Peace Takes Courage

A certain someone has argued with me in the past that liberals are always screaming insults and conservatives are the ones who behave themselves rationally in arguements.

I have never heard of or heard a liberal threaten to rape, beat or murder someone, let alone a 15 year old girl, for having a different opinion. (I have suggested that blue states should dump the red states- but that doesn't involve killing anyone).

Then I read this: Animation Producer Gets Ugly Slurs

Ava Lowery is a fifteen-year-old who lives in Alabama. She calls herself a peace
activist, and for the past year, she’s been producing her own short animations
on her website, peacetakescourage.com. All in all, she’s made about seventy of
them, she says, and most of them oppose Bush and his Iraq War.

So of course the wignuts come after her with comments like this. (Remember- she is a 15 year old girl and the bolds are mine)

“It’s people like you who need to fucking die and get raped while your
corpse rots in the sun,” said one e-mail Lowery shared with me.
“Fuck you, I would jack off on your parents if I could. If
you don’t like the team, get out of the park. That means take ur small dick
and get the fuck off of my homeland you faggot chocolate gulper.”

“You are a TRAITOR to your country and should be executed for
treason,” another one said. “All you do is bitch about the US. If
you hate it so much, why don’t you GET THE FUCK OUT.”

I watched the WWJD video and got seriously teary-eyed. There is nothing treasonous about it. These same people who are threatening to rape a 15 year old girl seem to have missed the idea that democracy means getting to have a different opinion from the one propagated by your government. So for the certain someone who keeps claiming that conservatives are the rational, practical ones- maybe you should read more and spout less. There is nothing rational or practical about rape and violence.

Macho Vs. Girly

There's an interesting discussion going on over at Echidne of the Snakes about defining masculinity and femininity. She suggests idea that femininity is the default setting and masculinity is something that needs to be aspired to, which is why people are always going on about the emasculation of men in society.

I have been called (in just the last year) uber-girly, super feminine and conversely I have been told I am a gay man in a straight girl's body or that I fuck like a man. I don't really know what to make of these remarks. I consider myself a girly-girl- and by that it means that I like pretty dresses and have a bathroom full of yummy smelling products. I have never thought that being girly automatically implied weakness. To the contrary, actually. Being a girl automatically means that you either develop a certain toughness and ability to protect yourself or you become a perpetual victim. I don't see anything weak or un-womanly about that. And I don't see how perpetual victimhood makes girls more girly. I don't think that by being capable I am sacrificing any of my girly-cred. But because I don't act weak- I am told that I am more masculine. Huh? I have also been told by boys who were put off by my toughness that I just needed to "see what a real man is like". Double huh? Like the insertion of a super-macho cock is going to suddenly make me unable to kill my own spiders or walk to the store by myself at night?

So peeps, boys and girls, what's your take on the whole macho/girly argument? Have you been accused of acting the wrong gender?

Dune- Desert Planet?

Without revealing my closet geek status as a total Frank Hebert fan- I can't help but think we are all bound for still-suits and recycled pee drinking in the near future after reading this interview at Salon.

Did you know it takes 650 gallons of water to make a pound of cheddar cheese? Or that enough water evaporates from Lake Nasser every year to hydrate the entire UK?

So enviro-geeks, what's your take?

Rebuild the Viaduct?

So the powers that B currently argue about replacing the highway equivalent to the Kingdome: the Alask Way Viaduct. The state says: we'll give you money, but only if you promise to replace it with a road of the same or greater capacity. But is this wise? Should we encourage more traffic or less? Should we construct another $millions/mile stretch of road that promotes air and water pollution (through ever-increasing toxic storm water runoff)? One that would further block views of the water?

Shouldn't we have enough knowledge and courage to determine that building more roads does not solve the problem of demand? Is rebuilding the viaduct, even one that is a tunnel, just more of the same? Or will we suffer without one?

Your thoughts?

