EVOLUTIONARY TACTICS

[spectre]

SPECTREVISION / OFFICE OF POPULAR HOLIDAYS
HEREBY FORMALLY RECOGNIZES : BEST THEME PARTY PROPOSAL 2009
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/11/26/first-earth-battalion/

1st EARTH BATTALION
http://www.firstearthbattalion.org/
http://www.neweartharmy.com/
http://www.firstearthbattalion.com/
http://www.firstearthbattalion.org/?q=node/9
http://www.firstearthbattalion.org/?q=taxonomy/term/3
http://www.firstearthbattalion.org/?q=taxonomy/term/4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbXKuwzwfxE

COLLECTIBLE FIELD MANUAL
http://www.dareland.com/field_manual.pdf
http://arcturus.org/field_manual.pdf

ORIGINS
http://firstearthbattalion.com/frequently-asked-questions/what-is-the-first-earth-battalion-and-how-did-it-originate.php
What Is The First Earth Battalion And How Did It Originate?
BY Jim Channon / 06 October 2009

Post Vietnam 1978 was a time when military morale and enrollment were
at an all time low. During this period the U.S. Army needed to
drastically shift approaches and prepare to defeat a vastly larger
Soviet force in Europe. Army leaders called upon officers to develop
needed creative approaches to dealing with this challenge. They were
encouraged to fully explore the Army’s Be All That You Can Be
philosophy. In response, U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Jim Channon
created the First Earth Battalion, that collected new technologies to
support a conceptual prototype of the soldier of the future. Channon
was inspired by the human potential and advanced human performance
movements and drew many of his ideas from these fields and from the
time he spent at Esalen Institute. Many senior generals in the Army
backed Channon because he was a bold example of what a young officer
could do creatively. The word spread and other elements within the
Army became more boldly involved in testing ideas that were on the
edge. They came to call him the “lightening rod”. Like any endeavor
that involves studying new ideas, some of the ideas panned out and
others did not. The larger story is that the U.S. Army is one of the
most creative organizations in the world and that it must continue to
be so in order to deal with the radically different missions it must
prepare for. Few people understand that reality because of the rigid
prototype the media has created around military culture.

What Is Evolutionary Tactics?
Jim Channon delivered his ideas about the First Earth Battalion
through his illustrated field manual, Evolutionary Tactics which
offered a 21st Century vision of the soldier of the future.
Evolutionary Tactics was published by the Army in 1978. The manual was
modeled after the popular Whole Earth Catalog with illustrations of
advanced human performance skills. It is credited with kick-starting a
very creative surge of activity in the U.S. Army. Army commanders
adopted the elements that served them. There was no one cookie-cutter
solution. Original copies have become something of collector’s item.
Since that time, tens of thousands of copies have been downloaded from
the Internet by fans across the globe. The archetype used in the
manual is the warrior monk … who is invincible in war but very
persuasive in peace. We see this model in action in the middle east
today.

Who Are "The Men Who Stare At Goats"?
The movie evolved from a book of the same title written by British
satirical writer Jon Ronson. It stars four of the most creative minds
in Hollywood today: George Clooney, Kevin Spacey, Jeff Bridges and
Ewan McGregor. The title of the book and film is based on an
experimental lab that once existed at Fort Bragg, NC where the
military reportedly attempted to kill goats simply by staring at them.
There were no corresponding approaches in Jim’s field manual. The
highly anticipated film is due out in December 2009. The movie is a
comedy, much of which is inspired by Jim Channon’s First Earth
Battalion because it kick-started a very creative surge in the army.
Channon is portrayed in the film by Jeff Bridge’s who plays the
character Bill Django. The First Earth Battalion is known in the film
as The New Earth Army a name Jim offered the producers who wanted the
creative liberty of making comedy without any direct association with
the actual Battalion scenarios. Though they both claim to be based on
a true story, author Jon Ronson and screenwriter Peter Straughan took
wide artistic license blurring the lines between fact and fiction in
order to create a somewhat dark Hollywood comedy. Here are some
important facts:
• Jim Channon was never discharged from the U.S. Army. He served in
the U S Army as an infantry officer and creative spark-plug from 1962
to 1982 and was in Vietnam twice 65-66 and 70-71. During his time in
Vietnam, he lost just one infantry soldier and never killed an
innocent civilian. He was known for his ability to imagine and
illustrate the future battlefield and its advanced applications.

Returning home from Vietnam, his goal was to find non-lethal and
peaceful solutions to potentially change the shape of war as we know
it and save lives in the process. His work in the military was highly
respected as he was asked to present to large high ranking conferences
with his most creative talents and launched a simulation and games
program that is now funded at 50 million dollars a year.
• Channon retired from the military in 1982 and did not serve in Iraq.
(Ronson speculated that the sound healing therapies detailed in
Evolutionary Tactics evolved into torture techniques in Abu Graib or
Guantanamo. This is total speculation since sounds have been used
since the beginning of armed struggle to influence moral or frighten
the enemy.

Was The First Earth Battalion A Secret Paranormal Force In The U.S.
Military?
No. The Earth Battalion has acted like a think-tank collecting and
reviewing advanced human performance skills from all disciplines and
it still does. It was never secret although some of the spin-off ideas
may have became secret once tested (such as remote viewing.) The think-
tank is still active and provides advanced human performance solutions
for soldiers planet-wide. It is supported by Jim’s retirement pay and
has dozens of other volunteer military thinkers as part of the brain
trust. Paranormal sensibilities possessed by soldiers can increase
survival rates on the modern and very complex battlefield. The goal is
to create more situationally-aware combatants with a more advanced
understanding of threats, allowing for peaceful incursions into
dangerous areas and sparing the lives of civilians.

Optimal Futurist
Most futurists today tend to be people who communicate about what
might happen in the next few years. Visionaries tend to cast images
about possibilities that seem far ranging. What he does is interview
leaders and scan the planet for things that are working now. Then he
upgrades their potential and bundles them into socially attractive
settings. So, then they become strategies that are describable and
organized graphically so people may actually get at the business of
creating and even constructing them. Walt Disney created the word
imagineer to make the connection between visionaries and engineers. To
some extent his graphics talents allow him to illustrate things that
can be constructed because they are drawn in 3D. He uses a personally
created advanced visual language to get this done. If you view his
over 70 videos on youtube.com you will see the graphics and storywork
live.

His real gift is that he has scanned the social architecture of the
earth and has created bundled solutions for many parts of the coming
world. His focus is on qualities of life assembled in beautiful
settings. He has interviewed over 2000 leaders on their ideas of a
future with a higher purpose. Those ideas have been assembled in
PROJECT EARTHRISE that he created with the fellows at the World
Business Academy. They are ideas projected 100 years out. We believe
he may be more fluent in long range futures than anyone alive at the
moment. He has an extra-ordinary set of skills.

Where Are Members Today?
Not surprisingly many original members remain actively involved in
planetary affairs. Jim Channon lives in Hawaii on an eco-homestead and
has pioneered a wide range of evolutionary ideas for living. Jim is
still actively engaged in envisioning the global militaries of the
world coming together as a New Earth Army to deal with environmental
and social problems of the future. He calls this endeavor Operation
Noble Steward and has written about on his website and discussed it in
his many You Tube videos. John Alexander, the father of non-lethal
weapons has just completed a major analysis of Africa and has written
two books on the future of warfare. His character in the film is
played more or less by the George Clooney role although there are few
direct correspondences since the comedy writer needed all the creative
license he could get. John’s book, The Warrior's Edge, provided an
accurate description of many of his projects that explored
phenomenology. Still exploring, he currently serves as a council
member of the Society for Scientific Exploration [http://
www.scientificexploration.org/] and the board of directors of the
International Remote Viewers's Association [www-irva.org]. Major
General Bert Stubblebine is developing a sustainable community in
Panama and raising global awareness about questionable medical
practices created by large pharmaceutical companies involved in Codex.
Most of the 130 some odd members of the Army’s original think-tank
called Task Force Delta (where these ideas were spawned) have gone on
to positions of meaningful social responsibility and other future-
based technologies.

GOAT LAB
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/11/psychic-spies-acid-guinea-pigs-new-age-gis-the-true-men-who-stare-at-goats/
Psychic Spies, Acid Guinea Pigs, New Age Soldiers: the True Men Who
Stare at Goats
BY David Hambling / November 6, 2009

“More of this is true than you would believe,” we’re told, just a few
minutes into the movie version of The Men Who Stare At Goats, which
opens today. But how many of the film’s outlandish military research
projects really happened? Turns out there’s plenty of material in the
movie which sticks quite close to the truth — though reality is a bit
more complicated. (Warning: minor spoilers ahead.)

Psychic spies? True. The non-fiction book which serves as the movie’s
basis features Colonel John B. Alexander. He served as a Special
Forces commander in Vietnam and spent decades promoting the use of
psychics and “remote viewers” for national security. (That is, when he
wasn’t pursuing his interests in -linguistic programming, UFOs, or non-
lethal weapons.) In 2007, our own Sharon Weinberger interviewed Col.
Alexander in some depth on the military use of witches. “They were
doing palmistry, crystal ball kinds of stuff,” he said. Danger Room
also noted Col. Alexander’s long-running feud with Armen Victorian
(alias Henry Azadehdel, alias Habib Azadehdel, alias Cassava N’tumba
and others), orchid smuggler, conspiracy theorist and all-round spooky
character in the intelligence world.

Moving into the further reaches of the fringe we find earlier work,
such as Boeing’s 60’s psychic experiments which concluded that certain
subjects could force a random number generator to produce a specific
number by sheer willpower. By 1985 an Army report declared that
“psychokinesis could, with continued research, have a potential
military value for future military operations ” and as recently as
1996 the phenomenon of eyeless vision was being investigated. Military
psychics may still be in business: a 2007 report suggested that the
9/11 attacks had been predicted some years beforehand by Remote
Viewers. In the post-9/11 world where every option seemed worth
exploring, it’s not implausible that some psychic spies were
reactivated.

Drug experimentation? True. Troops were doused with everything from
concentrated cannabis oil to LSD — at times, without their knowledge.
Researchers would watch as servicemen would then “carry on
conversations with various invisible people for as long as 2-3 days.”
The CIA was so enamored of acid, the agency had to issue a memo
instructing that the punch bowls at office Christmas parties were not
to be spiked.

Hippie Army? True. Lt. Col. Jim Channon dove deep into the New Age
movement, and came back to the military with a most alternative view
of warfare — one in which troops would carry flowers and symbolic
animals into battle. In the movie, Channon is played by Jeff Bridges.
His First Earth Battalion is renamed the “New Earth Army.” But the
ideas are the same. Much of the artwork from the New Earth manual is
lifted straight from the Channon original.

Channon has been taking advantage of the publicity for his cause; this
week he has a column in the Guardian newspaper, suggesting (among
other things) that armies should be used for reforestation and navies
to control over-fishing. The military’s interest in Eastern and
alternative practices is once again on the rise. “Warrior mind
training“, apparently based on ancient Samurai techniques, is being
taught at Camp Lejeune as a possible treatment for PTSD. Elsewhere the
Army has a $4 million initiative exploring other approaches including
Reiki, transcendental meditation and “bioenergy.” The Air Force is
looking into acupuncture for battlefield pain relief.

Sound weapons? True. Unpleasant sounds and repetitive music —
including the Barney theme — have been used as real-life psychological
warfare and interrogation techniques. (Some of the bands involved have
been less than happy about it.) Repetitive music takes a long time to
be effective, but loud, discordant noise is becoming more common as a
method of dispersing crowds. Danger Room’s David Axe was a test
subject for the LRAD sonic blaster and reported “It was like having a
hundred nagging girlfriends in my brain screaming at me”, while Sharon
Weinberger tried the Inferno blaster and experienced “the most
unbearable, gut-wrenching noise I’ve ever heard in my life.”

Killing animals with telepathy? False. The most outrageous claims in
the movie (and book) is that military psychics could kill goats by
looking at them. Even John Alexander says this isn’t true. “As I told
Jon Ronson when the book first came out, Alexander writes, ‘He [one of
the soldiers] hit the goat.’” Goats are the one of the preferred
substitutes for human targets in military testing, and there are
rumors of lethal goat-zapping experiments with the Active Denial
System. Special operations Command use them for training battlefield
medicine – first shoot your (anesthetised) goat — a practice which is
still controversial.

In her review of the movie, Col Alexander’s wife mentions that in real
life her husband can disperse clouds by looking at them — “It
certainly helped during our cruise to Antarctica!” – but asserts that
he has never used his powers to kill a goat. (Look at time lapse
photography of clouds and cloud-busting becomes less impressive).
Psychics are notoriously prone to believing in their own powers and
are often convinced that experiments have proven their abilities when
the results have been equivocal. In the Guardian, Dr. Phillip
Sponenberg suggests that mytonic or fainting goats plus little self-
deception may be behind the supposed success of the goat-staring
experiment.

However, as the First Earth Battalion’s manual makes clear, winning
the psychological battle is a big part of the struggle. If your
opponent believes that you can kill them with a look, then they are
already half-way to being defeated. And many martial arts masters know
that by overawing their students with displays that might be described
as trickery, they can convince them of the value of their discipline.
So it might be best not to take everything quite at face value, as Jon
Ronson does in the book and Ewan Mcgregor does in the movie. Or maybe
they really can kill goats with a look.

CRAZY RULERS OF THE WORLDS (BBC 2004)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKgilR4rIY0

SPOILER ALERT
http://www.firstearthbattalion.org/?q=node/96
A viewers guide to the Goats movie TRUE OR FALSE
BY John B. Alexander / U.S. Army (retired) / 11.06.2009

The movie, The Men Who Stare at Goats, is based on a book of the same
title. While listed as nonfiction, the facts were extrapolated almost
beyond recognition. The people in the book were listed by their real
names. I was named many times. While some Special Forces units
experimented with various techniques, the vast majority of the
incidents came from one of two other sources. Formal psi research
programs were conducted in the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security
Command (INSCOM). There was also a unique think tank called Task Force
Delta at Headquarters Department of the Army and later at the Army War
College. Delta was arguably the most innovative organization in the
world. With support of senior leadership, we were consciously pushing
the envelope. It should be noted that all of the explorations
undertaken were done based on solid rationale.

