Women Born Transsexual

I think we should have mandatory drug testing and constant surveillance of all Wall Street Market Traders, Brokers, Vulture Capitalists, Accountants, Bankers and CEOs.

From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/27/welfare-drug-testing-bill_n_1237333.html

Arthur Delaney
01/27/2012

A Republican member of the Indiana General Assembly withdrew his bill to create a pilot program for drug testing welfare applicants Friday after one of his Democratic colleagues amended the measure to require drug testing for lawmakers.

“There was an amendment offered today that required drug testing for legislators as well and it passed, which led me to have to then withdraw the bill,” said Rep. Jud McMillin (R-Brookville), sponsor of the original welfare drug testing bill.

The Supreme Court ruled drug testing for political candidates unconstitutional in 1997, striking down a Georgia law. McMillin said he withdrew his bill so he could reintroduce it on Monday with a lawmaker drug testing provision that would pass constitutional muster.

“I’ve only withdrawn it temporarily,” he told HuffPost, stressing he carefully crafted his original bill so that it could survive a legal challenge. Last year a federal judge, citing the Constitution’s ban on unreasonable search and seizure, struck down a Florida law that required blanket drug testing of everyone who applied for welfare.

McMillin’s bill would overcome constitutional problems, he said, by setting up a tiered screening scheme in which people can opt-out of random testing. Those who decline random tests would only be screened if they arouse “reasonable suspicion,” either by their demeanor, by being convicted of a crime, or by missing appointments required by the welfare office.

Continue reading at:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/27/welfare-drug-testing-bill_n_1237333.html

From Exiled:  http://exiledonline.com/max-blumenthal-washington-post-scrubs-quote-smearing-iran-war-critics-but-ex-camp-guard-jeffrey-goldberg-runs-with-it-anyway/

By Max Blumenthal
January 24, 2012

For nearly a month, a group of foreign policy researcher-bloggers at the Center for American Progress (CAP), an influential liberal think tank based in Washington DC, have faced an unrelenting smear campaign. The smears, initiated by former AIPAC spokesman Josh Block, focused on a few sardonic tweets by CAP bloggers that raised the ire of the pro-Israel and neoconservative political community. One tweet that included the term “Israel Firster” received special attention.

“This kind of demagoguery, anti-Israel invective, and in some cases actual hate speech, is absolutely wrong whether it comes from the extreme Right or Left, and like cancer, it has to be cut out before it metastasizes and destroys the whole body,” Block complained to Jennifer Rubin, a neoconservative columnist for the Washington Post who has accused CAP of “anti-Semitism” and who was recently scolded by the paper’s ombudsman for endorsing a screed advocating the slaughter of Palestinians.

Block’s campaign was transparently designed to force the Democratic establishment to disown a group of researchers who had generated an effective and factually solid counter narrative to the case for a military strike on Iran. And it was well orchestrated, receiving robust and sustained amplification from the right-wing of the pro-Israel community. By January 19, after a who’s who of neoconservative writers and right-leaning Jewish American groups called for the firing of the researchers, and weeks after the small handful of “controversial” tweets had been deleted and apologized for, the smears graduated onto the pages of the Washington Post.

A report by Washington Post staff writer Peter Wallsten summarized the attacks on CAP in a relatively uncritical fashion. In the original edition of the story (uploaded here to Josh Block’s Scribd account), Wallsten featured remarks by Jeffrey Herf, whom he presented as an academic expert on anti-Semitism:

Continue reading at:   http://exiledonline.com/max-blumenthal-washington-post-scrubs-quote-smearing-iran-war-critics-but-ex-camp-guard-jeffrey-goldberg-runs-with-it-anyway/

From Grit:   http://www.grit.com/a-wanna-be-pioneer/being-prepared-to-preserve-food.aspx

By Cheryl in Texas
1/23/2012

You’ve got to be ready to strike when the iron is hot – a future jam story.

Right before Christmas, my wonderful hubby and I stopped in at our local grocery store on the way to our homestead to pick up some lunch for later that day. Immediately inside the door, I spotted half pints of blackberries on sale for 67 cents! And I had thought the $1 I paid two weeks before was a great deal. The more we booted it around, we decided that this is part of what being self-reliant is about. We may not be able to grow our own berries (yet), but when you find something like that on a super good deal, you have to be prepared to take advantage and stock up. So we bought five flats! We saved $2.30 per half pint. Now that’s some power bargain shopping. They’re really good, ripe, tasty berries too.

