I really fed up with the Reich Wing Christo-Fascist Taliban cramming their fucking conformity,  gender and otherwise down peoples throats.

I came of age in the 1960s when we had to fight for the rights of boys to have long hair and girls to wear pants in school.  Not to mention the right for both boys and girls to wear jeans.

Then for about 15 years we enjoyed a taste of freedom of self-expression through dress for both kids and adults.

I liked hippie era hair, long and flowing, big Afros, beards on guys who felt free to wear paisley and velvet.  Once there was freedom instead of rigid conformity.

Fuck the idea that we have to be a bunch of damned plastic human resource consumerbot clones with a smile plastered on our faces and a corporate approved uniforms.

Now I’d rather wear athletic shoes than heels but I’ve known more than a few rock and roll dudes with the gender fuck punk drag look and they were cooler than the Wall Street scum by a million miles.

Sometimes freedom is about things that seem trivial.

And sometimes young gay kids strike real blows against the tyranny of both genderism and sexism with small acts of fuck you protests.

And yeah, Why are clothes presumed to have gender?  Is it because we are told that this collection of fibers is male only or female only?

From WIVB:   http://www.wivb.com/dpp/news/local/high-heeled-boy-prompts-protest

Niagara Falls boy claims double standard

George Richert 
Thursday, 22 Dec 2011

NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. (WIVB) – There is controversy in the halls of a local high school over how a teenaged boy was treated when he wore high heels to school.

More than 20 supporters turned out in front of Niagara Falls High School on Thursday for 17-year-old junior Tyreese Maye. The openly gay student wasn’t allowed to wear the same bright red high heels that many girls were wearing in the high school.

“I wore some high stiletto red heels and I had many girls wear them, too, just to see who they would pick out first. I didn’t even last a period because I went to breakfast and they told me to take them off. It was an administrator and he told me to take them off and I told him, ‘Tell this girl to take her heels off.’ And he said, ‘No, I’m making you take yours off first.’ And I said, ‘That’s not fair,’” said Maye.

He first refused to take them off, but gave in after he says he was threatened with suspension in the principal’s office.

Student Autumn Gotel said, “I had on heels yesterday all day long; they let me wear them walking up and down the stairs all day. There’s about five or six of my friends had on heels they didn’t say anything. They say the reason Tyreese couldn’t wear his heels was because it was distracting.”

Continue reading at:  http://www.wivb.com/dpp/news/local/high-heeled-boy-prompts-protest

The National Partnership for Women and Families: http://www.nationalpartnership.org/site/News2?abbr=daily4_&page=NewsArticle&id=31467&security=1521&news_iv_ctrl=-1

January 4, 2012

In 2011, state-level legislation to limit abortion rights did more to reshape access to the procedure “than any other year in three decades,” Sarah Kliff writes in the Washington Post‘s “Wonkblog.” Five states enacted bans on abortion after 20 weeks of gestation, seven states now require abortion providers to perform or offer an ultrasound prior to the procedure and eight states now bar private health insurers from covering abortion services, Kliff notes. She cites data from the Guttmacher Institute showing that states in 2011 passed 83 laws restricting access to abortion services, nearly four times the amount passed in 2010.

Much of the shift can be traced to Republican victories in the 2010 elections, which raised from 10 to 15 the number of states in which both the governor and legislative majority oppose abortion rights. Kliff writes that the most meaningful battles over abortion access typically are fought at the state level. “[T]hat means that a rise in the number of antiabortion governors and legislators has an enormous impact on the abortion rights landscape, paving the way for laws that could shape access for years to come,” she writes.

According to Kliff, the restrictions on private abortion coverage could have some of the most significant effects on access to the procedure. The federal health reform debate cast a spotlight on the issue, which was seldom debated prior to that point. The antiabortion-rights group Americans United for Life wrote draft legislation for states on how to limit insurance coverage of abortion services.

Kliff notes that over the past two years, the number of states that prohibit private insurance plans from covering abortion has increased from five to eight. Five states also have passed legislation prohibiting private health plans from offering such coverage on the insurance exchanges, which will launch in 2014 as part of the federal health reform law (PL 111-148) (Kliff, Washington Post, 12/29).

