Book Review - The Secret Army: The IRA by J. Bowyer Bell

A Definitive Work!

This is, or was, the definitive history of the IRA. Begun in 1974, this book had been constantly revised and updated by the author up until his death in 2002. Unfortunately for us, this means that this book was no longer updated with the most recent events such as the ongoing peace process and activities of breakaway groups such as the "New IRA" are not covered.

Its well written, although there are a number of bizarre run-on sentences and fragments which seem to be mistakes in editing. There are no pictures at all, at least in this edition. Not even a central photo section. The text itself is very informative and this book really is cited by almost every other history or book written about the IRA. It is really a necessary basic source for anyone wanting to really dig into the subject.

While Bell is not Irish himself, he seems to approach the subject fairly, portraying all sides in the conflict objectively. Or at least as much as possible. When the text gets to the modern era, he is critical of everyone, including the British Army, for all the pointless killing and bombings which occurred. Since the text ends with the Good Friday Agreement of 1997, Bell ends his work in a hopeful "we'll see" for the future of Ireland. As Bell passed away soon after, he could give no further analysis of the situation and for that, the student or reader will have to find more current histories. One thing for certain though, those histories will cite this work as a source.

I started reading books focused on one area or another of recent Irish History, the Civil War, the Anglo-Irish War, even a book on the Border Campaign of the late 50s early 60s. However, looking back at it, I would go so far as to say that anyone who wants to get into the history of the Troubles or recent Irish history, should start with this book first. The overview is invaluable.

Book Review: Irish Secrets by Mark M. Hull

 

Mostly about espionage, avoids too much concentration on the IRA-Germany connection.

This was a really good book! Well written, packed with information, its main focus is on the activities of the Abwehr in Ireland from just before World War 2 through the entire conflict. I wanted to read this book as I had seen a documentary on TV about the collusion between the IRA and the Germans during WW2 (plan Kathleen). 

While the book does talk about Plan Kathleen and does mention the IRA, the author avoids too much discussion about the IRA itself. Most of the attention is on the individual German agents who are drawn colorfully and showing all their failings. It seems Ireland wasn't very high on Canaris' list and he didn't send very good agents there. The fact that he was probably trying to sabotage his own plans (some say Canaris was working against the Nazis or at least ambivalent about them) explains why he sent out such obviously poor agents.

The book gives a lot of information on espionage itself, the use of codes, signals, the "book code" and background such as that so it is a more of a history of espionage in the 20th century than about Irish internal politics.

I definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in Irish History of this period, espionage, propaganda, or World War II history. Its well and lively written with plenty of photographs throughout.

Something totally off the wall! The Neo-Nazis and the Daleks!

Just a day or two ago, I was surfing the net as you do and I came across a neo-nazi site (which will remain nameless) that babbled on and on about 'true human origin' as they do.  Aryan white man came from heaven and non-whites were made by Satan to destroy them, that sort of thing.  Anyway, there was an interesting comment there in their FAQ section:

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Do you deny the Holocaust?

We do not need to deny the ‘Holocaust’ any more than we need to deny that Daleks fought in WWII. However, we ask why there are no laws requiring people to believe that Daleks fought in WWII.

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Au Contraire Mein Fuhrer, but they did!  No seriously, if you're going to compare real word events to fiction, then we can hold that fiction as real as the events you purport to deny.  And indeed, in Doctor Who canon, Victory of the Daleks, the Daleks were indeed involved directly in events of WWII, even appearing with Winston Churchill!  It was all a ruse, of course, but I won't spoil the episode, it was a good one!  Go watch it!

I also find common ground here with these Neo-Nazis.  There should be laws requiring people to watch and support Doctor Who and know that Daleks were involved in WWII!

Book Review: The 12th Planet by Zecharia Sitchin

Is he playing pool with planets?

 Sitchin's theory reminds me of an episode of the British comedy "Red Dwarf" where Dave Lister (the main character) causes one planet to hit another to fill in a white hole (using the interface of a pool table shot to do it). Only, Marduk/Nibiru's shot was a glancing shot that shot Earth into orbit, caused the asteroid belt and (to borrow again from Red Dwarf) "shot Marduk off the table and into someone's pint of beer."

