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warfare, climate & USA

by John Enyang

08 December 2000 22:12 UTC


                 It's not only greenhouse gas emissions: 
                 Washington's new world order weapons 
                 have the ability to trigger climate change

         By Michael Chossudovsky
         Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa and TFF
         associate, author of The Globalization of Poverty, second
         edition, Common Courage Press
         
         The important debate on global warming under UN
         auspices provides but a partial picture of climate change;
         in addition to the devastating impacts of greenhouse gas
         emissions on the ozone layer, the World's climate can now be
         modified as part of a new generation of sophisticated
         "non-lethal weapons." Both the Americans and the Russians
         have developed capabilities to manipulate the World's
         climate.
         
         In the US, the technology is being perfected under the
         High-frequency Active Aural Research Program (HAARP) as part
         of the ("Star Wars") Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI).
         Recent scientific evidence suggests that HAARP is fully
         operational and has the ability of potentially triggering
         floods, droughts, hurricanes and earthquakes.
         
                HAARP is a mass destructive weapons 
                - not part of any negotiations
         
         From a military standpoint, HAARP is a weapon of mass
         destruction. Potentially, it constitutes an instrument of
         conquest capable of selectively destabilising agricultural
         and ecological systems of entire regions.
         
         While there is no evidence that this deadly technology
         has been used, surely the United Nations should be
         addressing the issue of "environmental warfare" alongside
         the debate on the climatic impacts of greenhouse gases.
         
         Despite a vast body of scientific knowledge, the issue of
         deliberate climatic manipulations for military use has never
         been explicitly part of the UN agenda on climate change.
         Neither the official delegations nor the environmental
         action groups participating in the Hague Conference on
         Climate Change (CO6) (November 2000) have raised the broad
         issue of "weather warfare" or "environmental modification
         techniques (ENMOD)" as relevant to an understanding of
         climate change.
         
         The clash between official negotiators, environmentalists
         and American business lobbies has centered on Washington's
         outright refusal to abide by commitments on carbon dioxide
         reduction targets under the 1997 Kyoto protocol.(1) The
         impacts of military technologies on the World's climate are
         not an object of discussion or concern. Narrowly confined to
         greenhouse gases, the ongoing debate on climate change
         serves Washington's strategic and defense objectives.
         
                "Weather warfare"
         
         World renowned scientist Dr. Rosalie Bertell
         confirms that "US military scientists  are working on
         weather systems as a potential weapon. The methods include
         the enhancing of storms and the diverting of vapor rivers in
         the Earth's atmosphere to produce targeted droughts or
         floods."(2)
         
         Already in the 1970s, former National Security advisor
         Zbigniew Brzezinski had foreseen in his book
         "Between Two Ages" that:
         
         "Technology will make available, to the leaders of major
         nations, techniques for conducting secret warfare, of which
         only a bare minimum of the security forces need be
         appraised... Techniques of weather modification
         could be employed to produce prolonged periods of drought or
         storm. "
         
         Marc Filterman, a former French military officer,
         outlines several types of "unconventional weapons" using
         radio frequencies. He refers to "weather war," indicating
         that the U.S. and the Soviet Union had already "mastered the
         know-how needed to unleash sudden climate changes
         (hurricanes, drought) in the early 1980s." (3) These
         technologies make it "possible to trigger atmospheric
         disturbances by using Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) radar
         [waves]." (4)
         
         A simulation study of future defense "scenarios"
         commissioned for the US Air Force calls for: "US aerospace
         forces to 'own the weather' by capitalizing on emerging
         technologies and focusing development of those technologies
         to war-fighting applications." From enhancing friendly
         operations or disrupting those of the enemy via small-scale
         tailoring of natural weather patterns to complete dominance
         of global communications and counterspace control,
         weather-modification offers the war fighter a wide-range of
         possible options to defeat or coerce an adversary. In the
         United States, weather-modification will likely become a
         part of national security policy with both domestic and
         international applications. Our government will pursue such
         a policy, depending on its interests, at various levels. (5)
         
         
                The high-frequency active aural research program -
                HAARP

         The High-Frequency Active Aural Research Program (HAARP)
         based in Gokoma Alaska --jointly managed by the US Air Force
         and the US Navy-- is part of a new generation of
         sophisticated weaponry under the US Strategic Defense
         Initiative (SDI). Operated by the Air Force Research
         Laboratory's Space Vehicles Directorate, HAARP constitutes a
         system of powerful antennas capable of creating "controlled
         local modifications of the ionosphere".
         
