Women Born Transsexual

From Common Dreams:  http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/05/27-7

by Shamus Cooke
Published on Sunday, May 27, 2012 by Common Dreams

The recent JPMorgan scandal where billions of dollars were lost in risky bets has re-ignited the move to properly regulate the U.S. banking system.

Among those asking for new regulations is Robert Reich, former labor secretary to Bill Clinton. Recently Reich made a plea of sorts to President Obama, whom he wishes would take the commonsense approach to bank regulation by re-installing the depression-era regulation, the Glass-Steagall Act.

Reich’s first sentence places him among those who naively hope that Obama would listen to reason and act boldly, instead of merely putting forth populist catch phrases while obsequiously serving corporations:

“I wish President Obama would draw the obvious connection between Bain Capital and JPMorgan Chase.”

This quote alone proves that Obama’s vilifying of Mitt Romney’s former business venture is hypocritical, since Obama has been simultaneously protecting and praising JPMorgan.  Obama’s populist-style attacks on Mitt Romney are cynical election campaigning.

Reich’s article also points out Obama’s incredible lack of action against the banks that happened during the post financial crisis, assuring that such a crisis will emerge yet again, as the recent JPMorgan scandal has foreshadowed:

“As a practical matter, the Volcker Rule [Obama's still incomplete regulation attempt] is hopeless. It was intended to be Glass-Steagall lite — a more nuanced version of the original Depression-era law that separated commercial from investment banking. But JPMorgan has proven that any nuance — any exception — will be stretched beyond recognition by the big banks.”

Continue reading at:  http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/05/27-7

From The New York Times:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/opinion/sunday/lets-be-less-productive.html

By TIM JACKSON
Published: May 26, 2012

Farnham, England

HAS the pursuit of labor productivity reached its limit?

Productivity — the amount of output delivered per hour of work in the economy — is often viewed as the engine of progress in modern capitalist economies. Output is everything. Time is money. The quest for increased productivity occupies reams of academic literature and haunts the waking hours of C.E.O.’s and finance ministers. Perhaps forgivably so: our ability to generate more output with fewer people has lifted our lives out of drudgery and delivered us a cornucopia of material wealth.

But the relentless drive for productivity may also have some natural limits. Ever-increasing productivity means that if our economies don’t continue to expand, we risk putting people out of work. If more is possible each passing year with each working hour, then either output has to increase or else there is less work to go around. Like it or not, we find ourselves hooked on growth.

What, then, should happen when, for one reason or another, growth just isn’t to be had anymore? Maybe it’s a financial crisis. Or rising prices for resources like oil. Or the need to rein in growth for the damage it’s inflicting on the planet: climate change, deforestation, the loss of biodiversity. Maybe it’s any of the reasons growth can no longer be safely and easily assumed in any of today’s economies. The result is the same. Increasing productivity threatens full employment.

One solution would be to accept the productivity increases, shorten the workweek and share the available work. Such proposals — familiar since the 1930s — are now enjoying something of a revival in the face of continuing recession. The New Economics Foundation, a British think tank, proposes a 21-hour workweek. It may not be the workaholic’s choice. But it’s certainly a strategy worth thinking about.

But there’s another strategy for keeping people in work when demand stagnates. Perhaps in the long run it’s an easier and a more compelling solution: to loosen our grip on the relentless pursuit of productivity. By easing up on the gas pedal of efficiency and creating jobs in what are traditionally seen as “low productivity” sectors, we have within our grasp the means to maintain or increase employment, even when the economy stagnates.

Continue reading at:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/opinion/sunday/lets-be-less-productive.html

From Mother Jones:  http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/05/peter-victor-deficit-growth

Why do we keep thinking the economy will?

By Clive Thompson
May/June 2010 Issue

PETER VICTOR is an economist who has been asking a heretical question: Can the Earth support endless growth?

Traditionally, economists have argued that the answer is “yes.” In the 1960s when Victor was earning his various degrees, a steady rise in gross domestic product (GDP)—the combined value of our paid work and the things we produce—was seen as crucial for raising living standards and keeping the masses out of poverty. We grow or we languish: This assumption has become so central to our economic identity that it underpins almost every financial move our leaders make. It is to economics what the Second Law of Thermodynamics is to physics.

