Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Jon Ronson

Should have posted yesterday regarding this possible genius. And this post will be a bit lame cos I'm feeling lacklustre today. But just need to get it up - I'll edit it later. I saw this guy, Jon Ronson in conversation about his books on Monday night. It was part of a Salon series organised by Sleepers Publishing. Come to the next one if you can - it's on the 24th of November and the guy they'll have on then (David Corlett) has a lot of interesting stuff to say too. Anyways. Jon Ronson was hilarious, insightful and thought-provoking. Check out his work.

Jon Ronson is the Pommy version of John Safran. He's a writer and documentary film maker. His books, Them: Adventures With Extremists and The Men Who Stare at Goats are international bestsellers. He grew up in Cardiff and began his journalistic career as an award-winning columnist for Time Out, and also wrote for the The Guardian and produced BBC Radio 4 documentaries.
His goat book is about his investigation into the US military's strange experiments with the paranormal. At the "Goat Lab," tests were made to see if people could kill animals by simply staring at them. One man, Guy Savelli, who Ronson interviewed, told him that he was able to knock down one of the goats through remote influencing. Other experiments such as walking through walls and becoming invisible were less successful, Ronson reported. The unit that conducted the tests, known as The First Earth Battalion, was spearheaded by Jim Channon who incorporated a number of "new age" teachings into the program. Ronson believes that the use of sound on prisoners at such places at Guantanamo Bay developed out of the Battalion's tests. He also discussed his infiltration of the Bilderberg Group and Bohemian Grove. One of the "Bilderbergers" told him that they do have an agenda towards a one-world government. He characterized the rituals he witnessed at the Bohemian Grove as a "weird mix of paganism and Broadway," but not necessarily of evil intent.

Um, Teach, apparently the director of Napoleon Dynamite is going to direct the film version of Them: Adventures with Extremists!!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

hmmmm...lucky for him, jon ronson didn't visit any mormons in that first book. and readers, take bonnie's advice on the sleepers salons. sleepers publishing supports alternative literature at a time when we desperately need it. and it's fun.