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AFP’S PIPER MEETS PRESIDENT OF IRAN
IRAN’S DR. AHMADINEJAD SPEAKS FREELY WITHOUT MEDIA DISTORTIONS, CENSORSHIP
By James P. Tucker Jr.
On Sept. 20, American Free Press correspondent Michael Collins
Piper met face to face in Manhattan with Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a roundtable discussion and later in a private meeting. The Iranian president personally invited Piper to come to Iran as his guest in order to be able to visit the real Iran, not the mythical Iran that is constantly being harangued by the controlled media in the United States.
Copies of American Free Press and of Piper’s books were made available by Piper to the Iranian president and his official delegation.
Respected Iranian filmmaker Nader Talebzadeh was instrumental in helping AFP secure the meeting between Ahmadinejad and Piper. Best known for producing the movie, The Messiah, the Sunni Muslim equivalent to Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ, Talebzadeh was a featured speaker discussing the Middle East at the Labor Day weekend conference in Washington sponsored by American Free Press.
After meeting with Ahmadinejad, Piper remarked on the Iranian leader’s remarkable personality. “Although Dr. Ahmadinejad is only four years older than I am,” said Piper, “I felt I was in the presence of someone of deep wisdom and spirituality, far beyond his years.”
“It was an interesting experience to be able to see the Iranian president speak freely, without having his thoughts and words being deliberately distorted or misinterpreted by so-called ‘analysts’ from Zionist smear bunds such as the Anti-Defamation League or by lying propagandists from Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News,” said Piper, noting that when CBS celebrity Mike Wallace interviewed Ahmadinejad for Sixty Minutes, Wallace constantly interrupted the Iranian president in an argumentative manner, never allowing Ahmadinejad the opportunity to engage in candid discourse.
The visit followed on the heels of Ahmadinejad’s powerful speech to the UN General Assembly on Sept 19 in which the Iranian leader assailed the United States and Britain for violating international human rights. He said the “major powers” were abusing the UN Security Council as a tool of “threat and coercion,” which is “of grave concern” to all nations.
Ahmadinejad went on to say: “The prevalence of military domination, increasing poverty, the growing gap between rich and poor countries, violence as a means to solve crises, spread of terrorism specially state terrorism, existence and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the pervasive lack of honesty in interstate relations, and disregard for the equal rights of peoples and nations in international relations constitute some of the challenges and threats.”
He then turned on the United Nations, asking, “if the governments of the United States or the United Kingdom, who are permanent members of the Security Council, commit aggression, occupation and violation of international law, which of the UN organs can take them to account?”
Over the past year, Ahmadinejad and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez have both been able to seize the media spotlight with their fiery populism and their fierce opposition to the Bush administration in order to refocus discussion on such pivotal issues as oil, war and Israeli hegemony in the Middle East. This is threatening the very foundation of the plutocracy, and explains why the internationalists have been going through such contortions to paint these maverick leaders as another Hitler or a communist.
Ahmadinejad, especially, has been able to garner respect from the international community, despite his outspoken views on some of the most contentious issues in the world today—namely the Holocaust and nuclear energy.
Next week Piper will provide his first-hand account of Ahmadinejad’s remarks to the private round-table forum that followed the Iranian leader’s speech to the UN General Assembly.
AFP correspondent James P. Tucker Jr. is a veteran journalist who spent many years as a member of the “elite” media in Washington. Since 1975 he has won widespread recognition, here and abroad, for his pursuit of on-the-scene stories reporting the intrigues of global power blocs.
(Issue #40, October 2, 2006)
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