The Weaponization of the Magnetosphere

I recently came across some lumbering bit of bureaucratese called "Radiation Belt Remediation."

Previously, I had only heard the word "remediation" used in the sense "to repair," as in "environmental remediation," and so my first thought was some concern that, like our air, fields, and waters, we screwed everything up real good in our magnetosphere too.

There seems to be an aspect of doublespeak in this term, however. An article called The Atmospheric Implications of Radiation Belt Remediation implies that “Radiation Belt Remediation (RBR)” describes "studies...being undertaken to bring about practical human control of the radiation belts."

The charged particles in our upper atmosphere have been the object of scientific and military research for many years. Projects from Starfish Prime to HAARP have sought to understand and manipulate various properties of the Earth's electromagnetic fields.

But it would appear that RBR is not so much a "program" as a "doctrine" or a "goal." Institutional goals and doctrines have a strange life of their own: a new President every 4-8 years has little effect on most of the day-to-day functioning of the government; a lot of bureaucrats spend their whole lives behind the same desk.

Because it is not a program, but rather a more general sort of institutional goal, it is an organizing principle for many programs. There are all sorts of studies underway at various facilities around the world probing various aspects of the earth's electromagnetic fields.

I suspect that facilities like HAARP and the Clam Lake ELF transmitter work in concert, using constructive and destructive interference to generate local effects from global signals. That is, I suspect these facilities function together as a system - like a radio telescope array - about which different researchers make different types of observations.

I imagine some scientists use this system to influence the magnetosphere, to observe and model how the magnetosphere responds. They probably use all sorts of advanced computing technologies in the process. There are probably lots and lots of military dollars involved in many different places, with dual-use projects left and right.

The military is clearly interested in the ability to manipulate the earth's electromagnetic fields. What, specifically, might the military's interest be?

It turns out there are all sorts of military applications for the earth's electromagnetic fields.

The most straightforward application is communications: a part of the atmosphere can be used as a temporary antenna in much the same way as the ionization trail of a meteorite can be used as a temporary antenna. The advantage of such a technology has to do with security: if an adversary doesn't know where a signal is going to come from, it is more difficult to detect and decode that signal.

Some applications have to do with defense ("defense" in a literal sense, not in the American sense in which "defense" is a euphemism for "war"). If you can focus a large amount of energy at one place in the atmosphere, you can use this energy to heat a column of air. Such a mechanism may be sufficient to disrupt the course of a ballistic missile.

Some applications have to do with offense. A powerful, focused, electromagnetic pulse can disrupt communications or disable a power grid. Some applications may be oriented towards the weaponization of space.

Beyond the twisted irony in the doublespeak of the word "remediation" in this case, I find it extremely troubling the extent to which persons in my government are willing to turn EVERYTHING AROUND ME into a weapon.

Does anybody know who these people are and why they should be trusted? Do they really know what their experiments are doing to our planet?

Preemption and the New Kind of War

I was reading a little bit about the US Cold War nuclear planning in the 1960's, and came across these two facts, which really struck me:

1) A PREEMPTIVE nuclear war would attack 1000 targets with 3000 warheads;

and

2) A RETALIATORY nuclear strike would attack 700 targets with 1700 warheads.

These two facts struck me because the attitude that informed this war planning seemed counter-intuitive at first. If somebody hits you, and you're going to hit back, don't you want to hit them with everything you've got?

Part of the difference in the scale of attack is certainly due to war planners anticipating some portion of our capabilities being disabled in the case of a retaliatory strike. But the numbers are incredible: in a full scale preemptive strike, 3 nuclear warheads were to be delivered to each target. That's a lot of redundant destruction. Which got me thinking about the character of preemptive strikes in general.

If you're going to hit somebody first, and you don't know whether they've got a black belt in karate, or a knife, or if somebody's got their back, you drop them quick, and make sure they don't get up. Go for the knees, the throat, the eyes, the groin.

A preemptive strike means targets are hit that don't really need to be hit, because a preemptive strike has a lot of strategic redundancy.

Which got me thinking about the attitude of "our leaders," who launched a preemptive war in Iraq, as part of a larger campaign in our New Kind of War. "Our leaders," who rose to prominence during the Cold War, who built their house of cards during the Cold War, find great value in preemption. Whatever THEY're trying to get at now, it's worth an awful lot to them (look out Iran).

Right now, we're reorganizing our Federal Bureaucracies left and right for the War on Terror, spending blood and dollars hand over fist in our Central Front in the War on Terror, using National Security Letters to draft private citizens into the War on Terror. Imagine what the War on Terror costs in terms of administrative overhead alone. Screw bullets, there are bureaucrats to pay. We're going to be paying this off forever...

