The Blog

Murray Lipp: We Must Target the Origins of Homophobic Violence: Religion, Patriarchy and Heterosexism

2013-05-23T23:09:22Z

It is not sufficient to prosecute those individuals who commit anti-gay hate crimes. We must also address the societal conditions and contexts that create and fuel homophobia in society. Acts of abuse and violence against gay people are clearly symptoms of a broader societal problem, one that must be treated structurally if we are to ever succeed in reducing and eradicating violence against LGBT people.

A Societal Context That Is Hostile to Gay People

In the common, cultural meaning of the word, "homophobia" refers to the maintenance of negative and discriminatory views toward gay people. It is not a "phobia" in a psychiatric sense. Rather, the word serves as a concise way to refer to discrimination against those who are gay, in the same way that the words "racism" and "sexism" relate to discrimination based on race and gender, respectively. Homophobic beliefs drive homophobic conduct that occurs in all domains of societal life: at home, at school, in politics, on television, on the Internet, in churches, in organizations, at work and on the streets.

Earlier this month I wrote about two anti-gay hate crimes that had been committed in New York City, and I put out a call for LGBT people and our allies to rally against this violence. A rally was held on May 16, and two days later the city awoke to the gruesome death of Mark Carson, shot in the head in what police called a random act of homophobic violence. A second, much larger rally was held May 20, and within less than 24 hours, another two acts of anti-gay violence had been reported.

What has happened in New York City recently is not unique to this city. In cities and countries around the world, gay people are subjected to homophobic abuse and violence on a daily basis. Although the increasing visibility of LGBT people and gains in equality may be associated with short-term rises in homophobic violence, these changes are merely triggers and not causes of such violence. We must move beyond superficial and individualistic analyses of such heinous events and target their root causes: religion, patriarchy and heterosexism.

Religion and the Preaching of Hate

Any discussion about homophobia in society must absolutely reference religion. Clearly, not all religions or churches teach and promote homophobic messages. There are various LGBT-affirming streams of Christianity and Judaism. Religion as an institution, however, has, in general, played a key role in the fueling of homophobia throughout society. Conservative divisions of Christianity, Islam and Judaism continue to teach extremely negative views about homosexuality and gay people. In recent years in the U.S., the Catholic Church and its unofficial affiliate, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), have taken on an almost national leadership role in the demonization of gay people under the veil of religion.

People who are born into certain religious environments and grow up hearing toxic anti-gay messages may, not surprisingly, develop negative views about us. Young and impressionable minds can internalize the notion that gay people are inferior and that homosexuality is an "abomination," something unnatural and deviant. This infecting of the mind with distorted and false information is an extremely powerful process and in many cases lays the foundation for future anti-gay abuse and violence. As more and more people "come out" of the gay closet, there are more opportunities for young people to question the toxic anti-gay religious messages they are taught. However, many are still raised in social and familial environments where warped and negative views about LGBT people are still passed on and maintained under the guise of religion.

Given the extent to which certain religious groups and organizations attempt to influence secular and public institutions, they should not be free from public scrutiny and criticism. Those churches and religious organizations that preach messages of hate and intolerance toward gay people should be rightly challenged and exposed for the role they play in causing homophobic violence. In the U.S. there is much talk about the importance of "freedom of religion." Well, that should also involve freedom from religion. The religious views of no particular group should be written into public, secular laws that affect all people in society. While those who practice particular religions are free to believe whatever they wish to believe, freedom of speech should also allow us to criticize those who speak and behave in ways that jeopardize the health and safety of LGBT people.

Patriarchy and the Demonization of Difference

Despite all the gains in gender equality that have been made in many countries around the world, patriarchy (the privileging of men in society) remains a powerful and defining force. Inequality between men and women continues to persist vocationally, financially and politically. The privileging of the masculine over the feminine and the continued social enforcement of rigid gender norms relating to masculinity and femininity play key roles in the development of homophobic views and conduct. Homosexuality is viewed as being in direct opposition to how men and women are expected to behave in a patriarchal societal system in which straight men dominate.

From a patriarchal perspective, female homosexuality is viewed as a direct rejection of the most powerful group in society: straight men. Not surprisingly, this perceived rejection is penalized and sanctioned in various ways. The most extreme form of this sanctioning behavior is the phenomenon of "corrective rape," a violent and disturbing punishment that aims to "cure" gay women (lesbians) of their orientation. Male homosexuality is also viewed as a rejection -- in this instance, a rejection of "traditional" masculinity. Within a patriarchal framework, male homosexuality is regarded as a rejection of the masculine and an alignment with the feminine, the latter of which is already viewed as "less than." This patriarchal demonization of both female and male homosexuality permeates cultures and societal institutions globally and fuels the spread of homophobia accordingly.

The pursuit of gender equality must be maintained, and sexism in all regards must continue to be challenged. There is no legitimate reason or basis for men, as a group, to be afforded more power in society than women. The neutralization of the power gap between men and women is crucial to all efforts to challenge the existing "gender order" and its emphasis on strict gender roles around masculinity and femininity. LGBT people have a unique opportunity to lead and educate on matters of sexual and gender diversity and to challenge the impossible demand that all men embrace "traditional" heterosexual masculinity and that all women embrace "traditional" heterosexual femininity. The fluidity and diversity of human sexuality and gender identity should be honored and embraced, not shamed and sanctioned.

Heterosexism and the Privileging of Heterosexuality

Intimately linked with patriarchy is the phenomenon of heterosexism, the positioning of heterosexuality as superior to homosexuality and bisexuality. The assumption that all people are heterosexual is a central feature of heterosexism. Biological diversity is ignored within a heterosexist context. The reality that a certain proportion of the population (from 5 to 10 percent) may identify as homosexual or bisexual is cast aside as irrelevant. Within a heterosexual societal context, homophobic views and attitudes flourish unchallenged. In countries across the globe, including the U.S., heterosexism is so ingrained culturally and institutionally that many people can't even see it or don't even know what it is.

Those who are not heterosexual, however, see heterosexism in action on a daily basis. The exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage laws dismisses the validity of same-sex relationships. The favoring of straight people in positions of political power ensures that those with the power are able to maintain it. Heterosexual cultural imagery on television, in movies, in newspapers and magazines and on the sporting field reinforces daily what society regards as the primary and most acceptable sexual orientation. Given our smaller numbers, it is very difficult for gay people, as a group, to counteract this heterosexual cultural dominance. The exclusion of gay people from a seat at the main table of society communicates the erroneous message that gay people are "less than," not worthy, not good enough. It lays the foundation for homophobia to flourish.

There must be ongoing and consistent efforts to challenge the heterosexism that pervades almost all societal institutions. While the majority of people may indeed be heterosexual, that is no justification for excluding the needs and views of non-heterosexual people. Societal laws in relation to marriage and adoption should be gender-neutral, allowing for equal access by both opposite-sex and same-sex couples. Workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity must be outlawed, in the same way that sexism and racism have been. The fostering of a cultural climate that is, in general, more reflective of the actual diversity that exists within society would chip away at the flawed assumption that all people are heterosexual. It would also make it easier for those who are LGBT to be more open and honest about their true identities.

A Future That Honors and Embraces Diversity

As an increasing number of LGBT people across the world start to lead more open lives, our visibility will continue to rise. As efforts to pursue equality under the law progress, opponents threatened by their loss of privilege may continue to lash out. Ultimately, however, visibility and progress are simply triggers for homophobic violence and not causes of it. Any effort to seriously reduce and/or eradicate homophobic abuse and violence in society must address the roles that religion, patriarchy and heterosexism play in the development and fueling of homophobic messages about gay people.

To that end, LGBT people and our straight allies must continue to speak up and challenge those forces and institutions that directly contribute to the occurrence of homophobic abuse and violence. Together we can defeat the forces of hate and in the process create a better society and world for everyone.

(Photos by Murray Lipp)

Mehdi Hasan: Woolwich Attack: Demonising Muslims Won't Help

2013-05-23T23:00:00Z

"Whosoever killeth a human being... " says the Qur'an, in the 32nd verse of its fifth chapter, "it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind."

