Christian Persecution

Iranian Pastor Faces Execution for Refusing to Recant Christian Faith

By Joshua Rhett Miller

Published September 28, 2011 | FoxNews.com

An Iranian pastor who has refused to recant his Christian faith faces execution as early as Wednesday after his sentence was upheld by an Iranian court.

Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, who maintains he has never been a Muslim as an adult, has Islamic ancestry and therefore must recant his faith in Jesus Christ, the 11th branch of Iran's Gilan Provincial Court ruled. Iran's Supreme Court had ordered the trial court to determine whether Nadarkhani had been a Muslim prior to converting to Christianity.

The judges, according to the American Center for Law & Justice, demanded that Nadarkhani, 34, recant his Christian faith before submission of evidence. Though the judgment runs against current Iranian and international laws and is not codified in Iranian penal code, the judge stated that the court must uphold the decision of the 27th Branch of the Supreme Court in Qom.

When asked to repent, Nadarkhani stated: "Repent means to return. What should I return to? To the blasphemy that I had before my faith in Christ?"

"To the religion of your ancestors, Islam," the judge replied, according to the American Center for Law & Justice.

"I cannot," Nadarkhani said.

Nadarkhani is the latest Christian cleric to be imprisoned in Iran for his religious beliefs. According to Elam Ministries, a United Kingdom-based organization that serves Christian churches in Iran, there was a significant increase in the number of Christians arrested solely for practicing their faith between June 2010 and January. A total of 202 arrests occurred during that six-month period, including 33 people who remained in prison as of January, Elam reported.

An Assyrian evangelical pastor, Rev. Wilson Issavi, was imprisoned for 54 days for allegedly converting Muslims prior to his release in March 2010, Elam officials told FoxNews.com.

Nadarkhani, a pastor in the 400-member Church of Iran, has been held in that country's Gilan Province since October 2009, after he protested to local education authorities that his child was forced to read from the Koran at school. His wife, Fatemeh Pasandideh, was also arrested in June 2010 in an apparent attempt to pressure him to renounce his faith. She was released in October 2010, according to Amnesty International.

Nadarkhani was sentenced to death for apostasy last September based on religious writings by Iranian clerics, including Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, despite the fact that there is no offense of "apostasy" in the nation's penal code, Amnesty International reports.

In June, the Supreme Court of Iran ruled that a lower court should re-examine procedural flaws in the case, giving local judges the power to decide whether to release, execute or retry Nadarkhani. The verdict, according to Amnesty International, includes a provision for the sentence to be overturned should Nadarkhani renounce his faith.

Elise Auerbach, an Iranian analyst for Amnesty International USA, told FoxNews.com that an execution for apostasy has not been carried out in Iran since 1990. Nadarkhani's sentence is a "clear violation of international law," she said.

"The key is to keep up the pressure and to publicize the story because it obviously outrages most people," Auerbach said. "It's part of the pattern of persecution based on religion in Iran."

Kiri Kankhwende, a spokeswoman for Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a human rights organization that specializes in religious freedom, told FoxNews.com that Nadarkhani was asked for the fourth time to renounce his faith during a hearing early Wednesday and he denied that request.

"We're waiting to hear the final outcome," she told FoxNews.com. We're still waiting to hear what they've decided."

Kankhwende said Nadarkhani could be executed Wednesday or Thursday.

"Iran is unpredictable," she said. "We can't say when it might happen. It's a very real threat, but we can't say when exactly."

Officials at the U.S. State Department declined to comment when reached on Wednesday.Attempts to reach attorney, Mohammed Ali Dadkhah, were not successful.

House Speaker John Boehner said Nadarkhani's case is "distressing for people of every country and creed," according to a statement released on Wednesday.

"While Iran's government claims to promote tolerance, it continues to imprison many of its people because of their faith," the statement read. "This goes beyond the law to an issue of fundamental respect for human dignity. I urge Iran's leaders to abandon this dark path, spare [Nadarkhani's] life, and grant him a full and unconditional release."

Father Jonathan Morris, a Roman Catholic priest in the Archdiocese of New York and an analyst for Fox News Channel, said Nadarkhani's case is "unmistakable evidence" that Iran is executing Christians simply because they refuse to become Muslims.

Morris continued: "Will President Obama, and the free world, allow the United Nations to continue in its cowardly silence on this matter?"

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/09/28/iranian-pastor-faces-execution-for-refusing-to-recant-christian-faith/#ixzz1ZGonAF83

Rick Perry

Comrade Elizabeth Warren

Comrade Elizabeth Warren will be running as the Democrat Party's choice to take back the seat that Sen. Scott Brown (RINO) won with extensive help from the Tea Party. This was one of the initial wins that the Tea Party was able to achieve, in taking what used to be the life-long office of Ted Kennedy. She wants to return the seat back to the Democrat Party rule.

