After the Semmelweis Society International (SSI) presented Peter Duesberg and Celia Farber the Clean Hands Award earlier this year, the controversy that erupted caused SSI to hire a P.I., Clark Baker, to investigate claims by AIDS activist groups that "anyone who questioned HIV as the cause of AIDS" is a criminal.

Baker's new report is called "Gallo's Egg:"

Prof. Duesberg described the flaws in the HIV hypothesis of AIDS causation. Although formal screenings are not required by Academy members, the NAS published Prof. Duesberg's paper after an unprecedented six separate peer reviews. After 20 years, Prof. Duesberg's paper remains unanswered.

Prior to these publications, Dr. Robert Gallo, the cancer virologist who claimed HIV caused AIDS in 1984 described Duesberg as the scientist "who knew more about retroviruses than any man alive."

.....Although he vowed to respond, neither Gallo nor any of his defenders ever published a rebuttal of Duesberg's paper (or the 196 peer citations that supported it) in any peer-reviewed publication.

Instead, Gallo's defenders created the specter of AIDS-Denialists and Denialism, epithets designed to marginalize those who questioned Gallo's opinions as somehow denying the existence of AIDS itself. Because Gallo skeptics never questioned the existence of AIDS, this allegation is false. The fact that malnutrition, septic water, disease, environmental conditions, irresponsible drug use and self-destructive behavior can degrade a body's ability to protect itself from infection and cause death is undeniable. What is in question is Gallo's scientifically unsupported assertions that retroviruses cause leukemia, cancer, and AIDS.

A Nobel-prize-winning scientist, Kary B. Mullis, wrote the forward to Duesberg's book on the subject, published by Regnery in 1995. Mullis' views support Baker's work:

IN 1988 I WAS WORKING as a consultant at Specialty Labs in Santa Monica, setting up analytic routines for the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). I knew a lot about setting up analytic routines for anything with nucleic acids in it because I had invented the Polymerase Chain Reaction. That's why they had hired me.

Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), on the other hand, was something I did not know a lot about. Thus, when I found myself writing a report on our progress and goals for the project, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, I recognized that I did not know the scientific reference to support a statement I had just written: "HIV is the probable cause of AIDS."

So I turned to the virologist at the next desk, a reliable and competent fellow, and asked him for the reference. He said I didn't need one. I disagreed. While it's true that certain scientific discoveries or techniques arc so well established that their sources are no …

MORE...]]> 2008-07-30T17:39:01-07:00 http://www.bigpicweblog.com/exp/index.php/weblog/obamas_policies_are_consistently_contrary_to_whats_good_for_the_flagthe_eco/ Politics & Government, Previous Featured Posts An undeniable pattern has emerged in Obama's policies. Again and again, they are policies which are contrary to what's good for the American flag, the American economy, and the American military. The pattern may be seen repeatedly and consistently.

OBAMA VS. THE AMERICAN FLAG

Obama has refused in the past to wear an American flag pin.

He has refused in the past to put his hand on his heart for the national anthem.

And now he has removed the American flag from his jet: "...the plane that once had an American flag on its tail now sports the Obama 'O.'"

OBAMA VS. THE AMERICAN ECONOMY

Don't like paying high taxes? How would you feel about it if your taxes are higher because you're getting taxed by the United Nations too?

Obama is against drilling for oil, preferring instead to have our economy strangled by expensive gas prices.

Obama has sponsored a bill, which is still a danger to this country as it has not yet been defeated, which would require the U.S. to give $845 billion to the United Nations. Don't like paying high taxes? How would you feel about it if your taxes are higher because you're getting taxed by the United Nations too?

A nice-sounding bill called the "Global Poverty Act," sponsored by Democratic presidential candidate and Senator Barack Obama, is up for a Senate vote on Thursday and could result in the imposition of a global tax on the United States. The bill, which has the support of many liberal religious groups, makes levels of U.S. foreign aid spending subservient to the dictates of the United Nations.

