Array
I don’t know if Ice Cream Ireland did this on purpose or not (I’m guessing not) but on my birthday (I’m now 23!) they posted about the joys of good chocolate and Lent.I’m not really giving up anything this Lent - I am however getting up as soon as the alarm clock rings. Fast food(In the interests of full disclosure to God about Lent and stuff (God reads blogs, too, you know) - I really can’t buy into this one seriously as penance - I avoid pretty much all of the above all of the time.
link
We hope that many of you will be able to visit the monastery and join these events.Should you wish to make a donation to these activities, the Monlam website has now been updated to include these special events:http://www.monlam.org/mainprayers.htmlWith best wishes, Everyone at Monlam.orgFebruary 22 Tulku Urgyen Rinpocheâs AnniversaryFebruary 23-27 Vajrakilaya pujaFebruary 28 Tibetan New Year â Year of the Fire DogMarch 7-16 White Amitayus DrubchenMarch 14 Festival of Miracles (Chotrul Duchen)March 24 Lotus Dakini Puja (Kurukule)March 28 Dharma Protector PujaMarch 29 Ngakso Puja (Ocean of Amrita)April 6-14 Ngakso PujaApril 23 Lotus Dakini Puja (Kurukule)April 26 Dharma Protector PujaApril 27 Ngakso Puja (Ocean of Amrita)
link
Over at GOPUSA, Bobby Eberle reports:Despite some tough talk coming from a select few Democrats on Capitol Hill regarding defense and the war on terror, it appears that liberals are still liberals, and no amount of spin will change that fact. The latest evidence is a program sponsored by the Congressional Progressive Caucus which calls for 0 billion in cuts to the defense budget. And this is the party that wants to be seen as strong on defense?According to a report in The Hill, the proposal would take money away from defense and shift it to âhumanitarian assistance, social programs, energy conservation, homeland security and deficit reduction.ââI think itâs time for Congress and the House to talk about the huge amount of tax dollars going for weapons systems designed to fight a Cold War that doesnât exist,â said Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), co-chairwoman of the 62-member Democratic group. âI donât think people realize the billions of dollars that are being wasted.âWe don’t think people realize that the lunatics are now running the asylum. The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), a direct spin-off of the Democratic Socialists of America, has achieved critical mass. At this writing 62 members of Congress — fully one-third of Democratic members — have joined the CPC. Among the members are David Bonior and Jim McDermott who, at the height of pre-war tensions with Baghdad, flew to Iraq and declared Saddam Hussein more trustworthy than George W. Bush.Here’s a little inside information on the CPC from our forthcoming book, Donkey Cons: Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the Democratic Party:Leftist Democrats are still clinging to the Marxist dreamâ¦[B]ecause of that dream, Democrats tend to nurture subversion. Today, subversive Democrats even have an official club: the Congressional Progressive Caucus. The Progressive Caucus was founded in 1992 by Reps. Bernie Sanders of Vermont (an avowed socialist who has the good sense to advertise himself as an independent), Peter DeFazio of Oregon, Lane Evans of Illinois, Maxine Waters of California, and the arguably treasonous [California Congressman] Ron Dellums.Here’s some intriguing background on Dellums: He, along with the noted patriot Barbara Lee in 1983 were found to have been collaborating with Maurice Bishop, the Marxist dictator of Grenada, in order to conceal from the Reagan Administration Bishop’s military alliance with the Soviet Union . At the time, Lee was Dellum’s assistant. Now she is co-chair of the CPC. (Politically, Lee is slightly to the left of V.I. Lenin.)When he helped launch the [CPC], Dellums was an official with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and, during his three decades in the House, worked closely with the committed Marxists and Soviet KGB agents at the Institute for Policy Studies, a sort of boot camp for American communists. The DSA is âthe largest socialist organization in the United States and the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International.Until 1999, the DSA hosted the Progressive Caucus Web site, and the caucusâs Web site linked back to the DSA.22 Today, the ties are less visible, but can be found in dual memberships. For example, New York Congressman Major Owens is a member of both the DSA and the Progressive Caucus.With such close ties, it is instructive to learn what the DSA believes. Hereâs the group in its own words:23⢠âWe are socialists because we reject an international economic order sustained by private profit.