I N T E R P O L A R A RT 24 September 2008 - 12 October 2008

ART I N AN TA R C T I C A, A SE R I E S O F CO N F E R E N C E S… P. 4

September 2008 - 9th year

“Inuit are more likely to have an immediate, which isto say unmediated perception of the surroundingenvironment and living things within it. We to the

south are all but wholly insulated from the local landscape,and from what we are doing to both domesticated animals andwildlife. Our perceptions of “the environment” are heavilymediated by the mass media, which report about globalwarming in particular. Nevertheless, the array of climateopinion and the various uses it’s put to are broadly the same inNorth and South. We to the south may therefore learnsomething about ourselves from an understanding of howInuit process climate-related inform a t i o n .” (FranklynGriffiths, Camels in the Arctic?, Climate change as Inuitsee it: “from the inside out”; Walrus, November 2007)

The project we have been working on since 2007 dire c t sattention to the global cultural and ecologicals i g n i ficance of the polar regions, with a special focus on

@rt Outsiderswww.art-outsiders.com Tel : +33 (0)1 44 78 75 00

with Marko Peljhan and Annick Bureaud, Bureau d’études, Ewen Chardronnet, Andrea Polli, Catherine Rannou.

I-TASC - The Arctic Perspectiveby Marko Pel jhan &Matthew Biederm a n

Maison Européenne de la Photographie 5-7 rue de Fourcy – 75 004 Paris M° Saint-Paul ou Pont-Marie / Bus 67, 69, 96 ou 76

From the very first polar expeditions, artists havecontributed to the imaginary surrounding theEarth’s “extremities” and their work has fed a

sense of the sublime and of romanticism.Such a romantic vision endures, fuelled byadventurers of the extreme, who set out crossing,alone, the antarctic continent, the touching (anda n t h ropomorphic) image of penguins, the deadlybeauty of the environment conveyed by thousands ofimages of “icy white”, and by the fact that Antarcticais now threatened by global warming and ourpollution, that this last huge, supposedly virg i n ,territory is in danger.To create in or about Antarctica today is as much apolitical as an artistic act, just as it was in the 19th orearly 20th century. Except today the continent facesquite a diff e rent reality and our approaches arep robably more varied, more contradictory, morecomplex; burdened with numerous clichés all themore enduring for being mostly true.Current artistic practices are diverse in terms ofcontent as well as medium, but all show commitment:creating in Antarctica makes one a player rather thana mere witness. The four artists, or groups of artists, inthis conference series entitled “Art in Antarctica” areexemplary in the variety of their approaches and bythe issues they raise, each one echoing the others:climate changes and more broadly relationship to theecosystem, data processing and data “perc e p t i o n -understanding”, national organization of bases on acontinent where state possession is banned, habitatissues, Antarctica as a life-size laboratory and what isat stake there from a geostrategic perspective, thevision of a global world emerging from the heart ofisolation. Artists today work towards “putting the polesin the centre”.

the Arctic and the added value of that an openi n f r a s t ru c t u re of new communications and inform a t i o ntechnology can provide. The Arctic is one of the zones of crucial contemporarygeopolitical controversy and simultaneously a space with ano p p o rtunity for transnational, circ u m p o l a r, andi n t e rcultural cooperation and collaboration. In view of thee ffects of climate change, the indiscriminate economicexploitation of untapped re s e rvoirs of energy and naturalre s o u rces in the polar regions is increasingly feasible andinevitable. Unfort u n a t e l y, because of vested geopoliticaland economic interest, all of this is happening withouttaking into account that there is a determined cultureinhabiting the whole of the circumpolar continentalt e rritories. Through the spectacular placement of atitanium Russian flag on the seabed at the North Pole in2007, the Arctic was symbolically once again catapultedinto global public awareness. Russia’s recent activities,which have been going on since 2001, together withC a n a d a ’s delayed political responses and specifically thedelayed implementation of previously signed nativea g reements (i.e. the Kelowna Accord), …Followed page 2

The extreme in the centre

by Annick Bure a u d

Annick Bureaud, lives an works in Paris. New media artcritic and theoretician, director of Leonard o / O l a t s(www.olats.org).

are indicators of the shifting geopolitical significance ofthe Arctic and of the shifting relationship between theNorth and the South. Land and epi-continental claimsseem to bypass and ignore the impact on NorthernNative Cultures almost completely. The radicalecological and resulting cultural changes taking place inthe North are in our opinion central to a criticalunderstanding of planet Earth as a complex system.In light of this, the Interpolar Transnational Art ScienceConstellation (I-TASC) in conjunction with theConsortium Transnational Art Science Circumpolaire( C - TASC), has proposed and is working toward sestablishing the framework conditions for collaborativeprojects between aboriginal cultures, artists, hunters,scientists, tactical media workers and engineers in theA rctic within three broad topical fields: migration,climate and telecommunications. These three fields,understood both in scientific and poetic terms, sharecomplex mathematics, a changing and dynamic matrixand global reach. For the purposes of this interpretation,we see these fields wider, with migrations including themigration of flora, fauna, people, ideas and capital flows,with both climate and telecommunications areunderstood also very widely for the purpose of striving toestablish a common projection of the complex linksbetween these diverse territories and their connectedimpact. The activities of the two organizations are basedon the development, installation and deployment ofmobile, sustainable, zero-impact modular research units,o p e n - s o u rce ICT (Information and CommunicationsTechnology) literacy workshops, and pre s e n t a t i o nactivities within the circumpolar regions and globally.

The first implementation of the project involves thedeployment of the high tech media centric mobile unit –the BALOK, the setup of an open communicationsinfrastructure and the logistical support systems in theArctic from 2008-2010, allowing for the continuation ofsustainable operations beyond 2017. The module will betested in the Igloolik area and the Sirajuk peninsula,Baffin Island, together with field communications, mediaa g g regation and sensor components through acollaborative effort with the Inuit hunters, youth andmedia workers that will operate it and provide training tofuture operators.

In addition to the physical and technological systems, akey component of the project is the development of anopen structure for the dissemination of content, researchand design results, and a set of open data policy andp a rticipation guidelines. These guidelines can be

One of the inspirations for the project is provided by morethan ten years of activity of the mobile, autonomous andsustainable re s e a rch station Makrolab. Sited at theintersection of art, technology and science, Makrolab wascreated by a large interdisciplinary arts/engineering teamin Slovenia. It has been operating from 1997 to 2007 andhas been set up in remote locations in Germ a n y,Slovenia, Australia, Scotland, Italy and the UnitedStates. The final vision of Makrolab operations, hasalways been establishment of a permanent, collaborative,art/science infrastructure in the Arctic and Antarcticbeyond 2007. In addition to providing a means fortechnological innovation, the project served as a platformfor interd i s c i p l i n a ry and transdisciplinary exchange,providing creative conditions for joint teams of artists andscientists to work on the wide and global topics. While I-TASC and C-TASC on the one hand conclude the ten-year Makrolab process, their foundation opens up newareas of geographical and conceptual action. The project is centered around the Method of ArtisticResearch, which is currently playing a major role in thefield of conveying and appropriating innovativeexperience of the world. Heid and John (2003) wrote thefollowing on contemporary artistic strategies: “Artists are expanding their space of action by means of

diverse interventionist strategies. They no longer feelbound to an object-centered art market but instead findand invent operative, process-based forms in theircooperation with partners in all areas of society.Alongside these options for strategic action, an importantrole is assigned to investigating and reflecting uponsystemic conditions. In this way, artistic research canc rucially contribute to imparting and appro p r i a t i n ginnovative experience of the world. Artistic research isnot “bound to conventional paradigms of science, andcan be conducted without the obligation to adhere todogmatic methods (although both forms share the basicmotif of skepticism-as-a-method). Artistic research is ableto promote knowledge acquisition in very different areasof life without heeding the defining might of specialists,and in the process can choose aesthetic criteria as thefoundation for constructed realities” – to name just a fewof the most important factors. In this way, artistic researchpotentially promotes the emergence of a third culturethat might form a bridge between the two culturesdescribed in 1959 by C. P. Snow – namely, theirreconcilably juxtaposed humanities and the natural andtechnological sciences. Snow lamented the gap that hadgrown up since the 19th century between the humanitiesand the natural sciences, which he said had led to theimpoverishment of both fields. In a subsequent study ‘TheTwo Cultures: A Second Look’ (1963), Snowoptimistically prophesied the growing up of a “thirdculture”; a new generation of scientists that would closethe communication gap between the two traditionalcultures. Rather than giving a voice to popular science, the presentproject intends to strengthen the territory of artisticresearch, that for the purposes of this text, includesindigenous culture and traditional knowledge. Bothcultures, that of art as we describe it and that of science,hold in common human curiosity, creativity and thedesire to understand and represent the unknown. Theinitiators of this project believe that precisely thed i ffering epistemology and forms of knowledgeproduction can be used pro ductively in the proposedcollaborative matrix, by primarily taking into accountalso the geopolitical setting and the sociopoliticalconditions that are to be encountered in the polar regionsof the world and beyond.

extended for use by future use by a variety oforganizations, and individuals for use within native,scientific, cultural and academic projects and activities.In this way, the mobile, on-land media centric unit, withthe establishment of an open communicationsinfrastructure, will serve as a model for an empoweredmediated mobility for the Inuit, which is one of theprimary long term aims of the project.

With a focus on the creation of an inclusive workingmodel, the collaboration among northern and southernexperts will produce a true spirit of knowledge sharingand exchange, pre s e rving native expertise whileaugmenting it through an open technologicali n f r a s t ru c t u re. The content produced through theinitiative will be open-source, co-managed by I-TASC,C-TASC and local community members in the northand south, and made available worldwide. Through thismodel of information sharing and exchange, a valuablehistory will be written and preserved and will result inthe establishment of an open communicationsinfrastructure, presentation and learning websites andworkshops, videos, real-time audio-video stre a m i n gevents, the publication of a series of ‘cahiers’, as well aspublic events and exhibitions in the North, and a varietyof international venues, including Greenland, Iceland,Europe, Africa, the Americas, Asia and Australasia.

In our eyes, the distinction between artistic and scientificcreativity is minimal. In the past 10 years, the Makrolabproject set one of the precedents for an art derived, setof art/science based activites and technologicaldevelopments with many tangential results. Thetechnological innovations developed and tested in real-world conditions during the Makrolab operationsinclude: renewable energy systems, sensor networks andremote sensing systems, unmanned vehicle systems, newo p e n - s o u rce software and operating systems, thedevelopment of sustainable arc h i t e c t u re and longdistance communications infrastructures. The whole C-TASC / I-TASC system as we have started it in 2006 isnow placed into the International Polar Year activities.This project is the only IPY endorsed art / s c i e n c e ,technological, media/art, media “saturation” basedproject with indigenous Arctic culture collaboration andp a rticipation. Within the IPY, we can undoubtedlyachieve the goal of establishing a solid and clear baseleading to land mobility, media creation independence,and empowerment through technology, combined withthe potential of being a strong intercultural dialogueenabler.

EPTAP, 1999MAKROLAB markI, Lutterberg, DE, 1997

context of the NASA’s audiovisual data for the lunarexpeditions.Many films and documentaries have raised sometimesembarrassing questions about the hundreds of photos heldby the NASA communication services, whether they showfootsteps on the moon or incomprehensible shadows. Wewill not take up the argument here, yet one must recallthat just at the time when questions about the validity oflunar voyages were being reactivated, the followingheadline appeared on the teleprinters of the major newsorganisations: “NASA has lost the sound and video tapesof man’s first steps on the Moon” (Le Monde, 18.08.2006)(4). Just as discussions about the artificial nature of thephotos released by NASA do not allow us to decidewhether there has been an immense bluff, so thedestruction announced by NASA of all the archivesrelating to the lunar expeditions suggests that the questionis important and that this disappearance is part of ratherobscure projects.

Continuation of the article p.2…

idiocy.The theme of the planet is too heavily laden withscientific ideology not to give rise to doubts. What is thereality of this planetary icon: have we really seen itcorrectly? With what eyes do we look at it? Are weinterpreting the images correctly? There are so manydifferent ways of looking at the world, the stars and themoon; in any case, this is what is clear from the history ofWe s t e rn painting, which is also the history of themodification and deconstruction of perceptions, of formsand colours, as was the case with the appearance ofImpressionism and Cubism. It is hardly necessary to recallthat these pictorial experiments were rejected andlikened to symptoms of mental illness, until the momentthey appeared as far deeper expressions of the “real”. Asfor recording equipment, it cannot bring any certaintywhatsoever. The possibilities of “doctoring”, transformingand deforming pictures are incredibly powerful and meanwe cannot locate solid areas of reference in the tide ofphotographs, films and documentaries. We have seen thisin particular for our satellite planet, the moon, in the

Laboratory-Planetor the terminal phase of nihilism

VIP observers are lit up by the light of an atomic bomb, Operation Greenhouse, Enewetak Atoll, 1951.

1. Unique planet, obscene planet

The image of the “planet Earth” reproduced anddistributed ad nauseam (1) represents a kind of“nihilist icon” (2) : It imposes on all the proof of

an image-reality whose truth is the subject ofprogressively corrosive doubts about the “real” to whichit refers, that is, the unification of all eyes convergingtowards the image of a planet visible to all men, arelatively spherical planet, blue in colour. Thisastronomic picture, which has become an icon, wasshown by all television channels working closely with theNASA communication services during the Apollo lunarmissions.Each of us is called upon to unite around this unifiedimage of a single planet, on the surface of which allmankind are bustling about, whether they know it or not– a sacramental icon, as it were, like the unifying Christtowards whom humanity is making its way. This visioncan only satisfy small-time thinkers blending the mostcommonplace scientism with cry p t o - C h r i s t i a nhumanism (3).But this iconic unification of the world reveals somethingobscene since it devalues all representations of the planetthat do not emphasise a particular colour or anapproximate sphericity. According to this vision, whatbecomes of the gaze of Australian aborigines as they lookup at the skies? Should we simply throw out theexistential and geocentric journeys of all those whospend their lives walking across the stretches of the “flatcountry”? What becomes of ancestors, myths and poets?In this enticing vision of the planet there is too muchethnocentric weight that often accords with thecommercial and technological activities of industrialsocieties. The sphericity of the Earth has given rise tomany technical objects that are based on its shape, suchas satellite systems supplying GPS location andaudiovisual transmissions, map-making of all kinds, thetransport of thermo-nuclear weapons or the preparationof immense advertising signals projected from thestratospheric suburbs of the Earth. There is no need torecall that Google has already drawn up technical files forhuge advertising hoardings visible in clear weather fromthe Earth, just as the firm has already bought land on themoon that was sold in an auction organised by anAmerican estate agency that specialises in this kind of

(1) The ad nauseam argumentum or being right by default is as o p h i s t ry based on the repetition of an aff i rmation. Thismechanism lies behind the effectiveness of rumours and, at anextreme level, repetitive brain-washing through propaganda (oradvertising).(2) F. Nietzsche (1844-1900), ‘The European Nihilism’ in Willto Power, Random House, 1968. One stage of nihilism is markedby this swing between representations, concepts and values thatappear as intangible, then crack and give way to an increasinglyradical doubt, whether in the field of ethics, concepts or ofapparently clear perceptions.(3) This remarkable convergence between Christian faith andcommonplace scientism is embodied in individuals such asMichel Serres, member of the French Academy, friend of Hergéand avid reader of Tintin’s Explorers on the Moon. Tintin comicbooks should not be neglected, since they were long the sources

of imaginative by-products for Western children.(4) “Space: NASA has lost the sound and video tapes of the firststeps of man on the Moon. Blushing with shame, the directorsof NASA’s God d a rd Space Flight Center in Gre e n b e l t ,Maryland, confirmed on Tuesday 15 August that they hadlaunched a search to find some 10,000 to 13,000 tapescontaining the original data of the Apollo 11 mission. Thismagnetic material contains pictures of the first landing of a manon the Moon in the Sea of Tranquillity. The data were picked upon the Moon and transmitted to the American space agency’sground stations in Goldstone, California, and HoneysuckleCreek and Observatory Parks in Australia. They were then sentto the Goddard Space Flight Center, from where they weretransferred to the National Archives in late 1969. The NASAcentre later asked for their return, but in vain. The incident isall the more serious since the video quality, for example, of

these data is far higher than of those which, on July 21, 1969,dazzled hundreds of millions of TV viewers when Neil Armstrong,the commander of the Apollo 11 mission, set foot on the Moon.The American astronaut, with a falsely natural tone, then madehis famous remark: ‘It’s one small step for a man and one giantleap for mankind.’ ”Also missing, alongside the videos, are the tapes containing theprecious technical and medical data from the mission carried outby Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins. In all,there are some 2,000 boxes full of magnetic tapes, which, it ishoped, have simply been mislaid and not recorded over bymistake or otherwise used to save money. NASA, which in recentyears has experienced several setbacks, including the dramaticconsequences of the explosion of the Columbia shuttle, had noneed of such news at a time when it is trying to burnish its image.” Christiane Galus Article published in the edition dated 18.08.06

by Michel Ti b o n - C o rn i l l o t ,w r i t e r

VO O D O O P L A N E T… p.6Dommsday Seed Vault in the ArcticBill Gates, Rockefeller and the GMO giants know something we don’t p11

Geo-engineering : from the Atom Bomb to rising water level

p.4

n°3, October 2008 - 6 3 rd year 16 pages - 2 €"You can spend all your life measuring the dimensions of your prison"

2. Laboratory Planet

The unification and distribution of the image of theplanet Earth within the heliocentric Copernican

framework were present from the very beginning ofmodern science and point to the original vision thatscientific and technical globalisation would adopt. Thisvision was not only the embodiment of mod e rnspeculative reason, but was also the working plan for theplanetary laboratory that opened up before mankind inmodern societies. In the first issue of Planète laboratoire, I published anarticle, “The General Reconstruction of the World”, inwhich the deepest commitments of Galileo weredescribed. I would again like to look at his work here.Galileo was indeed the founder of laboratories, of spacesgiven over first to the construction and then thei n t roduction of rationalised phenomena ofexperimentation into the sensuous, everyday world. Itwas in the reserved space of laboratories that experimentswould be organised and that instruments would be used,each representing a concretised theory; where, in short,the world of multifaceted, confused, elusive experiencewould be replaced by a collection of objects and eventsreconstructed according to the principles of mathematicintelligibility.

The image of the planet issued from the speculations ofCopernican astronomy opened up a new era, that of themodern age, but it did so in a representative and abstractmanner. Yet it already heralds in a premonitory way thefinal assembly of all projects, of all the rational practicesreconstructing step by step the “real” world, this radiantworld towards which the pro g ress of science andtechnique is tending. Here the luminous unity of theicon Earth that appeared at the beginning proclaims thetransfigured Earth of the final rational phase of theprocess (6). It is in this sense that we suggest seeing inthis vision of the planet the workshop in which thegnome Alberich, the master of the underground worlds ofthe Nibelungen, the brother of the Titans of Greece,forges the new world.Several questions then arise: - what moment of this vast modern project have wereached? - have we arrived at the terminal phase of the process,that is, the quasi-mystic vision of a transfigured andradiant Earth? - how can this terminal phase be interpreted? Is it part ofa transfiguration or rather destruction and collapse?A re we not in fact the victims of our cre d u l i t y,interpreting the earliest harbingers, when in fact morecommonplace events are taking place?We still need the criteria to position ourselves on thetemporal scale of modern societies.