OUR POLITICIANS ARE UP TO SOMETHING AND WE DESERVE TO KNOW WHAT.

The War on Terror is a preemptive war. The United States has not seen terror anything like what Northern Ireland or Israel have seen. More people dead in Iraq than on 911. More people dead in car accidents every year than on 911. More people shot to death in the ghetto every year than on 911.

We don't re-organize our society because of car accidents, we build more roads and make it cheaper to drive than to use mass transit.

We don't re-organize our society because of inner city violence, we copyright rap music and sell it to white teenagers who play violent video games and manufacture more guns and sell Army surplus AK47's and crack to gangsters and keep the white kids hooked on speed for their attention defect disorder. We make thieves because the wealthy have more money than they know how to possibly spend. We make weapons for peace, use copyright to sell people their culture, we tell people our culture is a culture of peace and we put them in debt and put them to work and brainwash them into USA #1 because YOUR reality is entertainment for some monarch or oligarch.

OUR POLITICIANS ARE UP TO SOMETHING AND WE DESERVE TO KNOW WHAT.

If the War on Terror is a preemptive war, and the War in Iraq is at all part of the War on Terror, it may not really matter what happens in Iraq.

There's a war on for your mind. Propaganda is marketing. If they don't hook you in with Iraq, they've got something else in the pipe, be sure of it.

Failure in Iraq?

Our multi-headed National Strategy for Victory in Iraq is organized around "Eight Pillars." These "Eight Pillars" represent distinct strategic objectives, each with a "corresponding interagency working group."

Considering that Islam is defined in large part by a doctrine called "The Five Pillars," I fear it may be difficult to underestimate the negative impact of this verbiage in our battle to win the "hearts and minds" of the Muslim world. Islam, according to Huston Smith, "joins faith to politics, religion to society, inseparably."

Are "The Eight Pillars" of our National Strategy some bit of cultural insensitivity, or worse yet, a sick joke by the planners of this occupation? It would seem, if nothing else, the use of such religiously-loaded language is profoundly unhelpful in the context of a religio-political people under military occupation, as the Qur'an states: "Let there be no compulsion in religion" (2:256).

Imagine how you would feel if a foreign occupation of our country was guided by "The Thirteen Commandments."

Paul Wolfowitz has asserted that our mission in Iraq is "not a crusade," although we can perhaps forgive those in the Middle East who may believe otherwise: our President has himself used that very term, and the Administration consistently frames the violence as religiously-motivated, even as we push our "Eight Pillars" on these people. Our strategy to "isolate enemy elements from those who can be won over to the political process by countering false propaganda" would seem to amount to imposing a heretical doctrine on a subjugated people, while marketing this heresy as salvation.

Although we undoubtedly possess the raw military strength to "bomb Iraq back into the stone age," such a move would be politically suicidal for much of Washington. As General David Patraeus put it, "there is no military solution to a problem like that in Iraq." At present, we would seem also to lack a viable diplomatic or political approach.

Among the top goals of the National Strategy is the reform of Iraq's economy, "which in the past has been shaped by war, dictatorship, and sanctions." The United States of America is in no small part responsible for the war, dictatorship, and sanctions that shaped Iraq's economy in the past, and we have done almost nothing to bring about meaningful reform. We have only brought more war, caused more damage to Iraq's infrastructure, and propped up a puppet government in a fortress far removed from Iraq's citizenry.

While the politicians in Washington warn us against the risk of failure in Iraq, it is important to recognize that our present conflict is itself an acknowledgment of our previous Iraq policy's failure. This acknowledgment compounds the failure of our previous policy by failing to rectify our previous mistakes.

We need to dramatically alter our direction if we are to stop compounding our own mistakes. Our current policy is simply to add fuel to the fire and stir the pot.

What Are We Really Doing in Iraq?

The Admministration has given the Citizenry of the United States of America varied and malleable rationale for our invasion and occupation of Iraq, ranging from false pretenses to revisionist propaganda.

While the Executive refuses to relinquish its ideological crusade, and the Legislature squabbles over the political ramifications of sparing thousands upon thousands of soldiers and civilians unnecessary suffering, We Citizens, strong-armed into funding this war, are deprived by Our Federal Government of all but the most basic figures regarding the true human and economic costs of this man-made disaster.

The Administration and its Neocon allies have played the Press like a fiddle, and the Press has obediently followed along.

