Milani the avazi

You have to give credit to Ahmadinejad to the extent that the bare mention of his name seems to induce conniption fits in some people. Indeed, the bile-spitting and vituperation specifically associated with his visit to the UN reaches comedic proportions with Abbas Milani's article, "10 Questions for Ahmadinejad",  demanding that the media should force Ahmadinejad to "answer for his actions" - which apparently include the claim (by Milani) that some clerics in Iran were Nazi sympathizers way back in the 1930s, before Ahmadinejad was even born!

As an aside, I should point out that many people looked favorably on the Nazis -- in the Middle East, it wasn't just the Grand Mufti but also Reza Shah of Iran -- all of whom simply wanted to see another power rise up to challenge British colonial rule & not because they were particularly enamoured with National Socialism. And  Hitler certainly had his admirers outside of the Mideast too! The previous Duke of Windsor, King Edward VIII, was a Nazi symphathizer who visited Hilter a few times and gave him the "Seig Heil" salute (he was sent off into exile, supposedly because he loved a divorced woman.) And there was President George Bush's grandfather Prescott who was busying doing business with the Nazi, as was IBM. I won't even bother mentioning the Zionists who were cooperating with the Nazis either.

Anyway back to Milani - apparently natural phenomenon, like the fact that the Zayendeh Rud river in Isfahan regularly dries up - are also one of Ahmadinejad's "actions" for which the media should hold him responsible, as is the drying up of the Oromieh salt lake. You see, Ahmadinejad secretly controls the world's weather patterns and water resources, and could single-handedly fix these issues with a wave of his wand if he wanted to do so.

And then the economic comparisons with Turkey! Hate to break the news to you Milani, but since the revolution, the life of Iranians has improved on every socio-economic measure  -- access to clean water, healthcare, literacy, paved roads, electricity, etc. Now, if there wasn't a war with Saddam (backed by the US) and sanctions, perhaps things would have been even better. In fact, today Iran's Human Development Index is slightly above Turkey's (Iran = .702, Turkey = .679)

In Farsi, we have a term for people like Milani: avazi. If these people represent the "opposition" is it then any wonder why no one wants to join the opposition? They're scarcely any better than the bogeymonster Ahmadinejad they're riled up against.

Then there is Reza Marashi, the former US State Department official, who now is supposedly also part of the opposition, I guess. He writes that diplomats - not just journalists - should raise Human rights with Ahmadinejad. Course, the fact that the very same US State Department was, FOR EXAMPLE, not so long ago instructing its diplomats to try to shift the blame for the gassing of the Kurds at Halabja off of Saddam and onto Iran doesn't seem to faze Marashi as he boldly simply assumes that America has the sort of moral credibility left to lecture anyone about human rights. I don't know if Marashi has actually ever set foot in Iran himself, but I can assure him that millions of Iranians are not as quick as he is to forget their history, and see nothing but blatant, stomach-churning hypocricy in all this grandstanding about human rights. All your finger-wagging about human rights isn't going to fix anyone's human rights in Iran or anywhere else, but instead just contributes to the demonization of Iran that serves the interests of those who want to bomb the same people whose human rights you claim to care about, Marashi.

Comments

[Tim]

Zionist rabbi Joachim Prinz welcomed Hitler’s rise to power, since they shared his belief in the primacy of ‘race’ and his hostility to the assimilation of Jews among ‘Aryans’. Rabbi Prinz, whose book Wir Juden (We Jews, 1934) celebrating Hitler's German Revolution and its defeat of liberalism, subsequently emigrated to the USA, where he rose to be vice-chairman of the World Jewish Congress and a leading light in the World Zionist Organization. Zionists held links with anti-Semites, as was the case of Herzl and Count von Plehve, the antisemitic minister of Tsar Nicholas II; Jabotinsky and the Ukrainian leader Petlyura, whose forces, Shahak says, massacred some 100,000 Jews in 1918-21; Ben-Gurion and the French extreme right, which included notorious antisemites, during the Algerian war
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joachim_Prinz

[Mazdak]

Just a note on Zarafshan since Joe quoted him. Mr Zarafshan who is a lawyer by profession and represented some of the families of dissent intellectuals and journalists who were murdered in the late 90's by the gangs within the IRI's ministry of intelligence (all documented and available on the net), was jailed for 6 years as a punishment for outing some of the documentations pertaining to the case. When they came to get him (I have this from a very close friend of his, so you can either accept or dismiss it) they asked him which charge would he prefer to be arrested for, being in possession of an illegal firearm or having slept with the wife of one of his dead clients, bogus charges both of course. The honorable man that Mr. Zarafshan is (a former prisoner under the Shah) he agreed to the former. I have read the piece he wrote on Milani and my opinion of Milani is in accord with all here, but Mr. Zarafshan is no lover the current regime. For the record.

[Jane M]

Avazi ha ha. Asked an Iranian friend and she beautifully explained what it meant. Very apt for Milani. He reminds of some of Cuban Americans in Miami. You know the type who lost their Mafia/Batista connections/wealth after the revolution. They're quite Avazi too!

[Joe Six Pack]

Milani is a NeoCon stooge who started as a Maoist and then became a Savak asset, ratting out his comrades. All this is documented by Naser Zarafshan and is available on the Web (see link). He sells his soul to the highest bidder. Avazi is an understatement. Zarafshan called him "amale fekri nezam sarmaye dari". I could not describe him any better than Zarafshan has done.

http://azer-online.com/siasat/more/sarbalaa.htm

[Pirouz]

Milani invokes a corollary to Godwin's law. According to Godwin's law, he automatically loses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

Everybody has questions for Mahmoud! I even have one: Does he miss his old '77 Peugeot sedan? Inquiring minds would like to know...