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I just did that.:-/
I think @Salt USMC was replying to @Kakashi66223 . (Or are you just being flippant?)
I'm very familiar with Lonsdale's activities and I knew of him prior to going to SE Asia. Rufus Phillips was another Army/CIA officer involved with our allies there, working, like Lonsdale, to build a good relationship with our counterparts. Those two understood the need for rapport, the need to build support among the populace for an anti-Communist campaign. Their efforts were eventually stymied by the Bureaucracy/Big Army/Big Politics, South Vietnamese machinations and by Generals like Westmoreland who tried to fight the Viet Cong/NLF/NVA like they did the Germans on the plains of Europe.
I was involved in the Marine's Combined Action initiative. Major Curtis Williamson III offers one of the best descriptions of our mission:
"Never growing beyond 2,500 men and 114 platoons, the program achieved unsurpassed success towards providing security for the populace, threatening the guerrilla infrastructure, empowering the local and regional leaders to govern, and killing the enemy. Additionally, all attempts by senior Marine leaders to convince General Westmoreland of the CAP's validity as a fitting strategy for all ground forces failed to overcome his conventional inclination towards the nature of the war. The strategy contained three elements: separating the guerrillas from the people through combined action, fighting the guerrillas as guerrillas, and limited pursuit of large NVA units with "fix and destroy" forces. Accepting that the war was among the people, this alternative strategy strove to achieve first pacification through combined action, then destruction of enemy forces."
I honestly believe if the powers-that-be had listened to men like Lonsdale, Phillips and the Marine officers who tried to get authority to expand Combined Action, the war might've had a different outcome.
M
MAquino
Guest
MW is, as defined in the book, ethical in the extreme. When you start going inside people's skulls, this is essential. That's why the Agency got in so much trouble with its MK-series.
By contrast, converntional PSYOP has no formal, official ethical overlay. It's just assumed that the USA is the Good Guy. This has always bothered me, and especially so at the National War College in 1986, when at a symposium some senior officers were saying that the only consideration was effectiveness.
This US attitude was summed up by William "Wild Bill" Donovan, head of the WW2 OSS, in his “Basic Estimate of Psychological Warfare”:
"Psychological warfare is the coordination and use of all means, including moral and physical, by which the end is attained - other than those of recognized military operations, but including the psychological exploitation of the result of those recognized military actions - which tend to destroy the will of the enemy to achieve victory and to damage his political or economic capacity to do so; which tend to deprive the enemy of the support, assistance, or sympathy of his allies or associates or of neutrals, or to prevent his acquisition of such support, assistance, or sympathy; or which tend to create, maintain, or increase the will to victory of our own people and allies and to acquire, maintain, or to increase the support, assistance, and sympathy of neutrals."
That inspired me to get together with the ICA rep at the NWC and do a paper specifically on PSYOP ethics (later incorporated into MW). [ICA, previously USIA, had the proponency for peacetime US PSYOP, as DoD & CIA have for wartime. ICA has since been absorbed into DOS.]
On the subject of your "being tested": Not by activated MW. But we all live in a soup of pre-MW propaganda, both commercial and political. One of the wake-ups in the PSYOP course at Bragg is that you don't get objective information anywhere, anytime. So the PSYOPerator has to first untangle the existing BS and then come up with better, more effective replacements.
The problem is that once you let this cat out of the bag, the Army and indeed the government has a whole bunch of people who see too much, too clearly. This makes you effective at what you do, but it also makes you dangerous. I'm always reminded of Syme in 1984:
"One of these days, thought Winston with sudden conviction, Syme will be vaporized. He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly. The Party does not like such people. One of these days he will disappear. It is written in his face."
I'm just answering questions that I've been asked. Some of these are not exactly simple concepts, though I'm trying to minimize the jargon.
I don't recall dropping any generals' names. I mentioned MG Vallely because, as a COL & 7th POG CO, he initially tasked me with MW in 1980.
If you look at the MW dedication page, which you can see with Amazon's "Look Inside" feature, you'll see lots of advisors and consultants. There are some flag officers, along with Paul Kantner, Grace Slick, Kathryn Scott (Josette in the original Dark Shadows), Isaac Asimov, et al. Isaac and I took this back to his concept of "psychohistory" in his Foundation novels. Paul included SLIMC in the backstory of his Planet Earth Rock & Roll Orchestra, and you'll have some fun checking out some of the music on that album if you're an instrument geek. He was a space freak, whose brain I picked a lot during my tour with USSPACECOM. I duly wrote him and Grace up in FireForce.