Comrade Elizabeth Warren is the embodiment of what the members of the Democrat Party are. She is a Progressive and toes their mantra of left-wing politics. The Progressives use the Constitution's freedoms to push their corrupt socialist agenda.

In the following video she goes on to explain the Marxist world view that anything that people who own a business do are the result of a central all powerful Government. She is trying to tell a crowd that the reason that a business owner was able to make a successful company was because of what the government did for them. The workers were trained and educated by the Government. The roads were made by the Government. The business owners are therefore beholden to the Government.

Comrade Elizabeth Warren fails to mention that her world view is a bit skewed to the Left. She doesn't seem to take into account that the business owner working with the Freedoms of the Constitution of the United States of America, has gone on to begin a business in the private sector. That business owner will then go and take his or her idea and begin to formulate a business plan. They will then try to get the capital to start the business. They will put in money that they saved and get loans. They will pay taxes. If their plans succeed so will their business and they will pay more taxes. If the business continues to grow they will hire people to work for them and they in turn will pay taxes.

The business owner has a continued chance to succeed or fail according to their business plan. They have paid taxes the entire time and are therefore given the same protection and benefits of our society as any other citizen. The Government should never held responsible if a business owner succeeds or fails and loses his fortune nor should it, that's Socialism. In the American society one is free to succeed or fail. Socialism is anti-American and has been a cancer to all free people around the world.

Are the people of Massachusetts going to vote for the Democrat Socialist hack? I don't know, I hope not. I hope that people begin to realize how far leftist Progressive the Democrat Party has become. Live Free or Die.

Cherry Jump

Iraqi Prop Blast

This is a very good quality video.

All American Paratrooper

US Army Airborne = Epic Win

Egyptian Paratroopers - LOL

This is one of the funniest videos that I've ever seen about paratroopers anywhere. What can I say? Egyptian Paratroopers = FAIL

Online gamers help in illness cures

U.S. Gamers Crack Puzzle in AIDS Research that Stumped Scientists for Years

Published September 19, 2011

| NewsCore

In just three weeks, online gamers deciphered the structure of a retrovirus protein that has stumped scientists for over a decade, and a study out Sunday says their breakthrough opens doors for a new AIDS drug design.

The protein, called a protease, plays a critical role in how some viruses, including HIV, multiply. Intensive research has been underway to find AIDS drugs that can deactivate proteases, but scientists were hampered by their inability to crack the enzyme's structure.

Looking for a solution, researchers at the University of Washington turned to Foldit, a program created by the university a few years ago that transforms problems of science into competitive computer games, and challenged players to use their three-dimensional problem-solving skills to build accurate models of the protein.

With days, the gamers generated models good enough for the researchers to refine into an accurate portrayal of the enzyme's structure. What's more, the scientists identified parts of the molecule that are likely targets for drugs to block the enzyme.

"These features provide opportunities for the design of antiretroviral drugs, including anti-HIV drugs," the authors wrote.

Proteins are made up of long chains of amino acids that fold into complex shapes, but their structures are difficult even for computers to predict.

"We wanted to see if human intuition could succeed where automated methods had failed," said Firas Khatib, a lead author of the study, published in the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology.

The researchers were hopeful that their finding would open further possibilities of crowd-sourcing and online game-playing in scientific discovery.

"The ingenuity of game players is a formidable force that, if properly directed, can be used to solve a wide range of scientific problems," Khatib said.

Seth Cooper, a co-creator of Foldit, added, "People have spatial reasoning skills, something computers are not yet good at. Games provide a framework for bringing together the strengths of computers and humans. The results in this week's paper show that gaming, science and computation can be combined to make advances that were not possible before."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/09/19/us-gamers-crack-puzzle-in-aids-research-that-stumped-scientists-for-years/#ixzz1YQT2g0u1

Socialism sucks!

Simply put, Socialism sucks! Successful wins in two special elections. The victories in Wisconsin. The November 2010 elections success for the Republicans. There is a Conservative Ascendancy going on in this country right now. The People have walked to the edge of the Progressive's precipice and do not like what they see. This country is built on the freedoms that the Constitution has shown us. We do not want to throw away this successful system for the failed policies of the Left. You haven't seen anything yet, wait till November 2012. We will shed the oppressive shackles that have hindered our prosperity. We will once again be the 'Shining City on the Hill'....

