Women Born Transsexual

From Mother Jones Magazine: http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/12/end-abortion-insurance

By Nick Baumann

Remember the nasty fight over federal funding of abortion that nearly derailed the health care package? It’s not over.

The issue is sure to flare up again early in the next Congress in the form of a bill floated by Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act.” The proposal—which has the support of 185 cosponsors and incoming House Speaker John Boehner—has a stated aim of making the Hyde Amendment (a rule that has to be renewed every year that prohibits federal funding of abortions through Medicaid) into permanent, government-wide law. But abortion-rights advocates fear Smith’s bill could have even broader consequences. They view it as a Trojan horse for the elimination of private insurance coverage for abortion. If they’re right, tens of millions of Americans could see their health insurers stop covering abortions.

Susan Cohen, the director of governmental affairs for the pro-abortion-rights Guttmacher Foundation, argued in a policy brief this fall that “the Smith bill would go…into uncharted territory” by preventing employers from taking a tax deduction for offering an insurance plan that covered abortion. (Like most other benefits, health insurance costs are generally tax-deductible for employers.) Analysts at NARAL Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood, the leading abortion rights advocacy groups, agree. According to abortion-rights advocates, Smith’s bill would create a huge incentive for employers to only offer health insurance that doesn’t cover abortion. Insurers would respond to what their customers wanted, and the percentage of health plans offering abortion coverage—currently 86 percent—would undoubtedly plummet.

Continue reading at:  http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/12/end-abortion-insurance

I consider royalty to be worthless scum and a waste of oxygen.  So I was happy to see that the students in Britain attacked a car with Charles and Camilla in it.

Great start. Remember 1789 and follow through.

Prince Charles, Camilla’s Car Attacked By Student Protesters In London

From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/09/prince-charles-and-camill_n_794574.html#s203450

12- 9-10 05:35 PM

LONDON — In Britain’s worst political violence in years, furious student protesters rained sticks and rocks on riot police, vandalized government buildings and attacked a car carrying Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, after lawmakers approved a controversial hike in university tuition fees.

Demonstrators set upon the heir to the throne’s limousine as it drove through London’s West End shopping and entertainment hub. Protesters who had been running amok and smashing shop windows kicked and threw paint at the car, which sped off.

Charles’ office, Clarence House, confirmed the attack but said “their royal highnesses are unharmed.”

Police said it was unclear whether the royals had been deliberately targeted, or were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The couple arrived looking composed at the London Palladium theater, where they were attending a Royal Variety Performance. Their Rolls Royce limousine was left with a badly cracked rear window and was spattered with paint.

Protesters erupted in anger after legislators in the House of Commons approved a plan to triple university fees to 9,000 pounds ($14,000) a year.

Continue reading at:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/09/prince-charles-and-camill_n_794574.html#s203450

From The Nation: http://www.thenation.com/article/156811/making-unions-matter-again

December 2, 2010

For the first time in recent memory, most voices in the social change movement, including progressively inclined unions, are having a hard time spinning victory out of massive electoral defeat. Could it also be that this time we will finally learn the right lessons?

Given the constraints of our two-party system and the differences between the parties on workers’ issues, it makes sense for unions to endorse Democrats and for union members to pull the Democratic lever on election day. But for too long, union leaders have tethered themselves to the Democratic Party on fundamental questions of strategy. Ironically, when the Democrats take control of the White House the problem is exacerbated, as unions often mistake access for power. The leaders of the Democratic Party don’t wake up in the morning thinking about how to expand social benefits to workers or the poor. And they certainly don’t wake up and think about how to make unions stronger.

As the consultant-industrial complex linked to the Democratic Party has taken over at most national unions, unions have substituted “messaging” for organizing while actual organizers have nearly become extinct. To beat the twenty-four-hour nonstop lies blasted into American homes by Fox News requires engaging workers face to face—not blasting them with poll-tested e-mails. It takes a two-way discussion to help workers move past fear and frustration and toward collective action to address the problems in their lives. Note to unions: Twitter and Facebook are not engagement.

