Search results for "Net Neutrality"

Net Neutrality: Who is minding our store?

FCC’s Reported Capitulation around Open Internet Protections is a Major Step Backward

“If true, this proposal is a huge step backwards and just must be stopped,” said Michael Copps, a former FCC commissioner who now serves as a special adviser to Common Cause’s Media and Democracy Reform Initiative. “If the Commission subverts the Open Internet by creating a fast lane for the 1 percent and slow lanes for the 99 percent, it would be an insult to both citizens and to the promise of the Net.”

Susan Striech, WikiCommons Fair Use/Educational

Susan Striech, WikiCommons
Fair Use/Educational

Technologists, activists, and regular people like you have been trying to get the rest of us to pay attention to one of the most destructive efforts afoot in government today — the dismantling of the Internet as we know it, a beloved creation bestowed upon our culture that it cannot and should not be without, a method of worldwide communication, a tool of epic proportions to make the world a better place, right up there with clean air and water.

Most people know that the Internet was first developed for the Department of Defense as ARPANET, circa 1970 in order to facilitate communication between contractors and various agencies within the government for research and development purposes. (It so happens VenusPlusX Co-Founder Dan Massey was involved in this project professionally, so we were among the first to “go on line.”) Only after the Internet became available for public use, making every user an instant author, were the full dimensions of Internet potential realized. First in, pornographers, who at one point in the 80s were responsible for 50% of commercial Internet traffic. As the first generation of adults to start using the Internet, we quickly realized what the Internet meant to us personally, how it would change our lives, how we could use it to build a better future, how even the most vulnerable among us would finally have a platform to be heard in our new “town square.”

We started writing about the importance of preserving net neutrality a couple of years ago, when it was threatened by congressional efforts of control content and its flow to users (SOPA, PIPA), and even the White House’s proposed Online Privacy Bill of Rights. It’s always been somewhat a mystery why this subject doesn’t draw more attention and activism. Perhaps now that we are about to lose the best aspects of the Internet, more people will take this on as a primary issue.

Were we lulled into the belief that Obama, having campaigned on a platform of securing net neutrality both in 2008 and 2012, and a seemingly cooperative Federal Communications Commission (FCC) would be enough to stave off the opportunistic, profiteering, parasitic special interests by providers such as Verizon and Comcast? After  a judge struck down the FCC’s ruling that disallowed charging different rates for different content, the Commission is now circulating new draft rules that would in practice allow corporations to control the Internet and the speed at which information moves across it. Everyday people, small business owners and organizations, the voiceless, will all be shut out. Payola used to be a dirty word for it but what we are about to experience is a complex pay-to-play scheme whereby providers name the price that Netflix, HBO, and other users must pay to stream their material, costs which will be passed onto to consumers.

Like every other part of our government lately it seems, special corporate interests have trumped the will of the people, and, in the case of net neutrality, the needs of the deserving, the voice for voiceless.

Get off our couches, and do something about it!

To learn more go to: Common CauseThe Washington Post and The Huffington Post.

 

 

 

 

 

Net Neutrality and Internet Freedom: A voice for the voiceless

In preserving all human rights, especially those having to do with privacy of person and sexual freedom, free access to the unfettered communications of the Internet is crucial. The Internet is the circulatory system of the body politic, and the world’s only hope for true pluralism.

Any and all attempts to restrict or dismember the Internet and its uses must be met by an army of us willing to lay down our lives to make sure these attempts fail. Think of young Bradley Manning, who thought that transparency to bring alleged government corruption to the attention of a whistleblower was something he was willing to go to prison for. Very unfortunately, he has been in solitary confinement and suffered other loathsome, cruel, and unusual punishment at the hands of the U.S. government (latest updates, plus).

The hackerverse is populated with tens of thousands of young people like Bradley who are the world’s free speech heroes. They are not letting lawmakers interfere with Internet freedom with flawed legislation such as SOPA, PIPA, or the White House’s proposed Online Privacy Bill of Rights, or let stand any restrictions on constitutional freedoms on religious grounds. (Here is more information on the Stop Online Piracy Act/SOPA, the Protect IP Act/PIPA, and more.)

