Women Born Transsexual

From Eco Watch:  http://ecowatch.org/2012/we-wont-be-silenced/

Josh Fox
02-07-2012

Gaslandwas intended to be both a chronicle of the way in which oil and gas companies have used vast sums of money to shield fracking from virtually all federal, state, and local regulations and a cautionary tale about the toll the process takes on people and the environment.

Fortunately, the message of the film is getting through. Recent surveys show that 4 out of 5 Americans are concerned about fracking’s effect on our drinking water and seven out of ten Ohioans believe the process should be stopped until we know more about its effect on the environment and its relation to a series of earthquakes that have rocked the Northeastern part of the state.

The bottom line: fracking is not safe. It has never been proven safe and it will never be made safe.  The industry admits that well casing problems occur in 50 percent of wells over the life of the well. That means that 50 percent of gas wells can be expected to leak chemicals, hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds, carcinogens and neurotoxins directly into groundwater. The industry has never been able to solve this problem although they have been trying for decades and they have admitted that there is no solution to the problem.  Safe fracking is simply an impossibility. If the state allows further drilling, it is trading water for gas. It is trading the short-term windfall profits of huge gas companies for our public health and the permanent poisoning of our ground water.

Unfortunately, Governor John Kasich and the Republican majority in the Ohio General Assembly, like so many members of Congress and officials in other states, have decided to listen to the siren song of the industry rather than the concerns of their constituents and the growing body of scientific research that is shining a brighter and brighter spotlight on the dangers of fracking. It’s no accident that the governor is delivering his State of the State address in the hotbed of fracking in Ohio.

He’ll undoubtedly praise the industry and the jobs it promises to create in an attempt to divert attention from the fact that those jobs come at a steep cost to the environment and public health.

Continue reading at:  http://ecowatch.org/2012/we-wont-be-silenced/

From The Nation:  http://www.thenation.com/article/166127/proposition-8-unconstitutional-whats-next-anti-gay-law

From Counter Punch:   http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/02/03/occupy-oakland-are-we-being-childish/

by OSHA NEUMANN
February 3-5, 2012

“The Bay Area Occupy Movement has got to stop using Oakland as their playground,” said Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, speaking at a press conference Saturday evening after a day of demonstrations called by Occupy Oakland that saw approximately 400 arrests, multiple injuries, and numerous confrontations with police. She ticked off the damage that had been done when a group of protesters broke into City Hall, overturning a scale model of the building, vandalizing a children’s art exhibit, and burning an American flag. The next day in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, she returned to her talking point: “It’s like a tantrum . .  . They’re treating us like a playground.”

For the first time since October when the Oakland police violently evicted the occupation from Frank Ogawa Plaza after renaming it in honor of Oscar Grant, Mayor Quan, her protesting days behind her, looked genuinely comfortable in the role of champion of law and order. It was as if by trashing City Hall, Occupy had done her a favor. She was the adult, genuinely concerned with the well-being of the city. We were children, playing childish games, oblivious to the serious real-world consequences of our actions.

Occupy’s response to the mayor’s scolding was predictable. On KPFA the next day, Marie, speaking as a representative of the movement, was unapologetic. “The war in the streets is a visible manifestation of the invisible war on the poor . . . the violence of the capitalist system.”  In a statement put out by the Occupy Oakland media committee, Cathy Jones, an attorney with the National Lawyers Guild, is quoted as saying: “Never have I felt so helpless and enraged as I do tonight. These kids are heroes, and the rest of the country needs to open its collective eyes and grab what remains of its civil rights, because they are evaporating, quickly.” She agrees with Mayor Quan that those of us who were in the forefront in the confronting the police were “kids,” but for her they were “heroic.” For Mayor Quan they were just bratty.

Power always represents itself as adult, rationale and in control. The socially sanctioned definition of what it is to be adult includes the ability to be compliant with the self-repression required of an obedient and productive member of society. Since those of us in opposition have no desire to be obedient and less to be productive cogs in the machine, it’s no wonder we fall into the role of defiant children.

