Tanks have been reported according to The Spirit of Man
Saturday, June 20, 2009
-- Creation Wiki --
Cosmic Chronology.
NASA Explanation: The Universe is expanding gradually now. But its initial expansion was almost impossibly rapid as it likely grew from quantum scale fluctuations in a trillionth of a second. In fact, this cosmological scenario, known as Inflation, is now reported to be further quantified by an analysis of three years of data from the WMAP spacecraft. WMAP's instruments detect the cosmic microwave background radiation - the afterglow light from the early Universe. WMAP's amazing success in exploring the first trillionth of a second and favoring specific inflationary scenarios lies in its ability to make unprecedented, precise measurements of the properties of the microwave background. The subtle properties are distilled from conditions in the early Universe and related to its first moments of existence. Schematically, this diagram traces the 13.7 billion year (plus a trillionth of a second ...) history of the Universe from the quantum scale to the formation of stars, galaxies, planets, and WMAP.
People Are Being Shot in Iran
France 24 Reports From Tehran
Young Girl Killed - EXTREMELY GRAPHIC - BEWARE
Young Man Shot - EXTREMELY GRAPHIC
Evangelism Banned (Imported)
by Eric DonderoOn Thursday, a federal judge ruled that the group Arabic Christian Perspective can be prohibited from passing out literature on public sidewalks at an upcomming ethnic festival.
From the Detroit News:
A federal judge sided with the city of Dearborn on Thursday in a dispute with a Christian group over the distribution of religious literature during an upcoming Arab festival.
U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds denied a motion from the California-based ministry, Arabic Christian Perspective, for a temporary restraining order that would have prohibited the city from restricting the group from handing out literature, according to a release from the group's attorneys.
William Becker, a lawyer for ACP said in a memo to Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch:no other citizen is ordered to restrict what he or she can say or hand to another person. This is content-based discrimination against a Christian group, whose mission is to peaceably bring the good news of salvation to people attending the Festival.
ACP will now be treated as second-class citizens, forced to pass out their DVDs and booklets around the corner from the Festival, while other groups will be able to freely distribute their materials.
ACP is not there to criticize Muslims. They are there to do the good work of evangelizing, which might be perceived as threatening activity in a city boasting the highest per capita population of Muslims in the nation.
Judge Edmunds (photo) is generally regarded as a staunch liberal, who often sides with the ACLU in most cases, and in defense of the rights of criminals over those victimized by crime. She's best known for having ruled in favor of a class action lawsuit brought by a New York-based Foster Care association against alleged abuse in Michigan's system. The group argued against placing foster children with relatives. The suit ended up costing the State millions.Dearborn Mayor Jack O'Reilly (photo), sided with the Festival organizers against the Christian group. O'Reilly is a Democrat who was a close ally of ex-Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. He is also rumored to have close ties to indicted tax evader Talal Khalil Chahine. The owner of a chain of Arabic restaurats called La Shish, Cahine is alleged to have funneled millions from his business enterprises to Hezbollah in the Middle East. (Source: Detroit Free Press)
Attorney Becker vows that the lawsuit will proceed and that he and ACP will "seek an order permanently enjoining the city from violating ACP's First Amendment rights."
I have to mention a comment from LR's site on this post, funny and true: "Huh, perhaps they should pass out copies of the First Amendment instead."
Friday, June 19, 2009
People Are Ready to Die -- Obama Eminates Positivity
I may die...
This is a brief letter written by an Iranian woman who is going to attend the anti-regime rally tomorrow:
I'll participate in the rally tomorrow in Tehran. It might be violent. I may be one of those who will die tomorrow. I want to listen to all beautiful tunes that I have heard in my life, again. I want to listen to some cheap Los Angeles made Iranian music. I always wanted to have much narrower eyebrows too. Yeah, I'll check in with my hair-dresser tomorrow before I go to the rally. Oh, there are some excellent scenes in the famous Iranian movie Hamoon I want to see before I leave. And I gotta re-visit my own bookshelf. Shamloo and Farrokhzad's poems are worth re-reading. I've to see the family photo albums once again.
I'll have to call my friends and say good-bye to them. In this big world, my possession is only two bookshelves. I've already told mom and dad whom to give these books if I never come back. There are only two more courses left for me to get my BA degree but to hell with the degree. I'm anxious and excited. I wrote these scattered words for the future generations so that they know we were not sentimental or uselessly emotional.
I'm writing this so they know we did every thing in our power to make this work for them and so that they realize if our forefathers surrendered to the Arab and Mongolian invaders but they didn't give in to their tyranny. They resisted it. And I wrote this for tomorrow's children...
