Former president leads in Iran’s assembly polls - Reformist camp victory

[democratic]

TEHERAN - Iran’s former president Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani is leading the polls of the Experts’ Assembly elections while the candidate linked to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in sixth place, several local news agencies reported on Saturday.

Rafsanjani, one of Ahmadinejad’s main opponents, represented the coalition of reformists and moderates in the Experts’ Assembly elections while Mohamad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi stood for the presidential camp.

Rafsanjani and former reformist President Mohammad Khatami appeared together Friday at the polling station in the Jamaran mosque in north Tehran, demonstrating their political solidarity for the future.

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2006/December/middleeast_December271.xml§ion=middleeast

[OregonBlue]

1. Great minds thingy. I was, at this very monent ,wondering how the election was going

in Iran. Seems Ahmadinejad has been taunting the U.S. and Europe of late. Very unwise and very unsafe for the world. Thanks.

[sallyseven]

2. Who knew there was an election going on. I didn't

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

3. Maybe this is one reason the current president has been

doing what he he's been doing-the Holocost Denial Conference and all--he's playing to the home crowd for votes? If so, it appears to be backfiring on him.

[geek tragedy]

4. He should fire the ambassador to Syria.

Or have him shot. No difference to me.

http://www.irna.ir/en/news/view/line-17/0612154717154631.htm

[AngryAmish]

5. How is such denial possible?

The ticket lady at the movie theater where I grew up had a tattoo from Auschwitz. Did she just put a number on her forearm for fun?

The GERMANS, today and for many years, say it happened.

I know the answer - It allows Jews to be demonized, etc. etc. There is plenty of reasons to criticize Israel. But Holocaust denial is not one of them.

[timtom]

7. I have never doubted the holocaust,

having had many friends who had relatives who were lost or lived to be holocaust survivors.

But, truth to tell, a couple of years before I became aware of all this revisionist flapdoodle, I was having lunch with 2 professors of religion at a christian college. One of them mentioned the holocaust, and I blurted out, "All right! We get it! A great number of Europeans (many of whom were Jews) suffered at the hands of the Nazis! But it's fifty-some odd years later! We need to move on." One of them lamely said something to the effect that we need to remember history, and I asked if that means that South Carolina can keep the Confederate flag.

I also said something to the effect that if I heard "holocaust" one more time I would scream.

But something else caught my eye in the ensuing months and years. I became aware of several people being imprisoned for questioning the holocaust. I still assume the holocaust to have happened, but it happened to a whole lot of Poles, Russians, homosexuals, Jews, Gypsies.

If someone in this nation denied the Trail of Tears tragedy had occurred, would that person find himself in prison, as well?

When there is a reaction to a point of view that includes imprisonment and the abridgement of all due process of law, I, myself, begin to ask questions.

[AngryAmish]

8. Can't get around the 1st Amendment here

Other countries don't have the same free speech rights as we do, considering our level of free speech to be dangerous.

I think I'll just let other countries decide what is best for their society by and large.

Denial of the truth just insults me. (Look at me, making the Holocaust all about me. How selfish is that?)

[democratic]

6. Nice link

Where is the mis interrupation crowd?

[knowledgeispwr]

9. No kidding.

I'm sure they will arrive shortly to claim that Bushco has a hand in this and that there is no way something like this could happen without our bidding.