It may be inevitable that in the confrontation between radical movements and the systems they oppose there are echoes of the conflict between child and adult. We who march in the streets in defiance of the orders of the police have legitimate reason to rage against the system. It in no way negates the legitimacy of that rage to say that it may also have an “infantile” component.

Occupy is not a monolith. On Saturday within the motley of demonstrators one group stood out. They were the “kids” with the black bandannas and hoodies. Some carried makeshift shields constructed from segments of plastic trash cans painted black with peace signs spray-painted in white on the front. Some carried impressive movable barricades composed of rectangular sheets of strong corrugated steel, screwed to wooden frames to which handles had been attached so that three or four people could hunker behind them and push them into lines of police. It was this group that was in the forefront in the attempt to pull down the chain-link fence around the Kaiser Convention Center. A takeover of that center had been announced as the goal of the demonstration. Thwarted in that effort, the group got into a confrontation with a line of police blocking Oak Street south of the intersection with 12^th. This black block of anarchist youth tends to identify with insurrectionist anarchism. They are our militants who will be the first to challenge the police, and who proudly proclaim their disrespect for property rights. I imagine that for them the rest of us appear as somewhat compromised and a bit timid, for we are unwilling to go as far as they in our commitment to the revolution. Here something of the dynamic between child and adult reemerges as a political division within the movement. We who do not come to demonstrations dressed in black become the model of a not quite legitimate “maturity;” the purest revolutionary energies are represented by those who reject this maturity, as a fraud — the heroic kids.

Continue reading at:  http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/02/03/occupy-oakland-are-we-being-childish/

Video removed due to copyright issues.

From Russia Today:  http://rt.com/usa/news/catholic-church-war-obama-753/

08 February, 2012

From the campaign trail last month, GOP contender Newt Gingrich said US President Barack Obama had declared a “war on the Catholic Church.” Some clergy have heard that call and are warning the president: look out, we’re ready to rumble.

Responding to the Obama-mandated health insurance policies, Catholic leaders throughout America are outraged over what is being perceived by some as a serious assault on their religion. Under Obama’s health care plan, Catholic hospitals and universities will be required to offer free birth control to employees. While the law will not include entities with solely religious purposes, such as churches, it will extend to church-affiliated companies that do not exclusively support a religious-minded agenda.

Under the provision put forth last month by the president, health plans provided by Roman Catholic institutions that cover non-Catholics must front the cost of “all FDA approved contraceptives, including those that induce abortion.” Even if the policy is aimed at only a section of the church, Catholic leaders say Obama’s insurance plan is an attempt to take down the church by infiltrating it with God-less ideals on their religion, and according to some, they won’t go down without a fight.

Bill Donohue of the Catholic League says the move is a milestone in terms of taking on the Church, and tells CBS News that it is “unprecedented in American history …for the federal government to line up against the Roman Catholic Church.”

“This is going to be fought out with lawsuits, with court decisions and, dare I say it, maybe even in the streets,” adds Donohue.

Continue reading at:  http://rt.com/usa/news/catholic-church-war-obama-753/

From Al Jazeera: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/02/201224152439941847.html

Patenting seeds has led to a farming and food crisis – and huge profits for US biotechnology corporations.

Vandana Shiva
06 Feb 2012

New Delhi, India – The seed is the first link in the food chain – and seed sovereignty is the foundation of food sovereignty. If farmers do not have their own seeds or access to open pollinated varieties that they can save, improve and exchange, they have no seed sovereignty – and consequently no food sovereignty.

The deepening agrarian and food crisis has its roots in changes in the seed supply system, and the erosion of seed diversity and seed sovereignty.

Seed sovereignty includes the farmer’s rights to save, breed and exchange seeds, to have access to diverse open source seeds which can be saved – and which are not patented, genetically modified, owned or controlled by emerging seed giants. It is based on reclaiming seeds and biodiversity as commons and public good.

The past twenty years have seen a very rapid erosion of seed diversity and seed sovereignty, and the concentration of the control over seeds by a very small number of giant corporations. In 1995, when the UN organised the Plant Genetic Resources Conference in Leipzig, it was reported that 75 per cent of all agricultural biodiversity had disappeared because of the introduction of “modern” varieties, which are always cultivated as monocultures. Since then, the erosion has accelerated.

