Nexus - 1403 - New Times Magazine-pages

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ELECTROMAGNETIC WEAPONS AND HUMAN RIGHTS WEAPONS ELECTROMAGNETIC HUMAN RIGHTS AND The US military- industrial- intelligence complex has an arsenal of electromagnetic weapons to use on today's battlefields and also against citizens as a means of social control and in contravention of human rights. A STUDY OF THE HISTORY OF US INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS AND CONTINUING RESEARCH IN ELECTROMAGNETIC WEAPONS his research explores the current capabilities of the US military to use electromagnetic (EM) devices to harass, intimidate and kill individuals, and the continuing possibilities of violations of human rights by the testing and deployment of these weapons. In the 1950s and 1960s, the CIA began work to find means for influencing human cognition, emotion and behaviour. Through the use of the psychological understanding of the human being as a social animal and the ability to manipulate a subject's environment through isolation, drugs and hypnosis, US-funded scientists have long searched for better means of controlling human behaviour. This research has included the use of wireless directed electromagnetic energy under the heading of "information warfare" and "non- lethal weapons". New technological capabilities have been developed in black-budget projects over the last few decades; these include the ability to influence human emotion, disrupt thought and present excruciating pain through the manipulation of magnetic fields. The US military and intelligence agencies have at their disposal frightful new weapons, weapons that have likely already been covertly used and/or tested on humans, both in the United States and abroad, and which could be directed against the public in the event of mass protests or civil disturbance. Human rights belong to people collectively. To believe in rights for some and not for others is a denial of the humanness of people worldwide. Yet, denial is exactly what US Congress and President George W. Bush did with the signing of the Military Commissions Act of 2006. The new official US policy is that torture and suspension of due process are acceptable for anyone the president deems to be a terrorist or terrorist supporter. This act is the overt denial of the inalienable rights of human beings propagated in the US Declaration of Independence and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. More so, US actions have declared to the world that the US suspends human rights for those it believes are evil. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been a guide for international law for most of six decades, and as such binds the United States to its general principles. Article 10 states that "everyone is entitled to full equality, to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him", and Article 5 specifically prohibits torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Both of these basic human rights have been superseded by the passage the of Military Commissions Act of 2006. Additionally, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares that everyone has the right to freedom of thought, expression and opinion. This means that humans have the inalienable right to be able to think their own thoughts freely and discover their own truths. Freedom of thought, or cognitive liberty, is the natural human right of each person to be secure in their ability to perceive the world to the best of their ability. To have true cognitive liberty in a world as complex as ours would mean that first we must have access to truthful and unbiased information about the actions of others and the general state of the world. The Center for Cognitive Liberties defines this as "the right of each individual to think independently and autonomously, to use the full spectrum of his or her mind, and to engage in multiple modes of thought". by Peter Phillips, Lew Brown and Bridget Thornton © December 2006 Project Censored Media Freedom Foundation Sonoma State University California, USA Website: http:/Awww.projectcensored.org Project Censored Media Freedom Foundation Sonoma State University California, USA Website: http:/Awww.projectcensored.org APRIL — MAY 2007 NEXUS = 11 www.nexusmagazine.com