Re: FN-FORUM: OT: Hmm...

date posted 21st January 2005 15:27

Caz Thomson wrote:

>Just took a library book by Jon Ronson called 'The Men Who Stare At Goats',
>which I intend to get into this weekend if I have a mo'. It is about a
>secret US intelligence unit that came up with the great idea that they
>should test out things like stopping a goat's heart by staring at it :) The
>CIA, as I recall, were also involved in this weird sort of stuff in the
>seventies with their remote viewing experiments.
>
>
Apparently all the new age-ish stuff started with some very senior guy
at the Pentagon (in charge of multiple thousands of troops, IIRC)
getting the idea that it was possible to walk through walls. Apparently
for a very long time all you could hear from his office was a dull thud
as he attempted to do so.

And then the Vietnam war started to go bad, and then end, and the US
military sort of said "Well, that didn't work. We need some new ideas."
So highly respected army guy, Lt. Col. Jim Channon asked for a bunch of
money to go do research, and went and spend the end of the 70's in San
Francisco living at communes (and, I expect, all the rest that that
implies). He ended up producing a document called The First Earth
Batallion Field Guide:

http://arcturus.org/earth_battalion.html

http://www.tgorski.com/Mind%20Control/First%20Earth%20Battalion%20010910.htm

Which, amongst other things, suggested going in to enemy territories
carrying lambs and flowers, and playing ambient music to sooth the
opposition and end any disagreements.

Cut to now, and apparently all of this has been implimented, but in a
sort of weird chinese-whispers way. Instead of ambient music you have
people being locked in shipping containers listening to Barney music and
nu-metal at loud volumes, etc.

It's all a pretty interesting story, and, for the time challeneged,
available in the Channel 4 documentary "Crazy Rulers of the World" (in
three parts. Available on p2p networks, i'm told).

Jon Ronson also wrote the book "Them", which was also turned in to a
documentary called "Secret Rulers of the World". Anything by Jon Ronson
is worth tracking down - he's an stunningly good journalist.

http://www.jonronson.com/projects.html

(IIRC, he was school chums with Louis Theroux, apparently. His style is
quite similar, but not so light-hearted.)

...j