Women Born Transsexual

You know how the Kinsey Studies of the late 1940s revealed that about 10% of people are exclusively gay? You know those recent studies debunking the 10% figure that conclude, “Oh no it’s really 5%.”

I’ve found the missing 5%.

You know how there used to be certain tell tale signs that were sure reads that someone was gay?  Well it turns out that being loudly and overtly homophobic is one of those sure signs of closet homosexuality.

I wonder what will happen with Tony Perkins, Rick Santorum when their followers realize they have been deceived by closet case gay men?

From PoliticusUSA:  http://www.politicususa.com/en/proof-that-homophobia-is-associated-with-homosexual-arousal

By Sarah Jones
December 6, 2011

Breaking news! All that you thought you knew about homophobic people turns out to be true. You’ve been saying it for years, and it turns out that you were right. It’s scientific and stuff, too. Yes, imagine the fun you can have citing this study that proves that homophobia is associated with homosexual arousal to back up your claims that those who hate homosexuals are actually suppressing homoerotic urges. And this is bigger than Freud and his misogynistic, creepy theories.

In a Department of Psychology, University of Georgia, Athens study published on PubMed.gov, the authors come to the conclusion that homophobia is associated with homosexual arousal:

The authors investigated the role of homosexual arousal in exclusively heterosexual men who admitted negative affect toward homosexual individuals. Participants consisted of a group of homophobic men (n = 35) and a group of nonhomophobic men (n = 29); they were assigned to groups on the basis of their scores on the Index of Homophobia (W. W. Hudson & W. A. Ricketts, 1980). The men were exposed to sexually explicit erotic stimuli consisting of heterosexual, male homosexual, and lesbian videotapes, and changes in penile circumference were monitored. They also completed an Aggression Questionnaire (A. H. Buss & M. Perry, 1992). Both groups exhibited increases in penile circumference to the heterosexual and female homosexual videos. Only the homophobic men showed an increase in penile erection to male homosexual stimuli. The groups did not differ in aggression. Homophobia is apparently associated with homosexual arousal that the homophobic individual is either unaware of or denies.

This study is actually years old, and yet never as relevant as it is today as Republican candidates take to the stage to squeal that they will repeal DADT and make gay marriage illegal on a federal level, while ignoring jobs and the economy. It’s enough to make any sane person wonder.

Psychology Today broke it down:

When viewing lesbian sex and straight sex, both the homophobic and the non-homophobic men showed increased penis circumference. For gay male sex, however, only the homophobic men showed heightened penis arousal.

Continue reading at:  http://www.politicususa.com/en/proof-that-homophobia-is-associated-with-homosexual-arousal

From Common Dreams: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/12/05-3

by Jeff Bachman
Published on Monday, December 5, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

President Obama would be an international criminal. He would neither be the first U.S. president to reach such noble status nor would he be the last. He is simply the most recent president to flout international law as if it does not exist, as well as the U.S. president most supportive of international accountability—for others.

Under President Obama, the U.S. has been far more willing to openly support the prosecution of leaders of other countries. On numerous occasions, the Obama Administration has singled out other nations for accountability. The United States has lent its support for the International Criminal Court’s actions taken against President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan. Ben Chang, a spokesman for National Security Advisor James L. Jones, said, “It is in our country’s interest that the most heinous of criminals, like the perpetrators of the genocide in Darfur, are held accountable.”

In the summer of 2009, during a visit to Africa, Secretary of State Clinton put pressure on the Kenyan government to take measures to investigate and prosecute those responsible for violence following the disputed 2007 presidential election. “I have urged that the Kenyan government find the way forward themselves,” she said, “But if not, then the names turned over to the ICC will be opened, and an investigation will begin.”

Most recently, the U.S. supported Resolution 1970, referring Libya to the ICC. The U.S. Ambassador-at-large for War Crimes Issues, Stephen Rapp, stated, “Basically we have made the determination that all these cases are appropriate and cry out for justice – and in the absence of genuine proceedings at the national level –they require effective international justice.” According to Ambassador Rapp’s logic, U.S. officials should be turning President Obama and President Bush over to the ICC due to “the absence of genuine proceedings at the national level.”

Of course, international law is only applicable to others, specifically those determined by the U.S and its allies to be rogue elements. The discourse surrounding American atrocities in U.S. elite political and media circles begins and ends with the impact of these crimes on domestic political support for the President’s foreign policy “successes” and on America’s relationship with the countries in which the attacks occur.

