From The Guardian UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/may/05/food-prices-global-warming

Scientists warn that farming practices must be adapted to a warmer world and rises in global population

Damian Carrington
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 5 May 2011

Global warming has already harmed the world’s food production and has driven up food prices by as much as 20% over recent decades, new research has revealed.

The drop in the productivity of crop plants around the world was not caused by changes in rainfall but was because higher temperatures can cause dehydration, prevent pollination and lead to slowed photosynthesis.

Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, Washington DC, said the findings indicate a turning point: “Agriculture as it exists today evolved over 11,000 years of reasonably stable climate, but that climate system is no more.” Adaptation is difficult because our knowledge of the future is not strong enough to drive new investments, he said, “so we just keep going, hoping for the best.”

The scientists say their work shows how crucial it is to find ways to adapt farming to a warmer world, to ensure that rises in global population are matched by rising food production. “It is vital,” said Wolfram Schlenker, at Columbia University in New York and one of the research team. “If we continue to have the same seed varieties and temperatures continue to rise, then food prices will rise further. [Addressing] that is the big question.”

The new research joins a small number of studies in which the fingerprint of climate change has been separated from natural variations in weather and other factors, demonstrating that the effects of warming have already been felt in the world. Scientists have shown that the chance of the severe heatwave that killed thousands in Europe in 2003 was made twice as likely by global warming, while other work showed that the floods that caused £3.5bn of damage in England in 2000 were made two to three times more likely.

Continue reading at:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/may/05/food-prices-global-warming

From The Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/gop-plans-to-demand-manda_b_857326.html

By Robert Creamer Political organizer, strategist and author
May 4, 2011

It is increasingly clear that the Republicans will demand mandatory cuts in Social Security and Medicare as a price for increasing the debt ceiling later this spring.

Of course they won’t say they are demanding mandatory cuts in Social Security and Medicare.

Over the Easter recess they’ve had a taste of just how strongly people feel about Medicare. Before they left the Capitol last month House Republicans voted — almost unanimously — for the Republican budget that ends Medicare and replaces it with a privatized system of partial support for private insurance premiums. They ran into a town hall buzz-saw of opposition in every corner of the country.

The House Republican budget plan authored by Congressman Paul Ryan isn’t going anywhere in the Senate.

If the “gang of six” Senators come up with a deficit reduction plan that is acceptable to its three Democrats and three Republicans, that may attract brief interest among the elite media. But such a budget deal would have to involve substantial increases in revenue — presumably from raising taxes on the wealthy — and that has exactly zero chance of being approved by the Republican House.

But the Republicans won’t let the 70-plus percent opposition to cuts in Medicare and Social Security dissuade them. They’ve come up with a new plan that sugarcoats their attempts to eviscerate Social Security and Medicare. It’s called a “mandatory global spending cap” and it’s nothing more than the House Republican budget in disguise.

Continue reading at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/gop-plans-to-demand-manda_b_857326.html

From Feministing: http://feministing.com/2011/05/03/who-has-abortions/

May 3, 2011

For transcript go to Feministing:  http://feministing.com/2011/05/03/who-has-abortions/

Press Release: http://www.aflcio.org/mediacenter/prsptm/pr05042011.cfm

May 04, 2011

We commend Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer for refocusing attention on job creation by once again introducing the bipartisan “Make it in America” agenda. It’s time for Congress to focus on what Americans want and need most—jobs. We need to create them, retain them and make sure that they are safe and family-supporting jobs.

Rebuilding America’s manufacturing base is central to rebuilding our nation’s economy. The Make it in America agenda would finally create a national manufacturing strategy our country desperately needs. The National Manufacturing Strategy Act passed by the House last year provides a good starting point. The United States has seen far too many good jobs go overseas. And it’s not just the front line manufacturing jobs that have vanished – it’s design, R&D and engineering jobs as well.

The loss of our innovative, technical and industrial capacity not only undermines opportunities in America, it also threatens our national security. Other nations are taking over production of our national defense technology while countries like China have access to and have made moves to limit the United States’ access to the raw materials needed to guide a missile, drive an Abrams tank or build a hybrid or electric car.

This agenda would also address the long-term issue of the Chinese government’s currency manipulation. The manipulation has had a devastating impact on our economy—but the onus is on us to fix it. Last year, the House of Representatives passed the bipartisan Currency Reform for Fair Trade Act. Now is the time to finish the job. And as the Make it in America agenda unfolds, it must include strong Buy America provisions.

