In reply to Stephen A. Lawrence's message of Wed, 21 Feb 2007 13:25:32 -0500: Hi, [snip] >Perhaps the fact that the president of Iran asserted that their goal is >to erase Israel from the map has something to do with it. > >The actual phrase, reported in LeMonde IIRC, was something like "rayer >Israel de la carte" -- the word "rayer" stuck in my mind; it's pretty >dramatic when applied to an entire country. AFAIK LeMonde doesn't take >orders from Bush so, even though I haven't seen the original speech, I >expect the French translation was not too far off base.
As I understood it at the time, he should Israel "should" be .... There is a big difference between stating an opinion, and stating an actual intention to act. Whether or not Israel has nuclear weapons, everyone in the middle-east believes they do, and consequently no one is going to attack them. Hence it is IMO fairly clear that Ahmadinejad speaks his opinions freely, and that the US administration and media do their utmost to paint it as black as possible. > >Since this went hand in hand with Ahmednejad's bellicose assertions that >Iran has every right to pursue their nuclear program without outside >intervention or oversight, ..which of course they do, though if they wish to pursue it free of oversight, they should withdraw from the nuclear non-proliferation pact. Of course, doing this is as good as admitting that they want to produce weapons. Not that they have any less right to such weapons than anyone else. If Israel is so worried about Iran, then they could end their problems overnight, simply by coming to an equitable agreement with the Palestinians. For what it's worth, if it were up to me, I would excise (old?) Jerusalem from both Israel and Palestine, and make it a small city state, similar to Vatican City, but governed by a 7 member board, comprising 2 members from each of the major religions, and 1 secularly elected member. Having an odd number ensures that there is never a tied vote. With Jerusalem out of the way, it would be much easier for both parties to reach an agreement on boarders. >and with his rejection (or disregard) of >Russia's offer to provide the pre-enriched fuel for their reactors in >order to avoid the need for (weapons-convertible) enrichment facilities >in Iran, it made a lot of people understandably nervous about what the >future might hold if Iran's course is not changed. Only they get nervous who don't look deeply enough, or listen carefully enough. > >According to at least one apologist for Iran found on the Internet, the >literal phrase used meant "This occupation regime over Jerusalem must >vanish from the page of time. That doesn't sound a whole lot better to >me than the French version, frankly, and in this case, I'm inclined to >trust the translators who most likely knew what the Persian idiom meant >when they translated it to "rayer de la carte" -- which, by the way, >means exactly what it sounds like it means. Still, it's just his opinion, not a statement of policy. BTW note that my suggestion hereabove might satisfy his wish. [snip] Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://users.bigpond.net.au/rvanspaa/ Competition (capitalism) provides the motivation, Cooperation (communism) provides the means.
