Maybe you need more convincing…

So here’s a bunch of articles:

Jenna Talackova, transgender Miss Universe contestant becomes trans activist

Transsexualism: Petition to WHO an International Effort

Trans is not a Mental Illness

Petition calls on WHO to delist ‘transsexualism’ as illness

Miss Universe contestant petitions World Health Organization to remove transsexualism as a mental disorder

Man Petitions World Health Org: ‘We Are Trans, Not Sick’

This is a really big effort…  We like reached Critical Mass and it is time to kill off the whole Psychiatric Industrial Complex scam of labeling us as mentally ill just because we are Transsexual or Transgender.  We were born this way, we need appropriate medical treatment and when we have emotional issues we need the Psychiatric Industrial Complex to help us with those issues the same way they help non-trans people.

So Go here and Sign The Petition

From America Blog:  http://americablog.com/2012/10/log-cabin-republicans-romney-endorsement.html

by John Aravosis
10/23/2012

Vote For Romney, He Hates You

What a bizarre endorsement.

The lead gay Republican group, Log Cabin Republicans, told gay voters today that they should vote for Mitt Romney, unless they care about their civil rights, then they shouldn’t.

It was a self-contained flip-flop worthy of Mitt Romney himself.

Log Cabin titled their statement of support for Romney, “We Are Americans First.”

If you’re gay, you immediately get the message, and it’s quite a historically horrible one. It’s a line that self-hating gay Republicans have used for years in order to justify voting against their own humanity: “Yes, I’m gay, but it’s only a part of me.”

When they say that, they mean: “I don’t really care about my civil rights, I’m rather embarrassed about being gay, and money is more important to me, so leave me alone, I’m voting Republican.”

Continue reading at:  http://americablog.com/2012/10/log-cabin-republicans-romney-endorsement.html

See also The Nation:  Romney’s Private Promises to the Log Cabin Republicans

Can we call them Christo-Nazis now they are openly calling for us to be put to death?

From Huffington Post:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carlos-alberto-torres/republican-partys-perfect-storm_b_2007528.html?utm_hp_ref=politics

Carlos Alberto Torres
10/23/2012

Hegemony is a concept derived from the Greek word eghémonia, which means leader or ruler. Usually employed to signify military power, or the political predominance of one state over another, Antonio Gramsci, arguably the most important Marxist thinker of the 20th century, suggested the term hegemony is often used to mean the broader process of moral and intellectual leadership through which the dominant class and ruling elite exercises its domination.

Domination is not only based purely on coercion but it is a moral, intellectual and even cultural drive imposing a clear and certain cultural direction. Moreover, the basic argument that Gramsci makes is that socially subordinate sectors accept the hegemonic domination of elites even though this implies that they will follow economic, cultural, and political principles working against their own interests.

The tumultuous nature of this presidential campaign teaches us many things about hegemony in the United States. The country, split into two different political persuasions representing two different views of the world, includes unique understandings of capitalism and the role of government. To see evidence of hegemony, however, one need only look to the Republican Party, whose campaign discourse and idea of democracy is a perfect storm of overwhelmingly male centric, class centric, and ethnocentric policies.

The Romney/Ryan philosophy is straightforward old school male-centric. When Romney shared that he had asked for a “binder full of women” while governor of Massachusetts, to purportedly identify and appoint a few women to his administration, it was a small but telling gaffe reflective of a larger personal and social disposition: that males are natural rulers in every sphere, most especially in politics. It’s not a big leap from there to suggest that women should return home to fix dinner for their man once they have finished working all day outside the home. For Romney, it is obviously irrelevant that there are many households with just one head of the household, most of whom are women. In political life, women would only play a role when they embody and represent, like many businesswomen and some politicians, “hegemonic masculinities.” That is, they share with men and particularly the elites their desire to control and suppress counter-hegemonic principles, values, alternatives, and practices. Women’s bodies, which have long been a matter of public policy, are placed at the center of a “war against women,” where Republican anti-abortion policies are sustained and cuts to Planned Parenthood are proposed.

