Louis Proyect transcribes the NYT blogging on Ahmadinejad at Columbia: > Pressed by Dean Coatsworth on the > original question about the rights > of gay men and lesbians in Iran, > Mr. Ahmadinejad said: "In Iran, we > don't have homosexuals like in your > country. We don't have that in our > country."
I so much admire Louis Proyect's continuous effort to show the world how Ahmadinejad disgraces and ridicules himself every time he opens his mouth. The efforts of the U.S. media are clearly insufficient to invite the public scorn this pathetic figure of a man deserves. I mean, if the working people of Iran, conditioned -- as they are -- by the iconoclastic dynamism of advanced capitalist production relations and imbued by millenarian secular values as well as the uber-liberal spirit of Islam, hadn't been (as the historical record shows) the initiators and drivers of the the most vigorous expressions of the modern movement for gay rights in the world, then (and only then) Ahmadinejad's obscurantist, reactionary sentiments would be easier to explain, even if still impossible to justify. It is so evident, in this day and age, that national vindication in the face of U.S. imperialism and Zionism in the Middle East is at best second or third in the agenda of oppressed Persians, Arabs, etc. Obviously, U.S. imperialism and Zionism are minor issues compared to the much more pressing demand for full individual rights for gays in Iran. This is the type of political courage the U.S. left needs. It provides a needed balance to the lionizing, the barrage of apologies in favor of Ahmadinejad that saturate the Western media, from the left to the right wing. Thanks Louis.
