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U.S. Testing Pain Ray in Afghanistan
The U.S. mission in Afghanistan centers around swaying locals to its side. And there's no better persuasion tool than an invisible pain ray that makes people feel like they're on fire.
OK, OK. Maybe that isn't precisely the logic being employed
by those segments of the American military who would like to deploy the Active
Denial System to Afghanistan. I'm sure they're telling themselves
that the generally non-lethal microwave weapon is a better, safer crowd
control alternative than an M-16. But those ray-gun advocates better
think long and hard about the Taliban's propaganda bonanza when news
leaks of the Americans zapping Afghans until
they feel roasted alive.
Because, apparently, the Active Denial System is "in Afghanistan for testing."
An Air Force military officer and a civilian employee at the Air Force Research Laboratory are just two of the people telling Danger Room co-founder Sharon Weinberger that the vehicle-mounted "block 2″ version of the pain ray is in the warzone, but hasn't been used in combat.
[Update: "We are currently not testing the Active Denial System in Afghanistan," Kelley Hughes, spokesperson for the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, tells Danger Room.
So I ask her: Has it been tested previously? She hems and haws. "I'm not gonna get into operational," Hughes answers.
Hughes also disputes the assertion that Active Denial creates a burning feeling. "It's an intolerable heating sensation," she says. "Like opening up an oven door."]
For years, the military insisted that the Active Denial System - known as the "Holy Grail" of crowd control - was oh-so-close to battlefield deployment. But a host of technical issues hampered the ray gun: everything from overheating to poor performance in the rain. Safety concerns lingered; a test subject had to be airlifted to a burn center after being zapped by the weapon. (He eventually made a full recovery.) And then there were concerns about "the atmospherics" - how the locals might react - when they learned that the United States had turned a people-roaster on ‘em. "Not politically tenable," the Defense Science Board concluded.
I pinged Gen. Stanley McChrystal's staff about the use of Active Denial in Afghanistan. I'll let you know if I hear anything back. But a few months ago, a source told me that a representative from the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate was in Afghanistan. Did that mean Active Denial was about to be put into action? Nope, the source said. "She's just out getting some atmospherics on the use of non-lethals."
39 Comments so far
Show AllWho is going to burn in he'll?
"Wonder weapons" for the Empire.
"Wonder weapons" for the Empire.
Coming soon a "death star" details in wired next month........
"That's no moon. It's a space station."
We and the Israelis are the New Nazis of the 21st century. Farking unbelievable the tortures that we inflict on people of the third world.
" there's no better persuasion tool than an invisible pain ray that makes people feel like they're on fire."
I think they just play one of Obama's speeches on a loudhailer.
point a dozen of the pain trucks at our three branches of government , until they put things right, end the wars, end the patriot act, stop preaching fear, grow back bone and use the constitution to lead our country.
Practicing on the Afghans. So who is the next target? I'm guessing the Palestinians.
They've been trying to find a method of controlling large crowds. And I read about this "pain machine" quite some time ago. Apparently it's only just become operational. I'm suspecting the planned end use will be disgruntled American citizens when they've finally had enough of corporate looting of our economy.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
"I'm suspecting the planned end use will be disgruntled American citizens when they've finally had enough of corporate looting of our economy."
My thoughts exactly.
"Practicing on the Afghans. So who is the next target? I'm guessing the Palestinians."
Oh shit!! The Palestinians are the perfect victims for this technology. They have nowhere to go, and Israel is gonna love this sort of collective punishment - and how! Its like being able to tazer everyone simultaneously. My guess is this will be put into place over the next coubple of years.
Exactly. It is being tested now for possible future use on American citizens when the fecal matter REALLY hits the air circulation device.
And don't forget . . . many are the people who believe those airline restrictions and US border walls are not so much to keep people out as they are to keep people in. We could easily be boxed in just like the Palestinians as these things grow.
Ray Berthiaume
Read Greg Mortenson"s THREE CUPS OF TEA to read about a noble human being's approach to benefiting a foreign country. ...I sure hope none of those who invented & produce this torture machine claim to be Christians!
I wrote on the Pain Ray quite a while ago. I don't know if the net still has the clips. Volunteers were tested (mostly police officers and military if I remember right) with a closely monitored projector. even the toughest of them was screaming and running within three seconds.
The Pain Ray is sort of like a microwave oven. Concentrated high energy microwaves are directed at a crowd. This causes the subcutaneous moisture to come to a boil, causing unendurable pain.
In the case of crowd suppression, the people who are crippled or elderly might well not be able to run, not to mention pets and any wildlife in its path. I could not find out, but I imagine the aqueous fluid in the eyes would be effected the same way.
So, in essence, our way of controlling crowds has become to boil them alive, but not unto death if they surrender, or run away fast enough.
Boy, would the Spanish Inquisition have loved this one! Instead it comes from the "Land of the Free and Home of the Brave."