3. The shipwreck of the modern age

Icon and trademark of the modern age (7), the image ofthe planet Earth brings together and announces in a

single representation the ultimate project, that of areconstructed planet. But this remodelling work that hadonly just begun five centuries ago constituted and stillconstitutes the central project of modern societies andforms the heart of their history. This is still a very generalremark, but nonetheless gives us one of the keys helpingus situate the contemporary period in the development ofscientific, technical, industrial and financialp e rf o rmances of mod e rn societies. The incre a s i n g l yf requent appearance of phenomena with planetarydimensions and scope shows that the reconstruction ofthe planet according to the imaginary structures of themodern West is progressing and is embodying itself inparts of “reality” that are more and more devoted to theproject. Yet it so happens that the techno-scientific performanceswith a clearly established planetary dimension haveappeared only over the past five decades, during and afterthe Second World War. These performances, with theirexplicit planetary scope, are mainly issued from sciencesand techniques, and concern nuclear, chemical andbiological weapons, whose power must be unlimited. Butwe can also see that the technical and scientificinteractions and improvements connected to industrylead to other consequences on the planetary level, todeterioration in animal and plant environments, toglobal warming, etc. At this stage in the development ofthe grand project for the general reconstruction of theworld, the present generations are witnessing the firstappearance of planetary changes, implying a stro n gmaturity of the remodelling work.But this planetarisation of technical and scientific projectsthat deploy an effervescence of the geo-engineering typein the background also shows the stupefying dimension of

the “progress” of the sciences, techniques, industry andfinance, that is, the nihilism of modern Western historyin its entirety punctuated by the growing threats ofplanetary upheavals linked to the effectiveness of therequired performances. The changes in scale of techno-scientific applications, the recognition of their impact onthe planet, can all be read as traces of a baneful destiny.The “real” reconstruction of the world is confused littleby little with its destruction, and the radiant planetcollapses in its refuse and obscenity. Is it time to say thatthe modern age is foundering and that we are all sailingon an old tub that is sinking beneath our feet.Before describing some symptoms of nihilism, I wouldlike to indicate one of the paths towards understandingthis extraordinary transformation that took us so brutallyfrom our unshakeable confidence in the progress ofscience, technique and industry, to our rejection of thisstupid belief, and above all, to our fear of opening the lastdoor in Bluebeard’s castle (8), thus reducing the wholeplace, i.e. our dustbin-planet, to ruins.I need to advance carefully since the transmutation is sofast and so sudden from the trust placed in the progress ofthe techno-sciences to the anguish caused by theirpresent-day performances that one must avoid makingthe mistake caused by undue haste, especially since

attempts to understand this transformation are recent. Iwould however like to indicate some philosophicalorientations allowing us to grasp the planetary events thatare taking place; but I will merely evoke them in this textsince they are highly complex, meaning we must spendtime with the works that set out their general lines.To be continued in the next issue. We will examine thefollowing points:

- secularisation or the fatal aspect of the history ofprogress;- falling short of secularisation, the cosmic origins ofthe wreckage:The modern age as a new gnosisThe wreckage of the mod e rn age and its “nihilist”analyser.

- re-examination of some recent clinical symptoms:On the NATO report, Towards a grand strategy for anuncertain world – Renewing the transatlantic partnership,2007On the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the CERNaccelerator and its inauguration in September 2008.On the article Doomsday Seed Vault in the Arctic, F.Engdahl published on 4/12/2007

THE LABORAT O RY PLANET 2

… “Galileo introduced into a chaotic world a newseries of intelligible phenomena and beings,

presenting in the sensuous world the first creationsthat were transparent to mathematic intelligibilities.He inaugurated a new history where a new world wasconstituted and developed, rebuilt from the debris ofthe old. He thus opened up the immense building-siteof Western man; small, carefully enclosed laboratorieswould give way to other rational spaces, to factories,for example, where, with rationalised labour andmechanical machines, natural materials would bereduced and transformed on a large scale, spreadingtechnical objects all over the planet. And thisc i rculation, in ever wider and tighter concentriccircles, came to form in turn a new reconstructed,artificial and ever more rational nature. The firstorganised experiment, which created the reserved spaceof laboratories, set in motion a complex synergicmovement in which scientific undertakings organisedin laboratories were transferred to industry. Industry inturn spread the effects across the social life of man.Little by little this process gave rise to a new world, ourown.The formation of scientific reason includes both thespeculative aspect already evoked, the creation of newapproaches, the importance given to quantification, and

also a practical aspect, which is shown inexperimentation and about which manymisinterpretations regularly develop. Experimentationis not above all verification but the institution, theconstruction of a new reality. Through the eminentposition held by experimentation and laboratories, fromexperiment to experiment, from laboratory tolaboratory, this other aspect of modern reason isunveiled, its militant and activist aspect. Militantreason is the active face of reason, inextricably linkedwith its speculative aspect, creating for itself a worldless and less opaque to its project of transparency… In this context, modern observing reason can take partin the development of the endless building-site, whereanother world, full of meaning, is built, a worldgradually embodying an autonomous order throughscientific experimentation, through the networks oflaboratories and factories. Let us take this to itsconclusion: is there not here a replacement of theinitially given world with another world, madep e rmeable to the work of mathematisation? Therationality at work in modern sciences therefore hastwo aspects, a speculative aspect and an activist,militant aspect, aiming to rebuild nature and mankindso that they become diaphanous, transparent to the eyeof speculative reason (5).”

(5) Ti b o n - C o rn i l l o t, The General Reconstruction of theWorld, in Planète-laboratoire, n°1,page 4.(6) This approach is found in Hegel’s preface to thePhenomenology of Mind: “That it [the spirit of the world] is totteringto its fall is indicated only by symptoms here and there. Frivolity andagain ennui, which are spreading in the established order of things, theundefined foreboding of something unknown – all these betoken thatthere is something else approaching. This gradual crumbling to pieces,which did not alter the general look and aspect of the whole, isinterrupted by the sunrise, which, in a flash and at a single stroke,

brings to view the form and structure of the new world. But this newworld is perfectly realised just as little as the new-born child; and it isessential to bear this in mind. It comes on the stage to begin with in itsimmediacy, in its bare generality. A building is not finished when itsfoundation is laid; and just as little, is the attainment of a generalnotion of a whole the whole itself.” Hegel, preface to T h ePhenomenology of Spirit, Baillie translation.(7) By “the modern age” we mean Western Scientific, Technical,Industrial and Financial Modernity.(8) G. Steiner, In Bluebeard’s Castle, Yale University Press,

Operation Cue - Line of manikins at 7,000 feet, part of thermal radiation test after the blast. May 5, 1955.

Research into the driving forces of annihilation

by Bureau d ’étudesIndependant conceptual gro u p

We will not repeat here the now commonplaceo b s e rvation concerning the appro a c h i n gobsolescence and death of humanity or nature,

but will rather outline some of the opposing forces thatare working towards their fulfilment on the planet. Butfirst, to situate our remarks, we need to sketch out certainfeatures of the history of the Earth and the specialposition attributed to the nervous system in its history.The history of the Earth is a laboratory, an experimentalsituation in which the animal, the vegetable, the mineraland the human interact. In this vast laboratory, theperiod in which consciousness and knowledge began toaffect the Earth is sometimes called the Psychozoic Era.(1) This terms suggests an emergence, the emergence ofpsychic activity. Yet we might consider that the animalkingdom and mankind are already present in thevegetable and mineral kingdoms through the way inwhich seeds already contain leaves, flowers and fruits. Wecan identify a geological force here that is neithermaterial nor energetic with the name noosphere, which,alongside the geosphere and the biosphere, maps out thetripartite organisation of our planet. (2) The emergence and development of the noosphere islinked, according to some writers, to cere b r a ldevelopment, that is, to a particular form of thebiosphere. (3) We might call the idea according to whichthe central nervous system and cephalisation are theorganic sites of consciousness and knowledge, that is, ofthe constitution of the noosphere on Eart h ,cephalocentric.This focus on the central nervous system can becontested when we consider, for example, that theenteric nervous system with the abdominal brain thatserves as its central organ is the centre of the vitalfunctions (vascular and visceral functions, nutrition,gestation, respiration, circulation) – functions that areindependent of the cranial brain to the extent that achildren born without a cerebrospinal system can stilllive (4). These vital functions, although generallyunconscious and not mediated by re p re s e n t a t i o n s ,maintain relations with the outside world. Yet it isconsidered that thinking activity and self-consciousnessare located in the neuro-sensorial system. The nervous system is a closed system. “As a closedsystem, the nervous system is not capable of distinguishingbetween neuronal activity that comes from the outside andothers coming from the inside”. (5) In other words, from thepoint of view of the nervous system, there is nosubject/object distinction, no diff e rence betweenp e rception and hallucination, between inside andoutside. It functions without direct relations with theoutside world and is thus built up using only the elementsthat it constitutes itself. But though closed in on itself,the central nervous system does not lie outside the world.The particles that make up perceived matter alsocompose the matter that constitutes the eye, the brain,etc, or in short the neuro-sensorial system itself. Thiscontinuum between the ego and the non-ego was alreadynoticed by the German philosopher Schelling, for whomnature cannot be distinguished from the observer sincethe observer himself is part of nature (6). What observesis precisely what is observed. Since there is a continuum between the observer and theobserved, there is no reality-in-itself, that is, an objectradically alien to the observing subject. The observercannot distance himself sufficiently from the real totransform it into a distant object, all properties of anobserved reality being, as a result, intimately liked to thethought that brings it to light. Moreover, no observer canseparate in the language he uses a part that describes theworld and another part that describes his conceptualcontribution. Finally, the attempt to understand reality-in-itself comes up against the excess in the complexity ofthe real. The attempt to overcome this complexity by

concentrating on means or diagrams of recurrence arenot equivalent to a specular grasp of the real but aselection of the aspects that are most relevant in terms ofour cognitive interests. Contrary to the belief in reality-in-itself that claims todistinguish the observer from the observed object –removing, in the process, all aesthetic, ethical andteleological value from the observation – the continuumconnecting the observer with the object observ e dimplicitly calls on aesthetic, ethical and teleologicalvalues. These values point, as it were, to the imaginarylimits of the object observed. It is no different fromtheoretical creation, which, although it makes use ofideal objects, is also a certain kind of observation.We need now to move to the thought of a nineteenthcentury philosopher who aimed to grasp the dynamic andthe ends of this continuum that connects the observer tothe observed object. For Hegel, “knowledge knows that byrelating itself to an object, it is only outside itself, it exteriorisesitself; that it is only itself that appears to itself as an object, orthat what appears to itself as an object is only itself.” (7) Nowthis objectivity, the mediation of the object in theknowledge of oneself is, for Hegel, an alienated relationto itself, a relation that does not correspond to theessence of man. For this essence is realised as absoluteknowledge. Absolute, unmediated knowledge demandsthe overcoming, the annihilation of the object, theovercoming and annihilation of being (Nature). Although the object is first of all necessary forconsciousness to know itself, the suppression of theobject is the condition for the constitution of aconsciousness that depends on itself alone. T h econstitution of a consciousness that only depends onitself is thus closely linked to the killing of Nature.Nature “only has the meaning of an exteriority that must besuppressed.” (8) So is absolute knowledge the root of thedriving forces of annihilation?

This exteriority of Nature that must be suppressed inHegel vanishes from itself in Schelling by becoming

obsolete. For the transcendental history of the egoevolves according to an immanent law “according to whichthe subject of an anterior moment becomes the object of theulterior moment”. (9) Thus, he says, light, which isopposed to matter like the subject to the object, itselfbecomes an object. It becomes an organism. (10) In thisw a y, the organism, light that has become object,concretised light, becomes in turn subject.Then the organism, which seemed to exist for itself,becomes in turn the instrument of a superior term. “Oncethe (organic) process has reached its goal, this hithert osubjective term must itself pass into the object; its reign, itssovereignty are over, it makes way, in turn, for a higher power.(…) [When the organism] in turn becomes objective, and sosubordinates itself to a still higher subject – this momentcorresponds to the birth of man: with him nature as such isaccomplished and a new world begins, a completely new seriesof developments.” (11) In other words, the sovereignty ofbeing is over and makes way for pure knowledge: “Whatappears, as regards being in its totality, as a higher term, wherethe latter is included, could only be knowledge. Thus, we havetaken the subject to the point where it is pure knowledge: at thispoint, its being consists only in knowledge and we can nolonger find it in the form of a thing or of matter.” As forHegel, man, as the site of absolute knowledge or pureknowledge, is the driving force of annihilation. That being, that Nature should be obsolete (Schelling) orthat it must be suppressed (Hegel), that objectivity, thatN a t u re should be nothingness, alienation, this is athought that Goethe did not share, and Marx even less,who can be seen, as regards the theory of knowledge, as asuccessor of Goethe. Both (however opposed they wereon the social and political levels) shared an intensiveunderstanding of knowledge that cannot be seen as anisolated faculty but that must be an experience lived bythe whole subject; the same refusal of the division ofn a t u re into objects torn artificially from theirenvironment; the same idea of the sense organs andhuman speech as valid and reliable means of knowledge. For Marx, true knowledge is externalised knowledge, it is

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This Expanding Earth models show relative increase in Earth radii during Earth history. (Geology after the CGMW andUNESCO bedrock geology map, 1990)

(1) - The American geologist Joseph Le Conte (1823-1901)developed the idea that living matter was evolving in a definitedirection, which he called the Psychozoic era. James DwightDana (1813-1895), a geologist, mineralogist, and biologist,developed a similar idea, which he called cephalisation. Danapointed out that in the course of geological time, at least 2billion years and probably much more, there occurs an irregularprocess of growth and perfection of the central nervous system,beginning with the crustacea (whose study Dana used toestablish his principle), the mollusca (cephalopoda), andending with man. It is this phenomenon he calledcephalisation. Dana was a member of the Wilkes ExploringExpedition, (1838-1842), which discovered the MagneticSouth Pole and determined that Antarctica was a continent.(2) – cf. Vladimir I. Vernadsky, “Some Words about theNoosphere”, American Scientist, January 1945. The concept ofthe “biosphere,” i.e., “the domain of life,” was introduced in

biology by Lamarck (1744-1829) at the beginning of the 19thCentury, and in geology by Edward Suess (1831-1914) at theend of that century.(3) - See Teilhard de Chardin, Le Phénomène Humain, Seuil,1955(4) - Johannis Langley says that “... the ganglia of the gut do morethan simply relay and distribute information from the cephalic[cerebral] brain. He was unable to reconcile conceptually the greatdisparity between the 2 X 10 (8) neurons in the gut and the fewhundred vagus fibers from the big brain, other than to suggest that thenervous system of the gut was capable of integrative functionsindependent of the central nervous system.” (cf. Wood, J. D.(1994). ‘Physiology of the enteric nervous system’ in L.R.Johnson, (Ed.), Physiology of the gastrointestinal tract (3rd ed.)(Vol.1), New York, Raven Press, p.424)(5) – Maturana, Erkennen. Die Organisation und Verkörperungvon Wirklichkeit. Ausgewählte Arbeiten zur biologischen

Epistemologie. 2. Durchges. Auflage. Autorisierte Fassung vonW.K. Köck (‘Wissenschaftstheorie, Wissenschaft undPhilosophie’ 19), Braunschweig, Vieweg, 1985 (6) Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Einleitung zu seinemE n t w u rf eines Systems der Naturphilosophie [1799], Stuttgart ,Reclam, 1988, p. 19(7) – This reading of Hegel comes from Marx, Economic andPhilosophical Manuscripts of 1844.(8) - Marx, op. cit.(9) - Schelling, On the History of Modern Philosophy, CambridgeUniversity Press, 1994.(10) – cf. W. Vernadsky, La Biosphère, Félix Alcan, 1929, p. 12.It is the reflection of “the structure of the cosmos, linked to thestructure and the history of the atom, of chemical elements in general.” (11) - Schelling, On the History of Modern Philosophy, CambridgeUniversity Press, 1994.

Geo-engineering from the Atom bomb to rising water level

by Bureau d ’études

1. From ‘civil’ atom bombs to ‘clean’ atom bombs

An article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists inJune 1950 discusses the possibilities of usingnuclear explosives to blast canals and mines or

to break up icebergs. But the starting signal for nucleargeoengineering dates from the famous speech entitled“Atoms for Peace“ given by President Eisenhower on 8December 1953. Following this, the UN financed aconference in 1955 on the “peaceful“ use of atomicexplosives. In France, enthusiastic about the idea ofpeaceful bombs, the scientist Camille Rougeron wrote amonograph describing a range of possible applications fornuclear devices including diverting rivers, modifyingclimate, melting glaciers, building subterranean powerstations and blowing up mountains to extract ore. (1) Inthe Soviet Union, the engineer G.I. Pokrovskii alsospoke of the possible use of atomic devices to excavatecanals, considering that “radioactive contamination from anuclear explosion should not be considered anunsurmountable obstacle to the use of this kind of explosive formining or construction work.”(2)

The companies involved in the American militaro -industrial complex were quick to profit from theseh a rebrained schemes; they were the first to launchs e c ret programmes devoted to the “civil” use of nucleardevices (the Plowshare Program). At that time, so-called ‘clean’ nuclear projects were not yet on thea g e n d a .In 1957, the first civil nuclear explosion was carried outon a military site in the Nevada desert. It confirmed theengineers’ conjectures and was soon followed by theGnome Project in 1961 which carried out the first everu n d e rg round nuclear explosion.In 1956 Edward Te l l e r, the creator of the hydro g e nbomb, presented the crazy project of digging a “secondSuez Canal” using nuclear explosives. 300 nucleardevices buried in South Panama would be enough toexcavate the channel. Another option involvedb u rying a string of 764 bombs across Colombia.In 1958 the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) putTeller in charge of the Chariot Project, which involvedthe building of a man-made harbour at Cape Thompsonin Alaska using a hydrogen bomb.

H o w e v e r, the growing sensitivity of public opinion toradioactive contamination called these projects intoquestion, and the Plowshare Project itself wasultimately wound up in 1977. In the 1950s the first studies appeared showing theglobal effects of civil and military nuclear testing. AUN re p o rt mentioned that “The radioactive stro n t i u mthat has never existed in nature can be found today in thebones of the atomic era’s children, probably every w h e re inthe world. (...) The Un investigators have discovered thatthe quantity of radioactive strontium [ f rom H bombsexplosions] absorbed by the bones system of Orientalc h i l d ren is six times bigger that the quantity we find inOccidental ones [the first consumming rice, dire c t l ytaken from the soil]“( 3 ) .