Thus, the two supposedly Muslim men suspected of ambushing, murdering and mutilating an unarmed, off-duty soldier in the middle of a London street, while shouting "Allaho Akbar" (or "God is Great"), were brazenly violating the injunction of their own holy book. Perversely, it was the non-Muslim cub scout leader who, in trying to save the soldier's life and standing up to his alleged attackers, was acting in accordance with Qur'anic principles. Let's be clear: Islam, like every other faith, doesn't permit the killing of innocents. Armed jihad is permissible only in self-defence and if sanctioned by a legitimate government. To quote from our prime minister's pitch-perfect statement outside No 10, Wednesday's broad-daylight barbarism was "a betrayal of Islam and of the Muslim communities who give so much to our country".

Thankfully, British Muslims no longer have to wait for the much-maligned Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), or self-appointed 'community leaders', to take a public stand, nor they do need to compete with clowns like Anjem Choudary for media attention; they have been empowered by Twitter and Facebook, where in great numbers they have expressed disgust at the invoking of Islam to support such an appalling crime. (Commendably, the MCB issued a press release "unreservedly" condemning the murder as "a barbaric act that has no basis in Islam" within six hours of it occurring.)

Yet conventional wisdom still says the religion of Islam is behind violent extremism and radicalisation; that Muslims don't do enough to denounce terror; that imams and mosques incite hate and holy war. As is so often the case, the conventional wisdom is wrong. I have been a Muslim all my life and visited mosques across Europe, North America and the UK. Never, not once, have I come across an imam preaching violence against the West or justifying the murder of innocents.

Remember: the Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev was thrown out of his local mosque after lashing out at the imam for praising Martin Luther King in his Friday sermon. The Muslim father of the 'underwear bomber', Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, approached US officials to warn them about his son, several months before the latter tried to blow up a US-bound flight in December 2009. And the car bomb planted by Faisal Shahzad in Times Square, New York, in 2010, was brought to police attention by a Senelegase Muslim street vendor who spotted smoke coming out of the vehicle.

Many of my fellow Muslims want consistency from politicians and the press. When Anders Breivik, self-styled member of an 'international Christian military order', massacred 77 innocent Norwegians, most them children, in July 2011, did we indict Christianity? Sadly, we hold Islam and Muslims to a separate standard - despite the fact that, nowadays, (self-) radicalisation tends to be an online phenomenon; what the experts call the 'third wave' of al-Qaeda-inspired extremism has no need for either UK mosques or Pakistani training camps.

"Is it even possible to stop two nutjobs from going online and radicalising themselves and then going out to kill someone on the street with kitchen knives?" an exasperated official told me yesterday morning. "How do you prevent that?" Demonising Islam or Muslims won't help.

Listen to Olivier Roy, one of Europe's pre-eminent experts on extremism: "The process of violent radicalisation has little to do with religious practice." Read the classified briefing note prepared by the MI5's Behaviourial Science Unit in June 2008. "Far from being religious zealots, a large number of those involved in terrorism do not practise their faith regularly," reported the Guardian's Alan Travis, who obtained a copy of the document. "Very few have been brought up in strongly religious households...there is evidence that a well-established religious identity actually protects against violent radicalisation."

Yet on TV news channels, on newspaper comment pages, on social networks, everyone is either a terrorism expert, an Islam expert, or both. Some cut and paste verses from the Koran out of context; others unthinkingly demand 'reform' of Islam. Few want to discuss the role of British foreign policy in helping to radicalise these young, disaffected individuals. Meanwhile, former CIA official Marc Sageman says that, "11 and a half years after 9/11, we still don't know" what turns young men towards terror.

I'll tell you this, though: it isn't my faith or the faith of 1.6billion other Muslims. For once, I'm with David Cameron.

Carl Pope: The Big Lie on Natural Gas Exports

2013-05-23T22:47:51Z

Last week the Department of Energy gave approval to the Freeport LNG export terminal. Combined with an earlier approval at Sabine Pass, the U.S. has now committed the first 2.4 billion cubic feet of natural gas it produces each day over the next 20 years to foreign consumers -- because under these LNG contracts exporters will be able to offer higher prices than any domestic user, regardless of the price of gas that results. These two terminals alone will divert enough energy to replace a half million barrels a day of oil.

You may find these facts surprising, even implausible. I don't blame you. You have been massively misled.

The current media conversation about whether oil and gas exports are in America's interests makes the lead up to the Iraq War look like public policy on truth serum. All informed participants know -- and almost all conceal -- that the primary purpose of building export infrastructure like the Keystone Pipeline or LNG terminals is to raise energy prices in North America. What is mystifying is why almost all of America's political class is willing to support a set of policy decisions whose outcomes will be to impoverish most Americans and weaken the nation.

Without policy permission to build out massive export infrastructure -- Keystone and the Sabine Pass LNG Terminal being only the first -- North America's increased production of oil and gas will, as economic theory would predict, yield cheaper prices. Globally, however, OPEC cartel power will keep prices up. Oil and gas interests in North America want to share in the windfall profits created by the OPEC cartel and its prices. They can only do this by raising U.S. prices to OPEC levels. OPEC is a cartel. It profits from price-fixing which would be illegal if it took place within the U.S. (or Canada or the EU.) Why should we raise U.S. oil and gas prices to OPEC levels? Why should North American producers benefit from manipulated prices which would be illegal if set by oil and gas companies themselves?

Increased U.S. production of light tight oil from formations like the Bakken and Eagle Ford have created surplus oil in Central U.S. Wholesale oil prices have fallen 20 percent below global oil levels. Combined with greater fuel efficiency and fuel competition from electrification, natural gas and biofuels, genuine U.S. oil independence could be achieved in the next decade.

Abundant natural gas has brought down heating bills, encouraged the re-industrialization of the U.S., reduced coal dependence and pollution in the electrical sector. Natural gas offers a fuel source which could replace a third of U.S. oil imports in uses like home heating, chemical feed-stocks and trucking.

Gas in the U.S. now costs one-fourth the price of OPEC imported oil, and one-third the cost of natural gas in Europe and China. OPEC prices no longer control U.S. markets.

That's a good thing. We are about to throw it away.

As Boone Pickens has pointed out, even the oil endowed and market skeptical Iranians have figured out that instead of burning expensive oil at home and exporting cheap natural gas, it makes sense to burn cheap natural gas to back out oil.

If you take seriously the claims by export advocates that U.S. gas prices will rise "only a little" in response to converting U.S. gas to LNG, the economics just doesn't work. At $6 mcf, (the peak price of U.S. gas promised by export supporters), the gas shipped by Freeport and Sabine pass would sell for $120 million a day. The oil this gas could have displaced will cost the U.S. $350 million. You can't help our economy exporting cheap gas and replacing it with expensive oil.

If instead the U.S. used overall projected increases in gas production to back out 3 million barrels of oil by 2020, the decrease in demand would drive down the price of oil by $20/barrel, which would cut the US oil bill by another $400 million/day, in addition to saving the $350 for the oil saved. That's the real price of gas exports -- not getting off oil.

Of course, U.S. oil companies don't want to see the price of oil drop by $20, and they are delighted to profit both ways -- on LNG exports and greater oil imports. But it's hardly good for the U.S. as a whole.

Why don't the studies the media are relying on reveal this? Because, quite simply, they ignore inconvenient truths. The official government study on the basis of which these LNG exports were approved completely ignores the benefits of using natural gas to replace oil, saying it simply isn't an option -- even though countries from Iran to Pakistan and Argentina have already done it. These studies also fail to account for the cheaper oil which results from lower demand -- because they assume lower demand is impossible.

This obfuscation extends throughout the conversation. The official DOE study on the basis of which the U.S. government approved these terminals dealt with the issue or price increases by promising that we will export primarily incremental natural gas -- gas we would not otherwise have produced.

But when challenged on the possible environmental impacts of this increased gas production, the government declared that it didn't need to study them, because such production increases were too speculative! (For the record, Freeport and Sabine pass will export as much gas as the entire state of Pennsylvania produced from the Marcellus Shale in 2012.) Evidently billions of cubic feet of natural gas for export will simply be conjured up in the White House press office.