Continue reading at:  http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/12/05-3

From In These Times: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/12278/au_revoir_noblesse_oblige

The sense of duty America’s ruling class once felt to support the greater good is gone.

BY Chris Lehmann
December 2, 2011

Wall Street has been overrun with loutish, preening boors, heedless of civility and public order. They belong to an idle class of feckless layabouts, who indulge every passing destructive impulse, regard any serious social obligation as a personal slight and generally act as though the world owes them a living.

Also, some protesters are gathering nearby, in lower Manhattan’s Liberty Park, aka Zuccotti Park.

The public protests against the nation’s investing elite have laid bare one of the hoariest entries in our republic’s social mythology: the notion that our privileged caste bears a special sense of duty to turn their vast holdings toward the service of a greater good.

In more sentimental bygone times, this went by the name noblesse oblige–the idea that something (if not much, strictly speaking) was expected from those who benefited from existing social and economic arrangements. This myth served to make it seem as though large landholders and financial barons were doing the republic a favor by exercising what they took to be their natural prerogative as rulers. That’s why the election of a vulgar soldier such as Andrew Jackson as president came as a shock to the New England elites and Virginia squierarchy for whom affairs of state were a natural extension of their various landed and commercial monopolies. And that’s why Jackson’s overheated assaults on the early Republic’s “monster Bank” seemed so ugly. Did the new landless holders of the franchise have no gratitude, for God’s sake?

Still, the noblessse oblige ideal could serve as an occasional check on the over-grasping ambitions of America’s ruling class–and fuel the effective neo-populist counterinsurgencies of class traitors such as Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt. In our own addled neo-aristocratic age, however, the idea that elites who reap outsized benefits in the American social order incur any reciprocal social obligations is a dead letter. Not only is the nation’s power elite unhampered by a residual allegiance to a larger social agenda–they are the nation’s agenda.

Continue reading at:   http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/12278/au_revoir_noblesse_oblige

This is why we are in End Stage or Cancer Stage Capitalism and why the inevitable conclusion is some form of revolution

From Huffington Post:   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/06/criminal-prosecution-financial-crimes_n_1131639.html

Jillian Berman
12/ 6/11

Though often blamed with making the calls that led the country to the brink of collapse, financial executives likely won’t face criminal charges for their practices during the financial crisis, according to a former top U.S. investigator.

The Justice Department has decided that prosecution of financial executives is “better left to regulators” to take civil-enforcement actions, David Cardona, who was a deputy assistant director at the Federal Bureau of Investigation until last month, told the Wall Street Journal.

“There’s been a realization and a more deliberate targeting by the Department of Justice before we launch criminally on some of these cases,” Cardona told the WSJ.

Cardona’s comments come nearly eight months after Senator Carl Levin released a report on Goldman Sachs’ role in the financial crisis, which found the investment bank profited off purposefully deceiving its own clients at the height of the financial crisis. Levin then said he would recommend some of the investment bank’s executives for possible criminal prosecution.

Government officials haven’t successfully prosecuted a single Wall Street executive or financial firm since the meltdown, despite many Americans and experts blaming them for the decisions that led to the housing crisis and subsequent financial panic, according to CBS News.

Continue reading at:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/06/criminal-prosecution-financial-crimes_n_1131639.html

From Common Dreams:  http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/12/05-8

by Bill McKibben
Published on Monday, December 5, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

The most important piece of news yesterday, this week, this month, and this year was a new set of statistics released yesterday by the Global Carbon Project. It showed that carbon emissions from our planet had increased 5.9 percent between 2009 and 2010. In fact, it was arguably among the most important pieces of data in the last, oh, three centuries, since according to the New York Times it represented “almost certainly the largest absolute jump in any year since the Industrial Revolution.”

What it means, in climate terms, is that we’ve all but lost the battle to reduce the damage from global warming. The planet has already warmed about a degree Celsius; it’s clearly going to go well past two degrees. It means, in political terms, that the fossil fuel industry has delayed effective action for the 12 years since the Kyoto treaty was signed. It means, in diplomatic terms, that the endless talks underway in Durban should be more important than ever–they should be the focus of a planetary population desperate to figure out how it’s going to survive the century.