No idea what you mean by "quantum theoretical mental physics". Generally I don't go along with quantum theory; I think it's sloppy cut-and-paste speculation, but academically I'm a social, not a physical scientist.
In a MW campaign there is no hiding from it, since most of the PSYCONs are applications of the EMS (electromagnetic spectrum). The human body is an EM machine, controlled by EM fields. [That's why if you cut your arm, the correct kind of skin regrows, etc.] MW is an operating system for the machine.
M
MAquino
Guest
That's also why SF got sidelined to dealing with the non-Viet tribal cultures instead of being center stage. I was over there during Abrams' time, and I don't think he knew what to do with SF either. He certainly screwed COL Rheault. Many people don't know that Apocalypse Now's "Colonel Kurtz" was an intentional caricature of Rheault by Coppola. For that matter, few know that the original Star Wars was a takeoff on the Vietnam War. Coppola gave the idea for AN to his protege George Lucas because he was busy with Godfather, then took it back while George was doing American Graffiti. So George switched his concept outline work (oppressive establishment fighting guerrilla rebels) to outer space. There's a ghost of all this in AN, wherein Harrison Ford cameos as "Colonel Lucas".
In 1965 III MAF in ICTZ created an extremely successful "pacification program" for the coastal villages: an around-the-clock effort that didn't allow the VC to just roll back in. This program was disruped in mid-66 both because Westy wanted more search-and-destroy efforts like Starlight, and also because General Walt had to redirect assets to stop new NVA invasions over the3 DMZ. So the Marines had to develop the defensive bases along Route 9 out to Khe Sanh. I was very fortunate to meet General Walt when he spoke at Scabbard & Blade's national conventionin 1968. An astoundingly brilliant strategist.
Interesting thread.
Read about 'remote viewing' Ingo Swann once. My impression was it only works for a particular type of person. Could be wrong though.
Read about 'remote viewing' Ingo Swann once. My impression was it only works for a particular type of person. Could be wrong though.
M
MAquino
Guest
That was "Stargate". Beginning in 1973 first the CIA, then the NSA, and finally DOD embarked upon a $20 million series of “ESP” experiments together with the Stanford Research Institute (SRI). Originally entitled “Project Scanate”, in 1995 it was retitled “Project Stargate” to surf the popularity of the 1994 sci-fi movie, though that flick had nothing to do with ESP.
Stargate attempted “remote viewing” experiments, which failed due to the simple fact that the transmission of visual information to the brain does not occur outside of the visible electromagnetic spectrum (EMS), approximately 400-790 THz. It is impossible for EMS waves in this range to survive coherently through atmospheric interference at the extensive distances proposed by SRI. Moreover the electrical impulses within the brain are far too weak even to escape the skull, much less travel any distance beyond it.
One of the most rigorous and conclusive analyses was conducted in 1977 by E. Balanovski and J.G. Taylor of the Department of Mathematics, King’s College, London. Their findings were published in Nature magazine #276, November 2, 1978.
After having reviewed previous experiments attempting to test ESP for EM emission, B&T declared their dissatisfaction because of imprecise test conditions, exclusion of parts of the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS), and inadequate write-ups of the results. They determined to cover the entire EMS, and to do so under the most rigorous test conditions possible.
The battery of sensors they assembled included skin electrodes, electrometers, magnetometers, loop antennae, crystal detectors, horn antennae, thermocouples, electric thermometers, infrared detectors, and ultraviolet detectors. Many of these sensors overlapped one another’s frequency range, and altogether they covered the entire EMS from 0 to 3x105 GHz. Before the first experiment could be conducted, extensive test-running of all these sensors had occurred in order to record and filter out the irrelevant EM “noise” in the test areas, including passing cars and TV/radio station broadcasts. Readings were recorded on strip chart recorders, video tape recorders, and direct photographs of oscilloscope and frequency analyzer screens. The efficiency of this battery of devices was quickly evident, and the study concluded:
Summarily the human brain can by itself neither send nor receive the stuff of which specific thoughts are made - save through the media of the physical senses. Therefore ESP does not occur, nor do purely mental efforts to produce physical effects (psychokinesis/PK). Apparent successes in these fields are either coincidental, the results of non-mental physical phenomena (magnetic fields, gravity, etc.), or deliberate deception by clever stage-magic trickery.
Red Flag 1
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Most people who are not vetted are discouraged from making military related posts. This applies to any and all unvetted members. That having been said, how about we put a lock on this thread until the OP is vetted. Once vetted in a military capacaty we can unlock the thread. No disrespect is intended for the OP, and I'm sure the OP has the ability to understand the need for sticking to the rules.
So, for now this thread is locked down
So, for now this thread is locked down
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