Senator Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has not endorsed either Senator Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton in the presidential race. But on Thursday, February 14, he is trying to rush Obama's "Global Poverty Act" (S.2433) through his committee. The legislation would commit the U.S. to spending 0.7 percent of gross national product on foreign aid, which amounts to a phenomenal 13-year total of $845 billion over and above what the U.S. already spends.

And Obama wants to nearly double the capital-gains tax rate from 15% to 28%, which not only would devastate the economy, but would also be likely to lose money for the government.

From the NY Sun:

As Senator Obama's presidential platform starts to take shape, economists and tax officials here in New York and Washington are warning that his fiscal policies could have a devastating effect on what is, in effect, New York's biggest crop - capital gains.

Mr. Obama is proposing to raise taxes on capital gains and dividends by a staggering two-thirds, moving the rate up 10 percentage points to 25%, which could curtail investment and business on …

MORE...]]> 2008-07-29T15:34:00-07:00 http://www.bigpicweblog.com/exp/index.php/weblog/obamas_white_house_social_calendar_march_2009/ Humor, Politics & Government A peek into a what an Obama White House might be like ...Obama's White House Social Calendar for 2009.

Date/Time	Event	Description and Details
March 2009
Monday 16th March 12:00pm	Luncheon	Description: Guests - William Ayres, Bernardine Dohrn. Location:  President's Dining Room.
Tuesday 17th March 3:30pm	Afternoon Tea and Biscuits	Description: Greet Minister Louis Farrakhan. Accomodations:  The Minister will be staying in the Lincoln Bedroom. Location: West Sitting Room.
Wednesday 18th March 7:00pm	Dinner	Description: Guests - Father Michael Pfleger, Reverend Wright. Location: State Dining Room.
Thursday 19th March 7:00pm	State Dinner	Description: Guests - President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Location:  State Dining Room.
Friday 20th March 4:00pm	Photo Op	Description: President Mahmoud Abbas. Accomodations:  The President will be staying in the Lincoln Bedroom. Location:  Oval Office.

 

]]> 2008-07-27T16:48:01-07:00 http://www.bigpicweblog.com/exp/index.php/weblog/a_window_into_what_islamic_youths_in_the_uk_are_being_taught_in_the_words_o/ Europe, What's Going on Inside the Mosques We often discuss what's going in Islamic schools in the UK, but rarely do we have a view of it from one of the students. What are Islamic youth there being taught to believe? Two comments came in last month, evidently from a 14-year-old Islamic boy named Samir, living in England. According to a plugin I run (the ip2nation plugin for the ExpressionEngine blog engine), the ip address is indeed from the UK. I'm still thinking about these comments.

First comment:

You all do not understand Islam. It is very gentle, kind, non politics religion of peace and loves. Media tells lies about muslims. Muslims love Allah and he sees that they loves him, he helps them to get better in life and makes muslims get good house and jobs in Kafir countries.

In uk muslims even dont haf to work for allah provides money from government benefits. They efen can wer their own cloths without problems, but burka sometimes little problem in schools and places like this.

Allah has made muslims strong in west, and he is teaching kafir leaders how to respect ALL religion but most of all ISLAM.It is allahs will that ALL countries will become muslim, and one day there will be enuf muslims to take over all europ.When this happens you will see how good it is to be muslim, for allah will take alcohol away and immorals who go with own sex will be executed, no music or dancing except Islam music. Everybody will then say to Allah Thank you, we did not understand how good it is to be muslim.

I tell you all there is no reason to be afraid of Islam, just accept and see how allah will change your lifes.

peace to you all Allua Ackbar

Second comment, posted within an hour of the first:

Sorry forget to say I am 14 only but already I no the way to be happy without trubles. If only everybody see with my eyes, it is so sample if you just bleve what allah says. No body want to go hell so sample thing is just trust allah and the prophet mohammed (pbuh). One thing for shure is if you try verry hard to do good, allah will try his best to take you to paradise with servants there to serve you, and wine to. If anybody want to here about islam I will be happy to tell them.

peace to evry country samir

It's a very revealing set of comments. First of all:

In uk muslims even dont haf to work for allah provides money from government benefits.

