FOREIGN POLICY Ladyboys in the Gulf Slim and full-lipped,Mya is Thai-Chinese,though she was raised in Java and speaks English with an Indonesian accent. It was on one of her trips that she decided to go to Dubai,where she knew she could make a lot of money in the transgender sex trade. The men there love me, she says. According to Sulome Anderson,sex trade in the Middle East is attracting hundreds of transgender sex workers. All these Gulf countries abide by strict Islamic law,outlaw homosexuality,and forbid gay foreigners from entering the country. This is one of the more extreme challenges faced by the Arab Gulf countries as they struggle to adapt to the changing cultural norms brought on by globalisation,writes Sulome. These communities have long grappled with the sale of alcohol and foreigners scanty clothingbut the presence of transgender sex workers is dealt with not through compromise,but brute repression. TIME Will blacks vote for Obama Because Hes Black? Obama has not been shy about bringing black cultural signifiers with him onto the national stage from fist bumping his wife in the 2008 campaign to refusing change from a fast food cashier by saying Nah we straight. The question has become an Internet meme over the last week,fueled mostly by people like author Kevin Jackson,author of The Big Black Lie,who told Fox News,Racists that they are,[blacks voted for [Obama because hes black,not because hes qualified. Instead,the idea that blacks support Obama just because hes black is itself racist,suggest Toure,as if blacks would vote for anyone who shares their skin colour,even though most blacks didnt support Herman Cain,Allen West,Alan Keyes and dont respect Clarence Thomas. THE NEW YORK TIMES Armstrongs wall of silence fell rider by rider Floyd Landis,the cyclist who had denied doping for years despite being stripped of the 2006 Tour de France title for failing a drug test,went to a lunch meeting in April 2010 with the director of the Tour of California cycling race. Landis finally wanted to tell the truth: He had doped through most of his professional career. He was recording his confessions so he would later have proof that he had blown the whistle on the sport. Antidoping officials on multiple continents had pursued Armstrong for years,in often quixotic efforts that died at the wall of silence his loyal teammates built around him,writes Juliet Macur. The lunch conversation between Landis and Messick would eventually be seen as the first significant crack in Armstrongs gilded foundation,a critical turning point in antidoping officials quest to penetrate the code of secrecy that endured in cycling. Over the course of several weeks this spring,the investigation picked up as more and more cyclists contributed their own damning stories to the investigation. THE GUARDIAN 9/11 truther film September Morn Hollywood is set to court controversy with a film that will challenge the official version of the events of 9/11,a previously taboo topic for the industry mainstream. Martin Sheen,Woody Harrelson and Ed Asner have signed up to the movie,which is titled September Morn. Until now Hollywood has steered clear of claims that the Bush administration may have been behind the 9/11 attacks,writes Rory Carroll. Asner,in 2010,even told an interviewer: This country supposedly had a defence that could not be penetrated all these years. But all of that was eradicated by 19 Saudi Arabians,supposedly. Some of whom didnt even know how to fly.
