Losar Tashi Delek! Happy Tibetan New Year!!

Today is the official start of "Losar"- the Tibetan New Year, and me being a semi-lapsed Lutheran and semi-practicing Tibetan Buddhist, this is my holiday.

I was planning on celebrating it all day Friday but I'll be first learning how to play the Korean dansol instrument, followed by a Ukranian "Small World Coffee Hour" at the U of M.

The Democrats' "Happy Fascist" + today's Bush=Hitler article

The locally operated alternative weekly, "The Pulse of the Twin Cities", has a gushing tribute to El Presidente for life Hugo Chavez:

http://pulsetc.com/article.php?sid=2328

Perhaps some of you've heard that it's now illegal to criticize the Chavez regime:

Human Rights Watch: Americas : Venezuela
Referendum Process Strengthens Rule of Law, But Judiciary Still ... Venezuela's Supreme Court Upholds Prior Censorship and "Insult Laws ... Letter to President Chavez The main purpose of this letter is to ...
http://hrw.org/doc?t=americas&c=venezu

Here's some background info on the situation there:
"The Devil's Excrement":
http://blogs.salon.com/0001330/

"Venezuela News and Views":
http://daniel-venezuela.blogspot.com/

and...drumroll please....
Today's Bush/Hitler comparison! >

(from The Maui News) Parallels drawn between Hitler’s Germany, America:
http://www.mauinews.com/story.aspx?id=17288

Now I'm off to the "Latke-Hamenpash" debate at the University of Minnesota...

VARIFRANK's (and my) problem with bullies

Blogger Frank Martin five days ago wrote of an issue that's near and dear to my heart: bullying.
http://varifrank.com/archives/2006/02/the_bonfire_of.php#trackbacks

He really hit the nail on the head. I myself had to learn the hard way growing up to either fight back or be squashed.
Maybe that's what's wrong with the worldview of today's "liberals"- they've just never had to face down a bully.

registered with "Patriot Guard Riders"

You've probably heard on the news that a Kansan Baptist bigot and his followers are protesting military funerals around the country, claiming that America was attacked, and soldiers are dying because America tolerates homosexuality.
While far from being a gay rights proponent, these "protests" really boil my blood.

So I've registered with the Patriot Guard Riders:
http://www.patriotguard.org/
people that show up and give support to our fallen heroes in the midst of this harrassment.

A favorite website/organization of mine, the Rick Ross Institute, has collected this information on Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist "Church":
http://www.rickross.com/groups/westboro.html

Bloggers changin' Red China? I certainly hope so! + Don't drink the water...

I'm actually going to apply to teach English at a "Global Village" in the P.R.C. this Summer (though I won't have that free an access to the Internet there)...

Blogger Nation
A proliferation of voices is slowly dismantling the
status quo in China.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11437105/site/newsweek/from/RS.5/

And of course I'll have to watch what I drink:

Chemical spill cuts water supply for 20,000 in
China
Monday, February 20, 2006 at 16:35 EST
BEIJING — A chemical spill
in a southwestern Chinese river has halted the water supply to more than 20,000
people in Sichuan Province since last Wednesday, the state-run China Daily said
Monday.... © 2006 Kyodo News. All rights reserved. No reproduction or
republication without written permission.

http://www.crisscross.com/jp/news/364771

Of course, my Intro to Human Communication class would view this as a "cultural issue"

"The Blog Establishment" in 2/20 issue of New York Magazine

Not that I would otherwise pick up a copy of New York Magazine (the last cover story I remember seeing was "Murder and the Preppy Marine"

http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/features/11774/index.html [which showed how useless it is to debate the "chickenhawk" argument- even if you leave your high-paying job to fight in Iraq, you're accused of being "preppy"])...

I haven't had a chance to read the whole thing, but here are the links to the stories:

http://nymag.com/news/media/15966/index.html

Blogs to Riches - The Haves and Have-Nots of the Blogging Boom -- New York Magazine (2/20/2006)

Linkology - How the Most-Linked-To Blogs Relate (2/20/2006)

Yesterday + free plug on today's NARN broadcast

Friday:
My ridiculous Human Communication course, the Small World Coffee Hour at the U of M (where I get to use my language skills) and then..

I went to a very nice sushi party sponsored by the Japan Student Association:
http://jsa.blog29.fc2.com//

The sushi was good, the Japanese conversation was even better. I really get a natural high after speaking nothing but Japanese for two hours. It was a blast. Especially joking around in Osaka dialect at the end.

I did get to anounce the name of my blog over the air today on: http://am1280thepatriot.com/
on the show: http://www.northernallianceradio.com/index_flash.php
Before I could do that, I was obliged to make a donation to Operation Minnesota Nice to support our troops in Iraq: http://www.operationminnesotanice.com/send.html , which I gladly did.

