GO TELL THE SPARTANS

ON THIS DAY in 480 BC, Leonidas reaches Thermopylae with 300 Spartans and 700 Allies.

King Leonidas and the Spartans before the famous "Wall of Bodies" on the third day of their heroic stand.


Thermopylae is one of the most famous battles of the ancient world, of course; it took place in northern Greece during the Persian Wars. The Greek forces, led by King Leonidas of Sparta, managed to hold out for three days against the forces of Persian king Xerxes I, said to have numbered "one million" but probably closer to 200,000. Still, the feat of the Spartans was remarkable. Eventually Leonidas released the other Greek forces and a small Spartan contingent remained behind to resist the advance. The Greeks were only defeated after a traitor betrayed a route by which the Persians were able to outflank them. Leonidas and the remaining members of his original 300 Spartans were killed to the last man.

Leonidas' plan was remarkable for taking advantage of the terrain. At the time of the battle, Thermopylae - which literally means "Hot Gates" due to the presence of natural hot springs - was a narrow neck of land between mountains to the west, and the sea to the east. Leonidas was able to place his forces in this narrow "bottleneck" and thereby wear the Persian forces down in a deliberate delaying tactic, allowing the Greek City-State Alliance to better prepare for a more effective defense deeper within the homeland.

I visited Thermopylae when I was training with Greek Special Forces in the lead up to the 2004 Olympics, which of course were held in Athens. An earthquake in ancient times, and the continuous deposition of sediment from the river and hot springs has substantially altered the landscape during the past few thousand years.

The site of the battle today - the road to the right is built on reclaimed land and approximates the 480 BC shoreline.


Two monument mark the spot of this historic clash between the cultures of East and West:

The modern monument at Thermopylae.

The modern monument bears the words "Molon Labe" (ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ) meaning "Come and take them" - the defiant words reportedly spoken by King Leonidas in response to Xerxes' demand that the Spartans surrender their weapons.


The ancient monument was placed on top of the burial mound of the Spartans at Last Stand Hill:

The commemorative stone marking the last stand of the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae.


The original stone has not survived the ravages of time, but in 1955, the world's most famous epitaph was engraved on a new stone. The text from Herodotus is:

Ὦ ξεῖν', ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδε

κείμεθα, τοῖς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι.

"Go Tell the Spartans, Oh Passerby,

that here, in accordance with their Laws,

Three Hundred Lie"

.

ON WRITING

OK this is where my head is at right now:

I've been writing for years, but I really got serious about ten years ago; the year I lived alone, all by myself in a marble palace on the outskirts of a dusty, sand baked Nowheres-ville, on the edge of the great Sahara. I have the better part of two novels (based on my adventures, exploring the deepest recesses of the human psyche, all alone on the Road to Infinity, etcetera, etcetera . . .) already written down, and ten thousand times more than that bouncing around inside my skull.

What I want to do is save them as pdf's and post them online - a form of e-publishing - release them a chapter a week. For people to read them they click an icon, a dollar per chapter.

How to set this up? I know Pay pal is involved somehow; I put the question out there and true to form the Heroes of Team STORMBRINGER came back with all kinds of detailed instructions . . . give me a week or two to crack the code on this thing and we'll see how it goes from there.

All I know this thing is long overdue - the stories going around in my head have been screaming for an outlet for years now . . . decades even. I know my stuff is good - everybody I've shown it to cries out, "Sean! You've GOT to get your work out there! In the name of all that is Good and Holy, man, you've GOT TO GET PUBLISHED ! ! !" Now we're talking editors, writers - some pretty respectable figures in the literary world here - THE WOMEN even like what I write so I KNOW it's not just macho bravo sierra . . . and then sometime last week suddenly it dawned on me: This is what STORMBRINGER is FOR!

"To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women!"

BTW another journalist/writer has been querying me for technical advice for his sci-fi novels (involving a Special Forces desperado) and I have been feeding him institutional knowledge of the profession. I hardly told him anything about Special Forces . . . little drips and drabs . . . and what little I told him seemed mind-expanding:


Journalist/Writer Guy: I did read that there is some specialization among the SF companies, so that many specialize in some aspect. In addition to specializing in language, maybe one company is more highly-trained in underwater infiltration methods, another in mountain warfare, another in who knows what, and the one best suited (if available) is used in any given mission. So it's not as if all companies and A detachments need to know everything to the same degree. Just as there are focus roles in an A detachment with some cross-training (weapons, engineer, medical, communications, operations, commanders), so individual A detachments have areas of specialty.

