`Owning' the weather? PART V Katrina and Haiti

By Rahnuma Ahmed

The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present?and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower, US President (1953-61), and five-star general in US army
Jerry E Smith thinks there is a “scientific-technological elite” in the US. Precisely the kind of elite which Eisenhower had spoken of in his farewell address to the nation, nearly half a century ago (17 January 1961). One to which, not only American public policies, but global ones too, have become captive.
Smith, a writer, editor and activist for over three decades, is the author of Weather Warfare: The Military’s Plan to Draft Mother Nature (2006), and HAARP. The Ultimate Weapon of the Conspiracy (1998).
In a conference organised by Adventures Unlimited titled, `HAARP and the ultimate weapon of the conspiracy,’ Smith speaks of war and how changing weaponries through human history have impacted on the way war is fought: “Whenever you change the way fundamentally that war is fought, it’s called Revolution in Military Affairs, an RMA, and I believe we are in the 7th or 8th one in recorded history. The invention of gunpowder or the realisation that gunpowder could be used in warfare, created an RMA. The development of bows and arrows created an RMA and so forth. We stand now on a new RMA, in fact right after the fall of the Soviet Union, RMA was the hot topic in military intelligentsia circles. The war college circles and so forth were cranking out a large number of papers on this subject. One of the aspects of this that I find most disturbing, we went from weapons that could target individuals, swords, bows, guns, to weapons that could target groups of individuals, Greek fire, artillery. [We then went] to weapons that could target whole battlefields, i.e., the chemical weapons. And then we went on to those that could target whole cultures, whole ethnicities, i.e., the biological weapons; the atomic weapons are somewhat in-between. Now we are at the point where with the electromagnetic weapons we can target the whole planet. We can target whole continents, whole hemispheres.
“The guys at the Strategic Studies Institute who wrote this paper, titled:
Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). Electromagnetic Weapons.
The Revolution in Military Affairs and Conflicts Short of War
came up with a very interesting realisation… that the kinds of technologies we were developing, the kinds of weapons they were working on, were contrary to American morals and beliefs. And so, what was their contention, what did they say? [Did they say] Oh my gosh, this is immoral, we can’t do this? No. [Instead] they said, how do we change America, so that America will be willing to accept us playing with these toys. This is the tail wagging the dog. And this is that aspect [which I find most disturbing], we are being fed a world of disinformation on a continuing basis, because the military planners are re-designing our thinking to let them go forward in playing with these toys.”
As I watch and transcribe Smith’s lecture on You Tube, I think, so, is the `war on terror’ part of this re-design? Listening to Smith talking of `disinformation’ leads me to musing about why a scientist as brilliant as Nikola Tesla, is so unknown. Tesla, after all, had not only invented fluorescent lighting, the Tesla induction motor, the `Tesla’ coil (still used in radio, TV sets, other electronic equipment), the alternating current (AC) electrical supply system, 3-phase electricity,?but also the modern radio (no, not Marconi). Further, he is said to have invented a particle beam weapon, which some call a ?peace ray,? while others, a “death ray” . In theory, it was capable of generating an intense, targeted beam of energy and sending it across great distances to demolish warplanes, foreign armies. He is also said to have invented a doomsday device which could disrupt all communication systems on Earth, an idea long kept secret by the US government.
Most probably, I think, it was because of his invention of `free energy.’ If this line of research had been pursued, writes Ken Adachi on the basis of Dr Peter Lindemann’s meticulous research, “Unlimited electricity could be made available anywhere and at any time, by merely pushing a rod into the ground and turning on the electrical appliance.” (The Free Energy Secrets of Cold Electricity, lecture, 2000).
Free energy, derived from nature. For all. But surely initiating that kind of a revolution wouldn’t have appealed to the scientific-technological elite, would it?
Climate and weather are two different things, says Smith. Climate is what one expects, while weather is what one gets. Mainstream science recognises that human beings have the ability to alter the weather intentionally, only on a limited scale, and unintentionally, on a vastly larger scale. But the fact is, says Smith, “what can be done intentionally is far greater than what the mainstream is willing to or able to admit.” ?And there are, as Smith points out, a lot of intentional players around: academic, commercial and military. Who have a lot of intended objectives: financial, militaristic and political. To be acheived irrespective of the human costs involved. But no, actually, from the perspective of the scientific-technological elite, it is this wondrous humanity that is the problem. After all, as former American secretary of state Henry Kissinger had put it, the world’s population needs to be decreased by 50 percent. Population increases, he had asserted, harm US national security interests. ?(He too had received the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1973).
In Weather Warfare, Smith provides instances of “earthquakes on demand”: (a) the development of a “tsunami bomb” during World War II (revealed in documents recently declassified by the New Zealand government) (b) Project Faultless, which had caused a massive earthquake in the Nevada desert after a high yield atom bomb was intentionally detonated on a fault line. Smith also provides evidence of human initiation of several major quakes, and the 2004 Christmas tsunami, with “scalar” or other electromagnetic waves.
“There was nothing natural about the disaster that befell New Orleans in Katrina’s aftermath,” writes James Ridgeway (Mother Jones, 28 August 2009). Four years later, “confronted with images of corpses floating in the blackened floodwaters or baking in the sun on abandoned highways,” it increasingly becomes clear that what had taken place in this devastated American city was “no less than a war” where the victims were treated as enemies of the state. Their only crime was being black. Being poor.
“Every 30 or 40 minutes someone was dying,” recollects Marc Creswell, an Acadian medic. The company sent in outside doctors and nurses. FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) rejected the help. “When the doctors asked why they couldn’t help these critically ill people lying there unattended, the FEMA people kept saying, ‘You’re not federalized.’ ” I scan through headlines reporting FEMA failures, in the major media:
FEMA refuses hundreds of personnel, dozens of vehicles – Chicago Tribune, 9/2/05
FEMA won’t let Red Cross deliver food – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/3/05
FEMA fails to utilize Navy ship with 600-bed hospital on board – Chicago Tribune, 9/4/05
FEMA turns away state-of-the-art mobile hospital from Univ. of North Carolina – CNN, 9/5/05