Natural gas export advocates should have to use real numbers to back up their arguments, and they shouldn't get away with hand waving references to "free trade" and "jobs." It's all about higher prices -- they know it -- we ought to make them admit it.

A veteran leader in the environmental movement, Carl Pope spent the last 18 years of his career at the Sierra Club as CEO and chairman. He's now the principal advisor at Inside Straight Strategies, looking for the underlying economics that link sustainability and economic development. Mr. Pope is co-author -- along with Paul Rauber --of Strategic Ignorance: Why the Bush Administration Is Recklessly Destroying a Century of Environmental Progress, which the New York Review of Books called "a splendidly fierce book."

Leilani Münter: Why We Need to Fight for Tesla

2013-05-23T20:47:08Z

I spent last weekend driving a Tesla Model S from Washington DC to Atlantic City and back. Never before in my life have I driven a car that has started so many conversations. People were gathering around the car as it was parked at the supercharging station in Delaware. "Is this a Tesla? I heard about this car on the news. Can I get a look inside?" Photos were snapped. A woman chimed in, "I saw one of these last week in Virginia and I followed it just so I could check it out." Heads were turning and tongues were wagging.

On Wednesday, Tesla made headlines when the company wired nearly half a billion dollars ($451.8M) to the Department of Energy, repaying their full loan with interest nine years early, and becoming the only American car company to have fully repaid the government.

As a race car driver, my opinion on the performance of the vehicle is this: The Tesla Model S is a masterpiece. With incredible power from the moment you touch the accelerator (no need to build up rpm) to a world-class suspension coupled with the lowest center of gravity of any sedan, this car from top to bottom is the best street vehicle I have ever driven. And when something is this good, it is sure to make some waves. And Tesla is doing just that.

Just recently in my home state of North Carolina, a legislative proposal was unanimously approved by the State Senate's Commerce Committee that could make it illegal for Tesla to sell to NC state residents, or at the very least sell in any way other than via the established dealer network. The irony of lawmakers trying to ban the sale of an American-built, Motor Trend Car of the Year that sources from over 30 manufacturers in NC makes me shake my head and wonder.

You know the old adage, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Well, as the laws of logic and physics tell us, if something is true, then the opposite must also be true, or in this case, "If it is broke, then fix it."

In a world of environmental calamity and decay, greed, a corrupt political system, lobbyists, and special interest groups, things are definitely broke and need to be fixed.

And that is why we need to fight for Tesla.

It is not just that Tesla has developed a super-sexy car that has garnered a slew of awards, including Consumer Reports' proclamation that it may be, in fact, the best car of all time. No, it is about so much more than that.

The environmental argument for Tesla making it is long past debate. The need to get off fossil fuels is (almost) universally accepted as a must. The U.S. currently spends $1 billion per day on foreign oil, and some of this money is going to countries that don't like us very much. Our dependence on oil is a national security threat, and every time we fill up with a gallon of gasoline, a portion of that money is going toward putting bullets in guns shot at our soldiers. As long as we are dependent on oil for our transportation, we will be giving our money to the countries with the most oil. While the Model S is definitely not going to be Tesla's car for the masses, for every Model S sold, a BMW, Mercedes, or Audi with a combined fuel efficiency of 14-21 MPG is not on the road. With cars below the $25,000 price range now routinely getting 35MPG or better, this is a good place to focus. Tesla has openly discussed plans for a mass-market car priced at approximately $30,000 in the next three to four years.

Tesla must succeed because it is fighting the establishment. Free market economics is touted by conservatives, and yet almost routinely now we are seeing legislation being introduced designed solely to block the competition that Tesla is bringing to the old guard.

The bill that has now been passed to the House not only attempts to block the sale of a Tesla directly to a consumer, it is also seemingly encroaching on the fundamental right of every American to choose what they want to drive. It is also unconstitutional to regulate interstate commerce.

Supporters of the bill argue that Tesla selling directly from the manufacturer to the customer is "unfair competition." It is the same sales model used by Apple Computers and Ikea's furniture, so why should cars be any different? If we believe in letting the free market decide, then the market has spoken and it likes Tesla. Last quarter Tesla outsold Mercedes, BMW, and Audi. If Tesla has produced a better product and found a better sales model that consumers prefer, then the free market is stating very clearly: the competition needs to improve.

Lawmakers supporting the bill have also stated that the bill "protects consumers." How is forcing North Carolinians to cross state lines to test drive and purchase a car protecting us? The truth is, of course, that the bill is not protecting us, it is protecting the dealers. When I asked this question of a Senator's office who is a co-sponsor of the bill, the Senator's aide finally admitted to me that the Senator is helping to protect dealers over consumers. He told me this is likely "because there are far more GM and Ford dealerships in his district than Tesla owners."

How can public officials, elected to serve the best interests of the American people, so blatantly go against the oath they swore when taking up the position in public office? The answer is simple and something that we are seeing more of every day: Public servants are no longer a voice for their constituents, but rather puppets for special interest groups and corporations, funders of the next election cycle.

With the stronghold that these groups now hold over our officials, it becomes clear that the only way to get the voice back to the people is to diminish the power that these groups wield. And this is where companies like Tesla come in. By challenging the status quo and not just doing something because it is the way it has always been done, by being inventive and innovative and thinking outside the box, and by listening to the consumer and delivering what they actually want in a way that is convenient for them, companies such as Tesla and Apple are able to bypass the old vanguard and provide the real essence of a free market.

And herein lies why the current institution is so afraid. What these companies are bringing is competition, and yes, it is unfair. It is unfair because for so long these folks in the automotive business, at car dealerships and the oil and gas industry, have been able to make up their own set of rules; rules that, when you look closely, are designed to make them richer at the expense of the consumer. And now along come companies like Tesla and they are re-writing the rulebook and guess what? Consumers are taking notice and like this new playing field.

This is an American-built car that has surpassed all the competition. After all the naysayers touted that "there is no market for electric cars," those same people are calling it "unfair." The competition is very nervous, and they should be. The result is this bill, which, if anything is right in our state, should die in the House.

Tesla has arrived, and North Carolinians should have the choice to buy one if they desire. I plan to place my own order with Tesla soon -- before it's made illegal and I am forced to haggle with some car dealer over whether or not floor mats are included with the price of my car.

Paul Brandeis Raushenbush: Talking With Anne Heche About God, Love And 'Save Me'

2013-05-23T20:13:58Z

Sometimes surprising and good things happen completely out of the blue. Like this interview.

I'm at the gym last night when I got an email from the author A.M. Homes to tell me that she is with Anne Heche, who is in town to talk about her new comedy 'Save Me' that debuts tonight, May 23rd on NBC. Given that the new show features a Cinncinati housewife who can talk to God, they were wondering if I might be interested in sitting down for a few minutes to talk.

Sure, I said eagerly. When? Um, how about tonight?

Thirty minutes later (and showered) we were in my apartment, A.M. and Kathy Greenberg listening while Anne and I had one of the most interesting God talks I have had in a long time. At the end of our hour together I turned to Anne and remarked, 'I think you and your show have created a whole new theology.'

It is a theology that I believe will resonate in a world that is looking for new ways to talk about spirituality and God and how different those ideas can be to different people. And they do it with comedy! My interview with Ms. Heche has made me eager to watch what looks to be a very funny, brave and timely series that puts God on primetime in a way that we have never seen him/her before.

***

Talk about your own spiritual path and how you got to where you are today.

Spirituality has been a question mark for my life. I was raised in a very religious family in Ohio. The only thing we could do was read the Bible and religion was the thing that my family used as an excuse to not talk about anything. My parents had an addiction to talk about Jesus and the love of God and God saving us. Well, I thought, I have to be Jesus or I am not worth loving.

So, that became my path. I really had to figure that out. So I have been on the journey of figuring out what my relationship is with God and spirituality; what God is, and what God can be. How it can save you, how it can harm you. The many questions that have filtered through my life around that contradiction I was born into. I now feel like I am in a miraculous place of understanding that I am a voice to open up the conversation about Love.

How has spirituality helped or been a source of confusion for you?