But Victor—now a professor at York University in Toronto—felt something tugging him in the opposite direction. Ecologists were beginning to learn that Earth does have limits. Pump enough pollution into a lake and you can ruin it forever; chop down enough forest and it might never grow back. By the early ’00s, the frailties of the planet were becoming even more evident—and unsettling—as greenhouse gases accumulated and chunks of Greenland’s glaciers began breaking off into the sea. “We’ve had 125,000 generations of humans, but it’s only been the last eight that have had growth,” Victor told me. “So what’s considered normal? I think we live in very abnormal times. And the signs are showing up everywhere that the burden we’re placing on the natural environment can’t be borne.”

In essence, endless growth puts us on the horns of a seemingly intractable dilemma. Without it, we spiral into poverty. With it, we deplete the planet. Either way, we lose.

Unless, of course, there’s a third way. Could we have a healthy economy that doesn’t grow? Could we stave off ecological collapse by reining in the world economy? Could we do it without starving?

Continue reading at:  http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/05/peter-victor-deficit-growth

From Dallas Morning News:  http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/20120523-editorial-corporate-americas-rainbow-revolution.ece

Editorial
Published: 23 May 2012

Corporate America is now leading the way in extending benefits to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees. This quiet revolution has taken place even though it is legal in 29 states, including Texas, to discriminate against employees because of their sexual orientation.

The 2012 report by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, which is the research and education arm of the LGBT civil rights group, reveals a rather remarkable transformation over the last decade. An astonishing 88 of the Fortune 500 companies received perfect scores in the annual Corporate Equality Index, which was even more rigorous this time around because the top rating required employers to extend health insurance coverage without exclusions to transgender employees.

Indeed, a large majority of Fortune 500 companies scored very well because they forbid discrimination based on sexual orientation. If you are an LGBT employee at AT&T, Dell Inc. or AMR Corp. — the three local Fortune 500 companies that received the highest rating possible — the anti-discrimination policies legally protect you where Texas explicitly does not.

The one glaring exception to this positive trend remains Irving-based ExxonMobil. It is the only company to get a negative rating in the index, out of 636 that were scored, including all those on the Fortune 500 list. By comparison, half of the companies in the top 20 of the Fortune 500 list received perfect scores, Chevron among them.

It wasn’t always this way. Before the merger in 1999, Mobil was a pioneer on the equality front. The company included sexual orientation in its nondiscrimination policy and even offered domestic-partner benefits. After the merger, Exxon changed the policy, though benefits were grandfathered for Mobil employees who had been receiving them.

Continue reading at:  http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/20120523-editorial-corporate-americas-rainbow-revolution.ece

From Truth Out:  http://truth-out.org/news/item/9156-messing-with-our-minds-the-ever-finer-line-between-news-and-advertising

By Kingsley Dennis
Thursday, 24 May 2012

The manufacturing of consentis endemic within modern societies. Throughout history, the need to “persuade and influence” has always been manipulated by those people in power as a means to maintain authority and legitimacy. In more recent years, the overall manipulation of the mass public mind has become less about making speeches and more about becoming a pervasive presence within the lives of each individual.

Edward Bernays has often been called “the father of public relations,” as it was his teachings and research that spurred the postwar years of propaganda. Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud, utilized psychological and psychoanalytical ideas to construct an informational system – propaganda – capable of manipulating public opinion. Bernays, apparently, considered that such a manipulative apparatus was necessary because society, in his regard, was composed of too many irrational elements – the people – which could be dangerous to the efficient mechanisms of power (or so-called “democracy”). Bernays wrote that, “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.”[1] Bearing in mind that Bernays was working in the early 1920s, we can expect the mechanisms of propaganda – mass manipulation – to have progressed to a very advanced degree since then. Within the context of our modern mass societies, propaganda has morphed into a mechanism for not only engineering public opinion, but also for consolidating social control.