In the 1970s, declining re v o l u t i o n a ry movements joinedf o rces with the rising tide of ecological protesters. Theradiation suff e rers’ International replaced theR e v o l u t i o n a ry International, radiation now appearing asthe lowest common denominator shared by theg o v e rned peoples of the world. By doing away with the idea of non-anthropic nature onE a rth and fostering awareness of the systemic effects ofhuman activity, large-scale nuclear experiments ushere din a new age of engineering focused on modifying thee n v i ronmental, climatic, oceanic and atmosphericsystems they had previously destroyed using industrialand military technology. Certain highly active atomicre s e a rchers found themselves occupying high-levelpositions in climatic engineering.

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o b j e c t i v i t y. Objectification is not reification. Theproduction of the object is not negation but position ofitself when the subject is free activity and carrying withinit its own end. The non-objective being is, on thecontrary, alienated if it works for another or in a non-freeway, since it is not the master of its own activity. Whenalienated, human labour becomes negating power, adriving force of annihilation. Man ends up without object,loses the object in which he expresses his being. But bylosing the object, the worker is deprived of theobjectivity of his being, in other words, he is onlysubjective: he is closed in on himself, without sensuousrelations with the world and, therefore, without a world.And this absence of world joins with his self-annihilation and the annihilation of Nature. Man is“without being”, he is not. (12). For the non-objectivebeing “is a non-real being, non-sensuous, a being that existsonly thought, that is, a being that is only imagined, a being ofabstraction”. By being derealised by money or by abstractlabour (mechanised labour), by submitting himself to acertain kind of non-real beings, to a certain kind ofbeings of abstraction, alienated man not only loses hisnature as an historic being, but becomes “anti-nature”(13). He loses his faculty for natural and historic self-creation. He no longer reproduces without the help ofmachines, or uses artificial procreation. He no longerknows himself without the mediation of abstract beings. This anti-nature, neither natural nor spiritual, is areality of a third kind, the reality of automatic beings,doted with a “life” that uses what is dead to move itself(14). The self-creating faculty of these beings isconstituted by the driving forces of annihilation that,like monetary and mechanical capital (dead labour),come to replace nature and the human spirit. To the tripartite division of the Earth – geosphere,biosphere, noosphere – is added a new sphere that denies

them, a technosphere, issued from the driving forces ofannihilation. By submitting themselves to the forces ofdeath, these forces, generating non-real, non-sensuousbeings, by putting themselves in the power of what Marxcalls “the empire of alien beings”(15), by submitting toobjects that, having become subjects, are now doted withmovement, with a capacity for self-creation and for theirown reflexivity, man debases himself, annihilates himself.And “self-annihilations are not ideal phantasmagorias: onecannot abolish material dispossession by a purely inner actionof a spiritualised nature”. (16) But is material action enough to abolish these abstractbeings? And above all, why should we take care of man,of Nature, and resist their downfall? Must they not die,and become the object of a higher term? Must the Earthnot become a desert and man make way for theSuccessor? In technological humanity’s suicide, shouldwe not recognise the ultimate sacrament that it is able togive itself? Already, a century after Marx, man and the Earth havebeen plunged into the abstraction of machines to thepoint that, as Donna Haraway rightly saw, man is today acyborg (17). To go against what makes up our present, totake care of mankind and nature, to delay mineralisationand abstraction, to fight against the forces of alienation,allows us to gain time, no doubt, to hold back the endwithout end, that acceleration we evoked in the previousissue of Planète-Laboratoire. For this end without endclaims to be projected as far as the human ecumene, everfurther, deeper, to the confines of the universe (18). Butis it only a question of gaining time? Is it not, on thecontrary, about pursuing another path whose shape we donot yet know?

The possible means of action against the forces ofannihilation of beings of abstraction still re m a i n sobscure. Before any action, we need to recognise thatthese abstract beings are beings acting on history andnature, prompting a process of organic regression and theself-debasement, the self-degradation of man, that is, of

history and Nature. And because they debase us and pushus towards our annihilation, we cannot merely see themas nuisances but also as enemy forces which – whatevertheir ontology, whether fictive beings or counter-entelechies – do not have the same aims as real mankind(19). But it is not the role of the present text to identifythese abstract beings, to describe them or to set out thepossible relations we can establish with them.

(12) - “A non-objective being is a non-being”, Marx, Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844.(13) - Marx, Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844(14) – Hegel quoted in Michel Tibon-Cornillot, Les CorpsTransfigurés, Mécanisation du vivant et imaginaire de la biologie,Seuil, 1992, p. 267(15) - Marx, Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844.(16) - Marx, The Holy Family.(17) – Donna Haraway, “The Cyborg Manifesto”,http://multitudes.samizdat.net/spip.php?article800(18) – This push towards the edges is clearly expressed by theRussian astronomer Nikolaï Kardashev, who, in 1964, drew up ascale of the classification of civilisations according to theirtechnological level, which is also their power of annihilation. Acivilisation of Type I is able to exploit, for or against itself, allthe available energy on its original planet. A civilisation of TypeII collects all the energy of the Sun. A civilisation of Type III,the energy of its galaxy. A civilisation of Type IV, the energy ofa galactic superamas and a civilisation of Type V all the energyof the visible Universe.(19) - By “fictive beings“ we do not mean the well-foundedfictions describing the infinitesimals in Leibniz. By counter-entelechies we do not mean the concretions of noumena, ofthings-in-themselves (as described by Friedrich Dessauer) butmore – to use a term that the Romans applied to the malevolentspirits of their dead returning to haunt them – larvae or lemures.A larva is a concretion of dead labour – monetary or mechanicallabour – the continuation of a living dead being that movesitself.

Location of cloud seeding experiments in Australia. E, (Emerald Experiment), NE, (New England Experiment), W,Waraggamba Dam Experiment, SM, (Snowy Mountains Experiment) MW, (Melbourne Water Experiment), WV(Western Victorian Cloud Seeding Experiment), SA, South Australian Experiment, WA (Western AustralianNorthern Wheatbelt Cloud Study) and Tasmania (T).

Cont inuation of the art i c l e“ R e s e a rch into …“

2. From atom bombs to geoengineering

Local climate modification has been tested and carriedout for military and commercial purposes for many

decades. The technique of cloud seeding to cause rainwas discovered in the late 1940s and first tested in the 40sand 50s. (4) In 1953 a presidential advisory committeeon climate control was set up to pursue these ideas and in1958 the US Congress increased the research budget forweather modification.Large-scale experiments were also taking place in theSoviet Union, although the research was more secretive.Around 1956, Soviet engineers came up with the idea ofa dam on the Bering Strait which would make it possibleto pump water into the Arctic Ocean from the Pacific.Warm water flowing into the upper Atlantic would meltthe Arctic ice cap, making the ocean navigable andwarming up Siberia.In 1955 John Von Neumann, a mathematician andphysician and the father of cybernetics, told Fortunemagazine that “Microscopic layers of colored matter spreadon an icy surface, or in the atmosphere above one, couldinhibit the reflection-radiation process, melt the ice, andchange the local climate.” In 1961 Russian climatologistBudyko speculated upon the possibility of changing theclimate by spreading powdered soot on snow and Arcticice from the air. The soot would lower the albedo (rate ofsunlight reflection) and the surrounding air temperaturewould increase (5). In 1965, in order to pre-empt the scandal that might becaused by these “unnatural” processes, the USg o v e rnment gave itself the authorization to takecompensatory measures should climate warming due toincreased greenhouse gases such as CO2 become critical.These compensatory measures did not include limitingthe use of fossil fuels, but instead involvedgeoengineering solutions such as spreading particles overthe ocean or in the atmosphere in order to createartificial “mirrors” which would reflect more sunlight.The annual cost of these projects has been estimated at$500 million, and it is claimed that they are less costlythan all other government anti-global warm i n gprogrammes (6).

It would be impossible to list here all the proposedscenarios to prevent climate change. One Americanstudy describes some of the most exotic among them (7).It seems certain that some are beyond the experimentalstage (eg spreading micro- and nanoparticles of iron onthe oceans) and others have apparently been deployed ona global scale for several years (eg civil aircraft bouncingsunlight back into space using reflective particles ofaluminium) (8). These operations are linked to hugecomputerized global climate system modelling projects(as far back as 1945, John von Neumann stated that suchmodels were a necessary condition for any form ofclimate engineering).

In the 1970s the ARPA (Advanced Research ProjectsAgency) launched a secret multi-million dollar project todevelop such models, codenamed Nile Blue. In the1920s, L. F. Richardson had imagined a suite of 64,000computers (the Computing Theater) designed to produceclimate models and predict global weather patterns (9).Richardson’s flight of fancy has been made reality byresearchers at Los Alamos National Labs who have beenable to simulate a planetary sphere divided into 500,000tetrahedrons with sides measuring 20 miles, in order toproduce a model for the Earth’s climate.

Disasters contribute to the development of globalsystems designed to control them.

They contribute to the development of the craziest ideas.Old notions are given a second wind, such as the greatproject dreamed up by German engineer Herman Sorgel,who proposed building a huge dam across the Strait ofGibraltar to seal off the Mediterranean (10). The Dutchalready possess a $2.5 trillion infrastructure (equivalentto all trade between the EU and the US) designed toprotect the Dutch population from rising water. A global2 metre rise in water levels could spur gigantic projects toprotect inhabited areas.

If the war economy has often made it possible to kickstartcreaking economic machinery while increasing labourcoercion, the economy of environmental disaster couldwell be its identical twin in that it offers work and newo p p o rtunities for industrial redeployment. Such aneconomy depends on a radical functionalization of theplanet. Beyond any strategic advantages it may bring, adisaster is first and foremost a loss to be recovered. As anarticle in Nature suggests (11), there is nothing toprevent us from considering the Earth as a vast input-output table of envronmental exchanges, an economicsystem producing goods and services in the framework ofwhat might be termed ‘sustainable capitalism’. Here,ecology outlines a new programme for systemicengineering, where the planet differs from the factory notonly in the size and complexity of the factors involved,but also – and primarily - in its ultimate purpose.

(1) – Camille Rougeron, Les applications de l’explosionthermonucléaire, Berger-Levrault, 1956. (2) – G.I. Pokrovskii, On the Use of Nuclear Explosives forIndustrial Purposes, Gornyi Zhurnal, Vol. I, pp. 29-32. (3) – Cf. Calder, Ritchie (1963), L’homme et ses techniques,Payot, p.236(4)– 29 US States have authorized climate mod i f i c a t i o nprogrammes. Low-temperature cloud dispersal by seeding withliquid nitrogen or compressed air has become routine at someairports. From Israel to Russia and from Australia to thePhilippines, cloud seeding is regularly used to increase rainfall.The largest cloud seeding system in the world is in China. (5) - Budyko, Mikhail I. (1962). Some Ways of Influencing theClimate. Meteorologiia I Gidrologiia 2: 3-8. (6) - cf. President’s Science Advisory Committee (1965).Restoring the Quality of Our Environment. Report of theEnvironmental Pollution Panel. Washington, DC: The WhiteHouse, p. 127. (7) – For example: 24,000 people employed to manoeuvre 350cannons installed at sea, each firing 120 860-kilo shellscontaining uranium dust, 250 days per year (cost: 100 billiondollars) (p.818, National Academy of Sciences, National

Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medecine (SEM). PolicyImplication of Greenhouse Warming : Mitigation, Adaptation andthe Science Base ( 1 9 9 2 ) .“ h t t p : / / w w w. n a p . e d u / b o o k s / 0 3 0 9 0 4 3 8 6 7 / h t m l / i n d e x . h t m l ” w w w.nap.edu/books/0309043867/html/index.html. See also Ac t i v eClimate Stabilization : Practical Physics-Based Approaches toP revention of Climate Change in National Academy ofEngineering, Washington DC, 23-24 April 2002,“ h t t p : / / w w w. l l n l . g o v / g l o b a l w a rm / 1 4 8 0 1 2 . p d f ” w w w. l l n l . g o v / g l o balwarm/148012.pdf(8) – The danger of an alteration of global climate systems –while even a small experiment like Biosphere II has not beensuccessfully maintained – has nevertheless been expressed by theUS National Academy of Sciences: “Geoengineering options havethe potential to affect greenhouse warming on a substantial scale.However, precisely because they might do so, and because the climatesystem and its chemistry are poorly understood, these options must beconsidered extremely carefully. . . . Some of these options arerelatively inexpensive to implement, but all have large unknownsconcerning possible environmental side-effects.”(9) – cf. Richardson’s Weather Prediction by Numerical Process,

published in 1922. In The Mathematics of Chaos, Ian Stewartcompares numerical weather prediction to a three-dimensionalchess game. The tetrahedral grids form the board, the numericalvalues assigned to weather variables are the pieces, andtomorrow’s weather corresponds to a position of the game. Thegoverning rules are the equations of motion of the atmosphere.(10) - Commencing about 1929, and ceasing by about 1953, theGerman architect Herman Sorgel (1885-1952) proposed theconstruction of the world’s most powerful hydroelectric dam,which he estimated capable of generating 50,000 Mwe at theStrait of Gibraltar alone, when the Mediterranean Sea had beenreduced by 200 m. Sorgel’s “Atlantropa” means a macroprojectthat suggests “turning towards the North Atlantic Ocean” forhydroelectricity.(11) - “The services of ecological systems and the natural capitalstocksthat produce themare critical to the functioning of the Earth’slife-support system. They contribute to human welfare, both directlyand indirectly, and therefore represent part of the total economic valueof the planet. We have estimated the current economic value of 17ecosystemservices for 16 biomes, based on published studies and afeworiginal calculations. For the entire biosphere, the value (most ofwhich is outside the market) is estimated to be in the range ofUS$16–54 trillion (10 12) per year, with an average ofUS$33trillion per year. Because of the nature of the uncertainties,this must be considered a minimumestimate. Global gross nationalproduct total is around US$18 trillion per year.” (Robert Costanza,Ralph d’Arge, Rudolf de Groot, Stephane Farber, MonicaGrasso, Bruce Hannon, Karin Limburg, Shahid Naeem, RobertV. O’Neill, Jose Paruelo, Robert G. Raskin, Paul Sutton etMarjan van den Belt, The value of the world’s ecosystem servicesand natural capital, Vol.387, 15 mai 1997)

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Some geoengineering projects, such as this plan for theirrigation of the Sahara by creating a ‘second Nile’ to refillLake Chad, have become part of geoengineering folklore (cf.Earth systems engineering and management by Stephen H.Schneider, Nature 409, 417-421(18 January 2001)

North Sea Drainage Project to Increase Area of Europe - Some 10 millennia ago, sea levels were 120 m lowerthan today. The North Sea consequently wasn’t a sea, but a land bridge between Britain and Europe. Geologistscall this Doggerland, after the Dogger Bank, the shallowest, largest sand bank in the North Sea today. In the1930s, there existed at least one wild plan to reclaim this particular piece of sunken real estate from the seas.“If the extensive schemes for the drainage of North Sea are carried out according to the plan illustrated above,which was conceived by a group of eminent English scientists, 100,000 square miles will be added to theovercrowded continents of Europe. The reclaimed land will be walled in with enormous dykes, similar to theNetherland dykes, to protect it from the sea, and the various rivers flowing into the North Sea will have theircourses diverted to different outlets by means of canals.” (September 1930)

Voodoo planetby Ewen Chard ro n n e t

Sea-based X-Band Radar (SB-XBR-1). Operating from Adak Island in Bering Straits.

On December 13, 2001, in view of the new post-11-September situation, the United Statesannounced its withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-

Ballistic-Missile (ABM) treaty. The treaty had beensigned to limit the race to develop intercontinentalnuclear missiles, and led to what was known as the periodof ‘detente’ between the two sides in the Cold War. Bywithdrawing from the treaty, the US put an end to thirtyyears of equilibrium in nuclear deterrence in the name ofthe ‘War on Terror’. It was also a formal recognition ofdevelopments in the Eurasian region, but above allallowed the US to redeploy its nuclear forces and systemsof detection.A year later, on December 16, 2002, George W. Bushsigned the plan to establish a new National MissileDefence system (NMD) by 2004, and already spoke ofthe interest expressed in the system by the Polish, Czechand Hungarian delegations during the 2002 NAT Osummit. So it came as no surprise to experts in nucleardeterrence when in January 2007 the US made an officialrequest to set up sites in these countries. Despite Russianprotests ‘of feeding the arms race’, on March 28, 2007 theCzech Republic gave the green light for negotiations tobegin with the US about the installation of a radarsystem outside Prague. The antimissile shield theAmericans wish to set up in central Europe by 2012includes ten interceptor missiles deployed in Poland anda high-performance radar in the Czech Republic.Let us retrace the history of radar technology and thesuccessive installations of these monuments of thenuclear era.

Early Warning

The Second World War led to the rapid developmentof radar technology (1) in the air or on the seas. In

1945, with the material demonstration of the destructivepower of the atomic bomb, the question of long-rangemissile detection was first raised. The concept of anti-ballistic missile defences soon took shape, with earlydetection radars and anti-ballistic missiles for in-flightdestruction of enemy nuclear warheads.In the 1950s, two over-riding aims defined the firstgeneration of anti-nuclear defences: the construction of abarrier for early detection of transpolar ballistic missilesand the centralised computer synchronisation of radardetection systems. If long-range nuclear missiles couldnot actually cross the Atlantic, they could still reachtheir targets by passing over the North Pole. This threatwas taken very seriously by the US and the SovietUnion, and triggered a race to create anti-missileweaponry.The US successfully carried out computers y n c h ronisation using the Semi-Automatic Gro u n dEnvironment (SAGE) system, which was set up in 1951.Linked to 50 screens and communicating with somehundred radars on the Canadian Pinetree Line, theapparatus could track 400 planes.The range of radar detection systems grew each year, andthe Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS),which could detect missiles from the moment they leftSoviet airspace, entered service at the end of the 1950s.The BMEWS involved the deployment of three hugebases for long-range radar detection (about 4500 km):Fylingdales Moor in England, Thule in Greenland and

Clear in Alaska. The bases were located strategically inrelation to the North Pole, and scrutinised the Soviettranspolar ballistic threat. They are still a key element inthe US system today.

For its part, the Soviet Union deployed and testedvarious systems of satellite detection radars and long-range radars from 1959: Dunai-2 in Kazakhstan (west ofLake Balqash), and Dniester in Siberia (Angarsk) and inKazakhstan. All Soviet ABM radars were named afterrivers in the USSR. Tested successfully, the systemopened the way for construction from 1962 of a baseprotecting Moscow named A-35 or the ‘Dog House’(according to NATO’s imaginative designation). From1963 to 1969, two Dniester-M radars for detecting Anti-Ballistic Missiles (ABM-1) were set up on the northAtlantic transpolar front in Olenegorsk (nearM u rmansk) and Skrunda (Latvia). In 1969 theE K VAT OR project synchronised the Soviet ABM-1system. NATO christened this emergent defencesystem the ‘Hen House’.

