News of Note

A hypocrite the Boy Scouts can love

New Boy Scouts President Robert Gates: ‘I Would Have Supported Having Gay Scoutmasters’

Despite media to the contrary, Robert Gates, the Bush and Obama Administration, Defense Secretary, LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Trans) insiders didn’t view him as a true friend helping to repeal “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”. He had no problem accepting any and all kudos that may have come his way, however. By now mention of active duty troops and veterans who had to endure nearly 3 extra years of discrimination under Gates, until he finally relented and put a freeze on dismissals. has been dutifully scrubbed from his biography.

But Gates’s latest demonstration of his underlying hypocrisy is revealed by his first public address as the newly appointed President of the Boy Scouts. He actually said . . .

Robert Gates (WikiCommons)

Robert Gates
(WikiCommons)

A year ago, this meeting saw a respectful and civil debate over membership policy. In a democratic process, a strong majority of the volunteer leadership of this movement from all across the nation voted to welcome gay youth into scouting. In all candor, I would have supported going further, as I did in opening the way for gays to serve in CIA and in the military. […]

[…] Given the strong feelings — the passion — involved on both sides of this matter, I believe strongly that to re-open the membership issue or try to take last year’s decision to the next step would irreparably fracture or perhaps even provoke a formal, permanent split in this movement — with the high likelihood neither side would subsequently survive on its own. That is just a fact of life, and who would pay the price for destroying the Boy Scouts of America? Millions of scouts today and scouts yet unborn. We must always put the kids and their interests first. Thus, during my time as president, I will oppose any effort to re-open this issue.

 

This is a classic, really. Few profiles in public cowardice are so flagrant. It is glaringly obvious now: he was hired exactly because he wouldn’t bring needed change. Due to public pressure, the Boy Scouts had to reverse its discriminatory practice of throwing out young boys because they were gay. The next obvious step was to stop discriminating against scout leaders (often former scouts themselves) by throwing them out because they were gay.

A May 2013 ABC poll found that 56 percent of Americans oppose the organization’s “intention to continue to ban gay adults.”

By not taking this step, the Scouts are further discriminating against gay youth by demonstrating, in fact, that being gay is a bad thing, and that these young gay Scouts shouldn’t need positive adult role models, who happen to be gay. Hypocrisy writ large that will endure through Boy Scout President Gates 2-year term unless we ramp up pressure and right this wrong.

If you can, support and work with organizations such as Scouts for Equality, who, along with more than 1.8 million petition signers have called on the Boy Scouts to end its anti-LGBT practices.

 

 

Science is teaching us all about Lipophilia

Always Hungry? Here’s why

6361250197_29d92f8079_o[T]he increasing amount and processing of carbohydrates in the American diet has increased insulin levels, put fat cells into storage overdrive and elicited obesity-promoting biological responses in a large number of people .

. . . obesity rates . . . for adults, are almost three times what they were in the 1960s.

Addressing the underlying biological drive to overeat may make for a far more practical and effective solution to obesity than counting calories.

The latest frontier in nutritional research is revolutionary and important to every person, especially activists who wants to be more effective in changing the world. This ground-breaking information embraces our mission at VenusPlusX to help put an end to coercive systems that delay or otherwise interfere with the New Age of Sexual Freedom, such as the food industry that’s driven solely by greedy corporate interests supported by governments and your tax dollars.

Way back in 1908, a German internist named Gustav von Bergmann coined the term, Lipophilia, meaning love of fat, the first signal that metabolic disorder (rather than calorie imbalance or lack of willpower) causes overeating.

At last, new research picks up on this long-ignored theory and has been able to show a direct connection between sugar and modern processed foods and now epidemic rates of obesity (or even just weighing a little more than you would like too). These modern-day medical research heroes are showing us how stored fat inhibits our ability to absorb healthy calories and causes the overproduction of insulin, a vicious cycle that results in a compensating and progressively increased appetite, and, sadly more stored fat.

As it turns out, many biological factors affect the storage of calories in fat cells, including genetics, levels of physical activity, sleep and stress. But one has an indisputably dominant role: the hormone insulin. . . And of everything we eat, highly refined and rapidly digestible carbohydrates produce the most insulin. . . chips, crackers, cakes, soft drinks, sugary breakfast cereals and even white rice and bread.