Most important, the freeway of the Internet is the only mechanism whereby the voiceless have a voice, and for that reason alone, all of us must keep a watchful eye on anything that would interfere with the free flow of information.

The reasons that politicians try to interfere with Internet freedom are not very pretty, and are often stupid. For example, christianists in Congress want to invade the privacy of everyone who views pornography. Others would like to see all pornography removed from the Internet.

Ironically, that very industry, pornography, made possible the early exponential growth of the Internet that turned out to have been instrumental in fueling the rapid expansion of the technology throughout the world. These self-appointed politicians think that all adults shouldn’t be allowed to view porn, but again ironically, these very politicians represent their own personal statistical cohort group in the American South, the so-called “Bible Belt,” a population which watches the most pornography and breeds America’s backward abstinence-only sex education leading to the highest rates of STDs and teen pregnancy. The Bible Belt has the highest divorce rates in the country, too, despite its “religiosity.” That has to tell us they are doing something wrong, but it doesn’t penetrate because their minds because they are so busy condemning the rest of us.  Sad, sad, and sadder.

Will this opposition ever abandon their egocentric greed for personal and institutional power? Will they ever choose to live and let live? Or will they be content to be known for all time as just another bunch of ignorant and backward yokels who arrogantly assume the name of god in vain, as they try and fail to put freedom in a corner under their control?

Help us watch these people like hawks and make sure they keep their creepy hands off our inter webs.

Editor’s note: This is one of a series of position papers Dan Massey and I are creating and will soon index on our home page. They briefly explore the evolution of our points of view about a range of issues related to sex, gender, and racial freedom. Your feedback is always welcome.

Creative Commons image: Source

Creative Commons image: Source

 

The Salvation of Climate Change Deniers

Climate change deniers have painted themselves into a corner. They are victims of their own rhetoric based on illogical conclusions drawn from a fairly limited world view. Many do not seem to have paid attention in grade school, let alone have the skill set for a statesman entrusted with the life and death decision-making so necessary to preserve our planet. We should be helping them find a pathway away from this dead end, even though for some it may be too late.

Woodleywonderworks Flickr/creative commons

Woodleywonderworks
Flickr/creative commons

The theocratic GOP is a font of bad ideas and cowardly inaction, but both sides of the debate, and the media, have framed the question completely wrong in the first place, and it has nothing to do with science.

The environmental movement long ago won the science debate, and the climate change deniers will always cling to those few studies that counter the overwhelming evidence of the environmental carnage that’s here with us already with more to come.

You can produce dozens of charts that show the spiking environmental impact of man and machines since the Industrial Revolution, and it will still not be enough for a climate denier intent on allowing the rape of the earth’s natural resources for the profit of corporate elites, and those in government who benefit financially and politically by protecting them.

That fact, these seemingly irreconcilable and immovable differences — literally strangling the air we breath and the water and food we consume — proves that we have reached the end of this debate.

We need not strive in this arena anymore because there is a better, and more logical and more useful replacement for the climate change debate.

The issue of the causes of environmental changes is moot because we are already in the early decades of quite a long and fragile period that promises to be devastating to the world economies and security. We just have to look around and pay attention, real attention.

Even setting aside for a moment all the groundwater pollution (and earthquakes) caused by such enterprises as fracking, consider that entire ancient island populations have been forced already to migrate because rising sea levels have ruined all their groundwater. Entire populations, men, women, children, everything, leaving blighted land that once was a natural paradise.

More appropriate questions will replace debate, such as, “How many white people must be displaced by rising sea levels or other environmental catastrophes before we can end this grade-school debate and join in global action?”

As I wrote yesterday, this is one of VenusPlusX’s key issues because if we ruin our planet, our search for social and economic justice means little.

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As I wrote yesterday, this is one of VenusPlusX’s key issues because if we ruin our planet, our search for social and economic justice means little.

