In a stunning report on Saturday, a British newspaper claimed to have uncovered proof that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- notorious among the international community for denying the holocaust -- was actually born a Jew.
According to The Telegraph, a high resolution photograph of Ahmadinejad holding up his Iranian identity card, taken just before the 2008 election, reveals that his family changed its name shortly after he was born, renouncing their Jewish faith and adopting Islam.
"A close-up of the document reveals he was previously known as Sabourjian – a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver," the UK paper reported.
"The name is even on the list of reserved names for Iranian Jews compiled by Iran's Ministry of the Interior," noted Israeli publication YNet News.
At the annual Quds Day rally in Tehran last month, the Iranian president reiterated his denial of the holocaust and blasted the Israeli government.
Ali Nourizadeh, with the Center for Arab and Iranian Studies, suggested to The Telegraph that having a Jewish background "explains a lot" about one of the key ruling figures of a Muslim nation.
The United States, Britain, France and Germany have all issued statements slamming Ahmadinejad's latest outburst dismissing the killing of some six million Jews of occupied Europe by the Nazis during World War II.
“The very existence of this regime is an insult to the dignity of the people,” the hardline president said of Israel. “They (the Western powers) launched the myth of the Holocaust. They lied, they put on a show and then they support the Jews.
“The pretext for establishing the Zionist regime is a lie… a lie which relies on an unreliable claim, a mythical claim, and the occupation of Palestine has nothing to do with the Holocaust,” he added. “This claim is corrupt and the pretext is corrupt. This (the Israeli) regime’s days are numbered and it is on its way to collapse. This regime is dying.”
During a televised debate leading up to his disputed reelection, Ahmadinejad was forced to admit his name had been changed, but he did not address the issue further, The Telegraph noted.
Accusations of Ahmadinejad's Jewish history have been floating around on the Internet since Mehdi Khazali, the son of Ayatollah Khazali, called for an investigation into his family origins on a blog. Khazali was later arrested amid protests of Ahmadinejad's disputed reelection.
Donald Trumprefused to rule out election violence if he loses in November, and a panelist on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" sounded alarm bells.
The former president, who has been indicted in two cases related to his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, told Time Magazine that the possibility of violence depended on "the fairness of election," and host Joe Scarborough and guest Donny Deutsch agreed that Trump was plainly threatening "trouble" regardless of the outcome.
"His apologists who will write this in an op-ed, laughing, 'Oh, they're saying Donald Trump is' -- no, Donald trump's own words say," Scarborough said. "They don't suggest, they say he will subvert democracy if he doesn't win, and if he does win, it'll be worse. He will subvert democracy more. He will fire prosecutors who will not arrest his political opponents. He said it."
Deutsch agreed, saying that Trump was not hinting or joking but clearly threatening to act as a dictator on Day One, as he has claimed.
"He says what he is going to do," Deutsch said. "What he is going to do to your point, Joe, is have the FCC report to him so he'll be able to control shows like this. He wants the FCC to report to him. He wants the Insurrection Act to turn military troops on his own people. He wants to weaponize, as you said, the Department of Justice to go after his enemies. He wants women on a register for abortion if he wins."
Scarborough predicted conservatives would twist their words and claim they had misrepresented Trump's stated intentions, but he said they were accurately quoting the former president.
"Somebody out in the Trump sort of stratosphere will put on a website and say, 'Look at Donny Deutsch freaking out, right?'" Scarborough said. "That's their ploy, that's the lie. I will say, you know, I love the Wall Street Journal editorial page. I disagree with them a lot, but they will have people, like, writing op-eds, that will take what you just said and lie to their readers. They let them lie to their readers and say, 'Look at the media.' I've read more of this: 'The media are being hyperbolic' – no, we are repeating his words. When we repeat his words, when I repeat his words as a conservative – and you found out this past week, I'm a conservative – like, live by the law. Whether it's on college campuses, at the border, or whether you're a president of the United States that lost an election, live by the law, right?"