         Scientist Dr. Nicholas Begich --actively involved
         in the public campaign against HAARP-- describes HAARP as:
         "A super-powerful radiowave-beaming technology that lifts
         areas of the ionosphere (upper layer of the
         atmosphere) by focusing a beam and heating those areas.
         Electromagnetic waves then bounce back onto earth and
         penetrate everything -- living and dead." (6)
         
         Dr. Rosalie Bertell depicts HAARP as "a gigantic
         heater that can cause major disruption in the ionosphere,
         creating not just holes, but long incisions in the
         protective layer that keeps deadly radiation from bombarding
         the planet." (7)
         
                Misleading public opinion
         
         HAARP has been presented to public opinion as a program
         of scientific and academic research. US military documents
         seem to suggest, however, that HAARP's main objective is to
         "exploit the ionosphere for Department of Defense purposes."
         (8) Without explicitly referring to the HAARP program, a US
         Air Force study points to the use of "induced ionospheric
         modifications" as a means of altering weather patterns as
         well as disrupting enemy communications and radar.(9)
         
         According to Dr. Rosalie Bertell, HAARP is part of
         a integrated weapons' system, which has potentially
         devastating environmental consequences: "It is related to
         fifty years of intensive and increasingly destructive
         programs to understand and control the upper atmosphere. It
         would be rash not to associate HAARP with the space
         laboratory construction which is separately being planned by
         the United States. HAARP is an integral part of a long
         history of space research and development of a deliberate
         military nature.
         
         The military implications of combining these projects is
         alarming. The ability of the HAARP / Spacelab/ rocket
         combination to deliver very large amount of energy,
         comparable to a nuclear bomb, anywhere on earth via laser
         and particle beams, are frightening. The project is likely
         to be "sold" to the public as a space shield against
         incoming weapons, or, for the more gullible, a device for
         repairing the ozone layer. (10)
         
         In addition to weather manipulation, HAARP has a number
         of related uses: "HAARP could contribute to climate change
         by intensively bombarding the atmosphere with high-frequency
         rays. Returning low-frequency waves at high intensity could
         also affect people's brains, and effects on tectonic
         movements cannot be ruled out. (11).
         
         More generally, HAARP has the ability of modifying the
         World's electro-magnetic field. It is part of an arsenal of
         "electronic weapons" which US military researchers consider
         a "gentler and kinder warfare". (12)
         
                Weapons of the new world order
         
         HAARP is part of the weapons arsenal of the New World
         Order under the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). From
         military command points in the US, entire national economies
         could potentially be destabilized through climatic
         manipulations. More importantly, the latter can be
         implemented without the knowledge of the enemy, at minimal
         cost and without engaging military personnel and equipment
         as in a conventional war. The use of HAARP -- if it were to
         be applied-- could have potentially devastating impacts on
         the World's climate.
         
         Responding to US economic and strategic interests, it
         could be used to selectively modify climate in different
         parts of the World resulting in the destabilization of
         agricultural and ecological systems. It is also worth noting
         that the US Department of Defense has allocated substantial
         resources to the development of intelligence and monitoring
         systems on weather changes. NASA and the Department of
         Defense's National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) are
         working on "imagery for studies of flooding, erosion,
         land-slide hazards, earthquakes, ecological zones, weather
         forecasts, and climate change" with data relayed from
         satellites. (13) POLICY INERTIA OF THE UNITED NATIONS
         According to the Framework Convention on Climate Change
         (UNFCCC) signed at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de
         Janeiro:
         
         "States have, in accordance with the Charter of the
         United Nations and the principles of international law, the
         responsibility to ensure that activities within their
         jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the
         environment of other States or of areas beyond the limits of
         national jurisdiction." (14). It is also worth recalling
         that an international Convention ratified by the UN General
         Assembly in 1997 bans "military or other hostile use of
         environmental modification techniques having widespread,
         long-lasting or severe effects." (15) Both the US and the
         Soviet Union were signatories to the Convention. The
         Convention defines "environmental modification techniques"
         as referring to any technique for changing--through the
         deliberate manipulation of natural processes--the dynamics,
         composition or structure of the earth, including its biota,
         lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere or of outer space."
         (16) Why then did the UN --disregarding the 1977 ENMOD
         Convention as well as its own charter-- decide to exclude
         from its agenda climatic changes resulting from military
         programs?
         
                European Parliament acknowledges impact of HAARP
         
         In February 1998, responding to a report of Mrs. Maj
         Britt Theorin --Swedish MEP and longtime peace advocate--,
         the European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs,
         Security and Defense Policy held public hearings in Brussels
         on the HAARP program.(17) The Committee's "Motion for
         Resolution" submitted to the European Parliament: "Considers
         HAARP by virtue of its far-reaching impact on the
         environment to be a global concern and calls for its legal,
         ecological and ethical implications to be examined by an
         international independent body; &#91;the Committee&#93;
         regrets the repeated refusal of the United States
         Administration to give evidence to the public hearing into
         the environmental and public risks [of&] the HAARP
         program." (18.)
         
         The Committee's request to draw up a "Green Paper" on
         "the environmental impacts of military activities", however,
         was casually dismissed on the grounds that the European
         Commission lacks the required jurisdiction to delve into
         "the links between environment and defense". (19) Brussels
         was anxious to avoid a showdown with Washington.
         
