First Earth Battalion

[Wounded Ronin]

Holy, holy, HOLY ****. I just watched "The Men Who Stare At Goats", and then I googled "First Earth Battalion", and found what's supposed to be their concept paper. You have to read it to believe it. I cannot believe the military funded this crap at one point in time.

According to Wikipedia, "A number of Channon’s ideas on training were investigated by the Pentagon, and the First Earth Battalion had over 800 officers and bureaucrats on its mailing list, including eight generals and an undersecretary of defense."

http://ejmas.com/jnc/jncart_channon_0200.htm

An exerpt:

INTELLIGENT INITIATIVE

In the martial arts, one learns a number of possible countermoves against different types of possible enemies. These practice battles are done over and over until they become instinct. Likewise in the Earth Battalion all plausible engagements are war-gamed until each soldier has the routine cold. In this way the battalion can operate in the absence of commands from its leaders, who may be out of touch, because of the new realities of modern warfare.

[A chart compares "martial art stances" (e.g., prepare left, block left, en garde, prepare right) to a flowchart reading:]

If you are overrun -- move to the nearest road junction, take control of the buildings, wait for his towed artillery, destroy all you can… till you have lost an offensive punch, then exfiltrate [sneak out] or surrender to save life.



PEOPLE

All warrior monks, but an interdependence of New Age skills as well.

[The graphic shows the following skills, all emanating from a central Spirit Wizard]

Spirit wizard
Meditation leader
Martial arts wizard
Nutritionist herbalist
Vexillographer (flags and banners)
Cinematographer
Old tapes
Holographer
Printer
Minstrels
Video technoid
Satellite technoid
Laser technoid
General systems theorist
Physicist
Futurist
Builder
Conservationist
Indian tracker [sic]

What a weird historical anomaly. I really don't know what else to say.

[Diesel_tke]

Yeah, that's some pretty funny ****! It is like the military decided they needed an edge, but couldn't exactly figure out what they wanted. Then they started shooting in the dark and hoping something would be hit!

Either that or someone in a position of authority sustained a head injury, became schizophrenic and started doing all this stuff before anyone realized he had gone off the deep end!

[Devil]

What the fuckin' ****? I'm completely stunned. This is real? How did the Russians not skull **** our dumb asses in the 80s?

[PointyShinyBurn]

More or less mental than http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKULTRA , would you say?

[Devil]

Yeah, I'd have to say this **** is more mental than MKULTRA. At least MKULTRA possessed the redeeming quality of evilness.

This **** is just pure faggotry. Spirit wizards? Come on, man!

[thrutch]

The book which the film's based on is a very good read. Mental, bewildering and flabbergasting, all in an entertaining way. The US Military & Intelligence agencies had a fuckload of people high up in their ranks who would make Dillman seem like The Face of Rationalism.

Quite a few eye opening accounts of "esoteric" techniques used by shady US operatives at Waco, in Iraq and a few other dodgy hotspots.

[W. Rabbit]

What the fuckin' ****? I'm completely stunned. This is real? How did the Russians not skull **** our dumb asses in the 80s?

Because the Russians were busy trying to create their own ESP warfare programs, in fact, they were supposed to have been even MORE into ESP viewing/projection "research". Russia has a lot of Gypsies, too.

By the way, just because the whole idea seems flaky doesn't mean either side's "psychic ops" units didn't get "hits" now and then.

Movies/embellishments aside, these psychics were known to get things right now and then....and if your operating costs are merely a bunch of self-described clairvoyants meditating in a room, the cost is relatively low, so when they got that one "hit" (some book histories of the CIA talk about limited successes with this stuff), it's going to seem like a winner.

Add time to the equation, though, and you get enough "misses" to show that it's just not worth it.

By the way...the best part of "The Men Who Stare At Goats" is when Kevin Spacey gives George Clooney the "Dim Mak", and Clooney tells the legend of the Dim Mak to Ewan McGregor:

"Ewan: [So he died] right then and there?"

"Clooney: No, he died 18 years later....that's the thing about the Dim Mak, you never know when it's going to take effect".

Dry and priceless....Clooney's career best line.