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One Word To Legalize Prostitution

The desire for love, for touch, for compassion, and for companionship and the improvement of physical health doesn’t have and shouldn’t have any boundaries or interference by governments or religions because our erotic senses are foundational to our connection with others and the cosmic technology around us.

The above is an excerpt of a post I wrote in June, entitled, “Voluntary sex work is destined to evolve into a legitimate Sexual Healing Industry.”

flickr/creative commons

flickr/creative commons

As organizations make way for this discussion, some having worked on legalizing prostitution for more than a decade, I offer the words, “sexual healing” to substitute for the words, “prostitution” and “sex work.” It’s a business like any other business. As long as it’s entirely voluntary, it can provide revenue to people who choose it as one would choose any other job, and healing for so many people in need.

Sexual healing more aptly describes what these exchanges are about, paying for something we might have wished we got for free but otherwise need as much as the next person. By focusing on the value inherent in the exchange in recognition of the fact that this is a matter of healing as much as anything else, we change the dynamics of the discussion, and bring this activity out of the shadows, and help focus more on the unnecessary criminalization of it.

“Hey, I’ll be home late tonight because I am going to my sexual healing therapist after yoga” should be the norm. The sexual healing industry shall become just as benign as any other therapy or activity. As previously asserted, “Crime, sex trafficking, and financial exploitation accompany sex work only because it has always been criminalized.

A realignment of this entire discussion is long overdue. What do you think?

 

TODAY: Take Action for Net Neutrality

Last night, President Obama, in his State of the Union speech, made clear that net neutrality is important to everyone throughout the world.

“I intend to protect a free and open internet, extend its reach to every classroom, and every community, and help folks build the fastest networks, so that the next generation of digital innovators and entrepreneurs have the platform to keep reshaping our world.”

Flickr/creative commons

Flickr/creative commons

We already know that if we don’t continue to have unfettered and free access to this most important utility, the voices of so many people will be unnecessarily silenced, bringing us further under the corporatized, enslaving stranglehold by a small group of elites who lack any empathy for the rest of us.

As the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) seems poised to put all (or at least some) protections of net neutrality in place, powerful lobbyists representing corporations who wish to exploit this utility for their own financial gain are gaming the U.S. Congress in an attempt to circumnavigate the FCC.

[This was Comcast’s big play all along] . . . if they lose the FCC, get Congress to do the dirty work. Now it’s happening. There are two fake net neutrality bills in motion that wouldn’t stop cable companies from discriminating against certain sites, but would block the FCC from enforcing real rules. — Holmes Wilson of  Fight for the Future

We can’t wait until President Obama has to veto attempts by Congress to do the dirty work of the corporatists, or for a possible Republican president in 2 years to allow this travesty. Click here to call the committee members, right now and tell them to stop standing in the way of real net neutrality. We need *everyone* to do this.

So take a few minutes now to call as many of them as you can.

How awesome would it be if while they’re at these bogus hearings, they get panicked texts from staff about the HUGE number of pro-net neutrality calls? 

Many of you have been active all year in making sure the FCC hears your voice. The FCC acknowledged the millions of calls and statements in favor of making the internet a public utility, like water, electricity, and your phone, as it should be. We were heard, and up until this unnecessary interference to neutralize the power of the FCC, it’s been looking good.

We can’t give up, we won’t give up. Make your voice heard, today especially.

 

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The King Center

Hope you all saw my hopeful letter to Martin, yesterday, but today I want to ask people to spend a little time further investigating the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., and challenge everyone to get busy if they are not already in furthering his precepts though activism.

One of the best places to advance your education is The Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change, known as The King Center. Here you will find thousands of digitized documents pertaining to his legacy which established and newly minted activists will find enlightening and empowering. Dr. King’s life and teachings are accessible and the most apt anchor to guide and ground our collective social justice campaigns while giving hope to all the individuals who today, more than ever before, are willing to lay down their lives on behalf of freedom for all people.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. November 15, 1964 Flickr/creative commons

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
November 15, 1964
Flickr/creative commons

The philosophy of Dr. King underpins his entire life and the lives of his many followers. At The King Center website, you can read all about it in just a few pages. It is guaranteed to give you a new or newly invigorated focus because he addresses the entire breadth of effective activism on any front, regardless of your specific cause for freedom: the triple evils of poverty, racism, and militarism that exist in an intersectional and vicious cycle; the six principles of nonviolence; the six steps to nonviolent social change; and, concluding, an outline of what Dr. King called, The Beloved Community. In your organizational spaces or at home, print out these few pages and put them on the wall; look and re-read them often.

