Women Born Transsexual

I think it is time for the progressives in this country to start putting out books that list right wing morons and assholes who have turned this nation in to a goddamn racist violent hell hole.

Now we have  a washed up action film star with questionable acting skills blithering on about topics obviously far above his intelligence scale.

A male Victoria Jackson, same low IQ only without the acting ability, Chuck Norris rose to fame during the Reagan Era, making propaganda films showing how the Left sold out the noble warriors who would have won the war in Vietnam had it not been for the anti-war movement.

Ever since 1970 the right wing film makers, who are every bit as much a part of Hollywood and always have been as the left wing film makers, have been bombarding us with films designed to program us into accepting sociopathic rogue cops.

Eastwood’s Dirty Harry series taught us that we needed cops who didn’t have to answer to superiors or the courts for actions that are literally justifications for the suspension of the Constitution.  Not only that, but “Dirty Harry” films had a subtext.  They had a woman cop in one and an Asian cop in another, who dirty Harry saw as incompetent.  They had to die in order to drive home the anti- affirmative action message and enforce the idea of white male supremacy.

I was studying Tae Kwon Do when Chuck Norris’ first film came out.  The Dojang where I studied had been run by Chuck Norris prior to his franchising it out to Jun Chong.  Norris had been an early promoter of Tae Kwon Do and the martial arts during the 1960s and early 1970s and was one of the first white Americans to cash in on the martial arts film industry.

We were given tickets to his movie’s Hollywood opening and a bunch of us from the Dojang went.  When I was asked  what I thought of his acting ability my comment was, “Great spinning back kick.”

I expected him to be one of those one movie wonders.

But the time was right and he was groomed into a right wing propaganda peddler, hyping the big lie about how the left stabbed the noble American soldiers in the back leaving hundreds behind.  the same lie peddled by Stallone.

They used violence porn to hype the fear and sell the militarized police state.

Now these non-actor propaganda peddlers are afraid their violence porn might be undone.

Racist to the core the main reason for their hatred of Obama is the color of his skin.  It can’t really be his politics since he isn’t as progressive as either Lyndon B. Johnson or Dwight D. Eisenhower who were major leaders from both parties in the 1950s and 1960s.

What they are afraid of is that people may wake up and reject the Republican neo-Nazism.

From Raw Story:  http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/09/03/chuck-norris-threatens-1000-years-of-darkness-if-obama-wins/

Chuck Norris threatens ’1,000 years of darkness’ if Obama wins

By Stephen C. Webster
Monday, September 3, 2012

A video released this weekend by action movie hero Chuck Norris claims that America faces “1,000 years of darkness” if President Barack Obama is reelected.

“If we look to history, our great country and freedom are under attack,” Norris warns, standing next to his wife. “We’re at a tipping point and, quite possibly, our country as we know it may be lost forever if we don’t change the course in which our country is headed.”

The pair go on to explain that Obama won in 2008 because more than 30 million evangelical Christians stayed home on Election Day. “We know you love your family and your freedom as much as Gena and I do, and it is because of that we can no longer sit quietly or stand on the sidelines and watch our country go the way of socialism or something much worse,” Norris explains.

Continue reading at:  http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/09/03/chuck-norris-threatens-1000-years-of-darkness-if-obama-wins/

From The Independent UK:  http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/08/31/lies-about-transgender-people-and-how-to-spot-a-rubbish-journalist/

By Paris LeesFriday, 31 August 2012

Ever been kicked in the face? I have. Violence is common towards children who display gender difference. Poofter, they used to call me. AIDS victim, they’d whisper. Walk like a man, boy, or get a clip ’round the earhole. That last one came from my father. Still, as one matures, so does the nature of the bullying. Instead of gossip and ciggies behind bike-sheds, badmouthing is done by respectable journalists in national newspapers. Take the Telegraph’s Ed West, for example, who seems perfectly comfortable belittling the existence of “transphobia”(hatred towards transgender people). His quotation marks, not mine. Guess he’s never had a kick in the head. In fact, I doubt he has any subjective experience of being trans, and nor will many of his readers. That’s the trouble.

I question everything, now. I recall articles from years back, on various subjects; “facts” stuck in my head; fears I was given; health advice. Were all those items poorly researched too? I see so much rot written about trans people that I just don’t know anymore. Does anyone – from legal correspondents to sports editors – really know what they’re writing about? And, if not, why read their work? News is produced on increasingly small budgets and research is becoming a luxury. Press standards are under scrutiny. Would cynics be better off reading blogs by real experts?

