Is That Sexism? You Bet!

Now, I hadn't decided which candidate I hoped would be the Democratic nominee for president. I like the front-runners for different reasons. John Edwards supports women's rights, he understands the needs of the poor, and he has a strong, smart wife whom I admire. Barack Obama is a fresh (minority!) face, with good ideas, a smooth presentation, and a strong, smart wife whom I admire. Hillary Clinton is tough and smart, but I've been concerned about her vote for supporting President Bush in the Iraq war and about her inside-the-beltway connections that seem a little too cozy.

However, the "how do we beat the bitch" question posed to John McCain by a white-haired woman has fired me up. A woman runs for president in the United States, and she's called a "bitch." And John McCain doesn't flinch from the language--using it, instead, to raise a lot of money for his campaign. Then Clinton gets tossed that "diamonds or pearls" question. !!!?

My mind is now made up. It's way past time that the United States had a woman president. I mean, good god, Chile has a woman president; Argentina just elected a woman president; Germany has a woman president--among others. Hillary Clinton for President!

No Rights for Women

These are our "friends" in the Middle East: A nineteen-year-old Saudi woman who was gang raped has been penalized with 200 lashes and 6 months in prison after she appealed her case. Her lawyer had his license revoked and was suspended from the case. The rapists received jail sentences, but their victim was also punished, for being in a car with a male who was not a relative! What a justice system! Here is another article on the story.

Support Women's Rights!

Sufficient (A poem)

I.
Up Winnona Drive leaves sashay with color,
belting out hallelujahs to fall.
Summer’s faded green whirls orange and gold,
maroon warms the cool blue sky.
Bursts of periwinkle blazon the asters
that long stood dull and quiet against the garden fence.
Acorns blanket sidewalks, crushed piles that slip
beneath the feet of unwary walkers.
Caught in this kaleidoscope I catch
my breath and balance:
The pattern shifts again.

II.
Last night’s rain was not enough
to fill the lake for Atlanta’s millions
though the governor prayed for storm.
“Drought,” he said, “is God’s way
of getting our attention.” Then who’s listening?
Not the neighbor whose sprinkler still flails in the dead
of night, nor the man whose lone
water use could serve sixty homes,
nor the governor, who blames on God our own long-term cupidity—
Nor even the heavens, it seems, whose fourteen-hundredths
of an inch flipped off the hope
for an undeserved deus ex machina.

III.
But today the trees are washed and dressed,
transfigured in pagan glory.

Anita, 6 Generations blogger

One Beautiful Day After Another

One beautiful day follows another here in drought-stricken metro Atlanta. The high today will be in the low 70s; we've had frost some mornings. But every day since the last rain in October has been clear, cool, and gorgeous. If it weren't for the water shortage, this would be the perfect fall, and I would be planning and planting my front yard with native perennials, herbs, and vegetables.

To the untrained eye, our neighborhood seems unaffected by the drought. Our lawn, which we have never watered, remains green except for a few small spots of dead grass. Native plants are doing well; heavier water drinkers such as hydrangeas are wilted. The drought poses the most danger because 5 million people in metro Atlanta depend upon a small water source--the Chattahoochee River--and its dammed resources in Lake Sidney Lanier.

Metro Atlanta has been under an outside watering ban for some weeks now as the drought continues to increase in severity. Some folks have responded to the need to conserve water better than other folks. One of our neighbors continues to wash his car weekly and water his plants with city water from his outside water hoses. "Consider your dirty car as a badge of honor," Governor Sonny Perdue has encouraged us. I guess our neighbor doesn't value that particular badge of honor.

Some folks turn in their scofflaw neighbors who continue to water outside. A local news reporter interviewed a woman who walks in her neighborhood every day, rather self-righteously looking for the telltale signs of wetness around the edges of lawns. I'm not going to turn in my neighbor, but it is difficult for me not to feel a little ill will toward him. I've been doling out the water I collected from the last rain, watering in the native perennials I had purchased before the water ban, and I'll soon have to resort to gray water from the shower again.