Continue reading at:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carlos-alberto-torres/republican-partys-perfect-storm_b_2007528.html?utm_hp_ref=politics

From Think Progress:  http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/10/24/1078781/richard-mourdock-contraception/

By Scott Keyes and Travis Waldron
on Oct 24, 2012

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Indiana Senate nominee Richard Mourdock (R) doesn’t just want to prevent women who have been raped from obtaining an abortion; he also doesn’t think they should be able to access affordable birth control through their health insurance that could prevent such a pregnancy.

Months before Mourdock commented last night that pregnancies resulting from rape are a “gift” that “God intended,” ThinkProgress spoke with him at the 2012 Conservative Political Action Conference about Rick Santorum’s belief that insurance plans shouldn’t cover birth control at all. When asked whether he agreed with Santorum on the matter, Mourdock replied: “I do, I do.”

KEYES: I know Rick Santorum in his speech was talking a lot about this. He even went so far as to say, “I don’t think insurance plans should be covering birth control in the first place.” Do you think he’s right about that?

MOURDOCK: I do, I do. I don’t think that’s the role of government. We have to start rolling back government. There are many issues out there beyond Obamacare, but really the issue overlying everything is, is this nation going to survive? And that ultimately becomes an issue of economics.

Continue reading at:  http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/10/24/1078781/richard-mourdock-contraception/

From Alternet:  http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/indiana-gop-senate-candidates-mind-blowing-comment-pregnancy-rape-gods-will

Tea Partiers cheered when Richard Mourdock defeated Sen. Richard Lugar in the GOP primary, and Romney ran to endorse. Now, two weeks before election day, the War on Women is front and center.

By Adele M. Stan
October 23, 2012

Just as Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney thought he had that pesky War on Women problem under control, a new front was opened Tuesday night in a debate between Indiana’s candidates for U.S. Senate. Richard Mourdock, explaining why his anti-abortion position allowed no exception for rape victims, contended that sometimes such a pregnancy is just what God ordered up.

“I’ve struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life is that gift from God,” Mourdock said, according to a report in the Evansville Courier Press . “And even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.”

And right now the airwaves of the Hoosier state are saturated with political ads, including one featuring Romney speaking directly to the camera with an endorsement of Mourdock. The Republican Party, meanwhile, has been nuturing hopes to reclaim the Senate, needing a net gain of four seats in order to do so. Mourdock’s race against Rep. Joe Donnelly has looked like a close one, according to the limited polling available in Indiana, and it’s possible that Mourdock’s comments just cost him the contest.

Romney’s Mourdock problem is compounded by the G.O.P.’s Todd Akin problem. It was Akin, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Missouri, who claimed that women rarely were impregnated by what he called “ legitimate rape .” But unlike Mourdock, Akin has never enjoyed the support of the institutional Republican Party, allowing Romney some distance from him.

Mourdock’s stance on rape and pregnancy essentially amount to his belief that women who have been raped should be forced to bear the rapist’s chlld, a position that inconveniently calls to mind the legislation co-sponsored by Romney running-mate Paul Ryan that would revoke Medicaid funding for abortions for some rape victims, unless they could prove they had been “forcibly” raped.

Continue reading at:   http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/indiana-gop-senate-candidates-mind-blowing-comment-pregnancy-rape-gods-will

From The Nation:  http://www.thenation.com/blog/170767/ending-rape-illiteracy#

Jessica Valenti
on October 23, 2012

This week, a DC-based feminist group projected the phrase “rape is rape” onto the US Capitol building. The action was meant to highlight survivors’ stories and bring attention to the way rape is often mischaracterized. The sentiment may seem an obvious one—who doesn’t understand what rape is?—but the message, sadly, is much needed. Tuesday evening at the final Indiana Senate debate, Republican Richard Mourdock explained why he opposes abortion with no exceptions by calling pregnancy from rape “something that God intended”- the latest in a long line of “gaffes” by male politicians about sexual assault. It was only this January that the FBI updated its archaic definition of rape, male politicians’ “gaffes” about rape have become par for the course, and victim-blaming in the culture and courts runs rampant.

Feminists have done a lot to change policies, but not enough to change minds. Despite decades of activism on sexual assault—despite common sense, even—there is still widespread ignorance about what rape is, and this absence of a widely understood and culturally accepted definition of sexual assault is one of the biggest hurdles we have in chipping away at rape culture.

