By Michel 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 WEAPON - 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; [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.