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Dear
friends,
Few
people are familiar with the important military and police term
"non-lethal weapons." Although referred to as non-lethal — and indeed
used for non-lethal purposes to control both civilians and soldiers —
these sophisticated weapons technologies can also be quite deadly.
Below are highly revealing one-paragraph excerpts of 12 engaging
articles on non-lethal weapons from the major media. Why does the
media give so little attention to these disturbing new weapons which
raise serious ethical questions? Links are provided below to the full
articles on their major media websites. If any link should fail to
function, click
here. By choosing to educate ourselves on these important issues and
to spread the
word,
we can and will build
a
brighter future.
With
best wishes,
Tod Fletcher and Fred
Burks for PEERS and the WantToKnow.info Team
Tech Watch: Forecasting Pain2006-12-01, Popular
Mechanicshttp://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/4202262.html
No
longer a gleam in the Pentagon's eye, ray guns — or radiofrequency (RF)
weapons, to be exact — officially have arrived. As troops are
increasingly forced to serve as an ad hoc police force, nonlethal weapons
have become a priority for the military. The Department of Defense is
currently testing the Active Denial System (ADS), which fires
pain-inducing beams of 95-GHz radio waves, for deployment on ground
vehicles. This surface heating doesn't actually burn the target, but is
painful enough to force a retreat. While the military continues to
investigate the safety of RF-based weapons, defense contractor Raytheon
has released Silent Guardian, a stripped-down version of the ADS,
marketed
to law enforcement and security providers as well as to the military.
Using
a joystick and a targeting screen, operators can induce pain from over
250
yards away, as opposed to more than 500 yards with the ADS. Unlike its
longer-ranged counterpart, Silent Guardian is available now. As
futuristic
— and frightening — as the ADS "pain ray" sounds, the Air Force Office of
Scientific Research is funding an even more ambitious use of RF energy.
Researchers at the University of Nevada are investigating the feasibility
of a method that would immobilize targets without causing pain. Rather
than heating the subject's skin, this approach would use microwaves at
0.75 to 6 GHz to affect skeletal muscle contractions. This project is
still in the beginning stages. The ADS, on the other hand, is already a
painful reality.
Note:For
more reliable information on these "nonlethal" weapons, click
here.
Unusual Forms of Sound2004-08-25, ABC Newshttp://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=99472
Outside
the [Republican national] convention hall, New York City police plan to
control protesters using a device that directs sound for up to 1,500 feet
in a spotlight-like beam. Meanwhile, a display of former Republican
presidents inside the hall will feature campaign speeches that are
funneled to listeners through highly focused audio beams. Both
technologies feature unprecedented manipulation of sound, but for very
different purposes. And while both technologies have unique, "gee-whiz"
factors, some remain uneasy with the idea of using sound to control
crowds.
When in weapon mode, LRAD blasts a tightly controlled
stream of caustic sound that can be turned up to high enough levels to
trigger nausea or possibly fainting. LRAD ... has been used by the U.S.
military in Iraq and at sea as a non-lethal force. In these
settings, operators can use the device not only to convey orders, but
also
as a weapon. In tests, police have shown how they can convey orders in a
normal voice to someone as far as four blocks away. The sound beam is
even
equipped with a viewfinder so the operator can precisely target the audio
by finding a person in cross hairs. Rather than using pure volume to
throw
sound far, the LRAD reaches distant ears by focusing the audio beam.
Wherever the beam makes contact with air, the air molecules interact in a
way that isolates the original audible sound. So if you're standing in
front of the ultrasonic sound wave, you can hear the sound. If you're a
few inches away, you hear nothing. Already, some Coca-Cola machines in
Japan are equipped with the technology so passers-by hear the enticing
sound of soda being poured into a glass of ice.
Energy-beam weapons still missing from
action 2005-08-12, MSNBC/Associated
Presshttp://msnbc.msn.com/id/8516353
For years,
the U.S. military has explored a new kind of firepower that is
instantaneous, precise and virtually inexhaustible: beams of
electromagnetic energy. "Directed-energy" pulses can be throttled up or
down depending on the situation, much like the phasers on "Star Trek"
could be set to kill or merely stun. Such weapons are now nearing
fruition. The hallmark of all directed-energy weapons is that the target
-- whether a human or a mechanical object -- has no chance to avoid the
shot because it moves at the speed of light. At some frequencies, it can
penetrate walls. "When you're dealing with people whose full intent is to
die, you can't give people a choice of whether to comply," said George
Gibbs, a systems engineer for the Marine Expeditionary Rifle Squad
Program
who oversees directed-energy projects. "What I'm looking for is a way to
shoot everybody, and they're all OK." Among the simplest forms are
inexpensive, handheld lasers that fill people's field of vision, inducing
a temporary blindness to ensure they stop at a checkpoint, for example.