Modern programs of social influence could not exist without the mass media. Today it exists as a combination of expertise and knowledge from technology, sociology, social behaviorism, psychology, communications and other scientific techniques. Almost every nation needs a controlled mainstream media if it is to regulate and influence its citizenry. By way of the mainstream media, a controlling authority is able to exert psychological influence upon people’s perception of reality. This capacity works hand in hand with the more physical components, such as enforcing the legal system and national security laws (surveillance and monitoring). State control, acting as a “psychological machine,” instigates specific psychological manipulations in order to achieve desired goals within its national borders (and often beyond). Examples of these psychological manipulations include the deliberate use of specific cultural symbols and embedded signifiers that catalyze conditioned reflexes in the populace. These triggers have included the words “red” and “communist” during the United States’ 1950s McCarthyism, and “Muslim terrorist” during the currently constructed war on terror. Targeted reactions can thus be achieved, making the populace open to further manipulation in this state. This is a process of psychic re-formation that works repeatedly to soften up the people through continued and extensive exposure to particular stimuli. These are the symbols, artificial and human-made, that we live by in order to allow for the construction of a compliant society.

Continue reading at:  http://truth-out.org/news/item/9156-messing-with-our-minds-the-ever-finer-line-between-news-and-advertising

From Truth Dig:  http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/a_rare_admission_that_money_trumps_everything_else_20120525/

By David Sirota
Posted on May 25, 2012

Headlines transmit information in its rawest form—and the best of headlines crystallize indelible truths. Such was the case this week when the New York Daily News blared this simple but iconic headline: “Cuomo: Minimum Wage Harder to Get Than Gay Marriage.”

The story quoted New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, claiming that the effort to raise wages for the poorest of his constituents represents a “broader and deeper” divide than the recent successful fight to legalize same-sex matrimony in the Empire State. Though the piece quickly dissolved into the ether, it should have received more attention because it is an important Rosetta Stone—one that translates this era’s inscrutable political rhetoric into a clear admission that money trumps everything else.

Decoding this Rosetta Stone requires just a bit of contextual information from Siena College. According to the school’s surveys, only 58 percent of New Yorkers support legalizing gay marriage, while a whopping 78 percent support raising the minimum wage from $7.25 to $8.50.

Put Cuomo’s declaration next to those numbers, and the revelation emerges: In a political arena dominated by corporate money, the governor is acknowledging that politicians will champion initiatives that don’t challenge corporate power, but will avoid promoting those that do. Not only that, Cuomo is admitting this is the case regardless of public opinion.

Events in New York illustrate the larger dynamic at work. As The New York Times reported, despite lukewarm public support, Cuomo was able to get the state Legislature to legalize gay marriage after Wall Street financiers dumped cash into the campaign for equal rights. Knowing that marriage doesn’t threaten their profits, these moneyed interests opted to help their ally Cuomo notch a strategic win—one that allows the governor to preen as a great liberal champion to the state’s left-leaning voters, all while he simultaneously presses an anti-union, economically conservative agenda that moneyed interests support.

Continue reading at:  http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/a_rare_admission_that_money_trumps_everything_else_20120525/

From In These Times:  http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/13174/our_silent_spring

Fifty years after Rachel Carson’s warning call, have we learned anything?

BY Molly Bennet
May 21, 2012

Fifty years ago, America was on its way to being the kind of place few species would want to inhabit. Toxic waste flowed into rivers, soot floated out of smokestacks and pesticides were driving some species to the brink of extinction. Then, amid the turbulence of the 1960s and early 1970s, people began to realize that the earth might be something worth protecting. The result was our modern framework of environmental advocacy and regulation: Congress created the Environmental Protection Agency and passed landmark legislation like the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act; advocacy groups like Greenpeace, Environmental Defense Fund and the National Resources Defense Council were born; and older organizations like the Sierra Club were reinvigorated. On April 22, 1970, about 20 million people participated in the first Earth Day. The healing began.

It’s a familiar narrative – and would be a happy one if it ended there. Instead, today we face the gravest environmental threat that humanity has ever known – a threat that our system of environmental protection, so painstakingly constructed, is powerless to address. It’s been 24 years since NASA scientist James Hansen’s testimony before Congress brought global warming to the public’s attention. Yet despite the ceaseless work of activists and scientists, the carbon-fueled industrial economy that is wreaking havoc on the climate is still firmly in place. Neither the government nor the public evinces the will to confront it.

