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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Ten Things You Didn't Know About Mahmoud Ahmadinejad |
| 2007-09-27 |
| 1. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (pronounced bat-SHIAT cray-zee) was born Oct. 28, 1956, three years after the CIA-sponsored coup that installed the pro-Western leader Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as Iran's leader. A Shiite Muslim, he and his wife, a professor, have two sons and a daughter. 2. When he was an infant, Ahmadinejad's family moved from the village of Aradan to Tehran. It was at this point that the family changed its name from Saborjhian, which translates to "thread painter" (the lowliest job in Iran's traditional carpet-weaving industry), to the more religious Ahmadinejad ("race of Muhammad" or "virtuous race"). 3. Ahmadinejad is the fourth son of seven children. His father, Ahmad, ran a grocery store and then a barber shop in Aradan; upon their move to Tehran, his father became a blacksmith. 4. In 1975, he finished 130th among students across Iran who took university entrance exams that year and was admitted as a civil engineering student at Tehran's University of Science and Technology. He would later complete graduate work, earning master's and doctoral degrees in traffic and transportation engineering. 5. As a student, Ahmadinejad was politically active. Although religious activism was repressed under the shah, Ahmadinejad and his fellow protesters produced leaflets denouncing the shah using a printing press hidden in his family's home. Later, Ahmadinejad joined the ultraconservative faction of the Office for Strengthening Unity, the radical student group that grew out of the 1979 Islamic Revolution and staged the capture of the U.S. Embassy. 6. After serving in the war with Iraq, he joined Iran's elite Special Brigade of Revolutionary Guards, the militia force loyal to the spiritual leader at the time, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. He served in covert operations with the guards, probably in Kirkuk, and may also have been involved in the elimination of the Ayatollah's enemies; intelligence sources believed that he traveled to Austria in 1989 to assist in the assassination of Abdorrahman Qassemlou, a Kurdish dissident. 7. He was cofounder of the Islamic Society of Students and was an instructor with the Basij, the youth volunteer organization that enforces the Islamic Republic's strict religious codes. The Basij crisscrossed the city via motorcycles, searching for women out in public in violation of strict Muslim dress codes or in the company of males who were not close relatives. 8. After the war, he returned to academia as a lecturer and professor of engineering at his alma mater. Ahmadinejad's public service included serving as vice governor and governor of Maku and Khoy and acting as an adviser to the minister of culture and Islamic guidance. He was governor of the province of Ardabil from 1993 to 1997 and was the appointed mayor of Tehran in 2003. 9. As Tehran's mayor, he gained a reputation for personal piety and attentiveness to the city's lower and working classes. His two-year tenure was marked by religious conservatism and populism. He ordered the shutdown of fast-food restaurants, a crackdown on Internet caf�s, and the cancellation of some secular entertainment events. He also turned cultural centers into religious halls. At one point, he donned a street sweeper's uniform to earn the respect of city workers and, shunning a city-provided limousine service, drove his own 1977 Peugeot. 10. Declaring that "we did not have a revolution in order to have democracy," Ahmadinejad won Iran's presidential election, edging out his rival, Islamic cleric and veteran politician Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, in the runoff election in June 2005. |
| Posted by:Delphi |
| #12 HHHHMMMMM, Saborjhian. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2007-09-27 20:11 |
| #11 SO, in his own way Moud = OSAMA BIN LADEN, ZAWI, ZARQ, and OMAR, etal, in being involved in Islamist covert ops??? |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2007-09-27 20:09 |
| #10 21. Holds office of Vice President (for Life) of the "Society of Short Smelly Dictators". |
| Posted by: DMFD 2007-09-27 19:13 |
| #9 Ph.D. in traffic management isn't going to help much when the missile traffic starts coming in. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2007-09-27 19:12 |
| #8 Traffic Management Doctorate Degree? Maybe Columbia should "sister university" with his alma mater and see if the 13th iman can help thin out traffic after the Yankees games. |
| Posted by: Capsu78 2007-09-27 16:33 |
| #7 So he is a doctor of traffic engineering: he isn't old enough to blame for the I-10 connection to the Mississippi River bridge in Baton Rouge, so it must have been his thesis advisor who designed that. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2007-09-27 16:32 |
| #6 Answers to the name " Taxi!" |
| Posted by: Grunter 2007-09-27 16:31 |
| #5 21. Allergic to soap and water. |
| Posted by: Natural Law 2007-09-27 14:51 |
| #4 Also missing: the part where the Zionist mind control ray stunted his growth... |
| Posted by: Seafarious 2007-09-27 14:28 |
| #3 11. Wears women's underwear. 12. Often mistaken for homeless person. 13. Believes, "if your not on the receiving end, it's not gay." 14. Is unable to tie a tie. Says "it's really hard". 15. Favorite snack: Snot. 16. Favorite actor: "that Spicoli guy." 17. Guilty Pleasure: Goat pr0n. 18. Favorite TV show: "Naboul, the Jew Killing Bee". 19. Favorite Great Satanist: "that Spicoli guy". 20. Least Favorite Things: Loud bangs, Inshallah aircraft maintenance |
| Posted by: tu3031 2007-09-27 14:23 |
| #2 One item is conspicuously missing; the part where he was a bed wetter and thumb sucker during childhood (childhood lasted until he was well into his teen years). |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2007-09-27 13:37 |
| #1 With science and Islam being incompatible and this guy having a doctorate in engineering I begin to suspect he know he's spouting bull$h!t about the Twelvth Imam and is just another sociopath who is in it for the power fix. He's gotta be good to fool the Mad Mullahs who put him where he is but I bet that deep down inside he resents the hell out of them. |
| Posted by: treo 2007-09-27 13:16 |