For more . . .
What do Sex and Gender have to do with Climate Change and Net Neutrality
Silencing Climate Change Deniers
Response to Climate Change Impossible Without a Revolution in Thinking

 

Love Your Earth

Earth Peace
Listen to the sound of the earth turning
(Yoko Ono, Earth Day, April 22, 2015)

We’ve been promoting the hashtag, #EarthDayIsEveryDay because the impact on climate change is still grossly underestimated. It is one of our key issues because if we ruin our planet, our search for social and economic justice means little.

Pascal B. for technovore Flickr/creative commons

Pascal B. for technovore
Flickr/creative commons

Mass migrations caused by loss of groundwater due to rising seas, extreme weather and earthquake frequency, and loss of bio-diversity are just a few of the results. We can’t rely on mainstream media to inform us about the risks of climate change, and climate deniers cannot claim they are “skeptics” because that is a word connoting an open mind.

Here are some of the stories we are investigating today that we thought you should know about . . .

For more . . .
What do Sex and Gender have to do with Climate Change and Net Neutrality
Silencing Climate Change Deniers
Response to Climate Change Impossible Without a Revolution in Thinking

 

 

 

Part 2: Take Heart, Evidence Pouring In Hourly

Flickr/creative commons

Flickr/creative commons

Yesterday, I revisited my pre-election theory that progressives and all non-Republicans will see the greater good of a Republican takeover of the Senate and their increased footprint in the House. And I promised to riff on a few memes to substantiate that soon after. (Part 1 here.)

There’s nothing to fear since these election results are actually bringing about the best time in history to put these special interest jokers on full display and in sharper relief so that everyone, at least more and more people, can see them for who they really are and then respond.

A populist movement is the cure, the only cure. And populism is exactly what radical right-wing conservatives fear the most. These lawmakers and billionaires have made people that aren’t rich and white their enemy, out of fear. Populism is coming, call it our American Spring, because these right-wingnuts are and will remain mentally incapable of solving our most pressing problems.

While all the electioneering goes on and on, populist actions and non-violent civil disobedience are becoming ever more finely tuned to respond to our growing unrest. People are being stirred into action in direct proportion to the growing social and economic injustices wrought by this distinctly American capitalist theocracy entirely dependent on the enslavement of mostly everyone else. We’re not just taking it anymore.

Populists succeed in solving problems by standing up for human rights in spite of the temporal obstacles that haters throw at us. Our successes are in part due to our ability to connect across and learn more from different movements, from the climate and military to immigration and equality rights. We are helping each other make sense of the world. The more goofy the Repubs behave, the sooner we will succeed in making things right for all people throughout the world.

The first two issues the right-wingnuts have no clue whatsoever are matters of life and death: responding to the reality of climate change; and curbing our military, here and abroad. Why are these the first? Well, because there’s not much cause to fight for freedom and human rights if we destroy ourselves and/or this planet before then.

The U.S. military-industrial complex is led by special-interest lobbyists (public and private profiteers). They bring us incursions into dozens of countries, where we have no other business except greed and racism (no wonder Americans are hated), in order to annually justify huge defense spending. Along the way they fill body bags for the most part with unemployed poor people choosing to enlist because there is often no other options.

Likewise, these special interests are militarizing local police forces to control citizen uprisings. And, they stand in the way of police accountability. They are also lobbying lawmakers to harden and lengthen prison sentences to keep the growing number of privatized, for-profit prisons making money for the corporatists while disenfranchising huge swaths of the populace, especially brown and black poor men.

This terrible trend will only end if we stand up with each other and say, “No more gain based on someone else’s pain.” We can do it. We are doing it. Find organizations and people in your community to work with or otherwise support. Maybe start with CodePink and anyone in Ferguson, Missouri, these days.

Climate change, and the physical results which are already with us today, is a chief threat to life on this planet, and something that the well-financed, capitalist theocracy is incapable of dealing with.

These right-wingnuts are not just climate-change-deniers, they are science-deniers. The christianists deny science so much they fight to stay blissfully uninformed of reproductive health so they can still call Intra-Uterine Devices (IUDs) “built-in abortion factories.” They  don’t know how babies are made but they are determine to have the final say. When it comes to climate change they also fight to stay blissfully in the dark but with even more serious repercussions.

