Pastor Asks God to Smite President Obama

As if President Obama doesn’t have enough to deal with - what with civil unrest in Iran, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and economic malaise at home - now he’s also got a Southern Baptist minister praying for his death.

The Rev. Wiley Drake, pastor of the First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, Calif., told Fox News Radio earlier this month that he was practicing “imprecatory prayer” – a divine curse – that would bring about Obama’s death.

“So you’re praying for his death?” asked the show’s host, Alan Colmes.

“Yes.”

“So you’re praying for the death of the president of the United States?”

“Yes.”

The pugnacious pastor later elaborated: “If he does not turn to God and does not turn his life around, I am asking God to enforce imprecatory prayers that are throughout the Scripture that would cause him death, that’s correct.”

A spokesman for the Southern Baptist Association, where Drake was second vice president in 2006-2007, responded to Drake’s comments by saying that he believes most Southern Baptists are praying for the president’s well-being.

Obama isn’t the first person for whom Drake has prayed for an untimely demise. In 2007, when Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed a formal complaint with the Internal Revenue Service maintaining that Drake’s endorsement of Mike Huckabee for president violated tax laws, Drake called on his followers to pray for the deaths of the nonprofit’s staff.

And after Kansas physician George Tiller, a prominent provider of abortions, was murdered in church on May 31, Drake said his death was the answer to his imprecatory prayers. He called Tiller “a brutal, murdering monster” on his radio program. “This man, George Tiller, was far greater in his atrocities than Adolf Hitler.”

Drake is none too fond of homosexuals, either. He wrote the resolution at the Southern Baptist Convention in 1996 calling for a boycott of the Walt Disney Corporation after it afforded health benefits to gay and lesbian partners of employees. He urged followers to join him last year in praying for rain to fall on the Democratic National Convention in Denver. “I too am still against killing babies and allowing sodomites to marry,” he explained. [The weather was beautiful when Obama made his acceptance speech before 84,000 people in a football stadium].

Drake also is chaplain to the Minuteman Project, a group that President George W. Bush called “vigilantes.” He was Alan Keyes’ vice-presidential running mate on the America’s Independent Party ticket in 2008. They were plaintiffs in one of several unsuccessful lawsuits filed last year claiming that Obama could not be sworn in as president because he supposedly wasn’t born in the United States.

Neo-Nazi Hal Turner Arrested Again

Hal Turner, a neo-Nazi talk radio host known for his threats against public
figures, was denied bail during an appearance in federal court Thursday
afternoon on charges of threatening to assault and murder three federal
judges. Also at the hearing, FBI officials revealed that they’d found 200
rounds of ammunition and 150 illegal hollow point bullets in Turner’s home during a search on Wednesday, according to the Jersey Journal.

Turner’s arrest comes three weeks after he was taken into custody in New Jersey on charges that he incited violence against two Connecticut legislators. He had been freed on $25,000 bond and wasn’t scheduled to return to court until July.

But the FBI — an agency for which he once may have worked as a paid informant — arrested Turner on Wednesday after going to his home in North Bergen, N.J., to execute a search warrant. The charges stem from Internet postings earlier this month in which he blasted a June 2 decision by the 7^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago that essentially upheld local handgun bans.

The blog posts named Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook, who wrote the unanimous decision, along with Judges Richard Posner and William Bauer. “Let me be the first to say this plainly: These Judges deserve to be killed,” Turner allegedly wrote on June 2. He later posted the photographs, phone numbers, work address and room numbers of the three judges, as well as a modified photo of the Dirksen Federal Courthouse where they work that reveals the locations of “anti-truck bomb barriers.” He also posted a map showing how to get to the building, according to the FBI.

In the June 2 blog post titled in part “OUTRAGE: Chicago Gun Ban UPHELD,” Turner states that the same federal appeals court that made the handgun decision also upheld the 2004 conviction of Matt Hale, a white supremacist now serving a 40-year sentence for soliciting the murder of U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow. Turner also noted that a gunman killed Lefkow’s mother and husband in her home. “Apparently, the 7^th U.S. Circuit Court didn’t get the hint after those killings,” he allegedly wrote. “It appears another lesson is needed.”