At such a critical moment, it is worth considering the book that first snapped the country out of its complacency and set the environmental movement in motion. In 1962, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring asked us to reconsider the blind rush toward what the industrial world called progress. Carson warned us that by destroying the environment, humans would destroy themselves.

Somewhere along the way, her message has been lost.

Continue reading at:  http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/13174/our_silent_spring

I know there are no doubt some Transsexual Sisters of Purity out there who will mouth the radical right/radical feminist party line about how wrong it is for “men” to use the lady’s room.  Conveniently failing to mention what restroom they used as pre-ops.

I won’t do that.  I started using the women’s room when I had to pee as soon as I started going out in public during the process of getting on hormones.

I didn’t make a scene of it.  didn’t hang around primping.  I just went in, peed, washed my hands and left.

From The Advocate:  http://www.advocate.com/politics/transgender/2012/05/25/doj-and-transgender-woman-claim-victory-bathroom-battle-university

Jennifer Braly scores a win.

BY Neal Broverman
May 25 2012

After the Department of Justice applied pressure, the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith will now allow a transgender woman to use women’s restrooms.

Jennifer Braly has been fighting for the right to use women’s facilities at UA. Braly, 38, was a guest lecturer at the university as well as a student; she says she was banned from lecturing because she challenged UA’s bathroom policy.

The school is now allowing Braly to use the facilities, but only after the Department of Justice sent a letter to the school. Read more here, but be warned that the article continuously refers to Braly’s anatomy.

From Inside Higher Ed:  http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/05/25/arkansas-fort-smith-transgender-student-wins-access-womens-restrooms

Restroom Choice

The University of Arkansas at Fort Smith is changing its policy regarding restroom use by transgender people after a student complained to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Jennifer Braly, a 38-year-old UAFS junior who is a transgender woman, was upset after being instructed to use only gender-neutral restrooms on campus. Braly had used women’s restrooms and gender-neutral restrooms until another student complained.

Braly is again allowed to use women’s restrooms, said R. Mark Horn, a vice chancellor. He said that the decision was made this spring after the Justice Department sent a letter to the university system’s lawyers. The university wouldn’t make that letter available, citing federal privacy laws. Justice Department spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa confirmed that a letter had been sent informing the university of the complaint, but Hinojosa said the letter did not direct the university to take any specific action. Hinojosa wouldn’t say whether an investigation is ongoing. A conservative blog, the first national outlet to report on the issue, accused the Obama administration of forcing the issue.

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/05/25/arkansas-fort-smith-transgender-student-wins-access-womens-restrooms

For the Radical Right/Radical feminist take on this one can go to the Right Wing Extremist Blog Townhall:  http://townhall.com/columnists/kevinmccullough/2012/05/27/the_bully_administration

The Bully Administration

Kevin McCullough
May 27, 2012

What was the great injustice that the University of Arkansas Fort Smith was committing?

They had refused to allow a 38-year-old male student to use any and all female facilities on campus. So per the communication from the administration, Eric Holder, Barack Obama and company, and acting on the hopes the DOJ would play nice, they caved.

And now the 38-year-old anatomically male student, who goes by the name Jennifer Braly, and refers to himself as a “transgender” (instead of transvestite) has been given campus wide permission to enter any and all female facilities.

Since the university had initially denied the access, I’m sure you’re pondering how the DOJ got mixed up in this to begin with. According to Mark Horn, the Vice President of university relations it was pretty simple.

Complete article at:  http://townhall.com/columnists/kevinmccullough/2012/05/27/the_bully_administration

From The Guardian UK:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/25/radical-feminism-trans-radfem2012

The banning of trans people from RadFem2012 is just one of the disturbing aspects of this monolithic conference

Roz Kaveney
guardian.co.uk, Friday 25 May 2012

Twitter has been flooded with controversy for the last week about the RadFem2012 conference, currently booked into the Conway Hall, which announced its membership as restricted to “women born women and living as women” (it originally said “biological women”, but that got changed after much mockery). This disturbed the trans community, which it is meant to exclude, but also those feminists who regard trans-exclusion as something other than radical.