I love reading about phenomenology, the occult, the paranormal, ancient astronauts, etc. However Sitchin is just a little bit too far for my tastes. And I think I know why. Born in the early part of the 20th century, Sitchin's "scientific" terminology and knowledge is just too dated for modern readers. Anyone with even a nodding education in physics or astronomy knows that his theories are ludicrous. But its not so much that Sitchin is an idiot but that he is a product of his times. Its like the 19th century physicists or modern occults use of the term "magnetism." It doesn't mean what the modern scientific definition of magnetism is. This is how Sitchin is with terminology like "radiation." I do not think Sitchin means the same thing that we, in the post-atomic age, know as radiation (visible light, gamma radiation, microwaves, the spectrum, etc etc).

Indeed, Sitchin has that quaint early 20th century idea that all radiation is good radiation. Nibiru didn't need the sun in the depths of space because it had its own "radiation" to keep it warm (kind of like a microwave!). I guess Sitchin never heard that, except for a very narrow band, most radiation is very very bad for organic life.

Wrapping your head around Sitchin's cosmology isn't just a stretch, its a rip. But if I was going to try, I'd say the closest anyone else has ever got to Sitchin's idea for Nibiru was Brian Aldiss' "Helliconia" series which postulates a planet with extreme climactic eras because of being in a double sun system. Could Nibiru's radiation keep something warm for 2,000 years of deep space? Oh sure, I can imagine silicon based lifeforms that could be bathed in microwave radiation like we sunbathe... make a good episode of Doctor Who, I bet!

The Sammich: I'm so old, I can see language change!

When I was young, I was very interested in languages and linguistics.  I wanted to study linguistics but I had some medical problems in my youth which I'll probably bore all of you with one of these days.

I learned smatterings of lots of languages, the most I've ever learned of any one language is French.  My favorites are Welsh and Latin.  And of course, I'm a huge Tolkien fan and have practically memorized his essay "A Secret Vice" in which he discusses language creation as a hobby.

A while ago, I noticed people starting to use the word sammich for sandwich.  More and more its turning up, mostly on the internet.  Supposedly, sammich is not just any sandwich but is applied only to the best and most delicious of sandwiches.  

This is quickly falling by the wayside as my girlfriend these days uses the terms interchangeably and mostly favors sammich these days as the primary way of referring to sandwich.  This effect is actually how come we refer to dogs as dogs while in almost every other Germanic language they use some variant of hund, hond.  Our original word for dog, hound, still survives but is not as widely used. 

Now, coining new words, neologisms, neoglossia, these things happen every day.  Either through borrowing or some radical word change.  The recent appearance of the term cray, or craycray "crazy" is one example.  (Duplication of the word root to indicate emphasis is very widely used, especially in SE Asian languages and elsewhere). 

But sammich is, I think, a genuine example of sound change through time.  The sound law ND > M is a common one in Indo-European linguistics and is actually used by Tolkien in 'evolving' is Elvish languages from a root original to the 'modern' forms.  

Also, the leveling of the w to m afterwards is very common in language change.  There's a term for it, but I can't remember right now.  This is why the m in sammich is 'long', that is its sam-mich, not just sam-ich.  The 'w' has been absorbed into the m for agreement and because its easier to say.  No really, sometimes language change and the human mind work like that!

Why is this occurring now and why hasn't this happened in the few hundred years that the term has been around, ever since John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, couldn't be bothered to take a break from his card games?  I don't know, I just like this stuff, go ask Noam Chomsky!

Seriously though, its a real eye-opener when you can see actual language change in progress.  Not just coining or borrowing, or changing meaning, but honest to goodness processes like this.  It will be a long time though before sandwich vanishes and sammich is our only word for it.  The two words might exist in parallel for some time.  Perhaps sammich will only be applied in certain situations.  Or like the word dog, sammich could quickly eclipse its elder in usage altogether.

Book Review: The Ancient Alien Question by Philip Coppens

The Ancient Goblin Universe

Unfortunately, Philip Coppens passed away last year. I always enjoyed seeing him on "Ancient Aliens" as he seemed to be well spoken and rather level-headed. His book really bares that out as well. While writing about the "Ancient Alien Question" which many might find nonsensical, the realms of fantasy, Coppens approaches his subject very calmly. He does not rant and rave but builds up his case, talking about Carl Sagan's book "Contact" proves to be a 'Chekhov's gun' for his conclusions in the end.

His conclusions are equally as surprising and interesting. There have been many writers I have read that feel that any phenomenology around us is caused by invisible intelligences that have always been around. John Michael Greer writes of magickal or occult intelligences from different levels of being (that we mistake as UFO aliens). For John Keel and Ted Holliday, monsters such as the Loch Ness Monster are either spiritual remnants or evil demonic beings who wish us harm.

