Documentary: Crazy Rulers of the World
Crazy Rulers of the World is a documentary about secret paranormal experiments conducted inside military bases.
Three years in the making, Jon Ronson’s Crazy Rulers of the World explores the apparent madness at the heart of US military intelligence. With first-hand access to the leading players in the story, Jon Ronson examines the extraordinary -- and plain bizarre -- national secrets at the core of George W Bush's war on terror.
Interviewee: "We had a master sergeant that could stop the heart of a goat"All three parts are available on Google. Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3Jon Ronson: "What? Just by looking at it?"
Interviewee: Just by wantin' the goat's heart to stop
Previously on Boing Boing:
• The Men Who Stare At Goats
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What a ridiculous notion. I understand the various disorders that make conspiracy theorists believe what they believe, but I can't get on board with their stupidity/laziness: 'psyops,' as anyone clever and inclined enough to do a little reading knows, refers to psychological operations. Not mind control, propaganda: things like leaflets to enemy soldiers promising better treatment if they surrender.
It's a BBC doc.
I uploaded this series to Google Video two years ago but Google deleted it...
dcdryer -- Yes, the 9th PSYOPS BN is involved in tactical dissemination of POTF product, not psychic assassination attempts. But that doesn't make the sign any less amusing in this context.
Parenthetically, my wife remembers the military purchasing a large number of goats during the 1980s, when the "psychic SOF" stuff was going on. These requests weren't unusual -- the Army trains field medics in some cases by injuring sedated caprines and having the trainees stabilize them -- except that the military was specifically requesting "fainting goats," a breed that has a muscle chloride channel mutation that disrupts chloride conductance in the muscles. When the goats are startled, they suffer a kind of acute mytonia and fall over: although they're awake and unharmed, they appear to be "fainting."
This is entirely speculative on my part, but it seems possible if not probable that the "psychic warrior" crew used fainting goats as their test subjects. Unfortunately, since the goats do tend to fall over at even minor disturbances (and do so in flocks), they wouldn't really be suitable for heart-stopping psychic assassination training. You really can make them fall over just by looking at 'em funny.
And if you're doubting that the military can spend large (if relatively insignificant) sums on totally bizarre dead-ends, I recommend Sharon Weinberger's "Imaginary Weapons," a brilliant look at the pseudo-scientific underworld of DARPA development.
The Great Global Warming Swindle was a BBC doc, too, but nobody seemed to like that one...
#4: Actually, The Great Global Warming Swindle was made and broadcast by the UK's Channel 4. If it had been a BBC doc, it would have completely and utterly violated their rules of political neutrality. (Not to mention their standards of accuracy...) Channel 4 has no such restriction, and can broadcast whatever it likes.
Ah you're right. Though it's interesting that you think global warming is "political". Oh, there are politics all over it, for sure, but the issue itself is scientific, not political.
Just to confirm #5, it was indeed made by the UK's Channel 4, which, shall we say, caters to a different audience than the BBC. In terms of their goals and style, they are very different.
And the reason people didn't like TGGWS is because it misquoted the interviewees, fabricated data, and used a veneer of "science" to disguise sensationalism.
Doh, I didn't know there was a difference between Channel 4 and the BBC.
I'm pretty sure The Crazy Rulers of the World was done for Channel 4, so I guess calling it a BBC doc earlier was wrong.
:shrug:
these reporters can too...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we9_CdNPuJg
MK-ultra never was....
My first thought was, "why would they settle on goats, of all animals"; and my second thought, in the vein TWB (#3) explained above, was "Tennessee fainting goats." But it gets better:
You know what? I can turn traffic lights green, just by wanting the light to turn green. I did it at least once. Anyways, the 'reporter' mentions that "goat lab" came about as the successor to "dog lab" -- "nobody wanted to do all that to dogs."
So, yeah, this got me interested enough to watch the entire first part, here are my thoughts on that:
In an ideal world, people who can't distinguish between magic and the real world would get appropriate help. In the real world, it can't be done; there's too many who would have to be institutionalised on the spot. But that Stubblebine is arguably a nutter and a moron (in layperson's terms; proper technical terms might include 'delusional' and 'uneducated') and it's sad he was left in a position with so much power and responsibility.
Of course I'm assuming here that the guy's for real and not part of a huge practical joke (or military disinformation operation?) played on documentary maker Jon Ronson. The film itself is obviously a real Channel 4 programme, but it's hard not to entertain the notion of a brilliant deadpan comedy cabal when you see a Lieutenant Colonel Jim Channon explaining how "the emerging New Age movement of California" would be the best starting place for his quest to turn soldiers into cold-blooded killing machines.
