Ju-Jus, Use 'em or Lose 'em
We are but one small step from wearing tailsmans, feathers and paint ourselves. What comes to mind is the ritual Fred Cox, a Minn. Vikings kicker had. He had to sit in the exact same spot every game and kept a pair of sneakers by the end of the bench where he sat and kept a Snickers bar in the right shoe and would take one bite and one bite only after each kick he made. It gave him the edge he needed. He was college educated and making more money than most of us and he was held in high esteem by his teammates, fans and home town. One man's ju-ju is another's lucky rabbit's foot and by the way, there was Ghost Dancing at Wounded Knee II in 1973 and a Ghost Shirt was worn during the fire fight at the Jumping Bull compound in which 2 US Marshals went down. When I integrated into a bush village in Gambia, W. Africa during my Peace Corps stint, I was housed at a compound owned by one of the head men. He had fine orange tree and the fruit was coming ripe and he had ju-jus on the tree and nobody would touch the fruit. I remember going up to that tree to get an orange to eat and a couple of guys became quite alarmed and warned me to step back or bad things would happen. I was wearing my ju-ju that I got in the Senegal bush before moving into Gambia so I did a little ritual with tobacco smoke and some rocks with my ju-ju placed in circle of rocks, blew some smoke on the tree, grabbed an orage and ate it. Within 2 days time, all the oranges were gone from the tree and I only ate 2 of them. There are alot of funny things in the world we don't understand and can't appreciate and exploit. I highly recommend ju-jus to Spec. Ops forces. I don't care how advanced and civilized we purport to be, you can take the ju-ju off the man but you can never take the ju-ju out of the man.
Primitive Leader Types: Chiefs and Medicine Men
The excerpts below come from an interview with Carl G. Jung, "Diagnosing the Dictators." They may offer us a typological context to frame this discussion.
"There are two types of strong men in primitive society. One was the chief who was physically powerful, stronger than all his competitors, and the other was the medicine man who was not strong himself but was strong by reason of the power which the people projected into him. Thus we had the emperor and the head of the religious community. The emperer was the chief, physically strong through his possession of soldiers; the seer was the medicine man, possessing little or no physical power but an actual power sometimes surpassing that of the emperer, because the people agreed he possessed the magic--that is, supernatural ability. He could, for example, assist or obstruct the way to a happy life after death, put a ban upon an individual, a community or a whole nation, and by excommunications cause people great discomfort or pain."
Interestingly, Jung goes on to compare the Hitler/Medicine Man mystique to, of all people, Muhammad, Islam's final prophet, a political, spiritual and military leader. While reading that passage for the first time, I couldn't help but think of charismatic radical imams like Moqtada Al-Sadr, Osama Bin Laden, Sheikh Abdel Rahman, Sami Al-Arian, who seek first and formost to control the meaning of the religion by attacking the legitimacy of Muslim leaders and liberal clerics and also by shunning dissent within their local congregations and communities.
What, therefore, shall be our magical realist plan for psy-ops and other countermeasures to depower the mystique of a "medicine man" like Moqtada al-Sadr while empowering his adversaries?
Your evil plan to get me into boots might just take place
Hi Terri !
We decided, that if we can get Marc to join the Army (that would be the USA), Tom and I would split the first grand.
Now with Carl Jung hanging around yet again, I don't know if we will be so successful.
Did you happen to take the MBTI test ? And the results would be :confused:
Could we get you into say...wait for it....boots :eek:
Regards, Stan
Waving the Bible and Clear Shots
" What, therefore, shall be our magical realist plan for psy-ops and other countermeasures to depower the mystique of a "medicine man" like Moqtada al-Sadr while empowering his adversaries? " (Wondertk)
Putting the Eye of Horus/Eye of Ra on sadr's men KIA would be a good start but I think ROE prohibits doing anything with bodies other than burying them - other than that and a few other ideas that can't be discussed in this format about all that can be done is wave the Bible and pray for clear shots.....
I forgot to add in my previous post that many traditional Native Americans carried eagle feathers to Nam, feathers that were given in a ceremonial manner. I would bet a crsip $100.00 there are a few eagle feathers in Iraq and Afghanistan too.