The introduction of the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement of the World Trade Organisation has accelerated the spread of genetically engineered seeds – which can be patented – and for which royalties can be collected. Navdanya was started in response to the introduction of these patents on seeds in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade - a forerunner to the WTO – about which a Monsanto representative later stated: “In drafting these agreements, we were the patient, diagnostician [and] physician all in one.” Corporations defined a problem – and for them the problem was farmers saving seeds. They offered a solution, and the solution was to make it illegal for farmers to save seed – by introducing patents and intellectual property rights [PDF] on those very seeds. As a result, acreage under GM corn, soya, canola, cotton has increased dramatically.

Continue reading at:  http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/02/201224152439941847.html

From The Guardian UK:   http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/06/right-stupidity-spreads-enabled-polite-left

Conservativism may be the refuge of the dim. But the room for rightwing ideas is made by those too timid to properly object

George Monbiot
guardian.co.uk, Monday 6 February 2012

Self-deprecating, too liberal for their own good, today’s progressives stand back and watch, hands over their mouths, as the social vivisectionists of the right slice up a living society to see if its component parts can survive in isolation. Tied up in knots of reticence and self-doubt, they will not shout stop. Doing so requires an act of interruption, of presumption, for which they no longer possess a vocabulary.

Perhaps it is in the same spirit of liberal constipation that, with the exception of Charlie Brooker, we have been too polite to mention the Canadian study published last month in the journal Psychological Science, which revealed that people with conservative beliefs are likely to be of low intelligence. Paradoxically it was the Daily Mail that brought it to the attention of British readers last week. It feels crude, illiberal to point out that the other side is, on average, more stupid than our own. But this, the study suggests, is not unfounded generalisation but empirical fact.

It is by no means the first such paper. There is plenty of research showing that low general intelligence in childhood predicts greater prejudice towards people of different ethnicity or sexuality in adulthood. Open-mindedness, flexibility, trust in other people: all these require certain cognitive abilities. Understanding and accepting others – particularly “different” others – requires an enhanced capacity for abstract thinking.

But, drawing on a sample size of several thousand, correcting for both education and socioeconomic status, the new study looks embarrassingly robust. Importantly, it shows that prejudice tends not to arise directly from low intelligence but from the conservative ideologies to which people of low intelligence are drawn. Conservative ideology is the “critical pathway” from low intelligence to racism. Those with low cognitive abilities are attracted to “right wing ideologies that promote coherence and order” and “emphasise the maintenance of the status quo”. Even for someone not yet renowned for liberal reticence, this feels hard to write.

This is not to suggest that all conservatives are stupid. There are some very clever people in government, advising politicians, running think tanks and writing for newspapers, who have acquired power and influence by promoting right wing ideologies.

Continue reading at:   http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/06/right-stupidity-spreads-enabled-polite-left

From Right Wing Watch: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/darwin-hitler-how-evolution-leads-holocaust

by Kyle Mantyla
February 7, 2012

On yesterday’s program Bryan Fischer interviewed Dr. Georgia Purdom of the Creationist organization Answers in Genesis where the two discussed the direct line that connects Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution to Adolph Hitler and the Holocaust.

The two things are directly related, explained Purdom, because once you start to start compromising on the Biblical account of creation, it is a step down the path toward full-blown genocide:

Complete article at:  http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/darwin-hitler-how-evolution-leads-holocaust

From RH Reality Check:  http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/02/07/birth-control-and-government-right-refusal-should-belong-to-women

by Nancy Kaufman, National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW)
February 7, 2012

There’s a chant that is familiar to anyone who has ever attended a reproductive rights rally — “Not the church, not the state; Women should decide their fate!” Usually this rallying cry is in defense of a woman’s right to choose abortion. Today this chant takes on new relevance when it comes to birth control.