Rather than focusing on the immediate economic security of the working class (and in this highly unequal country, that means the middle class too), unions have been preoccupied with their own organizational security. Encouraged by pollsters and Democratic Party consultants, union leaders decided to bet the farm on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). With the economic crisis ravaging the nation, this was the number-one “ask” of the new administration labor had fought so hard (and paid so dearly) to elect. Keep in mind that unions have been trying unsuccessfully to win meaningful labor law reform since the 1940s—when they were much stronger. The Chamber of Commerce and its unionbusting allies were undoubtedly unhappy that Democrats were even discussing labor law reform, but the big business lobby must have been delighted with a strategy hatched by unions that the Chamber could boil down to “unions want to take away a worker’s right to vote by secret ballot on whether to form a union.” Labor leaders spent the first year of the Obama administration working “behind the scenes” to enact this priority. Not surprisingly, they failed.

Continue reading at:  http://www.thenation.com/article/156811/making-unions-matter-again

Or Alternet: http://www.alternet.org/news/149123/vision%3A_how_organizing_is_the_real_antidote_to_fox_news_propaganda/

From The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/fashion/09TRANS.html?_r=1&ref=style

Lea T

By WILLIAM VAN METER
Published: December 8, 2010

IT’S certainly a statement on our times that, in the same month, James Franco graces the covers of GQ and Candy. In GQ, he appears in a moody head shot. In Candy, a style magazine dedicated to what it calls the “transversal” — that is, transsexuality, transvestism, cross-dressing, androgyny and any combination thereof — Mr. Franco, shot by Terry Richardson, vamps in trowel-applied makeup, heavy jewelry and a woman’s dominatrix-style power suit.

Candy, it turns out, is but one of the more visible bits of evidence that 2010 will be remembered as the year of the transsexual. Yes, Mr. Franco is just dressing up and doesn’t feel he was born the wrong sex. But it is a grand gesture of solidarity with gender nonconformists and certainly hasn’t affected attendance at “127 Hours.”

Other celebrities have flirted with “the other side,” cross-dressing for fashion publications. On the cover of the current Industrie, Marc Jacobs is decked out in one of his signature women’s designs (albeit with a beard). Japanese Vogue Hommes revealed its new male model, Jo Calderone, who was, in actuality, Lady Gaga.

Not since the glam era of the 1970s has gender-bending so saturated the news media. The difference now is that mystery has been replaced with empowerment, even pride. Consider a few happenings that have blipped recently on our radar. The blog of a young mother whose 5-year-old son had dressed like Daphne on “Scooby-Doo” for Halloween went viral, initiating a nationwide discussion on the fluidity of gender. (The mother ended up on “Today.”) The performance artist Kalup Linzy became a downtown phenomenon in Manhattan for his gender-bending portrayals of soap-opera divas. Oprah Winfrey welcomed transsexual men to her program.

In November, a transgender student pledged a sorority at Trinity University in Texas. Original Plumbing, a zine for trans-guys, came out with a fashion issue.

<snip>

For Givenchy’s fall advertising campaign, Ms. T. was photographed by Mert and Marcus in a feathery blouson. When the ad was released in May, it set off a press frenzy, with Ms. T.’s modeling agency, Women, receiving more than 400 interview requests.

Ms. T., 28, has been a friend of the Givenchy creative director Riccardo Tisci, since she was 17. (The “T” stands for Tisci; he unofficially adopted her into his family.) She worked for the fashion house in various positions and as a fit model. It was Mr. Tisci’s idea to have her in the campaign.

Complete article at:  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/fashion/09TRANS.html?_r=1&ref=style

From 365 Gay: http://www.365gay.com/news/dont-ask-dont-tell-repeal-bill-is-dead/

Thu-Dec. 9- 4:10 p.m. -The Senate has just rejected an attempt to bring the defense authorization bill to the floor, effectively killing the prospects for repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell this year, and likely for years to come.

The vote was 57 to 40.