The Non-proliferation treaty and total protection of the territory

At the end of the 1960s, the two synchronised earlywarning anti-missile networks above the North Pole

area were operational. But the Cuban missile crisis andthe increasing range and speed of missiles revealed thethreat from sites nearer to hand and the vulnerability oftranspolar defences. Attack warning times fell from 15 to2 minutes in ten years. This situation led to theproliferation of anti-ballistic missiles at the end of the1960s and resulted in the USSR and the US signing theAnti-Ballistic Missiles (ABM) treaty in 1972, heraldinga period of ‘détente’. The treaty limited the number ofanti-ballistic missiles and authorised the construction ofradar defences, but confined their development to capital

cities and national borders.Under cover of this treaty, the period of ‘detente’ was togive both sides the time they needed to build a secondgeneration of defence systems (ABM-2).

Second Cold War

On March 23, 1983, Ronald Reagan and the neo-c o n s e rvatives launched the Strategic Defence

Initiative (SDI) of space-based protection known as ‘StarWars’. In the corridors of the Pentagon, discussionscentred around Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD);‘detente’ was at an end; Iran and Nicaragua hadundergone revolutions; Thatcher and Reagan had beenelected; the USSR had invaded Afghanistan. The SDI’schief goal was to energise the American ‘vood o o ’economy and stifle Soviet military investment in whatbecame known as the ‘Second Cold War’.In 1984, the Soviet transmitter/receiver radar systems ofthe Daryal type, a new generation rivalling the US PavePaws radars, were set up in Pechora (Siberia) and Qabala(Azerbaijan). They completed the Hen House (2). Theconstruction of a modified version, the Volga radar, wasundertaken in Belarus in response to the deployment ofPershing missiles in West Germany. Unlike the Dnieper,which was accurate to within one metre, the Daryal andthe Volga systems were precise to within about adecimetre (3).

The ‘Woodpecker’ signal

From the beginning of the 1970s, the US begandeveloping a system of Over-the-Horizon Backscatter

(OTH-B) radars, which is today considered as the biggestradar system in the world. (4)The USSR also set up a system of transhorizon radarsfrom 1976. They long remained secret, however. But a

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(1) - The radar is a system using radio waves to detect anddetermine the distance and/or the speed of distant objects. Atransmitter sends out radio waves, which are reflected by thetarget and detected by a receiver that is often located in thesame place as the transmitter. The position of the object isestimated through the time taken by the signal to return, andthe speed is measured using the change in frequency of thesignal through the Doppler effect. Radars are used in manysituations: in weather- f o recasting, air- t r a ffic control, thesurveillance of road traffic, by the army, in space travel, etc. Theword itself is an acronym: RAdio Detection And Ranging.Discovered in 1900 and defined theoretically in 1917 by NikolaTesla, radar technology was patented in 1935 by RobertWatson-Watt, which meant that he was considered as its‘official’ inventor. The British Defence Ministry ordered anetwork of radars, bearing the codename ‘Chain Home’, to bebuilt along the south and east coast. It played a crucial roleduring the Battle of Britain in 1940. From 1937 Nazi Germanydeveloped the ‘Freya’ radar, which was more powerful than theChain Home system, but also more expensive, which preventedits efficient deployment before the start of the war. Despiteoperations carried out between May and August 1939, theGerman Zeppelin LZ130 airship failed to prove that the 100-metre-high towers built by the British from Portsmouth toScapa Flow were linked to radar operations, and concludedinstead that they formed radio communications and life-savingnetworks. The British remained silent during the passage of theZeppelin... It is said that the technological advantage the

Germans believed they had confirmed their decision to invadePoland on September 1, 1939...(2) - From 1975, the USA built the PAVE PAWS system(Phased Array Warning System). To the BMEWS systemintercepting transpolar missiles were added the bases in CapeCod (Massachusetts), Robins (Georgia), Eldorado (Texas) andBeale (California), for the interception of trans-oceanicmissiles. The two systems are centralised at the CheyenneMountain base (Colorado). On the Soviet side, two Dniesterradars entered service in 1973 at Mishelevka (Irkutsk) and LakeBalqash (Kazakhstan), but above all the same year tests werecarried out on the first radar of the Dnieper type, which wouldalso be set up in the Lake Balqash region. It successfully openedthe way for a new generation of radars. Construction work onDnieper radars were also confirmed in Skrunda (Latvia),Mukachevo (Ukraine), Sevastopol (Ukraine) and Mishelevka.The Sevastopol and Mukachevo radars became operational in1978, completing the ABM-2 early warning ‘Hen House’system. The eastern part of the continent (east of the riverLena) was still unprotected, but the deserted region was out ofreach of the American ballistic threat at the time. In 1977,however, the US created the Cobra Dane radar, located at theEareckson base on the island of Shemya in the Bering Sea.Cobra Dane was conceived as an early-warning spy radar thatcould collect data on launch-tests of Soviet missiles inKamchatka and the Pacific Ocean.(3) - Other Daryal constructions were begun, but many neverentered service (such as the Skrunda in Latvia). In 1989, the

Soviet Union admitted the existence of a Daryal radar inKrasnoyarsk, which infringed the ABM treaty of 1972. Thetreaty stipulated that no ABM radar could be built more than150 kilometres from the country’s borders and that each oneshould be directed towards the exterior. Krasnoyarsk, however,is situated in central Siberia, over 800 km from any border. Theradar was dismantled progressively from 1989 to 1991. Despitethis setback, and before the fall of the regime, the USSRcompleted the ABM-3 Moscow defence fort ress, whichincluded, in particular, a radar of the Don type, a truncatedpyramid 45m high and measuring 100m at the base.(4) - Radio waves tend to travel in a straight line. This limitsthe range of detection of radar systems to objects in their visualhorizon due to the rotundity of the Earth. OTH radars use thereflection of short waves (HF), between 3 and 30 MHz, on theionosphere, the only part of the electromagnetic spectrumpresenting these characteristics. This technique means thatplanes and missiles can be detected over a longer range. Asthese signals are also reflected by the land and the sea, theDoppler effect is used to distinguish the ‘targets’ fro mbackground noise. The Doppler effect is the gap between thefrequency of the wave emitted and the wave received when thetransmitter and receiver are moving relatively to each other; italso appears when the wave is reflected on an object inmovement relative to the transmitter or the receiver. The effectis thus used to calculate the speed at which objects move.

repetitive HF tapping signal was frequently picked up byradio hams from the very beginning of Soviet OTHactivities. Due to its similarity with the tapping noisemade by the bird, it became known as the ‘Woodpecker’signal. NATO was well aware that the signal might comefrom unofficial OTH radars in the Soviet ABM network,and called it ‘Steel Yard’. Triangulation led to its beinglocated in Ukraine, although measurement errors meantthat opinions differed as to its exact source. For manyyears, disagreements continued concerning the signal’sorigin, prompting radio hams to express speculativetheories centring around a climate-control system, scalarwave weapons or attempts at long-distance mind control.The signal’s virtual disappearance from 1986 leftspeculation in suspense for many years afterwards.Today it is widely accepted that Soviet OTH radars werelocated at Komsomolsk-on-Amur in far-eastern Siberiaand above all at Chernobyl (transmitter) and nearGomel (receiver), both in the nuclear disaster’scontamination zone. The location of the immensetransmitter (over 200 metres long and 100 metres high),a few kilometres from the nuclear power station, mayexplain why the Russians and Ukrainians were sounforthcoming about the source of the ‘Woodpecker’signal... In any event, the nuclear catastrophe put an endto the activities of the OTH radar in Chernobyl. Freshspeculative theories today raise the question whether thenuclear power station brought the OTH radar to a halt orif it was the other way round.

New Order

In the 1990s, after the collapse of the USSR, theLatvian government ord e red the closure of the

Skrunda site for strategic reasons (rapprochement withNATO), but also because of the alarming rumours andstudies into irradiation of people living nearby (5). The

functions of the Skrunda radar were partly taken over atthe end of the 1990s by the Volga radar at Baranovichi,Minsk having better relations with Moscow. It had takenover fifteen years for the Baranovichi site to become fullyoperational and strategically effective. Since then it hasbeen progressively updated.Lastly, the prototype for the new strategic radar of theVoronezh type, set up in 2006 near Lejtusi, outside Saint-Petersburg, filled the gap left by the demolition of theSkrunda radar. Another Voronezh is being planned inArmavir in southern Russia to forestall uncertaintieslinked to its partners in Ukraine and Azerbaijan.In the US, ‘Star Wars’ was temporarily put on hold.Despite the ambiguity of studies into the dangers of non-

ionising rays and the proportionally higher cancer levelsnear the Cape Cod site in particular (6), the BMEWSand Pave Paws installations were regularly updated in the1990s, and are now considered the detection systems thatare hardest to break through.

From 1995, the USA developed a new generation radaroperating in the X band (X-Band Radar, XBR), whichcan detect debris measuring less than 10 cm. The firstprototype, christened ‘Have Stare’, was tested on the airforce base in Vandenberg, California, and was thenmoved to the Vardø site in northern Norway in 1998(today called Globus). The radar’s job is to keep watchon orbital debris, but also on Russian missile tests in theNorth Atlantic polar area.In 2006, the first sea-based XBR radar emerged fromTexan shipbuilding sites. This was an XBR positioned ona sort of mobile oil-rig that can be moved to strategicareas. The mobile XBR was sent to the Misawa base inJapan for purposes of deterrence and to supervise NorthKorean airspace, and to the Bering Sea for surveillance ofRussian missile tests.The radar planned by the Americans in the CzechRepublic is thought to be the one used in the KwajaleinAtoll (Marshall Islands), a high-performance XBR modelthat could also guide interceptor missiles that willprobably be installed in Poland.

Common Shield?

During the G8 meeting in 2007, Vladimir Putin madea proposal to set up common defences against the

Middle East and Iran, using installations in Qabala,Azerbaijan, but the proposal seemed to result fro mdilatory manoeuvres. According to Moscow, the Daryalradar in Qabala is one of the most sophisticated in theRussian system. Operational since 1985, it has a range of

8000 kilometres. Yet inBaku incre a s i n g l yinsistent rumours claimthat Azerbaijan willstop renting its radar toRussia in 2012. Theradar has been theobject of an inquiryabout irradiation in thesurrounding areas since2005 (like in Latvia).The Qabala radar isincompatible with thesystems of US anti-missile control, and theAmericans will notrebuild it to adapt it totheir interests. Theradar in Qabala, like theone planned forA rm a v i r, will not beable to undert a k eguidance of Polishmissiles and both havethe great disadvantageof being able to observee v e rything except

Russia.Vladimir Putin formally acknowledged the delicatesituation in which he found himself in April 2007 byannouncing a moratorium on the application of the CFEt reaty (Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces inEurope), which had been signed in Paris on November19, 1990, between 22 representatives of NATO statesand the Warsaw Pact, and later by the former states of theUSSR. The situation is indeed critical for Russia, first ofall because many of its radars are located outside itsterritory (in Belarus, Azerbaijan, Ukraine) and Moscowdoes not feel immune from its partners’ orangerevolutions, and has much to lose at the geo-strategiclevel in these countries, above all regarding its ABM

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system. Georgia, situated between Russia and Azerbaijan,pay the price of the new Big Game. Another major factorin a period of financial crisis is that the moratoriums allowthe US and Russia to relaunch their arms industries.

For the moment, the Americans and the Russians arereviving the old schemas of the Cold War, which in termsof economic war has the advantage of serving theircommon meta-strategic interests and of doing nothing tohelp the revival of the European Union (7). It remainsthat the US is forcing through discussions over ABMprotection against a Middle Eastern nuclear threat by2020, which has prompted Mahmoud Ahmadinejad tocall the shield project a ‘menace for all the Eurasiancontinent and for the member countries of the ShanghaiCooperation Organisation (SCO)’ (Russia, China,Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, withIndia, Pakistan, Iran and Mongolia as observers). Russiadoes not feel directly threatened by Iran, but under Putinis playing a double Atlanticist-European game guided byits own interests: to defuse orange revolutions and tomaintain its ABM defence grid, but also to fight Islamismin the south of the federation. Russia sides with theAmericans when necessary and joins up with the Iranianswhen the American policy of containment becomes tooblatant. In any event, an American system set up inEurope would make Europe a territory under de facto USprotection, while a reinforcement of the position inAzerbaijan at the Iranian border would risk stirring up stillm o re the already unstable Caucasian region, whichstretches from Chechnya to Iraqi Kurdistan.

“If Russia wants to preserve the oil of Baku (deprived of itRussia would hardly be able to keep not only theTranscaucasus, but also the Northern Caucasus under itscontrol), it should prevent Georgia’s independence.” (8)

(5) - International Conference on the Effect of Radio FrequencyE l e c t romagnetic Radiation on Org a n i s m s, Skrunda, Latvia(17/06/1994) and Motor and psychological functions of schoolchildren living in the area of the Skrunda Radio Location Station inLatvia; A. A. Kolodynski and V. V. Kolodynska; Institute ofBiology, Latvian Academy of Sciences (1996). This study wascarried out on 966 pupils, of whom 224 lived in the areas ofSkrunda neighbouring a military early-warning radio locationstation. The installation emitted frequencies between 154 and162 MHz, modulated by impulsions at 24,4 Hz. Three hundredand eighty-five children lived in the sectors of Skrunda thatw e re not directly exposed to the station (‘non-exposed’children). A control group, formed by 2357 subjects from theregion of Preili, was also examined, this region havingsimilarities to Skrunda. Diverse tests evaluating motorfunctions, attention-span and memory were carried out. Theexposed group from Skrunda obtained poorer results than thenon-exposed group; these diff e rences were moreover moremarked in girls.(6) - Assessment of Public Health Concerns Associated with PavePaws Radar Installations, Report Prepared for The MassachusettsDepartment of Public Health; 1999; By Linda S. Erdreich, Om

P. Gandhi, Henry Lai, Marvin C. Ziskin. And An Assessment ofPotential Health Effects from Exposure to Pave Paws low-levelphased-array radiofrequency energy; 2005; Board on RadiationEffects Research, Division on Earth and Life Studies, NationalResearch Council, National Academies Press. The analysisundertaken in Cape Cod by the NRC committee on the basis ofdata from 2000, using the information available on populationdensity, topography, and the direction of the Pave Paws radarbeam, reckoned that the proportion of the North Cape Codpopulation (main residence) submitted to a direct exposure ofthe Pave Paws radar was 11.8% in 1990 and 12.4% in 2000.“The analysis carried out by the NRC regarding certain cancers,especially colorectal, breast (women), prostate and lung cancer,did not show a direct relation between the high number ofcancers in the geographic sector and the exposure to the PavePaws beam”.(7) - Nicolas Sarkozy’s accession to power in France coincidedwith the creation of an ultramodern radar system for thesurveillance of orbital space, the GRAVES (‘Grand RéseauAdapté à la VEille Spatiale’: ‘Large network adapted to spatialsurveillance’), set up at two different locations in the country: theemission system at Broye-les-Pesmes in Burgundy and the

system of reception on a former nuclear silo site on the Plateaud’Albion in the Alps. Since 2005 France has already had at itsdisposal the re v o l u t i o n a ry transhorizon radar Nostradamus(located near Dreux, west of Paris), which can detect objects upto 2000 kilometres away in a 360-degree radius and which thusconstitutes a powerful secondary defence system for westernEurope. But the official launch of the GRAVES radar at the lastBourget air-show turned France into an essential player in ‘fullspectrum dominance’, since hitherto only Russia and the US haddisposed of systems of this kind, like the AN/FPS-85Electronically Steered Array Radar (ESAR) near Freeport inFlorida. At its inauguration, moreover, the chess game of spatialintelligence took on a totally new aspect with theannouncement of the detection of some thirty US army satellitesgravitating in what are known as ‘low’ orbits around the Earthand which did not appear in the Pentagon’s official catalogue:spy satellites, in short. There is no doubt that the technologydeveloped by the engineers from ONERA, the French aerospacelaboratory, should allow the Atlanticist Nicolas Sarkozy to carrysome weight in American plans to extend strategic defences.

Simulation of Boeing’s laser reflector carried from aStratellite (High Altitude Airship).

OTH Radar, Duga-3, Chernobyl

Voronezh radar, Lekhtusi, near Saint Petersburg, Russia

Genesis of a Geo-IndustryUsing water from icebergs

by Ewen Chard ro n n e t

How can deserts be irrigated? By making use of theicebergs melting in the polar circles... One of thefirst people to make serious plans to transport

icebergs from the Antarctic, in the 1950s, was JohnIssacs, an oceanographer from the Scripps Institution ofOceanography in La Jola, California. He proposed thatthree tugboats pull a 15km-long and 1.5km-wide icebergas far as Los Angeles. But enthusiasm for the idea oftransporting icebergs was particularly marked in the1970s. In 1972, the US National Science Foundationfunded a study, written by John Hult and Neill Ostrander,from the highly military-oriented think-tank, the RandCorporation, entitled Antarctic Icebergs as a Global FreshWater Resource. (1) They argued that five to six tugboatswith a tensile strength of 125 tonnes each could in theorypull a 100-million-tonne iceberg. They suggested carvingicebergs to give them the shape of a ship’s prow, (2) andto pull them along like a 1.2km-long ‘iceberg train’ withthe aid of tugboats fitted with a nuclear power station atthe rear, enabling them to be powered by nuclear energy.The melted ice would then be pumped from the coastalong pipelines, and the icebergs would be used as areservoir, while leisure facilities would be set up on themfor Californians. Taking the discussion further, in 1973,the Americans Weeks and Campbell published an articlein the Journal of Glaciology, analysing whether tabularicebergs from the Antarctic could be used for their water.A few years later, in 1977, the ‘First InternationalConference and Workshop on iceberg utilization forfresh water production, weather modification and otherapplications’ took place at Iowa State University. TheEgyptian Abdo Husseiny, who taught nuclear physicsthere, dreamt of transporting icebergs to the Red Sea.Much of the impetus and funding for the conferencecame from Saudi Arabia, especially from IcebergTr a n s p o rt International Ltd., whose founder andpresident was Prince Mohammed Al-Faisal, the nephewof King Khalid, and a rich oil tycoon. The firm, foundedin 1977, was mandated to study the feasibility oftransporting 100 million tons of iceberg water fromAntarctica to the port of Jeddah, a distance of 14,000kilometres. The countries that made the most substantialcontributions to the conference were France, Canada,Saudi Arabia, Australia, England, Egypt and Libya.Several scenarios were put forward: Professor SharkailIsmail, a technical advisor to Prince Mohammed Al-Faisal, imagined propelling icebergs forw a rd smechanically with a kind of oar, using energy obtainedf rom the diff e rence in temperature; Dr. Job, fro mAdelaide University, suggested locating the icebergs thathad already gone part of the way and tying a cable aroundthem to pull them along. As for climate change, mentionwas made of the potential consequences of the icebergs’passing through tropical regions; the problem for faunaand flora of keeping an iceberg stagnant so that pipelinescould be fitted to it in California or Arabia, as well as theidea of putting icebergs into the path of hurricanes tolower air temperature.

