No Section 8 housing vouchers, no city wide Advantage vouchers either. October is the last rental assistance formerly homeless people will receive since the State decided to cut funding for the citywide Advantage program, with the City's objections duly recorded. This was decided by New York State Supreme Court Justice Judith J. Gische. There is NO housing assistance in place on Federal, State or City wide levels AT ALL.

The House of Representatives, in its glorious Republican majority, passed a bill that would prohibit abortion even in the event of a mother's death. This is it: if you're bleeding and go to a hospital, the hospital is not required to treat you or transfer you to a facility that could save you. This seems to involve Catholic hospitals in particular. So, basically, you would bleed to death rather than undergo life saving procedures. The bill is expected to encounter Senate opposition and a Presidential veto, if it takes that.

Gilad Shalit has been freed by Hamas, and it's hard not to compare his conditions with those of the Palestinian prisoners released in exchange

From The Nation's What's next for the global food movement? volume, dated October 3, 2011: "President Obama ordered " the EPA to delay new regulations on ozone emissions because rules pose undue 'burdens' on corporate polluters." The president has also created fuel efficiency standars that "will significantly lower air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. But he has done bad things as well, including opening vast tracts of the West to coal mining and providing much more funding to nuclear and fossil fuel than to green alternatives." "sustenance has become a health hazard-with the US diet implicated in four out of our top ten deadly diseases." "Just four companies control at least three-quarters of international grain trade; and in the United States, by 2000, just ten corporations-with boards totaling only 138 people-had come to account for half of US food and beverage sales. Conditions for American farmworkers remain so horrific that seven Florida growers have been convicted of slavery involving more than 1,000 workers. Life expectancy of US farmworkers is forty-nine years." "roughly half-billion small farms worldwide (...) produce 70 percent of the world's food." In the United States "The largest 9 percent of farms produce more than 60 percent of output. But small farmers still control more than half our farmland, and the growing market for healthy fresh food has helped smallholders grow: their numbers went up by 18,467 between 2002 and 2007." "Monsanto, DuPont and Syngenta- control about half the proprietary seed market worldwide." In 2002 the Supreme Court allowed the patent of life forms. The opinion was written by once Monsanto attorney Clarence Thomas. In 1992 the Food and Drug Administration stated that "the agency is not aware of any information showing that [GMO] foods...differ from other foods in any meaningful or uniform way" while in 40,000 FDA file pages GMO's can contain "unexpected toxins, carcinogens or allergens." "(...) now most US corn and soybeans are GMO, with genes patented largely by one company: Monsanto.(...) they could be in 75 percent of processed food."

The law requesting a urine sample to collect benefits has been passed in Arizona, Indiana, Missouri, besides Florida. Legislators of thirty-six states proposed the law this year.

An adjunct teaching history at the County College of Morris in New Jersy, Elizabeth Snyder, sent an email to a student who has a stutter requesting he ask questions before or after class and write in class question answers on a piece of paper.

Italy's Berlusconi government has cut the budget for teachers of differently abled students.

Why we would be better off celebrating Italian Day of Independence or Italian Day of Liberation (the end of World War II in Italy) instead of Columbus Day: "Columbus wrote:' As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first Island which I found, I took some of the natives by force in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts. ' ", " Spain was recently unified, one of the new modern nation-states, like France, England, Portugal. Its population, mostly poor peasants, worked for the nobility, who were 2 percent of the population and owned 95 percent of the land. Spain had tied itself to the Catholic Church, expelled all the Jews, driven out the Moors. Like other states of the modern world, Spain sought gold, which was becoming the new mark of wealth, more useful than land because it could buy anything.", " In return for bringing back gold and spices, they promised Columbus 10 percent of the profits, governorship over new-found lands, and the fame that would go with the new title: Admiral of the Ocean Sea.", "The Indians, Columbus reported,"are so naive and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say no. To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone..." He concluded his report by asking for a little help from their Majesties, and in return he would bring them from his next voyage ' as much gold as they need...and as many slaves as they ask.' " From A People's History of the United States. Howard Zinn.

Here's a compendium of news from The New York Times: Kosovo organ trading ring paid as much as $20,000 for kidneys to people from Turkey or impoverished ex-Communist countries while selling them from $100,000 to $130,000; The United States Preventive Services Task Force no longer recommends mammographies for women under 40 or prostate cancer screening tests for men. These are still used in conjunction to the annual check-up regardless, thanks to many objections; The Pakistani government is thinking of filing charges against a doctor who ran a fraudulent vaccination program to try to locate Bin Laden; A Bedouin mosque was set on fire in Israel, probably by Jewish extremists. The government has already apologized. The Bedouins are a long time ally of Israel's; Alabama's Judge Sharon Lovelace Blackburn upheld what many consider the harshest law on illegal immigration yet: now people at routine traffic stops can be asked for immigration papers by state and local police, contracts involving illegal immigrants are no longer enforceable and schools are required to ascertain the immigration status of its population; an injectible hormonal contraceptive doubles the risk of HIV transmission than no injectable contraceptive at all; One of the Cuban Five was released from prison on probation after serving 13 years for nothing. He and the others were sent to the States legally thanks to an agreement between Cuba and the United States governments so as to infiltrate extreme rightist Cuban emigree terrorist organizations. The five instead were convicted by Federal Court decision; Severe schizophrenics show vast improvement on a variant of cognitive talk therapy.

Not only are Al Shabaad militias cutting off hands and feet for attempted theft in Somalia, but, because of the drought, they are stealing food as well.

Kurt Vonnegut. From Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons. Most of the true tales of masterfulness in new environments with new technologies have been cruel and greedy, it seems to me. The concepts of reality held by the masterful people have customarily been stupid or solipsistic in retrospect. Nobody has been remarkably secure, the masters have often ceased to be masters quickly. There have been tremendous messes to be cleaned up, ravaged landscapes dotted by shattered Earthlings and their machines. Stupid.