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by Michel Chossudovsky
Professor of Economics,
University of Ottawa,
author of The Globalization of
Poverty, 2000.
November/15/2006
from
GlobalResearch Website
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 Defense Initiative (SDI). Recent scientific
evidence suggests that HAARP is fully operational and has the
ability of potentially triggering floods, droughts, hurricanes and
earthquakes. From a military standpoint, HAARP is a weapon of mass
destruction. Potentially, it constitutes an instrument of conquest
capable of selectively destabilizing 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... [T]echniques 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 counter-space
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 IMPACTS 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...; [the
Committee] 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.
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. According to Herskovitz, "electronic
warfare" is defined by the US Department of Defense as "military
action involving the use of electromagnetic energy..." 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
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.
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