There is a new movie coming out starring George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges, Kevin Spacey, etc. Overture films describes the movie The Men Who Stare at Goats this way:

In this quirky dark comedy inspired by a real life story you will hardly believe is actually true, astonishing revelations about a top-secret wing of the U.S. military come to light when a reporter encounters an enigmatic Special Forces operator on a mind-boggling mission. Reporter Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) is in search of his next big story when he encounters Lyn Cassady (Academy Award®winner George Clooney), a shadowy figure who claims to be part of an experimental U.S. military unit. According to Cassady, the New Earth Army is changing the way wars are fought. A legion of Warrior Monks with unparalleled psychic powers can read the enemys thoughts, pass through solid walls, and even kill a goat simply by staring at it.

The trailer:

What’s interesting is that the movie is based on a real-life event in the U.S. Army called Project Jedi and the First Earth Battalion.

Here is where the idea for Project Jedi came from, and a description of the report that was produced. It is a fascinating, unbelievable concept that turns soldiers into warrior monks. You have to see it to believe that a military organization would even consider it:

After you watch the video, your very first impulse will be to ask, “Where can I see a copy of Evolutionary Tactics?” You can find it here, and it is stunning:

Evolutionary Tactics – Field manual for the First Earth Battalion

The book by Jon Ronson explored the project. Here Ronson is interviewed on Coast-to-Coast talking about his book and the project:

jon ronson part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 – Part 5 – Part 6 – Part 7 – Part 8″> – Part 9 – Part 10 – Part 11 – Part 12

From the height of the cold war to the depths of the war on terror, a small and clandestine sub-culture within the American military and intelligence agencies has embraced the paranormal and the potential of psychic warfare as the best hope to defeat the enemy. Our military psychological operations soldiers have experimented with weapons right out of a pulp science fiction novel: Mind control, cloaks of invisibility and the ability to pass through walls.

See also: “FIRST EARTH BATTALION The Real Story By Jim Channon”

First Earth Battalion

According to the book The Men Who Stare at Goats (ISBN 0-330-37548-2) by journalist Jon Ronson, Channon spent time in the seventies with many of the people in California credited with starting the human potential movement and subsequently wrote an operations manual for a First Earth Battalion. This manual was a 125-page mixture of drawings, graphs, maps, polemical essays and point-by-point redesigns of every aspect of military life. In LTC Channon’s First Earth Battalion, the new battlefield uniform would include pouches for ginseng regulators, divining tools, food stuffs to enhance night vision, and a loud speaker that would automatically emit “indigenous music and words of peace.” Rather than using bullets and munitions, Channon envisaged how this new force would attempt to first win the hearts and minds of the enemy by: using positive vibrations, carrying “symbolic animals” of peace—such as baby lambs—into hostile countries, greeting them with “sparkly eyes,” and then gently place the lambs on the ground and give the enemy “an automatic hug.” If these measures were not enough to pacify the enemy, members would employ the use of unconventional but non-lethal weapons to subdue them. Lethal force was to be a last resort. Intuition would be consulted first and foremost by battalion members.

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It is easy to imagine, in 10 years, every new car having this feature. The car drops you off at the door and then goes to park itself:

See also: Stanford to run driverless Audi TT-S up Pikes Peak next year

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The House of Representatives passed its health care reform bill on Saturday night. It is close to 2,000 pages long (you can read the text of HR 3962 here) – but what does it actually mean? Here are several interpretations:

1) Quickly summarizes ten key points – Key Provisions of the House Health Care Bill (CBS news)

2) Parsing the House Health Bill (WSJ)

3) Health insurance reform flow chart

4) House Health Reform Bill Expands Coverage and Lowers Health Cost Growth, While Reducing Deficits

5) Is the House Health Care Bill Better than Nothing?

6) Kucinich: Why I Voted NO

7) Why Congress’ Health Care Bills Are Better Than You Think

November 9, 2009 marks 20 years of freedom after the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. East and West Germany were re-unified, and not long after a new era began for the countries of the former Soviet Union.

