Our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy have changed. We think you'll like them better this way.

The real story behind The men who stare at goats

  • Broadcast in History
VNR with host Mike Cavalli

VNR with host Mike Cavalli

Featured Host
×  

Follow This Show

If you liked this show, you should follow VNR with host Mike Cavalli.
h:20511
s:5333823
archived
Play
'The First Earth Battalion was the name proposed by Lieutenant Colonel Jim Channon, a U.S. soldier who had served in Vietnam, for his idea of a new military to be organized along New Age lines.
Channon spent time in the 1970s 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. The manual was a 125-page mixture of drawings, graphs, maps, polemical essays and point-by-point redesigns of every aspect of military life.
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." Warrior monks will carry the best equipment modern technology can produce into the battlefield: lightweight laser stun guns, hallucinogen mortars, acupuncture kits, dowsing rods for locating hidden tunnels and mines, etc. 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 "

Facebook comments

Available when logged-in to Facebook and if Targeting Cookies are enabled