"March 24, 2009"
http://www.spaceweather.com/
"Daily Sun: 24 Mar 09 The Sun is blank--no Sunspots. Sunspot number: 0"
"Far side of the Sun: This holographic image reveals no sunspots on the far
side of the sun."

The face of the Sun is without blemish:
http://www.spaceweather.com/images20...t8657rv4 map5

Please visit:
http://blog.nj.com/southjersey_impac...SolarCycle.jpg

The right panel shows the face of the Sun as it looked on a good day during
the late Modern Warm Period. Sunspots are the apparent size of craters on
the moon. The left panel shows a Sun as it appears today. Please write to Al
Gore so that Al knows that the Sun is not living up to his religious
expectations. Al Gore is a divinity school dropout. George Carlin had a
better grasp of the true nature of God's creation, than does Al Gore.

Please visit:
http://www.co-intelligence.org/newsl...es/sun-etc.jpg
which shows the relative sizes of the Sun and planets. Compared to the Sun,
Jupiter is the size of a pea, earth is the size of a grain of sand.

Peace Conference Canceled After South Africa Bars Dalai Lama
By CELIA W. DUGGER
Published: March 24, 2009

JOHANNESBURG - Organizers of a peace conference that was to have been
attended by five Nobel laureates in Johannesburg this week said on Tuesday
that they had canceled it after the South African government denied a visa
to the Dalai Lama.

Two of South Africa's Nobel Peace Prize laureate, retired Anglican
Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former president F.W. de Klerk, condemned the
government for giving in to pressure from China to block the Tibetan
spiritual leader's entry into the country and said they would refuse to
participate in the conference if he was not there. The executive director of
the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Geir Lundestad, also said he would stay away.

The government, through a spokesman, said the Dalai Lama would not be
allowed to come to South Africa to attend the conference, which was meant to
promote the 2010 soccer World Cup, because he would have distracted
attention from South Africa and drawn it instead to the contentious debate
over the status of Tibet.

Thabo Masebe, a government spokesman, said on Monday that the Tibetan leader's
presence "would not be in South Africa's best interests."

A statement by the organizers on Tuesday said the participants had been told
that "the only purpose of their visit to South Africa would be for the
purposes of participation in the conference and not any other public
engagements as these could take away from the purpose for which the
conference was intended." The conference, which was to have begun Friday,
had been organized by South African soccer authorities.

"Given that the purpose of the conference is peace, the conveners do not
wish to put the Nobel Peace Committee under circumstances that would create
conflict between the committee and its laureates.'" the organizers said.
"The conveners have therefore decided - in the spirit of peace - to postpone
the South Africa Peace Conference to ensure it is held under conducive
conditions."

Three of South Africa's Nobel laureates had invited the Dalai Lama to
attend, and the government's move to deny him entry drew sharp condemnations
on Monday both here and abroad.

Critics of the decision, including Archbishop Tutu who won the Nobel Peace
Prize in 1984, said South Africa had caved in to China, which has
aggressively sought to extend its influence across Africa in recent years.
Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China said at a news conference this month that
foreign countries should stay away from any involvement in the Tibet issue.

"We are shamelessly succumbing to Chinese pressure," Mr. Tutu told a South
African newspaper, The Sunday Tribune, a statement his office confirmed on
Monday. "I feel deeply distressed and ashamed."

South Africa's decision comes at a particularly charged moment in China's
relations with ethnic Tibetans. China has sent thousands of troops to the
Tibetan region to quell any repeat of the anti-Chinese riots that broke out
a year ago in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital.

This year also marks the 50th anniversary of a failed uprising against
Chinese rule that led to the Dalai Lama's flight into exile in India. China
has accused him of pursuing independence for Tibet, while he maintains that
he is seeking only autonomy, not separation.

Mr. de Kler, who shared the Peace Prize with Nelson Mandela in 1993, said in
a statement released by his foundation that the government's decision to
exclude the Dalai Lama was irreconcilable with the country's commitment to
freedom of expression and made a mockery of the whole purpose of the peace
conference.

Mr. Mandela, 90, the third Nobel laureate to invite the Dalai Lama here, had
not planned to attend the conference because of his advanced age.

A Mr. Masebe, the government spokesman, was emphatic on Monday that the
government had no intention of changing its position.

"Of course we have excellent relations with China, and of course they've
contributed to increasing trade and investment, but it's not China that made
the decision," he said. "It's us."

Du Ling, a spokeswoman for the Chinese Embassy in Pretoria, would say only
that "all countries that have diplomatic relations with China, including
South Africa, recognize that there is only one China in the world and it
does not recognize the so-called independence of Tibet."

If South Africa's intention in barring the Dalai Lama was to keep the
attention of the world focused on the World Cup instead of Tibet, it
certainly seemed to backfire. Kjetil Siem, chief executive officer of the
Premier Soccer League in South Africa, which organized the peace conference,
seemed taken aback on Monday by the storm of protest that had engulfed the
conference. It was supposed to be a celebration of South Africa as the
rainbow nation of all races united by soccer.

Somini Sengupta contributed reporting from New Delhi, Edward Wong from
Beijing, and Walter Gibbs from Oslo. Alan Cowell contributed from Paris.