Posted on 11/08/2009 2:09:06 PM PST by JoeProBono
In the new movie The Men Who Stare at Goats, which opens today in the United States, George Clooney plays a former member of a secret sect of soldiers trained by the U.S. military to deploy a host of paranormal weapons against the enemy. Their deadly talents supposedly include the ability to kill a goat via psychokinesis—by staring at the beast they can make its heart stop with thought alone.
The movie takes some liberties in the name of comedy, but the program it's based on is real. During the Cold War, the U.S. military became convinced it was losing the "mind race" against the Soviet Union, and as recently as the late 1980s was investigating a range of paranormal phenomenon and their potential uses in espionage and combat, says Jonathan Moreno, a philosopher at the University of Pennsylvania who studies military applications of cognitive science.
For more details, Moreno referred me to a 1988 National Research Council report on enhancing human performance. According to the report, some military decision makers believed that extrasensory perception ("if real and controllable") could prove valuable for intelligence gathering, while psychokinesis could find an even wider range of uses, from jamming enemy computers or weapons, planting thoughts in individuals without their knowledge, or even killing enemies at a distance. And that's not all.
The report says: "One suggested application is a conception of the 'First Earth Battalion,' made up of 'warrior monks,' who will have mastered almost all the techniques under consideration by the committee, including the use of ESP, leaving their bodies at will, levitating, psychic healing, and walking through walls." This is the elite squad Clooney's character belonged to.
Moreno says that as far as he knows the military has abandoned its research into the paranormal. These days, he says, they're more interested in the fruits of neuroscience research—cognitive-enhancing drugs to keep soldiers sharp, for example, or brain-machine interfaces that could take over a plane if the pilot becomes incapacitated.
Goats who stare.
George Clooney aside, this movie looks freaking HILARIOUS!
Clooneys involvement means I will never see this film.
“Space: Above and Beyond” did an episode on this premise.
Save your money at the boxoffice.
Typical Hollywood anti-military establishment liberal eye candy.
I recall that a remote viewer (clairovoyant) was brought in to find General Dozier in the 80’s after he was kidnapped by leftist terrorists. Its reported he was amazingly accurate.
A person who has become a true psychic weapon could not only affect matter and energy from afar, he or she could probably “hack reality” to the point of causing people, places, and events to simply “not be”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we9_CdNPuJg
fainting goats is a well know phenomenon.
Hollywood idiocy!!!
Exactly.
Out of the vast multitude of activities engaged in by the military in the last 50 years, the Hollyweirdos look for anything, no matter how obscure or insignificant, that can be used to make the U.S. armed forces look ridiculous, and make that into a Hollywood feature film.
So when is the big budget Hollywood blockbuster coming out that will pay tribute to the incredible bravery, courage, sacrifice and determination shown by our service personnel in the Battle of Fallujah, or the fall of Iraq, or the fall of Afghanistan? Don't hold your breath.
Hollywood is scum.
After last night, I might by soap, pit juice and underwear if they are lucky. If not, I smell about the same as the Masters Degree Students in Women's Studies or Political Science at a Liberal University.
Clooney looks like he could play Hitler. I will not voluntarily see anything this self-absorbed POS smug-butt does.
I frankly doubt this. I think the operative philosophy was "It's all a load of BS ... but what if it's not?" So might as well cover all bases. I'm sure that those who pushed for these programs drew the analogy to the funding of various wild schemes in WWII, some of which did pay dividends. I'm thinking of Jasper Maskelyne, who came up with various large scale misdirections in the Mediterranean theater. These were in the realm of trickery and deception, of course, and far from invoking the paranormal. And note the caveat in the cited article!
And then there’s Barney Frank, who stares at goatse.
>”fainting goats is a well know phenomenon.”
My brother-in-law has a small herd of these. Great entertainment when drinking beer on a Sunday afternoon.
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