On Jan. 20th, the Obama Administration issued a decision to include contraceptives as part of the package of women’s preventive health services in the Affordable Care Act (ACA, the 2010 health reform law). Beginning in August 2012, all of the services in this package will be available in new insurance plans without any out-of-pocket costs to women. In a country where half of all pregnancies are unplanned and the cost of birth control is high, this decision is an important step in promoting women’s health. The rule specifically exempts pervasively religious institutions like certain houses of worship from offering their employees birth control coverage as part of their health insurance.

This exemption did not go far enough for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and some other religious groups who had been lobbying hard to broaden that exemption to include religious schools, organizations and service providers. They insist that to cover their employees’ need for contraceptive services would violate their religious beliefs — the beliefs of the employers, not the employees. After all, among the hundreds of thousands of employees of religiously-affiliated universities, hospitals, social service programs, etc., there are many who belong to a different faith group or — regardless of their affiliation — may hold beliefs that differ from their bosses. We are not just talking about direct employees by the way. Families of workers are likely to be covered under an insurance policy, too.

Statistics show that most insurance plans already cover birth control and 28 states require it. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, in announcing the Administration’s decision, explained that birth control is the most commonly taken drug in the U.S. by young and middle-aged women — and that holds true of women across the religious spectrum. Ninety-eight percent of all American women, Catholic and otherwise, report using birth control during their lifetime.

Continue reading at:  http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/02/07/birth-control-and-government-right-refusal-should-belong-to-women

From Common Dreams:  http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/02/06-4

by Bill Quigley
Published on Monday, February 6, 2012 by Common Dreams

“Corporations are people, my friend.” Mitt Romney at Iowa State Fair

Corporations are obviously not people.  But Romney is accurate in the sense that corporations have hijacked most of the rights of people while evading the responsibilities. An important part of the social justice agenda is democratizing corporations.  This means we must radically change the laws so people can be in charge of corporations.  We must strip them of corporate personhood and cut them down to size so democracy can work.  People are taking action so democracy can regulate the size, scope and actions of corporations.

One of the most basic roles of society is to protect the people from harm.  The massive size of many international corporations makes democratic control over them nearly impossible.

Corporate crime is widespread.  The New York Times, ProPublica and others have revealed Wall Street giants like JPMorgan, Citigroup, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs have been charged with fraud many times only to get off by paying hundreds of millions.  Professors at University of Virginia have documented hundreds of corporations which have been found guilty or pled guilty in federal courts.

Corporate abuse is even more widespread.  For example, Corporate Accountability International named six to its Corporate Hall of Shame, including: Koch Industries for spending over $50 million to fund climate change denial; Monsanto for mass producing cancer causing chemicals; Chevron for dumping more than 18 billion gallons of toxic waste into the Ecuadorian Amazon; Exxon Mobil for being the worst polluter; Blackwater (now Xe) for killing unarmed Iraqi civilians and hiring paramilitaries; and Halliburton, the nation’s leading war profiteer.

Continue reading at:  http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/02/06-4

From The New York Times:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/08/dining/a-suit-airs-debate-on-organic-vs-modified-crops.html?_r=4

By JULIA MOSKIN
Published: February 7, 2012

SILENT in flannel shirts and ponytails, farmers from Saskatchewan and South Dakota, Mississippi and Massachusetts lined the walls of a packed federal courtroom in Manhattan last week, as their lawyers told a judge that they were no longer able to keep genetically modified crops from their fields.

The hearing is part of a debate that is coming to life around the country, in courtrooms and Occupy sites, in boardrooms and online, with new petitions, ballot initiatives and lawsuits from California to Maine.

Last year, according to the Department of Agriculture, about 90 percent of all soybeans, corn, canola and sugar beets raised in the United States were grown from what scientists now call transgenic seed. Most processed foods (staples like breakfast cereal, granola bars, chicken nuggets and salad dressing) contain one or more transgenic ingredients, according to estimates from the Grocery Manufacturers Association, though the labels don’t reveal that. (Some, like tortilla chips, can contain dozens.)

Common ingredients like corn, vegetable oil, maltodextrin, soy protein, lecithin, monosodium glutamate, cornstarch, yeast extract, sugar and corn syrup are almost always produced from transgenic crops.

