Sunday, September 20, 2009
President Ronald Reagan, or Ronald Ray-Gun?
“Not he is great who can alter matter,
but he who can alter my state of mind”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
American Poet, Lecturer and Essayist,
1803-1882
“The secret of living a life of excellence is merely a matter of thinking thoughts of excellence.
Really, it's a matter of programming our minds with the kind of information that will set us free."
Charles R. Swindoll
American Writer, Clergyman
b.1934
On Thursday evening I recorded the last Colber(t) Repor(t) of the week, but did not get around to watching it until the weekend. Early in the show, Colbert featured an interaction with a remarkably calm but alert goat, as the lead in to his interview of Jon Ronson by satellite from the UK. Ronson has written a book, which I am looking forward to reading, as I work my way through the stack of material, book, online, periodical and 'other' that I seem always to feed slightly faster into the heap than I can winnow it down.
Ronson's Book, "The Men Who Stare at Goats", is about a little project that operated under the auspices of our government, beginning back in 1983, hence the whimsical word play on our esteemed late President's name. That and related projects were not discontinued until 1995. The book purports also to link these activities to the Bush administration's war on terror, which, not having read the entire book -yet - I can't address. It may very well be continuing in some form under President Obama for all I know. To supplement my preliminary reading, while I try to get my hands and eyes on a copy of this book, I have contacted the author by email, and await a response. Perhaps I should ask all of the readers of Penigma, like clapping for Tinkerbelle in Peter Pan, to 'will' Mr. Ronson to respond favorably to my request for an interview. (It must have worked, I have promptly received a positive response from Mr. Ronson.)
Mr. Ronson has a web site, which understandably is for the purpose of promoting his book and other activities, at http://www.jonronson.com/goats_04.htm%20l, and which provides access to the first chapter, which deals with a certain Major General Stubblebine, describing actual 'black ops' secret military projects with names like "Project Jedi" intended to create soldiers with super powers, able to use psychic ability for a variety of offensive and defensive purposes. Between that and the Reagan era Star Wars initiative, I'm afraid the US Government was tremendously, even appallingly, derivative of the George Lucas entertainment canon of movies and supplemental fictional material. Or given the military nature of all of this new age effort, should that be cannon?
In the Colbert interview, reference was made to something in the book, called 'sparkly eyes', for employing psychic powers against others. I'm afraid the closest I could get to that kind of inspiration while writing this was glittery eye shadow, but it certainly puts me in the correct frame of mind, given where my admittedly spotty research has taken me so far.
After reading an excerpt of Chapter 1 from "The Men Who Stare at Goats", I did a little research on this project, and I will admit shamefully to havng deviated from my usual standard of seeking solid original sources. I just looked it up on Wikipedia (cut me some slack, this is a fluff piece, written for fun; I read the boring, original, serious material the rest of the time). It was strictly a casual interim 'browse' to familiarize myself with the subject matter. Mr. Ronson very much is not making this stuff up. There genuinely does appear to be all this, and much, much more.
A quickie google search on Major-General Stubblebine produced material that was not funny. It appears that Major General Stubblebine is a 'truther', one of those who believes that there is some kind of conspiracy relating to the terrorist events of 9/11. Some of our readers have taken me to task for writing about the birthers and their conspiracy theories without having addressed the lunatic fringe movements on the opposite side of the political spectrum. Well, those readers will get their wish. Although not in depth in this article, I will continue to pursue information on Stubblebine. For now, I offer this video which I found through google - I repeat, I'm not claiming this is up to my usual research standards - for those who would like a glimpse of what I am describing. The video appears to be for some German media, I'm not clear whom, but for those of you whose language skills were getting rusty, which in this case includes me, there is a bonus in the form of German subtitles to amuse you. Here is the Stubblebine interview link : www.youtube.com./watch?v=daNr_TrBw6E I'm sure I'm not the only person who finds it bad enough for our fellow Americans to be treated to this rant by Stubblebine; for it to be seen around the world, in countries which are our allies, is even more embarrassing.
On a more serious note, which requires a bit of a mental shifting of gears to accommodate, I have to express my dismay and shock, so soon after researching the Orly Taitz / Birther information, that we appear to have high ranking military officers in the camps of our conspiracy theorists and lunatics on both extremes of the political spectrum. The 'truthers' apparently have the endorsement of Stubblebine, and the birthers claim the apparent support, through a law suit, of Major General James S. Childress.
