Archive for December, 2009

Dr. Robert Aziz: New Year’s Eve: Making It A Genuine First Step

It is a curious fact that New Year’s Eve is synonymous with getting wasted. How do I define wasted? Technically put, I would define it as any party-related excess that results in one feeling like crap the next day.

Now it goes without saying that getting wasted would typically not be the intended outcome of cultural and religious rituals. Their objective would be to strengthen rather than deplete the spirit; it would be to align people with the life energies of transpersonal moments such as the New Year, rather than undermine such connections; it would be to hold open transformative space to support the gathering-in and cultivation of the life forces, rather than to cause their dissipation. So why, we rightfully ask, do New Year’s Eve celebrations seem so often to take the form of dissipative rites?

When people are challenged by life experiences, I should explain by way of answering this question, and they are unable, for whatever reasons, to bring those challenges to consciousness and resolve them, those unresolved challenges create within the personality a tension, which in turn seeks physiological discharge, typically through the dissipative abuse of food, sex, drugs and alcohol. Psychic arrest creates psychic tension; unresolved psychic tension seeks physiological discharge. So exactly what does all of this have to do with dissipative New Year’s Eve rites?

We certainly frame New Year’s Eve as the most forward-looking event of the calendar year, but the harsh reality, I would suggest, is that it is the one time of the year when people are led to face, willingly or unwillingly, their shortcomings, failures and limitations. Both consciously and unconsciously, they are being called to account for what they achieved and for what they did not achieve in the previous year, perhaps even for things that they have not been able to achieve for several years. Most punishing of all is that these shortcomings, failures and limitations are not just being qualitatively identified and measured, but quantitatively, no less, in terms of an absolute timeline. The point I am making here is that far from being about holding open ritual space for the ‘new,’ New Year’s Eve, for the vast majority of people, has to do with desperately fleeing, by way of dissipative acts, the tensions attending the unresolved ‘old.’

Now given the nature of my professional work I am certainly not inclined to imagine that the unresolved ‘old’ will be readily resolved. What I would offer, though, is that we can do so much more when it comes to how we create and hold open ritual space on New Year’s Eve. There is certainly a reason why cultural and religious rituals seldom proceed in the absence of prescribed acts of personal purification, such as prayer, confession, fasting or ablutions. These acts of purification are indispensable to ritual process, as they ultimately serve to release the attendees from that which would keep them from being present to and moving with the transformative energies of the moment.

This is our challenge: to let go of what we must to find our way to the moment at hand on New Year’s Eve, to let go of what we must to hold open the requisite space for the ‘new’ to present.

More on Spirituality

Scott Mendelson: 2009 in review – The guilty pleasures, the surprisingly good, and the runner-ups,

Before I get to my obligatory ‘best films of the year’ list, I’d like to take a moment to run down a list of films that are worthy of mention outside of the very best of the year. Some of these films are great pictures that missed the top-ten. Some are surprisingly good pictures that would otherwise have no business on a ‘best of’ list. Some are simply movies that I felt like pointing out for one reason or another. Enjoy…

2012
A movie that, against all odds, actually turned out to be entertaining and genuinely good. Sure, the special effects were almost comical in their overwhelming scenes of world-ending carnage. Yes, we once again had to suffer through a ‘distant father learns to be a better parent and wins his family back’ yarn. But we also had lead roles for such national treasures as Oliver Platt and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Plus we had compelling supporting work from Woody Harrelson, Thandie Newton, and Danny Glover. While I could take or leave the $260 million Earth-crushing disaster scenes, I found myself actually enjoying 2012 as, of all things, an acting treat. It’s not a great movie, but it’s a surprisingly entertaining, compelling, and engaging b-movie disaster romp that does its genre proud.

The Blind Side
I don’t know how much of the story is actually truthful, and I don’t care. This refreshingly low-key heart-warmer works as a wonderfully entertaining fictional story. Sandra Bullock and Quinton Aaron make a solidly deadpan comic duo, and the film works because it is just as much Michael Oher’s story as it is Leigh Anne Tuohy’s. The picture rarely descends into schmaltz and Bullock refuses to let the fictional version of Tuohy come off as either too brash or too saintly (she really doesn’t have a big speech or big scene). If the film’s astounding success is indeed due to the film’s Christian fanbase, then let’s welcome this most Veggie Tales-ish Christian fable. At the end of the day, The Blind Side is just a darn good movie that is a pretty much perfect version of what it wants to be.

The Children
This chiller is the best direct-to-DVD horror film ever made, and it’s probably the best ‘evil children’ movie of all time too. What makes it so horrifying is the mundane cause of the carnage, and the unsettling question of whether you would or could slaughter your own child to save your own life. Lean, mean, well-acted, and sharply directed, this is a genuinely terrifying horror film no matter where it first premiered.

Chocolate
Prachya Pinkaew’s follow up to The Protector has a relatively stupid plot and unremarkable acting. But it has some of the most elaborate and painful martial arts sequences I’ve ever seen, including a climactic shop-house showdown that is absolutely the best fight sequence of the year, if not the decade.

GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra
There is such a thing as getting points for ‘giving the audience what they came for’. You want 110 minutes of colorful GI Joes and colorful Cobra minions killing the holy hell out of each other, with the kind of over-the-top carnage and wanton violence that you imagined with your own action figures when you were nine-years old? That’s exactly what you get with this inexplicably despised Stephen Summers picture. It’s not art, and the climax falls apart, but those first ninety-minutes deliver exactly what a GI Joe movie should be. The critical massacre of this one is akin to stabbing someone in the gut and complaining when they bleed all over your carpet.

Inglourious Basterds
While it’s a little too long and its morality is a bit icky, no one can deny the sheer artistry of Quentin Tarantino’s critical and commercial comeback. What’s most amazing is how Christoph Waltz, as a deviously charming Nazi commander, takes all of Tarantino’s worst dialogue vices and turns them into razor-sharp weapons of suspense and tension. The film overall is merely good, but there are many many great moments within.

Precious
A flawed and sometimes messy film about a very messed up life, this one easily skirts uncomfortable questions about racial, gender, and class stereotypes by explicitly setting out to tell the singular story of a single human life. It also contains several wonderful performances, from everyone to Gabourey Sidibe and Mo’Nique to Paula Patton and Mariah Carrey. It is not the be all-end all for movies about the poverty in inner-city, but its greatest strength is that it never tries to be.