Check out this opinion piece by Ross Clarke, published by the Daily Mail last week: “Beware of the sex-change zealots: Why IS the state so obsessed with whether we’re transgender?” Poor Clarke is outraged because a form asked him if he is transgender. I sympathise. I broke an eyelash once, so I know how upsetting traumas like this can be. Meanwhile, research commissioned by the Equalities Review shows that 73 per cent of trans people have experienced harassment and 47 per cent avoid public facilities for fear of discrimination. But sure, begrudge us a box that acknowledges we exist.

So, how can you tell if what you’re reading is rubbish? I have no idea how much of my daily news is true, but a visit to Islamophobia-Watch.com suggests that trans people are not the only minority group newspapers lie about. Still, there are 6 giveaways for poorly written trans features:

Continue reading at:  http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/08/31/lies-about-transgender-people-and-how-to-spot-a-rubbish-journalist/

From Yes Magazine:  http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/protesters-police-think-beyond-the-rnc

While Republicans spent the RNC attending corporate-sponsored parties and listening to scripted speeches, protesters’ commitment to nonviolence built solidarity beyond the usual suspects.

by Amos Miers
posted Aug 30, 2012

The author is an organizer with resistRNC.org.

In the lead-up to the Republican National Convention in Tampa, the authorities seemed to expect violence. Our mayor, Democrat Bob Buckhorn, brought in around 3,000 additional police officers from the rest of Florida, bringing the total number of officers to 3,500. These imported police walk the streets in khaki outfits that resemble military uniforms. Along with the 1,700 National Guard members, Coast Guard vessels armed with .50-caliber machine guns patrolling the waterways, and secret service checkpoints, downtown Tampa resembles a war zone.

Just as in wars overseas, these forces didn’t come cheap. The city spent $50 million in federal grant money on security, including $1 million for catering, $2 million for body armor, and $6 million for police radios.

Meanwhile, the city’s RNC Ordinance makes just about every person who enters the “Event Zone” subject to arrest. For instance, if you carry a bottle of water, or have an umbrella with a metal tip,  you risk a $500 fine and up to 60 days in jail.  Masks covering any portion of the face, a common item at theatrical protests,  are banned as well.

In addition, the city has required people to apply for permits to gather in groups of 50 or more, in violation of First Amendment rights.  An “official” parade route and a “public viewing area”—another term for free speech zone—have been defined.  These two areas are not a problem in and of themselves.  The problems arise when we are told that they are the only places where we may march or exercise First Amendment rights.

By designating only a certain area for the exercise of free speech and denying it elsewhere, city officials suggest that these rights are privileges.  This is dangerous for democracy because speaking out against the government is imperative to maintaining freedom.

Continue reading at:  http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/protesters-police-think-beyond-the-rnc

From The Nation:  http://www.thenation.com/article/169630/women-who-love-republicans-who-hate-them#

From Huffington Post:   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/31/karl-roves-donor-plan-afoul_n_1847834.html

Dan Froomkin
08/31/2012

WASHINGTON — A new report from Congress’ nonpartisan research arm suggests that the Internal Revenue Service won’t have much patience with the argument from groups like Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS that the ads it buys shouldn’t be counted as political campaign activity.

The claim that ads attacking candidates aren’t political — as long as they avoid words like “vote” or “elect” — is key to the empire of shadowy non-disclosing political groups that Rove, the Koch Brothers and other major political players have created.

By insisting that most of their budget goes toward “issue advocacy,” rather than influencing elections, these groups exploit a loophole that allows certain non-political groups to keep their donors secret.

The Aug. 30 report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS), first reported by Diane Freda for Bloomberg BNA, reviews IRS rulings on what qualifies as issue advocacy, and strongly indicates that the Rove-style ads wouldn’t be a tough call for the agency — which could revoke an organization’s tax-exempt status.

For instance, a recent $4.2 million Crossroads GPS ad buy attacked four Democratic Senate candidates, using the figleaf of calling on them to do such things as repeal health care or “cut the debt” — as if there was imminent action about to be taken on the Hill.

Continue reading at:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/31/karl-roves-donor-plan-afoul_n_1847834.html

From Alternet:  http://www.alternet.org/books/why-do-so-many-southerners-think-theyre-only-real-americans

Let’s not pretend that condescension is unique to the North.

By Chuck Thompson
August 27, 2012

Editor’s note: Portions of this article are reproduced or adapted from Better Off Without ’Em: A Northern Manifesto for Southern Secession .