Setting aside for a moment our urges for sugar and processed foods (including “diet” and “low fat” items), the only true enemy to this enlightenment is the food industry itself which literally banks on making all calories equal thereby justifying its mass production of super-profitable processed foods from corn, rice, and wheat, all of it from farms subsidized by tax dollars. Always calling for calorie balance and more and more personal willpower is the food industry’s first line of defense of their tax subsidized goldmine, all at the expense of our future health and the trillion-dollar obesity problems (diabetes, heart disease, etc.) that every tax payer is and will for some time be financially responsible for.

So you pay, first giving farm subsidies to produce the raw materials (corn, wheat, rice), then with our health after eating sugar and processed food from pesticide-ridden agribusiness (obesity, diabetes, and more) , then paying trillions in healthcare for millions of people with otherwise avoidable conditions. A lose-lose-lose situation we have solve very soon.

There will be numerous by-products of this research in the years to come, aside from making us all more healthy and effective. For example, we may finally see the end of “fat shaming,” that claims it is ignorance or lack of adequate will power causing people to be overweight. And, it will force a still closer look at corporate agriculture’s role in destroying our health through the mass use of pesticides, products like Monsanto’s RoundUp, now shown to have a direct connection to increased Autism, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, and other ailments.

As more and more is understood how much we have been enslaved and manipulated by corporate interests, we uncover knowledge and get busy taking better care of each other.

Tip: Fed Up, a movie now playing in theaters from An Inconvenient Truth
producer,
Laurie David, is all about revealing biologic truth
to the masses about what we are eating. Check it out.

 

 

Eric Holder explains it all, now it’s your turn

Holder confronts racial issues in address as White House puts discrimination at the fore

8718692337_1026fd2f33_zAttorney General Eric Holder has withstood savage attacks from his detractors but he has hung on and has emerged as our explainer-in-chief when it comes to racism in this country, really racism everywhere. His recent commencement address at Morgan State University was his most bold and erudite attempt to educate the world, particularly America, on the insidious and subtle nature of racism.

Holder rightly points out that the recent high-profile episodes of racism often mask systematic prejudice and discrimination.

“These [recent] outbursts of bigotry, while deplorable, are not the true markers of the struggle that still must be waged, or the work that still needs to be done,” Holder said.

“The greatest threats,” he continued, “are more subtle. They cut deeper. And their terrible impact endures long after the headlines have faded and obvious, ignorant expressions of hatred have been marginalized.”

In 2009, during Black History Month, Holder began this dialog by calling us “a nation of cowards” without the stomach for an actual conversation about racism. Gradually, with loving care, he (and President Obama) have led us through an increasingly more overt and candid discussion about race, the substance of which will live on as guide to all of us who have the courage to listen, take to heart, and put into action, much like the lessons of Martin Luther King, Jr.

So the next time that the likes of Bundy or Sterling take over the news cycle, it is up to all of us to draw the distinction Holder illustrates to begin a conversation with someone, anyone, about the deep roots of racism that still have stranglehold over our society, and what we can do together to overcome.

 

 

Winning (so far). Net Neutrality Protest Tomorrow

Grassroots efforts to save Net neutrality may be working

. . . more needs to be done to ensure the Internet is protected.

WikiCommons

WikiCommons

There’s no time to waste in feeling gratified even though advocacy organizations such as Free Press, CREDOand MoveOn.org, along with tech companies such as Google and Facebook, and rank-and-file grassroots activists are so far holding back attempts to commercialize the Internet in ways that would impede the otherwise free flow of media and data. 

Corporate special interests will not relent and neither must we. They want to secure fast lanes, the cost of which will be absorbed by everyday consumers, and simultaneously destroy the inherent democracy and equality of access that makes the Internet such a powerful tool of economic growth and social change.

We urge you to participate in a public protest at the Washington, DC, headquarters of the Federal Communications Commission (445 12th Street, SW), tomorrow, Thursday, May 15, at 9 AM.  And, to keep the pressure on.