Repubs will always have the handful of scientists they can point to but these are just .001% of all the scientists who are telling us it’s practically too late to put off the degradation the burning of fossil fuels has already caused. Even allowing the science-deniers the luxury of believing that burning fossil fuels aren’t the culprit, everyone must get busy with the results of climate change now upon us: more lightning strikes, hurricane-tornados, lack of clean water, and loss of coastal square miles and assets, increasing exponentially as long as the fossil fuel capitalist elites control our economies. Yes, we have to move to a renewable energy economy but we are already engaged in the mass relocation and economic disruption that will continue to escalate to epic proportions. Consider that rising sea levels caused by the melting ice caps is already causing small island populations to abandon their lives because their fresh water has been compromised by salinization. (If you haven’t already, read Naomi Klein’s new book, a scholarly page-turner, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate.)

We are on track to meet the goals the newly-elected President Obama set to reduce the effects of greenhouse gasses by the government, the largest energy consumer by far. Despite the political criticism from the Repubs, Obama used these same benchmarks to the U.S. as a whole this week to prompt China to set its goal, its first, to raise renewable energy sources to 20% by 2030. The recent UN report on climate change, which lays the groundwork for more significant agreements internationally in Copenhagen next year, and a newly invigorated climate movement have the power to curb capitalism in favor of planetary survival.

Make sure you are a part of it. If you can’t become an activist, do things in your local community to make it more earth-friendly, in one step healing us and raising awareness.

There are so many examples of how right-wingnuts will strip themselves bare as they fail these tests of leadership, and I could go on and on, but they will have to wait for a subsequent article. Next up is net neutrality because we cannot allow corporations to silence us and omit us from the debate for their own financial gain.

For now: get busy!

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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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Our September Round-Up

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City, photo by 5oulscape Flickr/creative commons

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City, photo by 5oulscape
Flickr/creative commons

This is our September round-up in case you missed some of our posts. If you like our unique mix of news and opinions, follow us on Twitter/VenusPlusX, and like our page, Facebook/VenusPlusX.

We kept up with many of our key issues with a discussion of how and why police bias is the chief cause of criminality in Culturally Inept Policing Schools Criminals; the psychology behind domestic violence in A Women’s Problem is a Men’s Issue; and the underlying ecology of progress in Everyone Needs Examples, Including Bad Examples. These followed our extensive take on the real legacy of the Michael Brown shooting.

We continued to monitor the Federal Communication Commission’s impending ruling which would destroy the inherent democracy built into the Internet by urging our visitors to participate in the Internet Slowdown Action earlier this month with Take Action On Wednesday For Net Neutrality, and outlined other things people can do in Today: Actions You Can Take To Assure Net Neutrality.

We asked you participate in the Fast Food Walkout with Support Tomorrow’s Walkouts To Raise Wages, and then cataloged the results in StrikeFastFood Protesters Walk Out, Get Arrested, Succeed.

We published Income Inequality Dampens Economic Growth for Rich and Poor Alike, a follow up to The Wealthy and Powerful Aid Social and Powerful Social and Economic Justice Activists and List of Organizations Working on Income Equality. And, we couldn’t overlook the Billions Wasted By Right-Wingnuts.

We covered the People’s Climate March, the next day’s Flood Wall Street sit-in, and the Climate Summit at the United Nations, with Climate March This Sunday Be Counted and Salutes and More Salutes and Stop, Hey, What’s That Sound?

The Global Poverty Project with aims to eradicate world poverty by 2030 and their Global Citizens Festival made a deep impression, We Are Here, We Are Here.

We commended actress and United Nations Ambassador Emma Watson’s succinct but bulls-eye redefinition of feminism for a new generation, in Salutes!

We riffed on lots of stories in the news, such as how recent research by Credit Suisse showed that profits go up in relation to the number of women in management and operations, in The Liberation of Women Will Change the World.

And, we continued to feature videos as part of our Sexual Freedom Project. Send us your video, write a poem, song, or an essay — or even create an original work of art — and express your thoughts. If we feature your contribution on the site, we will send you a free VenusPlusX t-shirt to thank you. This month: Gender Neutrality in Public Restrooms and Don’t Yuck Somebody’s Yum. (More videos.)