The goal of Dr. King’s philosophy culminates in the realization of The Beloved Community, the future humane world where old, coercive, and inhumane systems are vanishing, and being replaced with new, voluntary, humane ways of doing things that do not leave anyone behind. VenusPlusX points to the same end point. Dr. King teaches us that this is not an idealistic, perfected world but one where the reconciliation of adversaries is based on a “mutual, determined commitment to non-violence,” where all conflicts are resolved peacefully, “a type of love that can transform opponents into friends.”

In his 1959 Sermon on Gandhi, Dr. King elaborated on the after-effects of choosing nonviolence over violence: “The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, so that when the battle’s over, a new relationship comes into being between the oppressed and the oppressor.” In the same sermon, he contrasted violent versus nonviolent resistance to oppression. “The way of acquiescence leads to moral and spiritual suicide. The way of violence leads to bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers. But, the way of non-violence leads to redemption and the creation of the beloved community.”

Laying down one’s life for the cause of freedom is perhaps the best, the most noble thing you can do because until everyone is free, no one is free. (For those wondering, yes, that’s also a Jesusonian principle, that the greatest love we have have is to lay down our lives for a friend. But this doesn’t mean dying, it just means living another way.) I can have all the money in the world but if there is one child, perhaps a poor child, maybe a hungry child, living under an oppressive system, I cannot be silent. So I challenge all of you lurkers out there to commit just one hour, 60 minutes, on one day of the week, to do something to advance freedom for all people. You will find it is the most interesting and life-giving party around.

 

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Take Heart, Evidence Pouring in Hourly (Part 1)

Photo by Håkan Dahlström Flickr/creative commons

Photo by Håkan Dahlström
Flickr/creative commons

The far right believes they have a chance
to remake the world into the christian,
capitalist theocracy they have always wanted.

Even liberal media says, “If they win
this election cycle
they will do things that would
reverse history for 75 years!”

But none of that’s going to happen.

Just before the U.S. Election a week ago, I put forth the theory that non-Republicans should not fear, in fact we ought to take heart — that the probable Republican takeover the Senate and their increased footprint in the House were going to be good things for progressives. This is the right time in history to put these jokers on full display and in sharper relief so that everyone, at least more and more people, can see them for whom they really are.

Since the election, I’ve taken particular delight in just how fast and furious the Republicans are continuing to repudiate their reputations and dispel their humanity in the things they do and say. The timeline for their backward thinking to be completely expunged here and abroad has been immeasurably upstepped. The circumstances for progressives to act boldly have arrived.

Check the bread and circus for yourself. Don’t take my word for it. Assess for yourself the relative levels of buffoonery in whatever issue Repubs haplessly find themselves talking about, from the climate, the military, technology, you name it. Nothing they do or say suggest any understanding of the inherent equality of all people, of history, or even how our government actually works.

The only measurement we have, the one that matters, is the amount of special interest cash that is always involved. Whenever and wherever we follow the money, it leads to what’s rotten. Fortunately, these rotten cavities of entrenched special interests, rewarding corporate elites at everyone else’s expense, also offer a crystal clear roadmap for populists and all activists devoted to economic and social justice.

Some of my musings on this subject can be found in Part 2, tomorrow, and I would enjoy hearing from you if you too see it for yourself and want to share, here or on Facebook. (Maybe I should start numbering each of their rabbit holes for posterity.)

Each time one of them opens their mouth to speak, they show themselves to be, at best, uninformed, and, at worse, delusional. A shady combo of plain greed and stupidity takes over their thinking. It doesn’t appear they’ve read the news or read a book or seem to have studied much in college or since. Add to that the sweaty hysteria of desperate people driven by fear gasping for relevance, it’s almost sad (but not, really).

In VenusPlusX’s quest for a more perfect world of peace and universal equality, where every child born survives with all of its human rights unchallenged, we of course continue to focus on life-threatening issues such as climate change and the military and supporting net neutrality to make sure all voices are heard.

Freedom will not be a reality until we address the most pressing problems, the ones that are direct threats to life on this planet. The good news is that it will be the process of our joining together across borders and cultures to solve these life-threatening problems that will perforce bring about solutions to all the scaffolding issues such as ending racism, sexism, genderism, xenophobia, ageism, income inequality, and unharnessed capital greed.

