[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Weather warfare

[Bill Totten]

Beware the US military's experiments with climatic warfare

by Michel Chossudovsky

The Ecologist (December 2007 / January 2008)


Rarely acknowledged in the debate on global climate change, the world's
weather can now be modified as part of a new generation of sophisticated
electromagnetic weapons. Both the US and Russia have developed
capabilities to manipulate the climate for military use.

Environmental modification techniques have been applied by the US
military for more than half a century. US mathematician John von
Neumann, in liaison with the US Department of Defense, started his
research on weather modification in the late 1940s at the height of the
Cold War and foresaw 'forms of climatic warfare as yet unimagined'.

During the Vietnam war, cloud-seeding techniques were used, starting in
1967 under Project Popeye, the objective of which was to prolong the
monsoon season and block enemy supply routes along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

The US military has developed advanced capabilities that enable it
selectively to alter weather patterns. The technology, which is being
perfected under the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program
(HAARP), is an appendage of the Strategic Defense Initiative - 'Star
Wars'. From a military standpoint, HAARP is a weapon of mass
destruction, operating from the outer atmosphere and capable of
destabilising agricultural and ecological systems around the world.

Weather modification, according to the US Air Force document AF 2025
Final Report, 'offers the war fighter a wide range of possible options
to defeat or coerce an adversary', capabilities, it says, extend to the
triggering of floods, hurricanes, droughts and earthquakes: 'Weather
modification will become a part of domestic and international security
and could be done unilaterally ... It could have offensive and defensive
applications and even be used for deterrence purposes. The ability to
generate precipitation, fog and storms on earth or to modify space
weather ... and the production of artificial weather all are a part of
an integrated set of [military] technologies.'

In 1977, an international Convention was ratified by the UN General
Assembly which banned 'military or other hostile use of environmental
modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting or severe
effects'. It defined 'environmental modification techniques' as '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'.

While the substance of the 1977 Convention was reasserted in the UN
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) signed at the 1992 Earth
Summit in Rio, debate on weather modification for military use has
become a scientific taboo. Military analysts are mute on the subject.
Meteorologists are not investigating the matter and environmentalists
are focused on greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol.
Neither is the possibility of climatic or environmental manipulations as
part of a military and intelligence agenda, while tacitly acknowledged,
part of the broader debate on climate change under UN auspices.


The HAARP Programme

Established in 1992, HAARP, based in Gokona, Alaska, is an array of
high-powered antennas that transmit, through high-frequency radio waves,
massive amounts of energy into the ionosphere (the upper layer of the
atmosphere). Their construction was funded by the US Air Force, the US
Navy and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Operated jointly by the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Office of
Naval Research, HAARP constitutes a system of powerful antennas capable
of creating 'controlled local modifications of the ionosphere'.
According to its official website, www.haarp.alaska.edu, HAARP will be
used 'to induce a small, localized change in ionospheric temperature so
physical reactions can be studied by other instruments located either at
or close to the HAARP site'.

But Rosalie Bertell, president of the International Institute of Concern
for Public Health, says HAARP operates as 'a gigantic heater that can
cause major disruptions in the ionosphere, creating not just holes, but
long incisions in the protective layer that keeps deadly radiation from
bombarding the planet'. Physicist Dr Bernard Eastlund called it 'the
largest ionospheric heater ever built'.

HAARP is presented by the US Air Force as a research programme, but
military documents confirm its main objective is to 'induce ionospheric
modifications' with a view to altering weather patterns and disrupting
communications and radar.

According to a report by the Russian State Duma: 'The US plans to carry
out large-scale experiments under the HAARP programme [and] create
weapons capable of breaking radio communication lines and equipment
installed on spaceships and rockets, provoke serious accidents in
electricity networks and in oil and gas pipelines, and have a negative
impact on the mental health of entire regions'.

An analysis of statements emanating from the US Air Force points to the
unthinkable: the covert manipulation of weather patterns, communications
and electric power systems as a weapon of global warfare, enabling the
US to disrupt and dominate entire regions.

Weather manipulation is the pre-emptive weapon par excellence. It can be
directed against enemy countries or 'friendly nations' without their
knowledge, used to destabilise economies, ecosystems and agriculture. It
can also trigger havoc in financial and commodity markets. The
disruption in agriculture creates a greater dependency on food aid and
imported grain staples from the US and other Western countries.

HAARP was developed as part of an Anglo-American partnership between
Raytheon Corporation, which owns the HAARP patents, and British
Aerospace Systems (BAES). The HAARP project is one among several
collaborative ventures in advanced weapons systems between the two
defence giants.

The HAARP project was initiated in 1992 by Advanced Power Technologies,
Inc (APTI), a subsidiary of Atlantic Richfield Corporation (ARCO). APTI
(including the HAARP patents) was sold by ARCO to E-Systems Inc, in 1994.

E-Systems, on contract to the CIA and US Department of Defense,
outfitted the 'Doomsday Plan', which 'allows the President to manage a
nuclear war'. Subsequently acquired by Raytheon Corporation, it is among
the largest intelligence contractors in the World.

BAES was involved in the development of the advanced stage of the HAARP
antenna array under a 2004 contract with the Office of Naval Research.
The installation of 132 high-frequency transmitters was entrusted by
BAES to its US subsidiary, BAE Systems Inc. The project, according to a
July report in Defense News, was undertaken by BAES's Electronic Warfare
division. In September it received DARPA's top award for technical
achievement for the design, construction and activation of the HAARP
array of antennas.

The HAARP system is fully operational and in many regards dwarfs
existing conventional and strategic weapons systems. While there is no
firm evidence of its use for military purposes, Air Force documents
suggest HAARP is an integral part of the militarisation of space. One
would expect the antennas already to have been subjected to routine testing.

Under the UNFCCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
has a mandate 'to assess scientific, technical and socio-economic
information relevant for the understanding of climate change'. This
mandate includes environmental warfare. 'Geo-engineering' is
acknowledged, but the underlying military applications are neither the
object of policy analysis or scientific research in the thousands of
pages of IPCC reports and supporting documents, based on the expertise
and input of some 2,500 scientists, policymakers and environmentalists.

'Climatic warfare' potentially threatens the future of humanity, but has
casually been excluded from the reports for which the IPCC received the
2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
_____

Michel Chossudovsky is a Professor of Economics at the University of
Ottawa and an editor at the Centre for Research on Globalization,
www.globalresearch.ca


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