This has been one of those weeks that has left me shaking my head and asking,

“WTF?”

From Raw Story: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/09/fbi-raids-antiwar-activists/

By The Associated Press
Friday, September 24th, 2010 — 3:37 pm

The FBI said it searched eight homes in Minneapolis and Chicago as part of a terrorism investigation on Friday, and two subjects said the agency is targeting leaders of the anti-war movement.

FBI spokesman Steve Warfield told The Associated Press agents served six warrants in Minneapolis and two in Chicago. “These were search warrants only,” Warfield said. “We’re not anticipating any arrests at this time. They’re seeking evidence relating to activities concerning the material support of terrorism.”

The home of Minneapolis anti-war activists Mick Kelly and Jess Sundin were among those searched, they told the AP. “The FBI is harassing anti-war organizers and leaders, folks who opposed U.S. intervention in the Middle East and Latin America,” Kelly said before agents confiscated his cell phone. Sundin called the suggestion they were connected with terrorism “pretty hilarious and ridiculous.”

Continue Reading at:  http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/09/fbi-raids-antiwar-activists/

From Fight Back News: http://www.fightbacknews.org/2010/9/24/activists-denounce-fbi-raids-anti-war-and-solidarity-activists-homes

We denounce the Federal Bureau of Investigation harassment of anti-war and solidarity activists in several states across the country. The FBI began turning over six houses in Chicago and Minneapolis this morning, Friday, September 24, 2010, at 8:00 am central time. The FBI handed subpoenas to testify before a federal grand jury to about a dozen activists in Illinois, Minnesota, and Michigan. They also attempted to intimidate activists in California and North Carolina.

“The government hopes to use a grand jury to frame up activists. The goal of these raids is to harass and try to intimidate the movement against U.S. wars and occupations, and those who oppose U.S. support for repressive regimes,” said Colombia solidarity activist Tom Burke, one of those handed a subpoena by the FBI. “They are designed to suppress dissent and free speech, to divide the peace movement, and to pave the way for more U.S. military intervention in the Middle East and Latin America.”

This suppression of democratic rights is aimed towards those who dedicate much of their time and energy to supporting the struggles of the Palestinian and Colombian peoples against U.S. funded occupation and war. The activists are involved with well-known anti-war groups including many of the leaders of the huge protest against the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, MN in September 2008. The FBI agents emphasized that the grand jury was going to investigate the activists for possible terrorism charges. This is a U.S. government attempt to silence those who support resistance to oppression in the Middle East and Latin America.

The activists involved have done nothing wrong and are refusing to be pulled into conversations with the FBI about their political views or organizing against war and occupation. The activists are involved with many groups, including: the Palestine Solidarity Group, Students for a Democratic Society, the Twin-Cities Anti-War Committee, the Colombia Action Network, the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, and the National Committee to Free Ricardo Palmera (a Colombian Political Prisoner).

Steff Yorek, a long-time antiwar activist and one of the activists whose homes was searched, called the raids “An outrageous fishing expedition.”

We urge all progressive activists to show solidarity with those individuals targeted by the U.S. Government. Activists have the right not to speak with the FBI and are encouraged to politely refuse, just say “No”.

Please contact info@colombiasolidarity.org or info@fightbacknews.org if you would like to provide support to the targeted activists.

From IndyMedia: http://twincities.indymedia.org/2010/sep/breaking-news-three-houses-minneapolis-raided-other-houses-michigan-nc-chicago-targeted

*Breaking News* At least four houses in Minneapolis raided, other houses in Michigan, NC, Chicago targeted.

Trans mailing lists and blog comments are filled with nasty posts from trannie trolls and sock puppets all proclaiming how they are true transsexuals (Classic Transsexuals, HBS and other bullshit) and that those who don’t take up the party line of these self ordained arbiters of who is or isn’t a “real” transsexual are all “transgender identified”.

For people who claim to be so assimilated and disconnected from the worlds of transsexual and transgender people these folks seem to spend an inordinate amount of time trolling and posting their garbage to not only every blog put up by any person who is anyway related to anything transsexual or transgender but also in forums many of us abandoned years ago.  Like the Usenet..

Andrea James tracked a number of these people down and I have seen photographs of several of them.

The appearance of many of these people betrays their claims of assimilation into society.  Then there is the question of how they have the time?  I currently have more time than a few months ago due to having lost my job.  Many of these trolls are permanently unemployable and are on disability.

Often times the same truism that has entered popular thinking regarding homophobic pastors seems to also apply to these trolls and sock puppets.

The names they call reflect their own fears of being exactly what they are calling others.