Is this correct, or are they all basically interchangeable except with regards to language? I did read that all the 5 active groups are spending significant time in Afghanistan and Iraq despite their geographic responsibility. Maybe the two reserve groups are there as well.

As far as SF compared to Rangers, it appears that the Rangers, while I assume they could be used for any of the 9 SOF missions or 7 collateral activities, engage in more DA, CT, and SR than anything else. Well, I guess some FID. They're light infantry that goes in usually with bigger numbers than SF would. As far as the culture goes, and I know all individuals are different, but from what I understand, Ranger culture is more hooah gung-ho warrior macho than SF. Kind of "give me the target and I'll eliminate it." In, bam-bam, out.

"THIS . . . IS . . . STORMBRINGER ! ! !"

SF is more relationship focused with its UW and FID missions. They still perform DA, SR, and CT missions. They’re deadly snipers (isn't it SF and Marines that have the top sniper training?) But there's also a lot of training friendlies—insurgents, military, and law enforcement. And they're not mainstream soldiers, but more independent-minded. I think someone will shoot me if I say they're the hippies of the military, but that's what I'm getting. They're wearing beards and riding horseback into battle. You probably want to shoot me yourself (grin). Maybe "unconventional" is a better term.

So what of the above is not right? Also, I guess it depends on the current needs, but is my assessment that Ranger’s = DA while SF = UW, FID, SR accurate?


StormBringer: This is going to take me WEEKS to answer - especially since it's tax time of the year and I'm a freelancer, a privateer; my accountant has a love/hate relationship with me.

“Great Patriotic War on Towelhead-ism” - yes, cynicism; sarcasm, black humor - we're allowed to engage in it; we pay the price.

Special Reconnaissance (SR) - it used to be called "Strategic Reconnaissance" to differentiate from "Tactical Reconnaissance" which occurs within a mile or two of the front - "STRATRECON" became "Special Reconnaissance" when it enveloped the various disciplines of reconnaissance - think living in a sniper hide for a week, keeping a recon log, shitting in plastic bags then humping them out - electronic surveillance, photo reconnaissance, clandestine urban operations - teams patrolling the cities of Western Europe for Red Brigades, Red Army Faction cells; later doing the same thing tracking al Qaeda cells - this genre crosses over into "Special Activities" when you involve running cell organizations, collecting HUMINT from assets, etc.


Journalist-Writer Guy: This stuff is gold. Plastic bags of crap? Never in a million years would I think of that. As well as the “spy” crossover. A book I have on my list is Hunting the Jackal and I thought it interesting that it was CIA and SF. But now I see why. And I really like that business about spy versus scout. Take the time you need. I can’t wait to get the rest.


StormBringer: Of course this is the most important mission - "Time spent in Reconnaissance is never wasted." - George Washington said that.

This is the discipline where I made my most money. I was in the Atlanta airport, in the international transit lounge and some old guy was telling me, "I was a spy, I was in Austria after the war," and his wife was nodding her head up and down. I was just nodding and smiling and not saying a word. It was 1995, I was enroute to Sarajevo, and I was in civvies.

For what it's worth, very few intelligence professionals actually meet the dictionary definition of a "spy"; to be a spy, one must betray. I was a scout, a reconnaissance soldier.


Journalist-Writer Guy: “This is the discipline where I made my most money.” Is that a turn of phrase, or do SF actually get paid by the job?


StormBringer: That was turn of phrase but military pay works three ways: you get your base pay, then you get your special pay & allowances (jump pay, special duty pay, language pay, scuba pay, demo pay, housing allowance, cost-of-living-allowance, etc) then there's mission-related pay (TDY pay, per diem, hazardous duty pay, imminent danger pay, combat zone tax-free exclusion, etc).

You end up trying to connect the dots. Twenty-plus years ago I saw a brass plaque hanging over a team sergeant's desk, in one of the team rooms over in Torii Station, Okinawa. It said it all:


"WE'RE LOOKING FOR A LOW-INTENSITY WAR IN A HIGH PER DIEM AREA."

"The man's enlarged my mind. He's a poet-warrior . . . I'm a little man, he's a great man."



STORMRINGER SENDS



Today's Bird HERE.



.

THE WARRIOR ETHOS

Incredibly, there is actually a blog called this, and even better it's Steve Pressfield's blog. Pressfield is the author of Gates of Fire, of course; story of the epic battle of Thermopylae, where the three hundred Spartans sacrificed themselves to save their country - the cradle of our Western Civilization - from assimilation and servitude to the Persian Empire.