So stay tuned!

 

A Manifesto For The New Age of Sexual Freedom

The figure of Columbia, with a gender-fluid, two-spirit American native as the model, is VenusPlusX's icon for The New Age of Sexual Freedom

The figure of Columbia, with a gender-fluid, two-spirit American native as the model, is VenusPlusX’s icon for The New Age of Sexual Freedom

Editor’s note: republishing it by popular demand …

The New Age of Sexual Freedom is synonymous with the end of sexism and racism (the greatest form of sexual oppression), and the end of nationalism for the purposes of war (the greatest form of racism), in the shortest amount of time (because we are killing each other).

 

One of our most frequently asked questions is Why A New Age Of Sexual Freedom? Also, what’s that got to do with human rights — equality rights, immigration rights, environmental protections, and safeguarding net neutrality?

In honor of the relaunch of VenusPlusX, I am answering this question in the form of a manifesto, for the express purpose of continuing this conversation on line, which was developed for the most part with Dan Massey before he went on to other shores. Your thoughts and comments are welcomed. We crave your criticism.

To fully understand why VenusPlusX frames the quest for a more perfect world in terms of Sexual Freedom, specifically erotic freedom, first widen the lens a bit for the long view.

Creative Commons

Creative Commons

We are all capable of imagining an ideal state of being wherein every baby is born into the world free from all forms of discrimination and enslavement, and where human rights reign, including sexual freedom. These children are free to express whatever their personality wishes, to live and prosper wherever and however they determine. At last, there are no barriers preventing an era of world-wide mutual cooperation and support. Living Peace.

This state of being signifies that we have finally attained the most fundamental and personal human right, our inherited and inherent sexual freedom.  Only the achievement of universal sexual freedom, or erotic freedom, will symbolize our civilization’s full maturation — the point when everything that ever interfered with Peace on earth and good will among humans has been eliminated. No more sexism, racism, ageism, certainly no more war or destruction of the earth’s natural resources. Just universal pluralism, a world wide family.

Sexual Freedom is also important in another more basic way, and why VenusPlusX has propogated the more appropriate erotic freedom to get beyond words and get physical. Each human is endowed with health-promoting erotic senses. When a friend puts their hand on your shoulder when you need it, both of you feel comforted. Your electro-chemical systems fire up with the thrill of exercise and sport, and other activities you feel passionate about. Even your adrenalin in an emergency rushes through your every passageway. Erotic senses are your human senses and they operate asexually in numerous ways and also through sexual pleasure all the way to the ecstatic orgasm, something more than 90% experience. All of your erotic senses bring comfort, warmth, and safety in various dimensions everyday, igniting and awakening us to the larger world, even the cosmos itself.

And, more. Whether you perceive pleasure from your erotic senses as the stairway to heaven or just something that makes you feel better, more connected . . . more creative, our awakened erotic senses inevitably bring about much needed healing.These senses bring us into the realm of Love, and the expression of that Love, through Truth (consistency in real time), Beauty (harmony), and Goodness (Love IS the desire to do good to others). Again, another reason the attainment of sexual freedom is crucial to all human progress.

Creative Commons

Creative Commons

Your experince of your erotic senses may be mostly inexplicable, but they are there for a reason. You may have felt these, even for a fleeting moment, now try to put together as many consecutive moments just like them, and have a happy day.

These erotic senses are to be revered, even worshipped, for they are what connect each of us with every other human in the world, and beyond. 

It’s possible to open the lens wider still, and try to take the longest view possible, to understand how our perfecting world can progress speedily to the ideals we have in mind.

The progression and transformation of civilizations over millenia pass through many stages, from their most primitive roots all the way to universal pluralism (worldwide Peace). The attainment of Peace is the direct result of obtaining the most fundamental right of sexual freedom, the holy grail of all other freedoms.

Progress is a creative act, the ability to transform our selves and our world by adapting to better ways of doing things. Progress is always active and is often upstepped under certain positive circumstances.

Progress has its own evolution and ecology, always preserving and building upon what is old (historical) and also good (humane) while gradually dispensing with all other forms that are old and bad (inhumane, coercive), always in a state of forging a new and better art of living that is free from all forms of local and global enslavement.