Updated @ 3am ET: Iranian regime supreme dictator Khamenei will be leading the Tehran's Friday prayer in a few hours. Today is the 'Make or Break' day for the people of Iran and the regime. I can't see Rafsanjani, Khatami and Karoubi among the VIP row.
Updated @ 4:35am ET: Listening to supreme dictator Khamenei's speech on CNN now. So far he is appealing to the nation to calm down. Yet he knows, by examples he gave from Islamic history, that his regime is under pressure. Though I admit he sounds confident. (Maybe he knows Mousavi is not a direct threat to his own existence and he's certain he can find a way to settle this down with him). 4:39 am: He's appealing to the hidden 12th Imam. The first sermon was VERY SHORT. 2nd sermon just began. 4:41 am ET: There he goes. Exaggerating... LoL. He is trying to say every vote people did cast was a vote for the regime (that's why people should not participate in regime's political games). And now he's slamming "Democracies". This man is no democrat. He is an evil murderer.
4:48am ET: He just recognized the riff between the factions (Which is not new. We all knew it). He's now claiming the election as a victory for the regime again. What's a religious democracy?
4:51 am: god bless the enemies of Iran. What would mullahs do without these so-called enemies? LoL - And now he's talking about lack of trust in regime among the people. And he knows people mistrust him and his dictatorship. He acknowledges that people don't trust him and his minions. And now he says a regime that has lost the trust of its people is a goner. 4:55 am: 3rd point of his sermon is about the 'robust debate' among the candidates. 4:56 am: Khamenei just called the media 'dirty Zionists'. And now he's defending Ahmadinejad. He called him 'trusted'. And now he's praising the candidates as part of the Iranian regime's establishment. He says they all belong to the regime. 5:02 am ET: Khamenei is slamming the Zionists, tricky Americans and dirty Brits. He is also openly admitting to the infighting within the regime. Khamenei is not addressing any of the opposition's problems so far. 5:05 am ET: He is now saying indirectly that the "DEBATE" should not last any longer. Khamenei said if it lasts any longer, it will result in 'hatred'. 5:12 am: Khamenei criticized the emotional charge of the TV debates. He's blaming both camps for the ongoing problems. But he's now defending Ahmadinejad openly. He is also defending Rafsanjani but he just left the door to investigate the corruption charges of Rafsanjani's family.
5:16 am: He admits to several differences between himself and Rafsanjani. He just picked the side of Ahmadinejad against Rafsanjani. People shouting : "Death to anti Velayate Faghih people". 5:24 am ET: Khamenei says there was no vote rigging. He says there's no way 11 mln votes were stolen or faked. And now is calling for legal ways. He just said he won't budge to 'illegal pressure'. He announced he won't approve 'illegal challenges' either. This is an ultimatum to the protesters.
5:28 am: Khamenei is now threatening the political figures. Khamenei is now warning the opposition that they'll be responsible for violence and bloodshed if they go farther. 5:34 am ET: Now calling protesters 'terrorists'? Khamenei wants an END TO STREET RALLIES & threatened the protesters with more consequences.
5:37 am: Khamenei said budging under pressure is dictatorship. He is again threatening the heads of the opposition. He says people should try the 'kinder' way and saying if people go another way, then I'll be more blunt. 5:41 am: He's now taking a jab at the US and EU governments. I think he's trying to link the protests to the foreign governments now.
5:50 am et: Khamenei is saying Iran is no Georgia and there'll be no velvet revolution in this country. Now giving food to the stupid leftists in the western world... saying Iraq war is against human rights. Now criticizing Hillary Clinton and her husband for Waco incident. Khamenei says the Iranian govt is the defender of 'human rights' around the world. 5:51 am ET: He is now basically saying that he is willing to give his life to defend the revolution & Islamic state.
-----My gut feelings: I predict Tiananmen Square in Iran
A couple charged with manslaughter claim they were within their constitutional rights when they decided to pray for their 15-month old daughter rather than take her to a doctor to treat her pneumonia.
But legal experts believe that Carl and Raylene Worthington will likely have a difficult time arguing freedom of religion over the state’s duty to protect children from harm.
Ayatollah Refuses Vote Recount and Delivers Ultimatum
The "Supreme Leader" refuses to grant a re-vote or even a recount and threatens a violent bloody crackdown on protesters.....of course the entire time blaming the media, America and the evil joos for the uprising while leading a lovely sing along of "death to America."
Atheistic Government Movements
The below is taken from a larger debate I had with a history teacher whilst sipping on some wine. I posted this for ease of access in posting the info found here elsewhere on the Web.
