name="verify-v1" content="APvZhR9Gb/GpLM5o/POeHBJjAaMgIDVIzp+grBn25LM=" /
A bloggers view on a wide range of subjects including but not limited to Christianity and Politics.
Steve Hartnett of Grapevine Texas has started a group to work for change in corporate executive pay structures. Steve is a businessman himself, having been successful in his entrepreneurship for a couple of decades at least.
Just a taste of what you will find at Executive Change:
"Senate Leader Introduces Bill Limiting Deductible Compensation Issue: Executive/Deferred Compensation
Date: May 11, 2009
Action Taken: On May 7, the Senate Democrats’ second-in-command, Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL), introduced S.1007--the Excessive Pay Capped Deduction Act of 2009-- a bill that would impose a limit on the deductibility of compensation paid to any company employee. At the same time, he also introduced S.1006, a bill that would require a supermajority of publicly traded company shareholders to approve compensation payable to any company employees if that compensation package were to be in excess of the limit. The limit is 100 times the company’s average compensation."
This is not a partisan issue. I am a Conservative, but I believe that minority stock holders are getting a raw deal from the companies they hold stock in when these companies throw money hand over fist into executive compensation packages, especially when these companies are losing value and under performing, or the ones who have taken the Porkulus bailout and then paid millions in bonuses to executives who have not earned them.
This in turn is bad for the economy because the executives can ignore what is good for stockholders while making gross amounts of compensation in the form of inflated salaries, stock options, and other compensation such as enough retirement money to fund retirement for hundreds if not thousands of employees.
Click on the title to this post to go to Steve's blog, and if you agree with what is being proposed there, join the effort.
TEHRAN, Iran - In a sign of endurance for Iran's protest movement, demonstrators clashed with police Friday as one of the nation's most powerful clerics challenged the supreme leader during Muslim prayers, saying country was in crisis in the wake of a disputed election.
The turnout of tens of thousands of worshippers for former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's sermon at Tehran University and the battles with police outside represented the biggest opposition show of strength in weeks. Protesters faced fierce government suppression and hundreds were arrested following the disputed June 12 presidential election.
Read the rest by clicking on the tile of this post.
In his speech to the AMA in Chicago June 15, 2009, Obama shared his diagnosis, solutions, and justification for healthcare reform: health costs are spiraling out of control and are a threat to the economy, families, businesses, and the federal government. The current system is unsustainable. Costs are increasing faster than they should because we spend money on things that don't make us healthier. We equate expensive care with better care. We overuse and reimburse for treatments that are not needed and we pay for quantity instead of quality.
Click on the link in the title of this part of my post for the full treatment.
Consider this; Social Security is going to run out in 2023, or so they tell us. The truth is, it has already run out, there is no social security trust fund, the number of people retiring is increasing and our working population is decreasing.
Common sense should tell us that adding more debt to the Federal Budget for healthcare in teh face of a crisis in the whole Social Security Program is just plain insane, for lack of a better definition, at least one I can publish in common decency.
This probably helps explain the eagerness of both parties in DC to grant amnesty, yes, that its what it is, to illegal immigrants who are here in violation of the laws of our nation. They need someone to take the place of our declining work force.
Meanwhile, they are busy destroying our economy, and may not be able to provide jobs for those they grant amnesty in the very near future. Obama contradicts himself on how well the economy is doing; telling us one day it is looking good, and a day or two later that it is going to be a long haul to recovery.
CAIRO — Thousands of Iranians poured into the streets of Tehran on Thursday, clapping, chanting, almost mocking the authorities as they once again turned out in large numbers in defiance of the government’s threat to crush their protests with violence.
In Tehran, police officers fired tear gas, and they and militia members reportedly beat protesters. More Photos »
As tear gas canisters cracked and hissed in the middle of crowds, and baton-wielding police officers chased protesters up and down sidewalks, young people, some bloodied, ran for cover, but there was an almost festive feeling on the streets of Tehran, witnesses reported in e-mail exchanges.
A young woman, her clothing covered in blood, ran up Kargar Street, paused for a moment and said, “I am not scared, because we are in this together.”
The bitterness could represent a deeper, long-term challenge to the rule of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The outright rejection by some clerics of election results that Khamenei ruled valid breaks a basic taboo against criticizing the man who in the philosophy of the Islamic Revolution literally represents God's rule on earth.
The Iranian people are fed up with the repressive regime, not with Islam, but wish to have a secular government. We can hop and pray that a secular Iran will be an Iran that will not execute those of other religions for proselytizing.
We also would like to see an end to the brutality towards women by the religious enforcers of Iran. How about an end to honor killings and hanging women for adultery who were raped, not adulterers. Homosexuals? I believe they have a right to live, work, have a place to live. I don't hate them, thought some will claim I do, because I believe that practicing homosexuality is a sin against God. The homosexuals who know me as a friend or acquaintance know that I love them, and pray for them.
We don't hang homosexuals in the United States. I don't deny that some people show them hate, like the Phelps group, the Ayatollahs of American Christianity. In Iran, they are hung, sometimes after being raped by men as a punishment. How sick is that.
CAIRO — Thousands of Iranians poured into the streets of Tehran on Thursday, clapping, chanting, almost mocking the authorities as they once again turned out in large numbers in defiance of the government’s threat to crush their protests with violence.
In Tehran, police officers fired tear gas, and they and militia members reportedly beat protesters. More Photos »
As tear gas canisters cracked and hissed in the middle of crowds, and baton-wielding police officers chased protesters up and down sidewalks, young people, some bloodied, ran for cover, but there was an almost festive feeling on the streets of Tehran, witnesses reported in e-mail exchanges.