Facts and Fiction
- The First Earth Battalion (1EB) was created by Lt. Col. Jim Channon,
a brilliant imaginer and artist. He literally owns the First Earth
Battalion concept.
- The 1EB was never an authorized military unit of the U.S. Army
- The 1EB was a notional concept that encouraged/allowed people to
think innovatively, yet within a military construct
- The New Earth Battalion is a movie version of 1EB
- Most of the movie characters are based on real people – though some
are composites
- The Kevin Spacey character seems to be made up for movie purposes
- Senior officer with ponytail (Jeff Bridges) NOT REAL
- Remote Viewing – REAL- and was a 20 year official program
- Use of Remote Viewing in Gen Dozier kidnapping by Red Brigade - REAL
- Concern about Soviet psychic research – REAL
- JEDI projects – REAL – but ad hoc (I had one of them with multi-
agencies)
- Spoon bending – REAL – was taught to hundreds
- Cloud busting –REAL – though never as fast as done by Clooney
- Computer crashing – REAL – incident did happen
- Fire walking -REAL
- New Age exploration – REAL
- Running into walls – NOT REAL (is the opening scene of the movie)
- Use of LSD – not only NO, BUT HELL NO
- Hamster staring –ATTEMPTED - by Guy Savelli (a civilian martial
artist)
- Goat Lab – REAL – used to train medics
- Goats – Hit by martial artists – It did die hours later
- Goats – Staring – no credible evidence to support this allegation
- Dim mak – PROBABLY REAL – supported by physical evidence
- References to a hollow army –REAL – post Vietnam was a traumatic
period

Pushing The Envelope
’“If everything you’re attempting is successful, you are nowhere close
to the edge!”

THE U.S. MILITARY AND CREATIVITY
http://www.firstearthbattalion.org/?q=node/44
The U.S. Military and Creativity
BY John B. Alexander, Ph.D. / 10.26.2008

"Colonel John Alexander was an original member of the Earth Battalion
and served in many interesting paranormal scouting efforts. Eventually
he headed up the non-lethal weapons world for the Army. He continues
to be a trusted thinker and solid communicator to the Defense world
about many of the gifts created by the members of this circle of
pioneers. Thanks for this outstanding coverage of much of the
Battalions near legendary works." -Jim Channon

=================================================

The U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) lists four core values:
Integrity, Courage, Competency, and Creativity. In 2006, as a senior
fellow at the Joint Special Operations University (JSOU), I drafted a
monograph addressing creativity as it applied to Special Operations
Forces (SOF).* Indeed, SOF elements pride themselves their ability to
quickly adapt to rapidly changing, and often extremely dangerous
situations, and rightfully so. Of concern to me was not the myriad of
operations successfully conducted by small units. Rather, it was that
problems emerge when large organizations, such as USSOCOM, attempt to
institutionalize creativity. To quote on young U.S. Army Special
Forces officer I encountered in Timbuktu, “Creativity is directly
proportional to the distance from the flag pole.”

Having been involved in many creative projects during my 32 years in
the United States military, and observing the Army’s responses to
them, my objective was to point out that creativity is much easier to
say, than it is to execute in large organizations. Almost invariably,
as creative projects gain increased visibility, the more traditional
values of the large system come in conflict. When that happens, steps
are taken to eliminate the creative project.

In the monograph I addressed seven such innovative Army projects as
well as several from the other services. (No service, organization, or
individual has a corner on creativity.) The Army projects addressed
were all successful, yet all were terminated as opposition from
conventional sources rose. One of those projects, the Army’s
Organizational Effectiveness program, was probably the largest
institutional transformation project ever undertaken by any
organization.

The monograph covered several projects, including remote viewing, that
run counter to conventional scientific wisdom. Despite theoretical
arguments about the fundamental causation, an operational capability
was developed. However, because of the perceived controversial nature
of some of the material, including remote viewing, an executive
decision was made that the monograph would not be published by a U.S.
Government organization. Based on my agreement with JSOU, I am free to
publish that material in other sources. The monograph will be done in
its entirety in book form at a later date.

Given the recent development of the inept and highly fictionalized
book, Men Who Stare at Goats, as a movie, it was determined it would
be useful to present a more accurate picture of the history
surrounding some of those projects. While the book tends to present
the material in a ridiculing and somewhat humorous manner, these
projects were both successful and developed with a lot of serious
thought behind them. Both Jim Channon and I are covered extensively in
the book, for which even the title is misleading. (While there was a
goat involved, it was physically hit by a martial arts instructor.)
This article will present material that provides background on two of
the seven projects. One lesser-known project, called Task Force Delta,
was closely related to Jim Channon’s legendary and boundary-breaking
work on The First Earth Battalion.** In a large part, it was we, the
members of Task Force Delta, who initially helped spread the about Jim
Channon’s creative endeavor.

Appendix B
Task Force Delta
'Creativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected.' -
William Plomer

The early 1980s military think tank called Task Force Delta was an
extremely creative organization dedicated to exploring concepts of
high performance. It is unlikely that any military unit has ever been
as cost-effective. General Don Starry actuated the concept when he was
the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) commander
(1977-1981). He was familiar with James Grier Miller’s Living Systems
theory, which was just emerging at that time. This theory posited that
all living systems, no matter what size or complexity, had three main
functions. Those were input, throughput, and output and they applied
from unicellular life, such as ameba, through large social
organizations including the U.S. Army.

General Starry believed that systems theory offered lessons that would
be beneficial to the Army’s development and the future challenges that
it would face. Initially Colonel Mike Malone, a respected leadership
and systems theory expert, directed the evolution of the organization.
With Malone’s retirement, the Task Force Delta think tank soon moved
to the Army War College at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. Then
Lieutenant Colonel Bill Witt provided leadership while waiting for the
permanent director to be transferred from the Army Chief of Staff
office. Lieutenant Colonel Frank Burns, an OE officer for General
Meyer, became the director and remained there until the unit was
abolished. All of those directors possessed inquisitive minds and a
healthy understanding of emerging systems theory.

The basis of the Task Force Delta think tank was an extremely small
core group, supported by interested people, all of whom worked in
other organizations. The entire staff consisted of one lieutenant
colonel, one civilian equivalent, and three administrative personnel.
Participation by other people was on a totally voluntary basis. Frank
Burns cast a wide net both inside the Army and in the civilian sector
looking for people with innovative ideas and concepts they could
contribute. Meetings were held quarterly, and most participants had to
secure their own funding. Even many civilians with no other
affiliation with the Army attended at their own expense. The meetings
were so mentally stimulating that members rarely missed a session.

Some sessions could best be described as data gathering and mental
cross-pollination. Presentations on a wide range of topics would be
arranged. For many of the civilians it was a unique opportunity to
provide ideas directly to an Army audience that was open to new ideas.
Some noted their frustration at previous attempts to beat on the
Army’s front door only to find that most offices were just too busy to
listen. In those times, fighting fires was the theme of the day.

More important than the formal sessions was the ability to network
with bright, innovative people. It was not uncommon for informal
gatherings to go on late into the night, sometimes at the expense of
nodding off the next day. That really did not matter. Also significant
were the interpersonal contacts that routinely assisted participants
in their regular assignments back at home station. Many deep bonds
were formed. In fact, a substantial number of these relationships
continue today, nearly 25 years later and long after the official
demise of the Task Force Delta think tank.

On occasion, tasks would be assigned to the members attending the Task
Force Delta think tank meetings. An example is when Lieutenant General
Max Thurman, then Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, asked the group
to explore all aspects of future Army personnel issues. The topics
ranged from recruiting and retention to professional education, health
and welfare, leadership principles, organizational structures and
assignments, and emerging human capabilities. In response, meetings
were conducted from Monday through Thursday noon. Initially plenary
sessions occurred and later small, self-defined groups that discussed
specific aspects of the personnel system. As with other meetings,
these sessions tended to run through meals and late into the evening.

At noon on Thursday the discussions stopped, and the real work began.
Each person decided what topic area they wanted to contribute to. A
chapter outline was provided, and the teams went to work. Being very
self-motivated, most people worked continuously throughout the night.
When General Thurman arrived at 10:00 a.m. on Friday, he received a
bound book containing the deliberations on all aspects of the
personnel system and many suggestions about how to deal with future
complex issues.

Two items are important to remember for this 1982 time: a) word
processing, as it is commonly known today, did not exist and b) the
think tank conference attendees were all volunteers. Nobody had a
laptop computer, shared networks, or memory sticks. The physical
requirements of producing a written document of that magnitude took
tremendous effort. Nobody was graded on their input, nor would their
efforts ever be reflected in personal efficiency reports. Some of the
participants were civilians, whose only motivation was the excitement
of being able to collaborate in a truly high performing organization
and the possibility that somebody might read their concepts and
recognize that it could be applied in the Army.

Obviously the book had not been edited, and chapter formats did not
all match; that would come later. The success was definitively
demonstrating the primary effort necessary to create such a complex
document in a short period of time. The Task Force Delta think tank
proved what systems theorists predicted about the possibilities that
emerge when high performing organizations are tasked and then given
permission to respond as they deem necessary.

The networking efforts went far beyond periodic meetings. The Task
Force Delta think tank led the way in obtaining and initiating
computer networks that were populated by regular people, not just
techno-wizards. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, only a few
researchers and innovative managers understood the potential power of
computer networks. Malone envisioned a small organization that could
be used to research the possibilities that emerging technology and
networking provided by the think tank. At this time, personal
computers were scarcely known. Yet many of the think tank members were
given one to take home and use. Most of the communication was done
during off-duty hours and transmitted at the rate of 600 baud, thus
simple messages could take several minutes to download. In an age
where 24 mega bits per second (Mbps) is attainable, communicating at
such slow speeds is almost inconceivable.

While the Internet concept in 1980 was embryonic, the ability to
network was considered extremely innovative. For the first time, the
Task Force Delta think tank members demonstrated how to staff papers
around the world in less than 24 hours. This ability was a dramatic
improvement over the telecommunications of the day, or sending
printouts via mail and taking weeks for coordination.

Following Malone’s initial guidance, the composition of the Task Force
Delta think tank remained closely balanced. He insisted that
organizational composition include what he termed both “bumblebees and
butterflies.” In other words, as a counterweight to some pretty far
out ideas, he wanted people with their feet planted firmly on the
ground and an excellent sense for the realistic needs of the Army. As
we were just coming out of the Vietnam War, virtually all of the Army
officers involved had combat experience, which served well as a
sobering reminder of the real world.

What the Task Force Delta think tank demonstrated was that high
performing networks could provide significant advantages over
traditional organizational communications. The financial costs were
very small compared to the return of efforts provided from the vast
volunteer network that addressed a myriad of tasks because they found
it interesting. People worked extensively, not because they had to,
but because they wanted to. Guidance was minimal and generally not
necessary. Participants with difficult problems could have near
instant access to a wide range of technical experts. As each scouted
the burgeoning intellectual terrain, they reported back, often self-
initiating new areas of inquiry. However, some traditional leaders
viewed such intellectual freedom as a threat. Shortly thereafter, the
Task Force Delta think tank was closed.

Appendix C
Origins of the First Earth Battalion
'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt
of in your philosophy.' -William Shakespeare, Hamlet

During the late 1970s and early 1980s one of the Army’s brightest and
most futuristic thinkers was Lieutenant Colonel Jim Channon. A
military intelligence officer by training, Channon served 10 years in
the Infantry, including an assignment as a platoon leader in Vietnam.
He also had spent some time in Public Affairs. As such, he was even
assigned the Army interface with Hollywood. During this period Channon
initiated a scouting mission to explore the various emerging human
potential movements that were burgeoning in California at the time.
This effort was purely volitional and conducted mostly on his free
time. In no way could his activities be construed as part of the
domestic surveillance activities that later led to extreme
difficulties for the military.6

Among his personal skills Channon was (and still is) a phenomenally
gifted artist. He had an extraordinary ability to listen to people
describe abstract concepts, then quickly transform those ideas into
easily understandable graphics. In fact, some of the basic symbols and
graphic designs used in the Army today originated with Channon over 25
years ago. His artistic ability and mental acuity were widely known by
senior officers who often coveted his capabilities. Before Thurman
briefed the U.S. Army senior leadership, he would always ask, “Where’s
Jimmy?” Although assigned outside of the Pentagon, even on the West
Coast, Channon would be summoned to quickly create the visual briefing
materials. His renderings included a vast number of the normal
overhead transparencies as well as his large-scale summaries called
“monster-grams,” continuous charts that would cover many feet and
could be taped to the walls of the briefing room. The state of the art
in projection technology had not advanced to a degree anywhere close
to what is available today.

Channon was also a key member of the Task Force Delta think tank and
worked closely with Frank Burns and others in that circle. Therefore,
he was one of the group who were seriously engaged in studying
cultural transformation in the post-Vietnam era. As repeated attempts
to convey transitional concepts in traditional briefing format failed,
Channon realized that an innovative framework was required to help
people fully understand the significance of these events. As with all
organizations, especially old institutions, change is mightily
resisted. The concept, he believed, had to be one that fostered free
thinking, or what later became known as “out of the box” thinking.

The name First Earth Battalion literally appeared in his head during
one of his many transcontinental flights. He terms this innovation as
a “mystical hit.” The concept was to create a large catalogue of
possibilities and display them graphically. At that time a book titled
The Whole Earth Catalogue was selling widely in New Age circles. It
contained pages and pages of new technologies, techniques, and
materials from which the reader could choose. Similarly, Channon
created the First Earth Battalion catalogue as a field manual, which
was designed to provide readers a permissive-thinking platform.
Channon now describes the Earth Battalion as protomythological—looking
at the future while rooted in a historic framework (the battalion).
The motto of the First Earth Battalion was dare to think the
unthinkable. These words were taken in a positive sense, not the
foreboding notion that meant massive death.