Who really benefits from this war? Is it really right to view the Iraq conflict as "a war" in the singular sense of the word?

Are We an occupying force confronting a nationalist insurgency?

Are We fighting terrorists in the Global War on Terror?

Are We fighting a proxy war in an ideological standoff with Iraq's neighbors?

Are We peacekeepers working to quell sectarian violence?

Are We a police force suppressing opportunist criminals?

Are We liberators there to cast off Sunni fascists?

Are We a scapegoat for Shi'ite bitterness after the 1991 uprising?

Are We in the middle of a pan-national conflagration of Anti-American Arabs upset about the situation in Palestine?

What We are doing in Iraq?

When Our Government fails to give Us clear answers, We often turn to the free Press. Yet We must be wary that, if the fallout from the recent Walter Reed scandal is to serve as an indication of a free Press's power, it must also serve to warn Us of the power of a manipulated Press.

As so many of Us watch in horror and dismay while the Administration discusses open war with Iran, We, as Citizens, must take it upon ourselves to write Our Press, Our Senators, and Our Congressional Representatives; it is not enough to vote periodically. We must clearly express Our feelings about the current state of affairs, demand forthright governance, and prompt action. And as We find Ourselves in the midst of a psychological war waged against Us by the Administration, We must seek out alternative sources of information with which to arm Ourselves against that most potent weapon, ignorance.

Hidden Costs of the Iraq War

Advancements in battlefield medical care have reduced the number of deaths suffered by wounded U.S. soldiers relative to previous military conflicts. As a result, large numbers of soldiers are returning home with debilitating medical conditions.

Official U.S. Government figures list the number of severe battlefield injuries at 10,535 soldiers. This number, however, does not reflect the full extent of severe injuries suffered by soldiers. Some 18,704 soldiers suffering from infectious disease have thus far required evacuation by air transport. This is in keeping with figures from past wars, which often see greater numbers of soldiers succumb to disease than combat injuries.

Furthermore, these figures do not reflect the casualties suffered by the 100,000 civilian contractors currently serving in Iraq. Some 800 contractors have been killed in Iraq and 3,300 wounded. It is probably safe to assume that a large number of contractors have also suffered from infectious disease.

We are often asked to support our troops in Iraq, an assertion that plays off the good nature of citizens, who don't want to see fellow citizens hurt or killed. This assertion, which really equates to a plea to support our continued military presence, is dishonest: the same politicians who ask us to support our troops have themselves failed to do so in their vainglorious pursuit of a war predicated on a lie. This war demands an enormous investment in future medical care, and if we are to consider our troops to be fellow citizens and human beings, we must carefully consider what it means to support them.

It has become quite clear to me that the best way to support our troops is to ensure they have access to adequate medical care, and for our politicians seek a diplomatic victory in this conflict.

Rationale for the Iraq War

One reason President Bush gave as justification for an invasion of Iraq was the imminent threat that Saddam Hussein would give weapons of mass destruction to Al Qaeda.

Our inability to locate these weapons is often attributed to a failure of intelligence. However, the threat of Saddam Hussein giving WMDs to terrorists represents a deliberate effort to mislead the American public.

The most obvious problem with the Administration's rationale is that Al Qaeda viewed Saddam Hussein as an enemy. Saddam Hussein was the head of a secular regime, which did not require women to wear a burka and which allowed women to go to college.

Furthermore, Saddam Hussein was a dictator, and a dictatorship is about control. Why would a dictator in possession of a WMD yield control of such a device by giving it to an enemy?

Al Qaeda wasn't in Iraq before we invaded, and we are now deploying the same types of weapons on the battlefield which we, as grounds for our invasion, accused Iraq of attempting to acquire. This is untenable. Our colonial occupying force is actively breeding the very sentiment we ostensibly sought to confront.

While we worry about the rise of Fascism abroad, we omit the threat of Fascism in our Homeland (Fatherland, Motherland). We must be vigilant against Fascism both here and abroad.

The Modern Contemplative in Wartime

It is difficult to live the life of a contemplative in an age so fraught with strife, iniquity, and callousness. History, replete though it may be with violent conflict, has until recent decades never presented so many individuals with the threats we face today. Climate change, global war, and the spread of preventable disease, despite our collective ability to end such horrors, are epidemic. It is hard to make sense of a world where so many individuals struggle under these and other pervasive oppressions, with meaningless employment or debt, while the unimaginably wealthy, who profit from these struggles of others, cloister themselves away from the misery they’ve wrought.