Solving these planetary problems will re-enfranchise the voiceless of this world, and make sure we do have a world. Get active, do something. If you are already an activist in any area, continue to connect the dots between all of these issues — they are all connected, and all, in the end, are matters of life and death.

 

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Before the American polls close, NON-republicans take heart

The far right believes they have a chance to remake the world into the christian, capitalist theocracy they have always wanted.

Flickr/creative commons

Flickr/creative commons

Even liberal media says, “If they win this election cycle they will do things that would reverse history for 75 years!”

But none of that’s going to happen.

There are only two possible outcomes. Either . . .

  • The non-republican ground game will send the right-wing nuts an important rebuke. Everyone who doesn’t subscribe to their particular brand of religious and capitalist lunacy are non-republicans, Democrats or not, including those that are conservatives but not crazy. This by far larger majority will hopefully reject the worst of the candidates. The non-republicans are and will be the alternative and more long-lasting just because they are not crazy, or at least less crazy.

Or . . .

  • The kin to Sharia law, especially with respect to the treatment of women, our home-grown religious terrorists will be given the numerical and ideological reins and have their greatest opportunity yet to self-repudiate their bankrupt ideas.

There is an acknowledgement that it’s too late for these old, white men. Their time has already passed. They may enjoy a few years of influence but all their bad ideas will not last long because they have no survival value. They are already on the ropes and going down. Their opinions are everyday more non-sensical towards the environment, human rights, women’s rights, income inequality, just about everything, and we, the non-republicans are not standing for it no matter what happens tonight.

 

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Shamans Discover Special Interests

The shaman is presented as the intercessor between man and nature spirits Photo by Jean-Pierre Dalbéra Flicker/creative commons

The shaman is presented as the intercessor between man and nature spirits
Photo by Jean-Pierre Dalbéra
Flicker/creative commons

A primitive man who lived in a cave a long, long time ago once abstracted the idea that you can make a living, even a very good living as a shaman. He was largely self-appointed to intercede between and on behalf of other men and the existing natural resources. Most important, he consulted on what actions would be good luck or bad luck for individuals, families, and the tribe. This shaman reaped economic wealth and social advantages for his efforts that supported his own survival. The concept of special interest was born.

Special interest people take something, anything, an idea, a water source, or even an entire industry or government or church, and define it apart from the whole for some measure of personal profit.

Anthropologists or others might argue the value of some of these special interests in building the foundation of today’s technologically-advanced world. It may or may not be true that such an incautious approach that ignored special interests was ever warranted; that’s the past and we can’t change that anyhow. But having arrived at world-wide communication, individuals finally can see the special interests laid bare.

For the first time, people power can be active, no longer passive. Humanity is now looking differently at each of these special interests and deciding what’s worth preserving and building upon, those that chiefly consider and benefit the whole without any thought of personal profit. And which special interest systems are inhumane, coercive, exploitative, enslaving, profiteering and need to be left behind in the pre-technological era, their stories to be told someday just like we look at the shaman’s cave wall drawings.

All that profiteering special interests represent is counter to our survival. Their purpose is no more. There is no future in these scaffolding ideas. Without the pall of special interests all around us we will be able to rescue civilization from the impending climatic disaster brought on by men burning fuels for the last hundred years, repossess all of our human rights, and usher in universal plurality in all decision-making, local and global, otherwise defined as Peace.

Become a part of this revolution today.

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Climate Change Dangers Are ‘Higher Than Ever’: UN Report
Full UN Climate Change Report

 

 

 

Yes, it’s come to this

Flickr/creative commons

Flickr/creative commons

As reported last night by Rachel Maddow (see video below), at the urging of an anti-abortion religious group, the School Board in Gilbert, Arizona, is tearing out pages from a high school honors biology book. It is the first action taken after a law in Arizona passed two years ago that requires all textbooks “to present childbirth and abstinence as preferred options to elective abortion.”

The offending page, which simply discusses that abortion exists as a factual matter, something that is rightly part of the national curriculum for all Advanced Placement and other students hoping to enter college equipped with a complete education and able to compete on a level playing field.

Cutting out this page, retracting information previously available to students, is stupid and exceedingly counter-intuitive (see map below), whether in a biology textbook or in the context of sex education.

In this case, Rachel Maddow comes to the rescue by securing the domain, ArizonaHonorsBiology.com, to make this page available in perpetuity. But what about the next time and the next time after that?