A few of the other blogs announced on the show:
"The mindless ramblings and exploits of a US Army infantryman in Iraq":
http://funwithhandgrenades.blogspot.com/

Wog's Blog: http://wogsblog.blogspot.com/

Holocaust / Shoah deniers on the Left

I've been noticing that a lot of recent Holocaust denial in postings on "Crisscross News":
http://www.crisscross.com/
are being accompanied by a presumed "lack of evidence" of Saddam Hussein's WMDs and critiques of the U.S. Republican Party.
Three posters have been especially conspicuous in this:

sabiwabi: http://www.crisscross.com/us/bbs/msg/sabiwabi

sushi: http://www.crisscross.com/us/bbs/msg/sushi

MPLS: http://www.crisscross.com/jp/bbs/msg/MPLS

A cursory Google search yields this:

Holocaust Denial, indian and Jewish (by L. Proyect)
In recent weeks I have been in a battle with "left-wing" holocaust deniers on the Internet ... David Stannard, a Jew and author of "American Holocaust", ...
http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/ mydocs/jewish/holocaust_denial.htm

Alas, a blog » Blog Archive » Chomsky and Holocaust Denial
The primary evidence linking Chomsky to Holocaust denial is that he once wrote an ... Left Wing Liberal Commie Agitator · Progressive Indian-American Woman ...
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/ 2006/01/16/chomsky-and-holocaust-denial/

and this looks very interesting:

The Academic Left and Holocaust Denial
The Academic Left and Holocaust Denial. By Brian Carnell. Thursday, March 2, 2000. A story I've been trying to follow very closely over the past few weeks ...
http://www.libertysearch.com/articles/2000/000012.html

I only became aware of this late last year and I expect to post more on this as I learn more/more info becomes available...

After the blogosphere/media debate

The pizza was pretty good.

One of the sponsors was Collegians For A Constructive Tomorrow: http://www.cfactcampus.org/

Scott Johnson gave a recap of how PowerLine http://powerlineblog.com/aboutus.php#bigtrunk and Little Green Footballs http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/ (w/ their respective readers) took apart the "fake but accurate" CBS Bush Nat'l Guard "memos". Scott's preview of the debate was written here: http://powerlineblog.com/archives/013100.php

Eric Black, writer for the Minneapolis StarTribune, opened with some thoughts on declining newspaper readership, the ignorance of the masses and the "puny" 9% weblog readership.
Mr. Black's own weblog, the Big Question, can be found here:

http://www.startribune.com/blogs/bigquestion/

Eric Black is still holding on to the GW Bush as "Fortunate Son" and "A.W.O.L. from the Alabama Nat'l Guard" theme. Glad to see he has a hobby.

Obviously, I'm not the greatest at writing summaries to events/speeches/debates, so I'll end it here for now.

"The Blogosphere and the Future of Journalism" debate today at U of M Law School

Today at noon I'll be at Mondale Hall to see/hear Scott Johnson of http://www.powerlineblog.com/ debate Eric Black of the Minneapolis StarTribune newspaper.

Map to the Law School: http://onestop.umn.edu/Maps/MondaleH/index.html

Should be fun!

My "call-in" on NARN (and the success of African immigrants)

A bit pathetic, but if you click on "second hour" you can hear me call in with a question to Mr. McWhorter.
Basically, my point was that newly arrived immigrants from Black Africa (particularily the Somalis) are doing so well in this country that perhaps our so-called "African-Americans" (as a whole) could start following their lead...

February 12, 2006
New Podcast: Yesterday's Northern Alliance Radio Network
Having more or less gotten the hang of it, the podcasts are coming quicker now. I've done yesterday's show; in the first hour, Chad, Brian and I talked (irreverently) about the opening of the Winter Olympics and discussed current issues like the cartoon controversy and the extension of the Patriot Act. Part 1 is here; part 2 is here. In the second hour, we interviewed Professor John McWhorter, author of Winning the Race.
Posted by John at 08:20 AM

http://www.northernallianceradio.com/index_flash.php

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/013124.php

(until I figure out what "Closing tag has no matching opening tag: " means, I'm afraid you can't access it from here) Update: I figured it out!!

After the Blogger Maintenance + Kurdish talk

Blogger was out last night, so couldn't post.

Did attend a talk on Turkish Kurds on Thursday given by Kani Xulam ( bio: http://kurdistan.org/director.html ) and sponsored primarily by the U of M's Center for German & European Studies ( http://www.cges.umn.edu/ ) .

Obviously I have a lot to learn about the Kurdish situation in Turkey, but the speech itself was not much more than an exercise in America-bashing and misapplied analogies to the Kurdish plight there (+ the obligatory "Israel is like Nazi Germany" comment).

Things I'll need to look into: 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, the Turkish book "Metal Storm".

Documentary films to see on Saturday: "Good Kurds, Bad Kurds, No Friends but the Mountains" and: "Jiyan(Life)"

Long day

Started out with an absolutely ridiculous session of "Intro to Human Communication" (quite possibly the most useless area of study in American academia).
I then went to my English conversation group in the school library (where I get to use my scant knowledge in Korean and Cantonese).
I subsequently entered the school Biology Lab to examine various small to medium sized birds for my Minnesota Natural History class.
At 6:00 was the University of Minnesota's Campus Conservative Cultural Program meetinghttp://www.sao.umn.edu/groups/show.php?id=926&PHPSESSID=3c4372581b58f1be5e9d3a418887e78e .

More later.. ZZzzzz......

1st blog, 1st post

Here goes,

Finally got this thing up and running. I plan on using this weblog to destroy my writer's block and make a bit of difference in my little corner of the universe.

Wish me luck!