For large chunks of the last two years I traveled through Dixie doing research for a book called Better Off Without ’Em: A Northern Manifesto for Southern Secession (published this month by Simon & Schuster).

Wherever I went in the South I was called a socialist.

I was branded anti-American.

For supporting the administration of a sitting U.S. president, I was told that I was in league with the Muslim vanguard of a secret plot to destroy the United States.

Although otherwise respectable reviewers, bloggers and emailers have accused me of seeking out only the opinions of slack-jawed hayfoots slurping moonshine from ceramic jugs during my travels, the truth is that in the South this sort of ugly invective is mainstream orthodoxy.

It’s the same mainframe groupthink that’s going to allow a millionaire corporate flunky with a track record of destroying jobs to carry and very possibly sweep the South in November.

I dealt with the same reactionary slander everywhere I went.

I heard it from small business owners in South Carolina. From working professionals in Alabama. From college-educated football fans in Tennessee.

Continue reading at:   http://www.alternet.org/books/why-do-so-many-southerners-think-theyre-only-real-americans

From The Guardian UK:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/sep/02/tony-blair-iraq-war-desmond-tutu

Anti-apartheid hero attacks former prime minister over ‘double standards on war crimes’

Toby Helm, political editor
The Observer, Saturday 1 September 2012

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has called for Tony Blair and George Bush to be hauled before the international criminal court in The Hague and delivered a damning critique of the physical and moral devastation caused by the Iraq war.

Tutu, a Nobel peace prizewinner and hero of the anti-apartheid movement, accuses the former British and US leaders of lying about weapons of mass destruction and says the invasion left the world more destabilised and divided “than any other conflict in history”.

Writing in the Observer, Tutu also suggests the controversial US and UK-led action to oust Saddam Hussein in 2003 created the backdrop for the civil war in Syria and a possible wider Middle East conflict involving Iran.

“The then leaders of the United States and Great Britain,” Tutu argues, “fabricated the grounds to behave like playground bullies and drive us further apart. They have driven us to the edge of a precipice where we now stand – with the spectre of Syria and Iran before us.”

But it is Tutu’s call for Blair and Bush to face justice in The Hague that is most startling. Claiming that different standards appear to be set for prosecuting African leaders and western ones, he says the death toll during and after the Iraq conflict is sufficient on its own for Blair and Bush to be tried at the ICC.

Continue reading at:   http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/sep/02/tony-blair-iraq-war-desmond-tutu

See also: Desmond Tutu: Bush, Blair Should Face Trial Over Iraq

From Al Jazeera:  http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/06/2011622193147231653.html

Almost half of humanity will face water scarcity by 2030 and strategists from Israel to Central Asia prepare for strife.

Chris Arsenault
26 Aug 2012

The author Mark Twain once remarked that “whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over” and a series of reports from intelligence agencies and research groups indicate the prospect of a water war is becoming increasingly likely.

In March, a report from the office of the US Director of National Intelligence said the risk of conflict would grow as water demand is set to outstrip sustainable current supplies by 40 per cent by 2030.

“These threats are real and they do raise serious national security concerns,” Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, said after the report’s release.

Internationally, 780 million people lack access to safe drinking water, according to the United Nations. By 2030, 47 per cent of the world’s population will be living in areas of high water stress, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Environmental Outlook to 2030 report.

Some analysts worry that wars of the future will be fought over blue gold, as thirsty people, opportunistic politicians and powerful corporations battle for dwindling resources.

Dangerous warnings

Governments and military planners around the world are aware of the impending problem; with the US senate issuing reports with names like Avoiding Water Wars: Water Scarcity and Central Asia’s growing Importance for Stability in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Continue reading at:  http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/06/2011622193147231653.html

From Environment 360:  http://e360.yale.edu/feature/tipping_point_arctic_heads_to_ice_free_summers/2567/

Scientists say this year’s record declines in Arctic sea ice extent and volume are powerful evidence that the giant cap of ice at the top of the planet is on a trajectory to largely disappear in summer within a decade or two, with profound global consequences.

by fen montaigne
30 Aug 2012

As the northern summer draws to a close, two milestones have been reached in the Arctic Ocean — record-low sea ice extent, and an even more dramatic new low in Arctic sea ice volume. This extreme melting offers dramatic evidence, many scientists say, that the region’s sea ice has passed a tipping point and that sometime in the next decade or two the North Pole will be largely ice-free in summer.