When by the hands of ruthless oligarchs, lobbyists, and corrupt legislators, employment is systematically converted into a form of global oppression, there are relatively few problems that can be directly confronted by individuals, who are enslaved by market forces and daily distracted by unnecessary struggles. One turns perhaps to anger, violence, indulgence, or subservience as means towards the cessation of one’s struggles, if only for temporary release from bewilderments that render one deaf or mute before the presence of seemingly insurmountable corruptions, which threaten by their weight and inertia to drag down or hold back even the most simple of aspirations.

The contemplative of the Globalizing era, who seeks to struggle against war without engaging in violence, to procure sustenance without engaging in exploitation or oppression, who must look inwards while the sounds of the city beg endless distractions, must contend with an array of strange influences which the archetypal contemplatives of ages past were able to avoid; our present state of media saturation ensures that even if one does not watch commercial television, one is still made aware every time Tom Cruise has a baby.

Lovers of nature and seekers of simplicity are today most often without recourse to agrarian self-sufficiency or freedom from an increasingly invasive media landscape. Although by enculturation we lack personal knowledge of the ways of the seasons, of the soil, and of the stars, we move mountains, carve valleys and craters, redirect rivers, and create lakes. We shape the earth with machinery and color the heavens with the din of sodium vapor electrified, and claim dominion over the air itself with bands of electromagnetic radiation that turn the ionosphere into a deadly weapon. And what outrage will halt these machinations?

Anger, violence, indulgence... a fearful subservience before these unnatural powers, which can take from men and women their livelihoods or their lives with the stroke of a pen or the push of a button...

For all our modern refinement, we mask the visage of war in grotesque displays of nationalism and sacrifice, and deny our “savage” forbearers the nobility of their insights into the horrors of violence. The Vikings who fought their battles hallucinating on mushrooms, or the Aztec priests who, in ecstatic trances, tore out the living hearts of youths knew that to obscure the nature of violence was a grievous error that their civilization could not endure.

The symbolic lessons of our Western culture are so often buried under the clinical verbiage of disease and disorder that we no longer see why we inscribe our skin with tattoos, pierce our flesh, or why at birth we mutilate the genitals of our boys (to remind us all how powerless we shall be at the time of our death). Our clinical rituals are designed to hide from us any inkling we shall one day perish, while at the same time, on the other side of the globe, we cause scores of senseless deaths and permit the brutalization of the innocent for the sake of some man’s profit.

We have stockpiles enough of weapons to defeat any adversary by way of wiping clean the planet of our race, yet we continue to invest more resources in our military than our education, our art, and our starving citizens combined. Although our military expenditures are equal to those of the next nine most industrialized nations together, we encounter great difficulties gaining ground against insurgents in an impoverished plot of land in the middle of the desert: what can this mean but that war is some madman’s game, who defines victory how he sees fit? How can this be more sensible than peace?

Diplomacy for the War at Home

If we are to fight a War at Home - waged by the NSA, the FBI, the Pentagon, the DIA - against terrorist threats to our Homeland, are we to do so in such a manner as to deliberately rule out any possible diplomatic solution?

If we are to trust our Government's assertion that a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq would increase the risk of terror attacks on our Homeland, and if it is the goal of our Government to remove our troops expediently and expidiciously, then it follows that a non-military approach to solving our National Quagmire is essential. Distasteful though it may seem, the search for a diplomatic victory may require the formal recognition of Al Qaeda, and a diplomatic relationship with this formal body.

I think it can be taken as obvious by now that Al Qaeda is not some loose band of thugs and theives hiding out in mountain caves, but is a group of individuals who are organized and resourceful, who confess a group identity, and who associate with various similar groups of individuals.

In terms of the phenomenology of the movement, it may be worthwhile to consider nationalism as a mechanism to account for Al Qaeda. If it seems odd to think of Al Qaeda in nationalistic terms - we are, after all, told Al Qaeda is a "network" - it is worth noting that we speak of "the Palestinians" as we speak of nationalities. We hear the President speak of "Palestine," although no such State has yet been established.

Any number of causes can be used to account for the motivations of individual members of Al Qaeda. Some individuals, certainly, are motivated by ideology; some, certainly, are so lost as human beings they hate our Country enough to die just to prove it. Others, likely, are motivated by what they've seen America do in Iraq, Panama, Angola, or the disputed Israeli territories - these latter persons motivated by desperation and the fear they will be assimilated next.

Were America to publicly recognize Al Qaeda as we recognize Nations, and open formal diplomatic negotiations, we could meaningfully ask the question, "How can we help make the Middle East more stable, prosperous, and egalitarian?" The asking of the question in such a context - backed by the demonstrable Will and ability to help carry out positive initiatives - means violence would no longer be a necessary first and last resort.