Saw VI
The only thing rarer than a franchise that actually makes it to six movies is a franchise where the sixth film is actually the best of the series. This astounding comeback film for the struggling series regains its footing by returning to its roots. By putting Tobin Bell back on the center stage, using the health insurance industry as an antithesis for John Kramer’s philosophy, and actually creating tension and suspense in each Jigsaw trap, this sixth entry improves on every prior entry. Saw VI is the best Saw film yet, and stands on its own as a bloody-good horror film.

Scooby Doo: The Mystery Begins
This direct-to-cable reboot of the live-action Scooby Doo franchise is every bit the Batman Begins to the previous films’ Batman Forever/Batman & Robin sensibilities. With sharp writing, likable and plausible characters, and a back-to-basics approach, this is probably the best Scooby Doo movie we will ever see.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li
Why, you ask, is this not on my list of the year’s worst films? Well, by any normal measure it would be. But I have a suspicion that Chris Klein’s over-the-top work as Detective Charlie Nash may be some kind of genius. Is he merely giving a lousy performance in a bad movie, or is he pulling some kind of brilliant post-modern riff on every bad 1980s cop movie? I’m not sure, but every moment that he is onscreen is alive with powerful waves of awesome stupid.

Where the Wild Things Are
‘Everybody hurts’ in Spike Jonze’s bruising adaptation of the classic children’s story. This one just missed my ten-best list, but I imagine it will age very well over the next decade or so. This is a staggeringly emotional journey that is both completely tuned to the minds of children and completely over their heads. I have my issues with the second act, but the set-up and the finale are pitch-perfect. There are moments in the end that are just heartrendingly profound.

Wonder Woman
This direct-to-DVD animated origin story renders the eventual live-action movie null and void. Sorry folks, we’ve already got our epic, thrilling, and staggeringly cool Wonder Woman movie. With astoundingly violent mass-battle scenes, an angry feminist streak, and more than enough humor to compensate for both, this is easily the best of the DC Animated Universe movies thus far.

World’s Greatest Dad
The previews went out of their way to hide the narrative of this Bobcat Goldthwait comedy, so I won’t go into any details here. Easily Robin Williams’ best movie in ages, this gem is a sharply critical satire of society’s need to… sorry no spoilers. Let’s just say that when you realize where this movie is going, you’ll wonder why no one every made a movie about it until now.

OK, coming in the next day or two, we’ll get to the actual ‘favorite movies of 2009′.

Scott Mendelson

Ellen Snortland: OldieWeds: What to get the late bloomer boomers

\Celebrating a wedding anniversary as a late-love blooming, baby-booming bride has its challenges. We’ve been married for one year as I write this. We’re not spring chickens. We can’t add one more material item into our already packed-to-the-rafters house. What gift shall I give my groom? Or for those who want to give us something, what do we suggest? Being internet savvy helps, so I Googled the tables of traditional anniversary gifts and suggestions. Alas, so many of the gift recommendations are more fitting for newlyweds; younger people who are newly furnishing first-time homes. Here’s my contribution of appropriate presents for middle-aged “oldieweds”:

1st Wedding Anniversary –
Paper
Youthful people give each other paper hats, risqué paper lingerie, expensive lavender scented stationery. My suggestion for the older set who ties the knot? Why, Depends™ of course! Disposable adult diapers are a thoughtful gift, and useful for guests who have trouble sneezing or laughing when chuckling at the twists and turns of life. Adult diapers are also useful for any arts and crafts project you may take on in retirement; they make polishing shiny surfaces and clean-up a breeze! But of course, if you’ve lost your retirement account, the older couple may also enjoy a paper piñata in the shape of Bernie Madoff or, for the left-wingers, George W. Bush.

2nd Wedding Anniversary — Cotton
For those hot young couples, 1000 thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets are just the thing! For frugal been-there, done-that oldieweds, collect cotton wads from prescription medicine bottles, wrap them up and present them to your hearing-impaired better half and tell them to stuff it in their ears when everything is SO DAMNED LOUD everywhere! Geez! Turn it down, you kids!

3rd Wedding Anniversary — Leather
Leather pants on nice bodies? Yowza! Leather pants on us? Bow-wowza. Better to just give each other shoes that have been in the back of the closet that we forgot we had.

4th Wedding Anniversary — Fruit
Yeah, yeah. This is obvious. Prunes are appreciated for so many of us over 50. Hardy-har-har. And no, they’re NOT “dried plums,” they’re prunes dammit! Dried fruit people, you can call it anything you want … but we still know what it is.

5th Wedding Anniversary — Wood
For young couples, a new dining room set or new cabinets may be just the ticket. Wood for your older couple? Ask your Doctor for free samples of Viagra or Cialis.

6th Wedding Anniversary — Candy or Iron
What? Candy or Iron? Whose idea was that? I guess candy if the couple feels the relationship is going well, and iron if it’s not? This reminds me of my mother’s joke wedding shower gifts for every new bride whose shower she’d attend. She’d give the bride either a carved rolling pin or cast iron skillet with a note on it saying, “This is in case you need to make a firm impression on your husband.” Hard to believe that my mother was a proponent of women’s self-defense, years before I became an advocate myself.

7th Wedding Anniversary –
Wool
OK, I guess his and hers matching cashmere sweaters or a woolen bedspread would be appropriate for the people who make it through the famous “seven year itch.” Geezer couples? Well, my OB-GYN told me at my last appointment that her biggest complaint comes from older women whose husbands have gone down the road to Viagra-ville and worn out their welcome with the Missus. A great gift idea: the original wool delivery system… a sheep. I know, I’m BAAAAAAAAAD.

8th Wedding Anniversary — Bronze
Who the heck gets anything in bronze? What is bronze? I thought the bronze thing was over — excuse the expression — AGES ago. I suppose the senior couple could bronze their first orthopedic shoes.

9th Wedding Anniversary — Pottery
The younger folks? How about a nice new dish set, with serving bowls, thrown by a local artist. The older folks? Oh geez, just go get some clay and do your best. Goodness knows, you could make some ashtrays for the guests that still insist on smoking even though you kick them out of the house. Give them one of your homemade pottery ashtrays to use while they shiver in your backyard.

10th Wedding Anniversary — Tin or Aluminum
For the couple in their 30s, I suppose canisters, accessories, sculptures would be fine. For your older couple? Given the economy, and how many 401K funds have tanked, a tin cup or aluminum can for selling pencils and collecting coins would be very thoughtful.

100th Wedding Anniversary — 10K diamond
At this point, the distinction of young and old couples is clearly moot. It seems to me that if you are able to live with one person for 100 years the most logical gift would be some type of congressional medal of honor, regardless of the materials it’s made from.

