Mahmoud's Bad Day

The Iranian nutjob president has opened his Holocaust Denial Convention at Tehran University, but got a little taste of free speech from some of the students:

Iranian students have disrupted a speech by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at a prestigious Tehran university, setting fire to his picture and heckling him.

"Some students chanted radical slogans and inflamed the atmosphere of the meeting" at the Amir Kabir University, said the semi-official Fars news agency on Monday, which is close to Ahmadinejad.

"A small number of students shouted 'death to the dictator' and smashed cameras of state television but they were confronted by a bigger group of students in the hall chanting: 'We support Ahmadinejad'," it said.

It was the latest in a series of student demonstrations in recent days, the first time in least two years that such protests have taken place on this scale at Iranian universities.

Ahmadinejad responded by describing those students chanting the slogans as an "oppressive" minority.

"A small number of people who claim there is oppression are creating oppression and do not let the majority hear (my) words," he said.

There was an American presence at the HDC - none other than former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke:

Among the participants was U.S. academic David Duke, a former Louisiana Republican Representative. He praised Iran for hosting the event.

"There must be freedom of speech, it is scandalous that the Holocaust cannot be discussed freely," Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader told Reuters. "It makes people turn a blind eye to Israel's crimes against the Palestinian people."

"U.S. academic"? Boy, that's being generous. There's also a collection of nutcases from other parts of the world, including one sect of anti-Zionist Jews, though no Jews were allowed to attend and defend the Holocaust as historical fact.

Things are heating up in Iran, and not just in their relations to the rest of the world. There have been some significant student protests from kids who don't want to live their lives in a fundamentalist Islamic state. Keep it up, kids.

UPDATE: LGF tells us a little bit about the "Jewish rabbis" that participated in the event:

These so-called “Jewish rabbis” that Reuters casually drops into the article are in actuality members of Neturei Karta—an insane sect with a tiny membership that makes a practice of supporting evil around the world. Sort of the Jewish equivalent of Fred Phelps and his sick bunch. But to Reuters they’re just like any other “Jewish rabbis.”