Gorgon Stare: turning the living to stone
4January 4, 2011 by Kate Savage
The Air Force has a new super-surveillance drone plane which it will be using
in Afghanistan. This floating panopticon, which is named Gorgon Stare, will record data from entire cities and beam it back to the empire. In the Washington Post article on the subject, Maj. Gen. James O. Poss croons that “Gorgon Stare will be looking at a whole city, so there will be no way for the adversary to know what we’re looking at, and we can see everything.”
The article continues to explain that “officials” envision the Gorgon Stare could have ‘civilian’ uses as well, such as “securing borders.”
I’ve often been astonished at the brutal honesty of the name-givers in the weapon-tech industry (as an example, the article also mentions that the video footage the military gathers is termed “Death TV”). But these perverse new Adams were particularly insightful in using the term “Gorgon Stare.”
This is because the Gorgon turns the one she stares at to stone. No other mythology could so aptly explain our visual military technology: to transform human bodies and lives and stories into unfeeling objects, into simple matter-blobs that can be shot down in a long-distance video game.
The Mormon Worker 
Katy,
Thank you for exposing this monster! The Beast not only prevents those that challenge it from buying and selling, but also kills those that oppose it. We are truly the “hypocritical” nation referred to in Isaiah! In the words of Mark Twain–“God damn america” for what we have done and continue to do.
Creepy. Not surprising, but creepy. It’s amazing to me that they are not only good at naming things, but that they are so candid about what they are doing. And it’s depressing that hardly anyone seems to bat an eye about it. It’s all for our “freedom” I guess.
Well said. You’re a good writer, Katy.
You got your mythology wrong. The Gorgon doesn’t turn the one she stares at to stone, looking at her directly does. This is why Perseus used a mirrored shield in order to look at the Gorgon Medusa’s harmless reflection and behead her. Even looking upon her severed head could turn the living into stone.