Turner, 47, isn’t the only neo-Nazi whose cyberspace comments on the Hale case have helped lead to criminal charges in Chicago. Bill White of Roanoke, Va., the leader of the American National Socialist Workers Party, is scheduled for trial next month in federal court in Chicago on obstructing justice charges related to his alleged encouragement of violence against the foreman of the Chicago jury that convicted Hale. White posted the name, home address, phone numbers and other personal information of the “Gay, Jewish, anti-racist” juror last September. White wrote that the juror “played a key role in convicting Hale.”

If Turner is convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. “We take threats to federal judges very seriously. Period,” said Patrick J. Fitzgerald, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois.

Turner has made numerous racist and violent threats. In 2007, he railed against President George W. Bush, saying that “a well-placed bullet can solve a lot of problems.” He has written that “we need to start SHOOTING AND KILLING Mexicans as they cross the border.” In 2006, he published an attack on New Jersey Supreme Court justices that included several of their home addresses. Just before President Obama’s inauguration, he suggested that the mass murder of those attending the event “would be a public service.” Most recently, he was charged on June 3 with inciting injury to persons or property after he posted a blog entry that encouraged readers to “take up arms” against two Connecticut lawmakers, Sen. Andrew McDonald and Rep. Michael Lawlor. Turner was upset about state legislation that would give more power to the laity in the Roman Catholic Church.

In January 2008, unidentified hackers posted E-mail correspondence between Turner and an FBI agent who appeared to be his handler in the forum of Turner’s website for his radio program, “The Hal Turner Show.” The FBI last year declined to comment about Turner’s relationship with the agency.

Iran arrests 70 professors who met with Mousavi

CNN's Reza Sayah shares his stories about covering the turmoil in Iran after the Iranian government imposed restrictions.

Iran arrested 70 university professors who favor a reform of the country's political system overnight, spreading its crackdown beyond protesters on the streets to members of the country's political and intellectual elite.

The Associated Press – citing a web site close to Mir Hussein Mousavi, the centrist presidential candidate who observers both inside and outside Iran say had the country's June 12 election stolen from him – reported that the professors were arrested shortly after attending a meeting with Mr. Mousavi.

Even as the regime did so, Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, once the hand-picked successor of the father of the Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei, condemned his government's behavior. This came amid signs that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the populist and anti-Western president who claimed victory in the election, was losing some of his old supporters.

There [were] also indications that the disputed election has caused a rift among former Ahmadinejad supporters. Several Tehran newspapers reported Thursday that only 105 out of 290 members of parliament attended a victory celebration held by Ahmadinejad on Tuesday. Among the no-shows was Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani.

Writing in Lebanon's The Daily Star, columnist David Ignatius predicts that in the short term "the thugs who claim to rule in the name of God" will carry the day, but that the brutal opposition crackdown, now symbolized by the murder of young protester Neda Soltan, whose death was caught on video, will ultimately lead to fundamental change.

They have exposed the weakness of the clerical regime in a way that Iran's foreign adversaries – America, Israel, Saudi Arabia – never could. They have opened a fundamental split in the regime. The rulers will try to bind this wound with force, and salve it with concessions, but neither approach will make the wound heal.

Though President Barack Obama has said that he's committed to expanding dialogue with Iran, evidence of how difficult Iran's brutal crackdown will make that goal continued to emerge, with the US announcing its invitation to Iranian diplomats to attend July 4 celebrations at overseas missions has now been withdrawn, no matter that no Iranian diplomat had yet accepted the invitation. "So much for hot dog diplomacy," writes The Washington Post.

"July 4th allows us to celebrate the freedom and the liberty we enjoy," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said. "Freedom of speech. Freedom of religion. Freedom to assemble peacefully. Freedom of the press. So I don't think it's surprising that nobody's signed up to come."

Gibbs added: "Given the events of the past many days, those invitations will no longer be extended."

Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor of Middle Eastern history writes on his blog Informed Comment that the Obama administration has limited scope to support the opposition movement.

Obama will likely be as helpless before a crackdown by the Iranian regime as Eisenhower was re: Hungary in 1956, Johnson was re: Prague in 1968, and Bush senior was re: Tiananmen Square in 1989. George W. Bush, it should be remembered, did nothing about Tehran's crackdown on student protesters in 2003… As an oil state, the Iranian regime does not need the rest of the world and is not easy to pressure. So Obama needs to be careful about raising expectations of any sort of practical intervention by the US, which could not possibly succeed.

Farouk Hosni: "I'd burn Israeli books myself if I found any in libraries in Egypt"

Controversy
Farouk Hosny (or Hosni), (born 1938 in Alexandria) is an Egyptian abstract painter who was appointed in 1987 to the position of Minister of Culture, which he currently still holds.
In an interview published in November 2006, Farouk Hosni sparked controversy among many religious Muslims, particularly the clergy, after stating publicly that the traditional Muslim veil for women, the hijab, "is a step backward for Egyptian women". Hosny said, "women with their beautiful hair are like flowers and should not be covered up" and "religion today is linked only to appearances, while every woman's veil should be inside her, not outside." The dominance of the conservative party in Egypt also leads to a very conservative religious mindset. Farouk Hosni's views that men should be veiled if girls are and that men's hair is no more or less sinful than women's hair were shocking. Also he publicly denounced the "Moufti," people who are specially educated in the Koran and trained to give their views of Islam, and he said that they are worthless and are giving faulty image to the true Islam. His views were controversial, but was shared by a minority of Muslims who believe that hijab/veil is a step backward for Egyptian women and Egyptian culture.
Hosni remains in his job and said that he didn't call for stripping women of their veil, but that the veil style coming from the Arabian Peninsula (the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf) is not appropriate for Egyptian women.

In 2008 Farouk Hosni provoked a further controversy by declaring publicly that he would personally burn all Israeli books in Egyptian libraries if he could, which aroused charges of antisemitism against Hosni, despite his referencing "Israeli," not "Jewish," books. He later backtracked, issuing A Message to the World on his website, indicating that his statement was an exaggeration.

Hosni is a leading candidate to become the Director General of UNESCO at its 2009 elections. However, the backlash regarding the book burning comments may taint his candidacy.


ADL launched a major campaign to oppose the candidacy of Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosni for Director-General of UNESCO, saying that "throughout his tenure, Farouk Hosni has consistently promoted policies that contravene the founding principles of UNESCO through his entrenched opposition to cultural exchanges with Israel and his hostility toward Israeli culture.” ADL sent letters to 27 E.U. foreign ministers detailing Hosni's long history of hostility toward Israeli-Egyptian cultural exchanges.

ADL also took ran an advertisement in major U.S. and European newspapers calling attention to Hosni’s most infamous statement: “I'd burn Israeli books myself if I found any in libraries in Egypt.”

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Abraham H. Foxman oped: The Wrong Choice for UNESCO

Farouk Hosni in his own words

Sign ADL’s letter to UNESCO leadership opposing Hosni

• New Abe Foxman Jerusalem Post blog: In “Standing With Iranians Against Tyranny” he weighs arguments for the American approach to the situation in Iran.
  
  
• Anti-Israel activists are waging a campaign against Trader Joe's, demanding the company remove Israeli products from its store shelves.
  
  
• ADL calls on Attorney General to investigate if U.S. organization is raising funds for Hamas

The Information War About Iran

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Dutch television reported that the government of the Netherlands subsidizes most of the costs of a Radio station for Iran located in Amsterdam. It's about several tens of millions, but the government does not have influence on the content of the station. It's funding freedom of speech, a Universal Human Right. Governments spokesmen have confirmed the report.

Keith Olbermann on Ballots, Bullets and Blood

The Iranian government's report about Neda that travels around:

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Inside Iran: Christiane Amanpour

CNN's Christiane Amanpour discusses her recent time in Iran, the situation there and answers viewer questions.


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