Cork

Consider me the choir!

From a blog post of Outside Magazine (2011):

Sometime around World War II, synthetics exploded into our everyday lives. By some estimates, these materials—plasticizers, dyes, pesticides—have increased by a shocking 8,200 percent in the last quarter century. The upshot of that, of course, has been improved agriculture, economic wealth, and an abundance of cheap materials like Tupperware and Gore-Tex. The downside? According to McKay Jenkins, author ofWhat's Gotten Into Us?: Staying Healthy in a Toxic World (Random House; $26), it's scarier than you think.

From Al-Qaeda's Inspire Magazine (Spring 2011):

"Another line that is being pushed by Western leaders

is that because the protests in Egypt and Tunisia

were peaceful, they proved al Qaeda – which calls

for armed struggle – to be wrong. That is another

fallacy. Al Qaeda is not against regime changes

through protests but it is against the idea that the

change should be only through peaceful means

to the exclusion of the use of force. In fact Shaykh

Ayman al-Zawahiri spoke in support of the protests

that swept Egypt back in 2007 and he alluded to

the fact that even if the protests were peaceful,

the people need to prepare themselves militarily.

The accuracy of this view is proven by the turn of

events in Libya. If the protesters in Libya did not

have the flexibility to use force when needed, the

uprising would have been crushed."

The Enlightened Hangover

From the strain of my previous post, my concept of realizing the practical portion of this particular curiosity is two-fold:

One) I'm stimulated by the idea of reclaiming a plot of unusable, infertile land and make a mystic of it (i.e. sow vines to yield wines)

Two) I want to experience the tension pulling the tides in the war on terror, in the reorganization of the global system in both a less abstract manner and a more direct involvement.

Indeed the abstract doesn't lessen during moments of involvement, but once a curiosity has earned so much in the abstract it seeks to employ its investments. In the process of earning my curiosity I acquired an example of how a thing can weather from the inside out. My father for one has explained to me that my senior project read like a dissertation (which I read as code for "Complicated"), and my advisor suggested that I need to be intentional about not just making connections but showing how the ends of my lines became sticky. There are moments when tumult doesn't show in the sails but in motor, or the handling of the helm, or the smell of the cabin. When my adventure weathers inside out it is isolated at certain corners but it is of course, the weather outside that shows me my stress points. If I were to claim both a defense and an offense I would say that I seek an indulgent involvement and that I will fight against the leathering process of abandoning this curiosity for more conventional means: i.e. a recognizable form of employment for a lady of my posture and potential.

Marilyn Merlot in Morocco

More surprising still is the fact that Morocco’s oldest winery, Celliers de Meknes, has made a brisk business of selling booze in a country where 98 percent of the population is forbidden to drink alcoholic beverages.

Wine brings the state millions in sales tax, even though Islam appears to be on the rise politically.

I would like to explore that tension which I left out of my writings; that which pushes and pulls between Islam's haraam or forbidden view on wine and one of the largest wine producing countries of the Muslim Maghreb. The idea that 25million of 30million bottles of wine are sold in Moroccan borders is interesting. There are 5 wine regions in Morocco and 14 plots that adhere to Appelation d'Origine Garantie standards. In other words, the wine industry is organized, and from what I've read French colonialism only encouraged a people with viable vineyards.

Morocco has always been an object of intrigue to me (and that has been a source of anxiety for my parents), and now that intrigue is more than a whim: I can speak one of the main languages of Morocco, I have a basic drive to work on the vineyards, and a curiosity for the organization of a predominately Arab country. I want firstly to figure out the tensions that I will be playing with so far as I’m aware.

For one, I’m aware of the tension in asking for a job that is otherwise available to the unemployed people of Morocco. Secondly, I’m aware of the tension of a wine industry operating in an Islamic arab society. I’m aware of how my the title, “Western American woman” will introduce me before I give my name. If the motivation to destroy an American stronghold in world economics is viable and raw then a posit to ask for work in a foreign country as a representative of such stronghold is potentially offensive, ignorantly inappropriate, and naive.

These are the areas I foresee to require the greatest defense. So what offense do I have to offer? I want to be a field hand on a vineyard in Meknes, Morocco during such a time as to challenge al-Qaeda in the reorganization of the global system. To be clear, I'm working under the influence of 2 articles today, one from al Jazeera and the other from NPR. With little time divested between the two, I gathered one claim: Al-Qaeda's ideology stems from the dialect and distress of food shortages and unemployment in Egypt circa Sadat; brutalized for 3 years in Egyptian prison for collaborating in Sadat's assassination, Ayman al-Zawahiri learned of his impoverished reality, how it was sustained, and was radicalized by this discernment to oust oppressing/corrupted/occasionally-western authority.

My questions

If the current Egyptian revolution to overthrow a regime responsible for catering his people with poverty is an amplified-albeit more peaceful-echo of the 80's, does it pose a greater threat to destroy the American stronghold in the region than Al-Qaeda could through jihad? If the United States' stronghold is economic-based, is this a more direct hit?
(In the margins... if reorganizing the global system has the same end-effect shared between the two groups, does this basic line of reasoning--Al-Qaeda emerged as a resolve to an unhappy, impoverished Egypt years ago--drain into the fears for the emerging Muslim Brotherhood? --or, is that blanket a little too generous?)