“If you wanted to control the nation’s manufacturing, commerce, finance, transportation and natural resources, you would need only to control the apex, the power pinnacle, of an all-powerful SOCIALIST government. Then you would have a monopoly and could squeeze out all your competitors…. ‘Communism’ is not a movement of downtrodden masses but is a movement created, manipulated and used by power-seeking billionaires…” (None Dare Call It a Conspiracy, Gary Allen)
“Power kills; absolute power kills absolutely…. The more power a government has, the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite…” (Death by Government, R. J. Rummel)
[Quote from debate]
At this point the usual litany of "straw man" arguments proceeded to spill forth as they normally do when ones precious bumper-sticker beliefs are challenged and shown to be vacuous. The next thing out of Felicia's mouth was that organized religion has killed more people and started more wars than any other reason in history. This is where I cringed -- a teacher that is charged with children who makes such false claims is a red-flag to me. These types of people repeat such lines not because they have studied history or religion in-depth, but because a politically motivated historian like Howard Zinn or Noam Chomskey said such a thing, or they simply picked up the saying from another friend (who themselves had heard it from another) and it fit so well in their theophobia framework to make the rejection of religion an easy thing in their mind's eye. This is more of a commentary on said person's psychosis than making any sort of valid argument. This being said let us deal with this charge:
- e) The Bible does not teach the horrible practices that some have committed in its name. It is true that it's possible that religion can produce evil, and generally when we look closer at the details it produces evil because the individual people [Christians] are actually living in rejection of the tenets of Christianity and a rejection of the God that they are supposed to be following. So it [religion] can produce evil, but the historical fact is that outright rejection of God and institutionalizing of atheism (non-religious practices) actually does produce evil on incredible levels. We're talking about tens of millions of people as a result of the rejection of God. For example: the Inquisitions, Crusades, Salem Witch Trials killed about anywhere from 40,000 to 80,000 persons combined (World Book Encyclopedia and Encyclopedia Americana), and the church is liable for the unjustified murder of about (taking the high number here) 300,000-women over about a 300 year period. A blight on Christianity? Certainty. Something wrong? Dismally wrong. A tragedy? Of course. Millions and millions of people killed? No. The numbers are tragic, but pale in comparison to the statistics of what non-religious criminals have committed); the Chinese regime of Mao Tse Tung, 60 million [+] dead (1945-1965), Stalin and Khrushchev, 66 million dead (USSR 1917-1959), Khmer Rouge (Cambodia 1975-1979) and Pol Pot, one-third of the populations dead, etc, etc. The difference here is that these non-God movements are merely living out their worldview, the struggle for power, survival of the fittest and all that, no evolutionary/naturalistic natural law is being violated in other words (as non-theists reduce everything to natural law -- materialism). However, and this is key, when people have misused the Christian religion for personal gain, they are in direct violation to what Christ taught, as well as Natural Law.
So the historical reality that this teacher of history seemed to ignore is that non-religious movements have killed more people in the Twentieth-Century than religion has in the previous nineteen (or for that matter, all of mankind's history). I also pointed out to Felicia during our conversation that the non-religious view of origins has no moral law to point to any of the above acts as morally wrong or un-ethical. They are merely currently taboo. For someone to say the Nazis were morally wrong they have to borrow from the theistic worldview that posits a universal moral code. If there is no Divine moral law, then as Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s maxim makes the point, "If there is no God, all things are permissible." Without an absolute ethical norm, morality is reduced to mere preference and the world is a jungle where might makes right.
Detroit in the Hiznouse! Monica Conyers Is Ghetto
Monica Conyers is
Detroit: Conyers Offered Plea in Corruption Case
Monica Conyers debates school children
MONICA CONYERs Detroit 2009. Monica Conyers calls in ! WXYT Detroit Radio. Valenti and Foster Show.
Charles Krauthammer -- Some Input On Iran
WASHINGTON -- Millions of Iranians take to the streets to defy a theocratic dictatorship that, among its other finer qualities, is a self-declared enemy of America and the tolerance and liberties it represents. The demonstrators are fighting on their own, but they await just a word that America is on their side.
And what do they hear from the president of the United States? Silence. Then, worse. Three days in, the president makes clear his policy: continued "dialogue" with their clerical masters.
Dialogue with a regime that is breaking heads, shooting demonstrators, expelling journalists, arresting activists. Engagement with -- which inevitably confers legitimacy upon -- leaders elected in a process that begins as a sham (only four handpicked candidates permitted out of 476) and ends in overt rigging.
Then, after treating this popular revolution as an inconvenience to the real business of Obama-Khamanei negotiations, the president speaks favorably of "some initial reaction from the Supreme Leader that indicates he understands the Iranian people have deep concerns about the election."
Where to begin? "Supreme Leader"? Note the abject solicitousness with which the American president confers this honorific on a clerical dictator who, even as his minions attack demonstrators, offers to examine some returns in some electoral districts -- a farcical fix that will do nothing to alter the fraudulence of the election.
