By Michael H. Brown

There it was, staring me in the eyes again, the year "1990," as in the prophecy at the center of a new book. And it led to this question: how far can we go with things? When are we being wise to clandestine goings-on, and when do we fall into paranoia, onto the terrain of conspiracy buffs, who see a plot behind every event?

These days it's hard to tell, but I have to admit wondering more and more about a couple of issues that I had previously dismissed, or towards which I was skeptical, including something known as HAARP: a project in Alaska aimed at beaming huge amounts of electricity -- in the forms of microwaves -- into the upper atmosphere.

The government -- which is running the program through the Department of Defense (specifically Navy and Air Force research units, along with a university) -- says the mission of HAARP is simply to find better ways of communicating with submarines and detecting enemy aircraft -- "over the horizon radar," if you will.

"The goal of this program is to further advance our knowledge of the physical and electrical properties of the earth's ionosphere which can affect our military and civilian communication and navigation systems," is way the project's website puts it.

Those who oppose it fear that HAARP (which stands for High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program) has the potential of doing everything from waging electronic warfare on a massive scale to altering weather and even controlling the populace.

Those fears are expressed in a controversial book called Angels Don't Play this HAARP, by Dr. Nick Begich and Jeane Manning. And it is here that we edge into prophecy at the same time that we must be wary of overreactions.

Whether or not this program might one day be used for massive effects on an unsuspecting public, it seems like the height of folly to inject anything man-made into the space around us -- the air, the energy fields. Here we come to the 1990 prophecy, and an addendum in 2004, focused upon in Tower of Light, which warned of new technologies that are disrupting the very "support structures" of nature (in a way that is "alarming Heaven").

As one article recently explained, the apparatus for HAARP is a reversal of the radio telescope. Antennas spread over 35 acres near Gakona send out microwave signals instead of receiving -- basically, beaming electromagnetic energy into a part of the upper atmosphere charged by solar radiation.

Let's not get technical here, but as far as power, perhaps we get the point when we are told -- by the official website -- that the HAARP transmitter system "is able to produce approximately 3.6 million Watts of radio frequency power."

While the allusions in the prophecy to "support structures" of nature may pertain mainly to what is currently happening with genetics (where scientists are doing everything from cloning to combining the genes of animals and humans), this too -- projects like HAARP, and perhaps attempts, in other projects, to control weather through chemical release -- pose real dangers.

I was caught by the coincidence of one phrase in an article stating that it was in precisely the year 1990 that a government document indicated "that the radio-frequency power zap will drive the ionosphere to unnatural activities."

The project operators deny that there could be any massive damage. Aside from some effect on local wildlife, the energy should not have any environmental impact whatsoever, the government assures us -- as do most experts.

But opponents beg to differ -- radically. It is an experiment on the sky, they say, using the largest energy levels yet toyed with, a "skybuster." "The military is going to give the ionosphere a big kick and see what happens," is the way one researcher put it.

HAARP, such critics further assert, may give the military the ability to knock out communications on land, sea, and the air; modify weather by altering upper-atmosphere wind patterns; cause polar ice melting; and even generate wireless electricity.

To think of the earth -- the atmosphere -- full of such energy should give us all pause.

We are still grappling to know the effect of all the chemicals and microwaves around us.

There are those -- and here we get closer to the fringe -- who even fear that electromagnetic waves may one day be used to affect the electrical processes of the human brain.  

That seems far-fetched. The chief worry would be militarizing the atmosphere by shutting down communications and focusing energy like a bomb. But former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski once quoted a specialist in warfare as saying that electronic strokes "could lead to a pattern of oscillations that produce relatively high power levels over certain regions of the earth.

"In this way, one could develop a system that would seriously impair the brain performance of very large populations over an extended period."

This is no conspiracist speaking. This is a man who was once a key adviser at the White House -- a man who formed foreign policy under Jimmy Carter and who as early as 1970 predicted a "more controlled and directed society" would gradually emerge, "linked to technology."

Big brother, in a way few imagined?

Right now, there is scant evidence that such mind-controlling electronic technology is available. One is tempted to fall back on the notion that it is paranoid, but for the fact that other things that just ten years ago were considered paranoiac -- or in the fantasy realm, namely the use of microchips inserted under the skin of humans -- already is coming to pass.

With such chips, humans can be monitored, even via satellite.

For the moment, such is mainly in use with pets, livestock, and elderly Alzheimer patients. But so acute is the concern people one day might be forced to have such monitoring devices that some legislatures have initiated legislation forbidding such a requirement.

What's more, the government has proven time and again to deceive the public when it comes to secret military projects. The company with the HAARP patents has $800 million worth of projects so secret that even the U.S. Congress isn't told how the money is being spent.

Back in 1978 I secured a document from a highly secretive government unit called the Advanced Research Project Agency (now DARPA) that showed this agency was actively involved in bizarre research that even entered into the realm of the occult (or what they called "psi" and "parapsychology").

Now I am braced by the fact that in 1994 -- another year indicated in the 1990 prophecy -- the Air Force revealed what was called its Spacecast 2020 master plan that includes weather controls. Our military considers affecting clouds, fog, and rain fair game and has since the 1950s.

The support structures of nature indeed! Might it be linked to HAARP?

The government assures us that the ionosphere has just about nothing to do with the two layers of atmosphere underneath that control the weather.

"The HAARP has subsequently become a target for those who have suggested that it could be used to test the ability to deliver very large amount of energy, comparable to a nuclear bomb, anywhere on earth,' changing weather patterns, blocking all global communications, disrupting human mental processes and mind control, causing earthquakes, and 'x-raying' the earth," notes an online encyclopedia. "These claims are generally disregarded by scientists and those involved with the project as being completely baseless."

Okay. For now I'll take these experts at their word. But while we're at it, will the government please step forward and for once and all set minds at ease about what some perceive as strange emissions from high-flying jets and also secret groups like the Bohemian Grove? I'd like the government to finally flesh out why so many leaders and corporate types congregate so secretly at Bohemian Grove in California each year. It was reportedly at a Bohemian retreat that the Manhattan Project was first conceived.

I'd like to settle a number of issues because years ago a seer said an evil personage would come on the scene who would do so by way of science and the media. I also believe the 1990 prophecy has validity; it foresees a time when control will be exerted by forces that currently are hidden and nefarious.

09/18/07