IRIB Radio: "Students want Ahmadinejad to expel Saudi envoy"

In which we learn that "Saudi Arabia has become the perpetrator of the Zionist's colonialist plans":

Students protesting Riyadh's military assault on Yemeni Shias in front of the Iranian Foreign Ministry have called for the expulsion of the Saudi ambassador.

According to IRIB World Service, the university students, who were demonstrating for the second consecutive day on Tuesday, made the demand in a letter addressed to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The letter referred to the anniversary of the 1987 killing of pilgrims.

The students who have gathered in Tehran from all over the country despite the cold weather in the capital plan to continue their sit-in until Wednesday.

One of the organizers of the event told IRNA that the students were there to show their anger at what they believed was a war planned by "Zionist" entities.

There's more than one?

Student spokesman Esmail Tahmouresi said "The Zionists have instigated many wars in places like Afghanistan, Iraq and the Gaza Strip to cover their own losses," adding, "In the war against Shia Muslims in northern Yemen Saudi Arabia has become the perpetrator of the Zionist's colonialist plans." [...]

Some of the latest Iranian press articles attacking Israel were actually about Israel to begin with. At Fars, for instance, a headline proclaims "Ahmadinejad: Israel Incapable of Attacking Iran":

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad underlined on Tuesday that the Zionist regime is too weak to take military action against Iran.

Speaking in a press conference in Brasilia, Ahmadinejad responded to questions on the possibility of Israeli attack to Iran, and said, "Weapons, threats and attacks are means of the past and (such words) belong to those politicians who are lagging behind.

"Those you mentioned do not dare to do such a thing and are too small to take military action against Iran."

The Iranian president noted that the era of military invasions has come to an end "and today is the time for talks and thinking".

"Durable peace and friendship will be achieved in light of justice and those who want to rule the world will never attain their desirable results," he added. [...]

Wait till he finds out about the little device we've implanted in his heart valve! At IRIB we learn that "IRI, Bolivia urge justice-seekers to join hand":

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran and Bolivia are standing together, adding that independent states should stand together for their own progress and for neutralization of imperialists' conspiracies.

The President following his private talks with Bolivian counterpart President Evo Morales and negotiations of the two countries high ranking delegations, said Iran and Bolivia are partners and allies adding that ground for taking big steps to promote relations is at hand.

"We will stand together and I am confident that victory belongs to us," the President said.

He stressed that although Tehran and La Paz are geographically very far, the two nations and governments are close to each other in their viewpoints. [...]

Now you know. Another IRIB article concerns something called a "'Quds in light of Savior' gathering in Mecca."

[...] The conference attended by Islamic scholars as well as representatives of Palestinian resistance groups emphasized on the Palestinian cause and the necessity of unity among Palestinian resistance groups till their final victory over Israel. [...]

The head of Iranian pilgrims said agreements such as Oslo were in effect a way out for the Zionist regime from total collapse. He added that the Zionist regime had always lived with the fear of martyrdom seeking operations on the side of resistance groups. [...]

Of course, Iran may show all sorts of admiration for martyrdom-seeking operations, but advanced military hardware is also useful for thwarting world arrogance plots. A number of current articles in the Iranian press concern those anti-aircraft missiles that Russia is not delivering on schedule. Not to worry, as we learn from Fars, "Iran Able to Replace S-300 with Other Air-Defense Systems":

An Iranian top military commander on Tuesday underlined that Tehran is able to replace the Russian-made anti-aircraft S-300 missiles with other air defense systems in case Russia shrugs off contract terms for the delivery of S-300 missiles to Iran.

"If they do not deliver S-300 defensive system to us, we have replacements and we can supply our operational requirements through innovative techniques and different designs," Deputy Commander of Khatam ol-Anbia Air Defense Base for Coordination General Hassan Mansourian told reporters on the sidelines of countrywide military drills, codenamed "Modafean-e Aseman-e-Velayat 2." [...]