NASA and U.S. ice experts announced earlier this week that the extent of Arctic sea ice has dropped to 4.1 million square kilometers (1.58 million square miles) — breaking the previous record set in 2007 — and will likely continue to fall even farther until mid-September. As the summer melt season ends, the Arctic Ocean will be covered with 45 percent less ice than the average from 1979 to 2000.

Even more striking is the precipitous decline in the volume of ice in the Arctic Ocean. An analysis conducted by the University of Washington’s Pan Arctic Ice Ocean Model Assimilation System (PIOMAS) estimates that sea ice volumes fell in late August to roughly 3,500 cubic kilometers — a 72-percent drop from the 1979-2010 mean.

Peter Wadhams, who heads the Polar Ocean Physics Group at the University of Cambridge and who has been measuring Arctic Ocean ice thickness from British Navy submarines, says that earlier calculations about Arctic sea ice loss have grossly underestimated how rapidly the ice is disappearing. He believes that the Arctic is likely to become ice-free before 2020 and possibly as early as 2015 or 2016 — decades ahead of projections made just a few years ago.

Mark Drinkwater, mission scientist for the European Space Agency’s CryoSat satellite and the agency’s senior advisor on polar regions, said he and his colleagues have been taken aback by the swiftness of Arctic sea ice retreat in the last 5 years. “If this rate of melting [in 2012] is sustained in 2013, we are staring down the barrel and looking at a summer Arctic which is potentially free of sea ice within this decade,” Drinkwater said in an e-mail interview.

Continue reading at:  http://e360.yale.edu/feature/tipping_point_arctic_heads_to_ice_free_summers/2567/

From World Socialist Web Site:  http://wsws.org/articles/2012/sep2012/indi-s01.shtml

By Sathish Simon
1 September 2012

An estimated 20 percent shortfall in the annual June-September South-West monsoon has severely affected the lives of hundreds of millions of farmers and agricultural workers in rural India. Severe drought is causing significant crop and financial losses and for many hunger and even starvation.

Yet neither India’s Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government nor the various state governments have seen fit to bestir themselves to mount concerted relief programs so as to alleviate the desperate conditions confronting the rural toilers in large swathes of the country.

The drought has severely affected people in Punjab and Haryana in the north, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Gujarat in the west and Karnataka in the south and overall conditions are said to be far worse than the last drought in 2009. According to Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh, “[T]he drought in Maharashtra is the worst in last 20 years, the Gujarat drought is the worst in last 25 years and the Karnataka drought is the worst in last 40 years.”

While the all-India rain shortfall is estimated at 20 percent, in the worst affected states it is far in excess of this. For instance the rain deficit in north and south Karnataka is 51 percent and 47 percent respectively, while in Gujarat it ranges from 58 percent to 79 percent.

The government and the corporate media are presenting the ravages caused by the drought as the product of meteorological events beyond human control. But the drought is far from being simply a “natural” disaster. Although the monsoon is notoriously fickle and India’s rainfall is heavily concentrated in a few months of the year, India’s elite, even after 65 years of independent rule, has failed to develop a modern, comprehensive irrigation system.

Continue reading at:  http://wsws.org/articles/2012/sep2012/indi-s01.shtml

From The New York Times:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/03/business/economy/us-companies-prepare-in-case-greece-exits-euro.html

By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ
Published: September 2, 2012

Even as Greece desperately tries to avoid defaulting on its debt, American companies are preparing for what was once unthinkable: that Greece could soon be forced to leave the euro zone.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch has looked into filling trucks with cash and sending them over the Greek border so clients can continue to pay local employees and suppliers in the event money is unavailable. Ford has configured its computer systems so they will be able to immediately handle a new Greek currency.

No one knows just how broad the shock waves from a Greek exit would be, but big American banks and consulting firms have also been doing a brisk business advising their corporate clients on how to prepare for a splintering of the euro zone.

That is a striking contrast to the assurances from European politicians that the crisis is manageable and that the currency union can be held together. On Thursday, the European Central Bank will consider measures that would ease pressure on Europe’s cash-starved countries.

JPMorgan Chase, though, is taking no chances. It has already created new accounts for a handful of American giants that are reserved for a new drachma in Greece or whatever currency might succeed the euro in other countries.

Stock markets around the world have rallied this summer on hopes that European leaders will solve the Continent’s debt problems, but the quickening tempo of preparations by big business for a potential Greek exit this summer suggests that investors may be unduly optimistic. Many executives are deeply skeptical that Greece will accede to the austere fiscal policies being demanded by Europe in return for financial assistance.

Continue reading at:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/03/business/economy/us-companies-prepare-in-case-greece-exits-euro.html