But instead, almost no one is paying attention to the proceedings, at least on this continent. One of our political parties has decided that global warming is a hoax–it’s two leading candidates are busily apologizing for anything they said in the past that might possibly have been construed as backing, you know, science. President Obama hasn’t yet spoken on the Durban talks, and informed international observers like Joss Garman are beginning to despair that he ever will.

Who are the 99%? In this country, they’re those of us who aren’t making any of these deadly decisions. In this world, they’re the vast majority of people who didn’t contribute to those soaring emissions. In this biosphere they’re every other species now living on a disorienting earth.

Complete article at:  http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/12/05-8

From The Guardian UK:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/05/civil-rights-naacp-voter-warning

Civil rights group petitions UN over ‘massive voter suppression’ after apparent effort to disenfranchise black and Hispanic people

From Alternet:  http://www.alternet.org/story/153302/hazmat_suits_to_break_up_occupations_how_mayors_feign_concern_for_health_to_trash_a_growing_movement/

Mayors and police around the country have pretended public health is the reason for shutting down Occupy protests, but their actions belie their words.

By Sarah Jaffe
December 4, 2011

 When the police came to raid Occupy Los Angeles, they wore white hazmat suits, sealed away inside extra layers of material designed to protect against biological hazards, radiation, or chemicals.

They looked like aliens, or astronauts.

Not all of them of course; there were still typical riot-suited officers. 1400 police in all came in to clear out the camp that LA’s mayor had encouraged at first.

But the hazmat suits stuck out, not just because they were bright white against the darkness (like all the major Occupy raids, this one took place in the middle of the night), but because they seemed a final literal representation of the argument used against Occupy for months now. Disease. Contagion. Dirt.

“An audible gasp went up from people who were observing,” Rev. Peter Laarman, executive director of Progressive Christians Uniting and part of Occupy LA’s Interfaith Sanctuary Support Network, told me. “When those white-suited hazmat people came running from a corner of the police station we weren’t aware of, it was apocalyptic.”

Occupy LA’s camp was directly across from what Laarman called the “spanking new, dare I say antiseptic” police headquarters, and he and other clergy were standing with public information officers, trying to get into the park, when they saw the suits come in.

Continue reading at:    http://www.alternet.org/story/153302/hazmat_suits_to_break_up_occupations_how_mayors_feign_concern_for_health_to_trash_a_growing_movement/

From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/05/brooke-fantelli-california-transgender-woman-tased_n_1128725.html

First Posted: 12/ 5/11

A California transgender woman is reportedly planning a civil lawsuit after allegedly being tased in the abdomen and in the genital area by officials.

As LGBT Weekly is reporting, Brooke Fantelli, who is apparently a well-known figure in the off-road racing community, was allegedly stopped by a ranger while in the midst of a photo shoot in the Imperial County desert.

Though the 43-year-old Fantelli had been living as a woman for some time, she had been told by her physician that she needed to live two full years as a female before she could change her California identification. Only when the ranger saw Brooke’s identification card did the hostile interaction begin, according to the report.

Fantelli said the ranger went from referring to her as “ma’am,” “her,” and “she” to “sir,” “him,” and eventually “dude.” She said she was eventually told by the ranger that she was being arrested for being drunk in public after consuming beer (Fantelli claims she had two and a half beers, the officer said she had four) before finally being subjected to the excessive force.

“He actually looked me straight in the eye and says, ‘You used to be a guy,’ and I said, ‘Yes, I did.’ There was no way around it. I could see it in his eyes. He wanted to do that,” Fantelli, who is heard audibly screaming in the video, told San Diego’s 10News last month. She went on to note, “It was obvious. He hated me.”

From The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/world/americas/us-drug-agents-launder-profits-of-mexican-cartels.html?_r=2&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2&pagewanted=all

By GINGER THOMPSON
Published: December 3, 2011

WASHINGTON — Undercover American narcotics agents have laundered or smuggled millions of dollars in drug proceeds as part of Washington’s expanding role in Mexico’s fight against drug cartels, according to current and former federal law enforcement officials.

The agents, primarily with the Drug Enforcement Administration, have handled shipments of hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal cash across borders, those officials said, to identify how criminal organizations move their money, where they keep their assets and, most important, who their leaders are.

