This is going to be the weirdest article you’ll read this week.

A e-mail hit our inbox the other day that was filled with passion and anger.  “I want all NATO officers executed in public like allied forces executed nazis officers after WWII, after a fair trial,” Alan de Astudillo wrote to us.  Claiming to be descended from Spanish nobility, Alan’s skill set includes “planetary intelligence” and “planetary PSYOPS” which he apparently puts to good use as a member of the 7th Earth Battalion, a non-military unit that is a part of retired LTC Jim Channon’s New Earth Army.  Most of you know Channon through a fictionalized portrayal of him by Jeff Bridges in the film, “the men who stare at goats.”

Jeff Bridges starred as a fictionalized Jim Channon in the film "The Men Who Stare at Goats."
Jeff Bridges starred as a fictionalized Jim Channon in the film “The Men Who Stare at Goats.”

“I gives ZERO fucks about monkey-blooded peasant slaves with fictional corporate titles,” Alan continued in his email.  “My blood and entire lineage has been nobility since Roman times and Titus Statilius Taurus, and my family is inter-married with the house of Bourbon. I really don’t give a fuck about any corporate title or fictional rank given to corporate monkey slaves. My blue blood is worth more than all your corporate titles combined,” he wrote.

Although I realized going into this that Alan and I were likely to have some political differences, his story was just too interesting not to follow up on.  Ancient European nobility, running off to fight NATO conspiracies and Neo-Nazis with a the New Earth Army, founded by a controversial New Age military officer after his service in the Vietnam War…this was not something you see every day.   Alan agreed to a interview.

SOFREP: How did you come to work with LTC Channon and the New Earth Army?

I was first introduced to Jim by Mark Amaru Pinkham, the author of Guardians of the Holy Grail: The Knights Templar.  Mark was in one of my groups on facebook and we shared many interests. I liked Jim’s work and we eventually started working  together on a project called: The Combat of the Collective Conscience, which looks at Psychological Operations from Ancient to Modern times, in both military & civilians perspectives. That was our first project.

Jim Channon is a highly interesting, and colorful character, one that I had always wanted to meet myself since coming across his work while researching the Army’s Remote Viewing program nearly a decade ago.  Having served two tours in Vietnam as an Infantry officer, Channon returned home thinking about new ways that the United States could wage war, ones that don’t always require violence.  To say that Channon was thinking outside the box is an understatement.

JimChannon
LTC (ret.) Jim Channon

After being exposed to New Ager concepts in Post-Vietnam 1970’s America, Channon remained in the Army and was assigned to a Pentagon think-tank tasked with envisioning future methods of war. Channon’s concept was to create warrior monks who would make friends with enemy forces in novel new ways, including the employment of para-normal abilities.  When he pitched the idea to military commanders, they then made him the commander of the fictional First Earth Battalion in the New Earth Army.  Channon drafted a field manual for the US Army called First Earth Battalion Field Operations Manual which is definitely worth a read.