(I remember someone suggesting that wearing full body aluminum foil might deflect the rays before they reach the skin. I don't know and hope I never have to test the concept. ;-( )
I imagine we will all have a chance to experience at first hand this marvel of science, as more people become homeless, hungry and sick. "By God, they'd better not start bitching about it, or we'll show 'em! Hooah!"
By the way, if you read about the military plans for full spectrum dominance from space, we are not that far away from creating a "death Star."
As for those of us born in the 50s and public schooled here in America. B ut, but Americans are the good guys. We feed the poor. Provide housing to the homeless. Remember (TRUTH, JUSTICE, AND THE AMERICAN WAY). W.T.F.!!! Did somebody change the program and forget to send the memo? It's like a really bad dream that never ends, just gets worse day by day. Oil gushing uncontrollably in the gulf, 60 days now, how many Exxon Valdezes is that? 2 ilegal wars (probably more we are not aware of). Testing a pain ray on mostly defenceless civilians, to win their hearts and minds I know. War drums beating as American military vessels enter the Red sea. Israel murdering peace activists and getting a get out of jail free card from the US government. We have a president who never has looked like a man in charge. For those of you that remember JFK seemed are last hope of maintaining a moral superiority in the world. The rest is history, just like our constitution and bill of rights. GOODBYE America, for what you were suposed to be.
The best method of evaluation would be to change hats. Why not let some arabs or US dissidents use the ray gun on a US township, and see if it wins American hearts and minds. Without actually carrying out such experiments, there is just no way of knowing if Americans would mind being internally boiled, or if they would mind the resulting cancers.
Or is there? If you consult an astrologist or otherwise manage intuitively grasp that it wont win hearts and minds, then no doubt, the US government will have managed to grasp the same conclusions. After testing this on our ever so willing Afghani test subjects, this is not going to be of any practical use in Afghanistan.
So what is it going to be used for? Well, this stuff is going to be used domestically here in the USA to discourage demonstrations, and in case of a severe economic downturn, tent cities or other manifestations of "unrest".
Thats ridiculous, I hear you say. They wouldn't DARE do that to us! Relax dears, of course they wouldn't. And they wouldn't dream of using tazers on us either.
If you ever read the text (available on line) of the many Executive Orders sitting in a drawer in the oval office desk, you'd get an idea of what is probably in store for us if the system really starts breaking down and getting out of hand. It doesn't even need a massive uprising. A major natural disaster is all that is needed.
Martial law is declared, the entire government is given to FEMA. Not even the Congress or Senate can question it for six months. All forms of transportation may be seized, all foods and food production. People's homes may be seized and people will be relocated as the government needs and may be put to labor as needed.
The list goes on and on, then there are the KBR no-bid concentration camps, and old military bases converted or being converted. I have the army manual on the treatment of civilian prisoners for forced labor on military bases. NorthCom has been quietly training returning combat brigades in "suppressing civil dissent."
Sadly, we are rapidly approaching Nazi Germany, with more technological bells and whistles (pain ray, sound projectors, and other toys) along with the traditional truncheons, gasses, rubber bullets, sprays, mounted police, dogs.
Heil the Oligarchy! Heil Obama, its figurehead! Heil the Wehrmacht, er Pentagon!
In your heart, remember the Constitutional Republic we once were, and mourn its loss.
Minitrue,
Don't know if you are familiar with the panopticon or not. It is a type of prison building designed by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham back in the late 1700s, in which the design allowed an observer (prison warden) to watch each of the prisoners without any of the prisoners themselves being able to know if they were being watched. Bentham described it as "a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind" - pure omniscient surveillance. With what you have eloquently described, coupled with the ever-growing technological surveillance state, I believe we have an emerging virtual panopticon here in America.
Here is the wikipedia link for it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon
Also, I don't know if you read novels or not, but there is a GREAT trilogy of books out that touches on this very theme of the virtual panopticon and the surveillance state. It is the Fourth Realm trilogy by John Twelve Hawks. The first book is called "The Traveller", and the second one is "the Dark River". The third one just came out this year, but I haven't read it yet. They also include the theme of parallel universes. Here is the wikipedia link for those books:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Realm_Trilogy
I have always heard that America was an experiment.
Any more volunteers?
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Coming soon to a castrated protest or college campus near you: The Active Denial System pain beam, which we will no doubt be told is as "safe" and "non-lethal" as the Long Range Acoustic Device sound cannon. And why? Because "Amurkans" are now too stupid to resist it like our victims in the oil/terror war zones would.
"a test subject had to be airlifted to a burn center after being zapped by the weapon. (He eventually made a full recovery.)"
Sure, you can make a "full recovery" from first and second degree burns. It's when the microwave intensity is sufficient to cook your brains from the inside-out that you have to worry.
Coming soon to a protest near you.