Deutsch said there really was no more charitable reading of Trump's own words, and that he planned to encourage violence if he lost the election, and he posed another type of threat if he won.
"I just use his words," Deutsch said. "I just talked about if he wins. If he loses, he will tell people to take to the streets with violence – he's telling you, he's telling us. If he wins, we're in trouble. If he loses, we're in trouble."
It’s the 8th anniversary of an epic anti-Donald Trump rant, one of the best rants in modern political history.
But it wasn’t a Democrat or some left-wing commentator who delivered it.
On the morning of May 3, 2016, when Trump would win Indiana’s presidential primary — and all but clinch the Republican nomination en route to him capturing the presidency — his soon-to-be-vanquished rival, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), made a last campaign push. He went to an elementary school and greeted voters outside of Wolf’s Bar-B-Q in Evansville, Ind.
Once inside, flanked by his wife Heidi and vice presidential running mate Carly Fiorina, Cruz unleashed what he said was a previously suppressed tirade about “what I really think of Donald Trump.”
But back in 2016, Cruz’s rant was downright nuclear, as he accused Trump of being a “pathological liar,” “serial philanderer” and “utterly amoral.”
Cruz’s tirade also proved prescient: It included accusations — confirmed by testimony during Trump’s current criminal trial in Manhattan — that the National Enquirer created fake stories about Trump’s rivals to help him politically.
Cruz also smacked Trump for bullying strong women. Since then, several women have prominently stood up to Trump, including former Rep. Liz Cheney, former Trump White House staffer Cassidy Hutchinson, Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis, New York attorney general Letitia James and writer E. Jean Carroll, who won a jury verdict saying Trump sexually assaulted her — and then won two cases that centered around whether Trump defamed her.
To commemorate Cruz’s rant, Raw Story is recalling the most scathing, seething and sardonic parts of the senator's impromptu speech in no particular order — with a few pop culture references for context.
Remember, it’s not a lie if …
“I’m going to do something I haven’t done for the entire campaign for those of y’all who’ve traveled with me all across the country. I’m going to tell you what I really think of Donald Trump. This man is a pathological liar. He doesn’t know the difference between truth and lies. He lies, practically every word that comes out of his mouth.
“And, in a pattern that I think is straight out of a psychology textbook, his response is to accuse everybody else of lying. He accuses everybody on that debate stage of lying. And it’s simply a mindless yell. Whatever he does, he accuses everybody else of doing. The man cannot tell the truth, but he combines it with being a narcissist, a narcissist at a level I don’t think this country has ever seen. …
“Everything in Donald’s world is about Donald. And he combines being a pathological liar — and I say pathological because I actually think, if you hooked him up to a lie detector test, he could say one thing in the morning, one thing at noon, and one thing in the evening, all contradictory and he would pass the lie detector test each time. Whatever lie he’s telling, at that minute he believes it. But the man is utterly amoral. Morality does not exist for him.”
Trumped-up National Enquirer conspiracy stories
“Donald Trump alleges that my dad was involved in assassinating JFK. Now, let’s be clear. This is nuts. This is not a reasonable position. This is just cooky. While I’m at it, I guess I should go ahead and admit, yes, my dad killed JFK, he is secretly Elvis, and Jimmy Hoffa is buried in his backyard.
“You know, Donald’s source for this is the National Enquirer. The National Enquirer is tabloid trash. But it’s run by his good friend David Pecker, the CEO, who has endorsed Trump. So the National Enquirer has become his hit piece he uses to smear anybody and everybody. And this is not the first time Donald Trump has used David Pecker’s National Enquirer to go after my family. It was also the National Enquirer that went after my wife Heidi, that just spread lies, blatant lies.
“But I guess Donald was dismayed because it was a couple weeks ago the Enquirer wrote this idiotic story about JFK and Donald was dismayed that the folks in the media weren’t repeating this latest idiocy, so he figured he had to do it himself. He had to go on national television and accuse my dad of that.”