It could not be determined immediately which three senators did not vote. Most moderate Republicans, including Massachusetts’ Scott Brown, Illinois’ Mark Kirk, and Maine Senator Olympia Snowe, voted against allowing the bill to the floor. Republican Senator Susan Collins, who was a chief negotiator for trying to get the bill to the floor, voted for cloture.

It was a dramatic finish and, undoubtedly, viewers saw on the Senate floor just the tip of the iceberg in negotiations that sought to bring about repeal of the military’s ban on openly gay servicemembers.

Continue reading at:  http://www.365gay.com/news/dont-ask-dont-tell-repeal-bill-is-dead/

From AFL-CIO Media Center: http://www.aflcio.org/mediacenter/prsptm/pr12092010b.cfm

December 09, 2010

From Raw Story: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/deal-raises-taxes-poorest-earners/

By Daniel Tencer
Wednesday, December 8th, 2010 — 5:50 pm

Quarter of tax savings will go to richest one percent

The plan to extend Bush-era tax cuts that President Barack Obama struck with the Senate Republican leadership will result in lower taxes for wealthy and middle-class Americans but will mean a tax hike for the very poorest earners.

According to an analysis in the New York Times, the Obama-GOP deal will mean that individuals earning less than $20,000 and families earning less than $40,000 will see a small tax hike.

“It will come to a few dollars a week,” Roberton Williams, an analyst at the Tax Policy Center told the Times. “But it is an increase.”

As part of the deal, Obama agreed to drop the Making Work Pay credit that was created as part of the stimulus package, and replace it with a lower payroll tax. That lost credit — of $400 or $800 — is greater than the amount low-income earners will save from the lower payroll tax, meaning, in total, they will pay more.

Continue reading at:  http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/deal-raises-taxes-poorest-earners/

I know a lot of my sisters don’t like Barney Frank because he is supposedly soft on trans-issues.  But I’m a multi-issue person and Barny Frank is up there in the 10% or so of Democrats who are still real progressive Democrats and not total corporate sell outs, therefore I love him.

From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/08/barney-frank-tax-cut-deal_n_793944.html

Nick Wing
Posted: 12- 8-10 05:26 PM

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, announced Wednesday that he would vote against the White House’s recent tax cuts deal, but admitted that the package would likely pass despite increasingly vocal opposition from House Democrats.

“No, I won’t vote for it. I don’t think that I should be coerced,” Frank told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, before conceding that he was “afraid that it is” going to pass anyways.

“I do not believe that raising the marginal rate from 36 to 39 percent on hundreds-of-thousands of dollars is going to affect their spending patterns,” Frank maintained, countering a popular claim by Republicans that allowing taxes on the wealthiest Americans to revert to their pre-Bush rates would damage an already weak economy.

Frank also brought up a common critique of the Senate process, saying that the Democratic caucus in that chamber — and in the House, for that matter — had achieved a majority consensus on not extending the Bush tax cuts for the top two percent of Americans, but that Republicans were allowed to trump them because of filibuster rules.

Continue reading at:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/08/barney-frank-tax-cut-deal_n_793944.html

From The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/technology/09net.html?_r=1

By ASHLEE VANCE and MIGUEL HELFT
Published: December 8, 2010

A hacking free-for-all has exploded on the Web, and Facebook and Twitter are stuck in the middle.

On Wednesday, anonymous hackers took aim at companies perceived to have harmed WikiLeaks after its release of a flood of confidential diplomatic documents. MasterCard, Visa and PayPal, which had cut off people’s ability to donate money to WikiLeaks, were hit by attacks that tried to block access to the companies’ Web sites and services.

To organize their efforts, the hackers have turned to sites like Facebook and Twitter. That has drawn these Web giants into the fray and created a precarious situation for them.

Both Facebook and Twitter — but particularly Twitter — have received praise in recent years as outlets for free speech. Governments trying to control the flow of information have found it difficult to block people from voicing their concerns or setting up meetings through the sites.

