The Man Who Stares at Goats (movie)

Tuesday is half-price at the local cinemas. So, K and I went to see "The Man Who Stares Goats". It was an all right movie, funny but also weired. But what I did not realize is that some of the characters are actually "real", with one John B Alexander who actually affiliates with Canada's National Research Council (NRC) here in Ottawa. I'll be darned !!

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Alexander

John B. Alexander

John Alexander is a retired US Army Colonel and a leading advocate for the development of non-lethal weapons. He was born in New York in 1937, and obtained a PhD from Walden University in 1980. Col. Alexander figures prominently in journalist Jon Ronson's book The Men Who Stare At Goats which examines the subject of New Age ideas influencing the military.

Career

He Joined the army in 1956 and retired in 1988 after serving among other things with research and development, special operations, and served as a Special Forces commander in Vietnam and Thailand. During his time in the army he showed interest in esoteric techniques similar to those explored by Lt. Col. Jim Channon in his First Earth Battalion manual. For example neuro-linguistic programming with which he hoped to create "Jedi warriors". (according to himself in his 1990 book The Warrior's Edge).

Colonel John Alexander, US Army Intelligence & Security Command, TDYed to the NSA, obtained his "Ph.D." from non-traditional New Age Walden University, was head of Las Vegas billionaire Robert Bigelow's NIDS organization investigating paranormal sites, member of the Aviary group involved in UFO cover-up matters as orchestrated by the global power group, The Cabal.

After his retirement Col. Alexander joined Los Alamos National Laboratory where he developed the concept of Non-Lethal Defense. He conducted briefings on non-lethal warfare at the highest levels of government, participated in a Council on Foreign Relations study of non-lethal weapons and chaired the first major conference on the topic.

Currently he is a member of the (Canadian) National Research Council Committee for Assessment of Non-Lethal Weapons Science and Technology.
Alexander is a past President and a board member of the International Association for Near Death Studies, and he is a senior fellow with two DOD universities.