When Todd Akin uttered his now-famous line that women rarely get pregnant from “legitimate rape,” he didn’t misspeak. This was something he thought was true—both the bizarre logic about pregnancy and the idea that there is such a thing as a rape that isn’t legitimate. Last year, Wisconsin state representative Roger Rivard told a newspaper reporter that “some girls rape easy.” Now under fire, Rivard attempted to clarify his comments, claiming they were taken out of context.

What the whole genesis of it was, it was advice to me [from my father], telling me, “If you’re going to go down that road, you may have consensual sex that night and then the next morning it may be rape.” So the way he said it was, “Just remember, Roger, some girls, they rape so easy. It may be rape the next morning.”

Rivard obviously thought this explanation would lessen the damage of his original statement; he assumed his belief that women regularly lie about being raped was a commonly held one. What’s depressing is that he’s probably right.

Continue reading at:  http://www.thenation.com/blog/170767/ending-rape-illiteracy#

From BBC:   http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-mid-wales-20033422

Plans for a controversial “super dairy” with 1,000 cows at a farm have been rejected by Powys councillors.

23 October 2012

The vote is the latest twist in the debate about the dairy near Welshpool, which councillors had backed last year.

A protest was held outside the meeting against how livestock will be kept inside for 250 days of the year.

Farmer Fraser Jones, who wants to build one of the first parlours of its type in Wales, has said the proposal would result in improved conditions.

The matter was discussed again after changes in Powys council’s constitution and committee membership.

In November last year, the planning committee said it was minded to approve the application subject to a report about “outstanding issues”. It had been recommended for refusal.

The Welsh government called in the application in the following January.

Environment Minister John Griffiths is concerned about the risk of pollution from slurry spreading and the visual impact on nearby Powis Castle.

The plans include three livestock cubicle buildings, a fodder storage unit, two slurry stores and a water storage tower.

But animal welfare groups and some local residents strongly oppose the scheme.

Continue reading at:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-mid-wales-20033422

From Eco Watch:  http://ecowatch.org/2012/dirty-energy-over-democracy/

David Suzuki
10-23-2012

Why, when so many people oppose the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline project, would government and industry resort to such extreme measures to push it through?

The problems with the plan to run pipelines from the Alberta tar sands across northern B.C. to load unrefined, diluted bitumen onto supertankers for export to China and elsewhere are well-known: threats to streams, rivers, lakes and land from pipeline leaks; the danger of contaminated ocean ecosystems from tanker spills; rapid expansion of the tar sands; and the climate change implications of continued wasteful use of fossil fuels.

The benefits aren’t as apparent. Some short-term and fewer long-term jobs, possibly for foreign workers, and increased profits for the oil industry—including state-owned Chinese companies—are all we’re being offered in exchange for giving up our resources, interests and future, putting ecosystems at risk and forfeiting due democratic process.

Our government is ramming through another omnibus budget bill, and is set to sign a deal with China, both of which seem aimed at facilitating the pipeline and other resource-extraction projects. Its first budget bill gutted environmental protection laws, especially those that might obstruct pipeline plans. It also limited input from the public and charitable organizations, and included measures to crack down on charities that engage in political advocacy.

The recent 457-page omnibus budget bill goes even further. Among other changes, it revises the Navigable Waters Protection Act (renamed the Navigation Protection Act) to substantially reduce waterways that must be considered for protection and exempt pipelines from regulations.

Meanwhile, the government is set to sign a 31-year deal on Oct. 31 that will give China’s government significant control over Canada’s resources and even over Canadians’ rights to question projects like Northern Gateway. The Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement would allow China to sue Canada, outside of our borders and behind closed doors, if the pipeline deal were blocked or China’s interests in our resource industry hindered; for example, if the B.C. government were to stop Northern Gateway. It also gives the Chinese state-owned companies “the right to full protection and security from public opposition,” as well as the right to use Chinese labor and materials on projects in which it has invested.

Continue reading at:  http://ecowatch.org/2012/dirty-energy-over-democracy/