Good for you Chaz…

It’s kind of refreshing to have a brother talking about actual SRS and how important it is to him.

Just like it rocked my world to read Max Wolf Valerio’s memoir and hear some real honesty about the effects of taking hormones.

I get tired of having the physical dismissed.  Especially when self-proclaimed trans-men are giving birth to children.  Which is doubly offensive since transsexual and transgender women are told they aren’t really women since they can’t give birth to children.

Double standard or what?

From Rolling Stone:  http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/chaz-bono-im-saving-to-buy-a-penis-20120105

‘There’s different ways to do the surgery, from real basic to more and more options. It’s like a car.’

As you know, Chaz Bono, 42, has been through some changes lately. He started off as a girl named Chastity, the sole offspring of singers Cher and Sonny Bono; appeared on their TV show in the mid-Seventies as a cute little girl with curly locks, waving at the audience; came out as a lesbian in 1995; reconsidered her sexual identity a few years later; started testosterone treatments to become a dude; got a mastectomy to remove her breasts; started lifting weights; can presently curl 25 pounds with each hand; started going shirtless as often as he could, because, damn it, he was a man now and he could; got on the Dancing With the Stars TV program; was variously called a basketball, a penguin and an Ewok; got booted off after six weeks; has continued to stay in the news, what with Warren Beatty’s transgender son calling him a misogynist and him proposing to his girlfriend, Jennifer Elia, 36, atop the Seattle Space Needle, and then breaking up with her in December. It’s enough to make your head spin. What’s not generally known, however, is that, ever since the end of DWTS, Chaz has been studying his finances, adding up the credits and debits, and is pretty sure that within a short while he will finally be able to afford to get himself a penis.

He says he’s never felt better. He no longer numbs himself with painkillers and booze, for instance, and he no longer loses himself for days at a time in video games, though he still likes to play them. He has stopped smoking, too; it was quite an ordeal, until he learned of a certain frightening possibility if he continued.

“The way I had my top surgery done,” he says, “they take your nipples off, and from your old nipples, they make male nipples. They totally re-craft them, let’s say, and then they graft them back on. So it’s a graft, and grafts don’t always heal, and then this transgender guy that my girlfriend met said, ‘I know people who were smokers whose nipples have fallen off.’ When she told me that, that was all the incentive I needed. I went cold turkey.”

In 2002, Tina and I were living on Long Island.  We read The New York Times daily.  It wasn’t Fox News that led us to believe we needed to support Bush Jr.’s invasion and occupation of Iraq, it was the New York Times.

Later I remembered how when I was a teenager, the Times was all gung-ho about the War in Vietnam…  At least until the Tet Offensive, My-Lai and photos of ARVN Generals blowing people’s brains out or napalmed little girls running naked down the road started appearing.

I’m not a fan of Iran’s government, nor the way they treat women, but if that was the criteria for going to war we would be at war with all of the Middle East, and major portions of Africa.

I’m also tired of having America sucked into conflicts on the side of Israel, a state that has become increasingly right wing and fascist since the 1980s.  I strongly suspect our support for Israel in these matters is just a disguise for our wanting to wage neo-colonial wars in support of the oil industry.

By the way President Chimpy and his band of lying “Intelligence” scum ran the same bullshit by us regarding Saddam Hussein.  Do they really fucking think our short term memory is so bad that we would forget this shit in a mere ten years?

So cut the fucking crap.

No War. No Blood for Oil.

From Common Dreams:  https://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/06-8

by Robert Naiman
Published on Friday, January 6, 2012 by CommonDreams.org

It’s deja vu all over again. AIPAC is trying to trick America into another catastrophic war with a Middle Eastern country on behalf of the Likud Party’s colonial ambitions, and the New York Times is lying about allegations that said country is developing “weapons of mass destruction.”

In an article attributed to Steven Erlanger on January 4 (“Europe Takes Bold Step Toward a Ban on Iranian Oil “), this paragraph appeared:

The threats from Iran, aimed both at the West and at Israel, combined with a recent assessment by the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran’s nuclear program has a military objective, is becoming an important issue in the American presidential campaign. [my emphasis]

The claim that there is “a recent assessment by the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran’s nuclear program has a military objective” is a lie.

As Washington Post Ombudsman Patrick Pexton noted on December 9,

But the IAEA report does not say Iran has a bomb, nor does it say it is building one, only that its multiyear effort pursuing nuclear technology is sophisticated and broad enough that it could be consistent with building a bomb.

Indeed, if you try now to find the offending paragraph on the New York Times website, you can’t. They took it down. But there is no note, like there is supposed to be, acknowledging that they changed the article, and that there was something wrong with it before. Sneaky, huh?

