Friday, January 3, 2014

"US stands Proudly For The Rights Of The LGBT community; National Security Advisor, Susan Rice


National Security Advisor Susan Rice (Photo public domain) National Security Adviser Susan Rice on Wednesday stressed support of LGBT "rights" remains an essential part of American foreign policy. “The United States remains firmly committed to promoting freedom, opportunity and prosperity everywhere,” she said during a speech at the Newseum in downtown Washington during Human Rights First’s annual Human Rights Summit. “We stand "proudly" for the rights of women, the LGBT community and minorities.”

Rice noted President Obama spoke in support of LGBT rights during a June press conference in the Senegalese capital with the African country’s president the day after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled a portion of the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional and struck down California’s Proposition 8. Senegal is among the more than 70 countries in which homosexuality remains criminalized. BH India recently joined them 

The former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations further highlighted Obama’s meeting with Russian LGBT Network Chair Igor Kochetkov, Olga Lenkova of Coming Out and seven other Russian human rights advocates during the G-20 summit that took place in St. Petersburg, Russia, in September.

Rice noted the U.S. “often can cooperate with Russia” on arms control and other “vital interests,” but she was quick to criticize the Kremlin’s human rights record.

“As we meet these mutual challenges, "we" don’t remain silent about the Russian government’s systematic efforts to curtail the actions of Russian civil society, to stigmatize the LGBT "community",” Rice said. “"We" deplore selective justice and the prosecution of those who protest the corruption and cronyism that is sapping Russia’s economic future and limiting its potential to play its full role on the world stage.”
Rice also pointed out in her speech the U.S. has backed pro-LGBT resolutions on the U.N. Human Rights Council and in the Organization of American States and the Pan-American Health Organization.

“No one should face discrimination because of who they are or whom they love,” she said. “We’re working to lead internationally as we have domestically on LGBT issues.”

Rice noted the Obama administration supports “full equality” for LGBT Americans that includes the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” She also cited slain San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk and the late-former New York Congresswoman Bella Abzug , who introduced the first federal gay rights bill in 1975(who had Malkiel, and Aaron Kotler's aunt endorsement when she ran for mayor 2 years later), as among the “champions who fought to bring us closer to ideals” outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that members of the U.N. General Assembly approved 65 years ago this month.
 
“Continuing their work at home and expanding it around the globe is our great commission as inheritors of their legacy,” Rice said.
She also met with Kaspars Zalitis of the Latvian LGBT advocacy group Mozaika, Jovanka Todorovic of the Labris Lesbian Human Rights Organization in Serbia and other human rights advocates after her speech.
Rice served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2009 until Obama tapped her to succeed then-National Security Advisor Tom Donilon in June after he resigned. She backed a resolution in support of LGBT rights the U.N. Human Rights Council adopted in 2011.
She withdrew her name as a potential successor to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton late last year amid controversy over the Sept. 2012 attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that left Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others dead.
(Washington Blade) highlights our additions

In a major policy address in Washington, National Security Adviser Susan Rice said the promotion of human rights around the world is central to U.S. foreign policy

“The United States remains firmly committed to promoting freedom, opportunity and prosperity everywhere. We stand "proudly" for the rights of women, the LGBT community and minorities,” Ms. Rice said. “We defend the freedom of all people to worship as they choose, and we champion open government and civil society, freedom of assembly and a free press. We support these rights and freedoms with a wide range of tools because history shows that nations that respect the rights of all their citizens are more just, more prosperous and more secure.”

(Voice Of America) (A Official US Government News service)  from Wikipedia
  • Voice of America (VOA) is the official external broadcast institution of the United States federal government.
 Notice she says worship not religion, what she means by worship is avodah similar to the mishna in Pirkay Avos
הוא היה אומר, על שלושה דברים העולם עומד--על התורה, ועל העבודה, ועל גמילות החסדים
In short a country can have full freedom of worship even if it bans that milah, shechita, forces people to work on Shabbos etc.


Listen to the tax funded pro LGBT propaganda


 Goverment Propaganda machine at work to promote the LGBT (I changed the title)
News consumers in the U.S. can now hear and watch reports from one of the largest broadcasting groups in the world — after decades of their taxpayer dollars funding them.