That basically puts forth the idea that the peaceful revolutions of Egypt, in particular, pose a threat to the current "global system" that Al-Qaeda has vowed to destroy. Al-Qaeda seeks the same reorganization of economics through jihad. If the United States is hesitant to support or ignore the democratic desires of the revolutions currently underway in North Africa and the Middle East because of their threat –however non-violently it may be–to the American allegiances in the region then I want to personally experience its happening. I relish the idea of carrying this experience into a piece of fiction. Ayn Rand is my favorite author for her stories and her ability to weave theory through her tellings. I'm exhausted with theories after researching for my senior project, and would be grateful for the manual labor. I would like those both in hand when I pick up a pen again.

I recognize the violent contradiction of the statement: to be an American looking to be apart of the ousting of American presence; and that, simply acknowledging that contradiction will not defend me against violence. This is where I am. This is what I want to work towards.

Update: Instead, [the Gulf Cooperation Council, in light of its recent consideration to extend membership to Morocco and Jordan,] seems to be evolving into a club for Sunni Arab monarchs -- the institutional home of the counter-revolution, directed against not only Iran but also against the forces for change in the region.

Drinking And Fighting Proper

The Thesis

Terror in Terms of Terroir

"Once established, this empire, [a pan Islamic state], could then turn its attention to the subjugation and conquest of the rest of the world, particularly the liberal West, as the Ottoman Turks did in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries... Our Fight [therefore] is against those who want to turn Islam into a terrorist creed preaching global violence and revolution..." Thomas McInerney and Paul E. Vallely

In order to understand how I will allow viticulture and terrorism to converse I need to know where to cue in terror, terrorism, and terrorists.

Where, for instance, is the terrorist's vineyard? Clearly the reign of terror extends throughout national borders and over international waters. Because the fruit of a terrorist's labor is as simple as seeds, meat, and skin it is vulnerable to the elements it encounters. In the New Order of day (post 9/11), such encounter answers to the name "Counterterrorism". (In the days of our elders the encounter reeled through public policy as "Counterintelligence" or "Counterstrategy".) As the seasons change so too change the threats.

Working within the progression of climate--be it political, economical or societal-- a terrorist must understand the preparations demanded by the sow of his labor and essential to the structure and resonance of his or her final product. What fruit is good to preserve the terrorist should next consider which bottle best carries out the job. ZEALOT Considering the tangible realness of simple materials mingling and tingling, leavening from such basic constituents as the heat of light and willingness. The mild experiments that take place throughout the season just after curing the juice of the fruits of terror reveal to those who planted the seeds and tended the fruit a kind of satisfaction as well as engage with those who unknowingly import the fruits of terror into their harbors and ports. As the cured fruit of terror ages it also is also likely to establish itself as a vintage or as a reserve blend. In regard to the former, that of terror as vintage, the events of 9/11 made an example of terror locked in time. In regard to the latter, that of terror as a reserve, it is not unlike the actions made by the United States or the Soviet Union during the cold war to create stockpile after stockpile of nuclear weapons. While such an action plays on the palate like a simple table wine, it does not pertain to an immediate engagement, but rather to a foreseeable threat. While the effects of cured fruit are no different in a vintage blend than a reserve blend, the effects are lucid, palpable and do not leave the body quickly.

To even stand a chance of passing the fruit of terror, the body requires an enzyme. In the event that a terrorist pours you a glass of his or her finest yield, he or she demonstrates the first submission of control over the fruit: the ways in which terror is circulated, internalized, and digested within another human body now propagates and regulates the future of terror. Without the enzyme necessary for proper digestion of terror, the side-effects appear in the face as the consumer becomes flush with embarrassment and anger. (The enzyme required to properly break down the alcohol in wine is called aldehyde dehydrogenase 2 and indeed any indulgent consumer who has a deficiency of this enzyme will appear flush in the face.) Not only is the future determined by those who directly consume cured fruit. Control also plays a hand with the community, with those whose children attend school with children from the vineyard, with those who shop with or cut the hair of the wily and willing producers of terror. Such says the passage of McIreney and Vallely as they continue the thought posed at the beginning of this essay:

"...Ultimately, it is up the world's Muslims to make a commitment to peace, freedom, and tolerance; to determine how they will reconcile their religion with modernity..."

Sure terrorism is a trade as characteristically Old World as wine, and it is easy to see A in terms of B. It is also easy to understand the urgency that extrapolates the need to develop a defense against terrorist attacks; to counter terrorist attacks. While my position in Boone as a student allows me enough distance so as not to feel that urgency to counter terrorism, allowing me, on the other hand, room to play, it also excludes me from resources and networks. For example, I have not been able to track down any one who grows and makes a biodynamic wine, nor do I know any one to talk with about terrorism at the scale of 9/11, which apparently threw the United States into a watershed.