Steve Pressfield explores the Warrior Ethos in his writings. As well as Gates of Fire, Pressfield also wrote The Legend of Bagger Vance, a story of the warrior mystique juxtaposed upon a golf tournament. Bagger Vance was successfully produced as a movie, of course, directed by Robert Redford and starring Will Smith, Matt Damon, Charlize Theron.

Set in Depression-era Savannah, a privileged Southern aristocrat Rannulph Junah suffers shell-shock from his experiences of World War I, where his entire platoon was wiped out; in the course of the story, Junah attempts to recover his game and his life with help from a mystical caddy. The Legend of Bagger Vance is loosely based on the Hindu sacred text Bhagavad Gita, where the warrior hero Arjuna refuses to fight. The God Krishna appears as Bhagavan to help him to follow his path as the warrior and hero that he was meant to be. This relationship was fully explained by Steven J. Rosen in his book Gita on the Green, for which Steven Pressfield wrote the foreword.

The game of Golf is actually symbolic combat based on ancient warfare; the golf clubs are actually tiny war hammers, and the white ball symbolizes the skulls of our enemies, which we tap into holes in the ground.


Back to Thermopylae

This is a worthy event to investigate, for anyone interested in the Warrior Ethos.

The Battle of Thermopylae (Greek: Μάχη τῶν Θερμοπυλῶν) was fought between an alliance of Greek city-states, led by Sparta, and the Persian Empire of Xerxes. The battle occurred during the second Persian invasion of Greece, at the pass of Thermopylae ('The Hot Gates'). The Persian invasion was a delayed response to the defeat of the first Persian invasion of Greece, ten years prior at the Battle of Marathon. Xerxes amassed a huge army and navy and set out to conquer all of Greece.

The Second Persion Invasion of Greece.

A Greek force of approximately 7,000 men marched north to block the pass in the summer of 480 BC. The Persian army (alleged by the ancient sources to have numbered one million but actually considered at between 100,000 and 300,000) arrived at the pass in late August or early September. Vastly outnumbered, the Greeks held off the Persians for three days in combat, before the rear-guard was annihilated in one of history's most heroic last stands. During two full days of battle, the small force led by King Leonidas I of Sparta blocked the only road by which the massive Persian army could pass. After the second day of battle, a local resident named Ephialtes betrayed the Greeks by revealing a small path that led behind the Greek lines. Aware that his force was being outflanked, Leonidas dismissed the bulk of the Greek army, and remained in a rearguard element of 300 Spartans, 700 Thespians, 400 Thebans and perhaps a few hundred others, the vast majority of whom were killed.

I had the opportunity to visit the site of the Battle of Thermopylae, while training with Greek Special Forces prior to the 2004 Olympics.

Simonides Monument on the Kolonos hillock, believed to be the actual location of the Last Stand.

Ω ΞΕΙΝ ΑΓΓΕΛΛΕΙΝ ΛΑΚΕΔΑΙΜΟΝΙΟΙΣ ΟΤΙ ΤΗΔΕ ΚΕΙΜΕΘΑ ΤΟΙΣ ΚΕΙΝΩΝ ΡΗΜΑΣΙ ΠΕΙΘΟΜΕΝΟΙ
"Go tell the Spartans, Passerby, that here, in accordance to their laws, Three Hundred lie."


At the time of the battle, Thermopylae was actually a pass between the mountains and the sea; control of this pass was critical to the Greek defensive strategy. Due to seismic activity, however, the shoreline has shifted, and the seas have withdrawn. A modern highway roughly follows the ancient shoreline.

A modern view of the pass at Thermopylae, viewed roughly from the area of the Spartan camp northward toward the Persian position. The modern road marks the ancient shoreline.

Thermopylae shoreline changes over the course of history.


Thermopylae is viewed by scholars as “the battle that changed the world”. The clash between the Spartans and other Greeks on one side, and the Persian horde on the other, was a clash between freedom and slavery. The Greek victories at Thermopylae Marathon, fought some ten years earlier, were turning-points not only in the history of Ancient Greece, but also of World History; subjugation to the Persians would have snuffed out Western Civilization in its infancy. In the mid-19th century, the economist John Stuart Mill described the battle of Marathon as “more important than the battle of Hastings, even as an event in English history”.

The modern monument of the Spartans with the bronze statue of Leonidas. An inscription reads Molon Labe; King Leonidas' reply to Xerxes demand that the Greeks lay down their arms: "Come and Get Them."




Saturday Bird HERE - King Leonidas would approve.



.

HOW IS THIS A CRIME?

LIVERMORE WOMAN FACES 67 CHARGES RELATED TO SEX WITH TWO TEENAGE BOYS.


