Women Born Transsexual

From Common Dreams:  http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/23-2

by Bill Quigley
Published on Monday, January 23, 2012 by Common Dreams

“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values.” –Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1967

One. Human rights must be taken absolutely seriously. Every single person is entitled to dignity and human rights. No application needed. No exclusions at all. This is our highest priority.

Two. We must radically reinvent contemporary democracy. Current systems are deeply corrupt and not responsive to the needs of people. Representatives chosen by money and influence govern by money and influence. This is unacceptable. Direct democracy by the people is now technologically possible and should be the rule. Communities must be protected whenever they advocate for self-determination, self-development and human rights. Dissent is essential to democracy; we pledge to help it flourish.

Three. Corporations are not people and are not entitled to human rights. Amend the US Constitution so it is clear corporations do not have constitutional or human rights. We the people must cut them down to size and so democracy can regulate their size, scope and actions.

Four. Leave the rest of the world alone. Cut US military spending by 75 percent and bring all troops outside the US home now. Defense of the US is a human right. Global offense and global police force by US military are not. Eliminate all nuclear and chemical and biological weapons. Stop allowing scare tactics to build up the national security forces at home. Stop the myth that the US is somehow special or exceptional and is entitled to act differently than all other nations. The US must re-join the global family of nations as a respectful partner. USA is one of many nations in the world. We must start acting like it.

Continue reading at:  http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/23-2

From The Guardian UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/23/greece-default-only-option-debt

The dreadful debt saga will only come to a close when Greece takes charge of its predicament

Costas Lapavitsas
guardian.co.uk, Monday 23 January 2012

Negotiations to reduce Greek debt have been suspended after no agreement could be reached last week. At some point in the near future Greece seems certain to default on its obligations. But the drama surrounding the talks in Athens, Berlin and Paris shows that there will be nothing co-operative about Greek default. It is a ruthless contest dominated by the so-called troika: the European Union, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund.

At every turn the interests and rights of people across Europe have been disregarded. Negotiations have proceeded in secrecy. Greece, whose government is led by an unelected central banker, is represented by a team of politicians and technocrats who have performed lamentably during the crisis. They have hired bankers Lazard Freres and lawyers Cleary Gottlieb, renowned sovereign default specialists, although the benefits remain to be seen. Those who are owed money by Greece have been represented by the International Institute of Finance, a self-styled mouthpiece for bankers. Other lenders, including hedge funds, have no collective representative.

The troika has accepted that Greek debt must be reduced to sustainable levels; but it also wants the reduction to appear voluntary because, if the lenders were coerced, Greece would be declared in formal default, and banks and financial markets would be thrown into crisis. The troika would also like the reduction to be on terms that would allow immediate fresh loans to Greece – an urgent step if the country is not to stop repayments altogether – and wants Greek debt held by official bodies, including the ECB, to remain intact. Not surprisingly, the circle is proving hard to square.

The debt in question is €200bn. About half belongs to Greeks – banks, social security funds and others – who are first in line to bear the costs of reduction (the “haircut”). Less than a quarter belongs to international banks, and a good part of the rest to hedge funds.

Continue reading at:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/23/greece-default-only-option-debt

From The Advocate:   http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2012/01/23/WASHINGTON_HAS_THE_VOTES_FOR_MARRIAGE/

By Nick Visser and Andrew Harmon
Posted on Advocate.com January 23, 2012

Washington now has enough votes to pass a marriage equality bill in the state Senate, following a state senator’s announcement of her support today after hours of public hearings regarding the measure.

Mary Margaret Haugen became the 25th member of the state senate, and the last vote needed to pass the bill, after scores of same-sex marriage supporters told their stories in the state capital for more than two hours.

The bill, first brought up by Washington governor Christine Gregoire, is expected to easily pass in the House but was one vote short of passage in the Senate until Haugen announced her support this afternoon.

Haugen, a Democrat, cited her “very strong Christian beliefs” as part of the reason she supports marriage equality.

“Only one being in this world is omniscient, and it’s not me,” she said in a statement. “Personally I have always said when I accepted the Lord, I became more tolerant of others. I stopped judging people and try to live by the Golden Rule. This is part of my decision. I do not believe it is my role to judge others, regardless of my personal beliefs.”

Continue reading at:  http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2012/01/23/WASHINGTON_HAS_THE_VOTES_FOR_MARRIAGE/

From The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/education/edlife/a-sharper-mind-middle-age-and-beyond.html?_r=1

By PATRICIA COHEN
Published: January 19, 2012

IN 1905, at age 55, Sir William Osler, the most influential physician of his era, decided to retire from the medical faculty of Johns Hopkins. In a farewell speech, Osler talked about the link between age and accomplishment: The “effective, moving, vitalizing work of the world is done between the ages of 25 and 40 — these 15 golden years of plenty.”