At the same time, both Facebook and Twitter have corporate aspirations that hinge on their ability to serve as ad platforms for other companies. This leaves them with tough public relations and business decisions around how they should handle situations as politically charged as the WikiLeaks developments.

Continue reading at:  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/technology/09net.html?_r=1

From Infoshop News:  http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20101208174118826

MasterCard website down in WikiLeaks attack
Company says credit card system is secure and operating:

Manifesto video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZNDV4…r_embedded

MasterCard’s Canadian website remains unavailable after WikiLeaks supporters struck back Wednesday at perceived enemies of the site’s founder Julian Assange.

They also attacked the websites of Swedish prosecutors, the Swedish lawyer whose clients have accused Assange of sexual crimes, and the Swiss authority that froze Assange’s bank account.

MasterCard Canada spokesman Jim Issokson told CBC News the denial of service attack on the company’s website has not affected any credit card transactions.

“MasterCard’s systems have not been compromised,” he said, “At this time the issue appears to be the result of a concentrated effort to flood our corporate website with traffic and slow access.”

MasterCard and Visa severed their relationships with WikiLeaks Tuesday, under pressure from the U.S. government. Visa’s Canadian website is still operating.

MasterCard is working to get things back to normal.

“We are working to restore normal service levels,” Issokson said, “[however] there is no impact on our cardholders’ ability to use their cards for secure transactions globally.”

The online campaign took the form of attacks in which computers across the internet are harnessed — sometimes surreptitiously — to jam target sites with mountains of requests for data, knocking them out of commission.

Early Wednesday, a group taking responsibility for the online attacks, Operation Payback, led media to a YouTube video in which it states its objectives.

Wave of support

The online attacks are part of a wave of online support for WikiLeaks that is sweeping the internet. Twitter was choked with messages of solidarity Wednesday, while the site’s Facebook page hit one million fans.

A group, which has previously focused on the Church of Scientology and the music industry, has promised to come to Assange’s aid by knocking offline websites seen as hostile to WikiLeaks.

‘We want transparency and we counter censorship .…’
— Message from website activists

“While we don’t have much of an affiliation with WikiLeaks, we fight for the same reasons,” the group said in a statement on its website. “We want transparency and we counter censorship .…This is why we intend to utilize our resources to raise awareness, attack those against, and support those who are helping lead our world to freedom and democracy.”

It was not immediately clear which attacks the group was responsible for, although activists on Twitter and other forums cheered the news of each one in turn.

Claes Borgstrom, lawyer for the two women who claim to have been sexually assaulted by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in Sweden in August, talks to media at his office in Stockholm Wednesday. (Anders Wiklund/Associated Press)The website for Swedish lawyer Claes Borgstrom, who represents the two women at the centre of Assange’s sex crimes case, was unreachable Wednesday.

The Swiss postal system’s financial arm, Postfinance, which shut down Assange’s new bank account on Monday, was also having trouble. Spokesman Alex Josty said the website buckled under a barrage of traffic Tuesday, but the onslaught seems to have eased off.

“Yesterday it was very, very difficult, then things improved overnight,” he told The Associated Press. “But it’s still not entirely back to normal.”

While one internet company after another has cut its ties to the websites amid intense U.S. government pressure — Amazon.com, PayPal, EveryDNS — the French government’s effort to stop a company there from hosting WikiLeaks has failed — at least for now.

The web services company OVH, which is among those hosting the current site — http://wikileaks.ch — sought a ruling by two courts about the legality of hosting WikiLeaks in France. The judges said this week they couldn’t decide on the highly technical case right away.

WikiLeaks evoked the ire of the U.S. government last spring when it posted a gritty war video taken by Army helicopters showing troops gunning down two unarmed Reuters journalists. Since then, the organization has leaked some 400,000 classified U.S. war files from Iraq and 76,000 from Afghanistan that U.S. military officials say included names of U.S. informants and other information that could put people’s lives at risk.

The latest leaks have involved private U.S. diplomatic cables that included frank U.S. assessments of foreign nations and their leaders.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2010…z17Xiqa4c4