Will Iran get its Russian missiles to go along with the 20 percent enriched uranium it wants from the West? Stay tuned.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

"Leader of the Revolution Will Act to Repair Relations Between Sisterly Egypt and Algeria"

Who better to heal football rifts than Colonel Gadaffi? This story makes me intensely happy, but I wish someone would explain one thing to me: what's a "football much"?

Jana has learnt that the Leader of the Revolution, Chairman of the African Union is to act to heal the rift in the relationship between Egypt and Algeria caused by the fallout from the football much between the teams of the two countries.

However, the Secretary of the Arab League Amr Moussa has appealed to the Leader to intervene in the ongoing crisis given the good status that the Leader enjoys being the Chairman of the African Union and the status the Leader enjoys with both sides.

Kim's mother's exciting battlefield exploits

Of course she had battlefield exploits! You don't think she merely unknitted her woolen underwear to make gloves for the Great Leader, do you?

An anti-Japanese heroine Kim Jong Suk took part in a battle for defending the Chechangzi guerrilla zone on a day of October Juche 24 (1935) for the first time after her joining the Korean People's Revolutionary Army. In the battle, she displayed unparalleled bravery and boldness.

The Japanese imperialists hurled armed force more than 10,000 strong in the battle in an attempt to wipe out the guerrilla zone and the enemy's bombers indiscriminately pounded the zone without letup. The battle was too fierce for the guerrillas to transport ammunition and bombs from the back side of the height.

She, with an insight into the battle situation, went to the back side of the height along with several guerrillas, where she rushed toward the position, carrying two ammunition boxes on her back.

At the very moment a bomb blew up with a terrific explosion in front of them.

After a while the guerrillas came to senses and looked around. But she was not seen there.

She already reached the ridge of the height and called them there.

Then the guerrillas were greatly struck with admiration at the matchless bravery of her who unhesitatingly rushed toward the combat position through the bomb explosion.

The latest Haveil Havalim also valiantly rushes rushed toward the combat position through the bomb explosion.

Iran wants its "air defense" missiles and it wants them now

But Russia isn't delivering at the moment:

Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi said on Sunday that Iran is asking Russia to fulfill its commitments in delivering S-300 air defense missiles to Iran.

The S-300 system, which can track targets and fire at aircraft 120 kilometers (75 miles) away, features high jamming immunity and is able to simultaneously engage up to 100 targets.

The truck-mounted S-300PMU1, known in the West as the SA-20, can shoot down cruise missiles and aircraft. It can fire at targets up to 150 km (90 miles) away and travel at more than two km per second.

Iran says Russia should have delivered the air defense system some six months ago and the delay is apparently the result of Western pressure.

They don't want you to think that this leaves them with any gaps in their defenses, however. According to Fars, "Commander Stresses Iran's Ability to Shoot Down Israel's F15, F16 Fighters":

A senior commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) here on Sunday warned of Tehran's crushing response to any potential attack on the country, stating that Iran enjoys the required defensive capability to bring down Israel's advanced military aircrafts.

"Be sure that in case of any aggression, the Zionists' F15 and F16 aircrafts will be trapped by our air defense and will be destroyed," Commander of the IRGC Aerospace Force Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh said.

"And if one of their aircraft manages to escape Iran's air defense - before it can land - the bases from which these aircraft have taken off will be struck by our destructive ground-to-ground missiles," the Commander said in a reaction to Israelis growing war rhetoric against Iran's peaceful nuclear program.

"The Zionists may initiate such a war, but undoubtedly its end will depend on our will," Hajizadeh noted. [...]

And they'll attack more than just "bases." A PressTV article proclaims "If attacked, Iran will target Tel Aviv":

A senior IRGC official warns that Iranian missiles will be on their marks to target the very heart of Tel Aviv in the event of a military attack on the Islamic Republic.

“If the enemy tries its luck and fires a missile into Iran, our ballistic missiles would zero in on Tel Aviv before the dust settles on the attack,” said Mojtaba Zolnour, the representative of the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, in the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC). [...]