Channon’s drawings were done in black and white. Often they were
sketchy and suggestive with limited text, and the concepts
intentionally never were written out in detail. He wanted people to
fill in the missing material for themselves. The concept was to get
people to think, not to view the catalogue as a finished document, or
worse, a total blueprint for an actual Army organization.

Many of the concepts were way beyond the understanding of traditional
Army officers. For instance, exchanging soldiers and their families to
populate critical targets in opposing countries was never seriously
considered as a viable operational concept. Rather, by describing a
conscience corps, Channon was focusing on the consequences in human
terms should a nuclear exchange occur. In truth, many in the military
had become rather cavalier when discussing nuclear strike
capabilities. However impractical in reality the notion was, it did
cause readers to think about the implications of nuclear strikes in a
new and more personal light. He eventually bundled these ideas under
what he called “combat for collective conscience.” As he predicted,
global opinion today is shaped by the ethical judgments of the world
that watches combat unfold.

Well before the current outpouring of concerns about global warming,
Channon’s work had strong ecological preservation components. He
envisioned energy conservation, recycling technologies, and
reforestation as voluntary integrants of the military, not issues to
be forced on posts through draconian legislation. In many areas
Channon’s concepts were way ahead of their times; and he readily
acknowledges the need for an incubation period, often years and maybe
decades, before new ideas can be brought to fruition. As a further
example, in a 1979 version of the First Earth Battalion, he already
envisioned strategic micro forces—smaller units that could act
decisively without requiring the massing of larger forces. In a way,
he was describing what SOF has become but at a time when these
elements were not as highly regarded as they are today.

Balance was an essential element in much of Channon’s work. In some
areas the Army could easily accept his ideas. Physical fitness, albeit
with lower impact on joints, was reasonable. He was a strong advocate
of establishing and maintaining a healthy diet. New theories were
emerging about how the brain functions and exercises to enhance
cognitive capabilities. The use of previsualization before engaging in
complex tasks was encouraged. Also advocated were ancient, and proven
effective, meditation techniques.

Establishing a balance between mind and body seemed to resonate well
in the Army. However, Channon’s notions of integrating spiritual
concepts, especially ones that transcended national boundaries, were
of more concern to some casual observers. In fact, the First Earth
Battalion did suggest that individuals would operate in a global, not
national, context and focused on planetary peace making. The
acknowledgement of a tripartite balance of body, mind, and spirit is
less well accepted within military circles. The concept of the warrior-
monk has survived for millennia. However, in the U.S. Army, spiritual
matters were generally left to the chaplains and seen as matters of
personal choice. Channon, however, invoked the need for balance in all
three domains, and did so unapologetically.

At the time Channon wrote the First Earth Battalion, General “Shy”
Meyer was the U.S. Army Chief of Staff. As the Deputy Chief of Staff
for Operations, he had inherited an Army that was in need of repair.
Meyer’s efforts to rebuild the Army continued as he was selected over
many more senior generals as one of the youngest Army Chiefs of Staff.
Throughout his tenure Meyer strived to create an environment that
permitted exploration. Channon viewed the publication of the First
Earth Battalion, and its acceptance by many senior officers, as a
mechanism for more junior officers to see that they had permission to
think more freely.7

A limited number of original copies were made of the First Earth
Battalion. Initially these 300 copies were circulated to selected
members of Task Force Delta think tank. The draft annotation on the
title page expressed the notion that this document was a living
instrument. Demand for copies quickly grew as information about the
script spread via word of mouth. Those officers holding originals
began photocopying additional copies and handing them to friends.
Channon notes that this was an intentional means of distribution as it
created a mystique about the nature of the manuscript and gave it
enhanced value. Many people who had only a vague notion of the Task
Force Delta think tank wanted copies of the coveted First Earth
Battalion. People who never would have normally read the paper did so
because of the preternatural aura associated with owning a copy. The
underground distribution technique probably ensured wider readership
than it would have obtained had it been formally printed and
officially sent out. The effectiveness of this scheme has been noted.
Over the decades, photocopied versions of the original manuscript
could be found with officers who were interested in future concepts.
With the military today, a sub rosa element that circulates this
document still exists.

Soon this somewhat mysterious concept was to escape beyond the bonds
of the Army. Within a short time civilian media were asking Channon
for information about the First Earth Battalion. In February 1982, a
popular publication of the day, Omni Magazine, carried an article by
that title. That was quickly followed by a Dateline segment on NBC
that featured Lieutenant Colonel Channon discussing the inner workings
of the notional organization. Despite prior approval of the Public
Affairs Office at Fort Lewis, Washington, many senior officers in the
“Big Army” were not happy seeing a lieutenant colonel pushing the
conceptual envelope on national television.

Under-appreciated by a number of traditional-minded generals, Channon
retired from the Army in September 1982. He retained the copyright for
First Earth Battalion, and in recent years he has slightly updated the
original publication by adding a colored cover. It is currently
available on the Internet. In 2005 more than 10,000 copies were
downloaded for free; printed copies are sold to those interested in
that format. As testament to the efficacy of the notional concepts
Channon brought to the Army, he successfully transitioned those same
skills to the civilian sector. There, he has assisted a dozen of the
world’s largest 100 companies (and many others) to envision their
futures. He provides multidimensional graphics and storytelling magic
that allow their employees to more fully comprehend, and be charged,
by the company’s objectives.

In a recent interview, Channon noted many of the key aspects that led
to the development of First Earth Battalion. At that time the Army
depended heavily on formal written documents to convey structural
information. Various field manuals and other official publications
provided rather sterile, highly organized transfer mechanisms for
technical information. Eschewed by the military, Channon opined, was
transmission of the cultural information that engendered the soul of
the organization. Like today, the late 1970s was a period of cultural
transformation as the Army struggled to recover from the distasteful
experience of Vietnam. To be successful, the change must be deeper
than doctrine documents. Channon’s objective was to revitalize the
Army he loved at a most visceral level.

Channon studied various religious rites of passage. Throughout history
these rituals have evoked primal emotions, a very scary notion, even
counterintuitive, for many staid military officers. He noted also the
importance of symbology and ceremonies. True loyalty was not something
obtained by a written or sworn oath. Rather deep and abiding loyalty
comes from shared common experience, especially when endured in
hardship. To communicate culture means establishing programs that
produced many such shared experiences and often incorporated
historical events of great importance to the organization. He noted
that cultural transference through ceremonies has tended to be
squeezed out by the exigencies of day-to-day business. The importance
of this medium is still not fully understood.

Beyond the printed document, Channon embodied the essence of cultural
transformation. He advocated and demonstrated the ability to
simultaneously communicate complex, value-laden information on
multiple channels simultaneously. Employing visual and auditory
effects as well as orchestrated emotional stimuli, Channon’s
techniques had the ability to initiate concordance in multisensory
modes so that soldiers would integrate the Army’s values at a deep-
seated, core level.

End Notes:
* Among the SOF elements are U.S. Army Rangers, U.S. Army Special
Forces, U.S. Navy SEALS and Special Boat units, U.S. Air Force Air
Commandos, and other specialized units.
** Note that Task Force Delta was an Innovate think tank that had no
relationship with any other military organization using Delta In Its
title.

{John Alexander currently lives In Las Vegas and, though retired, Is
still active with several governmental and nongovernmental agencies.}

CONTACT
John Alexander
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Alexander
email : nonlethal2 [at] aol [dot] com

http://www.scientificexploration.org/mission.html
http://www.irva.org/about/index.html
http://www.coasttocoastam.com/shows/2005/09
http://www.coasttocoastam.com/guest/alexander-col-john/5669
http://www.sunshine-project.org/incapacitants/azadehdel.html
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2007/05/weird_v_weirder/
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2007/06/dinner-with/

BIO
http://web.archive.org/web/20071223210937/http://www.nidsci.org/bios/alexander.php

"Dr. John Alexander has been a leading advocate for the development of
non-lethal weapons since he created renewed interest in the field
starting in 1989. An original thinker, he has developed other unique
concepts for conflict that must remain undisclosed at this time. He
entered the US Army as a private in 1956 and rose through the ranks to
sergeant first class, attended OCS, and was a colonel of Infantry in
1988 when he retired. During his varied career, he held many key
positions in special operations, intelligence, and research and
development. From 1966 through early 1969 he commanded Special Forces
A-Teams in Vietnam and Thailand. His last military assignment was as
Director, Advanced Systems Concepts Office, US Army Laboratory
Command. After retiring from the Army, Dr. Alexander joined Los Alamos
National Laboratory where he was instrumental in developing the
concept of Non-Lethal Defense. As a program manager, he conducted non-
lethal warfare briefings at the highest levels of government including
the White House Staff, National Security Council, Members of Congress,
Director of Central Intelligence, and senior Defense officials. He
also met with heads of industry, and presented at academic
institutions, including Columbia, Harvard and MIT.

Dr. Alexander organized and chaired the first five major conferences
on non-lethal warfare and served as a US delegate to four NATO studies
on the topic. As a member of the Council on Foreign Relations non-
lethal warfare study, he was instrumental in influencing the report
that is credited with causing the Department of Defense to create a
formal Non-Lethal Weapons Policy in July 1996. For several years, he
has been a distinguished guest lecturer at the US Air Force Air
University and participated in key war games when non-lethal weapons
were first being considered. Dr. Alexander wrote the seminal articles
on current non-lethal warfare."

DIM MAK
http://www.firstearthbattalion.org/?q=node/89
Staring at Goats: The Rest of the Story
BY John B. Alexander / 10.02.2009

There has been substantial derision associated with the book, The Men
Who Stare at Goats, and the movie of the same name. However,
information has recently come to light that suggests that the basic
concept that led to the ignoble title was derived from a painful
lesson in the U.S. Army Special Forces history. Specifically, it stems
from the capture, and lengthy captivity, of then-Lieutenant James
“Nick” Rowe in South Vietnam. For those who may not be familiar with
him, Rowe is still considered a hero in Special Forces. Unfortunately,
despite his legendary actions as a prisoner of war (POW) in Vietnam,
he was assassinated by communist insurgents in Quezon City, in the
Philippines on 21 April 1989. Almost presciently, now-Colonel Rowe had
reported that he was second or third on the terrorist’s target list.

The basics of his capture and imprisonment are known. On 29 October
1963, LT Rowe, along with Captain Rocky Versace and team medic,
Sergeant First Class Dan Pitzer, was taken as a POW near the village
of Le Coeur in An Xuyen Province while advising a Civilian Irregular
Defense Group (CIDG) unit. The team members were separated and later,
in 1965, Rocky Versace was executed by the Viet Cong. He was last
heard singing God Bless America at the top of his voice. It was based
on reports of his continued resistance, that Versace was awarded the
Congressional Medal of Honor in 2002.

Then, in December 1968, 62 months after falling into the hands of the
Viet Cong, Rowe was rescued during an American air cavalry raid in the
U-Minh Forest also known as the “forest of darkness.” The years in
captivity were extremely harsh for Rowe. He repeatedly attempted to
escape and was frequently subjected to torture and physical
deprivation. Like Versace, he was also threatened with execution on
several occasions. As the VC had grown tired of his continued
resistance, Rowe was finally scheduled for execution at the end of
December, just a few days after his fortuitous rescue. Even that event
proved to be a close call as Rowe was nearly shot by the helicopter
crews. Though clad in black pajamas, he was recognized as an American
by his beard and scooped up.

Throughout his years in detention Rowe maintained a constant vigil and
mental awareness of his surroundings. Though physically weakened, he
tried many methods to gain an upper hand. For a long time he convinced
the Viet Cong that he was an engineer who happened to be the war zone.
Rowe was concealing the fact that he was a Special Forces intelligence
officer and had access to information about camps across the Mekong
Delta. It was only after some American peace-advocates went to North
Vietnam and provided a complete list of names and units that his
captors learned his true identity and that they had been fooled. Rowe
paid a high price for that revelation, but he had successfully evaded
being forced to provide useful information to the enemy. By the time
the Viet Cong understood his importance, the information he had was
too dated to be actionable.

After his recovery from serious diseases and extensive injuries, Rowe
left the Army. Then, in 1981 he was recalled to active duty and went
to Ft. Bragg where he became the director the Survival Evasion
Resistance and Escape (SERE) course.* The intent of that course was to
prepare members of special operations forces, and other personnel
conducting high risk missions, to be better prepared for the
eventuality of being cut off from friendly forces or worse yet,
captured. Obviously, it was Colonel Rowe’s personal experience in
captivity that caused the senior leadership of the U.S. Army Special
Forces to place him in that position of high responsibility.

Enter the goats. As mentioned, during his captivity Rowe tried a wide
variety of techniques to assist in escape. Being the director of SERE,
he had considerable latitude in exploration of unique measures that
might be helpful for the students. Drawing on his background Rowe was
determined to explore all options of techniques that might prove
useful. To that end, he directed a senior NCO assigned to the school
to track down information about dim mak, a relatively obscure martial
arts skill known in English as the death touch. Dim mak defies
conventional physiology. It is not a hard blow to a vital organ.
Rather, it involves a relatively light strike that is designed to
interrupt the flow of chi (or ki in the Japanese tradition) in such a
manner that death follows several hours later. According to Chinese
medicine philosophy, this life force, or chi, flows along meridians
throughout the body and moderates all human functioning. This concept
of chi is the basis for the Eastern medical practice of acupuncture,
and while easily observable it is not commonly accepted by Western
medicine practitioners.

Rowe was painfully aware of the physical degradation that follows
captivity. He reasoned that almost all traditional martial arts
techniques require too much physical exertion for most prisoners to
execute effectively. His interests therefore, were in locating and
pursuing techniques that could be employed by POWs while requiring
minimum output of physical energy. (Are we still laughing?)

The NCO went to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and worked
with members of the combative skills course. There he was told about a
civilian instructor by the name of Guy Savelli who professed some of
these very advanced skills.