This photo essay shows both the beginning and the end of the wall:

The 20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall

Why November 9, 1989? The following videos show you the events that led to this date:

Where did the wall come from originally? According to How the Berlin Wall Worked:

Berlin was an especially tender spot, because it was the only gap in the Iron Curtain. People in West Berlin could fly out of the city freely. While the border between East Germany and West Germany was closed, there was nothing to stop East Germans from entering West Berlin and fleeing (or defecting from) communist rule. Huge numbers of them did leave. By 1960, tens of thousands of people were leaving every month. In 1961, more than 200,000 East Germans had defected by summer [/source].

West Germany wasn’t happy to see this number of people leaving the East. Not only did it create an incredible economic strain, it increased tensions between East and West to an unbearable level. It seemed that an outbreak of violence was inevitable — no one knew what to do about the situation. The solution came from the Soviet politburo (the executive committee of the USSR) and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev. The orders technically were issued by German communist party leader Walter Ulbricht, but he was basically a puppet of the Soviets [source 1="Taylor" language=":"].

On the night of Aug. 12 and 13 in 1961, the borders between East and West Berlin were closed, along with all the rail stations. Thousands of East German soldiers guarded the border while workers began constructing barbed wire fences. Construction began at about 1 a.m. — streetlights were turned off so no one could see what was happening. The city of Berlin was being walled off, and the residents had no idea it was happening until morning. Neither did Western leaders. President John F. Kennedy was taken completely by surprise.

See also:

Revisiting Berlin, 20 years after the fall of the wall

Easterners who had been trapped inside the Soviet bloc crossed the border like water through a dam that had sprung a leak — first a trickle, then a torrent of people who climbed over the wall and through holes they chipped in the concrete.

On a recent trip to Germany, I drove the perfect car for the occasion, a little two-cylinder 1988 Trabant 601, which was ubiquitous throughout East Germany during Soviet days, a symbol of decrepit East Germany. The car’s hood, roof and fenders were made of cotton, cardboard and glue, powered with an engine like a lawnmower’s.

Berlin, 20 years after “the Wall”

Not a longing for the Wall, the Soviet occupiers, the secret police, the shootings of demonstrators, the decades of lost promise. But a reaction to the unraveling of the world East Berliners had known. They painted in their minds a memory of a more stable and egalitarian past, where everyone had a job and everyone was poor (except for the party elite). Where families stayed close because travel wasn’t an option. A time where clubs – chess, sports, youth, even nudist – were the places to make friends. Where every smart kid who didn’t mouth off against the government could go to college. Before the raw competition of capitalism swelled the unemployment rolls, split marriages, sent children to work in distant countries, and Western products pushed out familiar if inferior brands.

Twenty years later: Why the Berlin Wall fell

In August 1989, Hungary dismantled border barriers with Austria. Within days, hordes of Eastern Europeans, including 13,000 East Germans, escaped into Austria. Mass demonstrations against Communist rule erupted across Eastern Europe. To soothe public anger, the Communists opened the gates of the Berlin Wall on November 9. Within days, Berliners had chipped away and broken the Wall, amidst delirious cheering. Soon after, the Communist government fell.

Communists and socialists everywhere, including in India, were dismayed. They could not understand why East Germans blessed with income equality, free social welfare and full employment should flee to the highly unequal West, which bristled with unemployment and social perils. An answer came in a letter to a newspaper editor.

‘‘My daughter’s hamster (a pet white mouse) has food, water, shelter and even medical care, and a cage full of fun curly tubes. The hamster responds by constantly trying to chew his way to freedom. I think we all understand what freedom is, and it is not a gilded cage.’’

20 years later, eastern Germany making economic strides _ even selling products in West

“When East Germany joined the Federal Republic of Germany, its infrastructure was completely dilapidated, their state combine companies produced products that were unfit to be sold,” said Michael Huether, the director of the German Economic Institute. “Today the five eastern states can no longer be called an industrial wasteland.”

Today, in 2009, there are two new walls. One in the United States:

And one in Israel:

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