This nation can no longer live on legacy. We need to invest trillions in the coming decades to build a 21st century infrastructure and we must ensure that we actually make the technology and materials for the things we are building and installing. The Make it in America agenda is a big step in the right direction to resolve our manufacturing crisis. We stand ready to work with Congress to invest in our future, to create good jobs and to make it in America.

Contact: Amaya Tune (202) 637-5018

From Raw Story: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/05/05/democratic-lawmaker-introduces-lgbt-inclusive-immigration-bill/

By David Edwards
Thursday, May 5th, 2011

Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA) wants to do something about the nearly 6 million people that have been separated from their spouses, minor children, sisters or brothers for years because of an immigration backlog.

The congressman announced Thursday that he was introducing the Reuniting Families Act (H.R. 2709) to reform the family-based immigration system that has not been updated in 20 years.

The legislation aims to fix the broken family immigration system by reducing the wait times for legal immigrants and eliminating discrimination against same sex, permanent partners.

“Many family members who apply for visas are not granted admission for decades, undermining their economic contributions to our country and encouraging some frustrated relatives to resort to illegal migration,” Honda said Thursday.

“This bill would take important steps to towards fixing our broken family immigration system by reducing the waiting times for legal immigrants through recapturing family work visas that have gone unused. RFA would reclassify spouses and children of legal permanent residents as immediate relatives,” he explained.

Continue reading at:   http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/05/05/democratic-lawmaker-introduces-lgbt-inclusive-immigration-bill/

From Common Dreams: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/05/05-3

by Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith and Aric McBay
Published on Thursday, May 5, 2011 by ClimateStoryTellers.org

A black tern weighs barely two ounces. On bodily reserves less than a bag of M&Ms and wings that stretch to cover twelve inches, she’ll fly thousands of miles, searching for the wetlands that will harbor her young. And every year the journey gets longer as the wetlands are desiccated for human demands. Every year the tern, desperate and hungry, loses, while civilization, endless and sanguineous, wins.

A polar bear should weigh 650 pounds. Her biological reserves may have to see her through nine long months of dark, denned gestation, and then lactation, giving up her dwindling stores to the needy mouths of her species’ future. In some areas, the female’s weight has dropped from 650 to 507 pounds.¹ Meanwhile, the ice has evaporated like the wetlands. When she wakes, the waters will stretch impassably opened, and there is no Abrahamic god of bears to part them for her.

The Aldabra snail should weigh something, but all that’s left to weigh are their skeletons, bits of orange and indigo shells. The snail has been declared not just extinct, but the first casualty of global warming. In dry periods, the snail hibernated. The young of any species are always more vulnerable. In this case, the adults’ “reproductive success” was a “complete failure.”² In plain terms, the babies died and kept dying, and a species millions of years old is now a pile of shell fragments.

We are living in a period of mass extinction. What is your personal carrying capacity for grief, rage, despair? The numbers stand at 120 species a day.³ That’s 50,000 a year. This culture is oblivious to their passing, entitled to their every last niche, and there is no roll call on the nightly news.

We already have a name for the tsunami wave of extermination: the Holocene extinction event. There’s no asteroid this time, only human behavior, behavior that we could choose to stop. Adolph Eichman’s excuse was that no one told him that the concentration camps were wrong. We’ve all seen the pictures of the drowning polar bears. Are we so ethically numb that we need to be told this is wrong?

There are voices raised in concern, even anguish, at the plight of the earth, the rending of its species. “Only zero emissions can prevent a warmer planet,” one pair of climatologists declared.⁴ Or James Lovelock, originator of the Gaia hypothesis, who states bluntly that global warming has passed the tipping point, carbon offsetting is a joke, and that “individual lifestyle adjustments” are “a deluded fantasy.”⁵ It’s all true. And self–evident. “Simple living” should start with simple observation: if burning fossil fuels will kill the planet, then stop burning them.

