First Earth Battalion - The Men Who Stare at Goats

According to the book The Men Who Stare at Goats (ISBN 0-330-37548-2) by journalist Jon Ronson, 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. 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." 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 "sparkly eyes", and then gently place the lambs on the ground and give the enemy "an automatic hug". If these measures did not 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. A movie based on the book—released in Autumn 2009—starring George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey, retitled the First Earth Battalion as the New Earth Army.