For me, gender identity is more complicated than masculine and feminine or even transvestite and transsexual.

I don’t want a gender reassignment/‘sex change’ yet at the same time my motivation to cross dress goes way too deep for an uncomplicated case of transvestism. Dressing ‘en femme’ now and again won’t satisfy me.

I’d more readily describe myself as transgendered, or even third gendered - neither male nor female.

Modern science may well have found physical evidence to explain why we’re like this.

Meantime, we struggle under a bi-polar gender regime in which only two mutually exclusive gender options are recognized.   more »

No doubt the idea that western states can project their values by force of arms gives a sense of importance to those who believe it.

It tells them they are still the chief actors on the world stage, the vanguard of human progress that embodies the meaning of history.

But this liberal creed is a dangerous conceit if applied to today's intractable conflicts, where resource wars are entwined with wars of religion and western power is in retreat.

The liberal interventionism that took root in the aftermath of the cold war was never much more than a combination of post-imperial nostalgia with crackpot geopolitics.   more »

Brown's policy will be to try and put a small amount of distance between himself and Bush and hope that Bush doesn't do anything crazy.

He really doesn't have anything to say on the war whatsoever, he's just hoping that the Democrats will come to power and sort it out for him.

It's utterly craven. The Iraq war is a live issue in the US and Brown could have a very big influence.

Even talk of a UK withdrawal would supercharge the debates already happening in Congress.

Yet Brown won't do anything controversial, he'll just sit and wait and hope.   more »

Staying on message, the big lie is repeated over and over by this army of manipulators, attacking the airwaves, and thus our brains, in a constant stream of appearances.

Ignorant, ideological and delusional Machiavelli’s, this legion of propagandists is given free rein to saturate both televised and written media with their talking points.

They appear as “guests” on news shows, making the rounds, regurgitating the message their group wants disseminated, never being challenged, always having a loudspeaker from which to reach the masses.

Without merit, these operatives are placed as opinion writers, reporters and editors in America’s most influential magazines and newspapers, free to manipulate and condition the minds of readers, free to shift the nation’s discourse in a particular direction.   more »

Mahmoud told a worldwide television audience that he dared not return to his homeland because of the conditions created by the US occupation.

“I want America to go out,” he said. “Today, tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, but out. I wish the American people didn’t invade Iraq and hopefully it will be over soon.”

The American media was geared up for an orgy of propaganda, seeking to use the soccer victory as a metaphor for a military victory by the US and puppet forces over the anti-occupation resistance.

Mahmoud’s forthright opposition to the occupation—a sentiment shared by the overwhelming majority of the Iraqi population—did not fit that script.   more »