Rita Lobo

Brazilian journalist, writer and activist

Last week the governments of Rio and São Paulo, Brazil's two biggest cities raised the cost of the bus fare by R$0.20 (£0.06). It might sound like a negligible amount of money, but it was enough to trigger the biggest public uprisings the country has seen in over two decades.

Will Bunch

Author, 'Tear Down This Myth'

In both Turkey and Brazil, it has been the reckless brutality of the security forces -- captured on smartphones and broadcast to a whole world that's watching -- that has caused the protests to grow. Will the United States go down the same road?

Martha Burk

Money Editor, Ms. magazine; director, Corporate Accountability Project, National Council of Women's Organizations

House Speaker John Boehner told reporters the GOP's abortion ban that passed the House 228-196 on Tuesday won't change the party's relationship with women. He's half right. It won't change the party's relationship with women, because women already hate the GOP.

Joyce McFadden

Psychoanalyst, author of 'Your Daughter's Bedroom: Insights for Raising Confident Women'

As her father, you have the power to make certain she knows your love is steadfast, and that she won't have to choose between your love and her maturation.

Rep. Steve Israel

Congressman from New York's 3rd Congressional District

I'm proud to represent an area of Long Island that has been the location for many famous movies and TV shows. Shamefully, it's also now the location for a show whose characters are disgraceful, misleading, and fuel anti-Semitic stereotypes: Princesses: Long Island.

Mike Hogan

Executive Arts and Entertainment Editor, The Huffington Post Media Group

Don Draper doesn't kill people. He doesn't cook or deal drugs. He doesn't oversee an organized-crime syndicate. Hell, he doesn't even use the F-word. But there's no question he's a bastard. He lies. He cheats. He undermines his colleagues in ways both overt and underhanded. And yet, in spite of it all, there has always been something about Don that makes us love him anyway. We know what a scoundrel he is, but we just can't quit him.

Elia Saikaly

Adventure Filmmaker/Social entrepreneur, Founder of FindingLife

My goal was to bring to life the majestic beauty of the Himalayas and draw attention away from the negativity that has surrounded Everest in the past years. I wanted to remind people of the infinite possibility that the tallest mountain on Earth symbolizes in each of us.

William Astore

Writer, Professor, Retired Lt. Colonel, Air Force

How about some truly fresh thinking on national security? Here are five ideas that are more visionary than anything our sclerotic and self-absorbed bureaucracy will ever produce.

DJ Louie XIV

DJ

Like the majority of our generation, knowing that we feed into our own misery by engaging in the grown-up high school cafeteria known as Twitter and emptying our increasingly scant bank-accounts on a smorgasbord of Apple products, this man has an uncanny comfort with being a complete and total hypocrite, a quality that my mom, admirably if aberrantly, does not possess. So yes, Kanye West is perhaps morally reprehensible. But he is also the most perfectly polished mirror we have.

Tira Harpaz

Founder and President, CollegeBound Advice

I've lost 50 pounds in the past year, and it's just plain hard. I'm not on any special diet, I don't have a personal trainer, and I'm terrified every minute that I'll backslide like I have in the past.

Julie Jensen

Wife, mother, digital media veteran, stroke survivor

I'm sure I'd still be searching for fulfillment if I didn't receive a wake-up call on September 30, 2004. I was 26 when I was wheeled into the ER and a nurse asked if I knew what was happening. "I think I had a stroke," I muttered. "Ma'am, you are HAVING a stroke."

Nick Turse

Managing Editor, TomDispatch.com

Ten years after Washington began pouring taxpayer dollars into counterterrorism and stability efforts across Africa, the continent has experienced profound changes, just not those the U.S. sought.

Renee Fisher

Author

Susan seems to attract a lot of really interesting and unique men. So many, in fact, that I've decided to divide this column up into several parts. We'll start with the initial responses she gets from various men on the dating sites.

Lisa Copeland

Dating Coach

After speaking with a lot of men over 50, I've come up with these top 10 dating turnoffs you might be doing.

Russ Belville

Host of The Russ Belville Show

To put this in perspective, try and imagine the DEA caught an average American with a $45,000 annual income diverting millions of OxyContin on the black market and then settled with the American for a $47.25 fine and no criminal charges.

J.C. McKeown

Author

Sex hasn't changed much; we are still on that same quest, and many of the sexual attitudes from two and a half thousand years ago are still around today -- but there are also some radical differences.

Robert Scheer

Editor, Truthdig.com; Author, 'The Great American Stickup'

For defense contractors, the government officials who write them mega checks, and the hawks in the media who cheer them on, the name of the game is threat inflation. And no one has been better at it than the folks at Booz Allen Hamilton.

Shimon Peres

President of the State of Israel

We don't have enemies. There is no country, no religion, which we consider an enemy. Our only enemies are those who reject peace, sow division, and spread hatred.

Rev. Al Sharpton

President, National Action Network

Nobody should be denied the right to vote, or face additional hurdles because of a strategic method to disenfranchise them. Just as no one should be racially profiled, no one should be racially blocked from the voting booth.

Ethan Nadelmann

Executive Director, Drug Policy Alliance

The magnitude of our victories in Colorado and Washington makes what once appeared impossible -- drug law reforms grounded in science, compassion, health and human rights -- seemingly inevitable.

Mike Julianelle

Blogger, DadandBuried.com

Of course, being exhausted is not just for parents. Once you hit a certain age, energy is just harder to come by; pretty much everyone I know is exhausted all the time. It's just life. But as a parent, there is one primary reason I am always so tired.

Grown And Flown

Authors, Goldman Sachs: The Culture of Success

I let go of the burning ambition I once held because I didn't feel as though I could hold it and three babies at the same time. My husband did not do this, my children did not do this, I did this.

Zach Hindin

Writer and musician based in Harlem.

Almost immediately, the press invoked George Orwell to characterize the drama unfolding around Edward Snowden's revelation of the NSA's digitally omniscient domestic surveillance program. It should have been Aldous Huxley.

Suzan Haskins and Dan Prescher

InternationalLiving.com Editors

If you're old enough to collect Social Security, there may be no better place to live right now than Latin America.

Dean Baker

Co-director, CEPR; author, 'The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive'

It isn't often that progressives in the United States have much to celebrate. After all, the news has swung between bad and worse for most of the last three decades. That is why we should be celebrating the victory over the Campaign to Fix the Debt and its efforts to cut Social Security and Medicare.

Don Bacigalupi

President, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

We live now in permissive times -- art historically speaking -- when any and all art-making approaches are potentially viable, especially so if they riff on, reuse, or recycle the past. And so to be confronted with a monumental example of Minimalist art may be jarring.

Eric E. Sterling

President, Criminal Justice Policy Foundation

You would think that Eric Holder, the first African American Attorney General, and Barack Obama, the first African American President, would be vigilant that there was no racial discrimination in the Justice Department of their Administration. You would think.

Daddy-O

Hip-hop historian, music technologist, founder of Stetsasonic

There is no political correctness in my rant. Just facts. Without diversity, there is no hip-hop, even if you choose to call it that. Hip-hop is not a reality TV show. Hip-hop is not a pair of pants sagging. Hip-hop has founders, innovation, and purpose.

Simon Johnson

Author, 'White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, Our National Debt, and Why It Matters To You'

Global megabanks are pushing back hard against the idea that additional reforms are needed -- beyond what is supposed to be implemented as part of the Dodd-Frank 2010 financial legislation.