But that conclusion, in all its stark clarity, is not the one anyone’s drawing, from the policy makers to the environmental groups. When they start offering solutions is the exact moment when they stop telling the truth, inconvenient or otherwise. Google “global warming solutions.” The first paid sponsor, www.CampaignEarth.org, urges “No doom and gloom!! When was the last time depression got you really motivated? We’re here to inspire realistic action steps and stories of success.” By “realistic” they don’t mean solutions that actually match the scale of the problem. They mean the usual consumer choices—cloth shopping bags, travel mugs, and misguided dietary advice—which will do exactly nothing to disrupt the troika of industrialization, capitalism, and patriarchy that is skinning the planet alive. But since these actions also won’t disrupt anyone’s life, they’re declared both realistic and a success.

Continue reading at:   http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/05/05-3

From The Dallas Voice: http://www.dallasvoice.com/york-recognize-gay-marriage-1075498.html

Rhode Island considering civil unions; efforts under way in 6 states to ban gay marriage

DANA RUDOLPH | Keen News Service
lisakeen@mac.com
May 5, 2011

The openly gay sponsor of a marriage equality bill in Rhode Island said last week he would push for a civil unions bill instead, setting off a slew of criticism from LGBT groups.

Six states are considering legislation that would ask voters to amend their state constitutions to ban recognition of any legal relationships for same-sex couples. And all this was on the heels of a dramatic loss for a marriage equality bill in Maryland in March.

Has the state legislative fight for marriage equality lost momentum?

Not according to Evan Wolfson, executive director of the national Freedom to Marry group.

“Both Rhode Island and Maryland are very much still in play,” said Wolfson. “. . . The fact that we don’t win it exactly on the day we want . . . doesn’t change the overall momentum that is strongly in our direction.”

The “highest priority” right now, said Wolfson, is New York. He said he is “very hopeful” a marriage bill that is expected to pass the New York State Assembly, which is under Democratic control, will also pass the Senate, where Republicans hold a 32-to-26 majority.

Continue reading at:  http://www.dallasvoice.com/york-recognize-gay-marriage-1075498.html

From Stop Transsexual Hate Blog: http://stoptranssexualhate.blogspot.com/2011/05/dmacc-article-targets-transsexual.html

Reposted with Permission

By Dana Taylor Lane
May 5, 2011

Rob Denson, President of Des Moines Area Community College, you were made aware of an article that puts the safety of transsexual and transgender students at risk,  yet did not act to protect these students that were targeted in this article. Shame on you. One of these students is a personal friend of mine. You are being called out to denounce this article, and it’s bigotry,  and show your support for making your college a safe place for transsexual and transgender people.

When you read something like this, you find it just hard to believe. How could a an editor of a school newspaper approve an article like this be printed? Joe Murphy, who is a staff writer for a DMACC Urban Campus  newspaper called Urban Vibe wrote an article, titled “Is it invasion of privacy or law given right?”, which brings attention to the fact that there are transgender individuals on campus and then goes on to give specific building number that these students use the restroom at. This poses a a direct threat against these Male to Female Transgender students being incited by the newspaper. And the school’s administration, even though they have been made aware, ignore it. They do not step forward to protect these students.

So, when you think of ‘education’ you think ‘educated’, right? Well, that is not how they roll at DMACC. Some of the most ignorant things I have ever heard about treatment of transsexuals are from this article.

Now, if you notice, most of the quotes from faculty and students are anonymous and we know why. They would never stand behind what they are saying. Now, my question is this. Who instigated this article? Why are there no positive quotes from student and faculty (which you would expect at an educational facility)? It is simple, bigotry is strong there and someone wants to make transsexual and transgender feel unwelcome at this college.

See below for one of the incredibly uneducated students at this college.

Brian Martin, who is a student there said: “If I seen a dude, where he is dressed like a woman or not, I would grab him by the collar and correct the direction in which he was moving”

Keep in mind that State of Iowa has laws in place to protects these transsexual and transgender students which Joe Murphy calls “mumbo jumbo”. Tell that to the transsexual and transgender people who are attacked and killed each year.. The author of the article even elaborates this before calling on people to watch the bathroom in building #1 for illicit transsexual and transgender pee sessions.

If this whole situation doesn’t outrage you, well, it should. Contact the College President and let him know how you feel.

Robert J. Denson
President
Des Moines Area Community College
515-964-6638
rjdenson@dmacc.edu

 

Nadine Dorries and sex education lessons for girls

Nadine Dorries wants more sex education for girls, but her own understanding seems a little limited. The Conservative MP has won support from parliament for more abstinence lessons for girls. Yes, just girls, who manage to produce Britain’s high teenage pregnancy rate all on their own. There’s a confusing sex education lesson right there.