I think spirituality helped give me a sense that there was something greater in the world that could be tapped into as a source of strength that is Love. And by Love I mean caring, conscious, gentle, things that were contradicted in my life at home.

How did you sense that loving presence was there given that you didn't find it in your home life?

When I looked into the eyes of someone and trusted them, that connection was bigger than what I had. I could give something back to that -- it was a trust, which was probably related to faith for me. So, it became a very real thing for me what God is. God is bigger than me; God is in everyone.

Were there any specific people you met along the way who helped you realize this?

I had tried different kinds of therapy and a lot of searching, but trust really came later in life when I had kind of decided that I was not comfortable being here on this earth. It took, and I wrote a book about it, it took friendship, love, it took someone -- Kathy -- (points to Kathy Greenberg) coming to save me when I was in the hospital to reconnect me with the understanding of that which was bigger than me.

How do you talk about God now with your children?

I've taken my children to church and I've told them that I want them to experience all religion. We talk about love and God very openly.

People talk to God or don't talk to God or have a relationship with spirituality and it is liquid. Sometimes it feels close and we feel connected and sometimes far away. Whether we are connected to a God that we personally define or not, or are agnostic, you can find God when you meditate, you can find God in the trees.

Everybody has it somewhere and the reason I was interested in doing the show was because I wanted to open up that conversation to say that it is all possible. Everybody has a different connection with what gives them love, hope, a moral center -- how do we define that for ourselves? And how do we help others to be encouraged along the way to discover it if they are lost along the way.

This show is about a woman who did lose her way and got a second chance to try to make it right. And we all have that chance to make it right, and isn't it that opportunity what God is? The opportunity to be who we want to be, to live openly freely, without judgment, in a community that elevates us to live in that joy.

In the show the woman you play, Beth, faces death at the very first episode. How does facing mortality or a severe trial affect our awareness of spirituality -- in your character but also in your own life?

We talk about that in so many stories -- sometimes you need to go to the bottom, sometimes you need to go to the darkness -- it is often where you get the helping hand. A loss or a gaping hole of need is a unique place to start a story. It forces you to take a rough look at yourself and say 'I need to make a different choice.' And God comes in there. God tends to turn on the light when we are asking for help.

What are some of the reactions of the other characters on the show to your character when she says she talks to God?

When my character tells her husband 'I've been saved by God,' he says: 'please tell me you said Todd, not God.' He then says 'C'mon Beth you've never even been to church.'

Because my character has never been to church, when she finds God it is her own understanding of what God is. The audience never sees Him or Her -- my character calls God a he/she -- but God is a feeling, a knowing, an overwhelming thing that happens to her. It is never defined for the audience. Only the reactions of others around her.

So, in the second episode my friend invites Beth to church. And Beth thinks 'oh, I probably should go if I am a person who talks to God.' So I walk into church for the first time and God sings through me and I'm absolutely floored that I know a religious song. Later I go up to the minister and say that God talks to me and he says 'Good for you.' And while I am standing there someone else comes up to him and says he also talks to God. And I say, 'oh you talk to God too?' but he talks to God through a Furby so it is a little different.

The conversation about God scares so many people, but why can't we laugh about it? And that's part of what I am trying to do with this comedy.

What is the riskiest thing about the show?

The riskiest thing is that she is definitely talking to God. That is why the show will work, everybody thinks she's crazy, but she is definitely taking to God -- it's so clear.

Have you talked to your mother about the show?

I feel like I am discussing spirituality in our show but she is a very strict religious person and does things that we disagree on. And she has been very harmful to me. But I did reach out to her and tell her that I thought she might be interested that I was doing a show about a Cincinnati housewife who talks to God. Because I knew it was probably going to be something that she was confronted with.

We have probably exchanged four emails in 10 years. She worked with Falwell, she has a whole therapy practice changing gay people to straight, we are not on the same page about what God is. And she wrote today saying -- 'I was in church on Sunday and everyone is talking about your show.'

My life has brought me to a very unique place where I could not be at more opposite ends of what I believe God is. Yet I was born into a very specific God consciousness. And now my mother, who practices things I believe are the opposite of love, is having to confront the fact that the girl she disowned for loving a woman is now talking about God as love on national television. It is almost hard to believe that's happening. And I always believed that God was love, I always believed.

Do we ever find out more about God on the show?

(SPOILER ALERT -- DO NOT READ ON IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHO PLAYS GOD IN SAVE ME)

In the last episode I decide I have to run this marathon and raise money for this hospital that is closing but I have this 104 degree fever, and I don't make it and I die and meet God.

It was such a fun episode. My character Beth has these conversations with herself about who she would like God to be. God isn't clear to Beth, except it is clear that it is God. But Beth wishes God were as clear as you sitting in a room telling her what to do. But she only has herself until she dies and walks into this theater and sees God and and Beth says -- Betty White?

God is Betty White?

Yes! So we are doing the read through for that episode and I didn't know who they wrote and I am doing it in front of all the executives for the show and I read Betty White. And I start laughing because I don't read the script until I am sitting with everyone so we know what works and doesn't work right off the bat. And I started laughing -- Betty White. And of course that is the perfect God for television, it's the perfect God for me, and the perfect God all around.

So my character sits down with Betty White and Beth says to Betty: 'I have problems with you.' And Betty White says 'well I have problems with you too.'

And then we sit down in this theater and watch Beth on the screen go through my life and all the different times that she was God in my life. She was my best friend who was a black boy when I was new in school in second grade, and another time God was a stripper, and Beth is sitting next to Betty (God) and says -- 'that was you?'

We watch how God has been there the whole time, picking out the people I was supposed to be with, and the husband I married so that I could come into this world to be this person who talks about love.

And that's where the 7th episode ends.

Beth wakes up, alive with the realization that she actually has had God at her side her whole life.

Jared Bernstein: Stopping International Tax Avoidance: What Are the Best Alternatives?

2013-05-23T18:46:09Z

Both the Washington Post and the New York Times have articles today on a topic of great importance for the tax debate in advanced economies. The pieces discuss how officials from the UK and European economies are being pushed by their citizens to go after the type of tax avoidance engaged in by Apple, Google, GE, and countless other multinationals.

There are at least two reasons this development is important. First, technology and tax law have led to the emergence of what international tax analyst Ed Kleinbard calls "stateless income," a phenomenon that was on full display at the Apple hearing yesterday, where the company's spokesperson said in so many words, "you can't tax this income because it only exists where tax liabilities do not exist."

It's like some newly discovered physical particle that can only exist in a state of non-taxation.

Second, and this is very important to forthcoming policy, which is what this post is really about, a strong American argument in favor of territoriality, a regime favored by the multinationals but opposed by those who would shut down the types of tax sheltering on display yesterday, is that we have to go there because Europe is solidly there. In fact, as these articles show, Europeans are closely questioning the costs and benefits of the current system.

There are no global estimates of how much revenue governments lose through tax avoidance or evasion schemes.

But recent research by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) indicates that the problem is massive. Foreign direct investment, for example, in theory represents a long-term commitment by a firm in one country to owning productive capacity -- a plant or building, for example -- in another. But data show billions of dollars in foreign direct investment moving through small nations such as Bermuda and the Bahamas, suggesting that the money is not invested there but simply used to set up a corporate presence, for tax purposes, before moving to a final destination elsewhere.

So, what's needed in this debate is a robust discussion of alternatives to territorial regimes for taxing international income. I can't do this justice right now, but I encourage enterprising tax scholars and journalists to teach us about the relative pluses and minuses of these and other options.

-- "Tough territorial" As shown in the link above, territorial systems apply no home country taxes to foreign earnings by MNC's. "Tough" territorial un-exempts some portion of foreign earnings from home country taxes. The larger the share that's not exempted, the "tougher" the system. Works a bit like minimum or alternative tax rules.

-- End deferral, lower the rate. If US multinationals could not defer their foreign earnings (hold them abroad to avoid US taxes), they wouldn't benefit from the machinations to make them stateless. The extra revenue that this would generate could be used to lower the corporate rate. The Apple guy said he'd support closing loopholes if it would buy his firm a lower rate, even if it meant they'd have to pay higher taxes. Let's see what he says to this. (I'd be amazed if he would accept it, which is always the hitch with these "broader base, lower rate" appeals.)