I hope this helps the shopper who is pondering what to give the couple who has — or maybe used to have — everything. And remember, it’s not the gift but the thought that counts. If only I could remember what that thought was…

OldieWeds first appeared in the Pasadena Weekly on November 12, 2009. Ellen Snortland teaches writing and coaches first-time authors. Contact her at: www.snortland.com

More on Marriage

Deepak Chopra: Woo Woo Is a Step Ahead of (Bad) Science

It used to annoy me to be called the king of woo woo. For those who aren’t familiar with the term, “woo woo” is a derogatory reference to almost any form of unconventional thinking, aimed by professional skeptics who are self-appointed vigilantes dedicated to the suppression of curiosity. I get labeled much worse things as regularly as clockwork whenever I disagree with big fry like Richard Dawkins or smaller fry like Michael Shermer, the Scientific American columnist and editor of Skeptic magazine. The latest barrage of name-calling occurred after the two of us had a spirited exchange on Larry King Live last week. . Maybe you saw it. I was the one rolling my eyes as Shermer spoke. Sorry about that, a spontaneous reflex of the involuntary nervous system.

Afterwards, however, I had an unpredictable reaction. I realized that I would much rather expound woo woo than the kind of bad science Shermer stands behind. He has made skepticism his personal brand, more or less, sitting by the side of the road to denigrate “those people who believe in spirituality, ghosts, and so on,” as he says on a YouTube video. No matter that this broad brush would tar not just the Pope, Mahatma Gandhi, St. Teresa of Avila, Buddha, and countless scientists who happen to recognize a reality that transcends space and time. All are deemed irrational by the skeptical crowd. You would think that skeptics as a class have made significant contributions to science or the quality of life in their own right. Uh oh. No, they haven’t. Their principal job is to reinforce the great ideas of yesterday while suppressing the great ideas of tomorrow.

Let me clear the slate with Shermer and forget the several times he has wiggled out of a public debate he was supposedly eager to have with me. I will ignore his recent blog in which his rebuttal of my position was relegated to a long letter from someone who obviously didn’t possess English as a first language (would Shermer like to write a defense of his position in Hindi? It would read just as ludicrously if Hindi isn’t his first language).

With the slate clear, I’d like to see if Shermer will accept the offer to debate me at length on such profound questions as the following:

• Is there evidence for creativity and intelligence in the cosmos?
• What is consciousness?
• Do we have a core identity beyond our biology, mind, and ego?
• Is there life after death? Does this identity outlive the molecules through which it expresses itself?

The rules will be simple. He can argue from any basis he chooses, and I will confine myself entirely to science. For we have reached the state where Shermer’s tired, out-of-date, utterly mediocre science is far in arrears of the best, most open scientific thinkers — actually, we reached that point sixty years ago when eminent physicists like Einstein, Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrodinger applied quantum theory to deep spiritual questions. The arrogance of skeptics is both high-handed and rusty. It is high-handed because they lump brilliant speculative thinkers into one black box known as woo woo. It is rusty because Shermer doesn’t even bother to keep up with the latest findings in neuroscience, medicine, genetics, physics, and evolutionary biology. All of these fields have opened fascinating new ground for speculation and imagination. But the king of pooh-pooh is too busy chasing down imaginary woo woo.

Skeptics feel that they have won to the high ground in matters concerning consciousness, mind, the origins of life, evolutionary theory, and brain science. This is far from the case. What they cling to is nineteenth- century materialism, packaged with a screeching hysteria about God and religion that is so passé it has become quaint. To suggest that Darwinian theory is incomplete and full of unproven hypotheses, causes Shermer, who takes Darwin as purely as a fundamentalist takes scripture, to see God everywhere in the enemy camp.

How silly. Shermer is a former Christian fundamentalist who is now a fundamentalist about materialism; fundamentalists must have an absolute to believe in. Thus he forces himself into a corner, declaring that all spirituality is bogus, that the sense of self is an illusion, that the soul is ipso facto a fraud, that mind has no existence except in the brain, that intelligence emerged only when evolution, guided by random mutations, developed the cerebral cortex, that nothing invisible can be real compared to solid objects, and that any thought which ventures beyond the five senses for evidence must be dismissed without question.

I won’t go into detail about the absurdity of such rigid thinking. However, the impulse behind dogmatic materialism seems intended to flatten one’s opponents so thoroughly that through scorn and arrogance they must admit defeat, conceding that science is the complete refutation of all preceding religion, spirituality, psychology, myth, and philosophy — in other words, any mode of gaining knowledge that arch materialism doesn’t countenance.

I’ve baited this post with a few barbs to see if Shermer can be goaded into an actual public debate. I have avoided his and his follower’s underhanded methods, whereby an opponent is attacked ad hominem as an idiot, moron, and other choice epithets that in his world are the mainstays of rational argument. And the point of such a debate? To further public knowledge about the actual frontiers of science, which has always depended on wonder, awe, imagination, and speculation. Petty science of the Shermer brand scorns such things, but the greatest discoveries have been anchored on them.

If you are tempted to think that I have taken the weaker side and that materialism long ago won this debate, let me end with a piece of utterly nonsensical woo woo:

“Nobody understands how decisions are made or how imagination is set free. What consciousness consists of, or how it should be defined, is equally puzzling. Despite the marvelous success of neuroscience in the past century, we seem as far from understanding cognitive processes as we were a century ago.”

That isn’t a quote from “one of those people who believe in spirituality, ghosts, and so on.” It’s from Sir John Maddox, former editor-in-chief of the renowned scientific journal Nature, writing in 1999. I can’t wait for Shermer to call him an idiot and a moron. Don’t worry, he won’t. He’ll find an artful way of slithering to higher ground where all the other skeptics are huddled.

For more information go to deepakchopra.com

Tom Gregory: Joan Crawford to James Cameron: "Even I signed Autographs" (video)

I know we buy petroleum from a terrorist nation or two, but must Americans give this guy our dollar?

Joan’s experience with an airport crowd. How things have changed

Read the story here.http://www.tmz.com/2009/12/25/james-cameron-in-major-a-hole-dispute/

Peter Dreier: Pass the bill – then improve it

There are many lessons to learn from the health care war that has raged over the past year. We’ll get to some of them below. But here’s the bottom line: Pass the bill, then improve it.