Dorries said her 10-minute bill was “about giving empowerment to young girls”. It is nothing of the sort. It is an atavistic move that in effect blames weak-willed, ill-educated teenage girls for many of society’s ills. If they could just learn to say no, this former nurse believes we could see an end to too much sex on the telly, porn magazines in newspaper shops and padded bikinis for seven-year-olds as well as the highest teenage pregnancy rates outside America.

“Society is focused on sex. Teaching a child at the age of seven to apply a condom on a banana is almost saying: now go and try this for yourself,” she said.

It is hard not to agree with Chris Bryant, the Labour MP who called her bill “the daftest piece of legislation I have seen brought forward”. Within minutes of the vote, in which just 67 MPs trumped the 61 MPs against the bill, the Twittersphere had set up a #dorries hashtag in which the controversy-courting MP was accused of being anti-women, among other things.

It’s fair to say she has form on this: she has criticised David Cameron’s proposal to create all-women shortlists for prospective MPs, tried to ban women wearing high heels at work as the resulting pain made them take time off work, and tried to reduce the point at which an abortion can take place from 24 to 21 weeks. She is still keen to table an amendment insisting on compulsory counselling for women who want abortions, arguing again that if they are just told the options they will pick the right way.

Continue reading at:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/the-womens-blog-with-jane-martinson/2011/may/04/nadine-dorries-sex-education-lessons

From Alternet: http://www.alternet.org/economy/150839/shocker%3A_only_6_out_of_100_applicants_can_get_a_job_at_mcdonald%27s_–_it%27s_time_for_politicians_to_stop_ignoring_our_jobs_crisis/

McDonald’s just hired 62,000 new workers, out of 1 million applications.

By Scott Paul
May 4, 2011

Within a week, as the news and analysis of Osama bin Laden’s demise fades, the American people will focus once again on the issues that matter most to their daily lives. For most Americans, that includes the jobs market and the state of our economy.

But no one is talking about jobs. Except for American voters, that is. Does anyone in Washington care — or even know, for that matter — that jobs and the economy are still the most important issues to voters?

The April employment report will be released on Friday. There may be a dip in the current 8.8 percent unemployment rate and a jump in private sector job growth, but we are not likely to see real progress. Keep in mind that our economy needs to add at least 150,000 new jobs every month just to keep pace with new entrants into the job market. While other economic indicators, such as the stock market and GDP growth, are rising, employment is lagging far behind. In fact, job growth after this recession is the weakest on record. Ultimately, job security matters the most to the American people.

We are now more than four months into the new congress, and discounting partisan rhetoric, congress and the administration have paid scant attention to the plight of the unemployed. Leaders of both parties would be wise to heed the vision of Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign that toppled a clueless incumbent: It’s the economy, stupid.

Last week, McDonald’s announced with much fanfare that, after sifting through more than 1 million applications, it will be hiring 62,000 new workers. As one sly writer noted, a higher percentage of applicants got rejected by McDonald’s than by Harvard, though the prestige of flipping Big Macs is not yet on par with a Harvard degree. We will not “win the future” by relying on low-wage service sector jobs to lead employment growth.

Continue reading at:  http://www.alternet.org/economy/150839/shocker%3A_only_6_out_of_100_applicants_can_get_a_job_at_mcdonald%27s_–_it%27s_time_for_politicians_to_stop_ignoring_our_jobs_crisis/

From World Socialist Web Site: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/may2011/pers-m05.shtml

Keith Jones
5 May 2011
By propelling Stephen Harper and his Conservative Party to a majority government in the May 2nd elections, the Canadian ruling elite has revealed that its aim is to force workers back to conditions of class oppression not seen throughout most of the twentieth century.

Canada, like the United States and other major industrialized countries, stands on the brink of explosive class struggles. As the elections’ results show, the bourgeoisie’s program of social reaction is opposed by the majority of the electorate. While the Conservatives now hold 54 percent of the seats in the Canada House of Commons, they in fact won the support of less than a quarter of the electorate.

The votes Harper did win were based on a political fraud—claims that the Conservative Party, the result of the merger of the remnants of the Progressive Conservatives and the hard right Reform/Canadian Alliance, are moderates. Warnings about the character of Harper’s policies were dismissed as conspiracy theories about a “hidden agenda.”