Republicans seize on waning campus Obamamania

By MARTHA IRVINE - AP National Writer | AP – 12 hrs ago

CHICAGO (AP) — The young people in the ad look dissatisfied and pouty. Barack Obama's voice and the words "winning the future," from one of his old campaign speeches, echo in the background.

"You're LOSING my future," says one young man.

The ad, which has aired during sportscasts, reality TV shows and late-night comedy programs popular with younger people, was produced for the College Republican National Committee. It is an attempt to play on the fears that haunt college students, that they won't find jobs and will be living with less than their parents did.

Their fears aren't exclusive to their generation. But given that it seems to taken hold in a voting bloc that helped elect Obama with a wave of hope and change, there could be an opening for Republicans, unless the president can find a way to get young people fired up again.

"People are taking out $100,000 in debt and they're graduating next year," says Nick Haschka, a 25-year-old MBA student at Northwestern University.

Haschka voted for Obama in 2008 and remains a strong supporter. "I think he's doing the best he can in these circumstances," he says.

He knows others have been less patient.

That's been confirmed by recent polls, which show that young voters' support for the president is waning. It's true even on campuses like Northwestern, one of many where Obamamania began to take hold four years ago, when young voters supported the president by a 2-1 margin.

"I don't really think he can make a difference now," says Charlotte Frei, a 24-year-old doctoral student at Northwestern who's studying transportation engineering. She voted for the president in 2008 and will probably do so again, though she's not very enthusiastic about it.

Others worry that apathy could cause a lot of young voters to sit this one out.

"It's unfortunate — but I think the last election was an exception," says Aubrey Blanche, a senior at Northwestern. She soon will graduate with a degree in journalism and political science. Like many others, she has "no idea" where she'll get a job.

Young Republicans see an opportunity.

Even at the University of Chicago, a short walk from the Obamas' home in Hyde Park, members of the small local chapter of College Republicans are feeling empowered to engage students in conversation as the fall term begins.

"The jobs issue is a major accelerant," says Jacob Rabinowitz, a sophomore who is the group's vice president.

In a recruiting video, Zach Howell, the outgoing chairman of the national College Republican group, says his party offers "real change" and "hope," playing off the themes of Obama's last campaign.

The group's ads are edgy and catchy — and a good start, says political scientist Richard Niemi.

"Throwing back a candidate's words at him or her is a tried-and-true method," says Niemi, a professor at the University of Rochester in New York. "But you've got to have the candidate to go with it."

That's where it gets tricky for Republicans because young voters traditionally have leaned heavily Democratic.

In the 2012 race so far, Texas Rep. Ron Paul, with his libertarian leanings, is among those with a small but loyal legion of young followers. Jon Huntsman, the former Utah governor, has attempted to make a play for young supporters, calling them "Generation H."

Jacob Engels, a 19-year-old business student at Valencia College in Florida who is a delegate in the Republican straw poll later this month, is a Huntsman supporter. Though Huntsman hasn't made a strong showing in early polls, Engels calls him the "pragmatic choice" because he's less conservative on issues such as the environment and gay marriage.

That would make Huntsman more palatable to his college peers, he says.

Larry Berman, a political science professor at Georgia State University, says the president needs to find ways to inspire young people to vote for him, not just against his opponent.

He says the president might, for instance, find a different job for Vice President Joe Biden and choose a new running mate that would appeal more to the younger crowd.

The president also is likely to make more appearances on college campuses, as he did when he recently took his jobs plan to the campus of Ohio State University.

"He can't win Ohio and other key swing states without a dramatic turnout of young voters," Berman says.

Perhaps most important, "I think he's got to fight," Berman says. He suggests a re-election campaign speech like the one President Franklin D. Roosevelt made in 1936 in which he said of his detractors, "I welcome their hatred."

Meredith Segal, who helped found and run Students for Obama during the last presidential election, says it's far too early to discount young voters.

No, their response to Obama won't be the same as it was in the 2008 campaign, she says.

"Inevitably there is a difference between something that is brand new vs. a known quantity," says Segal, who's 25 and now director of student and family services at a new urban charter school outside Boston. "It's always virtually impossible to recapture the newness and energy of a candidate who is being discovered for the first time."

But she adds: "This generation still has the potential to have a huge impact — not just in the election but on their campuses, in their towns, their cities and their country."

http://news.yahoo.com/republicans-seize-waning-campus-obamamania-075604223.html

Chicago, the city of the Nanny State

Chicago, under the leadership of Comrade-Mayor Emmanuel, is mandating that it's public sector workers participate in a health program. They have been given three choices: comply, pay $50 to not participate or quit.