Rather than seeing welfare as a safety net for those temporarily out of work, Samir sees welfare as a benefit from Allah so that Muslims don't have to work at all. Is Samir aware that the government benefits come from taxes paid by working Brits? His teachers surely are. It appears that, if not Samir himself, …

MORE...]]> 2008-07-14T16:36:00-07:00 http://www.bigpicweblog.com/exp/index.php/weblog/top_10_arguments_against_obama/ Politics & Government, Previous Featured Posts, The Mid East Obama's campaign has two powerful things going for it.

• We've had a Republican President for 8 years, and it's unusual to have a President of the same party 3 terms in a row.
• He's Black, and Obama's come-from-nowhere success as a major-party nominee is evidence that America rightfully wants to have a Black President already. Obama's candidacy is welcomed, not just by those on the Left, but by the majority of Americans. From the Washington Post: "In a Post-ABC News poll last month, nearly nine in 10 whites said they would be comfortable with a black president. [.....] And by nearly 3 to 1, those who think Obama's candidacy will affect race relations said it will have a positive impact."
  

On every other measure, the facts are massively against him:

• He has no experience. Per Rasmussen, "As the general election campaign gets started, 41% of voters nationwide say that Barack Obama is too inexperienced to be President..."
• He has a 20-year history of close ties with people who hate America and say so. His official position is that he had no idea what his close friend Reverend Wright was like ("The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation"), or what his business associate Tony Rezko was like ("this isn't the Tony Rezko I knew"). At times, he'd like us to believe, he doesn't know what his own statements mean. From Reuters: "NEW YORK (Reuters) - Democrat Barack Obama misused a 'code word' in Middle East politics when he said Jerusalem should be Israel's 'undivided' capital but that does not mean he is naive on foreign policy, a top adviser said on Tuesday." In short, his official position of excuse after excuse after excuse, is tantamount to admitting that he had insufficient judgment to recognize who he was associating with, or at times, what he himself was saying.
• He wants to pull our troops out of Iraq, and turn victory into defeat, as even the Washington Post now admits. From the Washington Post: "While Washington's attention has been fixed elsewhere, military analysts have watched with astonishment as the Iraqi government and army have gained control for the first time of the port city of Basra and the sprawling Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, routing the Shiite militias that have ruled them for years and sending key militants scurrying to Iran. At the same time, Iraqi and U.S. forces have pushed forward with a long-promised offensive in Mosul, the last urban refuge of al-Qaeda. So many of its leaders have now been captured or killed that U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, renowned for his cautious assessments, said that the terrorists have 'never been closer to defeat than they are now.' ..... Still, the rapidly improving conditions should allow U.S. commanders to make some welcome adjustments -- and …
  
  MORE...]]> 2008-06-24T15:43:00-07:00 http://www.bigpicweblog.com/exp/index.php/weblog/is_it_time_to_march_on_the_supreme_court_of_california_and_the_supreme_cour/ National Security, Politics & Government, Police, Laws & The Courts This democracy cannot survive if our supreme court justices arrogate to themselves the right to dictate to the people - to be, in the words of Mark Steyn, our "monarchs".
  

  Just last month, the Supreme Court of California, seeking to make law from the bench, rather than to do its rightful job of merely interpreting the State Constitution, sought to overturn the expressed will of the people and force gay marriage on the people of California. Per Mark Steyn:

  ...what happened here was not just a sly judicial coup, but an explicit one in the wake of the expressed will of the California electorate, and their elected representatives. And what's interesting to me about this general business of judicial activism, in a period when most sort of sources of authority in society, whether you're talking about politicians or the Church, or I suppose the media, if you mean fellows like Walter Cronkite, when most of those sources have diminished in authority, we have kind of compensated by over-venerating a handful of guys in black robes, just because they happen to be called judges, and sit on a fancy court. And there's no reason for this. It's entirely at odds with the founders' conception of a functioning republic, that in effect, you should turn a handful of judges into super monarchs who can overrule.

