NEWSAMERICAS

(Traduccion al Espanol por debajo)

It’s hard to believe that in Ecuador, a country that has legalized homosexuality in its constitution, there are “ex-gay clinics” that claim to cure their patients through means of torture.  That’s right, under the guise of drug-rehabilitation, these clinics use verbal threats, shackling, days without food, sexual abuse, and physical torture to “cure” homosexuality.While 30 of these such clinics have been closed this year, over 200 remain open.  That’s why Ecuadorian activists are speaking out against these remaining clinics and demanding that the government close them.

If you're my age or older you may know her from her Academy Award winning performance in Children of a Lesser God? Maybe you know her from her feisty character in the West Wing, Joey Lucas?  Or for the younger ones out there for her roles in Desperate Housewives or the L-Word?

Marlee Matlin deserves some thanks from the Change.org human rights community.   Last week, Marlee wrote on her twitter account:

Dear Netflix. Nevermind about the price hike. When are you going to start captioning your streaming content? Fail, big time.

That's what we're saying!  Netflix , the internet's biggest provider of streaming online television and movies provides subtitling for only 30 percent of its online content.  Worse, while it is possible to see a list of all of the subtitled content on the site, but users cannot search within that content.

This is a post by Erin Hohlfhelder cross-posted ONE Blog.

The good news in development often gets buried, deep below wars and debt and disaster. But yesterday, world leaders made bold new pledges to the GAVI Alliance (Global Aliance for Vaccines and Immunisations) in support of child vaccines, making the choice clear for reporters, press secretaries and live-tweeters alike: today was going to be a good news day.

In fact, in spite of tough economic times, donors collectively pledged $4.3 billion between now and 2015 — surpassing GAVI’s $3.7 billion funding gap — setting GAVI and its partners on the path toward saving nearly 4 million children’s lives in the next five years.

Thomas Drake is a former National Security Agency (NSA) employee who was being prosecuted under the Espionage Act for retaining, not leaking, classified information about a data collection program that was costly, threatening to Americans' privacy rights, and wholly undeveloped. He did everything by the book, raising concerns through official channels first - including senior NSA management, the Defense Department's inspector general, and Congress.

His concerns were ignored. Drake started, legally, communicating with a reporter -- never sharing any classified information whatsoever. But the consequences looked to be severe, with prosecutors looking to make him spend the rest of his life in prison. So in response, the Government Accountability Project (GAP) ran an all-out campaign, which included a petition here on Change.org with nearly 5,000 signatures, calling for the charges against Drake to be dropped.

This is how a former laborer for Dole Food Company described the campaign to get the company to take care of poisoned banana workers:

“They’re just waiting for all of us to die off.  Because they know once that happens, they won’t have to fight anymore and they will have gotten away with it.  We refuse to let that happen.”

As the confident but somehow fragile-seeming man spoke in the warm accent characteristic of Nicaraguan Spanish, a spark of passionate anger coursed through me... How dare a company treat its former employees so horribly!

Jesselyn Radack is a  former Department of Justice whistleblower. She is currently the homeland security director of the Government Accountability Project, the nation’s leading whistleblower organization.

Former National Security Agency (NSA) senior official Thomas Drake is a whistleblower.   Through legal and proper channels Drake disclosed massive corruption, gross waste and mismanagement to tune of billions of taxpayer dollars, and, worse, widespread illegal domestic surveillance at the NSA.

When president Obama first took office, he applauded whistleblowers as "often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government.”  He said that "such acts of courage and patriotism . . . should be encouraged rather than stifled."

Given these remarks, Thomas Drake is exactly the type of whistleblower that the Obama administration should protect. However, under President Obama’s leadership, the Justice Department has labeled Drake an enemy of the state, and charged him with violating the Espionage Act -- an archaic law intended to prosecute spies, not whistleblowers. Drake’s prosecution is selective and retaliatory.

Since the early 1990s, Radio Victoria has provided a voice for the residents of the northern hills of El Salvador. Founded in the aftermath of the nation's bloody civil war, today Radio Victoria transmits daily local and international news and other programs to communities so poor they often lack telephone and mail services.

The journalists who run the station are mostly 16 to 24 year-olds who grew up in Honduran refugee camps and returned to the area with their families as the civil war raged around them.

And now, someone wants them dead.

Last month, Radio Victoria's workers began receiving a wave of death threats from a shadowy group reminiscent of the macabre rightwing "death squads" active during the civil war.

Last week, Change.org member Lindsey Hancock’s petition, which asks that a Native American burial site not be disturbed, started to gather a bit more steam, and a few of the petitioners started to hear back for the officials they are asking to step in and stop the quarry threatening the site. So I got in touch with her and she told me a little bit more about what motivated her to step and start her first petition on Change.org.

How did you first hear about the quarry?

I first heard about the quarry after reading an article by expert Richard Thornton. I periodically receive e-newsletters from People of One Fire, a national alliance of Muskogean scholars.

What motivated you to get involved?

With only 150 signatures sent to Georgia legislatures, a local Native American tribe has successfully used Change.org to get a discriminatory bill dropped!

One of the Creek Tribes, the Kialegee Tribal Town, wanted to come home. Then the Georgia State Legislators tried to prevent Indian Tribes that are recognized by the state from acquiring land for purposes other than casinos.

After the legislators got over 100 e-mails through this Change.org campaign, the House Judiciary Committee signed off the bill as "died in committee."

"We’ve drawn a line in the dirt, and it happens to be our dirt," said Wallace Seabolt of The Georgia Tribe of Eastern Cherokee, who started the petition. "We don’t ask anything except to be allowed to practice out culture, our traditions, and to share that... I think Change.org is really great. I’ll be in touch if there are any more things we need to work on.”

These tribes are recognized by Georgia and the bill (SB 62) would have unconstitutionally placed a severe hardship to require them to wait until the General Assembly is in session to get approval for a purchase or transfer of land. Local Native American activists argued, successfully, that such a policy would constitute illegal interference over American Indian tribes and violate the American Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968, Subsection 1302(8).

A big congrats to everyone involved, and thanks for taking action!