Based at the HAARP Research Station near Gakona, the project is seen by many as an even more terrifying Alaskan phenomenon than Sarah Palin, which surely serves to indicate the profound levels of anxiety that surround the project within those realms where the conspiracy-minded lurk. As well as its legitimate involvement in analyzing the ionosphere and studying its potential for developing ionospheric enhancement technology for radio communications and surveillance purposes, HAARP staff perform other tasks, too, such as analyzing weather-related issues and “long-term variations in the ozone layer.”[69] The fact that most of this work is undertaken by military agencies is one of the reasons why so many suspicions surround HAARP.
It could be argued that HAARP’s overwhelming military link is not so strange; after all, in today’s world, with an ever-increasing reliance upon ever-advancing technologies, fluctuations in the ionosphere — which commences roughly 35 miles above the surface of our planet — might adversely affect military communications systems, particularly so in emergency situations.
Those behind HAARP are keenly aware of the conspiracy theories that surround the program, and have specifically, and carefully, made their position clear on why there is so much involvement on the part of the U.S. Department of Defense in its operations: “Interest in ionosphere research at HAARP stems both from the large number of communication, surveillance and navigation systems that have radio paths which pass through the ionosphere, and from the unexplored potential of technological innovations which suggest applications such as detecting underground objects, communicating to great depths in the sea or earth, and generating infrared and optical emissions.”[70]
Those who see HAARP as having a distinctly covert agenda, however, point to what they consider the projects’ darkest of all secrets.
The Earthquake in Haiti
On Tuesday, January 12, 2010, the Caribbean country of Haiti was hit by a devastating earthquake that killed more than 300,000 people, injured approximately the same amount, and left more than a million people homeless. It was a terrible, shocking tragedy for the people of Haiti, and one from which, even at the time I write these words, the nation is still struggling to fully recover. And, in the wake of the carnage, it did not take long at all for conspiracy theorists to suggest that the reckless — some even suggested the cold and deliberate — actions of HAARP personnel were to blame.
Just 48 hours after the Haitian events occurred, the Website Ahrcanum (www.ahrcanum.wordpress.com), which covers such issues as New World Order fears, weather-modification technologies, and conspiracy theories relative to the swine flu controversy, among many other topics, devoted much Web space to a discussion of the events at issue, and whether or not HAARP staff, using technologies that might have the ability to induce and target earthquakes in specific areas of the planet, were the actual culprits. Although such a theory might provoke the rolling of eyes in the majority of people, it should not be forgotten that, back in 1997, none other than U.S. Defense Secretary Cohen had specifically warned about hostile forces that might soon possess the technology to deliberately stimulate earthquakes.
The Ahrcanum article provoked a wealth of online debate and response. Some pointed to the fact that immediately after the disaster occurred, U.S. military personnel descended on Haiti en-masse to deliver assistance, food, clothing, and medical supplies, as a means to help the populace recover from the disaster — not everyone was so sure that the reason behind this effort was as altruistic as most people assumed. Commentators at the Ahrcanum site came right out and suggested that the earthquake was a deliberate HAARP-induced event, designed to provide the United States government with a reason to make its presence strongly felt in an area in which it had special interests. One concerned writer asserted at the Website, “Haiti is going to be the next U.S. colony.”
But why would anyone want to colonize, or even exert control over Haiti? What would be the reason? After all, it’s hardly a nation equipped with nuclear-tipped missiles aimed at the United States. Its people are not planning dirty-bomb attacks on U.S. soil. And Haiti is most certainly not in a position to launch a large-scale military assault on America, even if it wanted to. However, Haiti does have something that many nations lack: substantial oil reserves. Currently, the island is estimated to be home to 3 million barrels of off-shore oil. More significantly, the Greater Antilles, which includes Cuba, Haiti, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic, have a combined estimated 142 million barrels of oil, and 159 billion cubic feet of gas, according to a U.S. Geological Survey report in 2000. The authors of the USGS report speculated that the levels might actually be much, much greater: perhaps more than 900 million barrels of oil, and more than a trillion cubic feet of gas.
And guess what: HAARP technology can remotely sense the mineral content of the planet’s subsurface. In other words, in plain, easy-to-understand English, HAARP can be secretly utilized to find underground and undersea oil reserves. Conspiracy theorists say that both Afghanistan and Iraq have large reserves of oil, but the hostilities in the Middle East have already allowed U.S. military forces to occupy both countries, and, as a result, hold some sway over the oil supply of both. But what about countries deeply rich in oil that are not showing hostility to the United States? How might they be successfully occupied and their oil supplies targeted and perhaps even manipulated in the future? The theorists say that when large deposits of oil have been found by HAARP, and there is no military justification for invading the relevant country, HAARP’s earthquake-inducing technology has been used to provoke a seeming natural disaster that has then allowed officialdom to move in with what looks like a friendly offer of help.
To be sure, this is a highly controversial and massively damning scenario, but — as far as the HAARP-watchers are concerned — it’s seen as a wholly viable one. And in a world where oil reserves are becoming ever more depleted, such a technology is not just important; it may prove vital in determining which nations survive and which go under in the undoubtedly fraught decades and centuries ahead of us. Make no mistake: our current, overwhelming reliance upon oil will pose major challenges in the years to come.
As a perfect example of the situation in which even now we find ourselves, in 2007, a U.S. diplomat met with one Sadad al-Husseini, a geologist and the former head of the Saudi oil monopoly, Aramco. Husseini said, in bleak terms, that Saudi oil output would likely reach its peak production point in the next few years, after which the rate of production would decline very noticeably. Precisely how fast that downward journey might be is, right now, open to much debate. We might, however, be able to glean more than a few ideas from a report titled “Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, and Risk Management” that was prepared by Robert Hirsch for the U.S. Department of Energy and published in February 2005.