Noonday Press, 1981, p. 26)? The young man's eyes and brows are caught by his photographer "at just the right degree of openness, the right density of abandonment" (Barthes, p. 59), freely and generously offered to the viewer. The photographer has found "the right moment, the kairos of desire" (Barthes, p. 59)
<http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/07/mahmoud-ahmadinejads-face.html></blockquote>
Flirting with an image of the handsome Iranian (who is all the more intriguing for his air of chastity and melancholy), I almost forgot to celebrate a BIG DAY for my true love Hugo Chávez Frías and Venezuela. My bad. Today is the 195th anniversary of Venezuela's independence. There are three developments to mark the happy occasion: universal literacy, Petrocaribe, and the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (cf. <http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/07/venezuelas-independence-day-literacy.html>).
Postscript: I also like Ralph, Matt (cf. <http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/07/libido-against-capitalism.html> and <http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/07/matt-gonzalez-why-vote-for-ralph-nader.html>), and Nichi (cf. <http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/04/la-vittoria-di-nichi.html>) among many others, though Nichi is gay and Ralph is asexual. :-0
>[lbo-talk] Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Face
>Chris Doss lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com
>Tue Jul 5 08:53:14 PDT 2005
<snip>
>Even assuming this [an allegation that Ahmadinejad was involved in
>the assassination of the 1989 assassination in Vienna of Abdul
>Rahman Ghassemlou, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran]
>is true, maybe the guy deserved it.
A spokesman for the Austrian public prosecutor's office, Ernst Kloiber, appears to find the allegation doubtful.
<blockquote>Kloiber cast doubt on the strength of the journalist's testimony.
"According to our information, he has third-hand information on the murder," Kloiber said. "It would therefore be very difficult" to open an investigation against Ahmadinejad, he said. (Agence Presse France, "Austria Seeks to Interview Journalist over Ahmadinejad Murder Accusations," <http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050705/wl_mideast_afp/iranahmadinejadkurds_050705183035>5 Jul. 2005)</blockquote>
The "journalist" is said to be an unnamed Iranian journalist whom the Austrian Green party's spokesman on security, Peter Pilz, "met on May 20 in Versailles, France" (Agence Presse France, "Austria Seeks to Interview Journalist over Ahmadinejad Murder Accusations," <http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050705/wl_mideast_afp/iranahmadinejadkurds_050705183035>5 Jul. 2005). Sounds like a potboiler. :-| -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Monthly Review: <http://monthlyreview.org/> * MR: <http://mrzine.org> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>