-- Sales apportionment. I mentioned this yesterday (see Apple link above) -- here's a piece by Bill Parks explaining the idea. I also heard tax scholar Alan Auerbach support this alternative yesterday on the radio. Firms pay taxes on their worldwide profits to country X based on the share of their sales in X. No sales in the Caymans, no application of Cayman "tax law" to the earnings you book there.

It's a solid, simple idea, but a knowledgeable friend views it as a version of a territorial system, because it's conceivable that under this system an American firm, for example, would pay little or no taxes here if all their sales are made abroad (e.g., I believe that 2/3 of Apple's sales come from outside of the U.S.).

Gotta run, but you get the idea. There's maybe some momentum for reform of this international tax avoidance problem, but you can't beat something with nothing. I'd love to see the echo chamber of this part of the debate filled with alternatives like these versus territoriality.

This post originally appeared at Jared Bernstein's On The Economy blog.

Robert L. Borosage: Washington's Sinkhole. Literally.

2013-05-23T17:22:26Z

On Tuesday, a "sinkhole" suddenly sank in Washington, D.C. three blocks from the White House. Not a metaphor, but a massive hole in the road as "long as a Ford Explorer," double the width of a train car and 17 feet deep. The asphalt eroded around a metal plate covering potholes in the street and collapsed over a sewer line that was laid in 1897. The sinkhole will take at least five days to "repair."

There is an idiocy about our current national politics that is simply stupefying. We are sitting idly, watching, and suffering, as our nation disintegrates into a run-down backwater. Our airports are a global disgrace. Our railroads, broadband, energy grid all outmoded by international standards. A bridge falls every other day. Our sewage systems are overwhelmed by normal use and collapse in the extreme weather that has become the national norm. Sinkholes now are becoming a life-threatening peril.

At the same time, over 20 million people are in need of full-time work. The construction industry has still not recovered from the housing collapse. The Federal government can borrow money for interest rates near zero. Yet instead of grabbing this opportunity to rebuild the country, Washington is focused on cutting budgets, an austerity that clearly costs jobs and impedes the recovery.

Any business leader with a whit of sense would say this is the perfect time to borrow money to rebuild the country, making investments now that will make us more competitive in the future. That's why the head of the Business Roundtable, former Republican Governor John Engler says it. At the top of his wish list for the economy is borrowing money to invest in roads and infrastructure. The resulting growth will more than repay the virtually free money. We'll end up with a more competitive economy, a healthier and modern infrastructure that will make lives easier and safer, more jobs, more income, more taxes and less debt.

This is literally a no-brainer. Yet when president proposes even a modest infrastructure bill, the Republican Congress rules it dead on arrival.

If desired, Congress could even get the investment done without adding to the debt. The Federal Reserve purchases $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities every month. Yes, every month. (It also purchases another $45 billion of Treasury bonds). This is designed to keep interest rates low -- and is part of the multi-trillion dollar rescue of the big banks, helping them slowly shed the garbage in their basements.

This program -- known as "quantitative easing" to befuddle observers -- helps to sustain the recovery, despite the counterproductive budget austerity. But flooding the banks with money is a very inefficient way to create jobs and growth. Banks can sit on the dough, or, worse, speculate across the world, gambling with what is literally the "house's money." Cheap money is more likely to spur mergers and acquisitions rather than new jobs.

A functional Congress would create a national infrastructure bank -- designed to make vital investments in rebuilding the country. It could issue bonds that the Federal Reserve would purchase with interest rates near zero. If the Fed spend $20 billion on infrastructure bonds, it would help insure against blowing up the next bubble, while actually putting people to work doing work that has to be done.

Wall Street, of course, objects to this heretical notion. If the Fed is going to print money, then the big banks make certain they are at the door with their hands out. But there is no reason for Congress not to act -- other than the bitter truth, as Senator Dick Durbin exclaimed, that the big banks "own the place."

"Internal improvements" used to have conservative support. Alexander Hamilton championed them. The Whigs under Henry Clay. Republican Abe Lincoln built the transcontinental railroads and the land grant colleges; Eisenhower the interstate highways. A lot of money was wasted. A lot of insiders got rich. But the country benefited from creating a modern, increasingly efficient infrastructure.

Now the need is pressing; the money is cheap -- or free. The work is needed. It is simply idiotic that the Congress refuses to act.

We know Republicans scorn aid to the poor. Food stamps, infant nutrition, pre-school, they argue, offer not a safety net, but in Rep. Paul Ryan's words, a "hammock." The Tea Partiers seem intent on sacking sensible regulation of the air, water, public health, and worker safety.

But repairing roads and rail, building modern airports, keeping our broadband and energy grid at world class standards, making sure the sewers don't leak, strengthening the sinews for the extreme weather that is upon us -- this isn't an ideological question. It is just common sense.

That this isn't getting done now reveals exactly how extreme, how corrupt, and how destructive our current politics are.

Carol J. Carter: What You Do in College Matters Most: How to Get the Best Return on Your College Investment

2013-05-23T17:05:54Z

Many students learned last month where they will be starting college next year. Some students were thrilled, some were disappointed, some were put on a wait list. No matter who you are or where you are going to college, the most important question any student starting college next fall should ask is:

How will I get the best return on my college investment in time and money?

This is the question that few students ponder before they start college. For the savvy student who does take the time to reflect on this important question, it can mean the difference between a college degree that leads to personal and professional success and one that has you couch surfing between your parents and friends.

The first step to improving your ROI for your time spent in college is to use the summer before college to consider:

Why are you going to college?
What do you want out of college?
Who are the people who can help you?
What are your strengths and weaknesses?
How hard are you willing to work to make the most out of college?
What do you want to do when you graduate?

As you consider these questions, think about the other ways you can stand apart from the millions of other students who are starting college. You are unique. Your responsibility and opportunity during college is to not only take the required classes for your degree, but to develop your interests and abilities to the fullest to make your college education different from the other freshmen who will graduate with the same degree.

Early on, Will understood the value of an internship. First trying his luck with some smaller firms, Will's academic advisor eventually introduced him to a Boeing representative, and after a short interview, he was offered an internship with Boeing. Now, Will is living in Seattle and is working on the water tanks that are fitted on the 727 jets millions of people fly every day. Will's experience with Boeing allowed him to apply his classroom knowledge to work that people in his industry do daily.

The next step to improving your ROI is to take action. College life is fast, and before you know it, you'll be in your cap and gown -- hopefully not regretting that you didn't carve out the time for an internship, make more connections, or get involved in an activity. Make an activity action plan for freshman year that will help you fulfill the college goals you outlined in the summer.

What is one club, internship, job shadow that could help you work on your weaknesses?
What is one thing you can get involved in that will help you learn about different opportunities in the career fields that interest you?

Jordyn wants to become an event planner. Jordyn realized that to get her dream job, she must network in addition to earning her degree. She accepted an internship with a wedding planner in Denver during her freshman year, where she assists the planner in making each wedding special. Her success in the internship, and her dedication to the classroom, makes Jordyn an integral part of the company. Now, she is on pace to plan weddings on her own by her junior year. Jordyn's balance of school life and an internship ensures she will have her dream job when she graduates college whether it is planning weddings, the next political rally, or an educational conference.

The students who "expand" the most by gaining mentors, taking on responsibility in clubs and organizations, contributing in their part-time work, taking classes with the hardest professors, securing meaningful summer or winter internships, and traveling to the far reaches of the world--literally or figuratively -- become the college graduates who have the most to offer the world and a prospective employer upon graduation.

Why? Because undergraduates who work hard, think, plan ahead, and know their strengths and weaknesses become employees who bring valuable, sharply honed talents to the table. They haven't necessarily played it safe. They've risked, they've failed, they've picked themselves up, and they've tried again. Through it all, they've maintained a strong, positive outlook in the face of any obstacles they've experienced.