It was claimed that 1200km3 of icebergs are created eachy e a r, of which 800km3 could be ‘harvested’ in asustainable way. For a global water consumption of3,100km3, this would constitute a 25% increase in theglobal water supply. During the closing ceremony, theconference was even compared to the InternationalConference on the Panama Canal in 1879. But noconsensus concerning the ‘optimal’ size of an iceberg thatcould be towed was found during the conference, whilelegal uncertainty about the ownership of icebergs stillcame up against the Antarctica Treaty, and the oil crisisraised the cost of such projects and made collaborationbetween the West and Saudi Arabia appear risky. TheSaudis preferred to concentrate on their industry ofdesalinisation of sea water. (3)

Yet at the conference it was also pointed out thatengineers from the Memorial University ofNewfoundland had already experimented with certaintechniques for hauling icebergs, with a view to protectingo ff - s h o re oilrigs. Icebergs from the west coast ofG reenland drift towards Newfoundland every yearbetween April and July – the ‘hunting season’.Newfoundland, an island lying in the path of thei c e b e rgs, has developed a tourist industry from the

phenomenon, named I c e b e rg Wa t c h. In 1990, GaryPollack, a businessman from the region, suggestedbottling water from an iceberg to supply plentiful waterto soldiers from the coalition deployed in Saudi Arabiaduring Operation Desert Storm. Seldom taken seriouslyduring his search for funding, Pollack nonethelessstudied, worked on and finalised a safe method for takingwater from icebergs without the risk of these enormousice cubes overturning in the process. The idea of usingi c e b e rg water to makebeer, vodka and bottledwater thus first took shapein Newfoundland in theearly 1990s. From thenon, two companies, theCanadian Iceberg VodkaCorporation, founded byG a rry Pollack, andIceberg Industries Corp.,would develop thetechniques for collectingice and would try toobtain healthauthorisations.

Canadian Iceberg was setup in 1995. Since icebergswere not then recognisedby the American andCanadian governments asa source of water, the firmdecided to bottle vodka,I c e b e rg Vo d k a, inp a rtnership with theNewfoundland LiquorCorporation, whichhandled bottling.

Set up by a form e rd i rector of CanadianIceberg in 1996, IcebergIndustries Corp is asubsidiary of Iceberg Corp of America, Nevada. In 2000,the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted atemporary licence to Iceberg Industries Corp to bottleiceberg water under the brand name Borealis IcebergWater. The company began production in its Trepassey,Newfoundland plant and, alongside its Borealis IcebergWater brand, produced Borealis Iceberg Vodka and BorealisIceberg Beer with its water in Ontario, and signed a majorcontract with Loblaw Cos. Ltd., which marketed icebergwater under its house brand name President’s Choice. (4)In 2002, Iceberg Industries Corp announced plans to runa floating bottling plant. A 22-metre mechanical diggerwas to carry out excavation work as if it were a coalmine.The ice would then be pumped by a pneumatic system asfar as the plant-ship. But by 2004 the firm had becomeinactive and in May 2005 the FDA revoked thetemporary licence granted to Iceberg Industries Corp. InJuly 2005, Canada’s Original Iceberg Water, the otherbrand produced by Canadian Iceberg, was on sale inupmarket grocery stores in New York and New Jersey, in0.3, 0.5 and 1 litre designer bottles. David Hood, vice-president of Iceberg Water, commented: “It cost thecompany more than $150,000 in legal and FDA fees forthe right to call its bottled water iceberg water.” (5) Thefirm sent ships to the Atlantic in search of iceber gfragments, blocks of ice of one to three tonnes that hadcome away from icebergs, which had themselves beenseparated from the icecap and could measure up to 250 or300 metres. Tr a n s p o rted to the distillery, the icefragments underwent a controlled melting process. Thusthe ice is never exposed to the environment and itspurity is protected, “like when snow fell at the NorthPole hundreds of thousands of years ago,” adds DavidHood. (6) Iceberg Vodka is sold in 13 American states, themost important market being Florida (60,000 to 70,000cases in 2005). The company launched Iceberg Gin in2007. In 2008, Canadian Iceberg decided to convert af o rmer fish plant in Port Union into a world-classbottling plant for iceberg water. (7)

Several companies make use of the water and ice ofG reenland on site, including Greenland Ice CapProductions, which has produced a beer (nicknamed “theglobal-warming beer”) in Narsaq since 2006 using icefrom glaciers. Greenland Ice Cap Productions has justsigned a partnership agreement with Premium GlacierInc., a Canadian firm that makes Siku Glacier Ice Vodka inthe Netherlands, Siku Ice Beer in Germany, and Siku IceWater. In the 2004 architectural exhibition Too Perfect:Seven New Denmarks, the curator, Bruce Mau, outlined avision of Denmark’s future role in the fresh water market:instead of leaving others to make pro fits from thecountry’s natural resource, instead of letting Manhattanand Bangladesh flood, and before tons of fresh waterbring catastrophic disruption to the ocean currents andthe world climate, Greenland could start to bottlebillions of litres of water floating in the sea and win ahealthy share of the world bottled water market. BruceMau writes: “Using the ocean to transport melted ice isan industry in its infancy, but many examples and

technologies are already available”. For instance, he citesthe Medusa Bag, “a giant bag designed in 1988 by JamesCran from Calgary, Alberta, attempting to meet the hugeneeds for water imports in California, Israel, Jordan andPalestine. It can carry up to 1,000,000m3 of melted ice”.(8) The Medusa Bag licence is today owned by theAustralian company MH Waters and the largest bagmeasures 670 metres by 160 metres.

The general view of global warming has its opponents,but they have little influence when faced withindustrialists wanting to open up new markets – by usingicebergs, for example, a resource that had hitherto beenspared by industry. When you take the ice cubes out ofyour glass, does your gin and tonic stay cool for long?

(1) “Antarctic Icebergs as a Global Fresh Water Resource”, byJohn L. Hult, Neill C. Ostrander, Rand Corporation, 1973.www.rand.org/pubs/reports/R1255/(2) This is somewhat reminiscent of the “Habakkuk” iceberg-airport project conceived by the British during the Battle of theAtlantic in 1942. They imagined a one-kilometre-long, 200-metre-wide and 40-metre-high iceberg-ship that could resisttorpedoes from German U-boats and would operate as anairplane base in the heart of the ocean, which promptedWinston Churchill and Lord Mountbatten to back a technicalstudy carried out in Canada. The project was initiated byG e o ff rey Pike, Lord Mountbatten’s military inventor andscientific advisor, around the idea of adding a small quantity ofsawdust to water before freezing it. Pike named the mixturepykrete. Tests were made in Canada, but the Normandy landingsput a stop to this titanic project, which was also an enormousconsumer of wood.(3) Prince Mohammed al-Faisal was later to concentrate hisactivities in Geneva on Islamic finance through his trust Dar al-Maal al-Islami, which he founded in 1981 after the failure of theIceberg project. The trust had links with the bin Laden family,and among the twelve members of the board were HaydarMohamed bin Laden, Osama Bin Laden’s half-brother, andKhalid bin Mahfouz, who was also implicated in the notoriousBank of Credit and Commerce Intern a t i o n a l scandal, aLuxembourg-based bank, but with funding from the UnitedArab Emirates, which was the crossroads at the time of theinterests of the Bush and bin Laden families. Mahfouz owned20% of shares at the end of the 1990s and helped fund Osamabin Laden’s activities in Afghanistan in the late 1990s.(4) “The use of icebergs to make drinking water… From haulingto bottling” (“L’exploitation des icebergs pour l’eau potable…Dure m o rquage à l’embouteillage”), Marianne Audette-Chapdelaine, June 2007.www.agissonsensemble.org/spip.php?article27(5) “A Quality Competitor in a Spirited Industry.” Ministry ofF o reign Affairs and International Trade, Canada, 2006.w w w. i n t e rn a t i o n a l . g c . c a / c o m m e rc e / s u c c e s s / i c e b e rg - v od k a -en.asp(6) “Icebergs hit new ground.” Canadian Tourism Commission,Media Centre, 14 March 2008.h t t p : / / m e d i a c e n t re . c a n a d a . t r a v e l / c o n t e n t / t r a v e l _ s t o ry _ i d e a s / i c ebergs-hit-new-ground(7) “Government of Canada supports tourism and businessdevelopment in Port Union.” Atlantic Canada OpportunitiesAgency, 31 May, 2008. www.acoa-apeca.gc.ca/e/media/press/press.shtml?4145(8) “Too perfect: seven new Denmarks.” 29 September – 21November 2004, curator: Bruce Mau Design, Danish Centre ofA rc h i t e c t u re, Copenhagen, and Venice Biennale ofArchitecture.

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Advertisement for the Iceberg Vodka

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F. Wi l l i am En gd ahl , r e s a rc hAs soc i at e , C e n t r e f or Globa lR e s e a rc h , Canada*

One thing Microsoft founder Bill Gates can’t beaccused of is sloth. He was already programmingat 14, founded Microsoft at age 20 while still a

student at Harvard. By 1995 he had been listed by Forbesas the world’s richest man from being the larg e s tshareholder in his Microsoft, a company which hisrelentless drive built into a de facto monopoly insoftware systems for personal computers.In 2006 when most people in such a situation mightthink of retiring to a quiet Pacific island, Bill Gatesdecided to devote his energies to his Bill and MelindaGates Foundation, the world’s largest ‘transpare n t ’private foundation as it says, with a whopping $34.6billion endowment and a legal necessity to spend $1.5billion a year on charitable projects around the world tomaintain its tax free charitable status. A gift from friendand business associate, mega-investor Warren Buffett in2006, of some $30 billion worth of shares in Buffet’sBerkshire Hathaway put the Gates’ foundation into theleague where it spends almost the amount of the entireannual budget of the United Nations’ World HealthOrganization.So when Bill Gates decides through the GatesFoundation to invest some $30 million of their hardearned money in a project, it is worth looking at.No project is more interesting at the moment than acurious project in one of the world’s most remote spots,Svalbard. Bill Gates is investing millions in a seed bankon the Barents Sea near the Arctic Ocean, some 1,100kilometers from the North Pole. Svalbard is a barre npiece of rock claimed by Norway and ceded in 1925 byinternational treaty.On this God-forsaken island Bill Gates is investing tensof his millions along with the Rockefeller Foundation,Monsanto Corporation, Syngenta Foundation and theGovernment of Norway, among others, in what is calledthe ‘doomsday seed bank.’ Officially the project is namedthe Svalbard Global Seed Vault on the Norwegian islandof Spitsbergen, part of the Svalbard island group.The seed bank is being built inside a mountain onS p i t s b e rgen Island near the small village ofLongyearbyen. It’s almost ready for ‘business’ accordingto their releases. The bank will have dual blast-proofdoors with motion sensors, two airlocks, and walls ofsteel-reinforced concrete one meter thick. It will containup to three million different varieties of seeds from theentire world, ‘so that crop diversity can be conserved forthe future,’ according to the Norwegian government.Seeds will be specially wrapped to exclude moisture.There will be no full-time staff, but the vault’s relativeinaccessibility will facilitate monitoring any possiblehuman activity.Did we miss something here? Their press release stated,‘so that crop diversity can be conserved for the future.’What future do the seed bank’s sponsors foresee, thatwould threaten the global availability of current seeds,almost all of which are already well protected indesignated seed banks around the world?Anytime Bill Gates, the Rockefeller Foundation,Monsanto and Syngenta get together on a commonproject, it’s worth digging a bit deeper behind the rockson Spitsbergen. When we do we find some fascinatingthings.The first notable point is who is sponsoring thedoomsday seed vault. Here joining the Norwegians are,as noted, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; the USagribusiness giant DuPont/Pioneer Hi-Bred, one of theworld’s largest owners of patented genetically-modified(GMO) plant seeds and related agrichemicals; Syngenta,the Swiss-based major GMO seed and agrichemicalscompany through its Syngenta Foundation; theRockefeller Foundation, the private group who createdthe “gene revolution with over $100 million of seedmoney since the 1970’s; CGIAR, the global networkcreated by the Rockefeller Foundation to promote itsideal of genetic purity through agriculture change.

agriculture to agribusiness.” He knew precisely what hehad in mind, though few others had a clue back then—-a revolution in agriculture production that wouldconcentrate control of the food chain in corporatemultinational hands, away from the traditional familyfarmer. (2)A crucial aspect driving the interest of the RockefellerFoundation and US agribusiness companies was the factthat the Green Revolution was based on proliferation ofnew hybrid seeds in developing markets. One vital aspectof hybrid seeds was their lack of reproductive capacity.Hybrids had a built in protection against multiplication.Unlike normal open pollinated species whose seed gaveyields similar to its parents, the yield of the seed borne byhybrid plants was significantly lower than that of the firstgeneration.That declining yield characteristic of hybrids meantfarmers must normally buy seed every year in order toobtain high yields. Moreover, the lower yield of thesecond generation eliminated the trade in seed that wasoften done by seed producers without the bre e d e r’sauthorization. It prevented the redistribution of thec o m m e rcial crop seed by middlemen. If the larg emultinational seed companies were able to control theparental seed lines in house, no competitor or farmerwould be able to produce the hybrid. The globalconcentration of hybrid seed patents into a handful ofgiant seed companies, led by DuPont’s Pioneer Hi-Bredand Monsanto’s Dekalb laid the ground for the laterGMO seed revolution. (3)In effect, the introduction of mod e rn Americanagricultural technology, chemical fertilizers andc o m m e rcial hybrid seeds all made local farmers indeveloping countries, particularly the larger more

“Doomsday Seed Vault“ in the ArcticBill Gates, Rockefeller and the GMO giants know something we don’t

The “Green Revolution“

The same Rockefeller Foundation created the so-called Green Revolution, out of a trip to Mexico in

1946 by Nelson Rockefeller and former New DealSecretary of Agriculture and founder of the Pioneer Hi-Bred Seed Company, Henry Wallace.The Green Revolution purported to solve the worldhunger problem to a major degree in Mexico, India andother select countries where Rockefeller worked.Rockefeller Foundation agronomist, Norman Borlaug,won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work, hardly somethingto boast about with the likes of Henry Kissinger sharingthe same.In reality, as it years later emerged, the Green Revolutionwas a brilliant Rockefeller family scheme to develop aglobalized agribusiness which they then couldmonopolize just as they had done in the world oilindustry beginning a half century before. As HenryKissinger declared in the 1970’s, ‘If you control the oilyou control the country; if you control food, you controlthe population.’Agribusiness and the Rockefeller Green Revolution wenthand-in-hand. They were part of a grand strategy whichincluded Rockefeller Foundation financing of researchfor the development of genetic engineering of plants andanimals a few years later.John H. Davis had been Assistant Agriculture Secretaryunder President Dwight Eisenhower in the early 1950’s.He left Washington in 1955 and went to the HarvardGraduate School of Business, an unusual place for anagriculture expert in those days. He had a clear strategy.In 1956, Davis wrote an article in the Harvard BusinessReview in which he declared that “the only way to solvethe so-called farm problem once and for all, and avoidcumbersome government programs, is to progress from

THE CGIAR PROJECT

As I detailled in the book, Seeds of Destruction, in1960 the Rockefeller Foundation, John D.

Rockefeller III’s Agriculture Development Council andthe Ford Foundation joined forces to create theI n t e rnational Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in LosBaños, the Philippines.(1) By 1971, the RockefellerF o u n d a t i o n ’s IRRI, along with their Mexico-basedI n t e rnational Maize and Wheat Improvement Centerand two other Rockefeller and Ford Foundation-c reated international re s e a rch centers, the IITA fort ropical agriculture, Nigeria, and IRRI for rice,Philippines, combined to form a global ConsultativeG roup on International Agriculture Researc h( C G I A R ) .CGIAR was shaped at a series of private confere n c e sheld at the Rockefeller Foundation’s conference centerin Bellagio, Italy. Key participants at the Bellagio talksw e re the Rockefeller Foundation’s George Harr a r, FordF o u n d a t i o n ’s Forrest Hill, Robert McNamara of the

World Bank and Maurice Strong, the Rockefellerf a m i l y ’s international environmental org a n i z e r, who, asa Rockefeller Foundation Trustee, organized the UNE a rth Summit in Stockholm in 1972.To ensure maximum impact, CGIAR drew in theUnited Nations’ Food and Agriculture Org a n i z a t i o n ,the UN Development Program and the World Bank.Thus, through a carefully-planned leverage of its initialfunds, the Rockefeller Foundation by the beginning ofthe 1970’s was in a position to shape global agriculturep o l i c y. And shape it did.Financed by generous Rockefeller and Ford Foundationstudy grants, CGIAR saw to it that leading Third Wo r l da g r i c u l t u re scientists and agronomists were brought tothe US to ‘master’ the concepts of mod e rn agribusinessp roduction, in order to carry it back to their homeland.In the process they created an invaluable network ofinfluence for US agribusiness promotion in thosecountries, most especially promotion of the GMO‘Gene Revolution’ in developing countries, all in thename of science and efficient, free market agriculture .

F. William Engdahl, author of “Seeds of Destruction, theHidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation“, edited byGlobal Research (www.globalresearch.ca).Contact by e-mail : info@engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net

(1) - F. William Engdahl,Seeds of Destruction, Montreal,(Global Research, 2007).(2) - John H. Davis, Harvard Business Review, 1956,cited in Geoffrey Lawrence, Agribusiness, Capitalism andthe Countryside, Pluto Press, Sydney, 1987. See alsoHarvard Business School, The Evolution of an Industry

and a Seminar: Agribusiness Seminar,http://www.exed.hbs.edu/programs/agb/seminar.html.(3) - Engdahl, op cit., p. 130.