But there is another level of self deception.  That is the idea that using these aliases gives them anonymity when every internet portal has an IP Address.  Or that connections can’t be made using Google or that some of us are not friends and won’t share info.

It’s kind of absurd to think that you are anonymous when I can track your IP to a street address that has a Google Earth view of your building.

You might as well wear the freaking “Transsexual Menace” t-shirt.  If you are on line it doesn’t matter if you use aliases or not.

So stop kidding yourself that you are so Anonymous.

Just today a blurb on “Some Assembly Required” pointed me to the following:

From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/23/tmobile-claims-right-to-c_n_736216.html

T-Mobile Claims Right To Censor Text Messages

wired.com:

T-Mobile told a federal judge Wednesday it may pick and choose which text messages to deliver on its network in a case weighing whether wireless carriers have the same “must carry” obligations as wire-line telephone providers.

Read the whole story: wired.com

There are too many trannie “Klan” out there who seem to think donning a robe and hood of  imaginary invisibility gives them license to spread hatred everywhere and poison the discourse among people working to improve the lives of TS/TG people.

WTF?

Libertarians are Republi-Nazis on Crack.

Too many people confuse libertarianism with anarchism.  They are are not the same.

The freedom libertarians believew in is the freedom to own slaves, rape the environment and fuck over workers while paying them Mumbai levels of wages.

Under libertarianism the rich get to all be Hitler and the working people get______.  Fucked is one word.  To die working is another way of putting it since libertarians do not believe in Social Security, Medicare or organized labor labor.  They do not believe employers should be required to provide any benefits or the 40 hour week.

For that matter the only government function they believe in is the military and police.

They are in short nearly the absolute worst choice of ideology around.

The only people who should ever consider voting for them are people who would otherwise vote Republican.

From TransGriot:  http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2010/09/why-trans-community-hates-dr-paul.html

By Monica Roberts

Reposted with Author’s permission

“The post-surgical subjects struck me as caricatures of women. They wore high heels, copious makeup, and flamboyant clothing; they spoke about how they found themselves able to give vent to their natural inclinations for peace, domesticity, and gentleness—but their large hands, prominent Adam’s apples, and thick facial features were incongruous (and would become more so as they aged)….” Dr. Paul McHugh 2004 Surgical Sex.

If you’ve noticed the spike in anti-trans rhetoric coming from the Catholic Church that has resulted in an increase in transphobia and hate violence crimes directed at transpeople in Latin America and other heavily Catholic spots on the planet, you have this man to thank for it.

You also have this man to thank for the ‘transsexuality is a choice’ meme that we have had to constantly fight as well.

But there is one group that he zealously defends. Catholic priests facing sex abuse charges.

Dr. Paul McHugh is another one of our longtime enemies of the trans community who first got the attention of our community in 1979. As then chair of the Johns Hopkins Psychiatry Department from 1975-2001 he shut down the Gender Program based on that infamous 1977 John Meyer study he ordered that claimed there was no real benefit to these services.

As a longtime critic of trans issues, McHugh has ties to neoconservative Catholic groups, was a member of the GW Bush Administration’s President’s Council on Bioethics, and is frequently quoted by anti-transgender groups such as NARTH and the Concerned Women for America.

McHugh claims responsibility for helping get J. Michael Bailey’s anti-trans character assassination waste of trees The Man Who Would Be Queen published through the National Academy of Sciences.

He was tapped as the Vatican Advisor on trans issues and set the table for the current ‘hate on transpeople’ attitudes now prevalent in the Vatican since 2003 and now spreading like a cancer through the Roman Catholic Church.

Paul McHugh is also a supporter and proponent of Ray Blanchard’s dubious autogynephelia theory that he created in 1989.

The “transgender” activists (now often allied with gay liberation movements) still argue that their members are entitled to whatever surgery they want, and they still claim that their sexual dysphoria represents a true conception of their sexual identity. They have made some protests against the diagnosis of autogynephilia as a mechanism to generate demands for sex-change operations, but they have offered little evidence to refute the diagnosis. Psychiatrists are taking better sexual histories from those requesting sex-change surgery and are discovering more examples of this strange male exhibitionist proclivity

McHugh not only leads the attacks on transpeople with a fanatical zeal, he did so against the late Dr. George Tiller to the point that in 2007 he was ordered by Kansas Attorney General Paul Morrison to cease and desist. The anti-Tiller public statements by him and others in the conservative movement led to Tiller’s death.

McHugh has the blood of our brothers and sisters around the world on his hands as well, and is deserving of the antipathy heaped upon him in our community.