Savelli was contacted, his capabilities verified, and then he was
brought to Ft. Bragg where he taught several students. As I told Jon
Ronson when the book first came out, “He hit the goat.” At that time I
thought it was Savelli who had executed the blow to the goat in
question. In fact, it was this same senior NCO who had been trained by
Savelli who hit the goat leading directly to its death several hours
after that. It was the moderate physical energy expended combined with
the delay in time of death that was the sought after outcome. It
worked.

As I recorded in my first book, The Warrior’s Edge, I have seen the
photos taken of the necropsy that show most remarkable physical damage
to the goat. Specifically, there was a path of energy, not unlike what
a bullet would produce while transiting a body, which ran across the
chest cavity. The difference was that there was no wound of entrance
or wound of exit. The NCO has recently confirmed those observations as
well. That experiment may be the first tangible, albeit elusive,
evidence that dim mak can produce physical results (death). Like this
NCO, I trained with Savelli, but for a shorter period of time. That
experience left little doubt that Savelli had mastered some very
advanced martial arts skills and could teach them to others.

Rowe was not prepared to limit his inquiry to the physical impact of
dim mak. Based on his extensive experience with his Viet Cong captors,
he believed that they could be mentally influenced. The first
objectives were relatively simple. Could a guard be made to look in a
certain direction? Could the prisoner cause the guard to walk in a
specified direction, or pause for a longer period of time? What were
the limits of influence that could be applied by a prisoner?

While the answers to these questions remain obscured, there is some
literature, mostly anecdotal, that supports the notion that remote
influence is a distinct possibility. During my training in the
Washington area, Savelli described to us a technique he called the
mind stops. In it, he claimed that he could confront an adversary, and
then he would maneuver himself behind that person without them being
aware of his movement. This capability is not unique and has been
reported by other researchers. One fairly well documented case is that
of Wolf Messing, a German Jew who fled to the USSR at the beginning
stages of World War II. His unusual mental skills attracted the
attention of Stalin who arranged for a series of tests. During one
dramatic demonstration he was able to pass by attentive guards and
enter Stalin’s well-protected house. When questioned, the guards
claimed that they had witnessed Lavrenti Beria, dreaded head of the
NKVD, enter the premises, not Messing.

Another, more extreme, form of remote mental influence was reported by
KGB defector, Major Nikolai Kokolov. Among other topics Kokolov
reported on the extent of psychic research being conducted during the
Cold War. In debriefings, he described the Soviet use of mental
influencing to actually fracture the spinal columns of test subjects.
Current readers may not be aware that lethal experimentation on humans
was conducted in several subject areas. By the time he took over
leadership of SERE, COL Rowe had access to that intelligence
information as well as his personal experience with similar techniques
to draw upon.

It is worth noting that beyond the anecdotes, there is scientific
research has been conducted in the area of remote influencing. In its
most basic form, prayer is a method of invoking remote intervention in
one’s life, and there are many studies demonstrating the success of
those techniques. Those are beyond the scope of this piece, but worth
exploring to interested readers.

In addition to esoteric mental influence techniques, the SERE
instructors explored more mundane and pragmatic approaches as well. Of
particular interest were martial arts techniques in which the initial
movements appeared normal and non-threatening. As an example, simply
brushing one’s hair aside in a seemingly harmless manner may allow the
prisoner to move their hand within a few inches of a guard’s eyes.
Under other conditions, allowing a prisoner’s hand close to vital
organs would be perceived as a potential attack, and would likely
cause a severe response by the guard.

Camouflaging intent of aggression is not new. In fact, there is an
entire martial arts form that was founded on the concept of
masquerading offensive movements, thus allowing practice to occur
uninhibited. Capoeira is a Brazilian fighting art form that was
developed by the African slaves as they prepared for conflict with
their owners. The graceful and intricate movements were portrayed as a
harmless folk dance. In reality, the moves were designed to enhance
the fighting skills of the practitioners. The history dates back at
least two centuries, and Capoeira can be observed in many Brazilian
cities today.

As renowned commentator Paul Harvey used to proclaim, “And know you
know the rest of the story.” Therefore, taken in context, staring at
goats, or hitting them, makes more sense than what one might initially
believe. Instead of being overly concerned about a foreigner’s attempt
at humor via gross distortion of truth, maybe we should embrace this
opportunity to explain the perfectly logical origins that form the
basis of those experiments. That includes acknowledging visionary
contributions of one of our heroes and fallen comrade, Colonel Nick
Rowe!

• The site, located at Camp Mackall, NC, is now officially the Colonel
James “Nick” Rowe SERE Training Center
• Note: SFC Pitzer was released by the Viet Cong in 1967. This action
was in response to American protestor visits. Pitzer was a medic, and
the other two POWs released were black soldiers as the VC played the
race card.
• Like many SOF personnel, the NCO involved with the SERE training
described wishes to remain anonymous. While retired from the U.S.
Army, he continues to work in a sensitive position serving the
interests of his country.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1baz3TkPw68
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0--cBilM5bU

JIM CHANNON
http://www.coasttocoastam.com/guest/channon-jim/41737
http://www.coasttocoastam.com/show/2009/10/25
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/nov/02/men-who-stare-at-goats1
My First Earth Battalion comes to life in The Men Who Stare at Goats
BY Jim Channon / 2 November 2009

Five years ago, Jon Ronson showed up on my doorstep to interview me
for a TV series, Crazy Rulers of the World. I watched with interest as
he digested all the edgy ideas about an army trying to reinvent itself
for the 21st century into his programme. Jon's job was to show the
paradox between how visionaries think and how politicians get it
wrong. He then expanded the show into a book, The Men Who Stare at
Goats, partly based on my First Earth Battalion manual.

The Battalion "mythology" I developed was a creative thinking tool
designed to encourage the young leaders in the army to think of new
ways, with the aim of changing the nature of war and improving the
chances of survival for all involved. It was intended to stretch the
imagination. The film is a comedy, because the screenwriter Peter
Straughan saw great potential in the humorous contrast between the
soldier archetype and some of the more "hippy" ideas mentioned.

So, why did four of the brightest actors in Hollywood team up to make
a movie about a small, activist band of army officers? Was it their
fascination with the audacity and spirit of these men, who wanted to
make a difference in the world? Could it have been George Clooney,
known for his politically provocative films, who felt he just had to
tell the world the unbelievable tale about a very creative period in
the US army's history?

People ask if I'm upset about myself or other members of the First
Earth Battalion being portrayed as fools. I guess it's the ultimate
"roast". What I'm mostly pleased about is that the First Earth
Battalion's shelf life has been extended far into the future, and that
the real story now has a chance of getting out.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/nov/03/men-who-stare-at-goats-jim-channon
Strategic shamanism and the new world order
BY Jim Channon / 3 November 2009

I find it very interesting to remind people that 30 years have passed
since I wrote the Earth Battalion field manual. I've always wanted the
story to be told by Hollywood – it's one of great hope and promise, a
mythology meant to start a social movement and to inspire individuals,
both military and civilian. The goal is to evolve beyond conflict to a
new level of peace-making where we can collectively address the social
and environmental challenges that create global conflicts in the first
place. So I have been doing lots of other strategic shamanic work
since 1978.

My work shifted to corporations: I have taken the same approach to
redirecting Fortune 500 companies and other large institutions toward
their higher purposes; I leave them with visionary illustrations to
guide the followup. I came to London and reminded Shell that they were
really a liquid transportation company and they could carry fresh
water about with virtually the same technology they use for oil.
Paradigm shift!

But old-world thinking persists on the battlefield. What really gets
my goat is that the "shock and awe" that happened in Baghdad is now
part of the reason it's taking so long for trust to be restored in
Iraq and Afghanistan. That's hard on the frontline soldiers.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/nov/04/1
The paranormal soldier demystified
BY Jim Channon / 4 November 2009

The term "psychic spy" features in The Men Who Stare at Goats. That's
because the paranormal is critical to New Earth Army missions.
Firstly, an extended range of perception using all senses is the key
to not stepping into a killing zone. Modern warfare may seem less
violent than traditional scenes of men charging up hills in the face
of oncoming fire. But paradoxically, it can be worse – worse because
civilians are also often present in the battle area. One miscue and an
avalanche of bullets or shrapnel can be triggered in which everyone in
range becomes the victim of the chaos. Not entering such situations is
the key to victory.

Remember, the real victims of war are the young soldiers who must live
a lifetime of regret and trauma because they have inadvertently killed
a woman or child in the heat of a firefight. We must accept that the
trauma victims of modern warfare are casualties for the rest of their
lives. Not moving into danger zones is simply the most skillful thing
any unit can do in many situations.

Another important idea about the paranormal is that it is currently
one of the most overlooked skillsets in modern life. We must awaken to
the possibility that the most important single advance the human race
can make to enter this century where we engage the galaxy and all of
its mysteries will require we become adept at moving through
dimensions of many kinds. We must tend to our interdimensional world.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/nov/05/1
The armies of the world should unite to save Earth
BY Jim Channon / 5 November 2009

It is often overlooked, but the Marshall Plan executed after the
second world war may have been the largest humanitarian exercise in
the history of the planet. The allied armies decided to put Europe
back together. Military forces had, and have, the tools and proper
organisation to help reconstruct the very things they have destroyed.
Imagine if all services were asked to recover the living biosphere of
our planet which we know is compromised. The Earth is the only stage
for life that we have.

After years of thinking I have conceived of important missions matched
to a corresponding capability for each branch of service. The army
would properly reforest and clean the fresh water sources. The navy
would control over-fishing and recycle the ocean waste. The marines
would tend the shorelines and restore the coral reefs and wetland
areas. Then the air forces would sense the environment from above and
detect polluters while also having the instant mass transport of
rescue villages for all the displaced refugees likely to surface
during climate change.

The many national guard units would reconstruct the countryside with
the assistance of the youth to bring nature back to her fullness for a
more decentralised and sustainable world. The corporations would all
shift 30 degrees to the green. Global villages and the internet will
become our worldwide exchange system, and former power centres will
just be support services. The world is already one culture. Countries
are obsolete and have been for 30 years.

JON RONSON ON COAST TO COAST
http://www.coasttocoastam.com/show/2005/09/06
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylV6fQVgLiQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBkYxHWoMrw

GUY SAVELLI
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Savelli
http://www.worldkungfu.com/Master.html
Precepts For More Effective Training: "To have paranormal results, one
must live a paranormal life."

BERT STUBBLEBINE ON REMOTE VIEWING
http://www.remoteviewing.com/remote-viewing-history/remote-viewing-research-lecture.html
http://www.remoteviewing.com/about-psitech/about-technical-remote-viewing.html
http://www.biomindsuperpowers.com/Pages/Superpowers.html
http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?page_id=198
http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?page_id=299
http://www.trvuniversity.com/remote-viewing-links.html
http://mergenthalerlinotype.wordpress.com/

AREAS OF NATIONAL RESEARCH
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2007/07/new-correlation/
http://foia.abovetopsecret.com/ultimate_UFO/UFO_GOVT/of_Interest/paranormal_briefing.pdf

ULTIMATE WARRIOR TRAINING
http://wisdomatwork.com/WisdomAtWork/JEDIWARRIOR.html
Jedi Warrior Training for the U.S. Army Special Forces Green Berets
BY Dr. Joel & Michelle Levey, Program Co-designers and Directors of
Advanced Biocybernaut Training

Our Trojan Warrior Program – aka – Jedi Warrior, or the Ultimate
Warrior Training Program for the U.S. Army Special Forces – is to date
the most intensive mental training and transformation program to be
offered in the military in modern times. The program review team at
West Point Military Academy described Jedi Warrior as, “The most
exquisite orchestration of human technology that we have ever seen.”
Two of our advisors, George Leonard and Michael Murphy, founders of
Esalen and the Human Potential Movement, described the program as “the
most intensive leadership and human development program to be offered
in modern times."

The full story on this program has yet to be fully told and we are the
only members of the original design team who were also involved with
the program’s full delivery. The senior officer whose inspired
leadership brought this program into being, has asked us to consider
writing the definitive full story of this historic program. Some day
we hope to fulfill his request. We are frequently invited to offer
briefings on this program for leaders around the globe who are
interested in the profound implications of applying lessons learned to
equipping cadres of leaders in other disciplines with the wisdom,
resiliency and capacity to accomplish their complex missions. This
work clearly has increasing relevance in preparing leaders and
communities to resiliently meet the challenges, and embrace the
opportunities, of these times.

Special Forces of the Mind
In 1982 we were approached by the US. Army to design and direct the
"Ultimate Warrior Training Program", AKA "Jedi Warrior,” and “The
Ultimate Warrior,” for two A Teams of Special Forces, Green Berets.
This six month-long, full-time program came about through the efforts
of a number of concerned and high-ranking officers who were inspired
by the vision of the First Earth Battalion, compelled by the psi/
ESPinage research taking place in China and behind the Iron Curtain,
and by increasing interest in advanced mental development
possibilities. These leaders also lived with the grief of knowing how
much unnecessary suffering took place during and following the war in
South East Asia, and wanted to find ways to reduce the likelihood of
that happening in the future. (Note: It was estimated at that time
that more than twice as many men and women committed suicide after
returning from SE Asia than died in combat... envision three Vietnam
Memorials...)

These visionary and compassionate leaders understood that because
their people were unprepared to stop the war inside themselves, under
pressure the seeds of violence within them manifested as the outer
violence that destroyed many innocent people, including their families
and themselves. We were told that more than twice as many people
committed suicide after returning home than died in combat, and that
they lived with the grief of that knowledge on a daily basis. These
courageous military leaders approached us with a hope and confidence
that we would be able to help design a state of the art, advanced
leadership and human development program for their elite Special
Forces soldiers.

The stakes were very high. We* were asked to work with two highly
strategic elite teams, whose mission had the potential to either
trigger or avert World War III, under the old Cold War scenario. Our
mission was to design and deliver a full-time intensive and holistic
program to equip these two A Teams of Special Forces Troops with the
personal, team, and mission capabilities necessary to recognize and
reduce the conflict/war within themselves so they could perform at
peak levels in the midst of extreme danger and distress - such as
working behind enemy lines for prolonged periods of time.

