Ahmadinejad News Blog @newzblogz.com

The Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance is a special place. Within its walls they teach millions of visitors the meaning of tolerance and the ugliness of intolerance. That should be enough.

But we all know that isn't enough. Man's inhumanity to man continues to manifest itself in horrific ways and in ways that practically numb the ordinary senses and common sense of otherwise good people.

Last week the Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles held its 2007 Tribute Dinner at which it not only honored two most deserving humanitarians, Robert Shaye and Michael Lynne from New Line Cinema, but also singled out three people for special medals of valor. One was Ann Curry of "Dateline NBC" for her gut-wrenching portrayals of violence and ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and Darfur. The other two medals were given posthumously to former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the recently murdered and totally selfless professor Liviu Librescu of Virginia Tech.

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LOS ANGELES ? Only four months ago, Jeff Carr traveled to Iran to meet President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ? and got grilled about it by Fox News after his return.

Carr, an evangelical minister who drew national attention as part of a liberal Christian advocacy group, hopes to make waves beyond Southern California after being selected by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa as Los Angeles' first ?gang czar.?

Officials have talked for years about creating a single post to oversee anti-gang efforts. If it works, it could become a model for other regions.

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Iran is in the throes of one of its most ferocious crackdowns on dissent in years, with the government focusing on labor leaders, universities, the press, women's rights advocates, a former nuclear negotiator and Iranian-Americans, three of whom have been in prison for more than six weeks.

The shift is occurring against the backdrop of an economy so stressed that although Iran is the world's second-largest oil exporter, it is on the verge of rationing gasoline. At the same time, the nuclear standoff with the West threatens to bring new sanctions.

The hard-line administration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, analysts say, faces pressure for failing to deliver on promises of greater prosperity from soaring oil revenue. It has been using U.S. support for a change in government as well as a possible military attack as the pretext to hound his opposition and its sympathizers.

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RANDOM WALK Comments on a June shower of happenings in the news . . .

Presidential aspirants are engaging in a series of candidate forums that make a mockery of the word debate. For the Democrats, John Edwards (of $400 haircut fame) objects heatedly to "global war on terror" -- terming it a bumper-sticker phrase. Hillary Clinton insists she can solve both health care and education -- the former with tax voodoo and the latter with tax-paid pre-K. (It now seems, according to a new Clinton biography, that years ago she flunked the piece-o'-cake D.C. bar exam, a datum...

Over on the Republican side, just about every candidate with a pulse is thumping the president. And at one forum nearly everyone piled on John McCain for having the temerity to think the immigration bill might accomplish something. Rudy Giuliani was quoted as saying Osama bin Laden "comes from one of the richest families in the world," and Mohammed Atta of 9/11 fame "was well-educated" -- thus disputing the "liberal mindset" that terrorism is caused by poverty and insufficient exposure to New Ma...

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?Mess,? ?fiasco,? ?disaster,? ?blunder,? and ?catastrophe.?

Fill in the blanks with almost any stock noun of gloom these days when speaking about Iraq.

For finger-in-the-wind politicians, writing off Iraq is mere throat-clearing before moving on to any discussion of immigration reform or taxes. For ahead-of-the-curve pundits, starting out with ?The failure in Iraq? is like opening their browser before daily pontificating. No need of explanation or empiricism, one just gets things out of the way at the very beginning with our new postmodern ritual.

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