To be clear, I know no trans women, still less trans men, who want to spend time in a space organized by people who slander us. However, one of the main speakers at the conference is Sheila Jeffreys, who has a forthcoming book critiquing trans medical care. In much of her earlier writing (see, for example, page 71 of this journal), she calls for “transsexualism” to be declared a human rights violation and then surgery banned by international law, so it’s fairly clear that we have an interest in the debate. What Jeffreys proposes has, of course, other implications for all women – the Vatican would love to make similar declarations about reproductive freedom.

There is also, more importantly, the question of whether what Jeffreys and her supporters say about trans people constitutes hate speech. As of two days ago, the Conway Hall expressed their concerns about the legality of trans exclusion, and about hate speech, to the conference organisers.

One of the problems with the Internet is that it is possible for people to lock themselves further and further into a restricted mind set where they hear no other voices. On the other hand, it makes it possible for those with a strong stomach to overturn every stone and find out just what people are saying and thinking. It’s clear that Jeffreys and her supporters are very hurt and disappointed that so many younger women don’t agree with her – Jeffreys blames the corrupting influence of post-modernism and queer theory; “trans-critical” lawyer Cath Brennan – who uses Twitter to deride trans people’s experiences and mock non-trans feminists who are their allies – is also a RadFem2012 attendee.

Complete article with comments at:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/25/radical-feminism-trans-radfem2012

From The Huffington Post:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathy-huang/tales-of-the-waria-indonesia_b_1546629.html

Kathy Huang
05/26/2012

This past March the Associated Press broke an unexpected story concerning Barack Obama’s childhood in Indonesia. Apparently, as a young boy growing up in Jakarta, Obama’s care had been entrusted to a transgender woman named Evie. American readers were shocked. What were the chances of the president having a transgender nanny — and in Indonesia, of all places? Having worked closely with the transgender community in Indonesia for the past several years, I can say: actually, not that bad.

In Indonesia biological men who believe that they are born with the souls of women are known as “warias.” The term is a melding of two Indonesian words: “wanita” (“woman”) and “pria” (“man”). As a group, warias are diverse, encompassing what we in America might call cross-dressers, transsexuals, drag queens, and effeminate gay men. What unites them is an irrepressible feminine spirit.

I first learned about warias in 2005, when I saw a newspaper photograph of a gorgeous waria who had won a beauty contest in Jakarta. I knew about the “ladyboys” of Thailand, but I had no idea that transgender people could live so openly in Indonesia, a country with the world’s largest Muslim population. Like many Americans I had this notion of Islam as being oppressive and particularly unforgiving toward sexual minorities. How could a community of warias possibly exist?

Three years later my curiosity as a filmmaker got the better of me. I took some Indonesian language classes and traveled to Indonesia to experience the lives of warias firsthand. Under the counsel of Dr. Tom Boellstorff, an anthropologist with 20 years of field experience working with the queer community in Indonesia, I landed in Makassar, a coastal city in eastern Indonesia known for both its strong Muslim faith and historic openness toward transgender individuals.

Continue reading at:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathy-huang/tales-of-the-waria-indonesia_b_1546629.html

From The Nation:  http://www.thenation.com/blog/168055/baby-gender-trouble

Salamishah Tillet
on May 24, 2012

“Do you know what the gender is?” is the question people most frequently ask expecting parents, including me. Usually, I give the conventional response: “No, we are waiting to be surprised.” But occasionally I offer up one of my two real answers, “We don’t know the sex or the gender” or “I don’t really believe in gender anyway.”

Eyebrows are raised. And then a series of explanations follow.

Sometimes I go into a long monologue, à la feminist philosopher Judith Butler, about gender being a fiction, consisting of two opposite categories and a series of staged acts that we tacitly agree to “perform, produce, and sustain.” On the most basic level, why is blue is the agreed upon costume color for boys, while pink is the color for girls?

Butler’s groundbreaking 1990 book, Gender Trouble, goes on to argue that we preserve the performance in order to maintain a fantasy of order, rules and normalcy. To break away from these two categories, to actually understand gender, as it really is—unstable, complicated, and multiple—risks harsh social punishments.