John did not want his shy personality to stand in the way of his college years. To develop his social skills, John ran for freshman class president. He put on a suit and stood outside the dining hall shaking hands with everyone who entered asking for their vote. John won and went on to become president of the entire student body his senior year. John overcame his initial shyness, stretching his comfort zone and became one of the most well-known people on campus. His involvement with the student government guided John to become a political science major. John buttressed his college education with extracurricular activities strengthening his appeal to employers, while building confidence that would help with his career.

Success in college and life comes from gaining knowledge and skills. The more you take responsibility for carving your own path of adventure, the more your true abilities will emerge. The grit that you show in your willingness to see opportunity, help others to see their gifts and talents, embrace increasingly more complex challenges and, most importantly, be accountable to your best outcomes shows others what you are made of and what you can contribute.

Being a straight-A student will do little for you outside the world of academia. Being a straight-A, or below, student who also got involved, risked, and gained real-world experience is someone noteworthy. Get the best ROI by seeking out learning opportunities beyond the classroom. You will have great value in the world outside of college, whether you decide to start your own business, teach ESL in Dubai, start a non-profit in Kuala Lumpur or join an established blue chip company to reinvent the modern age.

Mike Hogan: Brad Pitt's World War Z Isn't Just 'Mayhem Porn'

2013-05-23T16:56:16Z

I saw World War Z last night at a small screening at the MoMA. There were a few journalists, some industry types and a pretty large collection of celebrities: Bruce Willis and his wife, Emma Heming; Sting and Trudie Styler; Kevin Bacon; Jemima Kirke; one of the Olsen twins (I can never tell which I'm looking at); Oliver Stone; and Darren Aronofsky, in front of whom I humiliated myself at the post-party by mistaking him for screenwriter Damon Lindelof. ("You owe me one!," he said, laughing, as he walked away. Indeed I do.)

Before seeing the film, I read the Vanity Fair cover story about how the filmmakers scrapped the original ending and created a whole new one, written on very short notice by Lindelof and his friend Drew Goddard and shot with about 20 actors. Once you've read the VF story, you'll be able to see where the shift happens -- it's just over an hour in, when Pitt leaves Jerusalem on a plane. I don't want to spoil the movie, so I'll just say this: instead of getting even bigger, the story gets much smaller. The original ending had Pitt squaring off with zillions of zombies; this one has him facing a more personal, even intellectual challenge. There's action, but it's confined.

I think it works, though I suspect some people who see the movie cold will wonder why its scale contracted instead of expanding. The reason, according to the article, was to keep things focused on the characters.

Brad Pitt introduced the movie and spent a good long time socializing at the party afterward. Earlier in the night, he made a surprise appearance in New Jersey. So clearly, he's invested in the success of World War Z. One journalist I talked to, who didn't like the movie as much as I had, wondered why Pitt had bothered to make it. This person thought Pitt should stick to making films like Moneyball. It's an interesting question. I think Pitt, whose company, Plan B, produced the film, would like to prove that he can create and sustain a bankable franchise. But I also think the themes of the movie appealed to him. He liked the idea of a global action movie. There's also an environmental critique bubbling under the surface of World War Z, even if it starts strong (the opening montage is heavy on global-warming references) and quickly peters away. But maybe the biggest selling point was the emphasis on family. Pitt's character, Gerry Lane, begins the movie as a stay-at-home dad, and the safety of his wife (played by Mireille Enos of The Killing) and two daughters remains his primary concern throughout.

That family focus is one reason World War Z felt like something other than just another serving of apocalyptic mayhem porn (though there's plenty of that). And I think that's why it was smart to reduce the scale for the last hour, reminding us that Pitt's character is a man and a father -- not just a soulless killing machine.

I'm curious to see how this all looks in 3D (before the film, Paramount CEO Brad Grey informed the audience that director Marc Forster is still finishing the 3D conversion), and I'm curious to know what a paying audience will think. But for now, at least, the dark rumors that World War Z would be dead-on-arrival appear to have been greatly exaggerated.

Eva Moon: 'Who Are You To Judge Me For It?'

2013-05-23T16:38:51Z

Many people were shocked by the drastic measures Angelina Jolie took to prevent breast cancer. They ask: Why not just be more vigilant and catch it early instead?

As someone who's been there, let me take you on a little journey into surveillance when you're BRCA positive.

You're sitting in the radiologist's waiting room. You had a mammogram last week, and they called you back for a second look because there was something they couldn't quite see well enough and since you're BRCA positive, they're extra cautious. Double that if you have dense breast tissue, which makes your breasts a particularly evil Where's Waldo? scene. (Mine were so dense that when I had exams, doctors would go round up all the med students and interns so they could learn what dense breasts felt like.)

You're cooling your heels in the waiting room rather than heading home because the radiologist wants to talk to you. Swell. Your phone rings. It's your sister informing you mom is back in the hospital -- her cancer has returned. The nurse calls your name. The radiologist found a small mass in your left breast. A little calcification. Probably nothing. But it has a tail on it -- possibly a sign of something moving along a duct.

"We need to biopsy it. Have you had aspirin in the past ten days?"

"Yesterday."

They set an appointment for a biopsy in nine days, which you sweat out, while your brain rummages through the closet of your brain, trying on every nightmare. Biopsy day finally arrives, but that morning there's worse news: Mom's cancer has metastasized throughout her body. They're going to try chemo, but it doesn't look good. You lie face down on the table, breast dangling and harpooned by long needles, imagining the great mother-daughter days ahead, bald and vomiting into matching plastic trays.

Then you wait some more, trying to get a little work done, trying not to snap at people you love. The call finally comes. Benign! It's like your birthday, New Year's Eve and getting out of jail all at once!

All too soon you're back again. Most BRCA1 breast cancers are triple-negative -- the kind that can blossom and spread in just a couple months, so you can't wait long for another check. This time it's an MRI. They put an IV in your arm for the dye and squeeze you into a narrow, clanking tube. It takes about a year and you wonder if you'll ever breathe (or hear) again. The next day the phone rings. They found a suspicious mass in your right breast. It looks like a tangle of abnormal blood vessels. Swell. This time you were smart and swore off aspirin weeks ago, so you get an appointment in a few days to come back for an MRI-guided biopsy. Back in the clanking tube! Only this time, with more needles.

Then you wait. Again. Jumping every time the phone rings. Wondering how disfigured you'll be after a lumpectomy, how badly radiation will burn your skin, who will make soup and sit with you and stroke your brow now that mom is gone. The call finally comes. Benign again! It was a complex cyst. Once more, you beat the reaper, but the celebratory bloom is off the rose.

So, let me ask you: How many times will you do this, knowing they'll find something every time? Maybe you've got decent insurance now, but what happens when you retire? When you change or lose your job? Who pays for all those MRIs at $1,000+ a pop? If you have a mastectomy now, it's done and paid for. If you have a mastectomy now, it's just a mastectomy. If you wait, it's a mastectomy, chemo, radiation and possibly death. The future is a vast unknown with a giant C on it.

Let me ask you. Who is the real you? The happy, focused, vital woman who made the drastic choice to "mutilate herself" and then move on? Or the physically intact, natural "as God made you" woman who lives in dread of the next round of surveillance, who, with nearly certain odds of the deadliest form of breast cancer, knows that her dread is justified?

Let me ask you. When they talk about the numbers of women who choose surveillance, how long do you think that's for? How many switch camps after a few rounds -- either because they can't bear it anymore or because cancer made the decision for them? Some do stick it out and I salute their courage. I couldn't.

Let me ask you. Whose decision is it? And who are you to judge me for it?

Jordan Schultz: Frank Vogel-Roy Hibbert Fiasco to Blame for Pacers Loss to Heat

2013-05-23T16:01:10Z

A vital element of NBA Playoff basketball is breaking down end of game decisions.

In the case of Game 1 of the East finals, the most vital -- and costly -- decision occurred when Indiana head coach Frank Vogel took out center Roy Hibbert on two consecutive defensive possessions in overtime. Vogel's intentions were clear; Hibbert, despite being an elite rim protector who allows under 40 percent shooting at the rim, per ESPN, could potentially have been a liability against Miami's smaller lineup. Both times however, the Heat found driving lanes and an open rim without him on the floor.