FEMA won’t accept Amtrak’s help in evacuations – Financial Times, 9/5/05
FEMA turns back Wal-Mart supply trucks – New York Times, 9/6/05
FEMA prevents Coast Guard from delivering diesel fuel – New York Times, 9/6/05
FEMA blocks 500-boat citizen flotilla from delivering aid – News Sentinel, 9/8/05
FEMA asks media not to take pictures of dead – Washington Post, 9/8/05
FEMA turns back German government plane loaded with 15 tons of food – Spiegel, 9/12/05
While civilian aid for victims was made scarce, private security forces already had boots on the ground. As Jeremy Scahill reported in The Nation, Blackwater (re-named Xe) had set up an HQ in downtown New Orleans. Members of this private militia company were armed, and operated, as in Iraq: automatic rifles, guns strapped to legs, pockets overflowing with ammo, driving around in SUVs and unmarked cars with no license plates. When asked one of them replied: We’re on contract with the Department of Homeland Security. We can make arrests and use lethal force if we deem it necessary.
And the US government’s response to the earthquake in Haiti, on Jan 12 this year? A massive deployment of military hardware and personnel. Nine to ten thousand troops, including 2000 marines. Overall humanitarian operation led by the Pentagon. Dominant decision making role entrusted to US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM). The US, as the French cooperation minister remarked before being quickly shushed-up, seemed to be `occupying’ rather than helping Haiti. But why on earth would the US want to occupy a poor, impoverished nation like Haiti?
Haiti, according to recent revelations, has oil reserves which in comparison to Venezuela’s are like an Olympic swimming pool is to a glass of water. The US, according to Haitian scholar Dr. Georges Michel, has known of Haiti’s oil and natural gas reserves since 1908. After completing their explorations in the 1950s, they locked up what had been discovered, as “strategic reserves for the US.” To be tapped only when Middle Eastern oil becomes less available. Other Haitian scholars add, not only oil, but also Haiti’s strategic position, cheap labor, deep water ports, mineral resources (iridium, gold, copper, uranium, diamond, gas reserves, zyconium deposits), lands, waterfronts, offshore resources for privatization or the exclusive use of the world’s wealthy oligarchs and US big oil monopolies.
As I come across news reports, the Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez says the US was playing God by testing weapon that caused Haiti quake (Russia TV), I cannot help but trace parallels in the US government’s response to the disasters in Katrina and Haiti. The former seems to have been a dress rehearsal for the latter. Re-designing our thinking. The project of domination, as Eisenhower had put it.
Published in New Age 1 March 2010