Psycho in Town

Psycho in Town

by Rich Trzupek



Ahmadinejad enlightens the UN about his longing for the return of the 12th Imam — and his solidarity with 9/11 Truthers.



The United Nations played host to the latest version of the president of Iran’s road show yesterday. This was a subtly different Ahmadinejad than we’ve seen addressing world leaders in New York heretofore. His trademark mixture of insufferable smugness and blustering defiance was on display to be sure, but this speech was more about the former than the latter and that’s something of a change. It appears that there’s no need to spew much vitriol at the president of the United States any longer, for the leader of the Great Satan has rendered himself all but impotent without much Muslim assistance. Why would Ahmadinejad waste his breath denouncing or threatening the paper tiger currently occupying the White House?
 
Instead, Ahmadinejad used the global stage that the UN provided in order to show the world that nobody understands the problems confronting humanity better than he does. Religious scholar, champion of the poor, master of geo-politics, economic guru – these are but some of the many facets that define the President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and if you have any doubt about that, just ask him.

Ahmadinejad, if not quite declaring Islam victorious, seems more confident of the final outcome than ever. He said that the era of capitalism is coming to an end, after “one hundred years of domination.” Selling Adam Smith short by a couple of centuries, Ahmadinejad would – in typical fashion – later contradict his confused understanding of world history by asserting that the Western powers were responsible for ravaging the rest of the world through colonialism and slavery. The fact that colonialism and slavery were features of Western societies before the “one hundred years of domination” seemed to be entirely lost on him.

The solution to the world’s problems, he declared, was to turn to God, a sentiment that tens of millions of Americans would agree with in the broadest of terms. But of course when Ahmadinejad speaks of God, he’s really referring to the only acceptable version of the Deity that Islam tolerates. He parroted the Qur’an’s assertion that the people who refuse to accept the God of Muhammad deny the most obvious of truths because of selfishness and greed. Every prophet was confronted by similar unbelievers, were they not? Moses had Pharaoh and Jesus had the Pharisees. What’s the analogous group when it comes to Muhammad? Well, that would be us: we stubborn, egotistical Westerners who can’t bring ourselves to understand that God appointed a succession of prophets and that it is our duty to keep up with the program.

He asked the UN to proclaim 2011 the year of nuclear disarmament, and even helpfully provided a slogan: “Nuclear energy for all, nuclear weapons for none.” The first half of that couplet has a certain attraction, especially in the third world countries desperate for cheap power. But, it makes no sense in a nation like Iran, where the billions that Ahmadinejad has invested in his nuclear program could have provided so much cheap power if it were used to turn its vast oil supplies into domestic electricity and gas. The Iranian president is as comfortable with the Big Lie as any Democrat and he repeated it once again: his nation has no interest in building nuclear weapons. The sanctions that the UN has imposed as a result of his nuclear ambitions clearly chafed however, no matter how ineffective those measures have been. Ahmadinejad chided the UN for maintaining its five nation security council and mused about how much more effective the body would be if only Iran had veto power too.

Though he tried very hard to appear statesmanlike, Ahmadinejad couldn’t help but lapse into being Ahmadinejad, which is to say that the crazy bubbled over at times. Talking about the 9-11 attacks for example, he declared that there was little evidence that Islamic terrorists were involved. Instead, he revealed his version of the true nature of the attacks:

[S]ome segments within the U.S. government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy and its grips on the Middle East in order to save the Zionist regime. The majority of the American people as well as other nations and politicians agree with this view.

The supposition that the American economy was in decline in 2001, or that toppling the Twin Towers, attacking the Pentagon and crashing an airliner into a field in Pennsylvania was the formula to fix our supposed fiscal ills is certainly a unique view of history. How those attacks strengthened our position among our tenuous allies in the Arab world, or how 9/11 “saved” Israel are two equally mysterious concepts. The events of September 11, 2001 emboldened Islamic fanatics rather than cow them. And the only people who benefited economically from the attacks were those Muslims “in the know” who sold short on United and American stocks. The rest of us dealt with a recession.

The “plight” of the Palestinian people is never far from the Iranian president’s aggrieved heart, and he once again cried crocodile tears over their fate before the UN. Ahmadinejad doesn’t care about Palestinian refugees any more than he cares about the tens of millions of his countrymen wallowing in poverty in Iran while the mullahs live like royalty. Palestinian refugees are however useful pawns that can be played as he pursues his ultimate goal of destroying Israel. He said that Palestinians are being “deprived of food, water and medicine in their own homeland,” although he did not complain that Hamas or Hezbollah lacks for AK-47s, mortars or RPGs. Ahmadinejad rather stuck to the script, even if he didn’t call for the outright destruction of Israel this time. Instead, he said that Palestinians should be awarded jurisdiction over their “homeland,” which sounds a little nicer than “nuke Israel,” even if it achieves the same result.

Ahmadinejad’s true feelings and motivations were revealed on the cover page which accompanied the official transcript of his remarks. This quote appears on it: “Oh, God; hasten the arrival of Imam Al-Mahdi and grant him good health and victory and make us his followers and those who attest to his rightfulness.” Shia’ Muslims believe that Al-Mahdi is the legendary “twelfth Imam” who has been in hiding for over a millennium, but who will reappear to lead the righteous to victory over evil when the world is in chaos. Appealing to Al-Mahdi is therefore to wish for chaos – a world in flames which only the ultimate holy-warrior can rescue. Ahmadinejad is a fanatic who longs for that kind of righteous victory, but his contradictory, disturbing and delusional remarks before the UN have revealed once again that he yearns for the chaos that must proceed Islam’s ultimate triumph.