We must eliminate the need for terror as a political approach by separating terror as a tactic from the ideologies terrorists represent. In the absence of desperation, a radical approach is not necessary. Diplomacy as an outstretched hand gives reason to doubt the need for desperate measures.

Our Government must acknowledge the problematic nature of its present Middle East policy in order to demonstrate our leadership is not so rigid as to be unmoved even in the face of its own citizenry. We must demonstrate that our military presence in the Middle East does not represent a Colonial occupying force. We must demonstrate that our relationship with regional leaders is sufficiently developed as to facilitate regional cooperation.

Because cultural familiarity will be vital to successful diplomacy, we must build enduring ties with regional institutions, such as universities, art and natural history museums, humanitarian and civil liberties organizations, and entreprenurial or trade associations. We must help motivate Europe and China to engage in similar iniatives. We should help facilitate trade between the Middle East, South America, and Africa, possibly by subsidizing transportation or by providing training in management strategies. Al Qaeda must be granted the status of Nation; identified as such, these people will most likely seek to establish a State, and the interest of this people will require legitimate advocacy.

We must bring a truly global body of allies (and the whole array of their interlocked interests) to the negotiation table to produce a consensus regarding the appropriate steps for US troop withdrawal from the Middle East. As the United States Government contemplates new fronts in the War on Terror - from the Middle East to Asia to Africa - truly global negotiations with a formal body representing Al Qaeda are becoming increasingly necessary if we are to avert a global economic and humanitarian disaster.

public service

it bothers me to hear how defensive administration officials become when confronted wih criticism of the wars in iraq and afghanistan. public servants should serve the public, not the other way around.

i would like to see a prewar cost-benefit analysis that considers the effects of proactive programs to strengthen governments in moderate and progressive middle eastern states like lebanon and jordan.

i would like to see footage from multiple angles of the plane that hit the pentagon.

i would like to know why the world has seen over and over the world trade center collapse, but why nobody has seen even a single clear image of the attack on the pentagon.

i would like to know why effective inter-city and inter-state mass transit is not a national security priority: 40,000 people die every year on highways.

i would like to know why those who rely on mass transit pay a larger percentage of their transportation costs compared to those who commute by car.

i would like to know why mass transit is viewed as something subsidized by the weathy for the poor, but roads that are subsidized by the poor for the wealthy are viewed as an entitlement.

i would like to know what sacrifices the president has made for the wars.

i would like to know why there is a bounty on osama in the tens of millions, but we've spent hundreds of billions to get saddam, who never did anything to us.

Lost Highway and Mechanized Warfare

David Lynch's Lost Highway is an allegory about the horrors of modern mechanized warfare. While it is tempting to read Lynch's sanitized world of ritualized action and wooden speech as representing a defense mechanism against a world of physical brutality, sexual violence, and sublimated subconscious impulses, Slavoj Zizek in The End of Psychology argues that exactly the opposite is true.

In modern warfare, soldiers may or may not be aware of whether, how, or when they've killed an enemy. Zizek argues that, therefore, soldiers must construct fantasies about killing opposing soldiers in face-to-face situations as a defense mechanism against the knowledge that technology shields them from any sort of verifiable account of what acts they’ve committed in battle. Censored images of brutality in the news therefore make war more horrible, as do fictionalized depictions of bloody battles, because both cases deny the psychological reality of modern armed conflict. Such a denial is especially harmful in mass media because it collapses the boundaries between the private suffering of individual soldiers and the public awareness of what suffering takes place. David Lynch’s film mirrors this conflation by deliberately confusing alternate narratives: experienced reality is often less convincing than constructed reality.

I find Zizek’s argument quite appropriate, particularly because it agrees with intuitive accounts of why a given individual’s expectations may motivate an individual to act contrary to “objective” accounts of reality (because reality constructed from a set of expectations can be extremely convincing). Zizek also provides an account of why efficient mechanized warfare as a political endeavor is inherently immoral (I personally believe we’d get into far fewer wars if we fought like the Viking Berserkers, who ate large quantities of psychedelic mushrooms and tore opposing warriors apart with their bare hands), and provides prescriptive actions for public servants and the owners of media outlets who are responsible for shaping public opinion about armed conflict. Zizek’s account moreover describes why control of media is important in modern authoritarian states: as more people get more information about the world from mass media, the control of mass media becomes an increasingly useful tool for manipulating the constructed realities of large numbers of people.