Moreover, this incipient revolution is no longer about the election. Obama totally misses the point. The election allowed the political space and provided the spark for the eruption of anti-regime fervor that has been simmering for years and awaiting its moment. But people aren't dying in the street because they want a recount of hanging chads in suburban Isfahan. They want to bring down the tyrannical, misogynist, corrupt theocracy that has imposed itself with the very baton-wielding goons that today attack the demonstrators.
This started out about election fraud. But like all revolutions, it has far outgrown its origins. What's at stake now is the very legitimacy of this regime -- and the future of the entire Middle East.
This revolution will end either as a Tiananmen (a hot Tiananmen with massive and bloody repression or a cold Tiananmen with a finer mix of brutality and co-optation) or as a true revolution that brings down the Islamic Republic.
The latter is improbable but, for the first time in 30 years, not impossible. Imagine the repercussions. It would mark a decisive blow to Islamist radicalism, of which Iran today is not just standard-bearer and model, but financier and arms supplier. It would do to Islamism what the collapse of the Soviet Union did to communism -- leave it forever spent and discredited.
In the region, it would launch a second Arab spring. The first in 2005 -- the expulsion of Syria from Lebanon, first elections in Iraq and early liberalization in the Gulf states and Egypt -- was aborted by a fierce counterattack from the forces of repression and reaction, led and funded by Iran.
Now, with Hezbollah having lost elections in Lebanon and with Iraq establishing the institutions of a young democracy, the fall of the Islamist dictatorship in Iran would have an electric and contagious effect. The exception -- Iraq and Lebanon -- becomes the rule. Democracy becomes the wave. Syria becomes isolated; Hezbollah and Hamas, patronless. The entire trajectory of the region is reversed.
All hangs in the balance. The Khamenei regime is deciding whether to do a Tiananmen. And what side is the Obama administration taking? None. Except for the desire that this "vigorous debate" (press secretary Robert Gibbs' disgraceful euphemism) over election "irregularities" not stand in the way of U.S.-Iranian engagement on nuclear weapons.
Even from the narrow perspective of the nuclear issue, the administration's geopolitical calculus is absurd. There is zero chance that any such talks will denuclearize Iran. On Monday, Ahmadinejad declared yet again that the nuclear "file is shut, forever." The only hope for a resolution of the nuclear question is regime change, which (if the successor regime were as moderate as pre-Khomeini Iran) might either stop the program, or make it manageable and nonthreatening.
That's our fundamental interest. And our fundamental values demand that America stand with demonstrators opposing a regime that is the antithesis of all we believe.
And where is our president? Afraid of "meddling." Afraid to take sides between the head-breaking, women-shackling exporters of terror -- and the people in the street yearning to breathe free. This from a president who fancies himself the restorer of America's moral standing in the world.
(Axis of Evil) Top Obama Aids say, "the two challenges [Iran/N. Korea] are linked"
What did Bush say? The "Axis of Evil?" Well, President George W. Bush, author of the "axis of evil" concept, toppled Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, but got nowhere containing Iran and North Korea, either with policies of rigid isolation or, later, multilateral diplomacy.
Now, with Iran's uranium enrichment centrifuges spinning and North Korea testing both nuclear weapons and missiles, it's Obama's turn - and top aides are fully aware that the two challenges are linked. "Whatever we do with respect to North Korea is going to be closely watched by Iran," a senior White House aide told me.... (Mort Kondracke - Real Clear Politics)
Japan warns that North Korea may fire missile at U.S. on Independence Day
By Mail Foreign Service
19th of June, 2009
North Korea may launch a long-range ballistic missile towards Hawaii on American Independence Day, according to Japanese intelligence officials.
The missile, believed to be a Taepodong-2 with a range of up to 4,000 miles, would be launched in early July from the Dongchang-ni site on the north-western coast of the secretive country.
Intelligence analysts do not believe the device would be capable of hitting Hawaii's main islands, which are 4,500 miles from North Korea.
It was announced today that the U.S. has deployed anti-missile defences around Hawaii in response to the threat.
North Korea test-fired a similar long-range missile on July 4 three years ago, but it failed seconds after liftoff.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the additional defenses around Hawaii consist of a ground-based mobile missile system and a radar system nearby.
Together they could shoot an incoming missile in mid air.
'Without telegraphing what we will do, I would just say... we are in a good position, should it become necessary, to protect Americans and American territory,' Gates said today.
A new missile launch - though not expected to reach U.S. territory - would be a brazen slap in the face of the international community, which punished North Korea with new U.N. sanctions for conducting a second nuclear test on May 25 in defiance of a U.N. ban.
North Korea spurned the U.N. Security Council resolution with threats of war and pledges to expand its nuclear bomb-making program....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)