Continue reading at:  https://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/06-8

Jeff Moson is the only mixed martial arts fighter I actually know the name of thanks to Dave Zirin. I know of him mainly because he is a anarchist.

From RH Reality Check:   http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/01/03/did-abstinence-only-ideology-create-bully-generation

by Soraya Chemaly
January 5, 2012

Abstinence-only education creates a petri dish for bullying in schools. There is always a lot of back and forth about the efficacy of these programs, and I fall on the side that they demonstrably fail to reduce teen pregnancy, the rate of incidence of teen sex, or the transmission of sexutally transmitted infections (STIs) (all you have to do is look at Texas). In addition, however, I believe that the heyday of our federal investment in abstinence-only programs had a terrible collateral effect — namely, kids who were “educated” in this way were more likely to bully and harass because they learned, in ways integral to abstinence provisions, outdated “traditional” ideas about gender and sexuality. Even kids whose parents talked to them at home, about contraception or healthy sex, were taught gendered rules and more and more of them appear to have enforced those rules to great harm.

To be clear, I am not saying teaching abstinence is the problem. But, teaching abstinence in the context of fully comprehensive, age-appropriate sex ed is qualitatively different from teaching abstinence-only. This is the problem. I am saying that there is something inherently harmful about cultures that insist on abstinence-only teaching.

From 1982 until 2010 funding for abstinence-only programs grew exponentially, from $4 million dollars in 1982 to $176 million in 2007. According to The Department of Health and Human Services, during almost the exact same period, 2001-2008, there was a steady rise of bullying at schools. Fourteen percent of students, ages 12 through 18 reported being bullied during school in 2001, a proportion that more than doubled, to 32 percent, in 2007. Some of the bullying increase might be attributable to better recognition and reporting, but I think that the almost straight line correlation in growth trends during that same period is interesting. A correlation is not necessarily a causation, but here is why I think that there is an intimate dynamic between the two trends:

Elizabeth Meyer, author of the excellent book, Gender, Bullying, and Harassment: Strategies to End Sexism and Homophobia in Schools defines bullying and harassment in the following way:

Continue reading at:   http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/01/03/did-abstinence-only-ideology-create-bully-generation

Anyone connected with the murder of, selling the flesh of or consuming the flesh of endangered species is committing a true crime against nature.

From The Texas Tribune: http://www.texastribune.org/texas-environmental-news/environmental-problems-and-policies/endangered-species-issues-loom-texas/

by Kate Galbraith
January 6, 2012

BASTROP — Near a glade of blackened pines, a Ph.D. student at Texas State University used microchip technology to search for an endangered Houston toad. Her device beeped as she held it over a carpet of pine needles, and after a bit of digging, a live toad emerged, half-buried in dirt.

The creature was waiting for warmer, wetter weather before mating, but its species’ future is grim. The huge wildfires that swept through Bastrop County last fall may wipe it out.

“That was an extinction-level event,” said Michael Forstner, a Texas State biology professor who is overseeing the toad research.

But if the Houston toad becomes extinct and falls off of the federal endangered and threatened species list, plenty of other species are waiting to get on it. More than 20 statewide, including several types of salamanders and snails, are under serious consideration for an endangered listing over the next four years, and dozens more are in the early stages of the process, according to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. Altogether, the agency is reviewing the status of 96 species in Texas as of Nov. 1. Experts call this an unprecedented flurry of activity.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Texas Comptroller Susan Combs said in an interview this week. Her agency says even more species are under watch, including some from the National Marine Fisheries Service. The list of endangered species candidates is “very, very fluid,” she said, and could expand.

Continue reading at:   http://www.texastribune.org/texas-environmental-news/environmental-problems-and-policies/endangered-species-issues-loom-texas/

From The Chicago Tribune: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/sns-201201041800–tms–ahuffcoltq–m-a20120104jan04,0,6073728.column

In 2012, Americans will go to the polls and vote for who they want to represent them in Washington. But, as 2011 showed, the real political momentum is not to be found in Washington. Our institutions have let us down, not only by failing to prevent the biggest financial crisis since the Depression, but also by only producing suboptimal solutions at best to the multiple problems we’re facing.

In fact, the crisis itself was more of a symptom than a cause. The trends had been in motion for decades: the decline of the middle class, growing inequality and downward mobility. But, in 2011, with the credibility of our political system in tatters, something happened. People said “enough,” and decided to take matters into their own hands. Time magazine captured the moment by making the protester its Person of the Year for 2011.