Shape Up or Pay Up: Emanuel

Mayor Rahm Emanuel is giving city workers an important health choice: enroll in a new wellness plan, expected to be unveiled Friday, or pay a higher premium.

The price if they don't enroll: $50 a month.

The program includes an initial screening that focuses on preventative care for asthma, heart disease and diabetes. City employees would then receive wellness training to achieve long-term health goals, including weight loss.

Smokers wouldn't be penalized, but they would be encouraged to quit. Advisers overseeing the program will monitor progress on a bimonthly basis, and those who reach their goals could see their health care premiums reduced.

"We will help you be a good steward for your health," Emanuel said Friday, "but if you choose not to, you'll pay that price and that is the price you'll have to pay."

The mayor believes the program will help cut the annual $500 million bill for health care for city employees.

"We are going to implement a citywide wellness plan for city employees," Emanuel confirmed at a recent press conference, "because health care costs for the city are being driven by 10 percent a year, and we're not seeing revenue grow that way."

Most city unions have signed on to the agreement, according to theChicago Sun-Times, except the Fraternal Order of Police, which represents more than 10,000 city employees.

The FOP says its members have different health concerns and it doesn't want members to pay higher premiums if they decide not to enroll in the program.

But Emanuel says the program is a necessary step to getting healthcare costs under control.

"You can't ask the taxpayers to pay for a healthcare problem that you can manage and do a good job," Emanuel said. "You can do that with cholesterol, you can do that through diabetes, you can do that through smoking, through heart, blood pressure. Every one of those is manageable."

BY LAUREN JIGGETTS

http://www.nbcchicago.com/blogs/ward-room/Shape-Up-or-Pay-Up-Emanuel-129945248.html#ixzz1Y9MhfLqJ

Kabul Two Way Live Fire Range

Panic time!

Dim Bulb - Jan Schakowsky

We Remember 9-11

The Human IQ Rises

Woman dies after injecting hot beef fat into face

September 9, 2011 11:31AM

A Homewood woman died Thursday after apparently injecting heated beef fat into her face at her south suburban home.

Janet Hardt, 63, was pronounced dead at 6:25 p.m. at Advocate South Suburban Hospital in Hazel Crest, according to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office.

A source said shortly before Hardt died she injected heated beef fat into her face around her mouth and chin, which she had done before on several occasions.

An autopsy Friday determined Hardt died of peritonitis, a severe abdominal inflammation caused by a bacterial infection suffered because of weakened walls in her colon, according to the medical examiner’s office. Infections she suffered in her face from the injections did not lead to her death, which was ruled natural, according to the medical examiner’s office.

Hardt went to the hospital after complaining that her face became singed and felt like it was burning, according to the source.

She has previously undergone multiple facial surgeries, the source said.

An autopsy to determine the cause and manner of her death is scheduled for later Friday, according to the medical examiner’s office.

Homewood spokeswoman Rachael Jones would not confirm or deny the medial examiner’s office reports and said police were waiting for the results of the autopsy before releasing any information.

MSM favor Sarah Palin

I almost fell out of my chair when I read this article. I was expecting the typical Progressive hatchet job from another drone of the Democrat Propaganda Department of the Mainstream Media(MSM), about Governor Sarah Palin (R). It wasn't, the author actually becomes enlightened and is in agreement with what she states in her speech. He believes that this is some new political system that she is espousing and doesn't realize that what it is simply what our 'founding fathers' originally established for our Nation, The Constitution.

The Progressives have been hard at work for over a century making changes to our way of life. They have infiltrated both political parties in this country and have taken this country in a direction that it was never intended to go. They continue to try to 'nudge' us to a new global world order but it will never happen as long as there are people who believe in the Constitution. We will not travel the road to enslavement willingly. We will not become cogs in a machine which is controlled by a self-serving liberal elite.

The advent of the Tea Party is a reaction from the American People that the Progressives never counted on. They have always had control of groups such as unions and political action groups which did their bidding. They do not understand the individual American who is armed with the knowledge of the Constitution. They do not understand that the Constitution explains the freedoms that an individual has and that they come from God. Sarah Palin has embraced these principles and for that she has been vilified by both parties. We are all free and equal and what we do with it is our choice.

Governor Sarah Palin is the Tea Party and I am the Tea Party. There will always be a Tea Party as long as our Constitution is threatened.

NYT Fishwrap

September 9, 2011

Some of Sarah Palin's Ideas Cross the Political Divide

By ANAND GIRIDHARADAS

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS — Let us begin by confessing that, if Sarah Palin surfaced to say something intelligent and wise and fresh about the present American condition, many of us would fail to hear it.

