The Ahmadinejad Code

The above image was originally posted last October. It's an optical illusion called an "inversion." Move your cursor over the image, and it will flip upside down. If you look at the upside-down version just right, you will see a caricature of Iranian President Ahmadinejad. For more about the image and why it came to be, see the original post. I'm reposting it because, with Ahmadinejad speaking at Columbia University, comparisons of Ahmadinejad to Hitler are making the news.

From The New York Sun: Columbia Would Welcome Hitler, a Dean Insists.

The dean, John Coatsworth, heads the same institution that will serve as Columbia's host for President Ahmadinejad. The decision of Columbia to honor the Iranian anti-Semite and terror master with a speaking platform has drawn outrage among political leaders in the city, including the speaker of the City Council, Christine Quinn.

"If Hitler were in the United States and wanted a platform from which to speak, he would have plenty of platforms to speak in the United States," Mr. Coatsworth said in an interview with Fox News that was linked last evening by the Drudge Report. "If he were willing to engage in debate and a discussion to be challenged by Columbia students and faculty, we would certainly invite him."

Hot Air has the video.

From the Wyman Institute of Holocaust Studies: Columbia “Invites Hitler to Campus” --As it Did in 1933 by Rafael Medoff.

Columbia University has invited a representative of the world’s most antisemitic regime to speak on its campus. This week’s news? Try 1933.

Seventy years before this week’s invitation to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Columbia rolled out the red carpet for a senior official of Adolf Hitler’s regime, according to research by Prof. Stephen Norwood of the University of Oklahoma, who is completing a book on the academic community’s response to Hitler in the 1930s ...

According to Israel’s ambassador, inviting Ahmadinejad to speak is the equivalent of “inviting Hitler to [speak] in the 1930s,” because “appeasing fanatics and granting them legitimacy leads to genocide and war.” Will some future Columbia president one day look back at the invitation to Ahmadinejad and say the same thing?

From FOX News: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Arrives in NYC for Controversial Visit.

Irian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made a low-key entrance into New York City on Sunday evening amid extremely tight security as he faces a firestorm of controversy surrounding his visit to address the U.N. General Assembly and speak to students and teachers during a forum at Columbia University.

Ahmadinejad said the American people have been denied "correct information," and his visit will give them a chance to hear a different voice, the official IRNA news agency reported.

"The United States is a big and important country with a population of 300 million. Due to certain issues, the American people in the past years have been denied correct and clear information about global developments and are eager to hear different opinions," Ahmadinejad was quoted by IRNA as saying.

Ahmadinejad, who has called the Holocaust "a myth," encouraged the destruction of Israel and supported terrorists in Iraq, will address the United Nations General Assembly and a Columbia University forum but will not be allowed to tour Ground Zero.

UPDATE: Little Green Footballs has a listed of protests planned for Ahmadinejad's visit.
Posted by Forkum at September 23, 2007 09:49 PM