FREE AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY (DIRECT) DEMOCRACY
After testing this on our ever so willing Afghani test subjects, this will be used domestically. Reading the posts, it seems everyone has already grasped this.
But what of our Afghani test subjects. Most likely, the Afghanis never heard of such things, and they are not even aware of the cause of their sickness. Consider for a moment, the ethics of using them as test subjects.
I haven't heard them complain, have you? Therefore, as you can see, they are completely willing. At any rate, they cant communicate with the country at the centre of the empire and they certainly cant vote in US elections. They are part of the empire, but lack the same rights as US citizens. Our media will definitely not tell you about their pain. From capitalisms point of view, they are perfect. We can do as we like to them with almost no consequences.
So why do they hate us?
For our freedoms?...Or is it the freedoms we take with other peoples and countries?
"Ullman is ready to use every kind of weapon to create shock and awe. He once said it might be a good idea to use electromagnetic waves that attack peoples� neurological systems, �to control the will and perception of adversaries, by applying a regime of shock and awe. It is about effecting behavior."
When it comes to Iraq, Ullman likes the idea of cruise missiles -- lots of them, right away. CBS News reports that Ullman�s ideas are the basis for the Pentagon�s war plan. The U.S. will smash Baghdad with up to 800 cruise missiles in the first two days of the war. That�s about one every four minutes, day and night, for 48 hours.
The missiles will hit far more than just military targets. They will destroy everything that makes life in Baghdad livable. "We want them to quit. We want them not to fight," Ullman told CBS reporter David Martin. So �you take the city down. You get rid of their power, water. In 2,3,4,5 days they are physically, emotionally and psychologically exhausted."
If 'they' will do this to peoples who were and are no danger to them, what will 'they' do to millions of separate, uncoordinated groups trying to rebel against 'them' personally, up close?
Perhaps 'they' will take on board that other countries also have the capacities to shock and awe .. which actions will not distinguish among the rulers and the rebels.
I'm amazed that they are wasting time and money developing
this thing, it's so easy to beat. microwave absorbing
fabric for protective clothing is easy and cheap to buy.
Microwave reflective fabric is easy to buy or make. If
enough people point reflecting dishes at it I'll bet you
could get the SWR (Standing Wave Ratio) high enough to
start developing some serious heat in the waveguide.
I'll bet it's not designed to sink a lot of the RF
being reflected back at it. I'd love an opportunity
to try and wreck one.
"Active Denial" is another fantastic fascist phrase that conjures up nothing related to universal equity/justice. In fact, the main function of fascist projects and propaganda is to distract us away from the good.
This is something like an atomic weapon, but without a blast effect. People will suffer radiation effects from it, some of them permanent and devastating.
Deploying this is a Crime Against Humanity, and the people responsible, from the policymakers down through the development engineers, should all go to prison for it.
Remember years back when there was development of a battlefield laser that would shoot out unseen across to the enemy and blind them permanently?
It was also reasoned that it would take 1-2 people (enemy) to attend to each afflicted and so would tie up even more enemy who they hadn't yet blinded.
Apparently the outcry over this weapon development put a stop to it. (maybe)
Kinda like they stopped developing neutron bombs because they were 'inhuman' I guess.....
Roasted Liberals, a conservative wet dream.
I hate to think how much money has been used over the years to develop even more horrific weapons to hurt and kill other human beings in ever more demonic ways. This is a nightmare. Apparently "man" has one attribute that sets it apart from the rest of the mammals- its overly clever, and that is all.
The human species is reaching population overload because we figured out how to use oil but we used it cleverly for our own selfish gain and not wisely. The whole mess is headed for collapse now that oil is getting harder to find and access. News like this makes me think this cannot happen soon enough.
This weapon is "generally non-lethal" as I understand only because they control the ray bursts to very short periods of time, fractions of a second. If they choose to shoot continuous beams for longer periods of time then it can quckly become a lethal weapon. I remember hearing of strangely disfigured bodies from the aftermath of Fallujah that seemed likely to have suffered being test subjects of an early prototype of this type of weapon. To go from "Crowd Control" to "Burn In Hell" settings, the operator would only need to turn the dial up a notch. Also, it being a hi-tech machine, it is vulnerable to malfunction. What would the warranty cover if a resistor blew causing 4 college student demonstrators to receive unintended high doses resulting in their death?
Like the infamous Therac-25, perhaps?
What does Non Lethal Weapons mean? It seems like an oxymoron. Any weapon can be lethal. A knife, water as in water boarding Lasers if the person has a heart condition or they misuse them or they malfunction. Is there any way an international world court can get the backbone to ban collective torture of the innocent civilians or guilty enemy. It should be recognized as a war crime. Active Denial System is another negative evil system that will endanger America by recruiting more terrorist to fight Americans. People who invent produce and approve such weapons are a national security concern.