NEWSDEMOCRACY

According to a soon to be released investigative report from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, tens of millions of taxpayer dollars are spent each year on evangelical fundamentalist Christian concerts, retreats, youth programs and other events all aimed at converting military personnel and their families to Christianity.

This is not the money the military has historically spent on chaplains who provide support for military personnel who identify as people of faith.

Instead, the Department of Defense is spending on these programs with the intent to proselytize -- here are just a few examples of programs funded with taxpayer dollars:
--$30 million a year spent on the Army's Strong Bonds program. Strong Bonds is supposed to be non-religious, but has been hijacked by chaplains who have turned the program's pre- and post-deployment getaways for soldiers and their spouses into evangelical fundamentalist Christian retreats held at Christian camps and resorts.

In New York, the prosecution of child sexual abuse is a capped at a mere 23 years old, a common trend throughout the states.  Perhaps the biggest reason why so many states still have statutes of limitations for the prosecution of child sexual abuse is because so few people truly understand the crime and thus do not demand the laws be changed. Here are some ugly facts about child sexual abuse.

1)      At least 25% of girls and 15% of boys will be sexually victimized before their 18^th birthday.

2)      Over 90% of these children will be victimized by someone they know and trust, often a family member, or someone their family entrusts them to.

3)      Between 80-90% of children will not disclose their abuse before their 18^th birthday.

4)      In at least 10% of cases, there is an adult who is aware of the abuse, but does nothing to stop it.

5)      Child sexual abuse survivors are more likely to suffer from mental illness, drug addiction, to be incarcerated, disabled, unemployed, and to live under the poverty line than their non-abused peers. While there is often a direct relationship between the abuse they suffered and these effects, the relationship isn’t always clear to the survivor. CSA survivors often spend most of their early adult life digging themselves out of the wreckage the abuse has wrought upon their lives, not trying to seek legal justice.

Internationally renowned Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei was released from a Beijing prison late Wednesday night.

The news comes after more than 140,000 people in 175 countries joined an unprecedented Change.org campaign by leading global art institutions - including the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, London’s Tate Modern and the Association of Art Museum Directors - calling for the artist’s immediate release.

“This campaign has been quite a ride: in less than three months leading global art institutions and artists from all over the world came together to recruit more than 140,000 supporters in 175 countries,” said Ben Rattray, the founder of Change.org. “Their remarkable success led foreign hackers to launch a highly sophisticated cyber-attack on Change.org designed to prevent people around the world from simply voicing their opinion. But despite the challenges, Change.org is about empowering anyone, anywhere to call for action on the issues that matter to them, and it has been an honor to provide a platform for this inspiring campaign.”

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.

In my many recent Daily Kos diaries on the retaliatory prosecution of NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, many have suggested that Drake

"will have his day in court, and he should let the jury decide at trial if he committed a crime."

These often flippant remarks fail to recognize the years of investigation that precede a criminal indictment, during which the whistleblower must pay attorneys to defend himself. Those costs were so exorbitant for Drake that he is currently being represented by the public defender's office because he qualifies as indigent.

This is not a plea for a legal defense fund. Drake doesn't have one.  All he needs is your support.  Please support him by signing this petition demanding accountability for the Justice Department's malicious and selective prosecution of whistleblower Drake.

South African government sets up task team to tackle hate crimes against LGBT South Africans in response to a 170,000-strong Change.org campaign calling for action on ‘corrective’ rape.

South Africa’s Ministry of Justice is establishing a national task team to address hate crimes against LGBT South Africans after 170,000 activists from around the world demanded action on ‘corrective’ rape, the increasingly common hate crime in which men rape lesbian women to 'turn' them straight or 'cure' them of their sexual orientation.

The decision came yesterday during a meeting at the South African Parliament of senior government and police officials with grassroots activists, who used the US-based social action platform Change.org to recruit a record-breaking 170,000 supporters from people in 163 countries. It follows the murder of Noxolo Nogwaza, a 24-year-old lesbian who was stoned, stabbed with broken glass and gang raped 10 days ago in a black township outside Johannesburg. Used condoms, a beer bottle and a large rock were all found on or beside her body.