         
                Fully operational
         
         While there is no concrete evidence of HAARP having been
         used, scientific findings suggest that it is at present
         fully operational. What this means is that HAARP could
         potentially be applied by the US military to selectively
         modify the climate of an "unfriendly nation" or "rogue
         state" with a view to destabilizing its national economy.
         Agricultural systems in both developed and developing
         countries are already in crisis as a result of New World
         Order policies including market deregulation, commodity
         dumping, etc. Amply documented, IMF and World Bank "economic
         medicine" imposed on the Third World and the countries of
         the former Soviet block has largely contributed to the
         destabilization of domestic agriculture. In turn, the
         provisions of the World Trade Organization (WTO) have
         supported the interests of a handful of Western agri-biotech
         conglomerates in their quest to impose genetically modified
         (GMO) seeds on farmers throughout the World.
         
         It is important to understand the linkage between the
         economic, strategic and military processes of the New World
         Order. In the above context, climatic manipulations under
         the HAARP program (whether accidental or deliberate) would
         inevitably exacerbate these changes by weakening national
         economies, destroying infrastructure and potentially
         triggering the bankruptcy of farmers over vast areas. Surely
         national governments and the United Nations should address
         the possible consequences of HAARP and other "non-lethal
         weapons" on climate change.
         
         
                        NOTES
         
         1. The latter calls for nations to reduce greenhouse gas
         emissions by an average of 5.2 percent to become effective
         between 2008 and 2012. See Background of Kyoto Protocol at
         http://www.globalwarming.net/gw11.html.
         
         2. The Times, London, 23 November 2000.
         
         3. Intelligence Newsletter, December 16, 1999.
         
         4. Ibid.
         
         5. Air University of the US Air Force, AF 2025 Final
         Report, http://www.au.af.mil/au/2025/ (emphasis added).
         
         6. Nicholas Begich and Jeane Manning, The Military's
         Pandora's Box, Earthpulse Press,
         http://www.xyz.net/~nohaarp/earthlight.html. See also the
         HAARP home page at http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/).
         
         7. See Briarpatch, January, 2000. (emphasis added).
         
         8. Quoted in Begich and Manning, op cit.
         
         9. Air University, op cit.
         
         10. Rosalie Bertell, Background of the HAARP Program, 5
         November, 1996,
         http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/envronmt/weapons.htm
         
         11. Begich and Manning, op cit.
         
         12. Don Herskovitz, Killing Them Softly, Journal of
         Electronic Defense, August 1993. (emphasis added). According
         to Herskovitz, "electronic warfare" is defined by the US
         Department of Defense as "military action involving the use
         of electromagnetic energyˇ" The Journal of Electronic
         Defense at http://www.jedefense.com/ has published a range
         of articles on the application of electronic and
         electromagnetic military technologies.
         
         13. Military Space, 6 December, 1999.
         
         14. UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, New York,
         1992. See complete text at
         http://www.unfccc.de/resource/conv/conv_002.html, (emphasis
         added).
         
         15. See Associated Press, 18 May 1977.
         
         16. Environmental Modification Ban Faithfully Observed,
         States Parties Declare, UN Chronicle, July, 1984, Vol. 21,
         p. 27.
         
         17. European Report, 7 February 1998.
         
         18. European Parliament, Committee on Foreign Affairs,
         Security and Defense Policy, Brussels, doc. no. A4-0005/99,
         14 January 1999.
         
         19. EU Lacks Jurisdiction to Trace Links Between
         Environment and Defense, European Report, 3 February
         1999.
         
         
         Copyright by Michel Chossudovsky, Ottawa, November, 2000. All
         rights reserved.
         
         
         Permission is granted to post this text on non-commercial
         community internet sites, provided the essay remains intact
         and the copyright note is displayed. To publish this text in
         printed and/or other forms contact the author at
         chossudovsky@videotron.ca, fax: 1-514-4256224.
         
         
         Michel Chossudovsky
         Department of Economics, University of Ottawa, Ottawa,
         K1N6N5
         Voice box: 1-613-562-5800, ext. 1415,
         Fax: 1-514-425-6224
         E-Mail: chossudovsky@videotron.ca; (altern. E-mail:
         chossudovsky@sprint.ca)
         
         
         On the Globalisation of Poverty and the Financial
         Crisis:
         "Seattle and Beyond: Disarming the New World Order"
         http://www.transnational.org/forum/meet/seattle.html<BR>
         Global Poverty in the Late 20th Century
         http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/chossu.htm<BR>
         http://www.transnational.org/features/chossu_worldbank.html
         http://www.transnational.org/features/g7solution.html
         http://www.heise.de/tp/english/special/eco/
         http://heise.xlink.de/tp/english/special/eco/6099/1.html#anchor1
         Recent articles on Yugoslavia at:
         http://emperors-clothes.com/artbyauth.html#C NATO's Reign of
         Terror in Kosovo
         http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/yugo_archive/19990816mcpaper.htm
         Overview of the War:
         http://www.transnational.org/features/Yuoverview.html On the
         role of the KLA:
         http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/co/2743/1.html Breakup
         of Yugoslavia:<BR>
         http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/62/022.html</P>
         



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