The health care bill that will emerge from the House-Senate conference committee won’t be what most progressives had hoped for, but it is a major, historic turning point in American social reform legislation, comparable to the Social Security Act, the National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act, the Fair Employment Practices (minimum wage/40 hour year) Act, Civil Rights Act, the Clean Air Act, and other progressive breakthroughs. None of those laws were what their advocates wanted. They all involved compromises that, at the time, were heart-breaking to activists. Each one was subsequently improved by amendments, although not without reformers doing battle with reactionary opponents.

It is incredibly irresponsible for radicals and progressives to call for killing the health care bill. It is important to push for changes that would improve the Senate version of the bill. For example, the House funding plan (a tax on families with incomes over $1 million) is much better than the Senate version (a tax on so-called “Cadillac” health insurance plans). That’s what the labor movement, liberal and progressive Democrats in Congress, pro-choice advocates, and others will be doing in hopes of putting a better bill on President Obama’s desk, as Harold Meyerson discusses in his latest Washington Post column: (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/22/AR2009122202842.html?hpid=opinionsbox1) But the idea that we should scrap this bill and start from scratch next year is both immoral and impractical. If we don’t pass health care reform now, we won’t have another chance for at least a decade. And, like taking food out of the mouths of hungry children, killing this bill will hurt tens of millions of real people who are now suffering physically, psychologically, and economically.

For proof, check out this chart, putting together by Jonathan Cohn and Jonathan Gruber (a health care economist at MIT), based on CBO cost estimates of the Senate bill. (http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Columns/2009/December/~/media/CC9EB727BC494A1BB5FE01E9B71EA036.gif)
It shows the health care cost projections for a family of four at different income levels. For example, a family of four earning $60,458 — 250 percent of the federal poverty line — would pay an estimated annual premium of $12,042 and an annual out-of-pocket maximum of $12,600 without the legislation (in total, 41 percent of annual income). If the legislation passes, the comparable numbers are $5,797 and $6,300, respectively (or 20 percent of annual income). Families with lower incomes benefit even more. Here’s Cohn’s article, that explains this in greater detail http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Columns/2009/December/122109Cohn.aspx

After the Senate passed its version of the health care bill earlier today, Obama said: “This notion that somehow the health care bill that is emerging should be grudgingly accepted by Democrats as half a loaf is simply incorrect,” Mr. Obama said. “This is nine-tenths of a loaf. And for a family out there that right now doesn’t have health insurance, it is a great deal. It’s a full loaf for a lot of families who have nothing to fall back on if they get into a medical emergency.”

We can differ with Obama on the math — I’d say the House will is 3/4 of a loaf and the Senate bill is 2/3 of a loaf — but he’s basically correct about the real human impact. The bill will make life better for most Americans – those who don’t currently have health insurance and those who currently have inadequate health insurance. Every serious progressive health care expert agrees that the bill is a significant step forward — a stepping stone toward universal health insurance — although they may differ on some particular issues. The health care experts writing this week in the left-wing The Nation, the progressive American Prospect, and even the barely-liberal New Republic share this view.

Here’s what J. Lester Felder writes in The Nation (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100111/feder2):

“Despite these very serious shortcomings, however, the bill the Senate passed would reduce the number of uninsured Americans by 31 million by 2019. The Medicaid program will be open to new ranks of the country’s poorest residents, and the near-poor and middle class will get subsidies to buy insurance. The Senate also advanced some important delivery system reforms that could chart a path towards reining in costs.

As disappointed as progressives are with the compromises Democratic leaders made to get this bill through the Senate–and as tempting it is to believe they may have gotten a better deal if they’d pursued a more aggressive strategy–they are on the verge of doing many other lawmakers have tried and failed to do. And if this effort fails, another generation may pass before another chance will come to try again.”

Here’s what Jacob Hacker, the policy expert and Yale political scientist who is credited with devising the original “public option” plan, wrote in the New Republic (http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-treatment/why-i-still-believe-bill):

“Since the first campaign for publicly guaranteed health insurance in the early twentieth century, opportunities for serious health reform have come only rarely and fleetingly. If this opportunity passes, it will be very long before the chance arrives again. Many Americans will be gravely hurt by the delay. The most progressive president of my generation–the generation that came of age in the anti-government shadow of Ronald Reagan–will be handed a crippling loss. The party he leads will be branded as unable to govern…

The public option was always a means to an end: real competition for insurers, an alternative for consumers to existing private plans that does not deny needed care or shift risks onto the vulnerable, the ability to provide affordable coverage over time. I thought it was the best means within our political grasp. It lay just beyond that grasp. Yet its demise–in this round–does not diminish the immediate necessity of those larger aims. And even without the public option, the bill that Congress passes and the President signs could move us substantially toward those goals.

As weak as it is in numerous areas, the Senate bill contains three vital reforms. First, it creates a new framework, the “exchange,” through which people who lack secure workplace coverage can obtain the same kind of group health insurance that workers in large companies take for granted. Second, it makes available hundreds of billions in federal help to allow people to buy coverage through the exchanges and through an expanded Medicaid program. Third, it places new regulations on private insurers that, if properly enforced, will reduce insurers’ ability to discriminate against the sick and to undermine the health security of Americans.

These are signal achievements, and they all would have been politically unthinkable just a few years ago.”

Paul Krugman in the New York Times (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/the-wysiwyg-president), Ezra Klein in the Washington Post (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/12/jane_hamshers_10_reaons_to_kil.html), Paul Starr in the American Prospect (http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=deal_or_die_on_health_care), and many others echo versions of these same sentiments.

The bill that eventually winds up on Obama’s desk won’t be what we’d hoped for a year ago. There will be lots of articles and even some books diagnosing what went wrong and what went right. Some initial thoughts:

1. The biggest obstacle to more progressive reform is our system of campaign finance. The drug companies, insurance companies, the hospital lobby, and the American Medical Assn. have too much political influence because they’ve spent hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions and lobbying — something I’ve written a lot about over the past year. The Republican Party is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the medical industrial complex, as they’ve shown during throughout the battle over health care reform. Unfortunately, a handful of moderate Democrats in both Houses are also in the pockets of the health industry lobby – most obviously Senators Max Baucus, Ben Nelson, Mary Landreiu, Blanche Lincoln, and Kent Conrad. And let’s not forget one-time-Democrat-now-Independent-who-acts-like-a-Republican Joe Lieberman, whose vanity, hypocrisy, and double-cross should be rewarded by the Demos by stripping him of his committee chairmanship and whom all Democrats around the country should unite in defeating when he runs for re-election for his Senate seat from Connecticut in 2010. I’ve written about Lieberman as the “Senator from Aetna” (http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/12/17/joe_lieberman_senator_from_aetna), but he’s worse than that. Lesson #1: we need campaign finance reform, preferably mandatory “clean money” public financing plan (http://www.publicampaign.org), as an alternative to our current system of legalized bribery.