**Write to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at http://www.president.ir/en/ **

The Mexican Massacre That Shook All of Latin America

The Mexican Massacre That Shook All of Latin America

by Ioan Grillo / Mexico City

The alleged site where 72 bodies were found in San Fernando, Mexico

Mexicans have come to be numbed by the relentless reports of gruesome violence this year, but the brutal scene revealed to the public on Wednesday was enough to stun them anew. Seventy-two corpses were piled up haphazardly around the edge of a breeze-block barn, arms and legs twisted over one another, waists and backs contorted into unnatural shapes. There were teenagers, middle-aged men, young girls, a pregnant woman. They had left countries including Brazil, Ecuador, El Salvador and Honduras, making the hard trek north on trains, buses and foot in search of the American dream. And then in a ranch in northeast Mexico just 100 miles from the Texas border, they finished their days, with their hands bound and bullets in their heads.

How, newspapers asked, had the situation gotten so out of control that a heavily armed gang could commit such a massacre, comparable to some of the worst atrocities in wars, in one of the country's most developed regions? And how would other Latin American countries now look at what Mexicans had done to their citizens? Throughout the debate that has taken place since the discovery, one telling word has been repeated again and again: vergüenza, or shame. "National Shame and Anger," said an editorial of Mexico City's El Universal newspaper. "With what face can Mexico condemn the violation of migrant rights in the United States when here Latin Americans are killed with impunity and their bodies buried in clandestine graves?"

But the other overarching question was more basic, and pressing. What could the perpetrators possibly gain from slaying so many innocent people? Important clues to answer this were held by a 19-year-old Ecuadorian identified only by the name Luis, who, against all odds, survived the massacre. When the gunmen fired, a bullet went through his neck and out of his jaw. He fell down as if dead but was still conscious, and after waiting patiently for hours, he got up and stumbled miles on foot until he reached an army checkpoint. Mexican marines say that Luis made contact with them on the night of Aug. 23. But suspicious that they might be the targets of a trap, they waited until Aug. 24 to gather reinforcements and make the raid in the community of San Fernando. When they went in, a gun battle left three suspects and a marine dead before they discovered an arsenal of automatic rifles and the piles of bodies. One teenager from southern Mexico was detained, but many other gunmen apparently escaped.

(See pictures of a mass quinceañera in Ciudad Juárez.)

Luis was taken to a hospital in the city of Matamoros and then onto a Marine base, where he has been treated and interviewed by investigators. Police released a photo with his face blacked out, showing a skinny teenager, bandages across his chest and neck and tubes feeding his body. Parts of Luis' testimony have been related by Mexican officials, but journalists have not yet been able to interview him. According to the officials' account, the migrants were traveling north on a bus on the night of Aug. 21 when a group of gunmen stopped them and identified themselves as the Zetas — a gang of feared drug traffickers and extortionists. The Zetas blindfolded the victims and took them to the ranch looking to rob them. However, when the migrants did not have enough to give, the Zetas said the migrants would have to work as hit men, for a salary of $500 per week. When they refused the offer, according to this testimony, they were massacred.

(See how Mexican officials are targeting the gangs' top guns.)

While more facts about the massacre need to be established, the testimony fits many accounts of previous Zetas kidnappings and extortion of migrants. The gang was originally formed in the late 1990s out of defectors from the Mexican special forces to work as enforcers for the Gulf Cartel of drug smugglers. However, they have since spread across Mexico, recruiting thousands of young thugs into their ranks and becoming a separate drug cartel as well as branching out into a range of criminal activities. Their power is concentrated across the east of Mexico, in the path taken by many Central and South American migrants heading to the U.S.

Human-rights workers have gathered accounts of hundreds of migrants kidnapped by the Zetas since 2007. In one video of such testimony shown to TIME, a man described how he was held and tortured until his family in Central America sent $2,000. "I thought I was going to die. They suffocated me with a black plastic bag. They were saying I should give them a phone number or some kind of contact with my family," he said. He then watched them torture his friend. "They were kicking him in the pants. Or one of them was holding him, as the other was hitting him with a bat." In another instance, in 2009, the Zetas allegedly kidnapped a group of 53 immigrants traveling on a train through the southern state of Chiapas and held them on a ranch. When two people tried to escape, the Zetas shot them dead in front of the rest, according to the accounts of survivors.

(See pictures of Mexico's drug wars.)

Migrants and residents close to the sites of such atrocities are terrified to condemn them because of fear of repercussions. The government also concedes that the Zetas have a network of corrupt police working for them. They even paid six police to help kill their own mayor in the northeast town of Santiago last week, according to prosecutors. As well as shaking down migrants, Zetas leaders arrested in border cities have also confessed to "taxing" the so-called coyotes who guide migrants through the deserts and rivers into the U.S.

President Felipe Calderón issued a statement condemning the attack and saying that gangs had taken to extortion out of desperation because they were hit so hard. "This is the result of the activity of the state against them, which has significantly weakened the operational capacity of criminal groups," he said in the statement. Calderón did not mention any extra resources against the Zetas, who are already the key target of several battalions of the Mexican army stationed in the northeast.

Governments across Latin America and international human-rights groups sent out messages on Aug. 26, demanding justice for the massacre victims. "This case once again demonstrates the extreme dangers faced by migrants and the apparent inability of both federal and state authorities to reduce the attacks that migrants face," said London-based Amnesty International, which released a recent report documenting kidnapping, rape and robbery of migrants throughout Mexico. "The response of the authorities to this case will be a test."

See how Mexican police were arrested over a mayor's murder.

See pictures of a Mexican meth gang waging a holy drug war.