It is interesting that none of this stresses what Western analysts stress: Iran's efforts to make the nuclear facilities themselves less vulnerable. The Fars article does quote an American think tank study that doubts that a military strike will do much, but without giving a reason why it wouldn't. I guess the home crowd doesn't want to hear that even if there is widespread destruction the nukes will be safe.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

I guess this explains the starvation

(North) Korean News regularly features stories about how party officials were inexpressibly moved by something the Great Leader or the Dear Leader or "Anti-Japanese Heroine Kim Jong Suk" (Kim's mother) did. Here an official is "full of admiration" at the "unimaginable scenery" of the Dear Leader's agricultural experiments in his private garden:

It was on a Sunday of June, Juche 53 (1964).

An official who visited the residence of General Secretary Kim Jong Il was perplexed by the unimaginable scenery of the garden.

There grew thick trees of economic value in the garden and grain crops, industrial crops, vegetables as well as fodder grass in patches.

Sowing soybean as the second crop after wheat in a patch, Kim Jong Il kindly invited the official to join in sowing with a hoe.

The leader said that as the after-crop beans sprout leaves not so much, the close planting would not have influence on the sunshine over the crops, indicating the plant-interval to him.

When the official said that it was likely to harvest two tons of soybean per hectare, the leader stated with confidence that he anticipated three tons, not two tons and he would reap 6.5 tons altogether in the first and second crops.

The official was full of admiration. The leader told the official that he had fixed various species of crops as double-cropping ones and done experimental cultivation for a few years, stressing that the reserves for increasing the grain production were double-cropping and close-planting.

The official keenly realized that the patches were not simple experimental ones but a breeding farm for the development of agriculture of the country.

A related (to my imperialist mind anyway) story announces "Russian Government's Food Donation to DPRK Completed."

Observation

The great irony of the Ft. Hood shooting is that it demonstrates the vital necessity, sometimes, of jumping to conclusions.

Can we invite the Neturei Karta to our Mosque?

Islam Online issues a ruling on this supremely important question:

Dialogue is always helpful and opens the doors for understanding and cooperation. However, when we choose representatives of any faith, we should try to choose those who represent the mainstream rather than those who say what we like to hear.

Many Jewish and Christian groups invite to their gatherings some Muslims who are critical of Islam and abuse Muslims. Thus, we criticize these groups and tell them that they should invite mainstream Muslims. Consequently We should do the same thing. We cannot have a real dialogue with any religion unless we try to converse with those who represent their main groups. From there, a real understanding and common ground can develop.

There is nothing wrong with meeting with the Rabbis of Neturei Karta, but you should bear in mind that they represent a very small Jewish group. But, again, you should not close the door on others.

It doesn't sound as if the NK are exactly sweeping them off their sandals.

"Media; a lever of int’l Zionism to dominate the world: Ahmadinejad"

That should be a colon after the word "Media," but I'm not fixing ISNA's punctuation for them.

The establishment and employment of media is the lever of the international Zionism to dominate the entire world, said Iran’s President.

During a meeting with members of the Organization of Asia-Pacific News Agencies (OANA) in Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the media which belong to the Zionism magnify the slightest issues in Asian countries to pressurize their governments but do not reflect plenty of the ugliest measures in the US and occupied territories of Palestine.

The media are bombarding humans mind, Ahmadinejad noted and called for OANA to communicate the message of friendship, peace and brotherhood to the world. [...]

What's so haram about peace, love, and understanding, eh? The Fars version of this story is entitled "President Warns Nations about Zionists' Media Plot to Destruct Culture." IRIB also has an article based on the same speech:

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday evening expressed hope that the media of Asia and the Pacific region would overcome Zionist- and the Arrogance-held media in the next few years by appropriate understanding the international scene, resistance and interaction.

Once an "appropriate understanding" of "interaction" takes hold, all Zionist plots are doomed!

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

The Hungnam Fertilizer Complex Art Squad is back in the news!

It was 20 years ago today
The Great Leader taught the band to play
They never go out of style
'Cause they're supported by the rank and file
So let me introduce to you
The act that's Juche and Songun, too
Hungnam's Fertilizer Art Squad Band . . .