All efforts to strengthen communities, the health, housing, and employment of one’s neighbors, especially those most in need, are surely part of this new age. Hospice is an excellent example of an eleventh-century global concept worthy preservation. So is the Internet, now unfortunately under attack by special interest profiteers who would impinge on its free and productive use by everyone on an equal basis. 

The military-industrial complex is an easy example of an inhumane and coercive system requiring redirection (say, a green army to protect our environment).

Progress’s natural ecology, then, becomes reflective of how we are getting from Point A (now) to Point B, that perfected world. This concept is nothing new since its been long recognized by agrarians, religions, cults, marxism, feminism, and the transhuman and futurist movement. Progress always synthesizes all that is good, forms worthy of survival and preservation, with everything that is new and also good, on micro and macro levels, so therein is our simple equation, what I like to call a formula for peace. And, progress has scientifically proved to us that the more you apply this formula for peace each day, the better today becomes, not just for you but for everyone that you touch.

Progress is a constant, gradual, sometimes cataclysmic, transfer from coercive systems— created during intermediate and often painful stages of civilization—to new, humane, voluntary associations. 

Wherever and whenever an approach, a thing, a process, whatever … is coercive (enslaves another human), a humane alternative can be found with just a tad of creativity. (Love, Truth, Beauty, and Goodness are good places to start looking.)

Expanding and improving voluntary associations are the result of creative, thoughtful, and for the most part selfless people working for the good of humanity, a silent form of mercy on a mass scale. There are those who go through life in an uncaring trance, not really present in any moment to make a lasting contribution to the evolution of civilization, or even be aware of much that is going on around them. The rest of us have to wake them up! (Maybe once they realize that enjoyment of sexual freedom is key to something better, they might become more attentive,see above.)

Most dangerous, the generational uncaringness (learned or invented) of people “asleep at the wheel” turns them into blind fodder for the relative few who would amass power, enslave them, and sacrifice their humanity through man-made, always corrupt at their core, coercive systems. The longer and deeper these maligning systems persist, the more hopelessness ensues and even more people drift into this semi-awake state.

So, there’s no time to wait! Arise!

Eventual, inevitable, universal pluralism is built of mutual
respect and individual responsibility, and is only made possible
through the creative energy of Love, a very
high form of Peace wherein we do good to one another.

 Related: A Personal Call to Action

Eros and Agape are One, another excerpt from The Unseen Journey (working title)

The primary reason we created VenusPlusX a few years ago was to establish a repository of our solutions for freeing humanity of its many misconceptions about an individual’s direct connection to cosmic technology. It is also the reason we decided to capture the essential premise of our work in book form. Here is another excerpt of our upcoming book, tentatively entitled, The Unseen Journey, that may prompt some comments and criticism, both of which we crave and adore.

Anira/WikiCommons Fair Use/Educational

Anira/WikiCommons
Fair Use/Educational

We declare that eros and agape are one with unified Love. We declare that the erotic is a major component of cosmic Love. We declare that the ability to experience Love, either as physical or spiritual, is one and the same gift of the Supreme to all creatures. We declare that the erotic has a functional purpose in any vitology (way of living in dedication to destiny) and that failure to acknowledge this underlies the social stagnation and oppressive belief systems that characterize human society today.

© VenusPlusX, 2013, All Rights Reserved.

What we are talking about here is a non-religion, transhuman in nature. There’s more about these ideas in our Library and all over this website, including a preliminary reference that will become an Appendix to our new book, A Course in Immortality (and in Spanish, Un Curso En Inmortalidad). And, in connection with the relaunch of VenusPlusX last week, we’ve added A Manifesto for The New Age of Sexual Freedom.

In order for humankind to fully explore and manifest its destiny, we start by accepting everyone where they are, as they are, of course, but that doesn’t stop us from railing against the coercive systems established by governments, religious hierarchies, and corporations that enslave us to false values and principles and interfere greatly with happiness, both individual and collective. Immediately important to this cause is sexual freedom, global equality rights, the end of racism, and tangentially things like net neutrality. In connection with the relaunch of VenusPlusX this month, we have published A Manifesto for The New Age of Sexual Freedom, which covers these matters further.

