Next.

How about blogging about something more relevant such as the Romanian agreement to house US military bases? Interesting development in a former east-bloc country.

How about letting the blogger decide about what he shall blog? If you don't like it, don't read it.

Ah, Iran. If ever there was a country that needed wiping off the map, it is you, you house of lunatics. Perhaps we can help Mr Ahmadinejad believe in holocausts.

This guy and the clerics behind that government worry me a great deal. Plus, we're in an incredibly vulnerable position with an entangled army.

Worst. He speaks for a number of Muslims. Not all, not the majority. But too many.

He's the Persian Howard Dean!

As a kid, clowns always evoked deep feelings of apprehension in me. I believed them to be clever and malevolent jokesters, who were almost certainly in possession of concealed weapons.

Amhadinejad only lacks a red nose and floppy shoes.

Dan,

I am sure you know that this sentiment is exactly mainstream in the Middle East. In fact, the vast majority of Arabs I know would agree with this in principle, and I have had this discussion countless times. It is the truth that the State of Israel was born because the Europeans where/are so cruel to Jews. Unfortunately, it is the Arabs who have been made to pay a heavy price for European brutality.

In the above I am not referring to the doubt of the Holocaust aspect of what he said. From my experience, the vast majority of Arabs who doubt the Holocaust do so because it is commonly used as a political justification for the existence of State of Israel, and therefore it is implicitly a justification for the suffering and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

Weather is not as good in Europe, particularly for those living along the Mediterranean

Ahmadinejad?

Gesundheit.

Ahmadi-Nejad?

What's the little psycho without the towel on his head (a nice sartorial change of pace, at any rate) running on about today?

Bring back the bifurcated name, Dan!

Joe M,

It isn't as simple as that. The Zionist project started in the nineteenth century and sped up in the early 20th, but it predates both WWI and WWII.

It's quite likely that some form of Jewish or binational state would have been created in the Middle East irrespective of the Holocaust, since a lot of Jews wanted it, both settlers and indigenous. Yes, there were a fair number of indigenous Jews in Palestine before the formation of Israel. Not so surprising really, when you think about it.

The other problem, of course, with Ahmadinejad's idea is that the majority of Israel's Jews are actually refugees from Arab countries expelled after the formation of Israel. That is to say, Arab countries themselves swelled the population of Israel and fostered its existence by oppressing and ethnically cleansing their Jewish citizens. One notable exception, interestingly, is Iran, which still has a Jewish minority. I wonder what Iran's president will do next - maybe try something funny with his own Jewish citizens?

Since the Palestinians were mentioned, I thought it worthwhile to draw attention to a custom of their that the Iranian President might wish to adopt, just as a courtesy to the rest of the world.

Let's face it, Ahmadinejad is an absurdly long name. It's a real imposition to have to copy and paste it every time one writes a post about Iran. It is evidently common among Palestinians and some other Arabs for men to go by nicknames, like current Palestinian Authority head Abu Mazen. I'm told this means "father of Mazen," which is a little unimaginative, but still easy to remember. Ahmadinejad could earn himself some goodwill by doing something similar.

It isn't just Arab fathers of male children who adopt nicknames. Pro wrestlers do it too. If Ahmadinejad would consent to be known henceforth as The Iron Sheik, bloggers and headline writers around the world would thank him. As a bonus, whenever he wanted to make news he wouldn't need to go to the trouble of wading through the history of a certain Middle Eastern country that he has never seen and which has done very little to offend Iran whatever its relations with its immediate neighbors have been. All he would need to do to get front page coverage is include the phrase "Iran, Number One! USA, ach phtui!" in his speeches. And maybe shave his head.

Ehtnic cleansing of the Palestinians? Are you joking? There are not only MORE Palestinians than before Israel was reborn (out of land that never was a "Palestine") but the ONLY schools, hospitals and universities ever opened in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were opened under the so called "occupation."

The "suffering" of the Arab world is wholly self-created.