It is hard for most people to separate sex from gender. Sex refers to the biological differences, the presence of XX-female or XY-male chromosomes. (Even this is not a hard-set rule, as the Intersex Society of North America reminds us, about one in 1,500 to one in 2,000 babies is born each year with a reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t seem to fit the typical definition of female or male.)

Gender, on the other hand, is neither biological or chromosomal but social and cultural. The traits we associate with “being a boy” or “acting like a girl” have no grounding in science, but we assume they are natural and normal. For example, in the emotional spectrum, an excessive emotionality from girl children means dolls and princess clothing and hyper-aggression from boy children translates into trucks and knights.

Complete article at:  http://www.thenation.com/blog/168055/baby-gender-trouble

From The Environmental Magazine:  http://www.emagazine.com/magazine/this-is-your-ocean-on-acid

As Emissions Continue to Rise, the World’s Oceans Are Becoming Corrosive, Threatening Shellfish, Corals and the Entire Ocean Food Web

Brita Belli
May 1, 2012

On most days, Bill Dewey can be found wearing waist-high waders and inspecting Manila clams—the West Coast version of the littleneck—at his Washington clam farm, Chuckanut Shellfish. Under an arrangement that’s unique to the state, Dewey owns 32 acres of tidelands. Unlike land-based farms, he can only harvest when the tide recedes, leaving over a mile of mudflats, and shellfish, exposed.  He gathers the clams with the help of a former tulip-bulb harvesting machine that’s carried out aboard his boat, the Clamdango!

Working on the mudflats, often with his son and dog in tow, is the fulfillment of a dream for Dewey, a shellfish farmer for more than 30 years who is also the public policy and communications director for Taylor Shellfish Company. Taylor’s operations—which include growing oysters, clams, mussels and geoduck (giant clams whose necks can reach more than three feet long)—span some 1,900 acres of the same tidelands. All told, there are about 47,000 acres of oceanic land that have that special designation in the state, and, he says, “It’s fundamental as to why Washington leads the country in farmed shellfish production. In other parts of country, you typically have to lease the land from the state. Banks are less apt to loan money to businesses that have to lease.”

Commercial shellfishing makes up the lion’s share—two-thirds—of the nation’s aquaculture industry. So reports the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) Fisheries Service which makes a case for boosting domestic seafood production, noting that Americans eat a lot of seafood, and import 86% of it, creating a U.S. seafood trade deficit that now exceeds $10.4 billion annually, second only to oil when it comes to natural resources. In the Pacific Northwest, the shellfish industry contributes $270 million per year to the regional economy and employs more than 3,200 people. And when oyster cultivation fails at the top Northwest hatcheries and farms, the effects on the industry are devastating.

Continue reading at:  http://www.emagazine.com/magazine/this-is-your-ocean-on-acid

From Common Dreams:  http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/05/25-8

Greenpeace: Climate crisis caused by lack of political action

From The Guardian UK:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/24/police-urge-greeks-money-bank

Scale of withdrawals from Greek banks has led to speculation that eurozone-wide guarantee is need to maintain confidence

Jill Treanor
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 24 May 2012

Police are urging Greeks to keep their money in bank accounts rather than putting it at risk of theft, amid further uncertainty about whether the austerity-struck country will remain in the eurozone.

Greece‘s banks are likely to be shored up on Friday or Monday with €18bn (£14bn) of bailout funds they have been due to receive for weeks but which were held up by political uncertainty caused by inconclusive elections. Greece goes to the polls again on June 17, further stoking fears about its future within the euro.

The scale of withdrawals from Greek banks – almost 25% of deposits have been taken out in the past two years – and fears that other countries may suffer mass withdrawals has led to speculation that a eurozone-wide guarantee is needed to maintain confidence in the banking system.

Greece’s national police spokesman, Thanassis Kokkalakis, told Reuters: “Many people have withdrawn their money from the banks fearing a financial crash, and they either carry it on them, find a hideout at home or in storage rooms.

“We urge people to trust the banking system, leave their money there, or at least in a safe place, not hide it at home, where they must anyway take the basic security measures.”

The injection of fresh funds into the Greek banks is expected to allow the European Central Bank to start dealing with those unnamed institutions to which it stopped providing direct funding because they did not have enough capital.

Continue reading at:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/24/police-urge-greeks-money-bank