At the beginning of 2011, the tectonic shifts that would define the year had only just begun to rumble. Mohamed Bouazizi, a poor Tunisian fruit vendor, had yet to douse himself in paint thinner and ignite a revolution – one that would be the first of many. Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak sat comfortably poised to enter his fourth decade of dictatorship. And few people, aside from financial workers on their lunch breaks, were aware of the existence of Zuccotti Park, a small concrete plaza in New York’s Financial District that would soon become the beating heart of Occupy Wall Street.

The message of OWS was broad: the status quo is broken, the economic system rigged to unfairly help those who least need it, and we desperately need change. Some criticized the movement for not immediately having tangible, concrete goals. But, in fact, the simplicity of the message was part of what fueled its growth. Its appeal crossed party lines, generational lines and even class lines.

Continue reading at:   http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/sns-201201041800–tms–ahuffcoltq–m-a20120104jan04,0,6073728.column

From Guardian UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jan/06/eurozone-unemployment-hits-new-record

In bailed-out Greece, unemployment stands at 18.8%, up from 13.3%; while Spain now has the highest unemployment rate in Europe, at 22.9%

From Alternet:  http://www.alternet.org/story/153634/7_reasons_america%27s_mental_health_industry_is_a_threat_to_our_sanity/

Drug industry corruption, scientifically unreliable diagnoses and pseudoscientific research have compromised the values of the psychiatric profession.

By Bruce E. Levine
January 6, 2012

Why do some of us become dissident mental health professionals?

The majority of psychiatrists, psychologists and other mental health professionals “go along to get along” and maintain a status quo that includes drug company corruption, pseudoscientific research and a “standard of care” that is routinely damaging and occasionally kills young children. If that sounds hyperbolic, then you probably have not heard of Rebecca Riley, and how the highest levels of psychiatry described her treatment as “appropriate and within responsible professional standards.”

When Rebecca Riley was 28 months old, based primarily on the complaints of her mother that she was “hyper” and had difficulty sleeping, psychiatrist Kayoko Kifuji, at the Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts, diagnosed Rebecca with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Kifuji prescribed clonidine, a hypertensive drug with significant sedating properties, a drug Kifuji also prescribed to Rebecca’s older sister and brother. The goal of the Riley parents—obvious to many in their community and later to juries—was to attain psychiatric diagnoses for their children that would qualify them for disability payments and to sedate their children making them easy to manage.

By the time Rebecca was three years old, again based mainly on parental complaints, Kifuji had given Rebecca an additional diagnosis of bipolar disorder and prescribed two additional heavily sedating drugs, the antipsychotic Seroquel and the anticonvulsant Depakote.

At the age of four, Rebecca was dead.

At the time of her death, Rebecca had a life-threatening amount of clonidine—enough to kill her—in her body, according to the former director of the Massachusetts toxicology lab and the medical director of a regional poison control center. The medical examiner who performed the autopsy concluded that Rebecca died from intoxication of clonidine, Depakote and two over-the-counter cold and cough medicines that led to heart failure, lungs filled with bloody fluid, coma, and then death. Rebecca’s abusive parents went to prison for the over-drugging that led to their daughter’s death.

Kifuji’s fate? The psychiatric establishment rallied around Kifuji, enabling her to return to Tufts Medical Center practicing child psychiatry without any restrictions, penalties or supervision. After Rebecca’s death, Tufts-New England Medical Center defended Kifuji. A Tufts spokesperson told “60 Minutes” in 2009, “The care we provided was appropriate and within responsible professional standards.”

Continue reading at:  http://www.alternet.org/story/153634/7_reasons_america%27s_mental_health_industry_is_a_threat_to_our_sanity/

From Huffington Post:   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/06/pot-activists-threaten-obama-2012_n_1190301.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003

Lucia Graves
1/6/12

WASHINGTON — Medical marijuana activists have a message for President Obama: Defend us from the federal government’s crackdown, or else.

Steve DeAngelo, the pigtailed co-founder and executive director of Harborside Health Center in Oakland, Calif., said that for him, it’s a simple question of who will get his vote for president.

“I will be voting in the Republican primary in California, and I will be voting for one of the candidates who supports our position on medical cannabis. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of other medical cannabis patients join me,” he told The Huffington Post. “There’s a real opening here for Republicans.”

Presidential hopefuls who’ve voiced their support for state-regulated medical marijuana could exploit medical marijuana advocates’ anger at President Obama.

The president as a candidate promised to maintain a hands-off approach toward pot clinics adhering to state law. At a 2007 town hall meeting in Manchester, N.H., Obama said raiding patients who use marijuana for medicinal purposes “makes no sense.” At another town hall in Nashua, N.H., he said the Justice Department’s prosecution of medical marijuana users was “not a good use of our resources.” Yet the number of Justice Department raids on marijuana dispensaries has continued to rise.

Continue reading at:   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/06/pot-activists-threaten-obama-2012_n_1190301.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003