iran’s president is a genius

well i have read the letter iran’s president ahmadinejad wrote to george w. bush, and it is pure brilliance. there are a few parts i disagree with (mainly the parts about religion and how it is better than liberal democracy) but most of it is just pure common sense, and the truth. wow. i never imagined i would be agreeing with anything mahmoud ahmadinejad said or wrote, but here is an 18-page document full of reasoned arguments, with some religious dogma thrown in a few places for added emphasis. i mean, he is just about as logical and reasonable as an islamic fundamentalist could possibly be without contradicting their beliefs; he totally stretches that to the limit. another example of such brilliance from an islamic fundamentalist that i recently came across was the black book, by sudan’s justice and equality movement (j.e.m.). the black book is all about, that’s right, justice and equality, since it is by the justice and equality movement, after all. they are the larger of the 2 sudanese rebel groups in darfur that rejected the peace deal between the government and the sudanese liberation army (s.l.a.). this is because the s.l.a. and the j.e.m. have different ideologies, of course. now it is very nice that sudan’s evil dictators have signed a peace treaty with the democracy-oriented sudanese liberation army, but the islamic fundamentalist justice and equality movement is still fighting, and they outline why on the website i just linked to. basically, it is because they have a list of demands that have not been met. but anyway, if you view these links realistically and digest the contents, it becomes quite clear the nature of muslims. they are not really this great evil threat that will destroy the world, that mutual assured destruction cannot work against. they are really just like everyone else, and we have been provoking them by invading their countries and supporting their enemy israel and the oppressive governments of countries like saudi arabia, egypt, pakistan, etc. so, the poor and uneducated people turn to religion, which is what poor, uneducated people all across the world do, even right here in the united states. do we really have any reason to fear the islamic fundamentalists? they are mere pawns in a game bigger than they could possibly imagine, being provoked into attacking other people so that everyone else can unite around them as a threat. yes, al qaeda did manage to attack us on 9/11, but there are still many unanswered questions about how this “new pearl harbor”, in the project for a new american century terminology, came to be. what is clear is who benefited from it: president bush and the republicans, as well as the nation of israel. the big losers: democracts, the taliban, and saddam hussein. now, out of those 3 who were hurt by 9/11, i would say only the taliban would be dumb enough to support 9/11 even though it hurt them. as for the republicans and israel, who both benefited... the republicans and israel are both very large groups. if the republicans were involved, it was a very small number of neo-cons who were involved, and nobody else knew about it. if israel was involved, a small number of people from mossad, their intelligence agency, were probably involved, and nobody else knew. there are many conspiracy theories, and i for one do not agree that the world trade center collapse was a controlled demolition, or that the terrorist pilots didn’t know how to fly the planes. my thoughts are a bit more down-to-earth. i think, of course al qaeda did it. but, i think, there were probably those who knew about it who did nothing to stop it, because they saw it as a golden opportunity to benefit themselves. remember the people short-selling airline stocks right before the airplanes were hijacked? this is a much more plausible storyline than denying that al qaeda was behind 9/11. it is just that in analyzing any situation, the most logical course of action is to analyze who benefits and who is hurt, and think about how predictable that might have been beforehand, and how capable those concerned might have been in discerning this in advance. if it is clear that the republicans and israel benefited from 9/11, and that both of them had enough intelligence to understand that a big terrorist attack by islamic fundamentalists on the united states would have that effect, the only question is, would they do it, or rather, did they do it? and that is a question that, quite honestly, i cannot answer. but i do know that the democrats certainly had nothing to do with it, and neither did saddam hussein; in either of those 2 cases it would be entirely illogical for the democrats or saddam to act in direct opposition to their own interests. when the reichstag fire happened in germany, adolf hitler blamed it on the jews, and used it to unite germany behind his dictatorship. how is 9/11 really any different, except for us blaming it on the muslims, and them (apparently) actually being guilty? now, i don’t really think it is logical for anyone to hate any large group of people, whether it be muslims, americans, republicans, democrats, israelis, palestinians, christians, jews, atheists, or iranians. we are all people, and people are all pretty much the same. i think the media in the u.s. tries to brainwash us here in the united states into a xenophobic hatred of muslims, and in the past this has sometimes worked on me, i must admit. i certainly don’t agree with the muslim religion, nor do i think it is moral or just or correct in any way, but that is also the way i feel about all other religions too. christianity has a long history of crusades and inquisitions and wars fought over religion, and the jews carried out genocide long ago, which they proudly chronicle in the book of genesis. hindus and buddhists have also carried out similar atrocities and crimes against humanity. every major religion has plenty of blood on its hands, thereby nullifying any claims on being moral, just, or true. but it is not fair to single out the muslims, as being worse than the other religions, and only mention their atrocities and nobody else’s. they would probably be killing us whatever their religion is, after all we have done to them. the people of the world are uneducated and do not have very logical minds, and we cannot expect them all to understand the truth and put aside the beliefs that they have been raised in and the cultures that surround them. i am no moral relatavist or anything; i know western liberal secular values are inherently superior to all other value systems, but small minds cannot understand such grand ideas, especially when people have been brainwashed. but what the letter from iran’s president and the black book both show is, although islam has obstructed part of the truth from being found by muslims, they are still able to see much of the truth, despite their irrational belief system. this should really come as no surprise to us, however, because we have seen time and time again how christians and jews are perfectly able to do