2. Lefties have been too quick to criticize Obama and the Democratic Party for compromising with the moderate Dems and their sponsors, the insurance industry. The truth is that of the 58 Democrats in the Senate, 53 of them supported the public option and, later, even more supported the Medicare buy-in proposal (for people 55-64), as a way to create competition with the insurance industry. In a true democracy, 53 votes (out of 100) should be enough to pass a bill. So the second obstacle to real reform is the filibuster rule, which gave the five-member “Baucus Caucus” (who together represent states with 3 percent of the country’s total population), and then Lieberman, too much influence. Lesson #2: Kill the undemocratic filibuster rule.
3. Lesson #3: Grassroots organizing saved health care reform from an early death. Recall, at the end of the summer, pundits were already writing obituaries for major healthcare reform. Particularly during the August Congressional recess, an epidemic of right-wing anger against Obama and his policy agenda–of which healthcare reform was simply an immediate and convenient target–captivated the media, which reported disruptions at Congressional town hall meetings as though they were an accurate reflection of public opinion rather than a pep rally for extremists, encouraged by Fox News and talk-show jocks. The right-wingers stoked fear and confusion by warning that Obama’s “socialized medicine” plan would create “death panels,” subsidize illegal immigrants, pay for abortions and force people to drop their current insurance. Republican officials, including Senator Charles Grassley, Senator Jim Demint, and Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele, and conservative pundits Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and Betsy McCaughey repeated these myths. And support for the public option tumbled over the summer in response. In June, 62 percent of Americans told Washington Post/ABC pollsters that they favored a public option. By mid-August, support had slipped to 52 percent. Obama’s popularly fell, too, as jobs continued to disappear and the administration’s proposals to bail out the banks and the auto industry met with right-wing attacks and public skepticism. The death in August of healthcare reform stalwart Senator Ted Kennedy bolstered Baucus’ influence as chair of the Senate Finance Committee. As Marshall Ganz and I wrote in the Washington Post at the end of August (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/28/AR2009082801817.html), the grassroots momentum from the Obama campaign seemed to be stalled.

To the rescue came Health Care for America Now (HCAN), a coalition of unions, community organizations, consumer groups, environmentalists and netroots groups such as MoveOn, has been spearheading the reform campaign since the group was launched in July 2008. I’ve written about HCAN’s influence elsewhere. (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091109/dreier). Suffice it to say that in late August, seeing defeat on the horizon, HCAN and other reform activists regrouped. They decided to act more like a grassroots movement and less like an interest group. That meant mobilizing voters, focusing attention on the insurance industry, humanizing the battle by giving insurance company victims an opportunity to tell their stories and using creative tactics to generate media attention. They sponsored rallies and protests, including civil disobedience, in cities around the country. They helped focus public attention on the insurance industry’s outrageous profits and executive compensation, its abuse of consumers and its outsized political influence. And they warned Democrats not to get duped by the industry’s pledges of cooperation. Public support for the public option recovered after taking a tumble over the summer. In late October, a Washington Post/ABC poll found that 57 percent favor a public insurance option, while 40 percent oppose it. If a public plan were run by the states and available only to those who lack affordable private options, support for it jumps to 76 percent. Under those circumstances, even a majority of Republicans, 56 percent, favor it. That kind of grassroots pressure helped the liberal Democrats in the Congress fight to keep a decent bill alive, even though eventually Lieberman forced the Dems to compromise on the public option and then the Medicare buy-in.

4. Lesson #4: Watchdog the media. The mainstream media made it very difficult for Obama, the progressive Democrats, and health reform advocates. During the past year, the mainstream media gave right-wing activists a megaphone that gave them a much larger voice than they deserved. The ultra-right — including the “tea party” lunatics, and reactionary Republicans like Senators Jim DeMint and Charles Grassley, egged on by Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and their Fox News colleagues — got much more attention than they should have. As Todd Gitlin and I noted, the media covered the right-wing protests AGAINST health care reform, but barely reported on the protests sponsored by health care reform activists like HCAN. http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/demonstrations_at_ceo_mansions.php The mainstream media acted like stenographers, repeating their lies about the health care plans, without trying to verify them or put their outrageous statements in context. At the same time, the mainstream media completely shut out the voices of the left wing of the health care debate, the advocates for a single-payer system. With a few exceptions, the media repeated the right wing’s lies about Canada’s health care system without correcting them, and allowed them to frame the mainstream Democrats’ public option plan as “socialism.” Trudy Lieberman, the nation’s best media critic, has been keeping tabs on the media’s misreporting of the health care debate all along. http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/trudy_lieberman_campaign_desk.php It is worth reading her regular columns and blogs to see how much the media set the public agenda and framed the debate in ways that undermined progressive activists and President Obama.

5. Lesson #5: This isn’t just about health care. Last summer, Republican Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina said out loud what most Republican members of Congress were thinking and plotting. DeMint called the president’s health care proposal “D-Day for freedom in America” and said that stopping Obama’s plan for health care overhaul could be the president’s “Waterloo,” a reference to the site of Napoleon’s bitter defeat in 1815. What DeMint meant, and what his Republican colleagues and their allies like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and others intend, is that defeating Obama’s health care reform would undermine his presidency, and set the stage for major GOP victories in the 2010 elections and again in 2012, including defeating Obama’s re-election bid. They understood that if the unholy alliance of medical industry muscle, right-wing mob tactics, Republican Party hardline unwillingness to compromise, and a handful of conservative Democrats’ obfuscation is able to defeat Obama’s health-care proposal, it will write the conservative playbook for blocking other key components of the president’s and progessives’ agenda — including action on climate change, immigration reform, marriage equality, a second jolt of economic stimulus, and updates to the nation’s labor laws. So those progressives, like Howard Dean, who say, “kill the bill” are doing more than dooming tens of millions of Americans to health care hell; they are setting the stage for a Republican resurgence.

Obama has certainly disappointed many progressives on a number of fronts, including the Wall Street bail-outs, the weak foreclosure program, the too timid stimulus plan, and most recently by expanding the war in Afghanistan. What’s missing from these criticisms is the failure of progressive forces to mount an effective grassroots movement to push Obama and the Democrats. Both grassroots groups (including unions, enviros, community organizing groups, gay rights groups, peace groups, and others) and the Obama administration haven’t yet learned how to play the inside-outside strategy game as effectively as they could. Like FDR, Obama’s success depends on the existence of a progressive movement that organizes, protests, influences public opinion, lobbies, and keeps the heat on so that the inevitable legislative compromises are stepping stones to further reform. When activists asked FDR to support progressive legislation, he told them, “I agree with you. Now go out and make me do it.” Obama has sent the same signals. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-dreier/go-out-and-make-me-do-it_b_281631.html.