This is similar to what we are witnessing in the state of Texas, where access to sex education is severely limited, and where social studies and history textbooks are being censored or in some cases rewritten to falsify facts (such as wiping out all mention of slavery, that it ever existed).

What will be next? Tearing out pages that mention homosexuality? marriage or cohabitation without children? the achievements of people of color? The answer is: Yes, more page-tearing and book-burning is in our nation’s future if we don’t start paying more attention to elections, starting at the local level.

We bring attention to this especially because it demonstrates the horrible repercussions of the theocratic fundamentalism now permeating American politics and law, retarding our progression towards a fair and just society.

These are not the first or only examples of censorship within our schools, and we are poised to see more of this retrograde behavior wherever right-wing nuts can gain a foothold, from local school boards to congress and possibly the White House itself someday.

These founts of poor decision-making are operating out of fear. They don’t believe women should ever have control over their reproductive health or equality rights, and think they are “protecting children” when they are actually hobbling them.

Complete sex education is the only thing that actually protects teenagers.

Center for Disease Control, 2012

Center for Disease Control, 2012

Free access to complete sex education is a human right. To withhold it is blatant child abuse when you consider the actual facts and repercussions.

Research proves that these programs are entirely ineffective. As a matter of fact, unwanted pregnancies and STDs including HIV are more prevalent in areas in the country that limit all sex education to abstinence-only programs. So these misguided lawmakers are not just wrong in purpose but wrong in deed.

Please go the polls on Tuesday (and every Election Day) and vote these people into the dustbin of stupid history.

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More on sex education here.

 

A Women’s Problem Is A Men’s Issue

Years ago we used to tell a joke:
What does PMS stand for?
No, not Pre-Menstrual Syndrome, so often derided by men,
but Putting up with Men’s Shit.

by ghetto_guera29 Flickr/creative commons

by ghetto_guera29 Flickr/creative commons

Domestic violence is a story as old as time, but for the first time in history women and men around the world are positioned to change the status quo.

Our 24/7 worldwide communication bequeaths a global plurality heretofore unknown. This new connectedness is finally exposing civilization’s dark love affair with sexual oppression and racism to more and more people. This new clarity enables graphic symbols, both good (Michael Brown) and bad (Ray Rice), borne wherever and whenever the message finally merges with the messenger, galvanizing mass communication and vital dialog among people of good will about important human rights issues.

Thanks to the National Football League’s now-finally-exposed sponsorship of wife-beaters, we are coming upon a new wave of feminist awareness and progress, even as we acknowledge that a quarter of domestic violence victims are men. This is not the time to go lightly, We have to use this hyper-visible opportunity to put an end this scourge, which has, in large part, worsened in direct proportion to the gains women have made.

Sexual oppression and racism are subject to the same action-reaction psychology. The end of slavery brought about Jim Crow. The civil rights advances of the 1960s eradicated Jim Crow laws but brought about the completely cynical southern state political strategy (inciting racial hatred in low-information white people in the south) and today’s shameful mass incarceration of brown and black men. While domestic violence has a very long history, the now prevalent use of birth control and professional child care, allowing unprecedented advancement of women at home and in business and politics, has enraged weak men who believe their masculinity is somehow threatened or diminished by when a woman, any woman, succeeds. A good man knows better.

The tireless efforts of individuals and organizations are finally taking center stage. Women and men are redoubling their efforts to reverse the very bad statistics appended to this post. The march of civilization’s progress is dependent on ending both the violent and more subtle forms of sexual repression, at home, in the workplace, and in the halls of political power.

There is much work to do in order to achieve social and economic justice, the end to sexual oppression, racism, income inequality, immigration restrictions, environmental degradation, etc. There are numerous organizations (for example, here, here, here) working on eradicating domestic violence that will welcome your advocacy, now more than ever before. But all individuals can start today by speaking out more vocally against domestic violence, and the unfair treatment of women in the workplace, by politicians, and in the society-at-large.

Educate yourself and keep these statistics handy when arguing the case with people, especially politicians and bosses. They are sobering.