Inside Svalbard’s Global Seed Vault

THE LABORAT O RY PLANET 12

Cont inuation of the art i c l e“Doomsday Seed Va u l t … ”

of the Gates Foundation. In addition, an Alliance forAGRA includes Gary Toenniessen the ManagingDirector of the Rockefeller Foundation and AkinwumiAdesina, Associate Director, Rockefeller Foundation.To fill out the lineup, the Programmes for AGRAincludes Peter Matlon, Managing Director, RockefellerFoundation; Joseph De Vries, Director of the Programmefor Africa’s Seed Systems and Associate Dire c t o r,Rockefeller foundation; Akinwumi Adesina, AssociateDirector, Rockefeller Foundation. Like the old failedGreen Revolution in India and Mexico, the new AfricaG reen Revolution is clearly a high priority of theRockefeller Foundation.While to date they are keeping a low profile, Monsantoand the major GMO agribusiness giants are believed atthe heart of using Kofi Annan’s AGRA to spread theirpatented GMO seeds across Africa under the deceptivelabel, ‘bio-technology,’ the new euphemism forgenetically engineered patented seeds. To date SouthAfrica is the only African country permitting legalplanting of GMO crops. In 2003 Burkina Faso authorizedGMO trials. In 2005 Kofi Annan’s Ghana drafted bio-safety legislation and key officials expressed theirintentions to pursue research into GMO crops.Africa is the next target in the US-government campaignto spread GMO worldwide. Its rich soils make it an idealcandidate. Not surprisingly many African governmentssuspect the worst from the GMO sponsors as a multitudeof genetic engineering and biosafety projects have beeninitiated in Africa, with the aim of introducing GMOsinto Africa’s agricultural systems. These includesponsorships offered by the US government to trainAfrican scientists in genetic engineering in the US,biosafety projects funded by the United States Agencyfor International Development (USAID) and the WorldBank; GMO research involving African indigenous foodcrops.The Rockefeller Foundation has been working for yearsto promote, largely without success, projects to introduceGMOs into the fields of Africa. They have backedresearch that supports the applicability of GMO cottonin the Makhathini Flats in South Africa.Monsanto, who has a strong foothold in South Africa’sseed industry, both GMO and hybrid, has conceived ofan ingenious smallholders’ programme known as the‘Seeds of Hope’ Campaign, which is introducing a greenrevolution package to small scale poor farmers, followed,of course, by Monsanto’s patented GMO seeds. (5)Syngenta AG of Switzerland, one of the ‘Four Horsemenof the GMO Apocalypse’ is pouring millions of dollarsinto a new greenhouse facility in Nairobi, to developGMO insect resistant maize. Syngenta is a part ofCGIAR as well. (6)

Move on to Svalbard

Now is it simply philosophical sloppiness? What leadsthe Gates and Rockefeller foundations to at one

and the same time to back proliferation of patented andsoon-to-be Terminator patented seeds across Africa, aprocess which, as it has in every other place on earth,d e s t roys the plant seed varieties as monocultureindustrialized agribusiness is introduced? At the sametime they invest tens of millions of dollars to preserveevery seed variety known in a bomb-proof doomsday

established ones, dependent on foreign, mostly USagribusiness and petro-chemical company inputs. It was afirst step in what was to be a decades-long, carefullyplanned process.Under the Green Revolution Agribusiness was makingmajor inroads into markets which were previously oflimited access to US exporters. The trend was laterdubbed “market-oriented agriculture.” In reality it wasagribusiness-controlled agriculture.T h rough the Green Revolution, the RockefellerFoundation and later Ford Foundation worked hand-in-hand shaping and supporting the foreign policy goals ofthe United States Agency for Intern a t i o n a lDevelopment (USAID) and of the CIA.One major effect of the Green Revolution was todepopulate the countryside of peasants who were forcedto flee into shantytown slums around the cities indesperate search for work. That was no accident; it wasp a rt of the plan to create cheap labor pools forf o rthcoming US multinational manufactures, the‘globalization’ of recent years.When the self-promotion around the Green Revolutiondied down, the results were quite different from what hadbeen promised. Problems had arisen from indiscriminateuse of the new chemical pesticides, often with serioushealth consequences. The mono-culture cultivation ofnew hybrid seed varieties decreased soil fertility andyields over time. The first results were impressive: doubleor even triple yields for some crops such as wheat andlater corn in Mexico. That soon faded.The Green Revolution was typically accompanied bylarge irrigation projects which often included WorldBank loans to construct huge new dams, and floodp reviously settled areas and fertile farmland in theprocess. Also, super-wheat produced greater yields bysaturating the soil with huge amounts of fertilizer peracre, the fertilizer being the product of nitrates andpetroleum, commodities controlled by the Rockefeller-dominated Seven Sisters major oil companies.Huge quantities of herbicides and pesticides were alsoused, creating additional markets for the oil and chemicalgiants. As one analyst put it, in effect, the GreenRevolution was merely a chemical revolution. At nopoint could developing nations pay for the huge amountsof chemical fertilizers and pesticides. They would get thecredit courtesy of the World Bank and special loans byChase Bank and other large New York banks, backed byUS Government guarantees.Applied in a large number of developing countries, thoseloans went mostly to the large landowners. For thesmaller peasants the situation worked differently. Smallpeasant farmers could not afford the chemical and othermodern inputs and had to borrow money.Initially various government programs tried to providesome loans to farmers so that they could purchase seedsand fertilizers. Farmers who could not participate in thiskind of program had to borrow from the private sector.Because of the exorbitant interest rates for informalloans, many small farmers did not even get the benefits ofthe initial higher yields. After harvest, they had to sellmost if not all of their produce to pay off loans andinterest. They became dependent on money-lenders andtraders and often lost their land. Even with soft loansfrom government agencies, growing subsistence cropsgave way to the production of cash crops. (4)Since decades the same interests including theRockefeller Foundation which backed the initial GreenRevolution, have worked to promote a second ‘GeneRevolution’ as Rockefeller Foundation President GordonConway termed it several years ago, the spread ofindustrial agriculture and commercial inputs includingGMO patented seeds.

Gates, Rockefeller and a Green Revolution in Africa

With the true background of the 1950’s RockefellerFoundation Green Revolution clear in mind, it

becomes especially curious that the same RockefellerFoundation along with the Gates Foundation which arenow investing millions of dollars in preserving every seedagainst a possible “doomsday” scenario are also investingmillions in a project called The Alliance for a GreenRevolution in Africa.AGRA, as it calls itself, is an alliance again with thesame Rockefeller Foundation which created the “GeneRevolution.” A look at the AGRA Board of Directorsconfirms this.It includes none other than former UN Secre t a ryGeneral Kofi Annan as chairman. In his acceptancespeech in a World Economic Forum event in Cape TownSouth Africa in June 2007, Kofi Annan stated, ‘I acceptthis challenge with gratitude to the RockefellerFoundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, andall others who support our African campaign.’In addition the AGRA board numbers a South African,Strive Masiyiwa who is a Trustee of the RockefellerFoundation. It includes Sylvia M. Mathews of the Bill &Melinda Gates Foundation; Mamphela Ramphele,former Managing Director of the World Bank (2000 –2006); Rajiv J. Shah of the Gates Foundation; Nadya K.Shmavonian of the Rockefeller Foundation; Roy Steiner

Rudolf Schlichter, Blind Power (1937), BerlinischeGalerie – Landesmuseum Für Moderne Kunst

vault near the remote Arctic Circle ‘so that crop diversitycan be conserved for the future’ to restate their officialrelease?It is no accident that the Rockefeller and Gatesfoundations are teaming up to push a GMO-style GreenRevolution in Africa at the same time they are quietlyfinancing the ‘doomsday seed vault’ on Svalbard. TheGMO agribusiness giants are up to their ears in theSvalbard project.Indeed, the entire Svalbard enterprise and the peopleinvolved call up the worst catastrophe images of theMichael Crichton bestseller, Andromeda Strain, a sci-fithriller where a deadly disease of extraterrestrial origincauses rapid, fatal clotting of the blood threatening theentire human species. In Svalbard, the future world’s mostsecure seed repository will be guarded by the policemen ofthe GMO Green Revolution—the Rockefeller and GatesFoundations, Syngenta, DuPont and CGIAR.The Svalbard project will be run by an organization calledthe Global Crop Diversity Trust (GCDT). Who are theyto hold such an awesome trust over the planet’s entireseed varieties? The GCDT was founded by the UnitedNations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) andBioversity International (formerly the International PlantGenetic Research Institute), an offshoot of the CGIAR.The Global Crop Diversity Trust is based in Rome. ItsBoard is chaired by Margaret Catley-Carlson a Canadianalso on the advisory board of Group Suez Lyonnaise desEaux, one of the world’s largest private water companies.Catley-Carlson was also president until 1998 of the NewYork-based Population Council, John D. Rockefeller’spopulation reduction organization, set up in 1952 toadvance the Rockefeller family’s eugenics program underthe cover of promoting “family planning,” birth controldevices, sterilization and “population control” indeveloping countries.Other GCDT board members include former Bank ofAmerica executive presently head of the HollywoodDreamWorks Animation, Lewis Coleman. Coleman isalso the lead Board Director of Northrup GrummanCorporation, one of America’s largest military industryPentagon contractors.Jorio Dauster (Brazil) is also Board Chairman of BrasilEcodiesel. He is a former Ambassador of Brazil to theEuropean Union, and Chief Negotiator of Brazil’s foreigndebt for the Ministry of Finance. Dauster has also servedas President of the Brazilian Coffee Institute and asCoordinator of the Project for the Modernization ofBrazil’s Patent System, which involves legalizing patentson seeds which are genetically modified, something untilrecently forbidden by Brazil’s laws.Cary Fowler is the Trust’s Executive Director. Fowler wasProfessor and Director of Research in the Department forInternational Environment & Development Studies atthe Norwegian University of Life Sciences. He was also aSenior Advisor to the Director General of BioversityInternational. There he represented the Future HarvestCentres of the Consultative Group on InternationalAgricultural Research (CGIAR) in negotiations on theInternational Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources. In the1990s, he headed the International Program on PlantGenetic Resources at the FAO. He drafted and supervisednegotiations of FAO’s Global Plan of Action for PlantGenetic Resources, adopted by 150 countries in 1996. Heis a past-member of the National Plant Genetic ResourcesBoard of the US and the Board of Trustees of theInternational Maize and Wheat Improvement Center inMexico, another Rockefeller Foundation and CGIARproject.GCDT board member Dr. Mangala Rai of India is theSecretary of India’s Department of Agricultural Researchand Education (DARE), and Director General of theIndian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR). He isalso a Board Member of the Rockefeller Foundation’sI n t e rnational Rice Research Institute (IRRI), whichpromoted the world’s first major GMO experiment, themuch-hyped ‘Golden Rice’ which proved a failure. Raihas served as Board Member for CIMMYT (InternationalMaize and Wheat Improvement Center), and a Memberof the Executive Council of the CGIAR.Global Crop Diversity Trust Donors or financial angelsinclude as well, in the words of the Humphrey BogartCasablanca classic, ‘all the usual suspects.’ As well as theRockefeller and Gates Foundations, the Donors includeGMO giants DuPont-Pioneer Hi-Bred, Syngenta of BasleSwitzerland, CGIAR and the State Depart m e n t ’se n e rgetically pro-GMO agency for development aid,USAID. Indeed it seems we have the GMO andpopulation reduction foxes guarding the hen-house ofmankind, the global seed diversity store in Svalbard. (7)

Why now Svalbard?

We can legitimately ask why Bill Gates and theRockefeller Foundation along with the major

genetic engineering agribusiness giants such as DuPontand Syngenta, along with CGIAR are building theDoomsday Seed Vault in the Arctic.Who uses such a seed bank in the first place? Plantbreeders and researchers are the major users of genebanks. Tod a y ’s largest plant breeders are Monsanto,DuPont, Syngenta and Dow Chemical, the global plant-patenting GMO giants. Since early in 2007 Monsantoholds world patent rights together with the United StatesGovernment for plant so-called ‘Terminator’ or GeneticUse Restriction Technology (GURT). Terminator is an

THE LABORAT O RY PLANET13

ominous technology by which a patented commercialseed commits ‘suicide’ after one harvest. Control byprivate seed companies is total. Such control and powerover the food chain has never before in the history ofmankind existed.This clever genetically engineered terminator trait forcesfarmers to return every year to Monsanto or other GMOseed suppliers to get new seeds for rice, soybeans, corn,wheat whatever major crops they need to feed theirpopulation. If broadly introduced around the world, itcould within perhaps a decade or so make the world’smajority of food producers new feudal serfs in bondage tothree or four giant seed companies such as Monsanto orDuPont or Dow Chemical.That, of course, could also open the door to have thoseprivate companies, perhaps under orders from their hostgovernment, Washington, deny seeds to one or anotherdeveloping country whose politics happened to goagainst Washington’s. Those who say ‘It can’t happenhere’ should look more closely at current global events.The mere existence of that concentration of power inthree or four private US-based agribusiness giants isgrounds for legally banning all GMO crops even weretheir harvest gains real, which they manifestly are not. These private companies, Monsanto, DuPont, DowChemical hardly have an unsullied record in terms ofs t e w a rdship of human life. They developed andproliferated such innovations as dioxin, PCBs, AgentOrange. They covered up for decades clear evidence ofc a rcinogenic and other severe human healthconsequences of use of the toxic chemicals. They haveburied serious scientific reports that the world’s mostw i d e s p read herbicide, glyphosate, the essentialingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide that is tiedto purchase of most Monsanto genetically engineeredseeds, is toxic when it seeps into drinking water. (8)Denmark banned glyphosate in 2003 when it confirmedit has contaminated the country’s groundwater. (9)The diversity stored in seed gene banks is the rawmaterial for plant breeding and for a great deal of basicbiological research. Several hundred thousand samplesare distributed annually for such purposes. The UN’sFAO lists some 1400 seed banks around the world, thelargest being held by the United States Government.Other large banks are held by China, Russia, Japan,India, South Korea, Germany and Canada in descendingorder of size. In addition, CGIAR operates a chain ofseed banks in select centers around the world.CGIAR, set up in 1972 by the Rockefeller Foundationand Ford Foundation to spread their Green Revolutionagribusiness model, controls most of the private seedbanks from the Philippines to Syria to Kenya. In all thesepresent seed banks hold more than six and a half millionseed varieties, almost two million of which are ‘distinct.’Svalbard’s Doomsday Vault will have a capacity to housefour and a half million different seeds.

GMO as a weapon of biowarfare?

Now we come to the heart of the danger and thepotential for misuse inherent in the Svalbard

project of Bill Gates and the Rockefeller foundation. Canthe development of patented seeds for most of the world’smajor sustenance crops such as rice, corn, wheat, andfeed grains such as soybeans ultimately be used in ahorrible form of biological warfare?The explicit aim of the eugenics lobby funded by wealthyelite families such as Rockefeller, Carnegie, Harriman

and others since the 1920’s, has embodied what theytermed ‘negative eugenics,’ the systematic killing off ofundesired bloodlines. Margaret Sanger, a rapid eugenicist,the founder of Planned Parenthood International and anintimate of the Rockefeller family, created somethingcalled The Negro Project in 1939, based in Harlem,which as she confided in a letter to a friend, was all aboutthe fact that, as she put it, ‘we want to exterminate theNegro population.’ (10)A small California biotech company, Epicyte, in 2001announced the development of genetically engineeredcorn which contained a spermicide which made thesemen of men who ate it sterile. At the time Epicyte hada joint venture agreement to spread its technology withDuPont and Syngenta, two of the sponsors of theS v a l b a rd Doomsday Seed Vault. Epicyte was sincea c q u i red by a North Carolina biotech company.Astonishing to learn was that Epicyte had developed itsspermicidal GMO corn with research funds from the USDepartment of Agriculture, the same USDA which,despite worldwide opposition, continued to finance thedevelopment of Terminator technology, now held byMonsanto.In the 1990’s the UN’s World Health Organizationlaunched a campaign to vaccinate millions of women inNicaragua, Mexico and the Philippines between the agesof 15 and 45, allegedly against Tentanus, a sicknessarising from such things as stepping on a rusty nail. Thevaccine was not given to men or boys, despite the factthey are presumably equally liable to step on rusty nails aswomen.Because of that curious anomaly, Comite Pro Vida deMexico, a Roman Catholic lay organization becamesuspicious and had vaccine samples tested. The testsrevealed that the Tetanus vaccine being spread by theWHO only to women of child-bearing age containedhuman Chorionic Gonadotrophin or hCG, a naturalhormone which when combined with a tetanus toxoidc a rrier stimulated antibodies rendering a womanincapable of maintaining a pregnancy. None of thewomen vaccinated were told.It later came out that the Rockefeller Foundation alongwith the Rockefeller’s Population Council, the WorldBank (home to CGIAR), and the United States’National Institutes of Health had been involved in a 20-year-long project begun in 1972 to develop the concealedabortion vaccine with a tetanus carrier for WHO. Inaddition, the Government of Norway, the host to theSvalbard Doomsday Seed Vault, donated $41 million todevelop the special abortive Tetanus vaccine. (11)Is it a coincidence that these same organizations, fromNorway to the Rockefeller Foundation to the WorldBank are also involved in the Svalbard seed bank project?A c c o rding to Prof. Francis Boyle who drafted theBiological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 enactedby the US Congress, the Pentagon is ‘now gearing up tofight and win biological warfare’ as part of two Bush

national strategy directives adopted, he notes, ‘withoutpublic knowledge and review’ in 2002. Boyle adds that in2001-2004 alone the US Federal Government spent$14.5 billion for civilian bio-warf a re - related work, astaggering sum.Rutgers University biologist Richard Ebright estimatesthat over 300 scientific institutions and some 12,000individuals in the USA today have access to pathogenssuitable for biowarf a re. Alone there are 497 USGovernment NIH grants for research into infectiousdiseases with biowarfare potential. Of course this is beingjustified under the rubric of defending against possibleterror attack as so much is today.Many of the US Government dollars spent on biowarfarere s e a rch involve genetic engineering. MIT biologyprofessor Jonathan King says that the ‘growing bio-terrorprograms represent a significant emerging danger to ourown population.’ King adds, ‘while such programs arealways called defensive, with biological weapons,defensive and offensive programs overlap almostcompletely.’ (12)

Time will tell whether, God Forbid, the SvalbardDoomsday Seed Bank of Bill Gates and the RockefellerFoundation is part of another Final Solution, thisinvolving the extinction of the Late, Great Planet Earth.

(4) - Ibid. P. 123-30.(5) - Myriam Mayet, The New Green Revolution in Africa:Trojan Horse for GMOs?, May, 2007, African Centre forBiosafety, www.biosafetyafrica.net.(6) - ETC Group, Green Revolution 2.0 for Africa?,Communique Issue #94, March/April 2007.(7) - Global Crop Diversity Trust website, inhttp://www.croptrust.org/main/donors.php.(8) - Engdahl, op. cit., pp.227-236.(9) - Anders Legarth Smith, Denmark Bans Glyphosates, theActive Ingredient in Roundup, Politiken, September 15, 2003,

in organic.com.au/news/2003.09.15.(10) - Tanya L. Green, The Negro Project: Margaret Sanger’sGenocide Project for Black American’s, inwww.blackgenocide.org/negro.html.(11) - Engdahl, op. cit., pp. 273-275; J.A. Miller, Are NewVaccines Laced With Birt h - C o n t rol Drugs?, HLI Report s ,Human Life International, Gaithersburg, Maryland; June/July1995, Volume 13, Number 8.(12) - Sherw o od Ross, Bush Developing Illegal Bioterro rWeapons for Offensive Use,’ December 20, 2006, inwww.truthout.org.

Poster campaign by the Unitarian Service Committeein Canada.

According to official statistic,more than 150,000 Indianfarmers committed suicidesince 1997 unable to repaycrop loans. The crisis hasbeen building for years andPrime Minister ManmohanSingh’s government came upwith a plan in the 2008-09budget: cancel debts of smallfarmers with loans overdue onDecember 31, 2007, andwhich remained unpaid up toFebruary 29. But the write-off came with riders,beneficiaries can own up totwo hectares (five acres) andonly bank loans will becancelled, which meantnearly a quarter of 40 milliontargeted farmers will notbenefit because mostborrowed from rapaciousmoneylenders or they ownlarger tracts of land.