“The president of the United States has a bully pulpit unlike anybody else. The president of the United States affects culture. I ask the people of Indiana, think about the next five years if this man were to become president. Think about the next five years — the boasting, the pathological lying … the bullying. Think about your kids coming back and emulating this.”
This picture right here encapsulates Trump's lasting impact on American politics and society at large. — DOOP (reDOOPed) (@LolaAndCrash) March 2, 2022
Venereal disease and bone spurs
“Listen, Donald Trump is a serial philanderer. And he boasts about it. This is not a secret. He’s proud of being a serial philanderer. I want everyone to think about your teenage kids. The President of the United States talks about how great it is to commit adultery, how proud he is, describes his battles with venereal disease as his own personal Vietnam. That’s a quote, by the way, on the Howard Stern show.”
A podiatrist found “fake” bone spurs as a favor to Fred Trump so Donald could evade service to his country. Trump has said that avoiding venereal disease was his “personal Vietnam”. It’s on tape. Check out Howard Stern’s program.https://t.co/dL1HJNfmQb — Tom (@Tom_12578) December 26, 2023
Strong women
“And his strategy of being a bully in particular is directed at women. Donald has a real problem with women. … Donald is terrified by strong women. He lashes out at them.”
“I don’t believe that’s who we are. We are not a proud, boastful, self-centered, mean-spirited, hateful, bullying nation. If you want to understand Donald Trump, look no further than the interview he did a few months ago in Iowa, where he was asked a very simple question: When’s the last time you asked God for forgiveness? And Donald Trump said he had never asked God for forgiveness for anything. I want you to think about that. What does that say about a person?
“I’ve asked God for forgiveness three times today. Think about your children. Do you want your children coming home and saying, mommy, I don’t need to ask God for forgiveness for anything. Why? Because Donald Trump doesn’t. And if doesn’t, and if everyone likes him, and the media praises him, I don’t need to, either.
“This is not who we are. These are not our values. If anyone has seen the movie Back to the Future [Part]) II, the screenwriter said he based the character Biff Tannen on Donald Trump, a caricature of a braggadocious, arrogant buffoon who builds giant casinos with giant pictures of him everywhere he looks. We are looking, potentially, at the Biff Tannen presidency. I don’t think the people of America want that. I don’t think you deserve that.”
At the end of that day eight years ago, Cruz received 36.6 percent of the vote in Indiana to Trump’s 53.3, and he suspended his campaign.
The French parliament on Thursday agreed to create a commission of inquiry to investigate sexual and gender-based violence in cinema and other cultural sectors after several recent allegations.
The National Assembly, or lower house, unanimously agreed to set up the commission demanded by actor Judith Godreche in a speech to the upper house, the Senate, in February.
The 52-year-old actor and director has become a key figure in France's MeToo movement since accusing directors Benoit Jacquot and Jacques Doillon of sexually assaulting her when she was a teenager. Both have denied the allegations.
All 52 lawmakers present for the vote approved the creation of the commission, watched by Godreche, who was present in the public gallery in the chamber.
"It's time to stop laying out the red carpet for abusers," said Greens lawmaker Francesca Pasquini.
The new commission is to look into "the condition of minors in the various sectors of cinema, television, theatre, fashion and advertising", as well as that of adults working in them, it said.
On the basis of Godreche's proposal, a parliamentary commission on culture decided to extend the scope of the inquiry to also include other cultural sectors.
It is to "identify the mechanisms and failings that allow these potential abuses and violences", "establish responsibilities" and make recommendations.
The parliament vote comes a day after actor Isild Le Besco, 41, said in an autobiography she was also "raped" by Jacquot during a relationship that started when she was 16 but was not ready to press charges.
Godreche, by contrast, has filed a legal complaint against the prominent arthouse director, over alleged abuse that occurred during a relationship that began when she was 14 and he was 25 years her senior.
She has also formally accused Doillon of abusing her as a 15-year-old actress in a film he directed.