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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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