That is not how we’re primed to see Ms. Palin. A pugnacious Tea Partyer? Sure. A woman of the people? Yup. A Mama Grizzly? You betcha.

But something curious happened when Ms. Palin strode onto the stage last weekend at a Tea Party event in Indianola, Iowa. Along with her familiar and predictable swipes at President Barack Obama and the “far left,” she delivered a devastating indictment of the entire U.S. political establishment — left, right and center — and pointed toward a way of transcending the presently unbridgeable political divide.

The next day, the “lamestream” media, as she calls it, played into her fantasy of it by ignoring the ideas she unfurled and dwelling almost entirely on the will-she-won’t-she question of her presidential ambitions.

So here is something I never thought I would write: a column about Sarah Palin’s ideas.

There was plenty of the usual Palin schtick — words that make clear that she is not speaking to everyone but to a particular strain of American: “The working men and women of this country, you got up off your couch, you came down from the deer stand, you came out of the duck blind, you got off the John Deere, and we took to the streets, and we took to the town halls, and we ended up at the ballot box.”

But when her throat was cleared at last, Ms. Palin had something considerably more substantive to say.

She made three interlocking points. First, that the United States is now governed by a “permanent political class,” drawn from both parties, that is increasingly cut off from the concerns of regular people. Second, that these Republicans and Democrats have allied with big business to mutual advantage to create what she called “corporate crony capitalism.” Third, that the real political divide in the United States may no longer be between friends and foes of Big Government, but between friends and foes of vast, remote, unaccountable institutions (both public and private).

In supporting her first point, about the permanent political class, she attacked both parties’ tendency to talk of spending cuts while spending more and more; to stoke public anxiety about a credit downgrade, but take a vacation anyway; to arrive in Washington of modest means and then somehow ride the gravy train to fabulous wealth. She observed that 7 of the 10 wealthiest counties in the United States happen to be suburbs of the nation’s capital.

Her second point, about money in politics, helped to explain the first. The permanent class stays in power because it positions itself between two deep troughs: the money spent by the government and the money spent by big companies to secure decisions from government that help them make more money.

“Do you want to know why nothing ever really gets done?” she said, referring to politicians. “It’s because there’s nothing in it for them. They’ve got a lot of mouths to feed — a lot of corporate lobbyists and a lot of special interests that are counting on them to keep the good times and the money rolling along.”

Because her party has agitated for the wholesale deregulation of money in politics and the unshackling of lobbyists, these will be heard in some quarters as sacrilegious words.

Ms. Palin’s third point was more striking still: in contrast to the sweeping paeans to capitalism and the free market delivered by the Republican presidential candidates whose ranks she has yet to join, she sought to make a distinction between good capitalists and bad ones. The good ones, in her telling, are those small businesses that take risks and sink and swim in the churning market; the bad ones are well-connected megacorporations that live off bailouts, dodge taxes and profit terrifically while creating no jobs.

Strangely, she was saying things that liberals might like, if not for Ms. Palin’s having said them.

“This is not the capitalism of free men and free markets, of innovation and hard work and ethics, of sacrifice and of risk,” she said of the crony variety. She added: “It’s the collusion of big government and big business and big finance to the detriment of all the rest — to the little guys. It’s a slap in the face to our small business owners — the true entrepreneurs, the job creators accounting for 70 percent of the jobs in America.”

Is there a hint of a political breakthrough hiding in there?

The political conversation in the United States is paralyzed by a simplistic division of labor. Democrats protect that portion of human flourishing that is threatened by big money and enhanced by government action. Republicans protect that portion of human flourishing that is threatened by big government and enhanced by the free market.

What is seldom said is that human flourishing is a complex and delicate thing, and that we needn’t choose whether government or the market jeopardizes it more, because both can threaten it at the same time.

Ms. Palin may be hinting at a new political alignment that would pit a vigorous localism against a kind of national-global institutionalism.

On one side would be those Americans who believe in the power of vast, well-developed institutions like Goldman Sachs, the Teamsters Union, General Electric, Google and the U.S. Department of Education to make the world better. On the other side would be people who believe that power, whether public or private, becomes corrupt and unresponsive the more remote and more anonymous it becomes; they would press to live in self-contained, self-governing enclaves that bear the burden of their own prosperity.

No one knows yet whether Ms. Palin will actually run for president. But she did just get more interesting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/10/us/10iht-currents10.html?_r=4&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1315569719-RpR5AuX40tZqZl8xOiUg7g