Pacers coach Frank Vogel told reporters "I would say we'll probably have him in next time," after the Game 1 OT loss. (Getty Images)

"I would say we'll probably have him in next time," Vogel said after the Pacers' 103-102 defeat. Paul George added: "[Hibbert] does an amazing job of protecting the rim. I'm 100 percent sure he would've been there."

But hindsight is 20-20 and the bottom line is that Indiana -- after a gift-wrapped win thanks to a perplexing Dwyane Wade foul on George's desperation three-point attempt -- blew a golden opportunity to steal home court advantage away from the rusty Heat.

The mistake that Vogel made was letting Eric Spoelstra dictate his lineup. Spoelstra used marksman Shane Battier as a decoy four-man to spread the floor and also utilized Chris Bosh as his five-man. More importantly, LeBron's eyes lit up like a kid whose about to bust open his first piñata. Of course on paper, Bosh, another terrific shooter, would extend Hibbert away from the hoop and therefore mitigate his ability to protect the paint. But Indiana defended the three-ball better than any team in the league this year for a lot of reasons, and having Hibbert in the paint was as vital as any. Remember, it was Hibbert's massive block on Carmelo Anthony that helped seal Indiana's upset over the Knicks in Game 6 of the second round.

As this series progresses, Vogel will once again be faced with the decision to defend Miami's small ball, spread attack by either countering with quickness or relying on Hibbert and the rotations of a defense that ranked second in points allowed and dominated efficiency-wise during the entire regular season.

Email me at jordan.schultz@huffingtonpost.com or ask me questions about anything sports-related at @Schultz_Report.

Alyssa Silva: Dare to Be Remarkable

2013-05-23T15:27:36Z

When I was five-months-old, I was diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), a motor neuron disease that affects all gross motor skills in the body. At the time of my diagnosis, doctors weren't too familiar with this disease, and there was very little hope for people with it. I was given a mere two and a half years to live by my doctors, in which case my parents were determined to give me the best possible life in those two short years. Against all odds, I proved the doctors wrong; and although this journey hasn't been easy over the years, it's definitely been worth it. I truly owe it all to the love and support that my family has given me since day one.

Throughout my life, there have been times where it feels like the walls are caving in on me. I've been hospitalized countless times in the intensive care unit, not knowing what the next day will bring, and have faced many obstacles because I'm in a wheelchair. It can definitely be scary at times, but I can either choose to live in a life of fear, or I can choose to rise above it. Yes, I have a disease, and, yes, it surely affects my physical abilities, but it doesn't make me any less of a fighter. I learned at a very young age that life is a precious gift, and living in a life of fear will only hold me back from chasing my dreams. This is the life I've been given, and I can promise you I'm always going to make the most of it.

When CineStories approached me with the idea of producing a short documentary about my life, I happily accepted the offer. I'm always looking for different ways to spread awareness on SMA and thought that creating a video would be a great idea. You see, over the past several years there have been numerous breakthroughs in scientific research, and the SMA community is growing increasingly hopeful. At a time like this, it is more important than ever to bring awareness to this disease that affects thousands of people. Scientists are discovering different drugs that could potentially benefit those inflicted with this disease, which is why spreading awareness to Spinal Muscular Atrophy is so crucial right now. We're on the brink of something huge, and that something is a cure.

Oyster: Sticker Shock: 12 Crazy Expensive Hotel Suites

2013-05-23T14:37:19Z

Shelling out thousands of dollars a night for a hotel room may not be in the cards for most of us, but that doesn't mean we can't take a voyeuristic peek at the jaw-dropping suites that command these high price tags. From high-roller villas in Las Vegas to the uber-decadent suite in Istanbul where Madonna shacked up with her beau, these suites are designed to make you drool -- and sold at prices that will make you gag.

-- Kelsey Blodget, Oyster.com

John Dramani Mahama: The Big Push to Defeat HIV & AIDS in Ghana

2013-05-23T14:08:38Z

In late 2002, Ghana became the first country to sign a Global Fund grant. This unique moment of partnership marked a historical turning point for how we behaved as global partners coming together to fight AIDS, TB and malaria, which had devastated the lives of so many of my fellow Ghanaians for too long.

A sick population cannot generate the productivity needed to maintain the acceleration of our economy. Through the war chest as Kofi Annan called it, the international community chose to make an investment in Ghana. It is an investment that is paying off.

Ghana is among the 29 African Countries reported by the WHO to have been able to reduce prevalence of HIV and AIDS over the past decade. The national HIV prevalence has declined from a national high of 3.6 percent in 2003 to 1.5 percent in 2010 and has stabilized since. Prevalence among persons 15-24 years has equally reduced from 3.5 percent in 2003 to 1.5 percent.

While we can be proud of our response, we must recognize that the main challenge in the fight against HIV and AIDS globally is how to ensure Universal Access to prevention, treatment, care and support, and to ensuring zero transmission of new HIV infections in children.

To be able to achieve these laudable goals, especially for us in sub-Saharan Africa, there is the need for us to invest in improving our weak health systems. The inadequate number of health care facilities in many of our countries is a major issue of concern. The rural poor living in remote areas and the poor in our urban slums are the most vulnerable to HIV infections and they are also the ones without access to treatment and care.

The goal of Universal Access to prevention, treatment care and support and to ensuring zero transmission of HIV in children may appear to be a daunting task. But it is achievable. The driving force for realization of this goal is the mobilization of resources for implementation.

The Global Fund has set a goal to raise $15 billion for 2014-2016, which I appeal to international donors to meet, so we can reach our ambitious but achievable targets.

Recognizing the commitment to defeating HIV and AIDS as a shared responsibility, and in the face of stiff competition for scarce budgetary resources, we (Ghana) have committed $75 million to finance the implementation of our National Response.

During these difficult economic times, there is no doubt a discernible sense of donor fatigue among the partners. But we can't let our guard down. We can't slacken our effort at this time. We need a Big Push to defeat this pandemic.

As an international community we share this dream. Mankind has faced daunting health challenges in the past, but standing together we have managed to overcome. We eradicated small pox. We have made significant progress in the fight to eradicate Polio.

In Ghana, we have reduced incidence of malaria in some districts by as much as 70 percent by distributing bed nets and undertaking residual spraying. We can beat HIV and AIDS. But we can do this only if we continue to act together and prioritize HIV and AIDS as a major health threat to our global survival.

Tom Engelhardt: Terracide and the Terrarists

2013-05-23T14:05:44Z

Destroying the Planet for Record Profits

Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com

We have a word for the conscious slaughter of a racial or ethnic group: genocide. And one for the conscious destruction of aspects of the environment: ecocide. But we don’t have a word for the conscious act of destroying the planet we live on, the world as humanity had known it until, historically speaking, late last night. A possibility might be “terracide” from the Latin word for earth. It has the right ring, given its similarity to the commonplace danger word of our era: terrorist.

The truth is, whatever we call them, it’s time to talk bluntly about the terrarists of our world. Yes, I know, 9/11 was horrific. Almost 3,000 dead, massive towers down, apocalyptic scenes. And yes, when it comes to terror attacks, the Boston Marathon bombings weren’t pretty either. But in both cases, those who committed the acts paid for or will pay for their crimes.

In the case of the terrarists -- and here I’m referring in particular to the men who run what may be the most profitable corporations on the planet, giant energy companies like ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, BP, and Shell -- you’re the one who’s going to pay, especially your children and grandchildren. You can take one thing for granted: not a single terrarist will ever go to jail, and yet they certainly knew what they were doing.

It wasn’t that complicated. In recent years, the companies they run have been extracting fossil fuels from the Earth in ever more frenetic and ingenious ways. The burning of those fossil fuels, in turn, has put record amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. Only this month, the CO2 level reached 400 parts per million for the first time in human history. A consensus of scientists has long concluded that the process was warming the world and that, if the average planetary temperature rose more than two degrees Celsius, all sorts of dangers could ensue, including seas rising high enough to inundate coastal cities, increasingly intense heat waves, droughts, floods, ever more extreme storm systems, and so on.

