SheHe Rights

The authorities in Nepal have granted a man who dresses and behaves as a woman both male and female citizenship.

The unprecedented legal status was given to 40-year-old Chanda Musalman.

Conservative and religious Nepal, like many Asian countries, has a sizeable community of people who are born male but behave as women.

It is unclear how this unique legal status will play out in practice - for instance, how it will affect Chanda's marriage rights.

Nepal has a community of men identifying themselves as women


Nepal is not the only country that has communities of men who are transexual/transgendered or women for that matter, it is a universal phenomena.

But this is a postive blow for human rights, which have been denied to Transexuals in Canada.

Gender bending is as old as humanity and is reflected in the traditions of magick and shamanism.

It is disturbing to conservative moralists because it shows that gender is a social construct.


Also See:

Metrosexual

Gay

Homosexuality

Queer

Sexuality

Gender

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Did They Or Didn't They

Was a Iranian nuclear scientist assassinated by Israel? Or is this another disinformation campaign?

Radio Farda, which is funded by the US State Department and broadcasts to Iran, reported that nuclear physicist Ardeshire Hassanpour, 44, had died in mysterious circumstances.

Whose lying here, and why?

Israeli Mossad ‘assassinates’ Iran’s N-scientist

Tehran denies reports on scientist's "assassination"

Was it just an accident, that resulted from the push for rapid development of nuclear power in Iran, which is fraught with danger. Haste makes waste....of nuclear plant workers. And the Iranian government is covering up a nuclear accident.

Is the U.S. is using an accident to create a disinformation campaign that Israel was capable of assassination in Iran to destalize the regime. Since Israel has assassinated nuclear scientists before.


A senior nuclear physicist involved in Iran's nuclear program who died under mysterious circumstances two weeks ago was killed by the Mossad, according to a report released in a U.S. website this weekend. The website - Stratfor.com - features intelligence and security analysis by former U.S. intelligence agents.

Read between the lines.

See:

Iran

Israel




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Venezuelan Contras

Venezuelan Contras now in Florida are teaming up with their reactionary brethren in the Cuban Contra community in developing propaganda radio broadcasts to Venezuela.

The Miami Herald's near-continuous front-page coverage of developments in Venezuela is beginning to look less like objective reporting and more like a crusade against President Hugo Chávez and his government. I'm not saying that the reports themselves are slanted, although sometimes they border on it, especially the headlines. Rather, the pattern, frequency and the way they are displayed bolsters that impression.

The American state will sanction these new radio programs while denouncing Chavez for having nationalized the telecommunications/media industry in his country. Wait a minute, state sanctioned radio versus nationalized media....

Contrary to the propaganda of the Americans, Chavez does not just intend to make these organs of the state. They will be run collectively by the workers and community.

It was clear two months ago when I was in Venezuela that if Hugo Chavez won his third six-year term in the presidency this fall, he was ready to radicalize Venezuela - and he already has. He is going to abolish presidential term limits and "deepen this revolution." He is going to nationalize Venezuela's telecommunications and electricity utilities, bring the country's enormous oil wealth under more state control, and seek new powers from his already controlled legislature to rule by decree and reform the constitution along socialist lines. Local democracy will be run by "communal councils" reminiscent of the Paris Communes and the early Soviets.

The next step of course will be a Contra terrorist campaign. No wait that already happened, and the Americans refuse to extradict the Cuban Contra Terrorist to Venezuela for justice.

See

Chavez

Venezuela

Latin America

Cuba

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Business As Usual

Despite the headline the bosses still don't get it.

Bosses heed climate warning

The oil and gas sector's peak lobby, the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association, described the IPCC report as a "sober, careful and comprehensive overview" of the status of climate change science. APPEA chief executive Belinda Robinson said national and international policy responses must be similarly considered, measured and multi-faceted. "Just as the IPCC avoids hysteria, so should our responses. The report leaves little doubt in my, and judging by a range of polls, most people's minds that climate change is very, very serious," she said.

"But in tackling it there is absolutely no room for knee-jerk, ill-informed approaches that have more to do with political optics than a genuine desire to understand the complexities in settling on a suite of policies that serve the best long-term interests of Australia and the world."

