The Australian government has issued what is likely the first gender neutral identification card, or Recognised Details Certificate (similar to a U.S. birth certificate).
Norrie, 48, was born in Scotland and was labeled male at birth. At age 23 Norrie commenced sex and gender conversion to female through hormone and construction of a vagina and was then issued with a gender recognition certificate as female.

But Norrie did not feel that this female identity was correct, so zie ceased hormone treatment and identified as neither male nor female, “resisting further female or male normalisation. In January 2010 doctors declared that they were unable to determine Norrie as either male or female as zie has no gonads, the hormonal system was atypically male or female, and Norrie’s psychological identity was (androgynous).”

For more, go Here, and Here

Today I received an email inviting me to a webinar on OMEKA, a web based platform for all kinds of collections created by the Center For History & New Media. This sounds pretty great and I definitely am going to read up on this, if not try to watch the webinar (and I’m sorry to have already used the word webinar twice, you’ll have to suffer through it a couple more times I’m afraid)

Here is a blurb from the release for the webinar:

“Omeka is a free and open source collections-based, Web-based platform for scholars, librarians, archivists, museum professionals, educators and cultural enthusiasts. Until now, scholars and cultural heritage professionals looking to publish collections-based research and online exhibitions required either extensive technical skills or considerable funding for outside vendors…

Omeka features a “five-minute setup” that makes launching an online exhibition as easy as launching a blog. Designed with non-IT specialists in mind, it allows users to focus on content and interpretation rather than programming. It brings Web 2.0 technologies and approaches to academic and cultural Web sites to foster user interaction and participation. It also makes top-shelf design easy with a simple and flexible operating system. Omeka’s robust open-source developer and user communities underwrite its stability and sustainability…

Webinar participation is free and open to all but advanced registration is required. This is the second webinar in the OCLC Research Technical Advances for Innovation in Cultural Heritage Institutions (TAI CHI) Webinar Series developed to highlight specific innovative applications, often locally developed, that libraries, museums and archives may find effective in their own environments, as well as to teach technical staff new technologies and skills.  We intend to make recordings of these webinars available on the OCLC Research Web site and in the iTunes Store.”

Imagine the uses for this if it’s as flexible as it seems! Not just for libraries, but “cultural enthusiasts”, and who isn’t a cultural enthusiast of some kind?

More info and advance registration link HERE. 

original story here

‘people who lead this type of lifestyle need to be aware that this will happen’.

“According to an iReport by Chrisopher Pagan: “On November 14 the body of a gay 19 year old was found a few miles away from the town in which he was residing in called Caguas. He was a very well known person in the gay community of Puerto Rico, and very loved. He was found on the site of an isolated road in the city of Cayey, he was partially burned, decapitated, and dismembered, both arms, both legs, and the torso. This has caused a huge reaction from the gay community here, but its a difficult situation. Never in the history of Puerto Rico has a murder been classified as a hate crime. Even though we have to follow federal mandates and laws, many of the laws in which are passed in the USA such as Obama’s new bill, do not always directly get practiced in Puerto Rico. The police agent that is handling this case said on a public televised statement that ‘people who lead this type of lifestyle need to be aware that this will happen’. As If the boy murdered Jorge Steven Lopez was asking to get killed…”

Here’s a report on the murder (in Spanish) from PrimeraHora.com. Said activist Pedro Julio Serrano: “It is inconceivable that the investigating officer suggests that the victim deserved his fate, like a woman deserves rape for wearing a short skirt. We demand condemnation of this investigator and demand that Superintendente Figueroa Sancha replace him with someone capable of investigating this case without prejudice.” (my translation, please suggest a better one if you can).”

–Mr Kambaksh was found guilty of blasphemy and sentenced to death last year for circulating an essay on women’s rights which questioned verses in the Koran.

It later emerged he was convicted by three mullahs, in secret, without access to a lawyer. The sentence was commuted to 20 years on appeal. At that appeal, in October, the key prosecution witness withdrew his testimony, claiming he had been forced to lie on pain of death. The prosecution then appealed to the Supreme Court to reinstate the death sentence. The defence appealed to quash his conviction altogether.–

From the Independent online:

Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, the student journalist sentenced to death for blasphemy in Afghanistan, has been told he will spend the next 20 years in jail after the country’s highest court ruled against him – without even hearing his defence.

The 23-year-old, brought to worldwide attention after an Independent campaign, was praying that Afghanistan’s top judges would quash his conviction for lack of evidence, or because he was tried in secret and convicted without a defence lawyer. Instead, almost 18 months after he was arrested for allegedly circulating an article about women’s rights, any hope of justice and due process evaporated amid gross irregularities, allegations of corruption and coercion at the Supreme Court. Justices issued their decision in secret, without letting Mr Kambaksh’s lawyer submit so much as a word in his defence.

(more…)

From the Union Librarian

More than 40 major British companies face legal action for allegedly buying secret personal data about thousands of workers they wanted to vet before employing them.

The information commissioner, Richard Thomas, will today publish a list of the companies he believes may have broken data protection laws, after an investigation by his office that was sparked by fears that many workers were being unfairly “blacklisted”.