From The Guardian UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jan/04/chevron-accused-racism-ecuador-pollution

Oil giant vows to continue fight after appeals court rules it must pay $18bn for dumping toxic waste in Amazon basin

From Common Dreams:   http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/04-8

by Michael Schwalbe
Published on Wednesday, January 4, 2012 by CommonDreams.org

You don’t have to be a Marxist to see that capitalism generates inequalities in wealth and income. As long as a relative few control society’s major productive resources, and as long as they can, by virtue of this control, dictate terms of employment to everyone else, inequality is inevitable. It’s what the system is designed to produce. Yet even in capitalist societies the degree of economic inequality can vary. How much inequality there is depends on a lot of things.

It depends, for instance, on worker organization. When workers are organized, they’re better able to fight for higher wages and to represent their interests in the political sphere. When workers are disorganized, capitalists can easily “capture the state” and use it to make laws that rig the game in their favor. The more control over government that capitalists achieve, the worse the rigging and the greater the inequality that results.

Inequality also depends on capitalist organization. An internally cohesive capitalist class is more powerful than a factionalized one. The worst situation is when capitalists are united and workers are divided. That’s when we’re likely to see runaway inequality.

The opportunities available for profit-making matter, too. If capitalists in one country can super exploit workers in another country — colonialism is the classic example — they are usually less aggressive about sticking it to their working-class fellow citizens. This translates into a bit less domestic inequality, at the price of more international inequality.

Likewise, capitalists will accept more equality if an economy is growing. When the pie is getting bigger, capitalists don’t try so hard to get more for themselves at everyone else’s expense. If workers take advantage of these periods of growth to press for higher wages, inequality can be reduced. But, again, it’s a matter of degree; even a rapidly growing capitalist economy remains an engine for generating inequality.

Continue reading at:  http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/04-8

From Yes Magazine:  http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/a-bill-of-rights-for-occupied-communities

A bill of rights that protects people and nature, but not corporations? Your community could be next.

From The Guardian UK:   http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jan/04/ecuador-upholds-chevron-fine

Oil company vows to continue fight against ruling that subsidiary Texaco polluted Amazon rainforest

From Think Progress:   http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/01/04/397924/florida-bill-would-make-abortion-a-felony-with-a-maximum-sentence-of-life-in-prison/

By Tanya Somanader
on Jan 4, 2012

Florida state Rep. Charles Van Zant (R) is starting 2012 with yet another radical effort to ban all abortionsin the state unless the woman’s life is in danger. Declaring that “the Legislature acknowledges that all persons are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that first among these is their right to life,” the Florida for Life Act would essentially (and unconstitutionally) make it a felony to perform an abortion except when a physician meets very specific circumstances. The Florida Independent reports:

A termination of pregnancy may not be performed unless:

(a) Two physicians certify in writing to the fact that, to a reasonable degree of medical certainty, the termination of pregnancy is necessary to prevent the death of the patient;

Continue reading at:   http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/01/04/397924/florida-bill-would-make-abortion-a-felony-with-a-maximum-sentence-of-life-in-prison/

Just a reminder!

From SF Gate:  http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/01/03/bloomberg_articlesLX0Z3W0UQVI9.DTL

William D. Cohan, ©2012 Bloomberg News
Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Jan. 3 (Bloomberg) — It took a relatively obscure former British academic to propagate a theory of the financial crisis that would confirm what many people suspected all along: The “corporate psychopaths” at the helm of our financial institutions are to blame.

Clive R. Boddy, most recently a professor at the Nottingham Business School at Nottingham Trent University, says psychopaths are the 1 percent of “people who, perhaps due to physical factors to do with abnormal brain connectivity and chemistry” lack a “conscience, have few emotions and display an inability to have any feelings, sympathy or empathy for other people.”

As a result, Boddy argues in a recent issue of the Journal of Business Ethics, such people are “extraordinarily cold, much more calculating and ruthless towards others than most people are and therefore a menace to the companies they work for and to society.”

How do people with such obvious personality flaws make it to the top of seemingly successful corporations? Boddy says psychopaths take advantage of the “relative chaotic nature of the modern corporation,” including “rapid change, constant renewal” and high turnover of “key personnel.” Such circumstances allow them to ascend through a combination of “charm” and “charisma,” which makes “their behaviour invisible” and “makes them appear normal and even to be ideal leaders.”

From World Socialist Web Site:  http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/jan2012/euro-j04.shtml

By Stefan Steinberg
4 January 2012

2011 was a year of austerity for Europe. At the behest of the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, stringent programs imposing cuts in wages, pensions and social services, combined with the decimation of jobs, were introduced by governments across the continent.