The Right understands this. That’s why Glenn Beck, Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Congressmembers King and Issa, and others have been so persistent at attacking SEIU, ACORN, Van Jones, and others. They want to destroy the progressive movement and make it more difficult for Obama to be a successful (and two-term) president.

Speaking of ACORN: the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service released this report the other day about ACORN, documenting that the various accusations against the group — especially about alleged “voter fraud” — are totally bogus: http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/pdf/CRS-ACORN091222.pdf Here are some of the key findings:

There were no instances of individuals who were allegedly registered to vote improperly by ACORN or its employees and who were reported “attempting to vote at the polls.” Memorandum from the Congressional Research Service to the House Judiciary Committee, “ACORN Investigations” (December 22, 2009), at 1.

As of October 2009, there have been 46 reported federal, state, and local investigations concerning ACORN, of which 11 are still pending. “ACORN Investigations,” Table 1.
No instances were identified in which ACORN “violated the terms of federal funding in the last five years.” “ACORN Investigations,” at 1.

Recently enacted federal legislation to prohibit funding to ACORN raises significant constitutional concerns. The courts “may have a sufficient basis” to conclude that the legislation “violates the prohibition against bills of attainder.” Congressional Research Service, “The Proposed ‘Defund ACORN Act’ and Related Legislation: Are They Bills of Attainder?” (November 30, 2009), at 25. [A recent court ruling did, in fact, find that the legislation violated the law]

Concerning recent “sting” operations relating to ACORN, although state laws vary, two relevant states, Maryland and California, “appear to ban private recording of face to face conversations absent the consent of all the participants.” Memorandum from the Congressional Research Service to the House Judiciary, “Allegations of Recording Conversations with Various ACORN Affiliated Individuals without Their Consent” (October 9, 2009), at 1.

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Heather Lauer: Natural Gas: A Made-in-America Opportunity

U.S. leaders are returning from Copenhagen with fresh global agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They’re also heading home for the holidays preparing for an election year when jobs and the economy will be issue #1 at kitchen tables across America.

As our nation looks to establish its bona fides on clean energy, while putting Americans back to work, one often overlooked domestic resource stands abundantly ready–right here and right now–to make a difference, and that’s natural gas.

Natural gas supports more than 2.8 million American jobs throughout our country, pumping $385 billion into the nation’s economy last year, according to a recent study by IHS Global Insight. Fueling these opportunities is the fact that the industry is in the midst of game-changing innovation, which is unleashing abundant new supplies that can power our nation for generations to come.

A recent front-page article in the Washington Post explains the vast opportunity for our nation that lies in the enormous shale deposits under Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Appalachia. Combined with previously discovered deposits, the US has an historic opportunity to emerge as a clean energy leader–creating jobs, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and curbing our dependence on foreign oil.

This newfound abundance, combined with the fact that natural gas is twice as clean as coal, is inspiring many state utility leaders to look closely at natural gas as a principal power plant fuel — a move that would make an immediate, positive difference in our nation’s carbon footprint. Currently, the U.S. gets only about 25% of its electric power from natural gas, so there’s ample room to grow.

Natural gas also presents our nation with an extraordinary opportunity in the transportation arena. Around the world, there are some 10 million vehicles running on natural gas. Yet only about 130,000 are found on U.S. roads today. The NAT GAS Act, under consideration in Congress, would jump-start this green transportation movement by making it easier for fleets to turn to natural gas. Already, some top U.S. companies are taking the lead. AT&T, for example, operates one of the largest domestic civilian fleets and has committed to rotating to 8,000 natural gas vehicles over the next few years. From U.S. auto manufacturers to fueling and repair stations, the potential for our economy and our environment are significant if more companies do the same.

As President Obama prepared to return home from Copenhagen, he made an important point. He said, “If America leads in developing clean energy, we will lead in growing our economy, in putting our people back to work, and in leaving a stronger and more secure country to our children.”

Lofty words? You bet. But clean, abundant and American natural gas can play a starring role today helping make them a reality. If Congress and the Obama Administration are serious about saving jobs while saving the planet, then they should start their search for fresh solutions right here at home. Natural gas is an extraordinary, made-in-America opportunity, and it stands ready today to play a pivotal role in our nation’s green recovery and low-carbon future.

Regina Hopper is President and CEO of America’s Natural Gas Alliance.

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Rip Empson: Dear Tiger: An Email from Caddy to Employer

Below are excerpts from a few leaked emails written by Steve Williams this week to his boss, Tiger Woods. Read on at your own risk.

Oh hey Tiger,

It’s me, Steve. Your caddy. Hey. Cigarette?

…

First of all, let me just send my best wishes to you and your family. We’re thinking about you. And, listen, if you need a place to crash, our guest room is free. Clearly, crashing at your own place didn’t work out so well…Bazingo!! Nailed it. FYI, when my wife threatens me with a golf club, she does so in the privacy of our own bedroom – and we have a “safe word.”

…

(It’s “Anal Palmer” in case you were wondering.) Safety first.

…

Which reminds me…so you know how an “Arnold Palmer” is a popular drink that is half iced tea and half lemonade? And a “Jon Daly” is an “Arnold Palmer” plus 3 ounces of bourbon? So what do you think will make up a “Tiger Woods”? Maybe the ingredients don’t matter, as long as its blond and you pay for its GED? Maybe we could call it the “Pariah Papaya”? A-Rod could put his name on it, too. Or how about making it a malt ginger ale?

…

Man, I hope you got tested…yeesh…don’t want your balls to be in a hazard for the rest of your career.

…

So, buddy, I heard the news that you will be taking some time off from golf to put the pieces of your life back together… I completely understand and respect this decision, but WTF? What exactly am I supposed to do while you’re gone? It’s not like I can go to Caddy Grad School where Lee Trevino is headmaster. No, I know, I checked Google. You reaaalllly sandbagged me on this one. I was thinking I might take up gardening, maybe shave a Nike driver into my chest hair, but if you need me to, you know, fabricate a story about Phil Mickelson and a gay Canadian speed skater, you know, to take some of the heat off… I’m like the Tiger Woods of Photoshop, so lemme know…

…

Anyway, it’s a shame I wasn’t on your bag that infamous night. I never would have let Elin attack the car with that lie – even with a rescue club. That was a nice touch, though, Tiger. Your wife was “trying to extract you from the car,” which is why she smashed the window with a golf club… LOL! You almost made her a hero. Very Noble. Ha, reminds me of the time I got pulled over for drunk driving: the officer kept insisting that I was drunk, but I told him emphatically that I wasn’t drunk, and, in fact, had gallantly refused to smoke the rest of the bag so that I could get my son to soccer practice by 9 am. Those were wild times. Well, stupid times, really, but wild too.

