The “culture war“, now more than 30 years old – today is far from the obscure reference cloaked and made fun of by the little quotation marks which try to create the impression that the culture war is a euphemism and not really a war at all. The truth is very different, because when people’s lives are destroyed through the actions of other people – even people on the other side of the planet, even without the use of conventional weapons – and when people die - it is a war in every real sense of the word.

Far from fading out over time, it is a war that has escalated if anything – and now employs advanced weapons such as the internet, science, medicine, psychology and multimedia – along with more traditional hardware like covert operations, surveillance, intelligence, counter-intelligence, propaganda, politics, dirty tricks, entrapment, investigative journalism, expose’s, espionage, infiltration – and denial. (Read More)

Do you know who is spending your tax dollars in Uganda?

No? Neither do a number of organizations that have sued the State Department for access to this information — and have received little data in return.

The international AIDS charity AVERT hosts a web page which diplomatically explains the complexity (aka unaccountability) of foreign-aid recipients to U.S. taxpayers.

At a very basic level, it is apparent that U.S. tax dollars are transferred — in amounts counted in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars — to “prime partners” who then reallocate (some might say, launder) the foreign aid to “subpartners.” Each new layer of aid-laundering reduces the accountability of that aid to its original purpose.

Uganda is one of the largest single African recipients of PEPFAR HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment aid.

In Uganda, according to AVERT, two of the leading “prime partners” are Catholic Relief Services (which steers Ugandans toward abstinence-only education and prevention) and the conservative Children’s AIDS Fund — formerly the Americans for a Sound AIDS/HIV Policy — which likewise denies Ugandans easy access to comprehensive education and prevention methods.

Uganda’s designated prime partners contract out their aid allocations to some reputable outfits — but they also hire the likes of Uganda’s Martin Ssempa and other “faith-based” antigay vigilante leaders that have used the aid to promote hate-based myths about LGBT Ugandans: Specifically, the myths that LGBT people are pedophiles, that they “recruit” heterosexuals, that they are lust-crazed and rapacious vagabonds, and that they are primarily responsible for HIV/AIDS in Africa.

Please contact your congressional representative and senators. Ask them to demand full transparency and accountability of foreign-aid prime partners and subpartners to national policy objectives. All partners should comply with U.S. and international protocols for human rights and individual liberty — including freedom from ethnic, religious, and sexual discrimination, and freedom from religion-based bias in partners’ offerings of education, services, and materials.

No recipient of federal aid should offer health care or advice that is officially discouraged or rejected by the American Medical Association, American Psychiatric Association, or American Psychological Association.

If a recipient or sub-recipient of U.S. aid enforces religious principles that prevent it from providing comprehensive and non-sectarian education, prevention, and treatment to all, then its access to federal aid should be eliminated or tightly regulated.

The prime ministers of Britain and Canada last week protested, in the strongest terms, Uganda’s plan to execute its sexually active LGBT and HIV-positive citizens — and to imprison their families, doctors, clergy if they fail to turn in patients and loved ones to the police.

The two nations’ top leaders implied that Uganda might lose foreign aid and membership in the Commonwealth if it proceeds.

Compare these condemnations to the official statement of the highest-ranking U.S. executive-branch official, Eric Goosby. He is the head of the U.S. State Department’s foreign-aid program for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, known as PEPFAR.

As Truth Wins Out pointed out on Friday, Goosby said:

My role is to be supportive and helpful to the patients who need these services. It is not to tell a country how to put forward their legislation. But I will engage them in conversation around my concern and knowledge of what this is going to do to that population, and our ability to stop the movement of the virus into the general population.

Update: Goosby’s statement is much softer and more generous to Uganda than a U.S. embassy officer’s prior statement:

“If adopted, a bill further criminalizing homosexuality would constitute a significant step backwards for the protection of human rights in Uganda,” the embassy’s public affairs officer Joann Lockard said in an email. “We urge states to take all necessary measures to ensure that sexual orientation or gender identity may under no circumstances be the basis for criminal penalties, in particular executions, arrests, or detention.”

Americans must take urgent action to let the State Department know that it IS their job to prevent the misuse of taxpayers’ HIV/AIDS dollars to slaughter gay people, enrich evangelicals, and deny Africans access to condoms.

Please write letters to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demanding a hold on Uganda’s PEPFAR funding until strict human-rights, privacy, and free-speech controls can be imposed upon all PEPFAR aid. PEPFAR aid must not be given to sectarian religious interests, especially those with violent and inhumane intentions.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520
(202) 647-4000

Please THANK Rep. Tammy Baldwin for her support and urge her office to continue fighting against The Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009 by e-mailing Amber Shipley:

Amber.Shipley @ mail.house.gov

Please THANK Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen for her support via phone call or letter and urge her to continue using her position in the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs to hold Uganda accountable.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
2470 Rayburn H.O.B.
Washington, DC 20515-0918
(202) 225-3931

George W. Bush longed to escape his daddy’s shadow, while Barack Obama has turned to shadowy preachers in his long search for a father figure. His filial approach to faith began with Rev. Jeremiah Wright and has now taken a sharp turn right.

The New York Times reports that the president has surrounded himself with a cadre of clerical crackpots known as the “Circle of Five.” These holy men are: Rev. Joel Hunter, former head of the Christian Coalition; anti-gay Bishop T.D. Jakes; the ex-gay loving Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell; and Jim “waffling” Wallis, a protean progressive. The only Obama shaman who isn’t shameless is the civil rights era preacher Rev. Otis Moss Jr.

Rev. Jakes refers to homosexuality as “brokenness” and has claimed that he wouldn’t hire a sexually active gay person. But it seems T.D. can’t even keep his own son off the D.L. (down low). His “sexually broken” heir was arrested earlier this year for cruising a Dallas Park in search of gay men.
(Read More)