How to Make Staggering Amounts of Money and Do In the Planet

None of this was exactly a mystery. It’s in the scientific literature. NASA scientist James Hansen first publicized the reality of global warming to Congress in 1988. It took a while -- thanks in part to the terrarists -- but the news of what was happening increasingly made it into the mainstream. Anybody could learn about it.

Those who run the giant energy corporations knew perfectly well what was going on and could, of course, have read about it in the papers like the rest of us. And what did they do? They put their money into funding think tanks, politicians, foundations, and activists intent on emphasizing “doubts” about the science (since it couldn’t actually be refuted); they and their allies energetically promoted what came to be known as climate denialism. Then they sent their agents and lobbyists and money into the political system to ensure that their plundering ways would not be interfered with. And in the meantime, they redoubled their efforts to get ever tougher and sometimes “dirtier” energy out of the ground in ever tougher and dirtier ways.

The peak oil people hadn’t been wrong when they suggested years ago that we would soon hit a limit in oil production from which decline would follow. The problem was that they were focused on traditional or “conventional” liquid oil reserves obtained from large reservoirs in easy-to-reach locations on land or near to shore. Since then, the big energy companies have invested a remarkable amount of time, money, and (if I can use that word) energy in the development of techniques that would allow them to recover previously unrecoverable reserves (sometimes by processes that themselves burn striking amounts of fossil fuels): fracking, deep-water drilling, and tar-sands production, among others.

They also began to go after huge deposits of what energy expert Michael Klare calls “extreme” or “tough” energy -- oil and natural gas that can only be acquired through the application of extreme force or that requires extensive chemical treatment to be usable as a fuel. In many cases, moreover, the supplies being acquired like heavy oil and tar sands are more carbon-rich than other fuels and emit more greenhouse gases when consumed. These companies have even begun using climate change itself -- in the form of a melting Arctic -- to exploit enormous and previously unreachable energy supplies . With the imprimatur of the Obama administration, Royal Dutch Shell, for example, has been preparing to test out possible drilling techniques in the treacherous waters off Alaska.

Call it irony, if you will, or call it a nightmare, but Big Oil evidently has no qualms about making its next set of profits directly off melting the planet. Its top executives continue to plan their futures (and so ours), knowing that their extremely profitable acts are destroying the very habitat, the very temperature range that for so long made life comfortable for humanity.

Their prior knowledge of the damage they are doing is what should make this a criminal activity. And there are corporate precedents for this, even if on a smaller scale. The lead industry, the asbestos industry, and the tobacco companies all knew the dangers of their products, made efforts to suppress the information or instill doubt about it even as they promoted the glories of what they made, and went right on producing and selling while others suffered and died.

And here’s another similarity: with all three industries, the negative results conveniently arrived years, sometimes decades, after exposure and so were hard to connect to it. Each of these industries knew that the relationship existed. Each used that time-disconnect as protection. One difference: if you were a tobacco, lead, or asbestos exec, you might be able to ensure that your children and grandchildren weren’t exposed to your product. In the long run, that’s not a choice when it comes to fossil fuels and CO2, as we all live on the same planet (though it's also true that the well-off in the temperate zones are unlikely to be the first to suffer).

If Osama bin Laden’s 9/11 plane hijackings or the Tsarnaev brothers’ homemade bombs constitute terror attacks, why shouldn’t what the energy companies are doing fall into a similar category (even if on a scale that leaves those events in the dust)? And if so, then where is the national security state when we really need it? Shouldn’t its job be to safeguard us from terrarists and terracide as well as terrorists and their destructive plots?

The Alternatives That Weren’t

It didn’t have to be this way.

On July 15, 1979, at a time when gas lines, sometimes blocks long, were a disturbing fixture of American life, President Jimmy Carter spoke directly to the American people on television for 32 minutes, calling for a concerted effort to end the country’s oil dependence on the Middle East. “To give us energy security,” he announced,

“I am asking for the most massive peacetime commitment of funds and resources in our nation's history to develop America's own alternative sources of fuel -- from coal, from oil shale, from plant products for gasohol, from unconventional gas, from the sun... Just as a similar synthetic rubber corporation helped us win World War II, so will we mobilize American determination and ability to win the energy war. Moreover, I will soon submit legislation to Congress calling for the creation of this nation's first solar bank, which will help us achieve the crucial goal of 20% of our energy coming from solar power by the year 2000.”

It’s true that, at a time when the science of climate change was in its infancy, Carter wouldn’t have known about the possibility of an overheating world, and his vision of “alternative energy” wasn’t exactly a fossil-fuel-free one. Even then, shades of today or possibly tomorrow, he was talking about having “more oil in our shale alone than several Saudi Arabias.” Still, it was a remarkably forward-looking speech.

Had we invested massively in alternative energy R&D back then, who knows where we might be today? Instead, the media dubbed it the “malaise speech,” though the president never actually used that word, speaking instead of an American “crisis of confidence.” While the initial public reaction seemed positive, it didn’t last long. In the end, the president's energy proposals were essentially laughed out of the room and ignored for decades.

As a symbolic gesture, Carter had 32 solar panels installed on the White House. (“A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken, or it can be a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people: harnessing the power of the sun to enrich our lives as we move away from our crippling dependence on foreign oil.”) As it turned out, “a road not taken” was the accurate description. On entering the Oval Office in 1981, Ronald Reagan caught the mood of the era perfectly. One of his first acts was to order the removal of those panels and none were reinstalled for three decades, until Barack Obama was president.

Carter would, in fact, make his mark on U.S. energy policy, just not quite in the way he had imagined. Six months later, on January 23, 1980, in his last State of the Union Address, he would proclaim what came to be known as the Carter Doctrine: “Let our position be absolutely clear,” he said. “An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”

No one would laugh him out of the room for that. Instead, the Pentagon would fatefully begin organizing itself to protect U.S. (and oil) interests in the Persian Gulf on a new scale and America’s oil wars would follow soon enough. Not long after that address, it would start building up a Rapid Deployment Force in the Gulf that would in the end become U.S. Central Command. More than three decades later, ironies abound: thanks in part to those oil wars, whole swaths of the energy-rich Middle East are in crisis, if not chaos, while the big energy companies have put time and money into a staggeringly fossil-fuel version of Carter’s “alternative” North America. They’ve focused on shale oil, and on shale gas as well, and with new production methods, they are reputedly on the brink of turning the United States into a “new Saudi Arabia.”

If true, this would be the worst, not the best, of news. In a world where what used to pass for good news increasingly guarantees a nightmarish future, energy “independence” of this sort means the extraction of ever more extreme energy, ever more carbon dioxide heading skyward, and ever more planetary damage in our collective future. This was not the only path available to us, or even to Big Oil.

With their staggering profits, they could have decided anywhere along the line that the future they were ensuring was beyond dangerous. They could themselves have led the way with massive investments in genuine alternative energies (solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, algal, and who knows what else), instead of the exceedingly small-scale ones they made, often for publicity purposes. They could have backed a widespread effort to search for other ways that might, in the decades to come, have offered something close to the energy levels fossil fuels now give us. They could have worked to keep the extreme-energy reserves that turn out to be surprisingly commonplace deep in the Earth.

And we might have had a different world (from which, by the way, they would undoubtedly have profited handsomely). Instead, what we’ve got is the equivalent of a tobacco company situation, but on a planetary scale. To complete the analogy, imagine for a moment that they were planning to produce even more prodigious quantities not of fossil fuels but of cigarettes, knowing what damage they would do to our health. Then imagine that, without exception, everyone on Earth was forced to smoke several packs of them a day.

If that isn’t a terrorist -- or terrarist -- attack of an almost unimaginable sort, what is? If the oil execs aren’t terrarists, then who is? And if that doesn’t make the big energy companies criminal enterprises, then how would you define that term?

To destroy our planet with malice aforethought, with only the most immediate profits on the brain, with only your own comfort and wellbeing (and those of your shareholders) in mind: Isn’t that the ultimate crime? Isn’t that terracide?

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and author of The United States of Fear as well as a history of the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book, co-authored with Nick Turse, is Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050.

[Note: Thanks go to my colleague and friend Nick Turse for coming up with the word "terracide."]

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