THE LABORAT O RY PLANET 14

The well-known film Soylent Green (1973) is one ofthe many cultural productions that followed thefirst oil crisis in which Hollywood scriptwriters

imagined humanity’s ecological collapse, yet withoutforeseeing the end of the current economic system that isits cause. Soylent Green shows an overpopulated, highly pollutedand overheated world in 2020. Food is scarce, entirelysynthetic and produced in protected farms. A minority ofprivileged people enjoy a lifestyle sheltered from theswarming and poverty-stricken masses. In this context, Soylent Green, a new miracle foodstuff,is presented as a solution to the hunger that posesproblems even in the heart of New York, where the storytakes place. Produced by the multinational Soylent, it issaid to be made from ocean plankton.The story follows an enquiry led by a police inspectorinto the murder of one of Soylent’s directors. The enquiryfinally reveals that Soylent Green is actually made fromthe flesh of New Yorkers.

In many respects, the story might seem unrealistic: 1 - How could human beings be fed with other humanbeings? Their biomass is insufficient. 2 - How could the American population, which hasenjoyed such abundance, tolerate such a fall in its livingstandards? 3 - Where do the energy sources used come from?

A little thought, however, aided by recent developmentsin our world, suggests how the scenario might come true.1 - A simple calculation shows that “the self-consumption of humanity” would lead to the populationbeing halved every two months, which is a somewhatexcessive rate. But given that other foodstuffs still existin the film, with Soylent Green being only one amongmany (with an increasing share, it is true), then theexponential fall in the human population would not beso dramatic. Yet such a fall would cause a negativeretroactive effect on itself. When food shortages occur inthe film, hunger riots are repressed using dump trucksthat go to supply the Soylent Green factories, bringingmore food to those left behind - who have no otherchoice but to accept the food without asking questions. Some viewers, moreover, have pointed out that betweenthe beginning and the end of the film, the number ofextras onscreen decreases. This can be interpreted as adeliberate decision on the part of the scriptwriters,pointing to a visible and rapid fall in the populationduring the film, eventually leading to human extinction.

1 - The story can be seen as showing in extreme form theway our world has developed: pollution, social inequalityand the total consumption of re s o u rces (includinghuman resources in a literal sense) by the economy, butalso the increasing artificiality of food, which iscontrolled by multinationals, and an increasing trend totreat human beings like cattle, etc. A slow pauperisation,growing coercion of individuals, with the news mediamaking the whole process acceptable, the absence ofother choices within the terms of the dominant ideology,would lead to a situation close to that shown in the film.Today is it not clear that the premises of this world, withthe increasing numbers of homeless people in our cities,m o re or more security forces and our incre a s i n g l ysynthetic food, etc?A gradual shift (over one or two decades) towards asituation of this kind would make it possible and evenacceptable to the population. Human beings have shownthemselves capable of the worst acts in the twentiethcentury and before. This advance towards the world ofSoylent Green could take place without a sudden naturalor social disaster, but quite seamlessly (1). For “if it is clearthat we can deduce all kinds of possible catastrophes from theuninterrupted technical surge over the past two centuries, theworst thing would probably be that nothing happens in thefuture, nothing other than the slow and interminable death ofwhat remains human in the heart of the economic mega-machine. Nothing, not even a social or natural disaster”(2).

3 - We can extend the questions dealt with in the film tolook at climate and energy issues, especially since beforethe story starts an oil peak (3) and a decline in energysources have taken place.The scarce fossil fuels that are used in the world of SoylentGreen mainly bring comforts to the rich or aid thesurvival/coercion of the poor (a little electricity, theproduction and transport of food, the fuelling of dumptrucks, etc) so as to maintain a coherent, if highlyunequal, society.There are relatively few motorised engines in the film,but the skies are still clouded by pollution.The actors sweat continually since global warming hastaken place, despite the fog that darkens the sky(according to climate experts, this type of local pollutionactually lowered world temperatures in the 1950s and1960s). This is the result of massive CO2 emissions inthe atmosphere, causing a greenhouse effect that easilycompensates for the cloudy skies. This dual pollution,clouding skies and raising temperatures, could begenerated in the twenty-first century by the massive useof dirty resources (bituminous shale, liquid coal), whichmight take the place of easily extractable fossil fuels thatare now being used up (light crude oil, natural gas). Onour planet over the past few years, for fear of lackinghydrocarbon and with the rise in petrol prices, giganticprojects to liquefy coal (that is, making hydrocarbonsfrom coal, in return for a very poor energy yield and highpollution levels), the extraction of shale in Canada, havein fact been proposed.In addition, certain climatologists evoke the possibility ofviolent positive retro-actions, such as the melting of thepermafrost, the release of CO2 due to the death of forestsand the heating of agricultural soils in temperate climatesor the rise in the albedo due to melting ice. Such events,which involve even more worrying rises in temperaturethan those foreseen by the GIEC, would complete thepicture.

We can thus see an unexpectedly prophetic character inthe hero’s last words: “The ocean is dying, the plankton isdying ! It’s people! Soylent Green is made out of people!” Ifthe world economy persists in using up all energ yresources, including the extraction of all kinds of heavyoil and by liquefying coal, as for other, too numerousexamples in the past, and destructive, obsessive insanity,

Total Geo-engineering : Soylent Green

Cannibalism in Muscovy and Lithuania 1571

organised on a national scale and reinforced over time, thecomposition of the atmosphere and the oceans will beradically transformed. J e a n - M a rc Jancovici, an environmental consultant-engineer, asks whether we are “going to turn the oceansinto an acid lake?” (4), and concludes that it is notimpossible, given the excessive amount of CO2 in theatmosphere and the ocean. Then plankton will indeed die,land and oceans will indeed become virt u a l l yuninhabitable. And the consumption of all the mineral,vegetable, and animal resources will be concluded byhuman self-consumption, in a spiral of infernal growthclosed in on itself. In other words: since human beingsare part of the Earth, economic geophagy will lead toanthropophagy.

(1) - This “non-catastrophic shift” can be imagined fromprecedents that have occurred in so-called “modern” societies.During the siege of Leningrad in the winter of 1941-42,o ff i c i a l l y - t e rmed “isolated cases” of anthropophagy wereuncovered. In the case of Leningrad, as for Soylent Green, theìcannibalsî preferred not to know what they were eating: thiswas possible thanks to money and to the intermediary of meat-suppliers. The suppliers said to the buyers that it was horsemeatand the consumers believed them. We can relate this situationto the forms of delegation described by the French sociologistBourdieu: ìto the extent that, in most forms of delegation, there p resented [m a n d a n t s] write out a blank cheque to theirre p resentative [m a n d a t a i re], if only because they are oftenunaware of which questions the representative will be facedwith, they hand over responsibility to himî.Some years before, in fact, the totalitarian state of the USSRprovided an example of another form of ìsocial cannibalismî,when the Communist Party, ìdevoured its own childrenî duringthe purges whose pretext and starting point was theassassination of Kirov in 1934, once again in Leningrad.Hundreds of thousands of party members were arrested and shotor deported, before the police officers and denunciators whotook part in this enterprise themselves suffered the same fate inan infernal spiral from which few escaped.(2) - http://decro i s s a n c e a c o l o m b e s . z e b l o g . c o m / 3 0 1 3 8 -colombes-ville-rouage(3) - Cf the many works of the ASPO, Association for Study ofPeak Oil, indicating an oil peak between 2005 and 2020.(4) - www.manicore.com/documentation/serre/acide.html

by Jean-François TabardinEnergy consultant

THE LABORAT O RY PLANET15

Change the world, transform lifeby Jean Segont I

Pâle ouvrier qu’esquinte la machineVerlaine

Published in 1870 the text The Coming Race, byEdward Bulwer-Lytton,(1), is considered today asone of the founding texts of the science fiction

genre. In the long tradition of utopian narration, whichallows the author to criticise the society of his own time,Lord Lytton describes the journey of an engineer whodescends into the underground (3) and encounters thesociety of the Vril-Ya, descendants of Atlantis, who tookrefuge under the earth after a catastrophe. These superiorbeings of the Infra-World have achieved a high level ofdevelopment and constitute a new race, thanks to thepower of Vril, an inexhaustible energy source (4),developing knowledge and techniques many thousandsof years ahead of our own:

« I should say, however, that this people have invented certaintubes by which the vril fluid can be conducted towards theobject it is meant to destroy, throughout a distance almostindefinite; at least I put it modestly when I say from 500 to1000 miles. And their mathematical science as applied to suchpurpose is so nicely accurate, that on the report of someobserver in an air-boat, any member of the vril department

can estimate unerringly the nature of intervening obstacles,the height to which the projectile instrument should be raised,and the extent to which it should be charged, so as to reduceto ashes within a space of time too short for me to venture tospecify it, a capital twice as vast as London. » (5)

Ly t t o n ’s novel reflects, amongst other things, thepreoccupations of his times and the growing hegemony ofVictorian scientists in the field of knowledge (Darwin,Maxwell, the Royal Society, etc.). This being the case, itis not too far fetched to state that, for example, thenotion of Vril, operates in a way as an explicit referenceto electromagnetism:

« These subterranean philosophers assert that by oneoperation of vril, which Faraday would perhaps call‘atmospheric magnetism,’ they can influence the variations oftemperature—in plain words, the weather; that by operations,akin to those ascribed to mesmerism, electro-biology, odicforce, &c., but applied scientifically, through vril conductors,they can exercise influence over minds, and bodies animal andvegetable, to an extent not surpassed in the romances of ourmystics. » (6)

Today, the central position held by Lord Lytton’s novelwithin Nazi mythology (7) seems to rather overshadowthe interesting things that this story presents, in terms oftechno-scientific dystopia linked to the paradigm ofmutation, as described by Raymond Trousson:“As for the suffocating perfection within this world, Bulwer-

Lytton still prefers the current state of things. By questioninga civilisation founded on scientific progress and employmentcarried out by machines that pretends to transform humanbeings into half gods, he aims, through Koom-Posh, atdemocratic America, utilitarian et mechanised, but his ownsentiment is larger and more ambitious. His utopia supposes amutation in human nature, a dehumanisation, and istherefore a warning of a new tone: sociologically speaking,utopia is on the way to being eschatological.” (8)

The following extract is highly significant:“Thus, for our race, , long before the discovery of Vril, only

the most powerful organizations had survived, and our oldbooks recount a legend once widespread, that we have comefrom a region that seems to belong to the world that you’ref rom, so as to improve our condition and achieve apurification of our species, following the terrible struggle thatled our ancestors, and when our education is completed, weare destined to return to the earth’s surface to reign over allinferior races there.”(9)

Published anonymously two years later, Erewhon, bySamuel Butler, was first attributed by the British public tothe writer of the The Coming Race. Erewhon, an anagram

of the word Nowhere, uses the traditional structure of theutopian novel; in effect Erewhon assembles several essaysdevoted to a description given by a traveller lost in aworld, revolutionised five hundred years ago after thevictory of the “Anti-machinists” over the “Machinists’.

« The parties were styled the machinists and the anti-machinists, and in the end, as I have said already, the lattergot the victory, treating their opponents with such unparalleledseverity that they extirpated every trace of opposition.The wonder was that they allowed any mechanical appliancesto remain in the kingdom, neither do I believe that they wouldhave done so, had not the Professors of Inconsistency andEvasion made a stand against the carrying of the newprinciples to their legitimate conclusions. These Professors,moreover, insisted that during the struggle the anti-machinistsshould use every known improvement in the art of war, andseveral new weapons, offensive and defensive, were invented,while it was in progress. I was surprised at there remaining somany mechanical specimens as are seen in the museums, andat students having rediscovered their past uses so completely;for at the time of the revolution the victors wrecked all themore complicated machines, and burned all treatises onmechanics, and all engineers’ workshops—thus, so theythought, cutting the mischief out root and branch, at anincalculable cost of blood and treasure. » (10)

In the following chapter after this extract, Samuel Butlerpresents “The Book of Machines”, an essay that focuseson the visions and theories of the Anti-machinists that

inspired the anti-technological revolution; one cannotbut notice the remarkable contemporary character of thisdescription, right up to the questioning presented belowconcerning a future world which is more and moredependent on machines:

« There is no security against the ultimate development ofmechanical consciousness, in the fact of machines possessinglittle consciousness now. (...)But who can say that the vapour engine has not a kind ofconsciousness? Where does consciousness begin, and whereend? Who can draw the line? Who can draw any line? Is noteverything interwoven with everything? Is not machinerylinked with animal life in an infinite variety of ways? (...)“As yet the machines receive their impressions through theagency of man’s senses: one travelling machine calls to anotherin a shrill accent of alarm and the other instantly retires; but itis through the ears of the driver that the voice of the one hasacted upon the other. Had there been no driver, the calleewould have been deaf to the caller. There was a time when itmust have seemed highly improbable that machines shouldlearn to make their wants known by sound, even through theears of man; may we not conceive, then, that a day will comewhen those ears will be no longer needed, and the hearing willbe done by the delicacy of the machine’s own construction?—when its language shall have been developed from the cry ofanimals to a speech as intricate as our own? (...)“... (...) we cannot calculate on any corresponding advancein man’s intellectual or physical powers which shall be a set-offagainst the far greater development which seems in store for themachines. Some people may say that man’s moral influencewill suffice to rule them; but I cannot think it will ever be safeto repose much trust in the moral sense of any machine.“Again, might not the glory of the machines consist in theirbeing without this same boasted gift of language? ‘Silence,’ ithas been said by one writer, ‘is a virtue which renders usagreeable to ourfellow-creatures.’” » (...)« ... (...) I would repeat that I fear none of the existingmachines; what I fear is the extraordinary rapidity with whichthey are becoming something very different to what they are atpresent. No class of beings have in any time past made so rapida movement forward. Should not that movement be jealouslywatched, and checked while we can still check it? And is it notnecessary for this end to destroy the more advanced of themachines which are in use at present, though it is admitted thatthey are in themselves harmless? » (11)

The anguishing questions raised by Bulwer-Lytton andButler in these two stories are highly related to theepistemic crackdown in operation by techno-scientificmaterialism, that now appears like an ideology ripening todominate an era, the era in which we still live today. Thisideology crystallizes around the notion of pro g re s s ;directly proceeding from the ideas of evolutionism andD a rwinism; and it’s latest avatar, transhumanism -“humanity must give birth to a new species, asexual andimmortal, having exceeded the individuality, separation andfate” (12) – when the mask is thrown down, indeed, it isalways from a divine position that the language ofdomination burdens us to transform the world. (13)

(1) - Edward Bulwer-Lytton, English politician and writer, whosat in the House of Commons and then in the Upper House as aLord, is the author many stories including Zanoni, and The LastDays of Pompeii.(2) - As in Utopia by Thomas More or “Gulliver’s Travels byJonathan Swift.(3) - Lytton is inspired by hollow earth theories, which werepopular in the novels of the nineteenth century, for example inEdgar Alan Poe (The Adventures of Arthur Gordon Pym) andJules Verne (Journey to the Center Earth)(4) - This explains the special status of the novel within the“free-energy” community.(5) - E. Bulwer Lytton, The Coming Race, Chapter XVI, from (6) - E. Bulwer Lytton, The Coming Race, Chapitre VII, from (7) - See Black Sun by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Englishtranslation from Lorry Black editions.(8) - Raymond Trousson, Sciences, techniques et utopies, du paradisà l’enfer, L’Harmattan, 2003.(9) - Raymond Trousson, Sciences, techniques et utopies, du paradisà l’enfer, L’Harmattan, 2003.(10) - Samuel Butler, The Colleges of miss-judgment, Erewhon,Penguin Classics.(11) - Samuel Butler, The Book of Machines, Erewhon, PenguinClassics.(12) - Michel Houellebecq, The Possibility of an Island, Traedition, 2006.(13) - The philosophers have only interpreted the world, invarious ways; the point, however, is to change it’, Karl Marx inthe Theses on Feuerbach.

The National Ignition Facility, or NIF, is a laser-based inertial confinement fusion (ICF) research device underconstruction at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in Livermore, California, United States. NIFuses powerful lasers to heat and compress a small amount of hydrogen fuel to the point where nuclear fusionreactions take place. NIF is the largest and most energetic ICF device built to date, and the first that is expectedto reach the long-sought goal of “ignition”, when the fusion reactions become self-sustaining.

entitled them to take over “less vigorous” neighbouringareas, an interpretation based de facto on an idea of racialinequality that provided justification for imperialism andcolonialism (2) and which would ultimately lead to thenotion of liebensraum.

For Sir Halford J. Mackinder, (3) world history hasessentially been the story of a never-ending strugglebetween “sea wolves” and “land wolves”, between“thalassocracies” and “tellurocracies”, between naval andterrestrial world conquest. He considered the Caucasianand Eurasian region to be the “geographical pivot ofhistory”. At a lecture in 1904, when he was director ofthe London School of Economics, Mackinder presentedhis theory of a “Heartland”. Russia was about to completethe Trans-Siberian Railway, and Mackinder observedthat the advent of the railways in the late 19th centurygave men of the land the potential to be just as mobile as

naval powers. By using “interior lines”it became possible to occupy the“ c e n t re” of the Continent morerapidly than naval powers such asBritain could. A fervent partisan ofthe British imperial system,Mackinder put forw a rd the“Heartland” concept to help Londondefend its interests against Russianexpansionism, believing that in 1904the “balance of power” was beginningto tip in favour of Russia, the pivotalstate. Mackinder declared thatBritain’s strategic task for the 20thcentury would be to prevent Russiafrom reaching the Indian Ocean.Later on, following the collapse ofTsarist Russia, Mackinder insisted thatLondon should institute policiesdesigned to prevent the Bolshevikauthorities from consolidating theirhold over the outside edges of theirEmpire. Mackinder wanted the Westto uphold the independence ofcountries such as Ukraine, Armenia,Azerbaijan and Georgia. At that time,the British government and its allies

did not follow his advice, and the Bolsheviks ended upmaintaining control of most of the areas that had beenruled by their Romanov predecessors.

Somewhat paradoxically, Mackinder’s geopolitics alsoseems to have left a deep impression on his contemporaryideological adversaries. An “Eurasian School” promotingan Eurasian Union under Russian authority emergedamong Russian nationalist emigrants in the 1920s (led byPrince Nikolaï Trubetskoy and others) and owed much toMackinder’s ideas (as well as to the German notion of“Conservative Revolution”).As the decades passed, strategic challenges evolved andtechnological advances radically changed the way ac o u n t ry was able to project its power. And yetMackinder’s theories on the Eurasian Heartland were toremain operative; indeed they were to continue toprovide the intellectual foundations of Western politicswith regard to Soviet expansionism, in particular theformulation of America’s strategic policy of containment

THE LABORAT O RY PLANET16

‘Those who control eastern Europe dominate the Heartland:those who rule the Heartland dominate

the World Island (that is, Eurasia): those who rule the World Island dominate the world.’.