Alan Ritchie, the general secretary of Ucatt, the construction union, said: “Ucatt members know from bitter experience of being refused work that blacklisting exists in construction.

“However, the extent of the practice and the fact that most of the major companies are involved in the practice is truly shocking. It is outrageous that construction workers have been barred from jobs simply for being trade unionists.”
See after the jump for the full press release   (more…)

Shai Reshef has started  a new venture, The University of the People, which will begin classes in spring of 2009. Reshef isn’t new to online school adventures, he started an online university in Europe, which he sold to Laureate, and a testing preparation company in Israel, which he sold to Kaplan. UOP will be an almost free online university, with cost determined on a sliding scale based on the wealth of their country of origin,  initially offering degrees in Business Administration and Computer Science, with more in the works. The best part is that some of the learning and teaching will be peer-to-peer, with students doing the teaching. Learn more HERE and listen to a podcast with Reshef HERE.

From the UK Times Online & BoingBoing

Of the 248 inmates inside the detention facility, 44 are refusing food — but 33 of those are receiving nutrition with tubes that are forced up their noses and into their stomachs. On election night, according to one official, news of Mr Obama’s win spread across the prison facility even though no inmates had access to television that evening, and chants of “Obama! Obama! Obama!” erupted throughout the complex.

Human rights groups claim the total number of hunger strikers is higher than officials say. Gitanjali Gutierrez, a lawyer for the New York-based Centre for Constitutional Rights, says that more than 70 men held at the US base in Cuba are refusing to eat. She cited reports from visiting lawyers.

According to one official, most inmates are now well informed about what is happening in the outside world through a combination of watching Arabic news programmes and meetings with civilian lawyers and the International Red Cross, who are allowed to visit the facility. Most are aware of Mr Obama’s pledge to close the prison, which received its first inmates seven years ago this week. Asked why so many were on hunger strike and why the number was increasing, an official said: “This is the seventh anniversary of the arrival of the first detainees, and a week today is the inauguration of a new president. Hunger striking is an acknowledged form of protest.”

From Wired:

Transportation Security Administration officials and JetBlue Airways are paying $240,000 to settle (.pdf) a discrimination lawsuit against a District of Columbia man who, as a condition of boarding a domestic flight, was forced to cover his shirt that displayed Arabic writing.

According to a civil rights lawsuit, TSA and JetBlue demanded Raed Jarrar to sit at the back of a 2006 flight from New York to Oakland because his shirt read “We Will Not Be Silent” in English and Arabic.

As Jarrar was waiting to board, TSA officials approached him and said he was required to remove his shirt because passengers were not comfortable with it, according to the lawsuit. The suit claimed one TSA official commented that the Arabic lettering was akin to wearing a T-shirt at a bank stating, “I am a robber.”

The lawsuit claimed Jarrar, 30, invoked the First Amendment but acquiesced after it became clear to him that he would not be allowed to fly if he did not cover his shirt with one given to him by JetBlue officials.

“All people in this country have the right to be free of discrimination and to express their own opinions,” Jarrar wrote on his blog. “With this outcome, I am hopeful that TSA and airlines officials will think twice before practicing illegal discrimination and that other travelers will be spared the treatment I endured.”

From Good via Boing Boing

Just a short drive from the U.S.-Mexican border, a densely packed community will soon hum with activity. Homes will be jammed together, with any leftover space commandeered by taco stands, market stalls, and gathering places. It’ll be a far cry from the sanitized suburbs of southern California, but make no mistake: It will sit on the American side of the border.

Indeed, if the architect Teddy Cruz gets his way, the shantytowns of Tijuana, Mexico, will act as a blueprint of sorts for a new kind of urban development. “Architecture has been so distant from the politics and economics of development,” says Cruz. “We need to rethink the way we’ve been developing, and what we mean when we talk about housing, density, community, and neighborhood.”

Behind the precariousness of low-income communities, says Cruz, there is a sophisticated social collaboration: People share resources, make use of every last scrap, and look out for each other. Cruz is incorporating this resourcefulness into the planning of two new developments, in San Ysidro, a border-town community in southern San Diego, and in Hudson, New York. If they work as planned, these projects will become powerful case studies for a new approach to urban development that could be implemented across the country.

(more…)

Via Hatewatch (thanks Gabe!)

Two years after glorifying the border vigilante movement in Minutemen: Battle to Secure America’s Borders, a book he co-authored with Minuteman Project leader Jim Gilchrist, right-wing propagandist and conspiracy hound Jerome Corsi found himself being deported—from Kenya.

Immigration agents in Nairobi detained Corsi earlier today because, as one official told the New York Times, “His immigration forms were not in order.” Corsi was on his way to a press conference when he was taken into custody and forced to surrender his passport.

It wasn’t the first time in recent months that Corsi’s attempts to generate publicity have gone awry. In mid-August, just as Corsi was in the midst of a blitz of media appearances to promote his latest bestseller, The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality, Hatewatch revealed that Corsi had recently been a guest on the Political Cesspool, an overtly anti-Semitic and white supremacist radio show, and that he was scheduled to appear on the show again. (Corsi subsequently backed out of the second Cesspool appearance). (more…)