The Canadian ruling class is not hiding Harper’s reactionary agenda, however, but shamelessly flaunting it.

Canadian big business is clamoring for the dismantling of Canada’s purportedly “unsustainable” universal public health insurance plan, Medicare. According to a recently released report co-authored by a former Bank of Canada governor and quickly endorsed by the corporate media, Medicare is “suffering from chronic spending disease.” Through a combination of sharply reduced coverage and privatization, responsibility for providing health care is to be shifted from the state to individuals and their families.

The scale of the attacks that are being prepared is revealed not only by the Canadian bourgeoisie’s plans, but also by similar cuts being announced internationally. In all the old industrialized powers, the bourgeoisie has responded to the 2008 crash and the global slump by trying to destroy what remains of the social benefits that workers wrenched from big business through colossal social struggles in the last century.

Continue reading at:  http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/may2011/pers-m05.shtml

Racist Birthers just can’t help themselves.  These sons and daughters of the KKK just can’t stand it that we have a Black President who was born of an inter-racial marriage.  It  just twists their racist scum bag minds in knots and leaves them babbling incoherent racist shit.

From Raw Story:  http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/05/05/pam-geller-obama-illegitimate-because-parents-had-sham-marriage/

Conservative activist Pam Geller now believes she has insight into the intimate details of President Barack Obama’s parents’ marriage.

The anti-Muslim Geller took up the cause of birtherism in a recent World Net Daily article where she claimed Obama was an illegitimate president because he was also an illegitimate child.

Her allegations were based on a recently released immigration file of President Obama’s father, Barack Obama Sr.

“Stanley Ann Dunham was a white girl in a family way with a mixed-race child, desperate for legitimacy in a culture that condemned such behavior as abject immorality, and Barack Obama Sr. was a con man from Kenya desperate to stay in the USA,” she wrote. “Was the marriage merely a business arrangement (she was 17 when she got pregnant)? Is that why it was so important to place the ads in the Hawaiian papers announcing the birth of the future president — because his father was about to be deported?”

Geller continued: “Stanley Ann Dunham could not have been so savvy as to know that BHO I was a Muslim polygamist. Yet clearly, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., was never divorced from his first wife in Kenya.”

“That would make the president illegitimate,” she declared. “In 1787, illegitimate children had different rights. There is no way the founders of this great nation intended for an illegitimate child of a foreign bigamist to attain the highest, most powerful position in the new land.”

Continue reading at:  http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/05/05/pam-geller-obama-illegitimate-because-parents-had-sham-marriage/

Smash Racism, Smash Racists

From GID Reform:  http://gidreform.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/apa-releases-2nd-proposal-to-replace-gid-in-the-dsm-5/

Reposted with Permission

May 5, 2011

Kelley Winters, Ph.D.
GID Reform Advocates
www.gidreform.org
kelley@gidreform.org

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), published by the American Psychiatric Association, is the medical and social definition of mental disorder throughout North America and strongly influences international nomenclature. There is broad recognition that some kind of diagnostic coding is necessary to facilitate access to medical and/or surgical transition care for those trans and transsexual people who need it. However, the current psychiatric classifications of Gender Identity Disorder (GID) and Transvestic Fetishism (TF) in the Fourth Edition, Text Revision of the DSM (DSM-IV-TR) fall short of meeting this need and actually contradict transition by describing transition itself as symptomatic of mental disorder.

Today, the Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders Workgroup of the DSM-5 Task Force released a second revision to proposed diagnostic criteria to replace the Gender Identity Disorder category in the DSM-5.

Most significant, the ambiguously defined title of Gender Incongruence has been replaced by Gender Dysphoria (from a Greek root for distress). The work group noted that,

Many commentators recommended ‘gender dysphoria’ as a semantically more appropriate term, because it expresses an aversive emotional component. In this regard, it should be noted that the term ‘gender dysphoria’ has a long history in clinical sexology (see Fisk, 1973) and thus is one that is quite familiar to clinicians who specialize in this area.

A number of trans health organizations and clinicians have advocated nomenclature focused on distress with the wrong physical sex characteristics or the wrong social gender role rather than difference from expectations of assigned birth-sex. Despite some confusion between dysphoria and dysmorphia (delusional self-image) in the press and in the transcommunity, I think dysphoria more clearly communicates distress as the diagnostic focus than alternative terms and represents a positive step forward.