I wish we had time that weekend to just make them all into jam. But alas, being the last weekend before Christmas, that just wasn’t going to happen. And I think we’re low on jelly jars too. So I washed them all up and got them into the freezer in 6 cups portions. But first I froze them spread out on trays so that they’re individually frozen and don’t just become a big frozen blob. Now they’re ready to be turned into jam or syrup or a cobbler whenever we want. It helps that we have an extra freezer. But I really like having things canned, because they won’t ruin in the event of a power outage. And if our previous attempts at making jam are any indication, the blackberry should be pretty darn tootin good too.

So far, since this summer, we’ve made peach jam and canned peaches from a half bushel we bought at the farmers market, plum jam when we found plums on a really good sale at the grocery store and raspberry jam when we found raspberries for a really good price.  Other than the peaches, which were a planned purchase, all the others were spur of the moment decisions when we found a good deal on some produce.

Perhaps it might be good to have less artificial light out in the world at night.  I remember being able to look up at night and see a sky filled with stars instead of a sky filled with a wash of neon and street lights.

From The New York Times:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/opinion/sunday/as-streetlights-vanish-a-return-to-a-darker-age.html?_r=1&src=tp&smid=fb-share

By A. ROGER EKIRCH
Published: January 7, 2012

Blacksburg, Va.

IN the wake of widespread violence during the New York City blackout of 1977, a newspaper columnist quipped that just one flick of a light switch separated civilization from primordial chaos.

Leaving the hyperbole aside, artificial illumination has arguably been the greatest symbol of modern progress. By making nighttime infinitely more inviting, street lighting — gas lamps beginning in the early 1800s followed by electric lights toward the end of the century — drastically expanded the boundaries of everyday life to include hours once shrouded in darkness. Today, any number of metropolitan areas in the United States and abroad, bathed in the glare of neon and mercury vapor, bill themselves as 24-hour cities, open both for business and pleasure.

So it is all the more remarkable that, in what appears to be a spreading trend, dozens of cities and towns across America — from California and Oregon to Maine — are contemplating significantly reducing the number of street lamps to lower their hefty electric bills. In some communities, utility companies have already torn posts from the ground. Faced with several million dollars in unpaid bills, Highland Park, Mich., has lost two-thirds of its lamps, whereas officials in Rockford, Ill., have extinguished as many as 2,300, or 16 percent of all the city’s streetlights.

Municipal officials, mindful of the winter darkness enveloping residential neighborhoods, have vainly tried to relieve public anxiety. Denials that crime rates will rise are met with skepticism by the public, as are programs to encourage homeowners to install private security lamps or to “adopt a light” for a monthly fee. Street lighting is now at risk of being restricted, as it was in earlier ages, to residences and neighborhoods able to afford it.

Continue reading at:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/opinion/sunday/as-streetlights-vanish-a-return-to-a-darker-age.html?_r=1&src=tp&smid=fb-share

From Think Progress:   http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/01/26/411865/new-hampshire-republicans-propose-bills-that-prevent-police-from-protecting-domestic-abuse-victims/

By Marie Diamond
Jan 26, 2012

Since the 1970s, New Hampshire police have operated under a progressive policyfor handling domestic violence cases that has saved countless lives. Under current law the presumption is that an arrest will be made when police observe evidence of abuse. They have a large degree of discretion and don’t need to witness the assault firsthand or obtain a legal warrant before they can separate the alleged attacker from his victim.

All that will change if Republicans get their way. The state’s GOP legislators are pushing two bills that will reverse a half century of progress, the Concord Monitor reports:

Domestic violence is no longer taken lightly legally or by society. That’s the way it should be, but two bills under consideration by this most unusual of legislatures, would undo that progress and put lives in danger. Both deserve a speedy defeat.

House Bill 1581 would turn the clock back 40 years to an age when a police officer could not make an arrest in a domestic violence case without first getting a warrant unless he or she actually witnessed the crime.

Continue reading at:  http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/01/26/411865/new-hampshire-republicans-propose-bills-that-prevent-police-from-protecting-domestic-abuse-victims/

From Al Jazeera:  http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/01/201212382259755885.html

The historian and activist dedicated his life to “the countless small actions of unknown people”.

Noam Chomsky
27 Jan 2012

Editor’s note: Today, January 27, is the second anniversary of the death of Howard Zinn. An active participant in the Civil Rights movement, he was dismissed in 1963 from his position as a tenured professor at Spelman College in Atlanta after siding with black women students in the struggle against segregation. In 1967, he wrote one of the first, and most influential, books calling for an end to the war in Vietnam. A veteran of the US Army Air Force, he edited The Pentagon Papers, leaked by whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, and was later designated a “high security risk” by the FBI.