In comparison, he noted, “men above 40 years of age” are useless. As for those over 60, there would be an “incalculable benefit” in “commercial, political and professional life, if, as a matter of course, men stopped work at this age.”

Although such views did not prevent the doctor from going on to accept a post at Oxford University, one he retained until his death at age 70, his contention that brainpower, creativity and innovation have an early expiration date was, unfortunately, widely accepted by others. Until recently, neurologists believed that brain cells died off without being replaced. Psychologists affirmed the supposition by maintaining that the ability to learn trudged steadfastly downward through the years.

Of course, certain capabilities fall off as you approach 50. Memories of where you left the keys or parked the car mysteriously vanish. Words suddenly go into hiding as you struggle to remember the guy, you know, in that movie, what was it called? And calculating the tip on your dinner check seems to take longer than it used to.

Yet it is also true that there is no preordained march toward senescence.

Continue reading at:   http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/education/edlife/a-sharper-mind-middle-age-and-beyond.html?_r=1

From The Daily Mail UK:  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2090253/Oceans-acidified-200-years-did-previous-21-000-years-claims-new-climate-change-research.html

By Daily Mail Reporter
23rd January 2012

Man-made carbon emissions have acidified the world’s oceans far beyond their natural levels, new research suggests.

In some regions, acidity levels rose faster in the last two centuries than it did in the previous 21,000 years, a study from the University of Hawaii has shown.

Ocean acidity makes it harder for organisms such as molluscs and coral to construct the protective layers they need to survive.

Scientists looked at changes in the saturation level of aragonite, a form of calcium carbonate used to measure ocean acidification.

As seawater acidity rises, the saturation level of aragonite falls.

From RH Reality Check:   http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/01/22/39-years-after-roe-women-are-losing-independence

by Amanda Marcotte, RH Reality Check
January 22, 2012

Yesterday was Roe v. Wade’s 39^th anniversary, and what should have been just a joyous date for feminists has instead become a time to reflect how well we’re doing against the backlash to women’s rights. Roe was about abortion, sure, but it was so much more. It was the culmination of years of feminist activism, legislation, and court decisions regarding contraception and abortion that sent a clear signal to the women of America that they were the rightful owners of their bodies. Not their fathers, not their husbands, not their ministers, not the clucking prudes down the street, and not even their doctors.

The results were dramatic. The vile practice of the “maternity home”—a place where pregnant teenagers and single young women were sent to give birth and be subject to immense pressure to give up their babies—disappeared, signaling a new era where women who decided to keep their pregnancies are exponentially more likely to keep their babies rather than give them up for adoption. There was a fairly successful movement of women demanding more knowledge about their bodies, represented by the book Our Bodies, Ourselves. Gynecologists responded by becoming more patient-friendly. (Even douches have finally lost so many sales that douche companies are beginning to explore other options.) The new women-own-themselves frame became a launching pad for anti-rape and anti-domestic violence activism. In previous eras, society mostly looked away from these crimes, because dealing with them meant pushing back against the notion that women are the property of other people. Now that we believe (formally, though much work has to be done) that women own themselves, these transgressions are harder to ignore.

The problem is that 40 years of the anti-choice movement fighting back against this notion that women own themselves is starting to damage women’s confidence that they have and deserve their full human rights.

A recent episode of the Savage Love podcast really drove this home for me. A woman called in, concerned about a young woman of her acquaintance who was dealing with an unintended pregnancy. She peppered Dan Savage with questions about parental consent laws, how to make the decision, whether or not the man who got the young woman pregnant could be in legal trouble for being so much older, etc. But one question jumped out at me: She asked Dan if it was legal for the young woman of 17 to have an abortion without getting her boyfriend’s permission first.

Continue reading at:   http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/01/22/39-years-after-roe-women-are-losing-independence

Some cowardly impotent inbred Republican ass licking Nazi thought he would be a big man by murdering and mutilating a Democrat’s family pet.

And some liberals wonder why some of us left wingers own guns and are willing to protect our families from scum like that…

I consider our feline family members every bit as worthy of my protection as I would a human child.

From Raw Story:   http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/01/23/arkansas-dems-pet-murdered-with-liberal-scrawled-on-corpse/

By Stephen C. Webster
Monday, January 23, 2012

An Arkansas Democrat has a message for whomever killed his kids’ cat: “I’ve got a gun and I know how to use it.”

According to the Blue Arkansas blog, the campaign manager to Ken Aden, who’s running for the state’s third congressional district, came home last night to discover the family pet had been murdered and left on their front porch, as if the attacker wanted it to be discovered.

The feline’s skull was bashed in, and an ominous message was carved into its side: “LIBERAL.”

The killing comes after a weekend of positive press for Aden, a former soldier running for Congress as a Democrat in one of the most conservative areas of Arkansas.