This revised proposal also re-introduces a clinical significance criterion, B, which clarifies that diagnosis requires distress or impairment that meets a clinical threshold. This criterion is present in the DSM-IV but was removed from the first DSM-5 proposal. Parents of affirmed/transitioned youth and care providers have raised concerns that removal of the clinical significance criterion would further obscure the medical necessity of puberty delaying medications as well as hormonal and surgical transition care. The work group has demonstrated a willingness to listen to these concerns. However, the specific wording of this criterion will likely be debated among community and medical advocates in coming weeks.

The first diagnostic criterion is unfortunately unchanged from the first DSM-5 proposal. It ambiguously describes gender identity and a desire for transition related treatment as foci of pathology. The corresponding criterion for children is especially problematic, as it describes gender expression that differs from assigned birth roles as symptomatic of mental illness.

The work group also added a Post-transition specifier, intended to aid continued access to hormonal care after the distress of gender dysphoria has been relieved by transition. However, it will certainly raise controversy by blocking exit from the diagnosis to those whose distress has been successfully relieved by transition related care.

Finally, the work group noted that, “gender diagnoses will be separated from the sexual dysfunctions and paraphilias.” This change in categorical placement of the Gender Dysphoria category would also represent forward progress in the DSM-5, although many advocates and care providers have pushed to move the new diagnosis out of the Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders section altogether.

The second gender category of Transvestic Disorder remains in the DSM-5 proposal, despite broad opposition from the transcommunity, care providers and allies.

The deadline for public comments on this revised proposal is now June 15, 2011. Unfortunately, this will pass before the Symposium of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) in September. WPATH played an active role in providing feedback on the previous proposal in 2010. The DSM-5 Task Force has announced a third round of revisions  and another period of public feedback to follow.

Proposed Diagnostic Criteria for Gender Dysphoria (in Adolescents or Adults)**

See http://www.dsm5.org/ProposedRevision/Pages/proposedrevision.aspx?rid=482#

A. A marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and assigned gender, of at least 6 months duration, as manifested by 2^* or more of the following indicators: [2, 3, 4]**

1. a marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and primary and/or secondary sex characteristics (or, in young adolescents, the anticipated secondary sex characteristics) [13, 16]

2. a strong desire to be rid of one’s primary and/or secondary sex characteristics because of a marked incongruence with one’s experienced/expressed gender (or, in young adolescents, a desire to prevent the development of the anticipated secondary sex characteristics) [17]

3. a strong desire for the primary and/or secondary sex characteristics of the other gender

4. a strong desire to be of the other gender (or some alternative gender different from one’s assigned gender)

5. a strong desire to be treated as the other gender (or some alternative gender different from one’s assigned gender)

6. a strong conviction that one has the typical feelings and reactions of the other gender (or some alternative gender different from one’s assigned gender)

B. The condition is associated with clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning,  or with a significantly increased risk of suffering, such as distress or disability**

Subtypes

With a disorder of sex development [14]

Without a disorder of sex development

See also: [15, 16, 19]

Specifier**

Post-transition, i.e., the individual has transitioned to full-time living in the desired gender (with or without legalization of gender change) and has undergone (or is undergoing) at least one cross-sex medical procedure or treatment regimen, namely, regular cross-sex hormone treatment or gender reassignment surgery confirming the desired gender (e.g., penectomy, vaginoplasty in a natal male, mastectomy, phalloplasty in a natal female).

Note: Three changes have been made since the initial website launch in February 2010: the name of the diagnosis, the addition of the B criterion, and the addition of a specifier. Definitions and criterion under A remain unchanged.