Prior to submitting our proposal, we went through considerable soul
searching. We consulted many of our mentors and advisors, and
contemplated the potential implications, both positive and negative of
participating in designing and implementing such a program. During
this same period, Trident submarine was coming into Puget Sound for
the first time. As we pondered this RFP from the Army we realized that
if we had six months to train the crew of a nuclear submarine that we
would feel that the world was a safer place. It became clear that the
benefits to the men and to the globe were potentially extreme. We
assembled our team, created and submitted our proposal for a six-month
full time training program. We received an almost immediate reply from
leaders at West Point Military Academy who evaluated our proposal and
stated that our proposal represented "the most exquisite orchestration
of human technology we had ever seen!" Their response was heartening.

In preparation for the program we engaged dozens of our mentors to ask
for their council and advice. Our primary question for them was: “If
you had the opportunity to work intensively for six months with men
who were in a position to start or stop the next world war, what would
you do and what would be most essential to teach them?" Our advisors
and collaborators ranged from Vietnam veterans and respected military
leaders, to leading martial artists, noted researchers like Elmer
Green from the Menninger Foundation, Benedictine monk Brother David
Steindl-Rast, and Nobel Peace Laureate, His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
By the time the program began, we had woven the best of our own
experience with the insights of many others to deliver what Michael
Murphy, founder of the Esalen Institute, and Esquire editor George
Leonard, once called, "the most intensive leadership and human
development program to be offered in modern times."

For this pioneering project we designed an extensive lab of state-of-
the art technology to teach the men mastery of their minds and
bodies. It was vital that our soldiers learned skills for recognizing
and transforming their inner demons into inner allies. Our advanced
Biocybernaut training combined technologies of biofeedback,
neurofeedback, cyberphysiology, and contemplative inner methods of
mastery drawn from the vast array of contemplative science traditions.
In our lab the soldiers developed the skill and confidence necessary
to sense and control many previously unconscious physiological
functions: they learned to recognize and control muscle tension, to
control blood circulation in order to keep their hands warm in cold
environments, manage the intensity and physiology of their responses
to stress. For many visiting dignitaries to the base, the Jedi
Biocybernaut Lab became a first stop on the tour of the base, where
they learned that it was actually possible to recognize and control
the level of their blood pressure. The lab included the world's first
multiple-synchrony brainwave feedback system, which we helped to
design, in order to teach up to sixteen people at a time to
"synchronize" their brain waves in order to move toward a team
resonance and flow state of deep attunement to each other’s inner
state of being.

Our goal with all of this modern and ancient technology was to build
the soldiers' skills and confidence that they could indeed recognize,
understand, and influence/control their mental, emotional, and
physiological experience, and that they could strengthen the mindful
clarity they'd need to choose the wisest path of action even in the
midst of the “VUCA” conditions of the battlefield. (Note: VUCA is a
military term referring to operations in Volatile, Uncertain, Chaotic,
and Ambiguous conditions. Our training helped equip our men with the
skills necessary to bring a deeper Vision, Understanding, Clarity, and
Agility forward to meet the challenges of their VUCA mission
environments.)

For men who were outwardly fearless and willing to give their lives
for their country, the most terrifying part of our training was a
month-long silent meditation retreat that was called, "the
encampment.” This was a time of intensive mental training and martial
arts training where they learned skills for looking deeply into their
own minds and bodies in order to recognize, befriend and transform
their "inner enemies", to resolve inner conflicts and tap inner
strengths that could influence their outer effectiveness. They
deepened their insight into how these internal enemies could
ultimately cost them their lives if they were deployed on their
mission. Our teams discovered and learned how to tap reservoirs of
inner strength they never dreamed existed. Following this month of
intensive mindfulness and meditation training the men were parachuted
at night into a four-day ordeal called "the gut check" - a field
simulation in very rugged terrain with a series of tests and check-
points that needed to be passed on a strict timeline or the men would
not have food or water for the next leg of the test. Our two teams
were the first in history to muster both the individual and team
strengths necessary to successfully complete this extremely arduous
mission simulation.

The “integral nature” of the Jedi Warrior training design provided an
exquisite blend of methods for developing the wholeness and extra-
ordinary capabilities of our soldiers. Ours was also the first program
for the Special Forces to openly address issues regarding death, dying
and grieving. We introduced highly sophisticated methods of physical
and team training that were a step beyond the somewhat archaic
practices that were the norm in their physical training. Our men
learned to make wiser choices in diet to promote higher levels of
performance. Jedi Warrior training enabled our soldiers to develop
extraordinary skills for self-mastery, self-regulation, and
resilience. They learned skills for high-performance sleep, deep
relaxation, energy healing, and how to find an inner state of calm
intensity in which they could focus their minds for self -healing or
to maintain states of clear alertness for long periods of time. They
trained intensively in the martial art of Aikido, a martial art form
that emphasizes cultivating a greater sensitivity to energy flow and
force while creatively transforming the energy of inner and outer
conflict. We applied these learnings to enhancing the mission skills
and technical capabilities essential to their success, such as working
with code, emergency medical work, and other vital skills necessary
for their work. We also worked closely with the soldiers' families and
significant others to help integrate these insights and learnings into
their home life and relationships.

In addition to the outcomes summarized below, some of the most notable
impacts of our work were evident in an enhanced quality of
communication and relationship with their families. Many wives and
children of the men thanked us because their spouse/father came home
and talked to them and openly shared his feelings and fears. Some
commented that their husband/father seemed more in control of his
emotions and was able to talk through difficulties without getting
physically abusive. One team was selected as the most outstanding team
in the NATO Games that year. Many of these men went on to train others
in these inner arts, while others were recruited by Delta Force and
other special units in the Service. Others taught at the War College
or were decorated for their special roles in operations in Somalia,
the Gulf War, and Eastern Europe. Over the years we have heard from
many of the men that what they learned has saved their lives, their
missions, their teams, and their families from many difficult
situations. Reports over time indicate that the program had a profound
effect on the lives of those who participated in it, opening a vast
horizon of new possibilities for personal and professional
development. The benefits of this investment in these people’s lives
continue to this day.

Organizational Warrior Training: Special Forces at Work
The methods distilled through our work with the Jedi Warrior project
have inspired and informed the design of hundreds of programs we have
subsequently offered to organizations around the globe. Jedi Warrior
provided an organizational learning laboratory that has great
relevance for leaders in complex, high-stakes systems who seek wisdom,
resilience, mindful presence, collective creative intelligence, fierce
compassion, and courage. With practice, the Jedi Warrior core
disciplines allow insight and intuition to deepen, courage and
confidence to grow, health and performance to improve, and innovation
to be guided by a wisdom congruent with the pressing needs of the
times.

When our colleagues in other organizations hear about the work we did
with the Army Special Forces, they often respond by saying, "We need
a Jedi Warrior or ‘ultimate warrior’ training program for the people
in our organization! We work on an organizational battlefield with
every growing levels of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and
ambiguity and need to develop greater skills to increase our personal
and collective resilience, wisdom, creativity, and strength.” In
response to these requests we have designed and delivered a variety of
programs incorporating methods from the Jedi Warrior program for over
100 corporate clients around the globe with inspiring and enduring
results.

*The original design for this program was created by us (Joel &
Michelle Levey) and Bud Cook, and then at a later stage we brought in
Richard Strozzi Heckler (aikido teacher), and Jack Cirie (team leader)
as members of our core delivery team. It was inspired by the vision
of Lt. Col. Jim Channon’s inspired work with the First Earth
Battalion. A host of remarkable advisers and visiting trainers also
participated in this program, and each brought great wisdom,
expertise, and inspiration to this historic training.

CONTACT
Joel & Michelle Levey
http://wisdomatwork.com/WisdomAtWork/LeveyBio.html
email : levey [at] wisdomatwork [dot] com

PTSD
http://web.archive.org/web/20080401145018/http://www07.grants.gov/search/search.do;jsessionid=HvsdqLBh821wfTW1xnX90yhWpL01S5wtpJjDRBLQvGLynb12dMGY!767256891
http://www.usamraa.army.mil/pages/Baa_Paa/DCoE_PH_TBI_Program_Announcement.pdf

The Defense Center of Excellence (DCoE) for Psychological Health (PH)
and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is soliciting proposals for studies
on Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) in service members
dealing with sustainment and treatment for psychological health and
promoting healing for traumatic brain injuries in service-members. The
high prevalence of psychoneurological and other brain injuries
associated with the current OEF/OIF war effort make it especially
important to understand current use of CAM therapies by service-
members, and to explore approaches that may be particularly effective
in both protecting and treating the injured service-member. The DoD is
dedicated to supporting evidence-based approaches to medical treatment
and wants to support the use of alternative therapies if they are
proven efficacious. Specific aims of this call for proposals focus on
a holistic approach for trauma spectrum disorders, including patients
with TBI and/or post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression,
anxiety, and/or substance dependence/abuse. With the focus on a
holistic approach for trauma spectrum disorders, including patients
with TBI and/or post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression,
anxiety, and/or substance dependence/abuse, the following delineate
several of the areas of interest: 1. Conducting rigorous clinical
studies to determine the efficacy of alternative therapies for
treating psychological health injuries using techniques such as music,
animal-facilitated therapy, art, dance/movement, massage therapy, EMDR
program evaluation, virtual reality, acupuncture, spiritual ministry,
transcendental meditation, yoga and other novel approaches. 2.
Identification of patterns of use of CAM therapies to build resilience
in military populations, 3. Identification of factors and perceptions
associated with use of alternative and complementary therapies by
service-members, 4. Studies of mechanisms and efficacy of biologically-
based treatments, botanicals, and nutritional supplements for
enhancing cognitive function and mood in patients with trauma spectrum
disorders, including TBI and/or PTSD, depression, anxiety, and/or
substance dependence/abuse, 5. Studies that examine gender-specific
implications and issues related to the use of CAM therapies, 6.
Biological mechanisms and efficacy underlying acupuncture for trauma
spectrum disorders, including TBI and/or PTSD, depression, anxiety,
and/or substance dependence/abuse, including neuroimaging studies, and
7. Identification of the use and efficacy of therapies using
bioenergies such as Qi gong, Reiki, distant healing, and acupuncture,
especially new biophysical approaches involving
instrumentation.Proposals must provide a clear justification and
military relevance for the choice of therapies selected for study.
Collaboration with DoD medical researchers at the Defense and Veterans
Brain Injury Center (DVBIC), clinical research laboratories at
military medical centers and VA centers are encouraged and will be
considered in the selection of awards. Studies should be designed to
test pragmatic and theoretical components at once; thus, they need to
include sham control to separate specific from non-specific effects.
Rationale should include why the intervention should have effects
across trauma spectrum and evaluate putative mechanisms. Use of
primary care and community sites should be accessed and networked into
participate. Two types of proposals will be considered. Individual
research proposals containing preliminary data are expected to average
$200,000 per year for up to four years of support; no proposal award
will exceed $1M in total funding (including indirect costs). Seedling
grants proposing innovative but testable hypotheses without
preliminary data, will be considered for $300,000 in total funding
(including indirect costs), with research to be completed within 18
months. A total of approximately $4,000,000 is available for the
portfolio of projects to be funded.

YOGA, ANIMAL THERAPY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2008-10-07-holistic_N.htm
Pentagon researches alternative treatments
BY Gregg Zoroya / 10.7.2008

The Pentagon is seeking new ways to treat troops suffering from combat
stress or brain damage by researching such alternative methods as
acupuncture, meditation, yoga and the use of animals as therapy,
military officials said. "This new theme is a big departure for our
cautious culture," Dr. S. Ward Casscells, the Pentagon's assistant
secretary for health affairs, told USA TODAY. Casscells said he pushed
hard for the new research, because "we are struggling with" post-
traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) "as we are with suicide and we are
increasingly willing to take a hard look at even soft therapies." So
far this year, the Pentagon is spending $5 million to study the
therapies. In the previous two years, the Pentagon had not spent any
money on similar research, records show. About 300,000 Iraq and
Afghanistan war veterans suffer from PTSD or major depression, and
about 320,000 may have experienced at least a mild concussion or brain
injury in combat, according to a RAND Corp. study released this year.

The Army reported a record 115 suicides last year, and suicides this
year are at a rate that may exceed that, said Col. Eddie Stephens, the
Army's deputy director for human resources policy. The Department of
Veterans Affairs reported last month that suicides among Iraq- and
Afghanistan-era veterans from all services reached a record high of
113 in 2006, the latest year for which there were figures. Some
military hospitals and installations already use alternative
therapies, such as acupuncture as stress relievers for patients. The
research will see whether the alternatives work so the Pentagon can
use them more, said Army Brig. Gen. Loree Sutton, head of the Defense
Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain
Injury. Many of the treatments have been used for centuries, Sutton
said, "so it just makes sense to bring all potential therapies to
bear."

Her office issued a request for research proposals this year on
therapies ranging from art and dance, to the ancient Chinese healing
art of qigong or a therapy of hands-on touching known as Reiki.
Sutton's office narrowed a list of 82 proposals to about 10 projects
this year, and research should begin, with servicemembers as subjects
in some cases, in the next few months, said Col. Karl Friedl, head of
the Army's Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center, which
oversees the work. Friedl said research will include how meditation
can improve emotional resilience; how holding and petting an animal
can treat PTSD and how acupuncture pain relief can relieve headaches
created by mild brain damage from blasts. "We want to add everything
we can to our tool kit" for these injuries, said Col. Elspeth Ritchie,
an Army psychiatrist.

Some soldiers who suffer from PTSD are reluctant to share their
experiences in traditional psychiatric therapy, said Col. Charles
Engel, an Army psychiatric epidemiologist. He said those soldiers may
be more willing to use acupuncture and other alternatives if they are
effective. Initial research this summer with combat veterans showed
that acupuncture relieved PTSD symptoms and eased pain and depression,
Engel said. "Improvements were relatively rapid and clinically
significant," he said. About one third of sailors and Marines use some
types of alternative therapies, mostly herbal remedies, according to a
survey conducted last year. A recent Army study shows that one in four
soldiers with combat-caused PTSD turned to herbs, chiropractors,
acupuncture or megavitamins for relief. Although the Pentagon's study
of alternative medicine for combat diseases is unique, research into
such therapies for broad public use is not new, said Richard Nahin, a
senior adviser for the National Institutes of Health's National Center
for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. The NIH spends about $300
million a year on similar research.