His best-selling A People’s History of the United States spawned a new field of historical study: People’s Histories. This approach countered the traditional triumphalist examination of “history as written by the victors”, instead concentrating on the poor and seemingly powerless; those who resisted imperial, cultural and corporate hegemony. Zinn was an award-winning social activist, writer and historian - and so who better to share his memory than his close friend and fellow intellectual giant, Noam Chomsky?

Cambridge, Mass - It is not easy for me to write a few words about Howard Zinn, the great American activist and historian. He was a very close friend for 45 years. The families were very close too. His wife Roz, who died of cancer not long before, was also a marvellous person and close friend. Also sombre is the realisation that a whole generation seems to be disappearing, including several other old friends: Edward Said, Eqbal Ahmed and others, who were not only astute and productive scholars, but also dedicated and courageous militants, always on call when needed – which was constant. A combination that is essential if there is to be hope of decent survival.

Howard’s remarkable life and work are summarised best in his own words. His primary concern, he explained, was “the countless small actions of unknown people” that lie at the roots of “those great moments” that enter the historical record – a record that will be profoundly misleading, and seriously disempowering, if it is torn from these roots as it passes through the filters of doctrine and dogma. His life was always closely intertwined with his writings and innumerable talks and interviews. It was devoted, selflessly, to empowerment of the unknown people who brought about great moments. That was true when he was an industrial worker and labour activist, and from the days, 50 years ago, when he was teaching at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, a black college that was open mostly to the small black elite.

While teaching at Spelman, Howard supported the students who were at the cutting edge of the civil rights movement in its early and most dangerous days, many of whom became quite well-known in later years – Alice Walker, Julian Bond and others – and who loved and revered him, as did everyone who knew him well. And as always, he did not just support them, which was rare enough, but also participated directly with them in their most hazardous efforts – no easy undertaking at that time, before there was any organised popular movement and in the face of government hostility that lasted for some years. Finally, popular support was ignited, in large part by the courageous actions of the young people who were sitting in at lunch counters, riding freedom buses, organising demonstrations, facing bitter racism and brutality, sometimes death.

Continue reading at:  http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/01/201212382259755885.html

From Tree Hugger:  http://www.treehugger.com/gadgets/ever-broken-textbook-beyond-repair-now-ibooks-you-can.html?campaign=daily_nl

Elizabeth Chamberlain and Kyle Wiens of iFixit
January 23, 2012

I’ve dropped a lot of textbooks during my time in school. Usually, it’s not a big deal: maybe a corner gets bent, maybe the spine cracks, maybe a page or two tears. Even dropping a textbook in the bathtub isn’t such a problem—if you lay it out to dry, it’s readable again in a day or so. Maybe I’m clumsier than the average person. But based on the state of used textbooks I’ve purchased, I don’t think I’m the only one who occasionally drops textbooks.

That’s why Apple’s announcement of iBooks Textbooks worries me, as a graduate student, English teacher, and advocate of user repair.
On Thursday, Apple announced iBooks 2 (a new version of their iPad e-book software) along with two new projects: iBooks Textbooks and iBooks Author. They’ve made an agreement with three of the largest textbook publishers—Pearson, McGraw-Hill, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt—to begin publishing interactive textbooks for the iPad. Right now, they only have seven K-12 textbooks available, but more are promised soon. iBooks Author, drag-and-drop self-publishing software, should allow professors to create interactive iBooks textbooks with ease.

We’re excited for iBooks Textbooks. But we have concerns about the durability of the only device on which they can be viewed. Most devices made with the classroom in mind are designed to last forever (brick-like TI calculators, for example), or at least are modular enough to be repairable. We know repair technicians who successfully maintain a school’s worth of MacBooks. Apple can make repairable modular devices; the iPad 2 isn’t one of them.

Continue reading at:  http://www.treehugger.com/gadgets/ever-broken-textbook-beyond-repair-now-ibooks-you-can.html?campaign=daily_nl

From Common Dreams:   http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/27-0

by Michael Parenti
Published on Friday, January 27, 2012 by Common Dreams

When I recently went to Alta Bates hospital for surgery, I discovered that legal procedures take precedence over medical ones. I had to sign intimidating statements about financial counseling, indemnity, patient responsibilities, consent to treatment, use of electronic technologies, and the like.

One of these documents committed me to the following: “The hospital pathologist is hereby authorized to use his/her discretion in disposing of any member, organ, or other tissue removed from my person during the procedure.” Any member? Any organ?

The next day I returned for the actual operation. While playing Frank Sinatra recordings, the surgeon went to work cutting open several layers of my abdomen in order to secure my intestines with a permanent mesh implant. Afterward I spent two hours in the recovery room. “I feel like I’ve been in a knife fight,” I told one nurse. “It’s called surgery,” she explained.