Coppens comes down in a similar belief in his conclusion. While it is possible that aliens have physically been here on planet earth, he is skeptical of it. Of all the thousands of reports, he feels it could have happened only about four times and only then accidentally. Coopens does not think any aliens came here to mine our planet or genetically engineer us. However, Coppens theory is that there have been frequent non-physical contacts with "alien" intelligences throughout time. Either through shamans or ceremonies or accidentally through the use of various ceremonies and drugs, people have contacted extra-dimensional beings, or perhaps just aliens on their own worlds. This is where any "ancient alien" influences on ancient civilizations occurred. Its a theory I have seen in UFO and Cryptological literature frequently but this is the first time I have encountered it in regards to the Ancient Alien Theory.

Raiders of the Lost Nazis

Giorgio Tsoukalos' second venture "In Search of Aliens" takes an unfortunate turn into Nazi-UFO mythology in his second episode "Nazi Time Travelers."  The stories and theories presented are old hat and regurgitated old stories which interested parties such as myself have heard before.   Presented as truth now is Jan Van Helsing's story of the Bavaria UFO crash in the mid 1930s, a Nazi Roswell.  Van Helsing, either a neo-nazi anti-Semite, or just a crazy but harmless conspiracy theorist, depending on who you listen to, is hardly a trusted granite source of information.

I say again that this venture into Nazism is unfortunate.  Now, I seriously doubt Tsoukalos is a crypto-nazi or that the people he interviews are neo-nazis of some stripe.  I very much doubt that the History Channel would broadcast neo-nazi revisionism.  And I do not want to believe Giorgio has any sympathy with them.

It has now been many decades since the Nazi era.  Over seventy years!  Most of the people alive to witness the events are dead now.  So it is only understandable, I guess, to begin to drift into story, fable, and the recreation of history, mythologizing many of the events.  This is a standard historical effect.  For many people, including some very deluded people, the Nazi era is a time of cool uniforms, awesome panzers, big armies conquering certain hated enemies, awesome technological wizz-bangs, and a time when one man 'stood up bravely' against the people he hated and despised (Adolf Hitler or Winston Churchill depending on your side).   World War II was as historically complex as any other time but for many, pro-Nazi and pro-Allies, it was seemingly a very cut and dried, black and white time.  A time when it was easy to take sides, a battle of good versus evil (and that is relative to which side you were on of course).

As Jacques Peretti said in Hitler: The Comedy Years, all the movies about world war II in the post-war period wanted to record all the nostalgia that people had about the war sans the "horrible bit we found out about at the end" (the death camps and the holocaust). 

However, I have read widely on Nazism and their connection to the occult, and on the current Neo-Nazi movements.  One particular author that directly addresses the problems arising from something like this show's enshrining of Nazi science is the late Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke.  Other authors I have read on Nazi fringe matters include Dusty Skylar and Peter Levenda, among others.

The danger of shows like this, is that it mystifies and romanticizes the Nazis.  These tales of vimanas and Die Glockes and secret Nazi achievements.  Talking so much about Nazis like this, divorced of the fact of their terror and oppression, their genocide, dehistoricizes them.  It makes them into a caricature that, while scary or even desired, is not really all that bad.  Just some tough guys in cool black uniforms that tried to invent anti-gravity drive, after all.   The effect of a show like this is to attempt to erase the evil legacy and bad memory of the Third Reich and all they stood for.

For instance, during Giorgio's interviews, even he mentions that prisoners of war would have been used to create "The Henge" and the supposed secret bases, but no mention of how many thousands died doing projects like this around Germany.  He mentions that hundreds of tons of coal had been brought into a certain area of Poland without mentioning who would have been doing the transporting and at what horrible human cost. 


Another danger of making shows mystifying the Nazis is that it does indeed recreate Nazism for a new generation of Neo-Nazis.  Neo-Nazi intellectual sources such as Savatri Devi and Julis Evola did quite a bit of work in this area after the war, rewriting the Nazi 'narrative' to try and make them more heroic, more honorable, and more of what all white people should have joined with.   Such people do not need the help of UFO mythology to further remake Nazism into something that it was not, and make it into a springboard for further murder, destruction, and terror. 

I would heartily recommend that UFO researchers read Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke as a beginning point to learn how dangerous it is to make heroes of the Nazis based on mythology and false history.  Unless of course, that's the effect the creators of this program were looking for, then I have a quite different suggestion for them...