No known health risks are associated with eating transgenic foods (though many scientists say it is too soon to assess the effects), and the Food and Drug Administration classifies them as safe.

But consumer resistance to transgenic food remains high. In a nationwide telephone poll conducted in October 2010 by Thomson Reuters and National Public Radio, 93 percent said if a food has been genetically engineered or has genetically engineered ingredients, it should say so on its label — a number that has been consistent since genetically modified crops were introduced. F.D.A. guidelines say that food that contains genetically modified organisms, or G.M.O.’s, don’t have to say so and can still be labeled “all natural.”

Continue reading at:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/08/dining/a-suit-airs-debate-on-organic-vs-modified-crops.html?_r=4

From Truth Out: http://www.truth-out.org/how-gop-resegregating-south/1328624235

by: Ari Berman
Tuesday 7 February 2012

This article was reported in partnership with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute, and appeared in the February 20, 2012 edition of The Nation.

North Carolina State Senator Eric Mansfield was born in 1964, a year before the passage of the Voting Rights Act, which guaranteed the right to vote for African-Americans. He grew up in Columbus, Georgia, and moved to North Carolina when he was stationed at Fort Bragg. He became an Army doctor, opening a practice in Fayetteville after leaving the service. Mansfield says he was always “very cynical about politics” but decided to run for office in 2010 after being inspired by Barack Obama’s presidential run.

He ran a grassroots campaign in the Obama mold, easily winning the election with 67 percent of the vote. He represented a compact section of northwest Fayetteville that included Fort Bragg and the most populous areas of the city. It was a socioeconomically diverse district, comprising white and black and rich and poor sections of the city. Though his district had a black voting age population (BVAP) of 45 percent, Mansfield, who is African-American, lives in an old, affluent part of town that he estimates is 90 percent white. Many of his neighbors are also his patients.

But after the 2010 census and North Carolina’s once-per-decade redistricting process—which Republicans control by virtue of winning the state’s General Assembly for the first time since the McKinley administration—Mansfield’s district looks radically different. It resembles a fat squid, its large head in an adjoining rural county with little in common with Mansfield’s previously urban district, and its long tentacles reaching exclusively into the black neighborhoods of Fayetteville. The BVAP has increased from 45 to 51 percent, as white voters were surgically removed from the district and placed in a neighboring Senate district represented by a white Republican whom GOP leaders want to protect in 2012. Mansfield’s own street was divided in half, and he no longer represents most of the people in his neighborhood. His new district spans 350 square miles, roughly the distance from Fayetteville to Atlanta. Thirty-three voting precincts in his district have been divided to accommodate the influx of new black voters. “My district has never elected a nonminority state senator, even though minorities were never more than 45 percent of the vote,” Mansfield says. “I didn’t need the help. I was doing OK.”

Continue reading at:  http://www.truth-out.org/how-gop-resegregating-south/1328624235

By Robert Reich:  http://robertreich.org/post/17162027435

By Robert Reich
Monday, February 6, 2012

January’s increase in hiring is good news, but it masks a bigger and more disturbing story – the continuing downward mobility of the American middle class.

Most of the new jobs being created are in the lower-wage sectors of the economy – hospital orderlies and nursing aides, secretaries and temporary workers, retail and restaurant. Meanwhile, millions of Americans remain working only because they’ve agreed to cuts in wages and benefits. Others are settling for jobs that pay less than the jobs they’ve lost. Entry-level manufacturing jobs are paying half what entry-level manufacturing jobs paid six years ago.

Other people are falling out of the middle class because they’ve lost their jobs, and many have also lost their homes. Almost one in three families with a mortgage is now underwater, holding their breath against imminent foreclosure.

The percent of Americans in poverty is its highest in two decades, and more of us are impoverished than at any time in the last fifty years. A recent analysis of federal data by the New York Times showed the number of children receiving subsidized lunches rose to 21 million in the last school year, up from 18 million in 2006-2007. Nearly a dozen states experienced increases of 25 percent or more. Under federal rules, children from famlies with incomes up to 130 percent of the poverty line, $29,055 for a family of four, are eligible.

Continue reading at:  http://robertreich.org/post/17162027435