  • Every 9 seconds in the US a woman is assaulted or beaten.
  • Around the world, at least one in every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused during her lifetime. Most often, the abuser is a member of her own family.
  • Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women—more than car accidents, muggings, and rapes combined.
  • Studies suggest that up to 10 million children witness some form of domestic violence annually.
  • Nearly 1 in 5 teenage girls who have been in a relationship said a boyfriend threatened violence or self-harm if presented with a breakup.
  • Everyday in the US, more than three women are murdered by their husbands or boyfriends.
  • Ninety-two percent of women surveyed listed reducing domestic violence and sexual assault as their top concern.
  • Domestic violence victims lose nearly 8 million days of paid work per year in the US alone—the equivalent of 32,000 full-time jobs.
  • Based on reports from 10 countries, between 55 percent and 95 percent of women who had been physically abused by their partners had never contacted non-governmental organizations, shelters, or the police for help.
  • The costs of intimate partner violence in the US alone exceed $5.8 billion per year: $4.1 billion are for direct medical and health care services, while productivity losses account for nearly $1.8 billion.
  • Men who as children witnessed their parents’ domestic violence were twice as likely to abuse their own wives than sons of nonviolent parents.

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StrikeFastFood Protesters Walk Out, Get Arrested, Succeed

Yesterday, we urged you to find a fast food workers walkout and show your support, even be willing to get arrested to make sure this message is heard loud and clear. Today, courtesy of strikefastfood.orgthe results are in.

StrikeFastFood has been working since 2012 to change the conversation about income inequality, demanding $15 per hour and the right to form unions for collective bargaining. These activists have given birth to an international movement for all minimum wage workers, spreading to 150 cities and 33 countries on 6 continents.

Photo by Daniel X. O'Neil Flickr/creative commons

Photo by
Daniel X. O’Neil
Flickr/creative commons

Low wage workers in more than 150 cities took part in the Fight for 15 campaign this morning, using civil disobedience and risking arrest. Some highlights . . .

  • Hundreds shut down Times Square in New York City.
  • Boston strikers take to the streets and unfurl amazing 2-story banner.
  • Rockford, Illinois, strikers sit-in at McDonalds.
  • International support for arrestees in Chicago.
  • Detroit Police ran out of hand cuffs.

You have the power. You have the boots on the ground that can be brought to bear to rectify the injustice of income equality, if only you will.

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See also:
Income Inequality Dampens Growth for Rich and Poor Alike
List of Organizations Working on Income Equality
The Wealthy and Powerful Aid Social and Economic Justice Activists

Solutions Are Available But Will We Pay Attention?

“Every once in a while, a dramatic news story can actually produce real reform. More often the momentum peters out once the story disappears from the news (remember how Sandy Hook meant we were going to get real gun control?), but it can happen. And now, after the aftermath of the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missiouri, turned to a chaotic nightmare of police oppression, we may have an opportunity to examine, and hopefully reverse, a troubling policy trend of recent years.” — Paul Waldman, The American Prospect

Photo by Chase Carter Flicker/creative commons

Photo by Chase Carter
Flicker/creative commons

We’ve written our initial response to the unfolding events in Ferguson, Missouri, following the shooting over a week ago of Michael Brown by a white police force.

The escalation of protests and more violence at the hands of police continues as justice is delayed or denied for the Brown family, such as:

  • The Browns had to watch their son languish in the middle of the street, unattended for more than 4 hours.
  • The local police and the county prosecutor have completely failed in their duties, not releasing the name of the police officer for 6 days, and still giving no information from law enforcement’s reports on the shooting.
  • The pre-emptive release of a tape alleging Michael Brown was a shoplifter, although the policeman who shot Brown was unaware of this (not that it should have made any difference).
  • The overreaction of a militarized police force, a big nationwide problem that must be reversed, a key issue we will continue to cover.
  • The bull-headed insistence by Governor Jay Nixon and the rest of the white establishment that the community must first demonstrate peace before they will deal out justice when it is obvious that the reverse must take place in order for the unrest end.

It’s time to start looking for real and sustainable solutions, and we will dive deeper into these in the coming days:

  1. Mobilize people of color to vote, making sure they are represented proportionally at all levels of local, county, and state administration. The most recent elections in Ferguson brought out only 12% turnout by minorities, less than a third of white turnout.
  2. Support national legislation to reverse the decades long, constitution-bashing systems that turn local police forces into armed militias who must overreact to justify their existence. (Sign the Care2 petition.)
  3. Make every policeman wear a body camera, a simple fix that has shown a dramatic 88% decline in the number of complaints about police, and a similar drastic reduction in the use of force and police brutality. (Sign the White House petition.)
  4. More to come . . .

Michael Brown and his family have finally put a face on police brutality, sparking a robust national conversation that must take place. Freedom and human rights are just words, words this country peddles abroad but does little for at home. We can honor this family’s awful sacrifice by doing more each day to end this scourge in our nation. Will you?