the same thing; we just thought muslims lacked this capability, but now we have been proven wrong. a religious person can be perfectly capable of applying logic and reason to any topic except for religion, and this can hold true for any religion, no matter how illogical its beliefs are. this is because the religious person’s mind divides itself into 2 “separate but equal” parts: the logical mind, which thinks about most topics, and the spiritual mind, which is the only part that is allowed to think about religion. the spiritual mind is thought of as somehow being above or below or transcending logic, and rendering logic meaningless or inoperable. while a dogma is hard to accept if you do not already accept it, it is virtually impossible to get rid of if you base the rest of your belief system upon it. every belief system is like a tower: you have to build a foundation, underground, before you can move on to greater things. the foundation can be considered your assumptions or dogma, the things you just assume are true and never question. from that basis, you can establish other facts that are provable from what you know already. and with logic and observation you can build a very high tower of intellectual achievement. but if the foundation is flawed, the whole tower can come falling down, like the leaning tower of pisa falling over. that is why you need to get down off the top sometimes to revisit your foundation, and test it for structural integrity, something which does not really come naturally to most people. and because most people avoid this out of fear that they might accidentally knock the whole tower over, they stick with their flawed foundations, in their shaky towers. now, any system of belief that is truly viral in nature must include in its beliefs the fact that it is good and the fact that anyone who opposes it is evil. take time cube for instance; it makes both those claims in a very straightforward manner. therefore, it is a viral system of belief, also known as a religion. any system of belief that makes unverifiable or ridiculous claims must have beliefs of this nature so that the system has self-preservation. most major religions also have teachings on sexuality that have an end result of making their followers have lots of children that they raise in that religion; this is another form of self-preservation for the viral belief system. babies are born inherently free from any belief system, and from the moment they are born, they are subject to constant brainwashing from all sorts of belief systems. and any viral belief system subordinates its human followers to the belief system itself, making them think of the belief system as a great cause, usually a cause that is even worth dying for. in this way, people are enslaved to belief systems they are taught, and they lose their independence and free will. but no belief system is perfect, or can fully prevent its followers from rational thought; some rational thought will always creep in, about topics which the belief system does not address. and so, the human mind can never be fully enslaved; each of us still has the tools to make ourselves free from mental bondage. this is what the president of iran has demonstrated to us all; he has shown that even someone as deluded as him can engage in rational discourse under the right circumstances. he has managed to use logic to transcend his crazy belief system, with the objective of writing something to be persuasive for an audience of people who do not share his belief system. and for this, he is a genius, because his persuasive essay packs quite a rhetorical punch. you cannot expect every genius to have a belief system which is correct; this type of expectation is naive and illogical. many geniuses use logic to justify belief systems which are patently absurd, and they then proceed to invent even more absurd ideas, and then believe in them wholeheartedly. the logical mind is capable of arguing from premises which it disagrees with, and understanding multiple points of view, although it is usually so biased that it can only produce “straw man” arguments when it attempts to argue from the other side. but a logical mind usually ignores the fact that the conclusions of any logical argument are only as valid as the weakest link among the assumptions made beforehand; this is the arrogance of many practitioners of logic, who do not realize it is a tool for recycling information you already know and not a source of new information. every logical theorem is ipso facto a tautology and therefore trivial and devoid of meaning. this is why the iranian president’s emphasis on religion as the basis for morality and decision-making is important. if people are brainwashed into accepting a standardized viral belief system, this can make their actions more or less predictable, and it is logical that under the right circumstances, this could lead to peace among nations. he is opposed to individualism and thinking for oneself, because he views this as dangerous. someone who does not subscribe to any of these belief systems would be totally unpredictable, and if they were a world leader, who knows what would happen? nobody does. so his argument in favor of brainwashing has some merit; it is pure genius. so let the brainwashing victims rule the world together, while independent thinkers avoid seeking political power, and then there will be peace and stability. i wonder if any independent thinkers can come up with a counter-argument; i certainly cannot think of any at this time, so i think mahmoud ahmadinejad has won this argument by default. now there are some in the media who have criticized this letter by him, but that only shows that these critics have small minds, too small to allow any conflicting ideas to have any space inside. they think that he should address issues about iran’s uranium enrichment or other such rubbish in his letter, totally misunderstanding the purpose of the letter with their flawed assumptions. the purpose was to establish a frame of reference for his point of view to be used in further arguments and discussions. the purpose was to lay the foundation for such discussions to take place later, without getting bogged down in specifics about what happens later, because that would be too limiting. and this foundation would be used to build a tower of mutual understanding, for both americans and iranians, rather than just the tower of one particular ideology. a much more noble goal than ahmadinejad’s previous saber rattling and threatening statements about war. hopefully he was never serious about war, and was just trying to position himself to have more bargaining power to establish peace. let us hope that is the case, and let us hope this letter is serious and genuine, as it seems to be. otherwise, if this peaceful talk is just bluffing (which would make no sense), i am afraid that if it is war that he wants, then it is war he shall get. the doctrine of pre-emptive war is still in effect, whereas the united nations charter has been abandoned long ago.