â⢠âThe current assault on the welfare state led by corporate and conservative elites is also an attack on political democracy.â⢠âA democratic commitment to a vibrant pluralist life assumes the need for a . . . representative government to regulate the market. . . . In the 21st century this will increasingly occur through international, multilateral action.â⢠âFree markets or private charity cannot provide adequate public goods and services.â⢠âNo country, even a superpower like the United States, can guarantee peace and stability, never mind justice. Only a multinational armed force can intervene in conflicts to enforcegenerally accepted standards of human rights and democratic practices.â⢠The DSA supports a âmassive redistribution of income from corporations and the wealthy to wage earners and the poor and the public sector to provide the main source of new funds for social programs, income maintenance, and infrastructure rehabilitation.â⢠The DSA supports a âmassive shift of public resources from the military . . . to civilian uses.âHmmm…sounds similar to the CPCs new proposal. Coincidental? Do leftist Democrats in Congress really have anything to do with the DSA at all? Well let the DSA answer:In one document, the DSA urges its âyouth sectionâ to âstress our Democratic Party strategy and electoral work. . . . The Democratic Party is something the public understands, and association with it takes the edge off. Stressing our Democratic Party work will establish some distance from the radical subculture and help integrate you to the milieu of the young liberals.âBut deep in a document called âWhere We Stand: The Political Perspective of the Democratic Socialists of America,â the group states its goals more baldly: âMany socialists have seen the Democratic Party, since at least the New Deal, as the key political arena in which to consolidate this coalition, because the Democratic Party held the allegiance of our natural allies. Through control of the government by the Democratic Party coalition, led by anti-corporate forces, a progressive program regulating the corporations, redistributing income . . . and expanding social programs could be realized.âThink about it: American taxpayers are paying the salaries of 62 Democratic members of Congress so that they can implement a subversive socialist agenda. Heres the really good news: Progressive Caucus cofounder Bernie Sanders is running for Senate. If he wins, well all be the beneficiaries of bicameral socialism.- VINCENT
link
On Sunday we had a couple of the girls racing in a local race, much like a club race you will all be familiar with. They make them tough in this part of the world, in fact I was surprised more didn’’t pull out of the race, as we were freezing with about 20 layers on, under big jackets, or maybe it’’s just me been soft, I mean acclimatising to what’’s left of the winter.Great day for a race.The first break.The Girls did well, SVV was in a break of four for half of the race, and Sandra stayed with another break of twenty for the other half. I just hope there is a more modern makeup artist this year, so the girls don’t look as thought they just stepped out of the eighties with their buffed hair and bad makeup (sorry girls, but the truth hurts sometimes).I stole a preview off www.cyclingnews.com , for the race on Sunday, but too many crazy names for me to spell unfortunately.Omloop Het Volk for womenThe first Omloop Het Volk (UCI 1.2) for women will be ridden this Sunday, March 12, between the Belgian towns of Deerlijk and Deinze. Leontien Zijlaard-Van Moorsel will serve as race ambassador, to try to lift the low profile of women’s racing in Flanders.Leontien, if you have not heard of her before, is a bit of a Dutch icon in Women’s racing, think she was World champ, National champ and Olyimpic winner, but will find out more for you later.