These people are courageously challenging a brutal regime for the right to have a true Deomocracy with real elections and not suppression of protests. A more moderate government, a secular government, is what they desire.
Pray for these brave people. Their victory will be a victory for religious tolerance in a nation that has become a brutal persecutor of any religion but Islam, a nation where the Zoroastrians and Christians and others have token rights in theory, but persecution is what they receive if they make a public display of thier religion, or proselytize.
Proselytizing, and leaving Islam are punishable by death.
This report and video are on facebook, you will need a facebook account to see them. I am looking everywhere on the web for up to date news, or a good source with up to date news. From other sources, the regime now admits 20 deaths of protesters, but the hospitals are reporting over one hundred.
IRAN RISES Current Events in Iran « Ayatollah Musavi-Ardebili on the Elections Special: Report from an Eye Witness of Sunday’s Rally before the Qoba Mosque
Today, June 28, 2009, from six to eight in the evening, on the anniversary of the anniversary of the death of Dr. Mohammad Beheshti,1 hundreds of supporters of Engineer Mir Hosein Musavi rallied on Qoba Street at the Qoba Mosque, located on Martyr Dr. Ali Shariati Street in Tehran.
On 6:10, I entered Qoba Street. Qoba Street was full of a crowd which was heading for the Qoba Mosque. The security forces officers, who had been in the street in the neighborhood, did not did not permit the people to stop and led them towards the Qoba Mosque.
The Qoba Mosque was filled by the crowd and many of them were gathered in front of the mosque. Twenty minutes later, thousands of people could be seen in front of the mosque. They hailed His Holiness Mohammad (ص) and his pure family and raised the slogan, “God is great!”
There were many special officers in a state of alert at the end of Qoba Street, and many security forces officers could be seen in the crowd.
There was also a number of so-called reporters among them seen taking pictures and films of the ralliers. Some of them, faced with the people’s widespread protests, refrained from taking pictures. At 6:50, the slogan “Beheshti! Where are you?! Musavi is left by himself!” went up among from the rally.
Although it had been promised in advance that Engineer Mir Hosein Musavi would be present in this rally, people it was said in the crowd that he was prevented from coming by the security forces. After a while, the slogan, “We’re awaiting Musavi. We’re not going anywhere; we’re staying here,” then went up from the crowd.
About 7:30, Dr. Alireza Beheshti, the martyred Dr. Mohammad Beheshti’s son, spoke from among the people and thanked them for their presence, saying that he considered this broad presence “a sign of the people’s awareness of the issues of the day in our country.” He asked them to leave the rally peacefully, but since Engineer Mir Hosein Musavi was absent, no one spoke.
The crowd then began to to disperse, chanting the slogan, “Hail Beheshti! Hail Musavi!” and “Long live Karroubi! Be firm, Musavi!” At this point, the security forces officers led the people in the direction of Shariati Street.
The crowd peacefully, with their hands in the air, quietly or with prayers for the bliss of the souls of those departed in the fighting of the previous days, and for their families to remain calm, headed for Shariati Street. But before they reached Shariati Street, at 8:05, special forces suddenly attacked the crowd from Shariati Street and savagely set upon the people with blows.
The people were then forced to retreat to escape from the special forces. To calm the special forces, it was decided that the people would silently sit on the ground, and so they did. But the special forces attacked the people, despite the fact that they were sitting on the ground, and brutally beat them.
The people then retreated hastily and began to flee in the direction of Qoba Street and then began to flee in the other direction down that street, when, unfortunately, a number of old women and young girls were trampled. Most regretably, the security forces officers who were standing on the sidewalk, started laughing at the people who were fleeing to save themselves from a viscious beating atht ehands of the special forces.
In the mean time, Dr. Alireza Beheshti emerged into the street from within the mosque and the protesters went towards him and complained about the security forces’ savage attack on the people’s peaceful gathering. Because the security forces were keeping the people from stopping, I went down side streets and saw old women and girls who were crying out of intense fear and anxiety and the press of the crowd.
Emerging from the sidestreats, I entered Shariati Street and saw a great number of special forces who were in a state of alert. The shopkeepers were in the process of closing their shops on orders of the special forces. On Mir Damad Street and Mother’s Field I also saw a very large number of security forces and specisal forces officers who were busy preparing themselves to beat the people.
Footnotes 1 Dr. Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti was the leader of the Islamic Republican Party, founded just after the revolution as the party of the Khomeiniist mainstream. From the revolution until his death in a terrorist bombing in 1981 he was considered called Khomeini’s Rasputin in the West. He was famous for whipping up crowds of religious zealots to attack the secular and religious left and liberals.
For all his railing against Westernized Iranians, he was personally a cultured man with a taste for the West’s contributions to the arts, which he perhaps developed while in Hamburg as the supervisor of the Shiite mosque there.
This entry was posted on Monday, June 29th, 2009 at 7:27 pm and is filed under Demonstration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. One Response to “Special: Report from an Eye Witness of Sunday’s Rally before the Qoba Mosque”
1. Spear Bearer says: June 29, 2009 at 8:49 pm
I stand in support of the Iranian people who were robbed of their vote, beaten, shot, murdered.
There has been no news coming out of Iran that I can find, since my last post. There is one very surreal video showing the clear evidence of marshal law in Tehran.
This is a very eery and disturbing image of what is happening in Iran now.
