Current events rant, skip over if you like.

Okay, so it's never a good time when I go off into a rant. I try to avoid doing so at all costs. But really, here it is unavoidable. Read the following article before proceeding so that you know why I am so incensed. (Copied from My Yahoo!, all credit given where due)

Outrage turns to laughter at Ahmadinejad NY speech
By Mark Egan Tue Sep 25, 9:38 AM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Vilified as a Holocaust denier, a supporter of terrorism and a backer of Iraqi insurgents, the president of Iran was actually able to make New Yorkers burst into laughter -- but not at a joke.

"In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said at Columbia University on Monday in response to a question about the recent execution of two gay men there.
"In Iran we do not have this phenomenon," he continued. "I do not know who has told you we have it."
Loud laughs and boos broke from the audience of about 700 people, mostly students at the Ivy League school whose garb included "Stop Ahmadinejad's Evil" T-shirts.
Everyone from presidential candidates to September 11 families had expressed outrage that Ahmadinejad would speak there.
After his assertions that Israel persecutes Palestinians and that Iran's nuclear program is for energy not weapons, the Iranian leader's comment on gays broke the tension.
But it spurred strong reaction too.
"This is a sick joke," said Scott Long of Human Rights Watch, saying Iran tortures gays under a penal code that punishes homosexuality between men with the death penalty.
When Ahmadinejad, speaking in Farsi, actually tried to crack a joke, it drew no laughter, although maybe the nuance was lost in translation.
"Let me tell a joke here," Ahmadinejad said. "I think the politicians who are after atomic bombs, or testing them, making them, politically they are backward, retarded."
The crowd seemed uncertain how to react. Some applauded that pacifist sentiment, others seemed befuddled by the insensitive use of the word retarded.
DELUGE OF OBJECTIONS
Ahmadinejad's visit here was preceded by a deluge of objections when it became apparent he wanted to lay a wreath at Ground Zero and that he would speak at Columbia.
Presidential candidates from both major U.S political parties took swipes at the president of a country President George W. Bush calls part of "the axis of evil." They said he denied the Holocaust, supported terrorism and armed Iraqi insurgents.
U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York had a different way of capturing all that.
"Sometimes we have snakes slithering through the streets of New York," Weiner told protesters outside the United Nations, where Ahmadinejad will speak on Tuesday.
And in a city known for its blunt manners, the Iranian president's reception was bound to be frosty. The New York Daily News had the front page headline, "The Evil Has Landed."
At Columbia, university President Lee Bollinger pulled no punches. He called him a "petty and cruel dictator" and said his Holocaust denials suggested he was either "brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated."
"I feel the weight of the modern civilized world yearning to express the revulsion at what you stand for," Bollinger said to loud applause.
In retort, Ahmadinejad berated Bollinger as a rude host.
"Many parts of his speech were insults," he said. "We actually respect our students and the professors by allowing them to make their own judgments."
Not everybody objected to his speaking appearance.
"If the (Columbia) president thinks it's a good idea to have the leader from Iran come and talk to the students as an educational experience, I guess it's OK with me," Bush told Fox News.
(Additional reporting by Claudia Parsons, Michael Erman, Michelle Nichols and Megan Davies)

This is ridiculous. Anyone who has not been living under a rock understands that the relationship between the US and Iran is delicate at best. (As a side note, anyone who threatens to invade Iran is not to be trusted. Same with Pakistan--ahem, Barack Obama.) Therefore, anyone with half a brain would be mindful of preserving this delicate relationship and take utmost care to avoid turning things sour. Does anyone now see the stupidity of the American public in general, and Columbia president Lee Bollinger in particular, in so thoroughly disrespecting Mr. Ahmadinejad? Okay, I understand if you disagree with his viewpoint. But come on, people, he's a world leader. He's developing nuclear technology. And he already has an unfavorable view of America and Americans. You treat him with respect. Come to think of it, treat everyone with respect. Whether it's a suspected TARE'ist at Guantanamo Bay (or Abu Ghraib, shudder shudder) or the most esteemed Nobel Peace Prize winner you're dealing with, human decency always applies. I'm not even going to go into the maltreatment of prisoners right now, because currently I have something to be more pissed off about. (Usually I don't, heh, but one day I will vent about that whole bit too.) How does introducing an INVITED--emphasis on INVITED--speaker as a "petty and cruel dictator" help anyone? Think about it. Now Mr. Ahmadinejad has complete support for any argument against America he may make back in Iran. He says Hey guys, the west doesn't understand us, we can bomb them at will, and who will there be to disagree? The world saw how he was treated in New York. This does not bode well for the US's ever improving its world image. Seriously guys, get some manners and maybe people wouldn't hate us so much.

Also, start trying to understand people who are different from you instead of just blindly attacking them. Peace will never be achieved if no one wants to understand and accept anyone else.