link
Thus both dangers Eisenhower had feared were realized: a scientific-technological elite lobbied the government to impose their version of scientific âtruthâ as public policy before their papers were published â before other scientists had a chance to vet their work â and the U.S. government imposed HIV as the putative cause of AIDS as âtruthâ first on this nationâs scientists and then on the rest of the worldâs.On March 28, 1993, a short-lived ABC-TV newsmagazine show called Day One ran a 20-minute segment that gave many Americans their first hint that there was a different way of looking at AIDS. Along with John Lauritsen and Jon Rappoport of the U.S. and Joan Shenton and Jad Adams of Britain, Farber â working at first for an unlikely outlet, the music magazine Spin â alerted readers to the existence of scientists like Peter Duesberg, Kary Mullis, David Rasnick, Charles Thomas, Gordon Stewart and others who poked the mainstream vision of HIV as the cause of AIDS so full of holes that a theory with less government, industry and activist support would have collapsed completely.What was surprising is that Farberâs article appeared in Harperâs, a publication with a decidedly Left-of-center political slant. While publications on the Right â particularly the Libertarian Right â had occasionally presented the case against HIV as the cause of AIDS (usually in the context of arguing that the government should stop funding scientific research and leave that task to the private sector), the Left had not only enthusiastically embraced HIV as the cause of AIDS but used loyalty to the mainstream view of AIDS as an index of oneâs concern for Queers and people of color in both the developed and developing worlds.A Lethal Drug TrialFarberâs Harperâs article begins with the story of Joyce Ann Hafford, a woman from Memphis, Tennessee who, four months pregnant with her second child, accepted the advice of her obstetrician to take an HIV antibody test âeven though she was healthy and had no reason to think she might be HIV positive.â When her test did come back positive, she was referred to another doctor, Edwin Thorpe, an âHIV specialistâ who was also the principal investigator in a clinical trial of four anti-HIV medications â nevirapine, nelfinavir, AZT and Lamivudine â to see not only which combination of these drugs most effectively reduced the risk of HIV transmission from mother to child before or during birth but also how high the doses could be raised before the drugs started killing people or making them sick. So they naturally recruited the sorts of Gay men they figured would be most at risk of contracting hepatitis B: heavy users of recreational and pharmaceutical drugs, and people with multiple sex partners and long histories of infection with genuine sexually-transmitted diseases like syphilis and gonorrhea.Over the years, these âcohortsâ â research-speak for groups of people who are studied over an extended period of time â were pressed into service to study AIDS as well. They were given the standard HIV antibody tests and, sure enough, those who tested âHIV positiveâ were much more likely to get sick with AIDS symptoms and die young than those who tested âHIV negative.â MACS was therefore heralded as proof that HIV was the cause of AIDS, but there were two big catches in that argument. It also included antibodies to hepatitis B â which offered a far likelier explanation than that of the conspiracy theorists in the Queer community (who thought HIV had been biologically engineered and introduced into Gay men via the hepatitis B vaccine) for the high correlation between having taken the vaccine and later testing âHIV positive.â Most relevant to Joyce Ann Haffordâs story, Johnsonâs list also included pregnancy, especially in so-called âmultiparousâ women â that is, women whoâd been pregnant before. The idea that a Western Blot or an IFA can âconfirmâ the results of an ELISA is dubious because itâs still an antibody test â an indirect measure that canât actually detect whether a person is actively infected with HIV â and an unreliable one at that because so many other factors besides HIV can trigger a âpositiveâ reaction.The real reason people who test âHIV positiveâ are more at risk for a number of diseases involving weakened immunity is not that the test is measuring exposure to a unique virus called âHIVâ that is breaking down peopleâs immune systems and thereby allowing them to become sick. Those 99-point-something figures weâve seen ballyhooing the âaccuracyâ of the tests relate merely to their reproducibility â the likelihood that two tests run on the same blood sample will have the same result â and doesnât have anything to do with whether the tests are actually measuring an active HIV infection.Besides, the claim that an antibody response to HIV necessarily means an active infection itself flies in the face of 150 yearsâ worth of microbiology. homosexual men (including the so-called âmen who have sex with menâ but donât self-identify as Gay or Bisexual) are generally cast as the villains.Ironically, when Peter Duesberg first came out with his arguments against HIV as the cause of AIDS in 1987 he was almost immediately denounced as homophobic, partly because he used the word âhomosexualâ in his speeches (he claimed it was because it was a scientific term with which he felt more comfortable) and partly because he was accused of âblaming the victimâ by suggesting that peopleâs lifestyle choices â particularly drug use â led to their getting AIDS. The argument goes that we Gay men know what we must do to keep ourselves from becoming âinfectedâ with HIV â use condoms every single time we have anal or oral sex â and therefore, if we donât and we become âHIV positive,â itâs our own damned fault for not following orders.This oddly moralistic turn in the âHIV preventionâ campaign was largely dictated from the top â specifically from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), which when it began giving grants for âHIV preventionâ in the late 1980âs insisted that the goal of such programs be not to change individual behavior, which had usually been the focus of STD prevention, but to âchange community norms.