 

“We absolutely think this is a fight we can win . . . This time people are wiling to fight in a way they weren’t willing to in 2010. People realize what is at stake now. And they don’t want the Internet turning into Comcast.” (Becky Bond, CREDO)

 

Woefully bad news for Mothers and Children

Save the Children Report Ranks Best and Worst Places to Be a Mother: U.S. Drops to 31st . . .

 

US Coast Guard/Wikimedia Commons

US Coast Guard/Wikimedia Commons

If you read this report, can you not be radicalized by its findings?

Countries faring the worst were those affected by humanitarian crises . . Worldwide, more than half of all maternal and child deaths occur in areas made more fragile by conflict and disasters. 

If you are an American, can you not be saddened and embarrassed that in just 15 years the U.S. has fallen from the top five in women’s health to 31st?

Since 2000, the risk that a 15-year-old girl will die during her lifetime from a maternal cause has increased by 50 percent in America . . .

 

A coinciding study on the same subject, Global, regional, and national levels and causes of maternal mortality during 1990-2013 . . . (The Lancet, 2 May 2014), ranks the U.S. even lower, 60th, and reveals similar sad statistics for the U.S. For example, African-American mothers are more than 3 times as likely to die as a result of pregnancy and childbirth than their white counterparts.

If you care about the future of the world, can you not get up off your couch and do something about bringing about change, even if its only for your own community?

But what of an underlying question:  

WHY is women’s healthcare in this country in retrograde?

Citing the study reported in The LancetRobert Reich, political economist and former Labor Secretary in the Clinton Administration, again shows us why he has quickly become our progressive guru in chief. His talent is awakening average people of the venality of the right-wing agenda, and he’s done so again with his column on women’s health, today, How the right wing is killing women

But this tragic trend is also a clear matter of public choice.

Many of these high-poverty states are among the twenty-one that have so far refused to expand Medicaid, even though the federal government will cover 100 percent of the cost for the first three years and at least 90 percent thereafter.

So as the sputtering economy casts more and more women into near poverty, they can’t get the health care they need.

Several of these same states have also cut family planning, restricted abortions, and shuttered women’s health clinics.

Right-wing ideology is trumping the health needs of millions of Americans.

Let’s be perfectly clear: These policies are literally killing women.

Global women’s health is the mother of causes because so much of  our civilization’s future depends on women’s wellbeing, and because of its direct ties to human rights. The true hallmark of any advanced civilization is how justifiably well women are accommodated in society’s rules, policies, and laws.

A final caveat: Consider, the battleground for equality rights begins and ends with women. There are no rights coming to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender people as long as the rights of women are under attack. There is zero separation of women’s issues and LGBT issues, they are one in the same, a fact often overlooked by LGBT people themselves.

 

Net Neutrality on the front burner, at last

Basically Every Big Internet Firm Signs Letter Against FCC’s Net Neutrality Plan

There has been a rush of public pressure on the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) to put off the May 15 vote that would drastically change the Internet. The commission has proposed allowing big providers (Verizon and Comcast to name two) to create higher priced “fast lanes” for big media companies such as Netflix to move their content, costs that will be passed onto consumers. Instead of maintaining the free and democratic access to the utility of the Internet, there would be winners and losers, different classes of Internet users.

WikiCommons

WikiCommons

Now over a 100 tech companies, including Google and Amazon, have come together to oppose these proposed new rules, in an effort organized by New America’s Open Technology Institute. In a letter to the Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler and the agency’s four commissioners, the companies warn of “grave threat to the Internet.”

Right now there is a split among the commission chair and two Democratic members on whether or not these rules go into effect next week. The Republican commissioners are on the side of maintaining the Internet’s existing net neutrality.

As we have pointed out before, this issue should be important to every small business owner, every non-profit organization, and every activist who makes way for the voiceless. Just a casual look at emerging democracies is proof enough of just how important net neutrality is to the eventual peaceful resolution of all differences, and how it will help end of the most destructive forms of nationalism.

Get involved, and make your voice heard.