These austerity measures, designed to pay for massive bailouts of the banks following the financial crash of 2008, are now plunging Europe into new economic and social turmoil. This is confirmed by the most recent economic figures, which indicate that 2012 will be a year of renewed recession in Europe.

The first economic statistics for Europe issued in the new year show that manufacturing across the euro zone declined in December, the fifth consecutive month of decreased output. Overall economic growth in the 17-nation euro zone was anemic throughout the second half of 2011, increasing by just 0.2 percent between July and September. The performance of the 27 economies of the entire European Union was only slightly higher, at 0.3 percent. Since September the general trend has been downwards.

While Europe’s biggest economy, Germany, recorded significant economic growth in the second half of 2011, other major economies such as Italy and Spain registered large falls in production.

French manufacturing has also suffered from the slump in demand across the continent. PSA Peugeot Citroën, Europe’s second-biggest carmaker after Volkswagen, recorded a 29 percent fall in its December sales, while the country’s second major car producer, Renault, registered a 28 percent drop. “Orders were down about 55 percent in December, which leads us to expect a car market contraction of 17 percent in the first quarter of 2012,” said Renault sales chief Bernard Cambier.

Continue reading at:   http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/jan2012/euro-j04.shtml

From Forbes:  http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2012/01/03/china-set-to-frack-america-in-shale-deal-with-devon/

Christopher Helman, Forbes Staff
1/03/2012

Showing that it isn’t worried about the upswell of angst over hydraulic fracking technology, the Chinese government, through state-controlled Sinopec, today struck a deal with Devon Energy to buy into five prospective new exploration areas in the U.S.

The deal, which includes $900 million in cash upfront and a promise of $1.6 billion in the years ahead to cover drilling and development, gives the Chinese a 33% stake in five of Devon’s fields, and a front row seat to what is effectively the second wave of development of U.S. shale assets. The areas in question include the Tuscaloosa in Louisiana, the Niobrara in Colorado, the Mississippian in Devon’s home state of Oklahoma, the Utica in Ohio and the Michigan basin.

This isn’t the first time a Chinese company has bitten off a piece of shale — Cnooc has partnered with Chesapeake Energy in the Eagle Ford and Niobrara in recent years — but it is the first onshore U.S. foray for Sinopec.

Continue reading at:  http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2012/01/03/china-set-to-frack-america-in-shale-deal-with-devon/

From Alternet: http://www.alternet.org/economy/153640/why_spain%E2%80%99s_new_government_is_drinking_austerity_kool-aid_and_how_this_threatens_the_global_economy/

European elites push economic myths that benefit the rich and screw the rest. Spain’s program means even higher public deficits, fewer jobs, and slowed growth.

By Marshall Auerback 
January 3, 2012

Spain’s new government said late last month that this year’s budget deficit would be much larger than expected and announced a slew of surprise tax hikes and wage freezes that could drag the country back to the center of the eurozone debt crisis. The government plans to enact public spending cuts of 8.9 billion euros ($11.5 billion) and tax hikes aimed at bringing in an additional 6 billion euros a year to tackle the shortfall. Given what has happened to Greece, and now Italy, it is almost certain that this will have the opposite impact of that which the Spanish government wants: there will be HIGHER public deficits at the end of the day, as the cuts curtail economic growth even further.

Self-inflicted Catastrophe

Spanish employment fell by a whopping 72,075 in November, which came on the heels of an even bigger 82,944 decline in October. The Spanish employment data is really terrible. To get a feel for these numbers, you have to realize that Spain’s employment is about one-eighth that of the U.S. We are talking about employment declines in the last two months that would correspond to monthly declines of more than 600,000 if it were the U.S. economy. In the prior three months Spain’s employment declines corresponded to the equivalent of almost 300,000 job declines a month in the U.S. Would anyone doubt that the U.S. was in a deep recession if it reported such horrible employment data? Of course not.

The eurozone, indeed, the entire global economy, continues to experience a self-inflicted catastrophe, largely because of dangerously destructive myths about fiscal policy. In spite of the shrill rhetoric of the fiscal austerity brigades, the evidence in Europe continues to mount that a nation cannot have a fiscal contraction expansion when all other spending is flat or going backwards. Unless you want an economic disaster.

Let’s look at some macroeconomic issues in a simplified form:

Continue reading at:   http://www.alternet.org/economy/153640/why_spain%E2%80%99s_new_government_is_drinking_austerity_kool-aid_and_how_this_threatens_the_global_economy/