â In practice, that meant creating a climate of guilt, fear and shame within the Gay male community, so Gay men would be too afraid of social ostracism to have sex in any ways other than those of which the authorities approved. The clear intent of her article is to warn straight people that more and more Gay men are giving each other HIV through âbarebackingâ â often through casual pickups theyâve made via the Internet (a subsidiary villain in this mainstream AIDS script) â and shame her Gay male readers back onto the safer-sex reservation.But what her piece really does is vividly dramatize the sheer terror under which Gay men live if they believe in the HIV/AIDS model and accept the mainstreamâs advice to take the HIV antibody test every six months. They have to approach every sexual experience in their lives with the perception of â as author and AIDS activist Larry Kramer once put it â âIs this the one that will kill me?â They have to accept the stress of a new virological verdict every six months that will tell them whether theyâve been sufficiently âresponsibleâ sexually â or, if they havenât, whether or not theyâve dodged the HIV bullet. If there really is an inverse correlation between condom use and likelihood of testing âHIV positiveâ â and I donât know whether there is or this is yet another thing âHIV/AIDSâ scientists just assume is true â itâs more likely because, by blocking the transmission of bacterial STDâs, condoms reduce the risk of contracting antibodies that will trigger a false âHIV positiveâ result.Moralism and the Fear FactorThe heavily moralistic strategy of the AIDS establishment works not only on the micro level â attempting to shame homosexually active males into condom use by manipulating them emotionally and inducing guilt and fear if they donât â but, as Farber points out in her Harperâs piece, on the macro level as well. After taking her readers on a breathless tour of Alternative AIDS 101, from the death of Joyce Ann Hafford from nevirapine toxicity to the attack on government watchdog Dr. Jonathan Fishbein for pointing out the flagrant inaccuracies and abuses in a nevirapine trial in Uganda in 1997-99, the refusal of HIV drug researchers to use placebo controls â which means that highly toxic anti-HIV drugs are compared only to other highly toxic anti-HIV drugs and thereâs no indication that people on any of the drugs actually live longer or have fewer symptoms than people taking no drugs at all â and the scientific challenge raised by Peter Duesberg and others to the HIV/AIDS model itself, Farber exposes the way the mainstream has generally answered its critics: not by responding to their arguments logically but by mounting a ferocious moral attack on their motives and, sometimes, their very sanity:âAttempts to rigorously test the ruling medical hypothesis of the age are met not with reasoned debate but with the rhetoric of moral blackmail: Peter Duesberg has the blood of African AIDS babies on his hands.
link
(Bud) Selig.Sports clinics and seminars are part of the Department of State’s International Sports Programming Initiative that provides an opportunity for young coaches and players to discover how success in athletics, emphasizing teamwork, respect and leadership, can be translated into the development of life skills and achievement in the classroom.In September 2005, ten Venezuelan youth baseball coaches came to the United States for a two-week coaching program and in February 2005, New York Yankee Bernie Williams traveled to Venezuela and Colombia as a Sports Envoy to lead baseball clinics.For further information about U.S. government-sponsored international sports initiatives through the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, please contact Nicole Deaner at 202-203-7613.2006/251, Released on March 7, 2006 Media Note, Office of the Spokesman, Washington, DC, March 7, 2006Related: Keywords State Department, Wednesday, March 01, 2006 State Department Podcast and Text 02/28/06 Wednesday, February 22, 2006 State Department Podcast and Text 02/21/06, Monday, February 13, 2006 State Department Podcast and Text 02/10/06, Thursday, February 09, 2006 State Department Podcast and Text 02/08/06, Friday, January 27, 2006 State Department Podcast and Text 01/25/06, Friday, January 27, 2006 Rice on Palestinian Elections (PODCAST), Tuesday, January 24, 2006 State Department Podcast and Text 01/23/06 , Friday, January 20, 2006 State Department Podcast and Text 01/19/06, Thursday, January 19, 2006 Secretary Rice, South Korean Foreign Minister PODCAST 01/19/06, Wednesday, January 18, 2006 State Department Podcast, Text 01/17/05,
link
(more…)