Sir Halford J. Mackinder

The expression “The Great Game” was usedt h roughout the 19t h c e n t u ry to describe theconflict between Russia and Britain in the

Caucasus, and gained coinage as a key concept in thedevelopment of modern geopolitics. Since the fall of theBerlin Wall the expression “New Great Game” has beenused to refer to the contemporary struggle of influencebetween the US and Russia in the area that stretchesfrom Turkey to Tibet. In fact the concept remained

operative throughout the 20th century, ever since thefailure of the English-speaking world to anticipate theconstitution of the Bolshevik Empire.

The two key late 19th century founders of moderngeopolitics are Friedrich Ratzel and Sir Halford J.Mackinder, Darwinist zoologists who became geographersand historians of human development and who favouredimperial policies based on evolutionist ideology and thesecularisation of “sacred geography”.A contemporary of Darwin, Friedrich Ratzel adaptedconcepts of evolution to the more general scale of States,comparing the latter to biological organisms that undergog rowth and decline. Referring to himself as an“anthropogeographer”, he held that “The State undergoesthe same influences as all forms of life. That which underliesthe spread of Mankind over the Earth determines theextension of his States. (...) Frontiers should not be conceivedin any other way than as the expression of organic andinorganic movement.” (1) The spread of populations thus

p. 1 and 2 - L a b o r a t o ry - P l a n e t by Michel Ti b o n - C o rn i l l o tp. 3 - Research into the driving forces ofannihilation by Bureau d’étudesp. 4 and 5 - Geo-engineering. From the Atom bombto rising water level by Bureau d’étudesp. 6 and 7 - Voodoo Planet by Ewen Chardronnetp. 8 and 9 - Map : Detection and Nucleargeostrategy in Arcticp. 10 - Genesis of a Geo-industry : i c e b e rg s by EwenChardronnetPage 11 to 13 - Doomsday Seed Vault in the Arcticby William Engdhalp. 14 - Total Geo-engineering by J e a n - F r a n ç o i sTabardinp. 15 - Change the world, transform life by JeanSegont Ip. 16 - The Heartland by Ewen Chardronnet

Summary

Editors : L é o n o re Bonaccini, Ewen Chard ro n n e t ,Xavier FourtS e c re t a ry : B u reau d’étudesTranslation : Malcolm Eden, Martyn Back, SarahVe rmande, Ewen Chard ronnet, Hehe

Former military and political leaders participate in a mock gloal energycrisis at the Ritz-Carlton November 1, 2007 in Washington, DC. Thegroup Securing America’s Future Energy organized the “Oil ShockWave,”an event where participants will hold mock war-room meetings andrespond to a global oil supply crisis.

by Ewen Chard ro n n e tduring the Cold War.After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991,Mackinder’s Western concepts influenced efforts designedto promote “geopolitical pluralism” in theCommonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Thisconcept was to be the cornerstone of the Clinton andBush administrations with regard to the new independentStates of central Eurasia. In 1997, Zbigniew Brzezinski, aformer advisor to President Jimmy Carter, published TheGrand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its GeostrategicImperatives, which presented a version of the Great Gameadapted to the 21st century. (4)

While Brzezinski was developing his ideas, a strong Neo-Eurasianist current favouring national restoration wastaking shape in Russia, led by the orthodox geopoliticianAlexander Dugin. Drawing first from Edward Limonov’sNational-Bolshevik movement, then from classicEurasianist thinking and Atlanticist-Continentalist wartheories (5), Dugin was to exercise a major influence onthe development of a Eurasian strategy in Russia.Vladimir Putin was partially to embrace this strategy, thechanging economic and political climate over the lastdecade combined with 9-11 having led to a spectacularnew focus on the Eurasian region.Islamic radicalism, riding on the stagnation of economicconditions, was to gain a foothold in the region, nowconsidered by Russia and the West as pivotal to the fightagainst world terrorism. Meanwhile, regional security wasto become an increasingly complex issue, with Pakistanin possession of nuclear weapons and Iran striving todevelop its nuclear capacity. The Eurasian Heartland isalso becoming the backdrop for an increasingly intenseeconomic struggle, largely fuelled by a desire to controlthe region’s abundant energy reserves. The USA, Russiaand China all have key interests in the area, and Russia iseager to pre s e rve its influence from Baku to LakeBalkhash, not only for the sake of oil but also in relationto its space and anti-nuclear strategies. Moreover if Russialoses the Caucasus, she may well have to cede EasternSiberia to the Han Empire...

“If Russia wants to preserve the oil of Baku (deprived of itRussia would hardly be able to keep not only theTranscaucasus, but also the Northern Caucasus under itscontrol), it should prevent Georgia’s independence.”(6)

(1) Politische Geographie, 1897.(2) Ratzel’s theory held that primitive peoples (Naturvölker) inAfrica, Oceania etc. had traits that set them apart from more‘evolved’ peoples (Kulturvölker) in the Old and New Worlds, andthat the latter were thus naturally entitled to occupy theterritories of the former.(3) Originally a zoology student, Mackinder took up geographyand modern history “…with the idea of seeing how the theory ofevolution would appear in human development”.(4) “The Grand Chessboard - American Primacy And ItsGeostrategic Imperatives”, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Basic Books, 1997.(5) Here thalassocratic civilization, seen as Anglo-Saxon,Protestant and capitalist in spirit, is considered to be theirreducible opposite of continental civilization, seen as Russian-Eurasian, Orthodox/Muslim, and socialist in spirit. cf AlexanderDugin, The Great War of Continents, Avatar, 2006 ; and TheRussian Conservative Revolution, Evrazia Journal n° 2, 2006 ; (6) Nikolaï S. Trubetskoy, “O narodakh Kavkaza,” in: NasledieChingizkhana, Agraf Publishers, Moscow, 2000, p. 472-473.

We would like this newspaper to helpthe critique of techno-science reach awider public. We have chosen thenewspaper medium so that it can bedistributed as widely as possible, whileavoiding established distributionnetworks. This is only the second issue.We believe that the only curre n t l yexisting way of distributing thenewspaper outside established andcommercial circuits is to constitute acommunity of readers-distributors. For 20 euros, you will receive 30 copies(for 50 euros, 100 copies, withoutpostage) that you can distribute freely.If you subscribe for yourself and afriend: 15 euros (2 copies of 3issues,without postage). Singlesubscriptions are not available.

Community of reader-distributorsIf you would like to distribute copies of this issue:

(note the number of copies)

n°1 (why are we working for our own obsolescen-ce ?) (may 2007)n°2 (lucidity and cognition) (july 2008)n°3 (geoengineering) (sept. 2008)

For paiement contact the “Association la Planète-laboratoire“. The publication is distributed by individuals who wantto support the critical journal The Laboratory planet.

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The Heartland :between Atlanticism and Continentalism

The main objectives of the project operations are thefollowing: - the setup and testing of a High Frequency radio basedopen source messaging and digital communicationssystem, named : INSULAR RADIO for the Arctic to beused by all of the stakeholders in the North- the setup and testing of a field based WiFi andmicrowave open data and content exchange system in the Arctic (Nunatsiavut,Nunavik, Nunavut, Inuvialuit) - the setup and testing of zero-impact environmentalsensor networks to be used by the Inuit and Inuvialuit inconjunction with the traditional methods ofenvironmental observation- design, prototyping and fielding of the first BALOKmobile media-centric facility and life support modulewith renewable energy supply, waste recycling, andcommunications systems as an open source mobilearchitecture, to be replicated and developed further usingnative knowledge - direct, cumulative, and indirect environmental impactassessments of the project carried out in the identifiedterritories- discussions, interviews and forums with localinhabitants and the establishment of sharing thisi n f o rmation throughout the North and furt h e rCircumpolar areas via an open-source model- the establishment of clear policy guidelines in regard tothe dissemination of content, research results, data,knowledge exchange and project participation guidelines- the achievement of Inuit and Inuvialuit open sourceICT (Information and Communications Technology)and open systems literacy through a series of free softwareand open source software workshops, primarily aimed atdigital content production, aggregation anddissemination in a variety of media using free and openstandards and methods- the establishment of a representation structure, thatwould connect the Northern Cultures with the rest of theworld, by linking to existing indigenous mediaproduction, aggregation and distribution projects and byenabling the presentation of the supported activities inCircumpolar venues and around the globe - to establish a means of production and management ofscientific data within the identified Nort h e rncommunities.

The proposed project is the second phase of the I-TASC/C-TASC organizational activities, which startedin 2006 with the presentations of the project to theArctic research communities and indigenous peoples.The first event was the Makrolab North expedition toIgloolik, Nunavut, in April 2006, which also marked thestart of the collaborative relationship of the project with the Inuit hunters, media workers and thecommunity of Igloolik.One of the main thrusts behind the project is the design,development and prototyping of the first BALOKmodule. The module gets it’s name from the BALOKS(or Baluks), mobile wooden huts provided with runnersthat can be pulled by reindeer, and are still in use todayby the Dolgan people in the Siberian tundra in theRepublic of Sakha (Yakutia) . Our BALOK module is based on the preliminary firstdesign phase work done by Marko Peljhan, STVARArchitects, Jan Trost, and Nejc Trost, during a designworkshop in April 2006 at the University of California,Santa Barbara. Further improvements of the designconcept were done during a University of CaliforniaResearch in the Arts conference workshop on sustainable

a rc h i t e c t u re at the end of May 2006, with theparticipation of the Chillean based Arqze architecturecollective, with extensive Antarctic experience, and themain designer of the International Polar FoundationBelgian sustainable Antarctic base Johan Berte. Thep re l i m i n a ry design was presented to the Igloolikcommunity, elders, youth, hunters and media workersduring the Makrolab North expedition in the Isumaoffices in April 2006 in order to get Inuit input into thepotential usefulness of such an endavour, and theresponse has been overwhelmingly positive, providingthat this new infrastructure will be utilized and managedby them. The module is stru c t u red around the Intern a t i o n a lStandard Payload Rack (ISPR) system, a 2m high, 1mwide and 85cm deep rack module, based on theequipment and logistics exchange racks that weredeveloped for the use on the International Space Station.With the use of this standard and universal interface, wewill enable quick equipment and content exchangecapability for the users and increase the speed of themodule’s serviceability. The skin of the prototype asplanned will be made of multi-layered compositematerials and wood, with vacuum insulation paneling,however, we intend to make a study of locally sourcednatural materials (caribou skins and similar) which couldand will be used if deemed more sensible. The insulationcapabilities of the module will be enhanced by the use ofthermal mass, including water. The module will beequipped according to the local safety regulations, forinstance; with an insulation and fire resistance layer.

The ISPR’s that will be developed for the BALOKprototype will include: - a communications rack with High Frequency radio,FM/AM radio transmitters, VHF/UHF packet radiocapability, WiFi and microwave links- a biological solid waste processing and compostingsystem - a solid waste compactor- a black water filtering and recuperation system - a grey water recycling unit - sleeping unit - galley/storage unit- a hydroponic growing system- a renewable sources (wind, solar) power managementand storage systemThe other, non-ISPR based systems for the module willinclude a passive water production system, deployablephotovoltaic generators, and wind turbines.

“Along the new DEW line the reception of climatechange is constrained by enduring resentment over thepast and the present conduct of federal and provincialgovernments in regard to forced relocations, residentialschooling, land claims implementation, and the like. Thepersistent feeling is that Southerners have beendisrespectful, callous, and cruel to Inuit. The memories goway back. They seem connected to the traditional ethicof respect that ought to govern all behavior…Smallcommunity support for cooperation on an agenda thatoriginates with Southerners is not easy to find when theproject evokes past grievances, and especially when thesense of victimhood is strong. Climate change is such aproject, in its demands upon Inuit to listen and agree…”-Franklyn Griffiths “Camels in the Arctic?, Climatechange as Inuit see it: from the inside out”; Walrus,November 2007

The above words and those of LouisTa p a rdjuk, theNunavut Minister of Culture, who said that “…adiscourse of disaster that originates with others who areknown to be dominant cannot but present a threat to ourautonomy, to our ability to set our own priorities, to trustwhat we observe and experience in our everyday lives” areimportant statements coming from within the Inuit worldand its observers. Statements that we are takingresponsibly, ethically, and with great respect. They serveas guiding principles in this project’s quest to provide theInuit and other Circumpolar cultures with facilities forenhanced sustainable mobility, tools for autonomousremote sensing and wildlife monitoring through the use ofcivilian Unmanned Aircraft Systems, the knowledge tooperate them and an autonomous network infrastructure.These structures, both physical and virtual will enablemedia authoring, communications and aggregation “fromthe land” and will connect the culture to artists, scientistsand other invested parties throughout the world.

We have to go to work!

MAKROLAB markII, Rottnest Island, WA, 2000 MAKROLAB markIIex energy systems, Campalto, IT, 2003

The module is stru c t u red around theI n t e rnational Standard Payload Rack(ISPR) system, a 2m high, 1m wide and85cm deep rack module, based on theequipment and logistics exchange racksthat were developed for the use on theInternational Space Station.

@rt Outsiders which was created by Henry Chapier and Jean-Luc Soret in 2000 at the EuropeanHouse of Photography in Paris. This annual show devoted to cutting-edge creation and to theconvergence of the arts, science and technology revolves around themes such as: Digital Images(2000), Avatars (2001), Bio Art and Artificial Intelligence (2002), Space Art (2003), Censorship(2004), New Media Art in Brazil (2005), Electromagnetic Bodies (2006), Invisible Territories (2007).Président : Henry Chapier Curator : Jean-Luc Soret Communication : Yannick Le Guillanton Tel : 01 44 78 75 20 / E-mail : le.guillanton@art-outsiders.com

@rt Outsiders 2008

c o n f e r e n c e sArt and environment. Towards an Eco-creation ?Closing conference curated by Jean-Luc Soret in partnership with Le CubeAuditorium du Cube, Issy-les-MoulineauxOctober 12th 2008 – 3 > 6 pm

Marko Peljhan, ITASC Project

Andrea Polli, Ground TruthThe Antarctic is unlike any other place on Earth: afrontier where borders are overshadowed by scientificcollaboration and cooperation, where the compassbecomes meaningless yet navigation is a matter of lifeand death, an extreme environment with some of themost unique species, but also an ecosystem undergoingrapid change. Last year I had the opportunity to go toAntarctica for the first time, on a US NationalScience Foundation-sponsored artist’s residency.

I wanted to go to Antarctica to more closely engagewith the issue of global climate. I had been using datafrom remote weather stations in projects, though I hadnever actually visited them. While in Antarctica, Ispent most of my time in two places: The Dry Valleys

(77°30’S 163°00’E), 3500 km due south of NewZealand, the driest and largest relatively ice-free areaon the continent, devoid of terrestrial vegetation, andthe geographic South Pole (90°00’S), the center of afeatureless flat white expanse on top of ice nearly ninemiles thick.

I learned that many more human beings observe andre c o rd weather and climate in Antarctica thanmachines, and that the scientists call this process ofobservation ‘ground truthing.’

Why, with sophisticated instrumentation and remotesensing, do we depend upon humans on the ground tolook up at clouds? What is the meaning of ground truthand can it inform and enhance our relationship withthe environment? I am exploring these questions in mycurrent series of works called Ground Truth.

Catherine Rannou, architect andartist, lives in Britany, France.Web site : catherine-rannou.blogspot.com

B u reau d’Études, Conceptualgroup of artists founded in 2000based in Montreuil and SaintMenoux, France.. Co-founders ofThe Laboratory Planet, with EwenChardronnet.Web sites : www.utangent.org;www.laboratoryplanet.org

Ewen Chard ronnet, independantauthor and curator. Studied scienceand journalism, develops an artisticwork alone or in numero u scollectives. Co-founder of T h eL a b o r a t o ry Planet, with Bure a ud’études.Web sites : semaphore.blogs.com;www.laboratoryplanet.org;

www.e-ngo.org

Art in AntarcticaA series of conferences

curated by Annick BureaudAuditorium de la MEP Auditorium

september 24th and October 8th 2008 – 5 > 7 pm

Marko Peljhan was born in 1969and studied theatre and radiod i recting at the University ofLjubljana. In 1992, he foundedthe arts organisation Projekt Atoland was at the origins of theM a k rolab Project (1997-2007).He is currently professor ofi n t e rd i s c i p l i n a ry studies at UCSanta Barbara.Web site : www.interpolar.org

Andrea Polli, working and livingin New York.Associate Professor in theIntegrated Media Arts MFAP rogram at HunterCollege/CUNY.Web site : www.andreapolli.com

Marko Peljhan – Andrea PolliSeptember 24th 2008

5 pm > 7 pmMEP Auditorium

Catherine Rannou, “Inhabiting” antarcticaAntarctic stations are work places, facilities dedicatedto science and research. But can the continent be saidto be “inhabited”? Are these bases the beginnings ofan urbanization reminiscent of diffuse cities, a kind ofSilicon Valley with the occasional human habitats?A scientific station takes in laboratories, workshops,storage areas, dormitories, canteens... that is buildings,paths, platforms and between them, empty spaces...Empty spaces that are sometimes named and markedout and that can be walked through and measured...m e a s u rement being a condition necessary tourbanization.In between, next to, or together with scientific andlogistic necessities and beyond any political will toconquer new territories, the scale of those facilities, ofhuman pro p o rtions, produces a “space poetic”...imported landmarks crucial to the survival of theexogenous beings in these extreme locations.The conference at the Maison Européenne de laPhotographie will be the opportunity to show a videoentitled “Astro 1”, an artistic installation entitled“Cartography of transience” and plans for the nomadiccabin “Glacio-M1”, a project under constru c t i o n .These pieces are examples of the work I haveundertaken in Antarctica at the Dumont d’Urville

and Concordia bases, in collaboration with the FrenchPolar Institute (IPEV), Cultures France, the GrenobleLGGE (glaciology and geophysics enviro n m e n tl a b o r a t o ry), wintering biologists, logisticians andweather technicians (…).

Bureau d’études, Ewen Chardronnet, a laboratory planetSince the Second World War, the world has beenprogressively transformed into a full scale laboratory.The model of a “laboratory world” has been added tothe model of a “factory world”. The Arctic and Antarctic territories, with the actualp rogessive dismantling of the rules administratingthem (that manifest partly in the strategies preparingfor the renegociations of the maritime and polars o v e reignties in 2009), are also entering in thisindustrial and scientific activism. These spacesformerly called naturals are sold out for cheap priceswhile the demiurgic experiments are multiplying.The Laboratory Planet journal proposes to unify theh e t e rogeneity of the critics adressed at theset r a n s f o rmations, critics that are oftenly separated,conditioned and then given to the managmentstatistics of the disaster.

Catherine Rannou – Bureau d’Études& Ewen Chardronnet

October 8th 2008, 5 pm > 7 pmMEP Auditorium

>>>>> Art and Environment. Towards an Eco-creation ? Closing Conference <<<<<

October 12th 20083 > 6 pm

Le Cube Auditorium, Issy-les-Moulineaux with Jean-Luc Soret, Marko Peljhan, Ewen Chardronnet and Annick Bureaud

@rt Outsiders Partners : LaMairie de Paris, la MaisonE u ropéenne de laPhotographie, Le Cube( I s s y - l e s - M o u l i n e a u x ) ,Nova, MCD, lacrititique.org