This raises the question in my mind, who promoted these men to positions of authority and power, and how scary is it that they had access not only to soldiers, including special forces trained personnel, but dangerous weapons; guns and ammunition, tanks, rpgs. (OK - And goats!) I do not intend by these comments to in any way demean our armed forces, far from it. But reading and viewing the ideas held by these high-ranking individuals, the thought comes unbidden that those armed forces were under the care and command of individuals whose thought processes and conclusions I find disturbing. That these men, at either end of a very polarized political spectrum, had access to anything sharper than a marshmallow or more deadly than a daisy is on some level unnerving.
Readers may definitely look forward to my writing up something further on General Childress and on General Stubblebine. It is not my intent to be flippant or irreverent to legitimate service to our country by either gentleman in the course of questioning their extreme political views, and it is especially NOT my intention to embarrass or demean the rank and file of any of our armed forces. It is however an important concern for all of us that there appear to be individuals at the highest levels of our military who may be extremists, who are willing to use the achievement of that rank to give those extreme, even wacko views credence, and to use their service to recruit others who love their country to those bizarre viewpoints. The thought which popped into my mind unbidden was that it is bad enough to put inmates in charge of an asylum, but far worse to put them in charge of our armies.
Now, off to dig up that glittery eye shadow, and to try mastering the technique of 'sparkly eyes'.... if I can stop laughing long enough to apply it without poking myself in the eye.
More to come.
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Couple of comments about this.
ReplyDeleteFirst, not all the Star Wars missle defense was worthless. The patriot missle came out of this research and we now have destroyers equipped with anti missles that can take down an ICBM in the launch phase. Not 100% accurate but way better than seeing where it hits and cleaning up the bodies. If we had not started putting money into this when Reagan was president we would be a few yrs away from having some of it and with Iran anywhere from a day to 5 yrs from a nuke (even the same agencies have different estimates day to day) and working on long range missiles I for one am glad we have it.
As far as promoting the two generals chances are good (if they were smart) that they never mentioned their wacko views until after the promotions. As long as they are good soldiers, don't act on those views, and don't embarass the higher ups by being too vocal about their views chances are good no one will care. Remember Patton thought he was reincarnated and stuck his foot in his mouth at every opportunity but was constantly promoted and given a new command, mainly because we were in a war and he was quite possibly among the top 2 or 3 generals this country has ever seen when it came to leadership and strategy.
TTuck
ReplyDeleteI concur that Patriot and some other anti-missile technology came out of SDI, but the question again is, at what cost?
We've spent no less than $50B on SDI, many estimates are MUCH MUCH more - Patriot is a decent system, with hit chances exceeding 70%, but it requires attack of the ballistic missile in boost phase - something completely impossible if launched inside Iran. Even the ship-based equivilant (which btw, isn't on every destroyer, but rather a very select experimental platforms) must attack the missile before it reaches too high an altitude - or be completely incapable of doing anything whatsoever.
Morever, SDI was intended as a shield, capable of stopping dozens or hundreds of missiles. At no point, since the streak Eagle using ASAT missiles shot down a sattalite in the mid-1970's, did anyone ever suggest a ballistic missile couldn't be hit - but rather, that such a system was unviable when such easily deployed anti-anti-missile measures were so readily available.
While I understand your concern with Iran, I urge you to consider why MAD worked (meaning mutually assured destruction) - it worked because while you may have one maniac leading a government (and I don't think Ahmadenijad is that maniac - he's a puppet, willing to abide a lot of things) - everyone involved in launching missiles has to be willing to watch the counter-stroke kill their entire family, friends and everything they hold dear - it worked for 50 years with the Soviets, I thik it will and does work with Iran, North Korea, et.al, because if there is one thing a despot wants, he wants to stay in power.
So, while I also am glad of Patriot, and the chance to have something which would be useful to 'perhaps' shoot down an errant missile (which is the far most likely scenario when we're talking about nuclear missiles) - I think 50B-500B was far too high a price. Reagan spent this money profligately, with virtually no chance of reasonable success, certainly nothing like he envisioned or sold. If he were judged on his delivery, it would be deemed an abject failure, he fell FAR FAR short of the goal - and anything positive which came out of it can be termed, at best, a pyrrhic victory.