HOMEOPATHY, POWER OF PRAYER
http://www.siib.org/research/research-home/military-medicine.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a5wBTQVASIso
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/11/AR2005071101140_pf.html
Probing Edges Of Medicine -- And Reality
Homeopathy Against Bioterrorism? For a Local Research Institute, Few
Areas of Study Are Too Far Out
BY Sandra G. Boodman / July 12, 2005

Ask Wayne B. Jonas why the scientific foundation he directs is funding
research into the effects of prayer, the use of homeopathy to fight
bioterrorism and whether magnetic devices can heal orthopedic
injuries, and he offers a straightforward answer: Science is the way
to determine whether they work. "We're trying to stimulate good-
quality research," said Jonas, a former chief of the Office of
Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) who
directs the nonprofit Samueli Institute for Information Biology (SIIB)
in Alexandria. "There is a good case for looking at these things
scientifically, because we don't know a lot about them."

But, the 51-year-old board-certified family physician and retired Army
doctor adds, "it's difficult to walk the scientific fence" -- dodging
criticism from "the hard-core skeptics" who dismiss alternative
medicine as quackery and the "hard-core advocates" who accept it
uncritically. Jonas has headed the institute -- named for its
principal benefactor, California philanthropist Susan Samueli -- since
its inception in 2001. What began as a two-person foundation has grown
into a research organization with four offices and a staff of 15. It
has an annual budget of about $4 million provided by the Samueli
family, and an additional $5 million in contracts from the Department
of Defense (DOD) to study alternative treatments. Currently the
institute is funding about 50 projects, awarding grants ranging from
$20,000 to $250,000 to researchers in the United States, Europe and
Asia. Some grants have been awarded to institute staff members.

Among the DOD-related projects, which are a collaboration with the
Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, the military
medical school in Bethesda where Jonas is a clinical professor, are
several to determine whether the use of extremely diluted poisons,
including cyanide and botulinum toxin, might protect soliders from
higher doses to which they could be exposed in biological warfare.
"The work in this area is in its earliest stages but has some
promising characteristics," said Iris R. Bell, director of research
for the integrative medicine program at the University of Arizona
College of Medicine. "The Samueli staff are open-minded scientists,
they are not taking anything as dogma. They are asking the bigger
questions, such as what are the assumptions of science? I would expect
the work they do and the work they fund is going to be controversial."

Critics of the institute say that while they support rigorous research
into alternative medical treatments, Samueli is not doing it. "There
is nothing of scientific value they're doing that I'm aware of," said
Wallace Sampson, editor of the Scientific Review of Alternative
Medicine and clinical professor emeritus of medicine at Stanford.
"They're all ideologues trying to prove something that doesn't exist."

Homeopathy, prayer and other forms of "energy medicine" belong to a
category the NIH's National Center for Complementary and Alternative
Medicine, the name for the office Jonas once directed, calls "among
the most controversial of CAM practices." Homeopathy, a treatment
invented in the late 1700s, is predicated on the belief that "like
cures like" and that illnesses can be treated by stimulating a healing
response through the ingestion of highly diluted substances such as
herbs, heavy metals or poison ivy, which would cause harm at larger
doses. In most cases no single molecule of the substance remains.
Homeopathy has not been conclusively proven to be effective for any
clinical condition, according to NCCAM, and its "key concepts do not
follow the laws of science."

Sampson and other critics of Samueli's work also question its use of
terminology not found in science, such as "information biology," which
Jonas defines as "the interaction of information with biological
systems"; and "salutogenesis," which he says is the process of healing
and the opposite of pathogenesis, the process of disease. "We have to
keep an open mind, but not an open mind to nonsense," said Bruce
Flamm, a clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the
University of California, Irvine. "The Samuelis are very generous
people," said obstetrician-gynecologist Flamm, "but this institute is
a sadly misguided waste of money that could be spent on legitimate
research."

Last year, after Flamm repeatedly raised questions about a widely
promulgated study conducted by researchers affiliated with Columbia
University that prayer could help infertile women conceive, the study
was withdrawn. (Samueli had no affiliation with the study.) One of the
authors is currently serving time in federal prison on unrelated
criminal fraud charges. Some skeptics say the Samueli-sponsored
research is fundamentally unscientific and that much of it lacks the
necessary safeguards to prevent spurious results. One paper presented
at a Samueli-sponsored conference last year on optimal healing
environments -- a concept Jonas said he is helping to synthesize --
was entitled "The Spa as a Model of an Optimal Healing Environment."
Written by an executive of the posh Canyon Ranch Spa in Tucson, it was
published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine.
Using Canyon Ranch as a case study, the author concluded that
"creating an optimal healing environment at any price point" requires
"a dedicated, caring staff."

What Objective?
"What they're doing isn't science, it's faith healing," said Robert L.
Park, a professor of physics at the University of Maryland and the
author of a 2002 book entitled "Voodoo Science," which includes a
lengthy discussion of homeopathy. Adrienne Fugh-Berman, an associate
professor in the complementary medicine program at Georgetown
University, said she regarded the studies listed on the SIIB Web site
as "pretty self-indulgent." Fugh-Berman, a physician who has published
two dozen studies of alternative treatments, called the belief that
homeopathy could be used to fight bioterrorism "embarrassing" and said
she regarded optimal healing environments as "spa therapy for rich
people. What bothers me about some of the research is that I suspect
its objective is to create a veneer of science over certain strongly
held beliefs," she said.

Jonas disputes these criticisms and says the institute follows
standard NIH grant review practices. He said the goal is to fund
credible pilot studies to determine what works -- or doesn't -- and
that he has no other agenda. Negative results of studies are published
on the SIIB Web site, he noted. While the nonprofit foundation tries
to subsidize research that is rigorous, Jonas continued, it is not
always possible to conduct randomized, double-blind, placebo-
controlled studies of alternative therapies. "A high percentage meet
those requirements," he said, but "some things can't be blinded."
Richard H. Grimm, an epidemiologist who is director of the Berman
Center for Outcomes at the University of Minnesota, agreed, noting
that much of conventional medicine is predicated on treatments that
haven't been put to such a test. "It's relatively easy to do a
randomized, placebo-controlled trial of something that fits into a
capsule," Grimm said, but not for a non-drug treatment.

Andew J. Vickers, an assistant attending research methodologist at
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, said the Samueli
Institute should be judged on the quality of science it supports.
Vickers said he forsees three possible outcomes for the research on
homeopathy and prayer. The first is that they work, the second is that
"none of this works and it's a waste of time" and the third is that
"they find other things along the way that would be scientifically
useful. Science is full of examples of that."

Suddenly Samueli
It was Susan Samueli's longstanding interest in alternative medicine
that led to the creation of the institute in 2001, Jonas said. Around
the same time, she and her husband Henry endowed the Susan Samueli
Center for Integrative Medicine in the medical school at the
University of California, Irvine. The family's fortune comes from
Henry Samueli's interest in Broadcom, a company he co-founded in the
early 1990s while on leave from teaching at UCLA, where he earned a
doctorate in electrical engineering. Broadcom pioneered the
manufacture of chips used in DSL and cable modems just before the
demand for these chips skyrocketed. Over a period of a few years, that
invention catapulted the Samuelis from middle-class comfort to the
ranks of the Forbes 400, a listing of America's richest families.

The son of Polish Holocaust survivors who as a youth worked in his
family's liquor store, Henry Samueli has made record gifts to the
engineering schools at UC Irvine and UCLA, both of which now bear his
name. Several months ago the couple bought the Mighty Ducks
professional hockey team. Susan Samueli, whose undergraduate degree in
math is from Berkeley, has a PhD from the American Holistic College of
Nutrition and a diploma from a British homeopathic institute. The
holistic college is an unaccredited correspondence school located in
Birmingham, Ala.

Jonas's interest in homeopathy dates back to college. In a 1996 book
entitled "Healing With Homeopathy," he wrote that as a medical student
he suggested trying homeopathy on several patients who were faring
poorly with conventional treatments and was upbraided by supervisors.
Later, while stationed as an Army doctor in Germany, where homeopathy
is popular, Jonas said his interest in the subject grew, in part
because he couldn't understand how it might work. Jonas said he thinks
the answer might lie in a substance released by an ingredient in glass
or could be due to the placebo effect. He said he doubts the view,
widely held by other homeopaths, that the water somehow retains the
"memory" of the diluted substance, which results in healing. "There
are possible ways to explain this on a rational basis," he said.

Two months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Jonas, a former
official at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, urged Congress
to consider the use of homeopathy to fight bioterrorism. In testimony
before a commitee chaired by Indiana's Republican Rep. Dan Burton, one
of the most enthusiastic supporters of alternative medicine in
Congress, Jonas said that "homeopathic medical literature reveals
numerous reports of apparently successful treatment of epidemic
diseases . . . including smallpox" from the last century. A month
later NCCAM chief Stephen E. Straus, a virologist, warned the House
commitee against using alternative remedies for biological weapons. In
2003 Jonas was lead author of an analysis of homeopathy studies
published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The authors, all
specialists in alternative medicine, concluded that homeopathy may be
effective for some conditions and "deserves an open-minded opportunity
to demonstrate its value" but should not supplant proven therapies.

To Colorado physician Steven Bratman, the author of a dozen books on
alternative medicine and an expert in research in the field, using
homeopathy to combat bioterrorism is "completely insane -- not as
insane as UFOs, but pretty close. For homeopathy to work, there would
have to be a whole new law of science," said Bratman, a former
alternative medicine practitioner who said he abandoned acupuncture
and other treatments about a decade ago after he grew increasingly
uneasy about their lack of scientific underpinnings. "The fact that
DOD is spending money on this research is unfortunate," he said.

Increasingly, Jonas said, the Samueli Institute is focusing on
projects that explore and define optimal healing environments, a
concept that grows out of his long-standing interest in preventive
medicine. "We have a biomedical system that is attempting to apply the
acute care model to chronic illness," he said. "We need a new way of
thinking. . . . That's the salutogenic model." This interest in
healing is reflected in the institute's expensively decorated suite of
offices overlooking the King Street Metro station in Old Town
Alexandria. Situated outside Jonas's office is a large section of an
aspen tree, trucked in from land the Samueli family owns in Telluride,
Colo. Native Americans, Jonas said, believed the aspen tree was
endowed with curative properties. It seemed a fitting symbol.

BATTLEFIELD ACUPUNCTURE
http://www.n5ev.com/battlefield_acupuncture.htm
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2008-12-11/news/0812100207_1_battlefield-acupuncture-pain-with-acupuncture-traditional-chinese-acupuncture
Military tries 'battlefield' acupuncture to ease pain
BY David Wood / December 11, 2008

Using ancient Chinese medical techniques, a small team of military
doctors here has begun treating wounded troops suffering from severe
or chronic pain with acupuncture. The technique is proving so
successful that the Air Force will begin teaching "battlefield
acupuncture" early next year to physicians deploying to Iraq and
Afghanistan, senior officials will announce tomorrow. The initiative
marks the first high-level endorsement of acupuncture by the
traditionally conservative military medical community, officials said.

Using tiny needles that barely penetrate the skin of a patient's ear,
Air Force doctors here say they can interrupt pain signals going to
the brain. Their experience over several years indicates the technique
developed by Col. Richard Niemtzow, an Air Force physician, can
relieve even unbearable pain for days at a time. That enables badly
wounded patients who arrive here by medevac aircraft to begin to
emerge from the daze of pain-killer drugs administered by surgeons in
the field. "This is one of the fastest pain attenuators in existence -
the pain can be gone in five minutes," said Niemtzow, a physician,
acupuncturist and senior adviser to the Air Force surgeon general.

He and others stressed that tiny needles cannot replace morphine and
other powerful drugs used in combat medicine. And they acknowledged
that acupuncture doesn't work for everyone. But neither does
acupuncture provoke the kind of adverse side effects, allergic
reactions and potential addiction associated with powerful
psychotropic drugs often used to dull the pain of the severely
wounded. "We use acupuncture as an adjunct" to traditional therapy,
said Niemtzow. "The Chinese have used it for 5,000 years. It works,
and it's powerful."

The procedure developed by Niemtzow is a variation of traditional
Chinese acupuncture in which long, hair-thin needles are inserted into
the body at any of hundreds of points to ease pain. Niemtzow's
variation uses one or more needles inserted into any of five points on
the ear. The needles, which penetrate about a millimeter (or 4/100ths
of an inch) into the skin, fall out after several days. The procedure
can be repeated. The ear acts as a "monitor" of signals passing from
body sensors to the brain, he said. Those signals can be intercepted
and manipulated to stop pain or for other purposes.

CIA IN-HOUSE ACID TESTS
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/asin/0802130623/bizarrehistorica
http://www.historyhouse.com/c/in_history/?lsd

Lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD, has been a sacrament of artists,
would-be prophets, and other such social chaff since the 1960s.
Invented in 1938 by chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann while looking for an
analeptic (circulatory stimulant), he found it had no effect on lab
animals and forgot all about it. Years later, on the fateful day 16 of
April, 1953, he accidentally absorbed a little through his fingertips
and went flying on the first acid trip. By then the CIA had a ten-year-
old program running, looking for interrogation drugs and truth serums.
They'd played with caffeine, barbiturates, peyote, and marijuana. They
also tried to get subjects to kill while under hypnosis, rounding out
an operation seemingly concocted from the plots of situation comedies.
Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain report in their Acid Dreams: The CIA,
LSD, and the Sixties Rebellion, that by 1953, the CIA had authorized
project MK-ULTRA, designed to perfect mind-control drugs during the
Cold War. Conceived by Richard Helms of the Clandestine Services
Department, it went beyond the construction of mere truth serums and
ventured into disinformation, induction of temporary insanity, and
other chemically-aided states.