Then, while still pumped up with anesthetics and medications, I was rolled out into the street. The street? Yes, some few hours after surgery they send you home. In countries that have socialized medicine (there I said it), a van might be waiting with trained personnel to help you to your abode.

Not so in free-market America. Your presurgery agreement specifies in boldface that you must have “a responsible adult acquaintance” (as opposed to an irresponsible teenage stranger) take you home in a private vehicle. I kept thinking, what happens to those unfortunates who have no one to bundle them away? Do they languish endlessly in the hospital driveway until the nasty weather finishes them off?

Continue reading at:  http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/27-0

From The Guardian UK:   http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/27/occupy-movement-davos-capitalism-debate

Movement tries to stage its own debate on ‘remodelling capitalism’ at World Economic Forum venue

Jill Treanor in Davos
guardian.co.uk, Friday 27 January 2012

Activists from the Occupy movement attempted to disrupt a debate in Davos attended by the Labour party leader, Ed Miliband, calling on him and the other delegates to leave the stage and join them on the floor of the packed debate on “remodelling capitalism”.

The event, which was open to the public as part of a 10-year programme by the organisers of the World Economic Forum to engage with a wider audience, was eventually brought back under control when other public participants refused to support the efforts of Occupy activists.

Eyewitnesses said about 30 activists had strategically placed themselves in the large auditorium in the local Swiss Alpine High School and had attempted to conduct the debate on their own terms.

A representative of Occupy – who started the proceedings and gave her name only as Maria – had already been scheduled to take part in the debate, in which Juan Somavía, director general of the International Labour Organisation, was also a speaker.

After the event Miliband told the Guardian: “Occupy wanted us to do the debate in a different way.”

But, he said, they had been outnumbered by other members of the public. He had argued: “This is a big moment of opportunity. There are real opportunities to show there are solutions that can be moved forward. I understand why people are angry.”

Continue reading at:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/27/occupy-movement-davos-capitalism-debate

From Raw Story:  http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/01/27/active-duty-cop-the-war-on-drugs-is-a-war-on-people/

By Stephen C. Webster
Friday, January 27, 2012

Speaking to Raw Story recently, an active duty police officer who asked not to be named threw down the gauntlet over the part of his job he hates most: the drug war.

“I did not get in law enforcement to destroy a person’s future because that person had marijuana or a pill in their pocket,” the officer explained. “Why would you want to destroy that person’s future and cause them great harm because of that? It’s not worth it.”

Like many Americans, the reality of the drug war was was nothing like what he’d been taught to believe in his youth. But statistics like a citizen being arrested for drugs every 19 seconds in 2010, and 1.6 million people incarcerated over drugs in 2009, were nothing compared to what he actually experienced in the front lines of the drug war on America’s users.

From Truth Out: http://www.truth-out.org/military-sexual-abuse-greater-menace-combat/1327533957

by: H. Patricia Hynes
Thursday 26 January 2012

“A woman who signs up to protect her country is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire,” stated former California Democratic Rep. Jane Harman in testimony before a July 2008 House panel investigating the military’s handling of sexual assault reports. The Congresswoman added that her “jaw dropped” when she learned from military doctors that 4 of 10 women in a local veterans hospital had been raped by fellow soldiers.What’s equally startling, though, is that Harman – a reputed national security insider and a strong supporter of women in the military – was in the dark about rampant military sexual assault.

Not long after the hearing, one of the most eye-opening accounts of the sexual torment of women soldiers, “The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq,” was published. The author, Columbia professor and journalist Helen Benedict, had interviewed more than 40 soldiers and vets, mostly women, who came from all branches of the military except the Coast Guard. They included active-duty soldiers as well as reserves and National Guard, and held a variety of ranks, from privates up to a general. Most served in Iraq, a few in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Of these, Benedict chose five whose war lives most reflected the diverse experiences of female soldiers in Iraq, and she followed them over the course of years, uncovering “the universal stories of war” in their individual experiences.  They elected to have their stories told because they “wanted people to know what it was like to be a woman at war.”

The common motif threading through their narratives is, in the words of one, that “The mortar rounds that came in daily did less damage to me that the men with whom I shared my food.” Most of the women she followed were pushed to and beyond the limits of their substantial emotional and physical resilience, and, ultimately, the sexually abusive environments shattered them. The military inculcates into recruits that their comrades are their family in order to assure loyalty on the battlefield. Benedict concludes that the pervasive and constant sexual assault by “brothers in arms” has left many women veterans ashamed, terrified, blaming themselves irrationally and without trust in others. “Many turn to drugs or drink to numb the pain, losing control of their lives.”

Continue reading at:  http://www.truth-out.org/military-sexual-abuse-greater-menace-combat/1327533957