Ms Robinson warned that until commercial, environmental and technological drivers combined to dictate Australia's future energy profile, the emphasis must be on keeping all gas, clean coal, renewable, nuclear and a variety of other energy options open, as well as well others not yet dreamt of.

As in Canada so it is in Australia. PM pushes nuclear power

See:

Environment

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Fraser Institutes Flat Earth Report

Real Climate - Climate Science From Scientists says the Fraser Institutes Flat Earth response to the IPCC report, falls flat as a pancake;

An unofficial, "Independent Summary for Policymakers" (ISPM) of the IPCC Fourth Assessment report has been delivered by the Fraser Institute. It's a long, imposing-looking document, resembling, come to think of it, the formatting of the real Summary for Policymakers (SPM) document that was released on Friday after final negotiations of the IPCC in Paris last week. The Fraser Institute has assembled an awsome team of 10 authors, including such RC favorites as tilter-against-windmills-and-hockey-sticks Ross McKitrick, and other luminaries such as William Kininmonth, MSc, M.Admin -- whose most recent paper is "Don't be Gored into Going Along" in the Oct-Nov issue of Power Engineer. To be fair, he did publish a paper on weather forecasting, back in 1973. According to the press release, the London kickoff event will be graced by the presence of "noted environmentalist" David Bellamy. It's true he's "noted," but what he's noted for is his blatant fabrication of numbers purporting to show that the world's glaciers are advancing rather retreating, as reported here.

And Real Climate refutes the theory of Radiative Forcing which Blogging Tory Kitchner Conservative used in his blog to prove that the IPCC report was Fear Mongering and Alarmism.

One of the strangest sections of the Fraser Institute report is the one in which the authors attempt to throw dirt on the general concept of radiative forcing. Radiative forcing is nothing more than an application of the principle of conservation of energy, looking at the way a greenhouse gas alters the energy balance of a planet. The use of energy conservation arguments of this type has been standard practice in physics at least since the time of Fourier. We have heard certain vice presidents dismiss "Energy Conservation" as merely a matter of personal virtue, but we have never before heard people who purport to be scientists write off the whole utility of "Conservation of Energy." From what is written in the Fraser report, it is not even clear that the authors understand the first thing about how radiative transfer calculations are done.

Ouch.

And DeSmogblog issued a press release in anticipation of the Fraser Institutes Report today;

DeSmogBlog.com: IPCC Criticism Fits into Canadian Climate Change ...

A Canadian think tank's attack on the recently released report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is one of several recent initiatives by Canadian groups to block action on global warming, DeSmogBlog.com President, James Hoggan, said Monday. The latest attack, by the Exxon-funded Fraser Institute, is scheduled to be released today, Feb. 5 at a press conference in the United Kingdom.

"These people are an embarrassment to Canadians," Hoggan said. Two industry front groups (the Natural Resources Stewardship Project and the Friends of Science) have popped up in Canada the last couple of years, spreading doubt about climate change at every turn. And a scientist associated with those groups put together a petition of skeptical "experts" last spring, a petition that was quoted in U.S. Senate committee hearings.

Now the Fraser Institute, a right-wing think tank that has received annual grants from oil-giant ExxonMobil, is issuing what it calls an independent summary of the report of the IPCC. The Institute claimed that the IPCC's own summary is a political document "neither written by nor reviewed by the scientific community".

Andrew Weaver, the Canada Research Chair in Climate Modelling and Analysis and a lead IPCC author called the Fraser Institute's effort "highly ideological". The IPCC summary was written and reviewed by some of the most senior climate scientists in the world, without political or bureaucratic input, Weaver said.

The English newspaper the Mirror issued the following report;

ATTACKS ON GLOBAL WARMING

A RIGHT-WING think tank funded by oil firms will today try to rubbish claims of climate change.

The Canadian-based Fraser Institute argues there is no globally consistent pattern in rain or snow falls and not enough data to prove rising temperatures pose a danger.

Its review - branded "rubbish" by Friends of the Earth - attempts to challenge the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which compiled a report by 2,500 scientists from more than 130 countries.

ExxonMobil has paid the institute more than £30,000. A quarter of its funding comes from organisations including pharmaceutical, oil, and gas companies.