The director of MK-ULTRA, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, figured LSD's potential
as an interrogative agent paled in comparison to its capacity to
publicly humiliate. Lee and Shlain note the CIA imagined a tripping
public figure might be amusing, producing a memo that says giving acid
"to high officials would be a relatively simple matter and could have
a significant effect at key meetings, speeches, etc." But Gottlieb
knew that giving LSD to people in the lab was a lot different than
just passing it out, and felt the department did not have an adequate
grasp on its effects. So the entire operation tripped to learn what it
was like, and, according to Lee and Shlain, "agreed among themselves
to slip LSD into each other's drinks. The target never knew when his
turn would come, but as soon as the drug was ingested a ... colleague
would tell him so he could make the necessary preparations (which
usually meant taking the rest of the day off). Initially the leaders
of MK-ULTRA restricted the surprise acid tests to [their own] members,
but when this phase had run its course they started dosing other
Agency personnel who had never tripped before. Nearly everyone was
fair game, and surprise acid trips became something of an occupational
hazard among CIA operatives.... The Office of Security felt that [MK-
ULTRA] should have exercised better judgment in dealing with such a
powerful and dangerous chemical. The straw that broke the camel's back
came when a Security informant got wind of a plan by a few [MK-ULTRA]
jokers to put LSD in the punch served at the annual CIA Christmas
office party ... a Security memo writer... concluded indignantly and
unequivocally that he did 'not recommend testing in the Christmas
punch bowls usually present at the Christmas office parties.'"

MILITARY ACID TESTS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-rWnQphPdQ
British Army
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iualITdxXBk
Czech Army

MKULTRA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKULTRA
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-04-05-army-experiments_N.htm
Researchers tested pot, LSD on Army volunteers
BY Richard Willing / 4.6.2007

Army doctors gave soldier volunteers synthetic marijuana, LSD and two
dozen other psychoactive drugs during experiments aimed at developing
chemical weapons that could incapacitate enemy soldiers, a
psychiatrist who performed the research says in a new memoir. The
program, which ran at the Army's Edgewood, Md., arsenal from 1955
until about 1972, concluded that counterculture staples such as acid
and pot were either too unpredictable or too mellow to be useful as
weapons, psychiatrist James Ketchum said in an interview. The program
did yield one hallucinogenic weapon: softball-size artillery rounds
that were filled with powdered quinuclidinyl benzilate or BZ, a
deliriant of the belladonnoid family that had placed some research
subjects in a sleeplike state and left them impaired for days. Ketchum
says the BZ bombs were stockpiled at an Army arsenal in Arkansas but
never deployed. They were later destroyed. The Army acknowledged the
program's existence in 1975. Follow-up studies by the Army in 1978 and
the National Academy of Sciences in 1981 found that volunteers
suffered no long-term effects.

Insider's account
Ketchum's book, Chemical Warfare: Secrets Almost Forgotten, appears to
be the first insider's account of experiments performed on about 2,000
soldier volunteers, says Steven Aftergood, a government-secrecy expert
for the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, D.C. Ketchum
self-published the book, which he sells on his website. In an
interview, Ketchum, 75, said he wrote the book to trigger a debate
about the potential uses of non-lethal chemicals to incapacitate
terrorists who take hostages or use human shields. "Incapacitating
agents are designed to save lives," he said. "Isn't it at least
something we should be thinking about?" Such research, says chemical
weapons opponent Edward Hammond, would not only be illegal under
current international law but probably never should have been
performed. "There are things that have taken place in the past that
should probably stay there," says Hammond, director of the Sunshine
Project, an Austin group that opposes biological warfare. Ketchum's
memoir draws from previously classified files, including filmed
experiments, and notes of tests given subjects before, during and
after they were fed, sprayed or injected with mind-altering chemicals.

He says:
•LSD was rejected for weapons use because even soldiers on prolonged
trips could carry out violent acts.
•Even especially powerful marijuana lacked "knockdown effect." It was
rejected because its effects could be overcome simply by lying down
and resting.
•Soldier volunteers were willing participants who knew the program's
potential risks. Drugs given to soldiers were described in general
terms but not named though "many seemed to find out through the
grapevine."
•Intelligence reports of the time showed that Soviet researchers were
planning a large-scale LSD program.
•The CIA ran a parallel program that sometimes gave hallucinogens
secretly to unwitting citizens. The agency persuaded two Army doctors
to carry out experiments for the CIA that the Army would not have
authorized.

Ketchum says the Army phased out the hallucinogen project in about
1972, in part because disclosure of such research would have caused a
"public relations problem." Ketchum's notes suggest the Army's fears
were not imaginary. They describe soldiers on "red oil," an especially
powerful form of marijuana, who smirked for hours and found even
routine spatial reasoning tests to be hilarious. Soldiers under the
influence of hallucinogens ate imaginary chickens, took showers in
full uniform while smoking cigars and chatted with invisible people
for two to three days at a time. One attempted to ride off on an
imaginary horse while another played with kittens only he could see.
Another described an order of toast as smelling "like a French whore."
Some of the researchers also took LSD "as a matter of curiosity,"
Ketchum says. His lone trip, he adds, was "something of an anti-
climax." Colors seemed more vivid and music more compelling, he
remembers, but "there were no breakthroughs in consciousness, no
Timothy Leary stuff." At least two soldiers who received LSD in the
1950s later sued the Army, alleging that the drug later caused them to
suffer memory loss, hallucinations and occasional outbursts of
violence. The claims were denied. After leaving the Army, Ketchum saw
patients in a private psychiatric practice. The experiments on human
subjects ended in 1975, according to Jeff Smart, historian for the
Army's Research, Development and Engineering Command at Aberdeen
Proving Ground, Md. The United States signed a United Nations-
sponsored chemical weapons ban in 1993 that outlawed incapacitating
agents.

Calmative agents
Even so, the U.S. military has remained interested in researching non-
lethal chemicals. In 2000, the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, a
Quantico, Va., group run by all four major military branches,
commissioned a study of the possible military uses of "calmative"
pharmaceuticals such as anesthetics and serotonin reuptake inhibitors.
The Sunshine Project's Hammond, who obtained the study through the
Freedom of Information Act, says using calmatives as weapons would
also be outlawed by the 1993 chemical weapons ban. Ketchum says that
is not clear. In October 2002, Russian special forces used a calmative
agent to subdue Islamist Chechen terrorists who were holding about 850
hostages in a Moscow theater. More than 120 hostages died from the
drug's effects.

BZ + MIND DE-PATTERNING
http://www.counterpunch.org/robeson.html
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/155.html
http://i2.democracynow.org/1999/7/1/did_the_cia_drug_paul_robeson

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfeOQBeqc3c]

EDGEWOOD ARSENAL
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgewood_Arsenal_experiments
http://www.forgottensecrets.net/excerpts.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-04-05-army-experiments_N.htm
Researchers tested pot, LSD on Army volunteers
BY Richard Willing / 4/6/2007

Army doctors gave soldier volunteers synthetic marijuana, LSD and two
dozen other psychoactive drugs during experiments aimed at developing
chemical weapons that could incapacitate enemy soldiers, a
psychiatrist who performed the research says in a new memoir. The
program, which ran at the Army's Edgewood, Md., arsenal from 1955
until about 1972, concluded that counterculture staples such as acid
and pot were either too unpredictable or too mellow to be useful as
weapons, psychiatrist James Ketchum said in an interview.

The program did yield one hallucinogenic weapon: softball-size
artillery rounds that were filled with powdered quinuclidinyl
benzilate or BZ, a deliriant of the belladonnoid family that had
placed some research subjects in a sleeplike state and left them
impaired for days. Ketchum says the BZ bombs were stockpiled at an
Army arsenal in Arkansas but never deployed. They were later
destroyed. The Army acknowledged the program's existence in 1975.
Follow-up studies by the Army in 1978 and the National Academy of
Sciences in 1981 found that volunteers suffered no long-term effects.

Insider's account
Ketchum's book, Chemical Warfare: Secrets Almost Forgotten, appears to
be the first insider's account of experiments performed on about 2,000
soldier volunteers, says Steven Aftergood, a government-secrecy expert
for the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, D.C. Ketchum
self-published the book, which he sells on his website. In an
interview, Ketchum, 75, said he wrote the book to trigger a debate
about the potential uses of non-lethal chemicals to incapacitate
terrorists who take hostages or use human shields. "Incapacitating
agents are designed to save lives," he said. "Isn't it at least
something we should be thinking about?"

Such research, says chemical weapons opponent Edward Hammond, would
not only be illegal under current international law but probably never
should have been performed. "There are things that have taken place in
the past that should probably stay there," says Hammond, director of
the Sunshine Project, an Austin group that opposes biological warfare.
Ketchum's memoir draws from previously classified files, including
filmed experiments, and notes of tests given subjects before, during
and after they were fed, sprayed or injected with mind-altering
chemicals.

He says:
•LSD was rejected for weapons use because even soldiers on prolonged
trips could carry out violent acts.
•Even especially powerful marijuana lacked "knockdown effect." It was
rejected because its effects could be overcome simply by lying down
and resting.
•Soldier volunteers were willing participants who knew the program's
potential risks. Drugs given to soldiers were described in general
terms but not named though "many seemed to find out through the
grapevine."
•Intelligence reports of the time showed that Soviet researchers were
planning a large-scale LSD program.
•The CIA ran a parallel program that sometimes gave hallucinogens
secretly to unwitting citizens. The agency persuaded two Army doctors
to carry out experiments for the CIA that the Army would not have
authorized.

Ketchum says the Army phased out the hallucinogen project in about
1972, in part because disclosure of such research would have caused a
"public relations problem." Ketchum's notes suggest the Army's fears
were not imaginary. They describe soldiers on "red oil," an especially
powerful form of marijuana, who smirked for hours and found even
routine spatial reasoning tests to be hilarious. Soldiers under the
influence of hallucinogens ate imaginary chickens, took showers in
full uniform while smoking cigars and chatted with invisible people
for two to three days at a time. One attempted to ride off on an
imaginary horse while another played with kittens only he could see.
Another described an order of toast as smelling "like a French whore."
Some of the researchers also took LSD "as a matter of curiosity,"
Ketchum says. His lone trip, he adds, was "something of an anti-
climax." Colors seemed more vivid and music more compelling, he
remembers, but "there were no breakthroughs in consciousness, no
Timothy Leary stuff."

At least two soldiers who received LSD in the 1950s later sued the
Army, alleging that the drug later caused them to suffer memory loss,
hallucinations and occasional outbursts of violence. The claims were
denied. After leaving the Army, Ketchum saw patients in a private
psychiatric practice. The experiments on human subjects ended in 1975,
according to Jeff Smart, historian for the Army's Research,
Development and Engineering Command at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md.
The United States signed a United Nations-sponsored chemical weapons
ban in 1993 that outlawed incapacitating agents.

Calmative agents
Even so, the U.S. military has remained interested in researching non-
lethal chemicals. In 2000, the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, a
Quantico, Va., group run by all four major military branches,
commissioned a study of the possible military uses of "calmative"
pharmaceuticals such as anesthetics and serotonin reuptake inhibitors.
The Sunshine Project's Hammond, who obtained the study through the
Freedom of Information Act, says using calmatives as weapons would
also be outlawed by the 1993 chemical weapons ban. Ketchum says that
is not clear. In October 2002, Russian special forces used a calmative
agent to subdue Islamist Chechen terrorists who were holding about 850
hostages in a Moscow theater. More than 120 hostages died from the
drug's effects.

VETS SUE
http://www.mofo.com/news/pressreleases/15100.html
http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/spytalk/2009/01/vietnam-vets-sue-cia-for-secre.html
Vietnam Vets Sue CIA for Secret Drug Experiments on GIs
BY Jeff Stein / January 7, 2009

A Vietnam veterans group is suing the CIA for "thousands of secret
experiments to test toxic chemical and biological substances under
code names such as MKULTRA.," its attorneys said today. The suit was
filed in federal court in northern California on behalf of the
Washington-based Vietnam Veterans of America, Inc., and six aging
veterans with multiple diseases and ailments "tied to a diabolical and
secret testing program, whereby U.S. military personnel were
deliberately exposed, by government and military agencies, to chemical
and biological weapons and other toxins without informed consent," the
Morrison & Foerster law firm said in a press release. The firm said
the alleged CIA research program was launched in the early 1950s and
continued through at least 1976 at the Edgewood Arsenal and Fort
Detrick, Md., as well as universities and hospitals across the country
contracted by the CIA. Defendants include the CIA, the Department of
the Army, the Department of Defense and various government officials
responsible for these agencies. "The CIA secretly provided financing,
personnel, and direction for the experiments, which were mainly
conducted or contracted by the Army," the suit says.

According to the veterans, the experiments, conducted over a 25 year
period, included:
· the use of troops to test nerve gas, psychochemicals, and
thousands of other toxic chemical or biological substances, and ...
the insertion of septal implants in the brains of subjects in ... mind
control experiments that went awry, leaving many civilian and military
subjects with permanent disabilities;
· the failure to secure informed consent and other widespread
failures to follow the precepts of U.S. and international law
regarding the use of human subjects, including the 1953 Wilson
Directive and the Nuremberg Code;
· a ... refusal by the DoD, the CIA, and the Army to ... locate the
victims of their ... experiments or to provide health care or
compensation to them;
· the destruction by the CIA of evidence and files

Update: CIA spokeswoman Marie Harf said the agency would have no
comment "on specific matters before the court." But, she added, "CIA
activities related to MK-ULTRA have been thoroughly investigated, and
the CIA fully cooperated with each of the investigations. In addition,
tens of thousands of pages from documents related to the program have
been declassified and released to the public. "MK-ULTRA was
investigated in 1975 by the Rockefeller Commission and the Church
Committee, and in 1977 by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
and the Senate Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research," Harf
added.