 

Yes, it’s true, anti-LGBT laws kill

Quantifying the Effects of Homophobia

Providing the quantifiable effects of homophobia will allow policy makers, economists, and global leaders to better understand that anti-gay laws ultimately do more harm than good, to LGBT people and the population at large.

–Dominic Bocci for The Advocate

Society must be kept accountable for the facts that an LGBT youth is 40% more likely to commit suicide than her straight counterpart. Homelessness, lack of health care access, substance abuse, and employment discrimination are all higher among LGBT people.two young girls laughing behind another girls back

Another new study, this time from Social Science and Medicine, has confirmed earlier data that . . .suicide, homicide, and cardiovascular disease are substantially elevated among sexual minorities in high-prejudice communities. As these studies become quite visible and accepted, they provide activists with perhaps more convincing arguments against discrimination, such as economics and public health, that may reach a larger audience of potential allies.

The community of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) people have long focused on the moral argument against discrimination, and now can and should add these other dimensions that prove anti-LGBT laws hurt everyone.

 

Preventing Teens from Preventing Pregnancy: “Plan B” not an Option for Teens PART II

“As many as 11% of U.S. women ages 15-44 who have ever had sexual intercourse have used a “morning after” pill at least once, or 5.8 million women. Half say they used it because they feared their birth control method may have failed, and the rest say they had unprotected sex.”

First Federal Report on Emergency Contraception

The report also found that only 14% of sexually experienced females ages 15–19 had ever used emergency contraception, compared to 23% of women ages 20-24 and 16% of women ages 25–29. Moreover, the report showed that emergency contraception was most common among women 20-24, the never married, Hispanic and white women, and the college-educated.

So what’s with this fear that if the morning-after pill was available over-the-counter for girls under the age of 17 without prescription, that there would be a flood of 10 and 11 year olds buying it along with “bubble gum or batteries?” In my opinion, if they are old enough to have sex and have babies, they are old enough to have access to reproductive services, contraception, and especially the information provided by comprehensive sex education that is necessary for them to make healthy, responsible decisions about their sexuality and behaviors.

Federal Judge Edward R. Korman of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York seems to agree with me. In April (2013), Korman’s ruling in Tummino v. Hamburg reversed a prior decision by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Health and Human Services (HHS). In 1999, Plan B became the first emergency contraceptive approved for use by prescription. In 2006, the FDA approved it as an over-the counter drug for women over the age of 18, while requiring a prescription for minors and subsequently allowed 17-year-olds to obtain the drug without a prescription, which was overturned by the HSS in 2011 (see previous article).

Magazine cover depicting headlines for MTV’s “Teen Mom” series, demonstrating how American society exploits the struggles of teen mothers for humor and profit. The media should be trying to reinforce teen’s sexual and reproductive rights, including access to reproductive services and comprehensive sex education, not mocking the experiences of teen mothers in a sitcom reality television show.

Many have argued that the controversy over emergency contraception is based in politics, not science, where it should be. Nonetheless, this ruling has sparked hope in many, including Nancy Northup, the president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the lawsuit against the FDA and HSS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius: “This landmark court decision has struck a huge blow to the deep-seated discrimination that has for too long denied women access to a full range of safe and effective birth control methods. Women all over the country will no longer face arbitrary delays and barriers just to get emergency contraception.”

Now we who support the sexual rights of youth and access to comprehensive reproductive services must wait to see what unfolds next, as the Justice Department reacted to the ruling by stating, “The Department of Justice is reviewing the appellate options and expects to act promptly,” according to spokeswoman Allison Price.

For more, see Part 1.

Creative Commons Image Provided by: Flickr

Preventing Teens from Preventing Pregnancy: “Plan B” not an Option for Teens PART I

In 2011, the secretary of health and human services’ banned over-the-counter sales of emergency birth control to girls under age 17… in 2013, a federal judge challenged this decision.

When Kathleen Sebelius, former health secretary of President Obama, blocked the sale of emergency birth control (commonly referred as the “morning after pill” or by its name bran of “Plan B”) to girls under the age of 17, President Obama endorsed her decision, saying that “the reason Kathleen made this decision was she could not be confident that a 10-year-old or an 11-year-old going into a drugstore should be able – along with bubble gum or batteries – be able to buy a medication that potentially, if not used properly, could end up having an adverse effect.”