Right now, there is so much garbage and senseless noise all over the globe, piled higher and deeper with each succeeding generation of misinformation, all of it interfering with all good will efforts to recreate a world where every human retains from birth the inherited and inherent freedom of self-expression and is mutually respected, even revered, as a cosmic citizen, a living vessel of love from, and part of, this cosmic reality.

Like the agrarians, marxists, and feminists that paved the way, we aim to preserve that which is old and good, and disappear that which is old and bad, sometimes very bad, and build on or create new and better systems, voluntary associations, that uplift humanity within an atmosphere of mutual support where no one is enslaved to another.

 

VenusPlusX relaunches!

Welcome back to VenusPlusX.

As most of you know at the beginning of 2013 Dan set off suddenly and unexpectedly for the hereafter (WikipediaThe AdvocateHuffington Post). We had just finished our jointly authored book about the erotic connection to spirituality. It’s working title is The Unseen Journey, and we hope to publish it by the end of this year. We will periodically release short excerpts before publication here to stimulate discussion, and the comments and critiques we so avidly crave.

Already available now as a companion reference, A Course in Immortality (and in Spanish, Un Curso En Inmortalidad), which will be published as an included Appendix in the new book.

We again want to thank all the well-wishers who have reached out to our family this year. Many of you have asked about Dan’s amazing Memorial Service (February 23, 2013, Josephine Butler House, Washington, DC), so we have put those materials in a special section devoted to him personally.

During the past year our family and our extended family of VenusPlusX advisors have been recalibrating our new multi-plane relationship with Dan, and figuring out what to do next. Well, next is now, April 2014.

VenusPlusX’s has a new look for 2014, and we look forward to picking up where we left off. Our sister site, VenusMasX en espanol, will be getting a similar boost within a couple of months.

Newcomers can find out more about us, and old friends will enjoy our new streamlined navigation. There’s lots of new content, including our Manifesto for The New Age of Sexual Freedom, to remind our audiences of the diverse mix VenusPlusX puts together everyday, For example . . .

  • End Police Bias and Anti-Trans Violence is one of our continuing national advocacy campaigns with a grassroots component that offers communities help in developing a Transgender Day of Action for their city, using a process designed and proven to bring about systematic and sustainable change. Comparable to “Stop and Frisk,” walking while trans or otherwise gender non-conforming invites the same sort of constitution-crushing behavior by culturally challenged public safety officers who set a tone rarely fair to people of color and anyone else that is different from the white hierarchy.
  • The always inspiring individual Sexual Freedom Project videos. Maybe it’s time for you to join the cast by making your own declaration of sexual freedom by video or essay. And, we’ll send you one of our sought-after VenusPlusX t-shirts.
  • Transleadership and Transunity. This section has been corralled as a safe space to talk about the obstacle to unity faced by our community, both within the trans community and the LGBT community at large.
  • The transcendent aspects of sexual response and its direct connection to our role as cosmic citizens.
  • Sex Education, particularly for young people, since there is so much out there that constitutes harmful mis-information and the even more depraved and dangerous intentional disinformation propagated at all levels of society, from the family, schools, commerce, governments, and organized religion.
  • Sections on Transhuman Erotic Freedom and Sexuality, Freedom, and Cosmic Citizenship focus on dragging sacred sexuality out of the closet to save the world.
  • News [link to archive] and opinions, research studies, conferences, etc., that relate closely to our mission to bring about the New Age of Sexual Freedom. Issues such as net neutrality, de-militarization, and racial freedom are all keys to bringing about a new world that is voluntary and mutually supportive as opposed to inhumane, coercive, and enslaving by those who dare to amalgamate power against their fellow human. Sexual and racial freedom are inherited, inherent, and the bedrock of all other freedoms.
  • And, we have expanded our Library where among other things, you’ll find a handy table of contents to posts that Dan Massey authored or we co-authored with his byline.

Let us know what you think of our new look? To cheer us on, leave a comment, and if you haven’t already, please Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.