The second half, though, is just more loonies, who now try to demonstrate odd 'powers' and of course consistently fail miserably. However, this failure doesn't seem to become fully apparent to the 'reporter'. Toward the end I was getting the feeling that Jon Ronson became desperate to produce something with enough eye-drawing potential so he could sell it to Channel 4 and also get his book plugged on the telly.
For example, when he finally chased down the goat whisperer, after three years of 'research', Ronson is shown a video of a hamster lieing down to rest and a second one running up to it, sniffling curiously (no, really, this is as paranormally terrifying as it gets). And after all this time and effort invested into the, err, investigation, he doesn't even bother to find out whether this behaviour is perfectly normal for hamsters. Instead, Ronson states that the scene is "eerie". This is terribly shoddy work. If I learned anything worthwhile there, it's this: That sorry effort is a waste of time, better not take the chance of bothering with the other two parts.
OMG!!! The second part about sesame street is just mad!!! You have to watch it!!!
During a recent visit to London this summer, a friend sat me down and made me watch a good portion of this wonderful film.
It truly opened my eyes to some of the very bad things that have occured in the name of military freedom...globally of course, as well as domestically.
Of course, nothing can beat Hitler's regime in terms of overall sinister depth (thank you Josef Mengele), however the CIA has done rather well (and bumbled their way into some tragic accidents) in their quest to perfect the ultimate "prisoner breaker" - remember after all that they succeeded in spreading LSD across the country!
highly recommended!
Allison
Shoddy journalism, perhaps, but intriguing nonetheless.
For instance, I did not know that the LSD window fall victim was hit on the head with a blunt instrument (like the butt of a gun) before plunging to his death. MK-Ultra, indeed.
Nonesuch (6): Malarkey. The question of global warming was scientific, but the issue is political. What we do about it is absolutely a matter of politics.
The division of "science" and "politics" into mutually exclusive categories is invalid from the start. Environmental issues are always both scientific and political. So's HIV/AIDS, and dozens of other issues I could list.
TWB (3): so there's a recognized breed of goat that suffers from cataplexy? That's very interesting. I only knew about the syndrome occurring in dogs and humans.
I also recommend if you can find it, Ronson's other series, Secret Rulers of the World which profiles conspiracy theorists like David Icke and Alex Jones. Ronson does an excellent job of building them up before deconstructing them and pointing out how they are wrong.
Theresa, here is a fun video of the fainting goats.
Thanks, Squid. I can see now that it isn't cataplexy -- people who have that syndrome go limp, not rigid.
@Sputnik, #14: Agreed! I ended up skimming part 2 (which accomplishes very little in terms of research, but is brilliant entertainment) and watching part 3 after all (woke up at 4 a.m. and had some time to kill). Ronson redeemed himself a bit (still was too gullible, but at least asked some of the right questions and made some efforts to put the loonies into perspective), and the bits with Eric Olson (son of Frank Olson, the "LSD suicide/homicide guy") are really good. Getting the story straight from the man who is most involved in uncovering the truth about his father's death is informative and touching at the same time.
On the other hand, it was almost sickening to watch how Ronson approached the delusional, compulsively lying Prudence Calabrese without a modicum of scepticism, falling for her parlour tricks ("I'm impressed!") and never questioning her alledged infallible psychic spying skills. Of course it was right and decent of him not to push her into a complete nervous breakdown during the interviews (it wouldn't have taken much, I think), but even in the voice-overs he added after the fact, Ronson never raises the point of whether Calabrese might not have any supernatural powers at all.
I actually appreciate his open-mindedness; it's just that if you watched the documentary from a woo-woo's perspective, you'd find it very easy to find your beliefs about the existence of 'remote viewing' confirmed. That part of the audience could have used more focus on fact-finding, on an objective, scientific approach ... the lack thereof makes me feel a bit sorry for the poor bastards.
^^Neurotypicals jealous of our super-powers. sad.
#20: I knew you were going to say that.
I recall having a rather strange interview with a fellow in civilian clothes in the early eighties while I was serving in the USAF. Apparently word had gotten out about my deep interest in metaphysics, and I think he was trying to recruit me for that Stargate program- but he was very vague about it.
It didn't feel 'right' for me at that time- mostly because I didn't want to move to the East Coast. I think he was disappointed, because I had the 'right' clearance. This was in the middle of the Cold War, too.
Here's the text of the "First Earth Batallion" handbook.
http://ejmas.com/jnc/jncart_channon_0200.htm
You have to remember- the late 70s and early 80s were a hotbed of the "New Age" movement. So, it was very possible that the military would become interested in these ideas. And I am not a bit surprised that they would still be trying these tactics.
I tried watching this, I usually like stuff like this, but that guy doing the voiceover was doing my head in.
Like some kind of camp third-rate Louis Theroux...
wrong, wrong, wrong.