They said agents had deposited the drug proceeds in accounts designated by traffickers, or in shell accounts set up by agents.

The officials said that while the D.E.A. conducted such operations in other countries, it began doing so in Mexico only in the past few years. The high-risk activities raise delicate questions about the agency’s effectiveness in bringing down drug kingpins, underscore diplomatic concerns about Mexican sovereignty, and blur the line between surveillance and facilitating crime. As it launders drug money, the agency often allows cartels to continue their operations over months or even years before making seizures or arrests.

Agency officials declined to publicly discuss details of their work, citing concerns about compromising their investigations. But Michael S. Vigil, a former senior agency official who is currently working for a private contracting company called Mission Essential Personnel, said, “We tried to make sure there was always close supervision of these operations so that we were accomplishing our objectives, and agents weren’t laundering money for the sake of laundering money.”

Another former agency official, who asked not to be identified speaking publicly about delicate operations, said, “My rule was that if we are going to launder money, we better show results. Otherwise, the D.E.A. could wind up being the largest money launderer in the business, and that money results in violence and deaths.”

Continue reading at:  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/world/americas/us-drug-agents-launder-profits-of-mexican-cartels.html?_r=2&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2&pagewanted=all

From Bloomberg News:  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-05/steinem-s-wall-street-occupied-as-women-earn-81-cents-on-each-male-dollar.html

By Esmé E. Deprez
Dec 4, 2011

Dec. 5 (Bloomberg) – For Gloria Steinem, the international conversation that the Occupy Wall Street protests sparked about economic inequality is, at its heart, about gender.

Start with the thousands of dollars in student loans that saddle the average U.S. college graduate. Women “are paid unequally — so they are going to have a harder time paying back that debt,” Steinem, the 77-year-old feminist who helped start the women’s rights movement with the publication of Ms. Magazine nearly 40 years ago, said in an interview at Bloomberg News’ New York bureau. “It’s outrageous because they are kind of indentured when they graduate.”

Steinem’s comments echo a common lament among young women in the Occupy movement, which began on Sept. 17 as a demonstration against the widening wealth gap and an economic system that protestors say favors the rich. The unemployment rate for college graduates aged 20-24 rose to 9.1 percent last year from 8.7 percent in 2009, the highest on record for that demographic, according to the Project on Student Debt. Add to that the burdens of student loans, and young Americans say they don’t stand much chance.

“I have $93,000 in debt and I don’t make enough to pay it off,” said Adah Gorton, 23, a graphic designer and graduate of Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, as she marched with protestors across the Brooklyn Bridge on Nov. 17. “Have you ever had something hanging over your head, every day, 24 hours a day? That’s what it’s like.”

Continue reading at:  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-05/steinem-s-wall-street-occupied-as-women-earn-81-cents-on-each-male-dollar.html

From In These Times:   http://inthesetimes.com/ittlist/entry/12371/germany_may_ban_far-right_party_in_view_of_recent_nazi_activity

By Patrick Glennon
Monday Dec 5, 2011

In the wake of last month’s revelation that a neo-Nazi terrorist cell was responsible for more than a decade of hate-related violence, Germany may move to outlaw one of Europe’s most extreme right-wing parties.

Known as the National Democratic Party (NPD), the group is a hot topic among Germany’s political elite these days, as representatives across the political spectrum call for a ban on what they see as an organizational conduit for neo-Nazi ideology. NPD’s popularity is relegated to poorer regions of former East Germany, with electoral success in only two Landtags (state parliaments).

Reiner Haseloff—a member of Angela Merkel’s ruling, center-right CDU—stated that “The NPD-ban needs to happen now,” adding that “a confident, watchful democracy must deal with this threat.”

A previous proposal to outlaw the NPD was rejected in 2003 by Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court following the disclosure that police and intelligence informers had infiltrated the party’s highest ranks.

The debate’s resurgence is the result of events last month in Zwickau—a small town located near the Czech border—where police successfully traced 13 years of unresolved criminal activity to a Nazi-inspired group known as the National Socialist Underground (NSU).

Continue reading at:  http://inthesetimes.com/ittlist/entry/12371/germany_may_ban_far-right_party_in_view_of_recent_nazi_activity

From The Guardian UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/dec/05/eurozone-credit-downgrade-germany-france

Merkel and Sarkozy spark relief in markets after agreeing package of measures to take to EU summit