First Earth Battalion

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The First Earth Battalion was the name proposed by Lieutenant Colonel (LTC) Jim Channon, an American Soldier who had seen service in Vietnam, for his idea of a new US military to be organized along New Age lines. Such a battalion was never formed.

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 that 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.

Since Earthkind has grown from pack to village, to tribe, to territory, and then to nation, LTC Channon envisions going from nation to planet next, and hereby declares the First Earth Battalion's primary allegiance to the planet. Making the planet whole requires the ethical use of force based on the collective conscience. Therefore Channon believes the Army can be the principal moral ethical basis on which things political can harmonize in the name of the Earth.

Service members of the First Earth Battalion would practice meditation, use yogic cat stretches and primal screams to attain battle-readiness, and use tui na or shiatsu as battlefield first aid. First Earth Battalion trainees would learn to fast for a week drinking only juice and then eat only nuts and grains for a month. They would be able to: fall in love with everyone, realize the different paths of spirit, perceive the auras of living organisms, organize a tree plant with kids, attain the power to pass through objects such as walls (teleportation), bend metal by using the power of the mind (psychokinesis), walk on fire, operate based on spirit communications (mediumship), become a peacemaker, actually change a violent pattern in the world (Maharishi Effect), calculate faster than a computer, control their heart rate—including making it stop—with no ill effects, intuit information from the past (retrocognition) or future (precognition), have out-of-body experiences, live off nature for twenty days, be 90%+ a vegetarian, have the ability to massage and cleanse the colon, stop using mindless cliches, stay out alone at night, and be able to intuit other people's thoughts and feelings (telepathy). LTC Channon coined the term "warrior monk" for these new service members of the First Earth Battalion, which is anyone who has the presence, service and dedication of a monk and the absolute skill and precision of a warrior. The warrior monk will learn different self-defense systems of martial arts (such as taiji, aikido, etc.) based on using the force of their attackers against themselves. To alleviate negative stressors and promote healing in self and others, the warrior monk will employ a number of techniques like relaxation, visualization, qigong and reiki to help strengthen and improve the mind/body connection with spirit.

Some ideas proposed in the writings of Channon later found their way into military procedures for psychological warfare. Within weeks of the publication of the First Earth Battalion operations manual in the spring of 1979, soldiers throughout the Army began seriously trying to implement his ideas. One example was when the Army's Intelligence and Security Command began developing its own remote viewing program in 1979, which was a parapsychological intelligence gathering method that had already been experimentally tested at Stanford Research Institute since 1972 by parapsychologists Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff. Ronson specifically cites the First Earth Battalion manual's proposal to use music to effect "psychic mind-change" as one. ([1]) However, the American military has adopted loud sound as a psychological weapon, not to win hearts and minds. For example at Waco, Texas, in a repetition of the techniques used four years earlier in an attempt to drive Manuel Noriega from his sanctuary, an earsplitting cacophony of noise was played at the compound 24/7, that included the sound of rabbits being slaughtered, chanting Tibetan monks, roaring jet engines, and the Nancy Sinatra hit, "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'."

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[edit] References

Jon Ronson, The Men Who Stare at Goats (Simon & Schuster, New York, 2004)

Ron M. McRae, Mind Wars: The true story of government research into the military potential of psychic weapons (St. Martin's Press, New York, 1984)


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