Ttucker:
ReplyDeleteYour premise would work if I believed that the Iranian leadership actually was devout and religious, and further actually believed that by killing themselves (and thousands or millions of innocent others) that they would end up in heaven. In my professional studies, I have read the Qur'an. Here is an interesting passage:
Goodness and evil are not equal. Repel evil with what is better. Then that person with whom there was hatred, may become your intimate friend! And no one will be granted such goodness except those who exercise patience and self-restraint, none but people of the greatest good fortune. Qur'an 41: 34-35
There are some Muslim extremists who have mis-interpreted the Qur'an to condone violence. They have taken it out of context in ways not unlike some Christian leaders have from time to time taken the Bible out of context to justify incredibly violent and hateful acts...acts which can't be reconciled with the god of peace and love for which Christianity is known.
My point is, I don't believe the Iranian leadership is interested in anything except maintaining its own power. It doesn't have any real legitimacy now, it knows it, and now quite rightly, fears for its life (literally and figuratively) if it shows the slightest sign of weakness.
tt wrote: "the Iranians are religious fanatics who believe if they die in a war with us they go straight to heaven and get 72 virgins and whatever else."
ReplyDeleteI wasn't going to elaborate on this, but it became indirectly an interesting subject of discussion over the weekend after you wrote it, tt.
First of all, according to the Koran, you don't have to be a martyr to get the virgins (72 or unspecified "many"), although this is variously translated, the word is houris, including as 'wives'. Everybody who gets to heaven qualifies, not just martyrs.
Now personally, as a woman, this offer of houris doesn't thrill me particularly. Other parts of the Koran promise women who are perpetual virgins, it just keeps coming back, and that men will have permanent erections despite ejaculation, they will never 'soften'. An admittedly irreverent - but lively - discussion wondered if all those certain adds on tv and in one's email spam file had perhaps variously created heaven on earth, or made heaven obsolete.
As a desideratum, with a surprising consistency, I didn't hear a single woman wish to relive losing her virginity. On a continuum of closer to heaven or hell, it wasn't even near the middle on a regular basis, and nowhere near heaven. It didn't seem on any man's best ever list either, nor was sex exclusively with virgins as popular as someone might expect because it was apparently that it was a one-time experience rather than other qualities which made riginity for men or women significant, rather than pleasure.
I think we may safely categorize this as more metaphor than literal, particularly when you factor in the mainstream belief among many of that faith that we leave our bodies behind entirely, and in the after life become beings of pure spirit, making physical activities...not so very satisfying.
And that's not even getting to the subject of djinn and angels...and, well, never mind.
In paradies, you can also drink wine, as much as you want, without getting drunk or hung over. Perhaps that is easier if you don't have an actual body, because the faith believes you leave it behind to rot, and become, at least in many versions of islam, pure spirit.
The very word paradise, which for those who follow one of the abrahamic religions would include the description of the garden of eden as much as heaven; I will defer here to the language skills of ToE, other than to point out that the orginal word for paradise, from which the others seem to derive, refers to a walled orchard, or to walled parks for hunting where the animals being hunted couldn't get out, sort of like shooting fish in a barrel.
They have a very sensual, very sexual language for paradise in the Koran, one that is both male-oriented by some definitions, and very culturally different than the ours, if that is the interpretation you seek. But as with any religion, taking small bits out of context creates awful distortions.
Lets not even get into the arguments about the parts of the Koran where this wording occurs and the questions about authenticity and attribution....
there are few enough individuals who can hold really educated discussions about that as regards their own religion, never mind understanding other religions than their own.
Tuck
ReplyDeleteA couple of points - first, I don't believe the Shiaa faith offers 72 virgins to martyrs, but I could be wrong. Regardless Shiaa'ism doesn't have the same Armageddon scenario that Sunni'ism does - they believe in a 13th Immam (as memory serves) who will come to unite the world in peace. As such, there really isn't any credible evidence of an Iranian theocratically based imperialism or even suicidal jihadism against the West or Israel. That's an invention of those seeking to sew fear.
Further, even if there WERE such a scenario, there is a large gap between offering oneself up as a martyr and offering up your children, wife, parents, friends, close family, etc.. it takes a true psychopath to believe that's acceptible, and I don't believe any faith has those kinds of zealots running around in many places. Islam is no more full of whackos than most/all religions - people are mostly people, and Iran is mostly pro-West. While you may find a higher concentration of religiously rigorous people in their Revolutionary Guard, it's still an immense stretch (imho) to say they want their young children to die in a fiery, nuclear fireball. It's just not a rational desire, no matter how faithful the person themselves may otherwise be. I am more fearful of an accident than a missile launch from Iran.
Lastly, our A-SAT technology would be of no use against a missile launched toward Europe from eastern Iran. The missile would be too high and travelling too fast (as I understand it).