However, not everyone believes that Plan B will produce “adverse effects” on young girls.

Ted Miller, spokesman for Naral Pro-Choice America, and others in women’s groups argued that science supported the use of such medication for young girls: “Teva, the pill’s maker, commissioned two large studies in adolescents to satisfy government concerns about selling freely to them.” This did not satisfy Ms. Sebelius, who said in her reject that neither study included 11-year-olds. Even so, according to Dr. Phillip Stubblefield, a contraceptive expert from Boston University School of Medicine, there is no reason to believe that the morning-after pill would react any differently than older girls.

A huge part of the controversy of emergency contraception is that it is commonly confused with the abortion pill, when in fact, emergency contraception only prevents pregnancy, not terminates it.

 

But you tell me, what would you rather have: a pregnant 10 or 11-year-old, or a 10 or 11-year-old buying Plan B?

Research has demonstrated how teen pregnancy and childbearing negatively affects the parents and society, including substantial social and economic costs. In 2008, teen pregnancy and childbirth accounted for nearly $11 billion per year in costs to U.S. taxpayers for increased health care and foster care, increased incarceration rates among children of teen parents, and lost tax revenue because of lower educational attainment and income among teen mothers. Moreover, only about 50% of teen mothers receive a high school diploma by 22 years of age, versus approximately 90% of women who had not given birth during adolescence.

Life isn’t easy for the children of teen parents either: compared to children born to older mothers, children born to teen moms are likely to drop out of high school, live in poverty, become teen parents, use Medicaid and CHIP, experience abuse/neglect, enter the foster care system, end up in prisons, and be raised in single parent families. Unfortunately as well, the children of teenage mothers are more likely to have more health problems and face unemployment as a young adult. Additionally, these children have lower scores on measures of kindergarten readiness and lower vocabulary, math, and reading scores. In 2011 alone, almost 330,000 babies were born to teen girls between the ages of 15 and 19.

To clarify, Plan B is an emergency contraception to be taken within 72 hours after unprotected intercourse to prevent pregnancy. Plan B is NOT to be confused with RU-486, the abortion drug. So if you ask me, I’d rather have emergency birth control available to teens who desperately need it than more disadvantaged teen parents and children. And apparently, so does a federal judge. Check out Part 2 for the rest of this article.

Creative Commons Image Provided by: Shannon Kringen
Edited by: Alifa Watkins

Donate: The New Center Against Religious Extremism

I was so heartened to see yesterday’s press release issued by Wayne Besen’s Truth Wins Out (TWO) regarding the funding of TWO’s new Center Against Religious Extremism (CARE, or TWOCARE).

“If you’re like me, you are tired of American extremists literally getting away with murder from Uganda to Russia,” said Truth Wins Out Executive Director Wayne Besen. “The Center Against Religious Extremism is designed to monitor, counter, and ultimately serve as a bulwark against an ignoble enterprise designed to drag the world back into the Dark Ages.”

It would be a wonderful service to humankind if TWOCARE can disarm and dissolve organizations that are actively spreading hate, especially of women, and queer people. Most notable and deserving of such scrutiny, in my opinion, is The Family/Fellowship, a secretive organization of politicians, military officers, attorneys general, and business people operating within the borders of most countries.

Bless those who are helping fund this important research that will unveil to the world some of the most, if not the most, vile international conspiracies ever known, just as bad as any terrorist organization which happens to have unending billions of dollars at their disposal. Learn more about this work, and if you can, make a donation however small.

There is no hyperbole that could shock you more than the reality of these nefarious organizations, especially because if you went to the best Hollywood scriptwriters, you couldn’t come up with a more devious plan to strangle the course of history. These groups are not trying to take us back to some archaic way of doing things that rejects modernity, but attempting to create a dystopian future devoid of personal choice and human happiness, based on the extreme rightwing agenda of a relative handful of old white men.

