The Men Who Stare at Goats

This book goes back and forth from hilarious to horrifying more often than Rosemary's Baby. Except that it's all true. This really touches on so many of my main interests, I don't even know where to begin. Basically, all the weird shit that just seems like fiction in a Pynchon novel turns out to be based in reality and this book does a better job of digging it all up, while being more well-researched, well-written and less sensational than any book about the US military's psychic engagements ever could be. Suffice it to say, I definitely want to re-watch the film.

The Black recesses of the military industrial complex are full of strange ideas and projects, but few are stranger than the programs in psychic warfare chronicled in The Men Who Stare At Goats. Taking as his starting point a General in Military Intelligence, Ronson follows the trail of the First Earth Battalion Operations Manual, a hippy-dippy plan to create an army of "Warrior Monks" and "Jedi Soldiers" with uncanny powers including invisibility, thought projection, and the ability to kill with a thought or touch. Like a bad penny, every time the Army runs into trouble (Vietnam, Iraq...) it goes towards mystical mind control as a solution. Former officers, martial arts gurus, and Coast to Coast AM conspiracy nuts are all part of the show more picture. A second, less amusing thread, follows the covert history of sonic torture, including subliminal messages and repetitive aggressive noises, as used at GITMO and Abu Ghraib. MK-Ultra enters the picture as the grandaddy of the whole project, with Sidney Gottlieb as the mastermind and Frank Olsen as the first victim, killed because he was going to talk.

I'm deeply conflicted about this book. Ronson believes that he's stumbled onto a big secret, but it's not clear what this secret is. It could be that America has a secret army of psychic spies, or that we have sophisticated psychological torture, or just that the Brass believes in this nonsense. Either way I feel like, 'real' secret programs are better secured or just common knowledge. But what really rubs me the wrong way is that Ronson makes the claim that these programs are deliberately depicted as absurd to hide the unsavory truths about torture and the like. If that's so, why participate in the charade by writing a book as weird and conspiratorial as The Men Who Stare At Goats? show less

Well-written and interesting account of some of our government's more unusual (and often sinister) forays into psychological warfare and parapsychology. From a peace-loving advocate of facing enemies while playing calming music and holding baby animals, to over-the-top tales of psychological torture and experimental drugs, there's a lot to hold the reader's interest. (I have not seen the movie that is based on this book and cannot imagine how they could have made it into a story for film; it is a great piece of reporting but is not a neat linear story with heroic characters.)

Alltsedan 1970-talet har den amerikanska armén utbildat en hemlig grupp soldater i paranormala förmågor. De tränar sig i osynlighet (!), att tindra med ögonen för att göra fienden förvirrad, konsten att förflytta medvetandet utanför kroppen, men också mer "normala" närstridstekniker. Verksamheten låg nere från mitten av 1990-talet men nu under 2000-talets Krig mot terrorismen har de blivit reaktiverade. Och nu är det krig på riktigt, vilket leder hela vägen till den psykiska tortyren av fångarna i Abu Ghraib och Guantanamo.
I sitt underhållande reportage Män som stirrar på getter lyckas Jon Ronson förena skarpsynthet och samhällskritik med en humor som sträcker sig långt över vad man trodde var möjligt.

This book goes back and forth from hilarious to horrifying more often than Rosemary's Baby. Except that it's all true. This really touches on so many of my main interests, I don't even know where to begin. Basically, all the weird shit that just seems like fiction in a Pynchon novel turns out to be based in reality and this book does a better job of digging it all up, while being more well-researched, well-written and less sensational than any book about the US military's psychic engagements ever could be. Suffice it to say, I definitely want to re-watch the film.

The Men Who Stare at Goats was not the book I expected it to be. It's billed as a humorous look at research into parapsychology and remote viewing by Army intelligence, and for the first half, it is. It turns out that after Vietnam, a few officers influenced by the human potential and New Age movements in California attempted to bring these ideas into the Army - resulting in the creation of the "First Earth Battalion" manual, a description of a new army where opponents are psychically manipulated into surrender and no weapons are needed. Some results - a general that repeatedly tries and repeatedly fails to walk through walls, remote viewers spying on the Loch Ness Monster, and the attempt to create real Jedi warriors that can kill show more goats by staring at them.

But just like Star Wars, there's a dark side to the Force. About halfway through the book, Ronson digs into the movement away from peaceful research into things like acoustic weaponry used to break prisoners and shows how these ideas were implemented in the Noriega arrest, Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo Bay. This is not funny stuff. The Psychological Operations folks treated these situations as laboratories to put into actual experiment all the wild ideas they've been thinking about all these years - leading to the abuses we've been reading about in the papers over the years. The Men Who Stare at Goats is a good book, make no mistake. It's just not quite what it's advertised to be. show less

The film of The Men Who Stare at Goats was a diverting comedy based on the cartoonishness of the ideas espoused by characters played by George Clooney and Jeff Bridges. The book is a very different matter, because it is not fictionalised, the people discussed are real, and the more sobering consequences of their ideas are spelled out by Jon Ronson in what turns out to be a pretty serious manner.

The real tragedy in the book is that the ideas lampooned in the film were a genuine response by Jim Channon to the trauma he experienced in Vietnam, to find more non-violent ways of conducting wars, based on New Age ideas. Channon published his ideas as a manual for the New Earth Brigade, and they received about the amount of attention that you show more would expect from the Army of the time.

Rather than sink without trace however, Channon's non-violent ideas were adopted and twisted by others to become something unrecognisable from his original intent. Ronson shows the link between seemingly fanciful New Age theory such as using music to change behaviour to the torture deployed at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Ronson makes a convincing argument that the repellent activities of people like Lynddie England were ordered by higher-ups applying a version of Channon's ideas.

Similarly, Ronson recounts experiences at Waco with the Branch Davidians that suggest similar torture methods were attempted there.

All in all this a sad book because Channon was clearly trying to achieve something quite different from what his successors have ended up doing with his ideas. While the start of the book seems comical, along the lines of the film, by the end Ronson has made you take this very seriously. For all that, however, you are never quite sure how much of this to believe. As Ronson says, the best way to discount these events is to make them seem funny; the film has succeeded in making Ronson's book seem more of a joke than maybe he wanted. show less