  This week the Supreme Court of our nation, by a 5-4 vote, declared that enemy soldiers who are trying to kill us have protections under our laws that, in the dissenting opinion of Justice Scalia, "will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed." Scalia's dissent states:

  Today the Court warps our Constitution in a way that goes beyond the narrow issue of the reach of the Suspension Clause, invoking judicially brainstormed separation-of-powers principles to establish a manipulable “functional” test for the extraterritorial reach of habeas corpus (and, no doubt, for the extraterritorial reach of other constitutional protections as well). It blatantly misdescribes important precedents, most conspicuously Justice Jackson’s opinion for the Court in Johnson v. Eisentrager. It breaks a chain of precedent as old as the common law that prohibits judicial inquiry into detentions of aliens abroad absent statutory authorization. And, most tragically, it sets our military commanders the impossible task of proving to a civilian court, under whatever standards this Court devises in the future, that evidence supports the confinement of each and every enemy prisoner.

  The Nation will live to regret what the Court has done today.

  The Supreme Court of the nation has made a ruling that, in the words of dissenting Justice Scalia, "will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed." 

  There's one thing the 5 Supreme Court justices who seek to be our super-monarchs have overlooked.

  We, the American people, do not like things that put our countrymen in danger of being killed. We, the American people, do not like our officials arrogating to themselves powers that were not intended by the Constitution, and making decisions which put our lives …
  
  MORE...]]> 2008-06-13T16:02:00-07:00 http://www.bigpicweblog.com/exp/index.php/weblog/what_does_it_mean_that_obama_is_responding_to_pressure_from_abbas_rather_th/ Politics & Government, The Mid East Washington Post: 

  Obama Backs Away From Comment on Divided Jerusalem

  Facing criticism from Palestinians, Sen. Barack Obama acknowledged yesterday that the status of Jerusalem will need to be negotiated in future peace talks, amending a statement earlier in the week that the city "must remain undivided."

  Obama's statement, made during a speech Wednesday to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group, drew a swift rebuke from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

  "This statement is totally rejected," Abbas told reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah. "The whole world knows that holy Jerusalem was occupied in 1967, and we will not accept a Palestinian state without having Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state."

  ...Obama quickly backtracked yesterday in an interview with CNN.

  "Well, obviously, it's going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues. And Jerusalem will be part of those negotiations," Obama said when asked whether Palestinians had no future claim to the city.

  Under pressure from Palestinians, Obama contradicted himself. Under pressure from Palestinians, Obama changed his position. 

  Not pressure from U.S. citizens. Not pressure from U.S. voters. Pressure from Palestinians. Think about that. Does Obama wish to represent the people of the country of which he seeks the presidency? Does Obama wish to represent the people of the United States?

  Here we see him caving, in less than 48 hours, to a mere statement from Abbas, the leader of another people. How fast would Obama cave in a face-to-face meeting with Ahmadinejad - a meeting that Obama says he wishes to have?
  

  What does it mean that Obama is responding to pressure from Abbas, rather than to pressure from US voters? It appears to mean that the interests of voters of United States are not high on his list of priorities. The explanation for this may be in part, that from the age of 6 years old to 10 years old, he lived in Jakarta, Indonesia, rather than in the U.S. 

  ]]> 2008-06-06T15:55:00-07:00 http://www.bigpicweblog.com/exp/index.php/weblog/update_on_effort_of_un_committee_chaired_by_genocidal_slave_holding_sudan_t/ The Mid East, The U.N. this previous article for details.]]> 2008-06-06T14:40:00-07:00 http://www.bigpicweblog.com/exp/index.php/weblog/un_plans_a_ruling_which_would_massively_publicize_its_own_illegitimacy/ The Mid East, The U.N. Wikipedia:

  The New York Times, in its editorial The Shame of the United Nations, praised those intent on "reforming the disgraceful United Nations Human Rights Commission." The Times said that the Commission was composed of "some of the world's most abusive regimes" who used their membership as cover to continue their abusiveness. On 15 March 2006, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to replace UNCHR with the UN Human Rights Council.