The Family has existed pretty much under the radar until the last 5 or 6 years, when it was skillfully unmasked by Jeff Sharlet’s two books, The Family (2008) and C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy (2010). These two books comprise a case study in religious extremism, and what made global human rights and equality advocates start to take notice of The Family and related organizations. These two volumes are must-reads for anyone interested in this issue, although the more attention The Family received, the more scrubbed their website and public face became until every detail was secreted away.

Besides Sharlet’s ground-breaking expose, organizations such as the Center for Responsible Ethics in Washington (CREW), have from time to time tried to expose The Family, famously by bringing ethics charges against certain members of US Congress, who, along with a few US governors, accepted unreported gifts from The Family/Fellowship by virtue of their low-cost residency in a well-known Capitol mansion known as the C Street House. This mansion is one of numerous properties owned and operated for the benefit of The Family’s worldwide network of 10,000 cells operating more or less independently, but this one happens to also be infamous because a good portion of its recent residents have been caught and disgraced by sex scandals (Mark Sanders, John Ensign, etc.).

More than 50 years ago, The Family concluded that the model for spreading a worldwide christianized theocracy (a theocracy based on their all too human and profane imagination) was not progressing well or fast enough through traditional missionaries. Instead they embarked on a program to develop in-country missions by recruiting natives, business leaders and politicians such as Uganda’s President Museveni (and his wife), and especially youth to be educated at The Family’s expense and trained as its future organizational leaders to bring about the organization’s megalomaniacal vision of world domination. Membership is open to christianists and non-christians alike, Muslims especially are shown a way to align with The Family, in a conspiracy to shackle the world’s natural resources under the guise of “doing it for Jesus” but it’s actually all about money.

CC-hiv-abstinence-propaganda

Make no mistake, except for paying lip service to Jesus, there is nothing whatsoever religious about this crusade because anyone can join, even if one’s sole purpose is gaining access to the important business contacts and political leaders and the global natural resources they control. You can be a cynical, non-christian businessman and also a member of The Family for the sterling contacts alone, as long as you support The Family’s agenda to rule the world based on their personal and distorted resurrection of christendom, often termed dominionism.

Wayne and I, along with Jeff Sharlet, have talked now for a number of years about getting big media to finally pay attention to The Family’s secretive world wide movement and its singular goal to supplant established and nascent democracies with theocratic rule based on (their own version of) “God’s Law.” This new center, CARE, will no doubt help expose The Family and other organizations like it for what they actually are.

Right around the time Jeff Sharlet’s first book was published, we executed several very visible protests. The first protest was about the annual National Prayer Breakfast, a function fully funded through The Family although presented to the world and foreign dignitaries as an official US government event, much to the chagrin of our own State Department. Although The Family has operated its international machinations under a shroud of secrecy, it has nonetheless made this Breakfast practically a national institution, on a scale that every sitting US President and a fair share of the US Congress attend every February — so why wouldn’t foreign visitors think this is an officially sanctioned function. But it’s not. It’s a time and place each year when The Family comes together to celebrate, not prayer, but its broadening reach around the world.

Next, local DC activists staged a non-violent civil disobedience action on the C Street House’s doorstop, protesting The Family’s wholesale exporting of hatred of LGBT people in places such as Uganda. This relatively small protest received national attention, and shortly thereafter, The Family’s website was scrubbed clean of any evidence of its deep tentacles wrapped around the US government and nations abroad. To this date, it is only Sharlet’s two books that see into this organization.

I started researching and occasionally writing about this subject at the time, and in the process uncovered a congressional caucus called the Values Action Caucus. Here, members of both houses of congress convene at tax payers expense to set legislative goals. This Caucus’ goals were to forward anti-abortion, personhood legislation and to work towards putting the Ten Commandments in every Federal building in America. By comparing membership in this organization and those reported by Jeff Sharlet to be members of The Family, I found a lot of overlap. This Caucus was, in effect, a government body being led by The Family right under our noses, and we were paying for it.

It’s time for me to pick up my research and write more about this on VenusPlusX, so stay tuned. We now have this new Center for Against Religious Extremism to help focus our efforts in rooting out this theocratic conspiracy and ending its influence on world affairs once and for all. Please do your own research and help support this worth new endeavor.