VEGAN STRAIGHT EDGE
http://istpp.org/military_science/
http://theseoultimes.com/ST/?url=/ST/db/read.php?idx=8459
http://theseoultimes.com/ST/?url=/ST/db/read.php?idx=9055

I saw the movie The Men Who Stare at Goats [http://
www.themenwhostareatgoatsmovie.com] with interest. I enjoyed the movie
for what it was - a satirical look at the US military's attempt to
develop more of the full potential of their warriors using so-called
paranormal approaches. Unfortunately, words like "paranormal" and
"supernatural" are loaded terms which carry negative connotations. For
this reason, scientists are hesitant to associate themselves with
people who profess interest in such things. However, since I have
already been associated with one of the real-life characters of the
book and movie, I would like to discuss the real-life military
possibility of using more of the potential of the human mind through
my area of expertise - Invincible Defense Technology (IDT), a
technique that includes Yogic Flying. I would also like to recommend a
book by Craig Pearson, Ph.D. titled: The Complete Book of Yogic Flying
[http://www.mum.edu/achievements/2008_11_08.html] which discusses this
approach in great detail. (Full disclosure: Dr. Pearson is the
Executive Vice-President of Maharishi University of Management. I am
employed at the Center for Advanced Military Science (CAMS) which is
affiliated with this institution.)

In The Men Who Stare at Goats, the character General Hopgood (played
by Stephen Lang) is based on Major General Albert Stubblebine, US Army
(Retired), a former commander of the US Army Intelligence & Security
Command (INSCOM). He is satirically portrayed as attempting to walk
through walls without success. In both the book and movie, a soldier
under his command allegedly killed a goat by staring at it. In real
life, Stubblebine served as a consultant on my Consciousness-Based
Military Defense doctoral committee at The Union Institute &
University. He was an intelligent pioneer in the development of human
resource technologies for the US Army. Stubblebine understood the
latent potential of the human mind, and, that warriors would
eventually be trained to harness it. Jon Ronson wrote in his book, The
Men Who Stare at Goats, "General Stubblebine passionately believes the
First Earth Battalion [http://firstearthbattalion.com] doctrine that
every human being alive was capable of performing supernatural
miracles."

While serving on my doctoral committee, Stubblebine helped organize my
lecture series about Invincible Defense Technology in Moscow. Thanks
to him, and the late Brig. Gen. Clarence E. Beck, U.S. Army (Ret.), I
recruited another distinguished general (retired Soviet Army General-
Major Leonid Shershnev, who fought in Afghanistan) as well as other
military-related leaders to participate in my doctoral program in
Consciousness-Based Military Defense which is now known as Invincible
Defense Technology in military circles.

Shershnev was a key figure in the Soviet's war in Afghanistan. His
reflections on the futility of war were similar to Stubblebine's and
those of many of our own military personnel after the Vietnam War.
Shershnev regretted the inappropriate waste of lives, and has vowed to
spend his life working to create world peace. Probably due to his
efforts, many generals and other military-related leaders from Russia
and other former Soviet-block countries attended the Third
International Conference on Invincible Defense in The Netherlands in
the 1990's. Senior leaders wrote encouraging assessments of the
potential of Invincible Defense Technology to prevent war and
terrorism and apparently reported back to their governmental leaders,
urging implementation. See "The Need for a Prevention Wing of the
Military by the Conference Participants" [http://istpp.org/
military_science/third_invincible_defense_p13.html] and "The Race for
'Inner Space'" [http://www.davidleffler.com/enewsletter/
20080411_IDT_News.html#LETTER.BLOCK8] for related information.

The goal of Invincible Defense Technology is to enhance the peace-
keeping capabilities of the military, adding a "non-lethal weapon," a
kind of national armor (called "rastri kavach" in ancient Vedic
literature) that would ensure the security and invincibility of their
nation. The founder and chief proponent of this approach is the late
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a renowned scientist of consciousness and Vedic
scholar. Maharishi stated that so-called supernatural abilities are
normal to a stress-free nervous system, which can be achieved through
the Transcendental Meditation program and its advanced practices, if
people are properly trained in the correct manner to harness them. In
1997, studying this non-religious approach, I completed my Ph.D. under
the auspices of the doctoral program at The Union Institute &
University. Invincible Defense Technology was labeled such because
Maharishi recognized its potential to prevent the birth of an enemy, a
principle he abbreviated with the phrase "victory before war." His
vision was that any country taking full advantage of this technology
could become invincible. He asserted that invincibility can never be
attained through conventional weapons, but can be attained if a nation
is incapable of creating enemies. If a nation has no collective
stress, it becomes "friends" with everyone.

Prevention Wings of the Military consisting of about 3% of the
military could ideally achieve this goal. These special units would be
trained in the Transcendental Meditation (TM) and TM-Sidhi programs.
They would practice them in large groups, twice a day. Extensive
scientific research shows these programs not only reduce stress on the
individual level, but also reduce the collective societal stress that
is ultimately responsible for social problems, like war, terrorism and
crime. For instance, a peer-reviewed study published in the Journal of
Conflict Resolution [http://invinciblemilitary.org/articles/
sapratableii.html#b41] (32: 776-812, 1988) found that a group of only
two hundred people practicing IDT in Israel during the Lebanon war
were able to reduce war deaths there by seventy-six percent. A follow-
up study of seven different TM-Sidhi assemblies published in the
Journal of Social Behavior and Personality [http://
invinciblemilitary.org/articles/sapratableii.html#b13] (17: 1,
285-338, 2005) showed similar results as well as a 68% reduction of
war injuries.

These "effects at a distance" have been studied in other ways, such as
research showing changes in EEG (brainwave) coherence. During the
practice of Transcendental Meditation, an individual experiences
"transcendental consciousness," a proposed fourth state of
consciousness. This state is characterized by increased coherence of
the EEG where different parts of the brain are working together more
coherently. Increased EEG coherence during the TM program correlates
with increased creativity and achievement outside the TM program, in
activity. When many people practice this technique (or the more
advanced TM-Sidhi program) together in one place, the coherence-
generating effect is enhanced. Also, when meditating groups are large,
similar increases in coherence are produced in subjects far removed
from the group. One experiment showed increases in EEG coherence one
thousand miles from the group. Another study offers a proposed
explanation of causality in biological terms. Research conducted on
the powerful neurotransmitter serotonin shows that it produces
feelings of contentment, happiness and even euphoria. Low levels of
serotonin, according to research, correlate with violence, aggression,
and poor emotional moods. The peer-reviewed study showed that higher
numbers of Invincible Defense Technology experts correlated with a
marked increase in serotonin production among other community members.
This finding offers a plausible neurophysiologic mechanism to explain
reduced hostility and aggression in society at large. Another peer-
reviewed study conducted globally showed that international terrorism
dropped 72% and world conflict dropped 32% during the global
experiment and went back to previous levels after it was over.

Militaries and civilian groups worldwide have already begun to harness
the full potential of the human mind using Invincible Defense
Technology. The book titled The Complete Book of Yogic Flying:
Maharishi’s Mahesh Yogi’s Program for Enlightenment and Invincibility
by Craig Pearson, Ph.D. is available at [http://mumpress.com/
p_c16.html] and is the most comprehensive book available on the topic
of Invincible Defense Technology.

Editor’s Note: The Seoul Times previously published Dr. David
Leffler’s co-authored article with renowned quantum physicist John
Hagelin , Ph.D., which further discusses the military potential of
Invincible Defense Technology. It is titled "S. Korea Needs a Defense
System Beyond Nuclear Weapons." [http://theseoultimes.com/ST/?url=/ST/
db/read.php?idx=8459]

{Dr. David R. Leffler serves as the Executive Director at the Center
for Advanced Military Science (CAMS) [http://www.StrongMilitary.org].
David received his Ph.D. in Consciousness-Based Military Defense from
The Union Institute & University in Cincinnati.}

'HOLISTIC' STRATEGY
http://www.pajhwok.com/viewstory.asp?lng=eng&id=76279
Military solution improbable in Afghanistan
BY Maj.Gen.(Ret.) Kulwant Singh, Col. Brian Rees & Dr. David
Leffler / Jun 17, 2009

In congressional testimony, Army Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal vowed
that he would use a "holistic" strategy and take extreme measures to
avoid Afghan civilian casualties. Its "measure of effectiveness will
not be the number of enemy killed, it will be the number of Afghans
shielded from violence," he said. By starting to think holistically
and measuring the effectiveness of avoiding casualties, McChrystal is
on the right track. However, his new strategy may not be sufficient to
bring an end to the protracted violence. War is based in social stress
that is not likely to be ended by changing the rules of engagement,
limiting airstrikes or using small ground units in search and
detention operations.

Although a military solution to the Afghanistan war is improbable, it
is possible to deploy a scientifically verified technology of defence
to reduce societal stress and end the war. Extensive research has
confirmed its effectiveness, and militaries have already applied it in
order to defuse and eliminate conflict and prevent disruption and
attack from within the country or outside the country.

Meditation has been shown to reduce stress not only in the individual
but also throughout society. The Vedic tradition of knowledge, from
ancient India, includes highly developed, non-religious meditation
practices, in particular the Transcendental Meditation programme and
its advanced techniques that have become the focus of intense
scientific research over the past 50 years. These practices, taken
together, are known as Invincible Defence Technology (IDT) in military
circles. They have been used by members of many faiths to eliminate
conflict in the recent past. If the military were to apply this human
resource-based technology, which is non-lethal and non-destructive, it
could reduce the collective societal stress fuelling the tensions in
Afghanistan.

A Prevention Wing of the Military would be the ideal way to achieve
this goal. It would comprise about 2 to 3 percent of the military of
Afghanistan. The personnel involved would practice these technologies
in large groups, morning and evening. Studies show that when the size
of the IDT group reaches a particular threshold, war and terrorism
abate, crime goes down in the affected population, and quality-of-life
indices go up. Scientists have named this phenomenon the Maharishi
Effect after Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who first predicted it. In 1993, a
two-month Maharishi Effect intervention was studied in Washington, DC.
Predictions of specific drops in crime and other indices were lodged
in advance with government leaders and newspapers. The research
protocol was approved by an independent Project Review Board. The
findings, published in Social Indicators Research, showed that crime
fell 23 percent below the predicted level when the IDT group reached
its maximum. Temperature, weekend effects, and previous trends in the
data failed to account for changes.

Over 50 studies have evaluated and confirmed the reduction of crime,
violence, terrorism, and even open warfare through the establishment
of IDT groups. The causal mechanism has been postulated to be a field
effect of consciousness -- a spillover effect on the level of the
unified field from the peace-creating group into the larger
population. A study published in the Journal of Social Behaviour and
Personality offers an explanation of a proposed causality of IDT in
biological terms. Research on the powerful neurotransmitter serotonin
has shown that it produces feelings of contentment, happiness and even
euphoria. Low levels of serotonin correlate with violence, aggression,
and poor emotional moods.

The peer-reviewed study showed that higher numbers of IDT experts
practicing in groups correlated with an increase in serotonin
production among other community members. These results were
statistically significant and followed the attendance figures in the
IDT group. This finding offers a plausible neurophysiologic mechanism
to explain reduced aggression and hostility in society at large. The
Maharishi Effect has also been documented on a global scale in a study
published in the Journal of Offender Rehabilitation. When large
assemblies of IDT experts exceeded the Maharishi Effect threshold for
the world (about 7,000 at that time) during the years 1983-1985,
terrorism globally decreased 72%, international conflict decreased
32%, and violence was reduced in other nations without intrusion by
other governments. This study used data provided by the Rand
Corporation.

The evidence indicates that the military may be able to accomplish its
mission simply by establishing a coherence-creating unit of IDT
experts. As part of its responsibility to protect, the military is
obligated to thoroughly examine methods for preventing war and
terrorism. IDT is such a method. All that is necessary is to provide
the proper training for a group of military personnel- or indeed, any
large group within the country. Lt. Gen. McChrystal has the
opportunity today to implement a cost-effective, scientifically
validated and truly holistic strategy to bring peace to Afghanistan.
Events on the ground in Afghanistan and Pakistan may increase the
difficulty of exploiting this opportunity in the future.

{Major General (R) Kulwant Singh, UYSM., PhD, leads an international
group of generals and defence experts that advocates Invincible
Defence Technology. Colonel Brian M. Rees, MD, US Army Reserve, a
veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan, is a graduate of the US Army War
College, and is currently Deputy Command Surgeon of 63rd RRC, Los
Alamitos, California. David Leffler, PhD, a US Air Force veteran, is
the executive director at the Centre for Advanced Military Science.}

CONTACT
David Leffler
http://www.davidleffler.com/
email : drleffler [at] hotmail [dot] com

INVINCIBLE DEFENSE TECHNOLOGY
http://www.davidleffler.com/explanation.html
http://www.davidleffler.com/sapraalternative.html
http://www.davidleffler.com/sapratableii.html
http://www.davidleffler.com/links.html
http://istpp.org/manual.html

U.N. REFORESTATION PROJECT
http://www.unep.org/billiontreecampaign/
http://www.unep.org/billiontreecampaign/howtoplant/index.asp
http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=593&ArticleID=6254&l=en
http://www.firstearthbattalion.org/?q=node/76

"Blue helmets have already planted nearly 30,000 saplings in 11
peacekeeping missions worldwide, in countries including Timor-Leste,
the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Georgia and Lebanon. To
date, more than 4 billion trees have been planted, with 169 countries
having taken part in UNEP’s Billion Tree Campaign. Ethiopia alone has
planted 1.4 billion trees, while Turkey has planted 707 million and
Mexico has planted 537 million."

PREVIOUSLY ON SPECTRE : HUMAN TERRAIN TEAMS
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2007/10/31/human-terrain-teams/
MILITARY CREATES ITS OWN EXIT STRATEGY
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2007/08/04/military-creates-its-own-exit-strategy/
“THESE PEOPLE HAVEN’T HEARD HEAVY METAL”
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2007/02/13/these-people-havent-heard-heavy-metal/
VOICE TO SKULL TECHNOLOGIES
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2007/02/05/voice-to-skull-technologies/
CARY GRANT’S THOUGHTS ON LSD
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2008/02/10/cary-grants-thoughts-on-lsd/