Continue reading at:  http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/01/23/arkansas-dems-pet-murdered-with-liberal-scrawled-on-corpse/

Thanks to the rabid right wing for reminding us how all progressives including anarchists should read Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” and “Revelry for Radicals“.

From The Guardian UK:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/richard-adams-blog/2012/jan/24/republican-presidential-nomination-2012-newt-gingrich

An obscure, long-dead community organiser has been a constant presence in the GOP debates thanks to Gingrich

Posted byRichard Adams
Monday 23 January 2012

Unless you’ve been paying close attention to the undercurrents of right-wing US politics over the last five years, you might have missed an obscure name from the 1960s who has been hoisted into a hate figure: Saul Alinsky.

Alinsky died nearly 30 years ago but thanks to a tenuous link to Barack Obama, his name has been raised as evidence of Obama’s radical roots. Newt Gingrich, the current front-runner for the Republican nomination, repeatedly denounces Obama as “a classic Saul Alinsky radical” on the campaign trail.

When Gingrich won the South Carolina primary on Saturday, his victory speech sought to distinguish what he called “American exceptionalism versus the radicalism of Saul Alinsky” of Obama.

Gingrich has merely tapped into a fulmination against Alinsky – who was what passes for a left-wing radical in American politics, agitating for better living conditions for the poor in the slums of Chicago and New York – that has been filtered through the likes of right-wing talkshow hosts such as Glenn Beck and Mark Levin.

The connection with Obama is that his career as a community organiser included work for an Alinsky-inspired group in Chicago, while a profile of Obama by Ryan Lizza in the New Republic in 2007 said Obama “taught Alinsky’s concepts and methods”:

Continue reading at:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/richard-adams-blog/2012/jan/24/republican-presidential-nomination-2012-newt-gingrich

From Right Wing Watch:  http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/santorum-wins-backing-fringe-religious-right-leaders

by Brian Tashman
January 20, 2012

One day before the crucial South Carolina primary, Rick Santorum is beginning to win the endorsements of not just Religious Right luminaries but also fringe activists, including some who previously backed the failed presidential campaigns of Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry. Santorum recently won the backing of Religious Right activists such as James Dobson, Gary Bauer, Richard Viguerie, Maggie Gallagher, Penny Nance and most recently, former Perry booster John Stemberger.

Today, Viguerie released the names of additional Religious Right figures that are supporting Santorum, including Paul Pressler, the Southern Baptist leader who hosted the recent Texas meeting of social conservatives.

But other Santorum endorsers are less well-known:

• Cathie Adams of the Texas Eagle Forum, who has likened President Obama to Adolf Hitler, warned that scientists are cloning humans in order to give them diseases and kill them and that the United Nations is trying to “subvert our children’s faith in God by elevating its earth-centered zealotry that would grant the UN dominion over the earth.”

• Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness, who has dedicated her career to fighting the rights of gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military, argued that it would lead to a draft along with “forcible sodomy.”

ETC…

Continue reading at:  http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/santorum-wins-backing-fringe-religious-right-leaders

From Raw Story:   http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/01/22/davos-elites-to-seek-reforms-of-outdated-capitalism/

By Agence France-Presse
Sunday, January 22, 2012

Economic and political elites meeting this week at the Swiss resort of Davos will be asked to urgently find ways to reform a capitalist system that has been described as “outdated and crumbling.”

“We have a general morality gap, we are over-leveraged, we have neglected to invest in the future, we have undermined social coherence, and we are in danger of completely losing the confidence of future generations,” said Klaus Schwab, host and founder of the annual World Economic Forum.

“Solving problems in the context of outdated and crumbling models will only dig us deeper into the hole.

How Douche Nozzles like Frothy Mix of Shit and Anal Lube (Santorum) think:

After all the Rapist’s Baby is a Gift From a Patriarchal God Who Hates Women. Therefore it is the duty of the unworthy sperm receptacle to bear that child and raise it.

From Think Progress:   http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/01/23/409242/santorum-to-rape-victims-make-the-best-out-of-a-bad-situation/

By Tanya Somanader
Jan 23, 2012

Standing steadfast as the most socially right-wing candidate in the GOP presidential field, Rick Santorum has repeatedly touted his extreme anti-choice position, which dictates that abortion should be uniformly illegal, even in cases of rape or incest. He even suggested that physicians who provide abortions to such victims should be criminally charged.

Last Friday, CNN’s Piers Morgan asked Santorum to clarify his reasoning behind such a callous position. Insisting that “it’s not a matter of religious values,” Santorum explained that sexual assault victims should “accept this horribly created” pregnancy because it is “nevertheless a gift in a very broken way” and that, when it comes down to it, a victim just has “to make the best out of a bad situation“:

Complete article at:  http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/01/23/409242/santorum-to-rape-victims-make-the-best-out-of-a-bad-situation/