People respond to crises in different ways. Some think they are above the cares and concerns of ordinary people, as if they have no personal responsibility in civic life. Channel 2 Action News recently researched the water records of Cobb County to discover the biggest water users in that county. One man's home rose to the top of the list: 440,000 gallons of water used in the past month, "as much [water use] as a 60-home subdivision," according to Channel 2. On her website, Dr. Pamela Gore, of Georgia Perimeter College, writes that the average person in Georgia uses 168 gallons of water a day. So that's a lot of water per day for this guy in Cobb County who lives alone, according to one news source.

That kind of reckless use of our resources contributes to the water crisis we're facing here in north Georgia. Photos of Lake Sidney Lanier illustrate that crisis more than these words can. The unfortunate thing is that most of us don't see the dramatic results of our poor use of resources until it's too late: homes are burned on the hillsides in California; water taps are running dry in Atlanta. As long as our grass is green, we don't seem to care if the neighbor's spigots are dry.

UPDATE:
I have edited this entry so that no one can exactly identify the neighbor who continues to wash his car. His outside watering is small potatoes: he probably uses less water cleaning his car than he would if he used the facilities of a local car wash. (Some car washes, however, are recycling their water.) Watering one's lawn wastes the most water in urban and suburban areas. I think we need to change this ideal of the American lawn as being a huge expanse of thirsty green grass. At some point in our history--probably in the 1950s--the American lawn, with its heavy need of water, fertilizer and its requirement of a hatred of dandelions--became every suburban American's obsession. How can we turn around that obsession and get folks to grow native grasses and ornamentals that require less water and attention? This water crisis is not going to go away. We may eventually get enough rain to raise the water in the reservoirs, but Atlanta continues to grow while our water resource does not.

UPDATE II:
"Cobb Top Water Guzzler Say's He'll Try to Cut Back" And, of course, he has hired a PR team to help him

Torture: "It Depends on Who Does It"

I've been following the debate on torture since those first pictures of Iraqi prisoners emerged from Abu Ghraib. That debate has revealed the moral bankruptcy of the Bush administration and most of the Republican party. Rudy Giuliani, the front runner (God help us!) for the Republican nomination for president, recently said in a town meeting that the definition of torture depended on "how it's done. . . the circumstances. . . . [and] "who does it."

Well, people who represent us are doing it, and with our votes and our silence, we're complicit. Giuliani recites the old, tired, Republican mantra that the "liberal media" is distorting the facts. It's not "liberal media" that calls waterboarding torture; this method has been considered torture--by people of all political persuasions-- since its first use. Joan Walsh, at Salon, directs readers to a recent editorial in The Washington Post by Evan Wallach, a former JAG in the Nevada National Guard. Wallach gives us a brief history of water torture, including details on how the United States prosecuted for war crimes people who performed waterboarding on prisoners.

In his article, Wallach writes that waterboarding does not "simulate drowning," as so many who try to downplay the details claim: "To be effective, waterboarding is usually real drowning that simulates death." Wallach supplies testimony of people who have experienced this form of torture.

So waterboarding is torture when used by the Japanese in World War II against Allied soldiers--but it's NOT when used by operatives of the United States government against suspected terrorists? Would it be torture if Rudy Giuliani were waterboarded? I think Giuliani--and all those other Republican faces who downplay torture--would sing a different tune if he were strapped to a table with his head down and experienced water being poured on a cloth over his mouth and nose until he lost consciousness.

Torture is torture, no matter who does it or who the victim is.

UPDATE: This evening (8 Nov. 2007) on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, "a former Navy instructor and an intelligence expert" were questioned about the legality and effectiveness of waterboarding as a coercive technique to extract information from suspected terrorists and "enemy combatants." The transcript of that discussion can be found here, on the PBS website. More about Former Senior Chief Petty Officer Malcolm Nance, who, in my opinion, spoke so eloquently against the use of torture, can be found here. A short essay written by Malcolm Nance can be found here--and another here.