Proposed Diagnostic Criteria for Gender Dysphoria in Children

See http://www.dsm5.org/ProposedRevision/Pages/proposedrevision.aspx?rid=192

A. A marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and assigned gender, of at least 6 months duration, as manifested by at least 6^* of the following indicators (including A1): [2, 3, 4]

1. a strong desire to be of the other gender or an insistence that he or she is the other gender (or some alternative gender different from one’s assigned gender) [5]

2. in boys, a strong preference for cross-dressing or simulating female attire; in girls, a strong preference for wearing only typical masculine clothing and a strong resistance to the wearing of typical feminine clothing [6]

3. a strong preference for cross-gender roles in make-believe or fantasy play [7]

4. a strong preference for the toys, games, or activities typical of the other gender [8]

5. a strong preference for playmates of the other gender [9]

6. in boys, a strong rejection of typically masculine toys, games, and activities and a strong avoidance of rough-and-tumble play; in girls, a strong rejection of typically feminine toys, games, and activities [10]

7. a strong dislike of one’s sexual anatomy [11]

8. a strong desire for the primary and/or secondary sex characteristics that match one’s experienced gender [12]

B. The condition is associated with clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning, or with a significantly increased risk of suffering, such as distress or disability.**

Subtypes

With a disorder of sex development [14]

Without a disorder of sex development]

See also [13, 15, 19]

Note: Two changes have been made since the initial website launch in February 2010: the name of the diagnosis and the addition of the B criterion. Definitions and criteria under A remain unchanged.

From The Dallas Voice: http://www.dallasvoice.com/calif-ag-prop-8-backers-defend-marriage-ban-1075177.html

LISA LEFF | Associated Press
May 4, 2011

SAN FRANCISCO — California’s attorney general has again come out against the state’s same-sex marriage ban, this time telling the state Supreme Court the proponents of successful ballot initiatives do not have the right to defend their measures in court.

Kamala Harris, a Democrat who succeeded Gov. Jerry Brown in January as attorney general, submitted an amicus brief Monday in the ongoing legal dispute over the voter-approved ban known as Proposition 8.

In it, she argued that only public officials exercising the executive power of government have authority to represent the state when laws passed by voters or the Legislature are challenged.

“California law affords an initiative’s proponents no right to defend the validity of a successful initiative measure based only on their role in launching an initiative process,” Harris wrote.

The question of where the role of ballot measure backers ends is critical to the legal fight over California’s ban on same-sex marriages. Both Brown and former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger refused to defend the 2008 constitutional amendment on appeal after a federal judge struck it down last summer as a violation of civil rights.

Proposition 8′s sponsors asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to allow them to step in, but the court punted the question to the California Supreme Court earlier this year, saying it was a matter of state law.

If the sponsors are not permitted to intervene, the lower court ruling overturning Proposition 8 will stand.

Continue reading at:  http://www.dallasvoice.com/calif-ag-prop-8-backers-defend-marriage-ban-1075177.html

From Gay NZ:  http://www.gaynz.com/articles/publish/3/article_10299.php

Posted in: International News
By GayNZ.com Daily News staff – 30th April 2011

Writer and critic Joanna Russ has died in Arizona after suffering a series of strokes.

Science fiction publication Locus Magazine has confirmed the 74-year-old died peacefully in hospice care in Tucson. She first suffered a stroke in February and was admitted to care in April after a further series of strokes.

The lesbian writer first came to prominence in the late 60s in a science fiction world largely dominated by men. She is lauded as being one of the most outspoken authors to challenge male dominance in the field, and is generally regarded as one of the leading feminist science fiction scholars and writers.

Russ was best know for The Female Man, which was published in 1975. She suffered from health problems including back pain and chronic fatigue syndrome, which reduced her writing output.

From Raw Story: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/05/03/koch-brothers-pick-a-fight-with-the-new-yorker/

By Kase Wickman
Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011

Oil baron brothers David and Charles Koch aren’t the types to throw out old magazines, according to recent reports. The Koch brothers have taken up against the American Association of Magazine Editors, who recently nominated an anti-Koch New Yorker article for a National Magazine Award in reporting.

Jane Mayer’s “Covert Operations: The Billionaire Brothers Who Are Waging War Against Obama” ran last August. The Koch brother declined to be interviewed for the piece.

Now, a representative for the Koch brothers has written a letter to the ASME board, protesting the nomination of Mayer’s piece.

“Her article is ideologically slanted and a prime example of a disturbing trend in journalism, where agenda-driven advocacy masquerades as objective reporting,” wrote Koch Industries Senior Vice President and general counsel Mark Holden, according to the New York Post.

Continue reading at:  http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/05/03/koch-brothers-pick-a-fight-with-the-new-yorker/

Ah yes a disturbing trend an actual independent media that reports on the rich elite neo-fascists attempting to destroy American Democracy.