I have no idea of the quality of graduate education in Iran, but the man has a Ph.D. in civil engineering, so he can't plead ignorance like a peasant in the outback. :-0
On 5/10/06, Dennis Claxton <ddclaxton at earthlink.net> wrote:
> >We don't give a rat's ass what Ahmadinejad thinks about European
> >history or what pissant speech the little shit gives.
> Juan Cole to " All the warmongers in Washington, including Hitchens,
> if he falls into that camp,"
> http://www.juancole.com/2006/05/hitchens-hacker-and-hitchens.html
Juan Cole may not care, but I do. You see, there are two governments in the entire Arab world that can claim electoral legitimacy and popular mandate: the Iranian government and the Palestinian Authority.
And Iran is at a crossroads, both internally and externally. The Iranian people need a Bolivar in Tehran (btw, there is a statue of Bolivar in Tehran, unveiled while Ahmadinejad was its mayor and Hugo Chavez was visiting the city: <http://www.payvand.com/news/04/nov/1244.html>), and the President of Iran needs to live up to the task that history has given him, rather than indulging in a fool's errand.
I've tried to pay attention to Ahmadinejad's economic policy (hard as it is to understand it from the Western press's reporting), the subject that doesn't interest Cole: "Still, parliament this week approved a $ 1.3 billion "love fund" intended to give financial support to young newlyweds. Another big-ticket package to lower chronic unemployment is on the table, and the president wants to double teacher salaries" (Scott Peterson, "Iranians Wait for Change from Ahmadinejad," Christian Science Monitor, 13 October 2005, <http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1013/p25s01-wome.html>); "Iran will spend $25 billion this year to hold down the prices of flour, rice, even gasoline" and "His first budget also included $19 billion to create the new jobs" (Kari Vick, "As Iran Presses Its Ambitions, Its Young See Theirs Denied: Lack of Economic Opportunity Leads Many to Drugs," Washington Post, 21 April 2006, p. A01 <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/20/AR2006042002253.html>); and "He pours Iran's ballooning oil cash into wage and pension increases, cheap loans and debt cancellations for farmers" (Jackson Diehl, "Deft Demagoguery in Iran," Washington Post, 9 MaY 2006, <http://www.iranian.ws/iran_news/publish/article_15511.shtml>). As far as economic policy is concerned, the Ahmadinejad administration is on the right track, which is one more reason for Washington to hate it in addition to its nuclear research.
Moreover, Ahmadinejad's social policy turned out to be more interesting than many expected: "The New Decision of Mr Ahmadinejad's regarding Women," <http://www.webneveshteha.com/en/weblog/?id=2146307756>. Ahmadinejad's decision to allow women to attend sports events provoked a veto from Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei: "Ayatollah Blocks Soccer Move" (Associated Press, 9 May 2006, <http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0605090024may09,1,6901932.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed>).
We'll see if Ahmadinejad can reverse the clerical veto over time.
Though few have taken note of this fact, Ahmadinejad is the first lay person to become Iran's President. His religious faith is beyond doubt. He, like Chavez, also has military backgrounds. He enjoys support of his generation of Iranians: the generation of men and women from humble origins who were high school or college students during the Iranian revolution, who wouldn't have gotten the education they did but for the revolution, and yet whose advancement is blocked by the gerontocracy of clerics. In many ways, Ahmadinejad is an ideal candidate to pull off a passive revolution (cf. Antonio Gramsci) against clerics.
Practicing economic populism and a passive revolution against clerics at home, and pursuing nuclear sovereignty, supporting Palestinians, cementing friendship with the socialist axis of good (Havana, Caracas, and La Paz), and retaining support of Moscow and Beijing -- such are the many tasks of the President of Iran. He has NO business playing to the Holocaust-denying gallery (as Martin and WKD suggest that he is).
-- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>