Today's launch of the report follows the revelation that the right-wing American Enterprise Institute - also funded by ExxonMobil - offered scientists up to £5,000 to underminine the IPCC study.

Just to be Fair and Balanced as they say on Faux Newz.

The Scoop from New Zealand published a news release from a New Zealand Flat Earth Coalition, another arm of the Fraser Institute. You can tell because they call the Fraser Institute an 'independent think tank', not a right wing one nor do they mention Exxon funded the report, nor the fact they are one of the Fraser Institutes sources.

Press Release: New Zealand Climate Science Coalition

Independent Summary Shows New UN Climate Change Report Refutes Alarmism And Reveals Major Uncertainties In The Science

February 5, 2007

For Immediate Release

LONDON, UK—An independent review of the latest United Nations report on climate change shows that the scientific evidence about global warming remains uncertain and provides no basis for alarmism.

In 2006, independent research organization The Fraser Institute convened a panel of 10 internationally-recognized experts to read the UN International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) draft report and produce an Independent Summary for Policymakers. The result, released today and available at www.fraserinstitute.ca, is a detailed and thorough overview of the state of the science. This independent summary has been reviewed by more than 50 scientists around the world and their views on its balance and reliability are tabulated for readers.

US Republican Senator Inhofe is using the Fraser Institute Report to refute the IPCC Report, he too is aligned with the small circle of climate deniers, he quotes the report almost word for word,

Washington, DC – Sen. James Inhofe, (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Environment & Public Works Committee, today commented on the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Summary for Policymakers.

"This is a political document, not a scientific report, and it is a shining example of the corruption of science for political gain. The media has failed to report that the IPCC Summary for Policymakers was not approved by scientists but by UN political delegates and bureaucrats," Senator Inhofe said. The IPCC is only releasing the Summary for Policymakers today, not the actual scientific report which is not due out until May 2007.

Which is refuted by Real Climate;

Why go to all the trouble of producing an "independent" summary? The authors illuminate us with this wisdom regarding the official Summary for Policymakers: "A further problem is that the Summary for Policy Makers attached to the IPCC Report is produced, not by the scientific writers and reviewers, but by a process of negotiation among unnamed bureaucratic delegates from sponsoring governments." This statement (charitably) shows that the Fraser Institute authors are profoundly ignorant of the IPCC process. In fact, the actual authors of the official SPM are virtually all scientists, and are publically acknowleged. Moreover, the lead authors of the individual chapters are represented in the writing process leading to the SPM, and their job is to defend the basic science in their chapters. As lead author Gerald Meehl remarked to one of us on his way to Paris: "Scientists have to be ok, they have the last check. If they think the science is not represented, then they can send it back to the breakout groups. "

Inhofe, the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition; a handful of scientists and rigth wing lobbyists, and a wine grower, like the folks the Fraser Institute has rounded up are all part of the coalition funded by Exxon of climate change deniers, like the Candian petro lobby; Friends of Science.

In fine neo-con tradition what they do is quote each other, without refering to the fact they all belong to the same club, as if that proves their authority and points.
And they make the misleading claim that they are "leading climate scientists" which of course they are not. They are corporate apologists for capitalism.

This is the same tactic used when the Fraser Institute issues an economic report on the joys of the free market, proving their evidence by quoting a "leading" economicst from the Cato Institute, which of course quotes a "leading" economist from the Fraser Institute as a source.

You get where all this is leading. It is a self completing circle, as Phil Ochs said; a small circle of friends. Though one could be forgiven for considering it an ideological circle jerk.

See:

Fraser Institute

Environment


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Anarchism In Action

Many folks have seen Avi Lewis and Naomi Kleins NFB film The Take, here is a report on the mass self-valorization movement in Argentina and the people who took direct action and direct control of their lives and communities after the collapse of the IMF regime in their country.

It is an example of anarchism in action, the creation of use value, hence self-valorization, and the elimination of exchange values, money-capital-money, for a barter system. Which pre-dates capitalism and is known as the gift economy.