Christine Shreeve Hubbs, a 42-year-old Livermore woman was arrested Thursday on 67 sexual assault charges against two teenage boys. (Livermore Police Department photo)

Hubbs is being held at Santa Rita Jail in Dublin in lieu of $4.3 million bail.

Apparently the mother of one of the boys went to the police after she found a nude photo of Hubbs on her son's cell phone; the boy told police that he began having sex with Hubbs in December 2008, when he was 14.

During the investigation, police learned of a second boy, now 14, had a sexual relationship with Hubbs from December 2009 through July.

Investigators say Hubbs communicated with the teens by text messages and at times used her cell phone to send sexual messages and nude pictures of herself.


The charges involve the concept of statutory rape; sexual activity between an adult and a minor (one below the age of consent). In this case the adult was a woman of course, and the minors involved were (VERY) young teenage males.

I ask how is this a crime - I mean, come on; what we have here is no more than a classic case of Cougarism; the philosophy concerning older women who prey on younger, verile men to fulfill their primal sexual desires.




Granted, in this situation the young men involved (I say men because they are obviously no longer boys) were EXTREMELY young; well beyond society's accepted equation for May-September romantic liaisons (age, divide by two, add seven). In fact, by these standards, I myself became involved in criminal activity under similar circumstances at the age of thirteen.


Grrr, Baby . . .

At the same time I acknowledge that if the tables were turned; that is, if the parties involved here were a 42-year-old man and two teenage girls beneath the age of consent, I would be amongst those leading the pack howling for the perpetrator's neck in a noose.


What's good for the Goose is not always good for the Gander . . .


Hypocrisy? Perhaps. Again, I ask how is this a crime? Amongst the ancient and traditional societies, it is not unheard of for a young man to be tutored by an older woman in the ways of physical love.



In his play Hippolytus, Euripides tells the story of Phaedra, an older, married woman in love with a much younger man.


A practice that was mentioned by many visitors to Sparta was the practice of “wife-sharing”; in accordance with the Spartan belief that breeding should be between the most physically fit parents, many older men allowed younger more fit men to impregnate their wives.

Even by the liberal standards of their day, Spartan women were particularly open-minded.

Aristotle writes:“Someone contacted a Spartan woman to ask if she would agree to let him seduce her. She said: ‘When I was a child I learned to obey my father, and I did so; then when I became a woman I obeyed my husband; so if this man is making me a proper proposal, let him put it to my husband first."


What strikes me here is not so much the crime, but the judicial system's handling of it: bail is set at 1.4 million dollars - isn't this a bit excessive? Especially considering that this occurs in a state where same-sex marriages are endorsed by the governor, marijuana shops are popping up on every street corner and entire cities flout Federal law by openly embracing illegal immigrants.

There are some crimes which are a crime regardless of what the law says. Slavery is a good example; even if it is completely legal - as it was in the United States two hundred years ago - it is still wrong and still a crime against humanity. This is the concept of natural law.


Meee-owww . . .

Natural law (Latin: lex naturalis) has been described as a law whose content is set by nature and that therefore has validity everywhere. As classically used, natural law refers to the use of reason to analyze human nature and deduce binding rules of moral behavior.


Cougars are known to hunt in packs.


Natural law theories feature greatly in the philosophies of Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, and have had a profound influence on the development of English common law. Because of the intersection between natural law and natural rights, it has been cited as a component in United States Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. The essence of Declarationism is that the founding of the United States is based on Natural law.


A cougar about to maul her prey.

More to the point of what we are discussing here might be the various sodomy laws still on the books across the United States. Although originally intended to outlaw certain sexual acts between homosexuals, many state's sodomy laws made certain heterosexual acts illegal as well. It is hard to imagine - in this day and age - a single, sexually active person in North America who has not violated some aspect of these laws.

Sodomy laws were invalidated by the 2003 Supreme Court decision Lawrence v. Texas.


Cougarism in the Bible - Genesis chapter 39: Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife (1649 painting by Guercino)


The sexual abuse or exploitation of a child is another example of Natural Law. Whether or not endorsed or tolerated by a society it is wrong, outright, anywhere and everywhere it takes place. This is obviously the issue at hand; in today's society thirteen year old males are considered children.

Perhaps I am a little more lenient because I regard the world through a prism of the Classic era; in ancient times a thirteen-year-old male was of military age; a circumstance which continued until at least the Napoleonic era.


Queen of the Cougars

Over the course of her 34-year reign, Catherine the Great of Russia racked up an impressive tally of conquests, which ended with Alexandrovich Zubov, a man 40 years younger than her.



Cougarism in popular culture: "Coo, coo, ca-choo, Mrs Robinson."



Go Team!


.