Daniel Halper at the Weekly Standard reports that the Iranian Fars News Agency has indicated that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will visit with protestors from Occupy Wall Street.
“Ahmadinejad is also set to meet American university students, artists, intellectuals and elites, including Occupy Wall Street anti-capitalist protestors, despite the ongoing efforts made by the pro-Zionist lobbies to prevent direct link between American people and the Iranian president,” the Iranian organ Fars News reports.
But the OWS folks see a plot to discredit them. They angrily refuted the report and denounced the Iranian president:
Occupy Wall Street members do not intend to meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, despite a report from the Iranian state-sponsored Fars News Agency saying otherwise.
“This is nonsense propaganda,” Dana Balicki, a member of the Occupy Wall Street PR Team, told The Daily Caller. “There is no organized effort on behalf of OWS to meet with Ahmadinejad,” she said. “None at all.”
Balicki also denied any funding of the movement from Iran or Iranian entities, again denouncing such speculation as “nonsense propaganda.”
“Furthermore, there is no way to verify anything from Fars News Agency as they have no listed phone number and their email address bounces,” she said.
“It would’ve been nice to get a call before the original story went up repeating an unverifiable news report which drags us into the Iranian regime’s propaganda efforts,” said Balicki.
But there appears to be some confusion among OWS protestors about what and who exactly they are protesting. This is classic OWS incoherence:
Shawn Carrie, an activist with the Occupy Wall Street movement, also denied the report, telling Buzzfeed, “Nobody in their right mind would meet with a fascist dictator like Ahmadinejad.”
Carrie said that members of the movement may go protest the Iranian leader, along with Havaar, an Iranian anti-war organization.
Havaar plans to protest Ahmadinejad, President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as U.S. sanctions against Iran, in front of Ahmadinejad’s hotel in New York City Tuesday afternoon.
“JOIN Havaar as we raise our voices in protest, in front of Ahmadinejad’s hotel, against the crimes of his government, including the lack of accountability for the torture and killing of dissidents, and the continued unjust detention of Iranian political prisoners — including union organizers, student activists, and advocates for the rights of all Iranians,” said a Facebook event announcement from Havaar.
“Join us to simultaneously express opposition to US-led sanctions and American and Israeli threats of war against Iran,” said the event announcement.
Maybe it would be easier to ask them what they were for.
OWS may not be aware of this, but Ahmadinejad believes the organization heralds the arrival of the mythical 12th imam — that wild and wacky savior who will turn the world over to the Muslims when he alights on earth from points unknown. The Iranian president believes that OWS represents the collapse of capitalism and an “American Awakening:”
Given the similar failure of communism, the world now needs a “new order” and new management, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared at the weekend.
And he has the answer.
The “only alternative” to both systems is the “global rule of the Imam of the Age”, he insisted, referring to the Shiite messiah, Imam Mahdi. The 12th and last of the Shiite Imams, he went into hiding in the 9th century. Most Shiites believe that he will return at the apocalyptic end of time to save mankind and bring Islamic peace and justice to the world.
It’s too bad that A-Jad and OWS won’t meet. The sheer goofiness on display from the two sides would be worth the price of admission. A-Jad, the Holocaust denier, and OWS, the perpetual children, deniers of adult responsibilities.
A marriage made in heaven.
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