The story begins in 2001, when the Argentine economy collapsed under pressure of IMF demands. Unemployment reached 35 percent. Direct action movements of unemployed workers known as “piqueteros,” mostly women, began blocking highways and then negotiating with the authorities for subsistence programs and public works employment.

The example of the “piqueteros” spread to a more and more disgruntled population. Discontent came to a head as the government accepted even greater austerity demands from the IMF and imposed a state of siege to suppress popular protest. Every bank account in the country was frozen. On the night of December 19, 2001, people from all over Buenos Aires took to the streets banging pts and plans and marched on Congress and the presidential palace. The next day, spontaneous street demonstrations forced Fernando de la Rua to resign the presidency. People throughout the country from diverse class backgrounds began meeting in “self-convened neighborhood assemblies.”

In the context of the crisis, people began improvising new economic institutions. New bakeries and gardens began providing food, often with support and distribution through the neighborhood assemblies. Soon five to seven million people were involved in barter networks, trading not only basic goods but also services – for example, psychoanalysis for computer repair. They also began taking over abandoned buildings, notably banks, and reopening them as neighborhood centers.

Meanwhile, many bosses stopped paying their workers and eventually closed their workplaces. The idea of taking over the workplaces emerged in response. One textile worker says the takeover at the Brukman factory “wasn’t an occupation at first, but it became one without us intending it.”

“Together, everyone in the factory thought about our situation, and decided to stay to see if the bosses would decide to give us a little money so we could celebrate the holidays with our families. . . . We waited two months for the bosses to come back. We went to the unions, the Ministry of Work, all with the intention of getting the boss to come back and offer us a solution. He never came. So we decided to work.”

At the Chilavert printing factory,

“When we realized that they were going to come and take the machines, well, then we had to make a decision. The time for thinking had ended and we took over the workplace. . . You know that if they take the machines from you, you’ll end up on the street. It’s a reflex – you don’t think about cooperatives, you don’t think about anything. Defending your source of work is a reflex.”

More than 200 such “recuperated workplaces” are currently in operation. Almost all were closed, abandoned, in bankruptcy, and/or in debt and in arrears in payments to their employees. Seventy percent were initiated in the 2001-2 period, but such takeovers are still occurring. Most are in the Buenos Aires area, but others are scattered in all parts of the country. They employ about 10,000 workers in total.

See:

Workers Control

Self-Management

Anarchism

Latin America





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It's An Ecological Crisis, Stupid

Climate Change and Global Warming are only symptoms of the ecological crisis created by the fordist production models of capitalism.

Climate change is just one of the many symptoms exhibited by a planet under pressure from human activities. "Global environmental change, which includes climate change, threatens to irreversibly alter our planet," says Kevin Noone, Executive Director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP).

Global studies by IGBP show that human-driven environmental changes are affecting many parts of the Earth’s system, in addition to its climate. For example:

• Half of Earth’s land surface is now domesticated for direct human use.
• 75 percent of the world’s fisheries are fully or over-exploited.
• The composition of today´s atmosphere is well outside the range of natural variability the Earth has maintained over the last 650,000 years.
• The Earth is now in the midst of its sixth great extinction event.

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Environment


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Fraser Institute Meets Bill O'Riley

Love this announcement from the Fraser Institute for their Flat Earth Report; note the Bill O'Riley like No Spin Zone pronouncement.

Climate Change Without the Spin:
An Independent Summary for Policymakers of the New IPCC Report

When spinning is exactly what this is all about. Another example of neo-con newspeak.


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Environment


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Direct Action In Israel

Defintely not Zionists.

"Anarchists block Tel Aviv street"

Protesting against the separation fence, "Anarchists Against the Wall" activists blocked the entrance to one of Tel Aviv's main streets, Rothschild Boulevard, with barbwire and a sign saying "restricted military zone" on Saturday.

This is the anarchists' second Tel Aviv protest aimed at demonstrating the daily difficulties the separation fence places on residents of the Palestinian Territories.

The demonstration did not last long, and since the act was illegal, the anarchists refused to reveal their identities for fear of getting arrested.