…

Let me also say, while I have your attention, that I think it’s pretty f***ing unfair that many of the women you’ve slept with are coming forward to claim lucrative media/book deals and may even be getting hand outs from you to keep quiet. Again, I get burned. I’ve been cleaning your balls and judging your length for 10 years, what am I, chopped liver? You can just brush that off?

…

This is a recession, Tiger. A RECESSION. I need this. I know you’re headed into your own great depression, but have a heart. Come on…your wife just bought Sweden…you can spare a dime. Brother.

…

Remember when your dad told Sports Illustrated, “Tiger will do more than any other man in history to change the course of humanity”? What do you think he meant by that, exactly?

…

You’re way too intense Tiger, you need to relax. Have you tried getting lai… oh, right. Sorry.

…

Wikipedia says that you believe in most of Buddhism. Seriously. I looked it up. Are you f***ing kidding me? Which parts?

…

Tiger?

…

Honestly, Tiger, I think your d*** needs a caddy.

…

Only thing to do now is go on Oprah. Look what she did for Tom Cruise.

…

Rehab?

…

I’ll wait for you. No I won’t. Yes I will. TIIIIIIIGGEEEERRRR

…

So I hear that Jaimee Grubbs (your favorite “text messaging partner” and one of your mistresses) is going to be posing for the cover of Maxim Magazine. Seeing that she may have failed to realize why she is now famous, I heard that Irony frantically attempted to send Jaimee a text – but instead decided to dramatically commit suicide. In response, American Culture then took an un-ironic bow.

…

Your wife is HOTT, like really hot, like what were you thinking hot?

…

In the words of old Bill Blake, which I’m p-p-p-p-retty sure was your father’s inspiration for your name: “Tiger, Tiger, burning bright,/ in the shady motels of the night,/ what immortal hand or eye,/ could frame…dude, you’re fu**ed. Seriously. Move to Iceland.”

…

Keep it clean,

Steve

P.S. Call me

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Johann Hari: After The Catastrophe In Copenhagen, It’s Down To Us

Buried deep in our subconscious, there still lays the belief that our political leaders are collective Daddies and Mummies who will – in the last instance – guarantee our safety. Sure, they might screw us over when it comes to hospital waiting lists, or public transport, or taxing the rich, but when it comes to resisting a raw existential threat, they will keep us from harm. Last week in Copenhagen, the conviction was disproved. Every leader there had been told by their scientists – plainly, bluntly, and for years – that there is a bare minimum we must all do now if we are going to prevent a catastrophe. And they all refused to do it.

To understand the gravity of what just happened, you need to know a few facts about global warming that, at first, sound odd. The world’s climate scientists have shown that man-made global warming must not exceed 2 degrees centrigrade. When you hear this, a natural reaction is – that’s not much; how bad can it be if we overshoot? If I go out for a picnic and the temperature rises or falls by 2 degrees, I don’t much notice. But this is the wrong analogy. If your body temperature rises by 2 degrees, you become feverish and feeble. If it doesn’t go back down again, you die. The climate isn’t like a picnic; it’s more like your body.

Two degrees is bad: it means we lose much of the world’s low-lying land, from the island-states of the South Pacific to much of Bangladesh to swathes of Florida. But at every step up to and including 2 degrees, if we reduce our emissions, we can stabilise the climate at this new higher level. If we go beyond 2 degrees, though, the situation changes. The earth’s natural processes begin to break down – and cause more warming. There are massive amounts of warming gases stored in the Siberian permafrost; at two degrees they melt and are released into the atmosphere. The world’s humid rainforests store huge amounts of warming gases in their trees. Beyond two degrees, they lose their humidity and begin to burn down – releasing them too into the atmosphere.

These are called “tipping points”. Because of them, the world gets warmer and warmer beyond C. They stand at the climate’s Point of No Return, beyond which there lies only warming. We are only 6C away from the last ice age; we are setting ourselves on course to go that far in the opposite direction.

So what do we need to do to stay this side of 2 degrees? There is a very broad, rock-solid scientific consensus that we need a cut of 40 per cent in the most polluting countries’ emissions by 2020 if we are going to have even a 50-50 chance of doing so. Then, by 2050 we need an 80 per cent cut from everyone. The fact we are only aiming for a 50 per cent goal of avoiding calamity is a sign of how far we have already made a terrible compromise with fossil fuels – but our leaders are refusing to aim even for those odds.

There was plenty of disgrace to go around in Copenhagen. The world’s worst per capita warmer is the US, yet its President turned up offering a pathetic 4 per cent cut by 2020 – and once you factor in all the loopholes his negotiators demanded, he was actually demanding the right to a significant increase in US emissions. He caved to the oil and gas lobbies who virtually own the Senate. It was – apart from anything else – a terrible betrayal of his own country’s national security. In 2004, a leaked Pentagon report warned that unchecked global warming would ensure “disruption and conflict will be endemic … [and] once again, warfare would define human life.”

Similarly, the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao behaved appallingly. His country is the single largest overall emitter of gases, albeit with a far larger population, and much more need for development. Yet he vetoed the 80 per cent target by 2050, and refused to allow other countries to carry out basic checks to ensure China was carrying out the smaller cuts they were committed to. Again, he is betraying his own people: most of China’s population depend on rivers that flow down from the Himalayan glaciers, yet they are rapidly disappearing. His name will be cursed in the Chinese history books.

The European Union was hardly better. They sat inert, refusing to make any larger offer to get the ball rolling. Only President Lula da Silva of Brazil came out boldly with an ahead-of-the-curve offer – but his heroism was met with awkward silence and avoided glances from the other leaders.

So here’s the situation. There is no deal. The world’s leaders refused to agree to limit our emissions of warming gases. The most they could agree was to officially “note” the scientific evidence about C – with no roadmap to keep us this side of it. You get a sense of how valuable this “noting” is when you look at the things the conference also “noted”: the hard work of the airport security staff, and the quality of the catering in the Bella Centre. It seems impossible, but our leaders really did give the stability of our climate the same status as their praise for Danish sandwiches.