  ...The Commission was repeatedly criticized for the composition of its membership. In particular, several of its member countries themselves had dubious human rights records, including states whose representatives have been elected to chair the commission.

  Another criticism was that the Commission did not engage in constructive discussion of human rights issues, but was a forum for politically selective finger-pointing and criticism. The desire of states with problematic human rights records to be elected to the Commission was viewed largely as a way to defend themselves from such attacks.

  Activist groups had long expressed concern over the memberships of the People's Republic of China, Zimbabwe, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, and the past memberships of Algeria, Syria, Libya, and Vietnam on the Commission. These countries had extensive records of human rights violations, and one concern was that by working against resolutions on the commission condemning human rights violations, they indirectly promoted despotism and domestic repression.

  On May 4, 2004, United States ambassador Sichan Siv walked out of the Commission following the uncontested election of Sudan to the commission, calling it an "absurdity" in light of Sudan's ethnic cleansing in the Darfur region. One major consequence of the election of Sudan to the Commission was the lack of willingness for some countries to work through the commission. Indeed, on July 30, 2004, it was the United Nations Security Council, not the Commission, that passed a resolution - by 13-0, with China and Pakistan abstaining - threatening Sudan with unspecified sanctions if the situation in the Darfur region did not improve within the following 30 days. The reasons given for the action were the attacks by the Janjaweed Arab militias of Sudan on the non-Arab African Muslim population of Darfur, a region in western Sudan.
  

  The U.N. replaced the Commission, with the United Nations Human Rights Council. This new Human Rights Council almost immediately proved that it intended to conduct business as usual. From the NY Times in March 2007:
  

  UNITED NATIONS, March 12 - A United Nations Human Rights Council mission to Darfur said Monday that the Sudanese government had organized and taken part in human rights crimes against its own population, and that international action to stop the killings and rapes had been inadequate.

  ...The rights council has been widely criticized for being …
  
  MORE...]]> 2008-06-04T15:33:00-07:00 http://www.bigpicweblog.com/exp/index.php/weblog/baracks_church_are_we_really_supposed_to_believe_that_it_suddenly_changed_w/ Politics & Government So Barack finally resigned from his church of 20 years, the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.  With one preacher after another making horrendous comments there, he had no choice.

  Barack would still have us believe that speeches like those of Wright and Pfleger are recent anomalies there:
  

  "It's clear that now that I'm a candidate for president, every time something is said in the church by anyone associated with Trinity, including guest pastors, the remarks will imputed to me even if they totally conflict with my longheld views, statements and principles," he said.

  "By anyone associated with Trinity"? "Guest pastors"? Who is he kidding? Jeremiah "God damn America" Wright wasn't a guest pastor. He wasn't just remotely associated with Trinity. He was the leader of Trinity from 1972 to 2008.

  And the preachings of Pfleger weren't unexpected. He is well known at Trinity.  In his introduction, Pastor Otis said of Pfleger, "He needs no introduction. He is a friend of Trinity. He is a brother beloved. He is a preacher par excellence. He is a prophetic powerful pulpiteer. He is our friend. He is our brother. He is none other than Father Michael Pfleger. We welcome him once again!"

  Pfleger's rant wasn't considered shocking or surprising at Trinity. After Pfleger spoke, Otis said, "We thank God for the message and we thank God for the messenger!"
  

  Will anyone believe, as Obama evidently would like us to believe, that the speeches currently heard at this church, are significantly different than those that have been heard there for the last 20 years? Are we really supposed to think, that the normal goings-on at that church suddenly changed since Obama began running for office?
  

  ]]> 2008-05-31T22:42:00-07:00