They're takin' it to the stage! As always, the Hungnam Fertilizer Complex is the official People's Fertilizer Complex of the Judeopundit Blog:

Senior party and state officials, the chairpersons of the friendly parties and officials of ministries and national institutions watched an art performance given by the art squads of the February 8 Vinalon Complex and the Hungnam Fertilizer Complex at the People's Palace of Culture on Tuesday.

Put on the stage were such colorful numbers as chorus "My Country Is Eternal Country of the Leader", band music and song "The Glow over Kangson", male solo "My Beloved Factory", singing in unison and story-telling "Hungnam Is Alive with Farm Fields", agitation with song "Are We Living like in Those Days" and drum-beating and song "Let Us Glorify Socialism on Songun Fleet Steed".

The performers sang high praises of the immortal exploits General Secretary Kim Jong Il has performed by wisely leading the grand drive for building a great prosperous and powerful nation through his day and night forced marches for field guidance after kindling the torch to bring about a new revolutionary surge. They also powerfully demonstrated the heroic stamina of the working class dashing ahead like the wind towards the morrow of a thriving nation under the Songun leadership of the party. [...]

The latest Haveil Havalim is kindling the torch to bring about a new revolutionary surge!

When chrono-fowl collide

The Large Hadron Collider keeps having the wrong sort of collisions. According to a Time article, the latest mishap may have happened when a "passing bird . . . dropped the chunk of bread on an electrical substation above the accelerator . . . " Just a bit of unwanted randomness? Not according to some scientists:

While most scientists would write off the event as a freak accident, two esteemed physicists have formulated a theory that suggests an alternative explanation: perhaps a time-traveling bird was sent from the future to sabotage the experiment. Bech Nielsen of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, Japan, have published several papers over the past year arguing that the CERN experiment may be the latest in a series of physics research projects whose purposes are so unacceptable to the universe that they are doomed to fail, subverted by the future.

The article goes on to mention some objections to this theory, but in my inexpert opinion, the main problem is that nobody knows what the folks in the future might or might not find objectionable. It's all pure speculation. For all we know, the people in the future may have taken (will being ge-taken haven?) a vote, only narrowly avoiding a resolution to stop the creation of the latest Mattisyahu CD.

I'm picturing all this as actions taken by future people, no doubt missing the "complex mathematics" that this Time article is rendering as a big metaphor for the vast uneducated public. On the other hand:

Nielsen tells TIME, "you could explain it [simply] by saying that God, in inverted commas, or nature, hates the Higgs and tries to avoid them."

You have to wonder why the "inverted commas" are necessary. I often think physics is catching up with religion. That's one way to think about it.

If the Collider is indeed on a collision course with a mysterious vanishing, then someone may have anticipated all this years ago:



Crossposted on Soccer Dad

Adventures in auto-translation

EOZ is very good at sorting out these things. I just like to enjoy them as they are:

Warned Sheikh Raed Salah, head of the Islamic movement in the occupied interior of the 'mythical scheme and deceive' to establish a ring of parks around the Talmudic Al Aqsa Mosque.

Will that keep the Talmudic Mosque from spreading?

Fars: "Ahmadinejad Hails West's 'Retreat' on Nuclear Issue"

"Retreat" is exactly right, isn't it?

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the West has retreated in its nuclear dispute with Tehran, as it is no longer talking of suspension of Iran's uranium enrichment activities.

"We have now entered a stage of cooperation. At the moment, one of the key issues is Iran's participation in projects such as the international [nuclear] fuel bank or reactor and plant construction," Ahmadinejad said in a Wednesday night televised interview.

"There is no more talk of suspension. We have reached a stage where we are cooperating, on a high level, with other countries that have the technology through the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)," he was quoted by press tv as saying.

The progress made on talks on the nuclear issue has upset Israel and several European states, as they wanted the so called 'nuclear challenge' to continue so that they could use it to spread propaganda against Iran, Ahmadinejad said.

"Israelis and a number of Western countries are angry about this. They are trying to prevent us from forming cooperation. They want the talks to break down and end in dispute."

Ahmadinejad's comments came after an Israeli military official repeated the regime's past threats against Tehran, saying Tel Aviv was readying all options to try to force Iran to halt its nuclear program. [...]