I am normally somebody who supports incremental change. Most progress happens by inches. But with this problem, we can’t wait patiently knowing we’ll prevail in the next generation. The tipping points will make that too late. You can’t defuse a ticking bomb slowly year after year. You either defuse it fast, or it blows up in your face.

Our leaders were given the scientific facts, and they have responded by trying to haggle with the facts about the atmosphere. Imagine a 50-a-day smoker who goes to his doctor and is told he must stop immediately or he will develop lung cancer. He says: “I’ll tell you what, doc – I’ll cut down to 40-a-day, I’ll eat a salad every lunchtime, and I’ll slap on a few nicotine patches. How does that sound?” That’s the official response to global warming.

Where does this leave us all? At least we know now: scientific evidence and rationality are not going to be enough to persuade our leaders. The Good Daddy isn’t in charge. Nobody is going to sort this out – unless we, the populations of the warming-gas countries, make them. Politicians respond to the pressure put on them, and every single politician at Copenhagen knew they would get more flak at home – from their corporate paymasters and their petrol-hungry populations – for signing a deal than for walking away.

There is only one way to change that dynamic: a mass movement of ordinary democratic citizens. They have made the impossible happen before. Our economies used to be built on slave labour, just as surely as they are built on fossil fuels today. It seemed permanent and unchangeable, and its critics were regarded as deranged – until ordinary citizens refused to tolerate it any more, and they organised to demand its abolition.

The time for changing your light-bulbs and hoping for the best is over. It is time to take collective action. For some people, that will mean joining Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth or the Campaign Against Climate Change and helping them pile on the pressure. But those who can go further – by taking non-violent direct action – should do so. Every coal train should be ringed with people refusing to let it pass. Every new runway should be blockaded. The cost of trashing the climate needs to be raised.

It works. Look at Britain. Three years ago, eight new coal power stations were being planned, and the third runway at Heathrow was all but inevitable. A few thousand heroic young people took direct action against them. Now all the new coal power stations have been cancelled, and the third runway is dead in the water. Here in the fifth largest economy in the world, they have stopped coal and airport expansion. Politicians felt the heat. That was done by a few thousand people. Imagine what tens or hundreds of thousands could do.

There need to be parallel movements to this in every country on earth (and a much bigger one in Britain). Copenhagen had one value, and one value alone. It has shown us that if we don’t act in our own self-defence now, nobody else will.

This summer, Johann travelled across the Arctic to report on the effects of global warming there. The article is here. He also travelled across Bangladesh to report on its effects there. The report is here.

Johann Hari is a writer for the Independent. To read more of his articles, click here. For an archive of his writings on global warming, click here.

You can follow Johann on Twiter at www.twitter.com/johannhari101

Dr. Mark Dybul: Uganda’s Anti-Gay Law: Opposition Grounded in Bipartisan Confluence of Human Rights and Public Health

There has been appropriate moral condemnation of Uganda’s proposed anti-gay law that originally included the death penalty. Evangelical uber Pastor Rick Warren led the way with a moving and powerful video directed to clergy in Uganda, followed by the Holy See, conservative Senator Tom Coburn and the Obama Administration. It is good to see ecumenism and bipartisanship. But in addition to the clear human rights issues, there are important public health principles at stake – as the current US Global AIDS Coordinator, Ambassador Eric Goosby, has rightly noted.

Gay men and women cannot be legislated out of existence. The practical impact of the law will be to undermine Uganda’s efforts to combat its HIV epidemic. That would be a tragedy in any country, but perhaps more so in a place with a record of leadership and success on HIV prevention. UNAIDS launched a “know your epidemic” campaign a few years back. It makes great sense – if there is insufficient knowledge about the drivers of the spread of HIV in a country, or areas of a country, it is impossible to dedicate resources to the programs that are most likely to be effective. Recently, Ugandan officials have embraced that approach regarding discordant couples – where one person in a relationship is HIV positive and another is negative – because data show that transmission in such pairs was contributing significantly to the spread of HIV in their country.

What is unknown in Uganda, and much of Africa, is the contribution of men who have sex with men (MSM) to HIV transmission. While it is commonplace for officials to say MSM does not contribute significantly to HIV in Africa, the fact is that we do not know. The US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief began to support MSM surveys in several African countries during the Bush Administration. Progress was slow and difficult due to cultural issues, which must be understood and respected to effectively move forward. The Ugandan law requires anyone who is aware of the homosexuality of any person to report them to authorities. Rick Warren was right to note that the requirement would make pastors policemen. But it also prevents public health officials from assessing the factors driving the spread of HIV. Without adequate knowledge of the drivers of the epidemic, it is not possible to effectively plan and implement programs to combat it.

In a related way, outlawing gay people, especially in such a draconian way, simply drives them underground where they cannot or will not access prevention, care and treatment services. Public health officials would not only be handicapped from effectively directing programs, the law would directly contribute to the spread of HIV and lead to increased sickness and death. That would counter the laudable gains Uganda has made in prevention and more recent advances in expanding treatment and care. Even if MSM do not currently contribute significantly to the HIV epidemic, if they are pushed away from services that could quickly change. This is a lesson learned the hard way in the US. While the epidemic has been stable or declining in previously high-risk populations, there has been an explosion in the inner cities and among African Americans, in particular women, who are often beyond the reach of prevention and care programs. For these reasons, President Bush talked about the need to deal with HIV in inner cities and prisons in a State of the Union Address and President Obama is developing a national HIV strategy.

Which brings us to the final point – stigma and discrimination are rarely good for public health. In addition to driving away people in need and at risk of spreading infection, stigma and discrimination cause others genuinely at risk to believe they are safe and need not act to protect themselves. And by ghettoizing a disease among what are considered marginalized populations, it lightens the pressure on policymakers to act quickly. We saw this phenomenon in the early days of HIV in the US, and we are seeing it today in Eastern Europe and parts of Asia.

Stigma and discrimination have in no small part fueled the HIV pandemic at the level of person-to-person interaction and at the highest levels of policymaking. It is also just wrong. For these reasons, President Bush directed his team to work to do away with one of the vestiges in the US – the unnecessary restrictions and bureaucratic hurdles for HIV-positive people to enter the US: a process that President Obama completed.

Sadly, Uganda is not the only country considering stigmatizing and discriminatory laws. Opposition to such measures pulls together a unique confluence of conservatives and liberals, people of deep religious faith and those more secular in outlook and principles of human rights and good public health. Seems like something worth standing up for.

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