Some of these already are used in Iraq.
A separate branch of
directed-energy research involves bigger, badder beams: lasers that could
obliterate targets tens of miles away from ships or planes. Such a strike
would be so surgical that, as some designers put it at a recent
conference
here, the military could plausibly deny responsibility. The
directed-energy component in the project is the Active Denial System,
developed by Air Force researchers and built by Raytheon Co. It produces
a
millimeter-wavelength burst of energy that penetrates 1/64 of an inch
into
a person's skin, agitating water molecules to produce heat. The sensation
is certain to get people to halt whatever they are doing.
Nonlethal weapons touted for use on
citizens2006-09-12,
MSNBC/Associated Presshttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14806772
Nonlethal
weapons such as high-power microwave devices should be used on American
citizens in crowd-control situations before being used on the
battlefield,
the Air Force secretary said Tuesday. The object is basically
public relations. Domestic use would make it easier to avoid questions
from others about possible safety considerations, said Secretary Michael
Wynne. "If we're not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens,
then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation," said
Wynne. Nonlethal weapons generally can weaken people if they are hit with
the beam. Some of the weapons can emit short, intense energy pulses that
also can be effective in disabling some electronic devices.
Note:The government has been developing potentially lethal "non-lethal
weapons"
for decades, as evidenced by released FOIA government documents. Don't
miss an excellent summary on this critical topic available
here and the in-depth
Washington Post article on
psychological manipulations available immediately below.
When Seeing and Hearing Isn't
Believing 2000-02-28, Washington
Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A45...
"Gentlemen! We have called
you
together to inform you that we are going to overthrow the United States
government." So begins a statement being delivered by Gen. Carl W.
Steiner. At least the voice sounds amazingly like him. But it is not
Steiner. It is the result of voice "morphing" technology developed at the
Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Psychological
operations...PSYOPS, as the military calls it, seek to exploit human
vulnerabilities in enemy governments, militaries and populations to
pursue
national and battlefield objectives. Covert operators kicked around the
idea of creating a computer-faked videotape of Saddam Hussein crying or
showing other such manly weaknesses, or in some sexually compromising
situation. The nascent plan was for the tapes to be flooded into Iraq and
the Arab world. The tape war never proceeded...but the "strategic" PSYOPS
scheming didn't die.
What if the U.S. projected a holographic
image of Allah floating over Baghdad urging the Iraqi people and Army to
rise up against Saddam? According to a military physicist given the task
of looking into the hologram idea, the feasibility had been established
of
projecting large, three-dimensional objects that appeared to float in the
air. A super secret program was established in 1994 to pursue
the
very technology for PSYOPS application. The "Holographic Projector" is
described in a classified Air Force document as a system to "project
information power from space ... for special operations deception
missions."
Note: If the above
link
fails, click here.
If
you want to understand some of the many hidden capabilities of the U.S.
military, this article is a must read.
'Matador' With a Radio Stops Wired
Bull1965-05-17, New
York Timeshttp://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F20817F9395812738DDDAE0994DD4...
The brave
bull bore down on the unarmed "matador" — a scientist who had never faced
a fighting bull. But the charging animal's horns never reached the man
behind the heavy red cape. Moments before that could happen, Dr. Jose M.
R. Delgado, the scientist, pressed a button on a small radio transmitter
in his hand, and the bull braked to a halt. Then, he pressed another
button on the transmitter and the bull obediently turned to the right and
trotted away. The bull was obeying commands from his brain that had been
called forth by electrical stimulation—by the radio signals—of certain
regions in which fine wire electrodes had been painlessly implanted the
day before.
[Experiments] have shown, he explained, that
"functions traditionally related to the psyche, such as friendliness,
pleasure or verbal expression, can be induced, modified and inhibited by
direct electrical stimulation of the brain." For example, he has been
able
to "play" monkeys and cats 'like little electronic toys" that yawn, hide,
fight, play, mate and go to sleep on command. With humans under
treatment for epilepsy, he has increased word output sixfold in one
person, has produced severe anxiety in another, and in several others has
induced feelings of profound friendliness—all by electrical stimulation
of
various specific regions of their brains. "I do not know why more work of
this sort isn't done," he remarked recently, "because it is so economical
and easy." Monkeys will learn to press a button that sends a stimulus to
the brain of an enraged member of the colony and calms it down,
indicating
that animals can be taught to control one another's behavior.
Dim 10 Juin - 17:36 par mihou