Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is limbering up to address the great and good at New York’s Hyatt Hotel. Also in New York, ostensibly for discussions on the financial crisis, is Australia’s leader Kevin Rudd.
But is it the same Kevin Rudd who vowed to take “legal action” against Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the International Court of Justice for “inciting genocide” ? That Kevin Rudd would recall Ahmadinejad vowing to wipe Israel off the world’s map, and in so doing kill millions of Jews.
As Piers Ackerman says:
That was then. Prime Minister Rudd is now at the UN where he has every opportunity to ask Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to refer Ahmadinejad’s genocidal calls to the UN Security Council as a matter threatening international peace and security.
Is Rudd is a man of his word ?
Don’t hold your breath, however. Mr Rudd is actually in New York to wheedle promises of support for Australia’s $40million bid to sit temporarily on the UN Security Council and rub shoulders with the big guys
And of course, Ahmadinejad wants to be seen, back home at least, sticking it to the man; It’s part of his his campaign to be reelected as Iran’s president in June 2009. According to Slates’s Hooman Majd:
Ahmadinejad’s speech Tuesday at the U.N. (one I had a hand in translating) was an uncomfortable blend of sermon and anti-Zionist rage, bordering at times on the anti-Semitic. There were times, as I read the speech in English at the U.N. for a worldwide audience, when I was hoping perhaps to hear something a little more conciliatory or even something new — and at times it was hard to keep a straight face (or, rather, a straight voice), particularly in the section where he repeated claims from the long-discredited “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”
What does it say about a person, let alone a state leader, that believes, let alone preaches, this kind of Bigotry ? And its not the first satement of this kind that he has made.. Remember this quote from Ahmadinejad ?:
“a handful of Zionists controls the economic centres and political decision making” in the West