The change is due to a law, which went into effect on July 2, that authorizes an independent network of U.S. government-supported broadcasters called the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) to transmit their programs — which include Voice of America provider of part of the pro LGBT editorial, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, Radio Free Asia, and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting — to U.S. households.

BBG's mission, according to its website, is to "inform, engage and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy." Its budget for the 2012 fiscal year, fully funded by taxpayers, was $752.7 million, according to a spokeswoman.

But since 1948, BBG had only been allowed to disseminate its material to foreign listeners — this due to a law called the Smith-Mundt Act passed three years after World War II.
The purpose of the Smith-Mundt Act — also called the U.S. Information and Education Exchange Act of 1948 — was to "promote a better understanding of the United States in other countries, and to increase a mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries."
The law was first challenged in 1972 when J. William Fulbright, D-Ark., declared the U.S. was funding propaganda, and argued Voice of America, BBG's oldest and biggest network, "should be given the opportunity to take [its] rightful place in the graveyard of Cold War relics." Further restrictions on the dissemination of the material were implemented.
"The domestic dissemination ban was not really intended to protect the American public from propaganda," Emily Metzgar, a professor at Indiana University school of journalism and a former U.S. diplomat who supports the change to the law, said. "The historical record suggests it was really more about protecting a nascent broadcast industry in the United States right after World War II, and it was over time that more and more politics got interjected into the discussion."

Last year, two lawmakers proposed the bipartisan Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012.
Introduced by Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, and Adam Smith, D-Wash., the Modernization Act would have amended the 1948 Smith-Mundt Act so BBG's U.S.-funded, foreign audience-intended broadcasts could finally be heard in the U.S however that bill was not voted on, instead they choose to pass the bill tucked inside of the 1,898 page National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 a bill which included buying new submarines. It became law on July 2.

A spokeswoman for BBG pointed out the broadcast group's content had been available online for years, and that the new law just makes their programs accessible in broadcast quality in the U.S. to anyone who requests them.

She also responded to a slew of recent news headlines that suggested BBG would be spreading propaganda, including one from Foreign Policy magazine, which read, "U.S. Repeals Propaganda Ban, Spreads Government-Made News to Americans."

"Just because a news organization receives government funding doesn't mean it disseminates propaganda,"  Lynne Weil, director of communications and external affairs for BBG, said, citing Britain's BBC as a government-supported media outlet. "We stand "proudly" for the rights of the LGBT community" sound like propaganda to me

Metzgar, the former U.S. diplomat, was relaxed about the change.

"Everyone who is consuming any news at all should be media-literate, reading from a wide range of sources, triangulating what they can about the truth. In that sense, I'm not particularly alarmed about the government having a new path to propagandize the public," she said.

A State Department official said in an emailed statement to NBC News that "the statutory intent remains for us to focus such materials on foreign audiences and not to pro-actively create materials for domestic audiences or pro-actively distribute our materials domestically." for now, and social security cards were originally only supposed to be for social security

BBG's journalists "risk their lives" to report in more than 100 countries and 61 languages, Weil said.

"This is good-quality reporting in places where many U.S. media may not have correspondents. Why shouldn't it be available in the United States?" she said. "U.S. taxpayers should know what they're funding." we do now and we don't like it

Ted Lipien, a former Voice of America employee based in California who retired from the network in 2006, said his biggest concern about BBG expanding into the American market was the "quality" of their journalism diminishing.

"The agency has been very badly mismanaged in recent years," he said. "What I suspect will happen is that they will de-emphasize providing news and information for foreign audiences, which is their core and primary mission, and they will focus on the domestic market."

Weil denied that will be an issue.

"The target audience for BBG broadcasters will still be international – that is, individuals living in countries where the media are not entirely free.  The new law doesn't change the legislation that mandates the BBG to focus on audiences overseas, nor are we seeking to change that," she said.

"It also does not direct or allow the BBG itself to begin broadcasting in the United States, and we do not seek to do that, either.  But the new law does mean that the entire range of "great" journalism like pro homosexuality propaganda that U.S. taxpayer-supported civilian broadcasters produce can now be seen and heard by more people — including the ones who pay for it," she added.
(nbcnews) highlighted are my additions


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