Diplomacy, diplomacy, diplomacy

From Zbigniew Brzezinski

Why we whould not attack Iran:

But there are four compelling reasons against a preventive air attack on
Iranian nuclear facilities:

1. In the absence of an imminent threat (with the Iranians at least several
years away from having a nuclear arsenal), the attack would be a unilateral
act of war.If undertaken without formal Congressional declaration, it would
be unconstitutional and merit the impeachment of the President. Similarly,
if undertaken without the sanction of the UN Security Council either alone
by the United States or in complicity with Israel, it would stamp the
perpetrator(s) as an international outlaw(s).

2. Likely Iranian reactions would significantly compound ongoing U.S.
difficulties in Iraq and in Afghanistan, perhaps precipitate new violence by
Hezbollah in Lebanon, and in all probability cause the United States to
becomebogged down in regional violence for a decade or more to come. Iran
is a country of some 70 million people and a conflict with it would make the
misadventure in Iraq look trivial.

3. Oil prices would climb steeply, especially if the Iranians cut their
production and seek to disrupt the flow of oil from the nearby Saudi oil
fields. The world economy would be severely impacted, with America blamed
for it. Note that oil prices have already shot above $70 per barrel, in part
because of fears of a U.S./Iran clash.

4. America would become an even more likely target of terrorism, with much
of the world concluding that America's support for Israel is itself a major
cause of the rise in terrorism. America would become more isolated and thus
more vulnerable while prospects for an eventual regional accommodation
between Israel and its neighbors would be ever more remote.

And what we should do instead:

The United States should become a direct participant in the negotiations,
joining the three European negotiating states, as well as perhaps Russia and
China (both veto-casting UN Security Council members), in direct negotiations
with Iran, on the model of the concurrent multilateral talks with North Korea;As
in the case of North Korea, the United States should also simultaneously engage
in bilateral talks with Iran regarding mutually contentious security and
financial issues;

The United States should be a signatory party to any quid-pro-quo
arrangements in the event of a satisfactory resolution of the Iranian nuclear
program and of regional security issues.At some point in the future, the above
could perhaps lead to a regional agreement for a nuclear weapons-free zone in
the Middle East, especially after the conclusion of an Israeli-Palestinian peace
agreement, endorsed also by all the Arab states of the region. At this stage,
however, it would be premature to inject that complicated issue into the
negotiating process with Iran.

The choice is either to be stampeded into a reckless adventure profoundly
damaging to long-term U.S. national interests or to become serious about giving
negotiations with Iran a genuine chance to be productive. The mullahs were on
the skids several years ago but were given a new burst of life by the
intensifying confrontation with the United States.

The U.S. strategic goal, pursued by real negotiations and not by posturing,
should be to separate Iranian nationalism from religious fundamentalism.
Treating Iran with respect and within a historical perspective would help to
advance that objective.

Don't it make the red states blue

There is hope after all! Those 51% of red-staters that we have been mocking for the last few years may have finally seen the error of their ways.

Maybe if we promised to forgive them for being idiots and stopped teasing them for being dumber than a sack o'hair the trend will keep up until midterm elections. Or maybe it's the mocking that is doing the trick.

Damn You Wimbledon!

In the last year I have taken up the oh-so bourgie sport of tennis. Not just taken up- but become addicted to the thwack of my racquet on a little green ball (no snickering allowed from the peanut gallery about my love of smacking around balls-really.)

Mephistopheles (the brave boy that he is) and I are taking lessons together from a little French guy who likes to address my breasts. Last Saturday most of the class ditched, so there were only 4 of us and the devil was the only boy. Tennis is great because it is one of the few sports where women can compete with men (remember Billy Jean King anyone?) and it is the women who are the current superstars- though I salivate over James Blake.

Then I read this:

WIMBLEDON, England (AP) Wimbledon remains the only Grand Slam tournament that pays the men's champion more than the women's winner.
The All England Club announced Tuesday that the men's winner this year will receive $1.170 million and the women's champion $1.117 million, a difference of $53,000. It's a four percent increase in British currency. The French Open announced earlier this month that it would pay the men's and women's champions the same amount for the first time, although the overall prize fund is bigger for the men. The two other Grand Slam tournaments,the Australian and U.S. Opens, have paid equal prize money for years.

So why is it that Wimbledon is one of the last tennis events to pay men and women so unevenly? To read their convoluted reasoning and a damn fine analysis go check out Zuzu's post at Feministe.