Anarchists in Tel Aviv Saturday (Photo courtesy of activestills.org)

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Anarchism

Berlin Wall

Israel

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Surge In Iraq

The real surge in Iraq is not Bush's it is the in the civil war being conducted by the Iraqi Government and its allies, the Shia establishment, against fellow Shia and the Sunni's in their battle to take control of Baghdad. It is ethnic cleansing of areas where both Shia and Sunni's have lived together for years.

Iraqi Interior Ministry estimates 1000 killed in one week

The increase in internecine warfare has been aggravated by police and security units which are made up of religious zealots of both sects. So far since Bush announced his surge policy the result has been more deaths in Baghdad than ever before.

"The root causes of the sectarian violence lie in revenge killings and lack of accountability for past crimes as well as in the growing sense of impunity for on-going human rights violations," the UN report said.

That is the real surge. The ethnic cleansing of neighbourhoods before the US troops backing Shia government forces appear.

Soldiers say adding troops is lost cause

They cite the level of violence, lack of security or Iraqi support

Soldiers interviewed across east Baghdad, home to more than half the city's 8 million people, said the violence is so out of control that while a surge of 21,500 more American troops may momentarily suppress it, the notion that U.S. forces can bring lasting security to Iraq is misguided. Soldiers such as Hardy must contend not only with an escalating civil war between Iraq's Sunni and Shiite Muslims, but also with insurgents on both sides who target U.S. forces.

Officials estimate that 500,000 or more Iraqis have been forced into the limbo of displacement inside their country since February 2006, when the bombing of a Shiite shrine in the city of Samarra accelerated ongoing sectarian violence and localized ethnic cleansing.

The forced migrations are especially prevalent in Baghdad, a once-mixed city that is now fragmenting into segregated enclaves.

"Both (sects) are involved in the game," said Ali Shalan Mohan, a department director in the Iraqi government's Ministry of Displacement and Migration, who is himself displaced.

Iraqis are fleeing at a rate that could exceed 1,000 per day, according to some estimates.

In a country of about 26 million, more than 1.5 million people have been displaced, according to the International Organization for Migration, a Geneva-based group that counts displaced Iraqis in the central and southern portion of Iraq (not including the three Kurdish-run provinces). More than 1.2 million Iraqis, by most estimates, have fled Iraq to neighboring countries since 2003.

The Iraqi government reported a much higher count as of mid-January, saying 560,000 had fled their homes in 2006 — close to what the United Nations has estimated.

But Sunnis especially fear registering as displaced with a government that is dominated by Shiite parties with links to Shiite militias.

"People won't register with this government because they think the government is part of the displacement," said Samir al-Hayat, 30, from a mixed Sunni-Shiite family that is displaced yet unregistered.

The U.S. military has long suspected that Shiite militias in Baghdad are working systematically to cleanse neighborhoods.

Last summer, American troops in eastern Baghdad said Shiite gunmen were suspected of forcing mass evacuations of Sunni residents so they could give their homes to Shiites displaced from other areas of the city.

Mahdi Army gains strength by US aid

The U.S. military drive to train and equip Iraq's security forces has unwittingly strengthened anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia, which has been battling to take over much of the capital city as American forces are trying to secure it.

U.S. Army commanders and enlisted men who are patrolling east Baghdad, which is home to more than half the city's population and the front line of Sadr's campaign to drive rival Sunnis from their homes and neighborhoods, said Sadr's militias had heavily infiltrated the Iraqi police and army units that they've trained and armed.

Domestic Security Forces Face Major Challenges

Even after the Defense Department took over this training in 2004 and invested more resources, it was clear that the U.S. military did "not have the right experience or personnel to provide the unique training that the Iraqi Police Service needs."

On January 28, Diyala Governate police chief Ghanim al-Qureyshi announced that 1,500 local police officers had been dismissed for fleeing when the city of Ba'qubah was attacked by Sunni insurgents last November. He added that Ba'qubah Mayor Khalid al-Sinjari had been dismissed amid suspicions that he had collaborated with Sunni insurgents.

On January 20, armed gunmen attacked a Provincial Joint Coordination Center in the southern city of Karbala, resulting in the abductions and deaths of five U.S. soldiers. As details of the attack surfaced, U.S. officials reported that the attackers wore uniforms resembling those worn by U.S. forces and drove in vehicles commonly used by U.S. contractors.

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Iraq

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