30 August 2004

Thoughts on the Passing of Another Summer

I don't think you ever outgrow the wistfulness that comes with the last couple of weeks of August. On the way home from Nantucket I stood at the stern of the ferry and watched the sun set over the water. It was the only real vacation I had taken this summer and it seemed all too short as I was headed back to the stresses of work, moving out of my apartment, and waiting to hear what would become of the next 6 months of my life. It was chilly, too, as it always seems to be out on the water, no matter how warm it is in Hyannis.



Part of my contemplative mood was caused by all the big changes coming up: leaving my apartment, people I know moving away, my own impending move to another country. It was nice in a way to have all those (big, nasty, stressful) things captured by the perennial change from summer to autumn. It's sad to see the summer coming to an end, but there are nice things about autumn, too; and in just that way, it's sad to be getting ready to leave my home for my whole life, but it's exciting, too.


And after all, summer will be back again next year.


24 August 2004

Cone of Silence

As in, I am leaving same. I've also tossed up a few choice photos from the Erection party in Ossipee, some Red Sox games and my recent trip to Nantucket. Now if only I had something interesting to say.



10 August 2004

Erection Party

Well we successfully erected something this weekend, although it wasn't actually an LME (Lightweight Maintenance Enclosure). Instead it was a pair of smaller lightweight tents with a TENT: GENERAL PURPOSE, MEDIUM awaiting additional poles for later erection.



Quite the crowd assembled at Josh's Ossipee land, including the A-Side, Josh & Erin, Scott & Ehren, Brad & Delphin, mdakin, eahearn, Beth Dakin and her friend, paladin, lael, lindsay, mbroxton, greddy and kailas. We sort of arrived in bits and pieces on Saturday. I was originally part of the main car convoy that had departed from Cambridge/Somerville/Revere around 12:30 on Saturday. While we were stopped at a WAL*MART in southern NH, however, we received a distress call from the bicycle party in Pittsfield, NH. Scott and Ehren had left at 6AM to cycle the 135 miles from Boston to Ossipee.



MRhé and I diverted from the rest of the group to go fetch Ehren, who's body had given out on him after 90 miles (which is approximately 85 miles farther than I would've made it). Because my sense of direction is so abysmal we first of all cruised right by Ehren at 50mph before realizing it 5 miles later and doubling back to get him. Then I absentmindedly took the wrong route somewhere in the vicinity of Wolfesboro and wasted another hour heading back and finally getting on track. In the end we arrived only 10 minutes before Scott did on his bike.


Saturday was a lot of brush clearing with the string-trimmer and reorganization of vehicles before dusk fell. Josh, greddy and Brad (with a little late help from me and Ehren) felled a dead tree in the nearby bog (yay, ticks!) and there was much drinking and grilling and revelry into the night. I woke early on Sunday and puttered about the camp site (it was fixing to be a gorgeous sunny day). At around 8:30 I dragged Josh out of bed so we could head to the Indian Mound Hardware Store to purchase a machete for some more heavy-duty brush removal than the string-trimmer was capable of. We arrived just as they were opening (most of the aisles were still clogged with the wares they wheel out front to lure customers in) and the entire store was populated by crochety old men wearing shirts with "INDIAN MOUND" and their names embroidered on the front. Eventually we escaped with a spatula, baking pan (poor man's griddle), bow saw, machete, scythe stone, honing oil, sheath, 100' tape measure and a bottle of syrup from the Valu-Land next door.


Upon our return to camp we had a few people get the fire going to make pancakes while others finished the clearing, measuring and demarcation of the tent site while still others begin inventorying our parts. This last group came to the conclusion not too much later that we did not, in fact possess an LME, but rather a mish-mash of other tent assemblies. After a bit of disappointment we decided to build what we had and ended up with something which could at least shelter the two boats.


Anyway, some photos to come soon, although Amrys's are more plentiful anyway.


02 August 2004

The War of Ideas and the Ideas of War

This would be elsewhere if Scott provided the facility to comment on his website entries. As is, I'll continue the discourse originally prompted from his thoughts on terrorist grievances in this forum.



In the post Scott outlines his belief that President Bush is out of touch with the reality of the so-called "War On Terror". He supports this opinion by contrasting a statement by George W, which in part reads:



"They hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other."


He then goes on to quote from Osama's 1998 letter to Al-Quds al-Arabi, a London based Arabic newspaper. His point is to show that Al Qaeda lays out several grievances via bin Laden's ltter which have nothing to do with the President's contention that this war is between Freedom (as represented eloquently by the Bill of Rights) and Oppression.



I think George W. Bush (for all his failings) manages perfectly to capture the essence of this war.


Let's begin with the document used to infer Al Qaeda's true grievances, the 1998 communiqué titled, "Declaration of the World Islamic Front for Jihad against the Jews and the Crusaders." Given that mouthful of a title and the Qur'an quotation which begins the piece:


"I have been sent with the sword between my hands to ensure that no one but God is worshipped."

It is immediately clear that Osama defines this as an us-versus-them conflict between Islam and the infidels. Osama goes on to lay out "three facts that are known to everyone," including accusations that the US is "occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, and terrorizing its neighbors," and bemoaning "the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million." This is not a rational statement of purpose, but a wholesale distortion of reality. The presence of the United States in Arabia represents a challenge to the hegemony of radical Islamist governments in the region. This is a declaration of war on the fundamental beliefs that accompany Americans on every overseas deployment. Osama isn't saying, go home and we'll return to contentedly surpressing and murdering our own people, he's saying, "I'm going to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, then I'm going to come and stomp you out in America too." He calls his fighters in February 2003 to fight "to establish the rule of God on earth," commenting, "take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors: they are but friends and protectors to each other."


Let's go further and validate President Bush's representation of this conflict. It's pretty much summed up by Osama's "Letter to America" of November, 2002:



"It is saddening to tell you that you are the worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind:

You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator. You flee from the embarrassing question posed to you: How is it possible for Allah the Almighty to create His creation, grant them power over all the creatures and land, grant them all the amenities of life, and then deny them that which they are most in need of: knowledge of the laws which govern their lives?"


He derides all the things that Bush claims separate us from the evil-doers: freedom of speech, separation of church and state and the idea that our government is the people's government, not God's.


Not only are Al Qaeda's aims much deeper than stated in Osama's original fatwah, but the claims he makes in same are in such unabashed contradiction of reality that they are nearly meaningless. George Bush and his handlers love painting this picture as a very stark battle between the forces of Freedom and Chaos. He loves using freighted words like "evil" to stir up public fervor on his behalf. But in times of widespread moral tergiversation we need to occasionally stand up and declare, "We believe that our system is the best there is in an imperfect world, and if you choose to try to impose your despotic 11th century ideals on us, you're in for one hell of a fight."