Playing the blame game like a pro. “Ahmadinejad blames West for AIDS,” from the Associated Press, July 29:
Iran’s president on Tuesday blamed the US and other “big powers” for nuclear proliferation, AIDS and other global ills and accused them of exploiting the UN and other organizations for their own gain – and the developing world’s loss.
Projection Alert — more about the Non-Aligned Movement below.
But, he said, time was on the poor countries’ side.
“The big powers are going down,” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told foreign ministers of the Nonaligned Movement meeting in Teheran. “They have come to the end of their power, and the world is on the verge of entering a new, promising era.”
Specifically, he criticized the indictment of Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir by an international prosecutor on charges of genocide in Darfur.
Instead, he said the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor, who indicted Bashir on July 14, should instead press charges against Israeli leaders for assassinating opponents and imposing a food and medicine blockade against Palestinians.
He also warned that US attempts to reach an agreement with the Iraqi government over the future presence of American troops in the country, “will undermine the independence and rights of the people of Iraq.”
Ahmadinejad’s comments fit both the venue and occasion of the meeting.
The more than 100-member NAM is made up of such diverse members as communist Cuba, Jamaica and India and depicts itself as bloc-free. But most members share a critical view of the US and the developed world in general. And with Iran assuming the chairmanship of the conference Tuesday, Ahmadinejad’s keynote speech was tailored to reflect the struggle that some NAM members see themselves in against the world’s rich and powerful countries. […]
The Non-Aligned Movement is left over from the Cold War and refers to non-alignment (often in name only) with United States’ and Soviet Union’s respective spheres of influence. It is worth noting that among the NAM’s current 118 members are nearly all of the 57 member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. That amount of, well, alignment, cannot be discounted.
While only infrequently mentioning the US by name Tuesday, Ahmadinejad made clear that he blamed Washington and its allies for trying to “impose their political will on nations and governments.”
He accused the great powers of “fomenting discord …. to intensify the military and arms race” so they can feed their arms industries. AIDS, he said, also was the result of world conditions “imposed by big powers.” […]
“If the United Nations and the Security Council … were supposed to deal with the problems of the world … we would not have a problem called Palestine,” he declared, in indirect criticism of the creation of Israel 60 years ago.