Series : Geoengineering | Project GROMET : India gets her own Popeye | Post 5

amit86 (49)in #informationwar • 3 years ago (edited)

It is commonplace in Indian folklore that Kings of the past used music to create rains (alluding to Tansen and the famous Megh Malhar Raga music). But little is known about the recent (dating back a few decades) scientific experiments that have been carried out on Indian soil and in Indian airspace, to modify weather and create rainfall artificially. Introducing Project GROMET, possibly the first of its kind weather modification experiment in India. In this post, I will articulate the prevailing politico-economic conditions in India and US Foreign policy towards India context leading up to the launch of this nascent Geoengineering program in the sub-continent.

Famine Backdrop

Historically, famine was no stranger to India. The latter half of British rule in India saw at least six major famines (1873-74, 1876, 1877, 1896-97, 1899, 1943) with fatalities mounting in millions. Of particular significance in the Bengal famine of 1943, wherein the infamous policies of Churchill and his wartime cabinet during WWII let to the deliberate genocide of millions of Indians. As noted by journalist Madhushree Mukerjee -

Rice stocks continued to leave India even as London was denying urgent requests from India’s viceroy for more than 1m tonnes of emergency wheat supplies in 1942-43. Churchill has been quoted as blaming the famine on the fact Indians were “breeding like rabbits”, and asking how, if the shortages were so bad, Mahatma Gandhi was still alive.

Indian citizens waiting in line at a soup kitchen during the 1943 famine. (Photo - Bettman)

Less than two decades post India's independence, a similar crisis was shaping up in the eastern state of Bihar as well as parts of eastern Uttar Pradesh.Hardest hit was the state of Bihar, with a population of more than 51 million and a primary grain crop heavily dependent upon water: rice. Without water, the paddies dried up and the rice shriveled and died. Although crops can be saved with irrigation, Bihar was dependent almost exclusively upon rainfall. During a good monsoon season, the rice crop was good. When the monsoon failed, the rice crop failed with it. India had depended upon U.S. grain shipments since the mid-fifties, using imports to provide cheap food to the masses while its capital was invested in heavy industry instead of a strong agricultural base. In 1965, India was without water and without grain.

Famine news.JPG

US Foreign Policy

The Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act of 1954, commonly known as PL-480 or Food for Peace, was signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. PL-480, then administered by the Departments of State and Agriculture and the International Cooperation Administration, permitted the president to authorize the shipment of surplus commodities to friendly nations, either on concessional or grant terms.

It's essential to point out that PL-480 (similar to Green Revolution of Punjab) aid to India as well other nations did serve – or at some point came to serve – certain specific foreign policy goals for the USG (United States Government) -

Primarily the objective was to dispose of the surplus produce that was a direct result of domestic price support policy
Advantage as a foreign policy tool to push soft diplomacy
Economic and trade benefits
Provided a boost to the American agricultural exports and shipping industry

The primary objective of cold war U.S.-India foreign policy was to pull nonaligned India—the world’s most populous democracy and a vital linchpin in U.S.-Asia policy—into the Western sphere as a bulwark against the Soviet Union and Communist China.

It is important to note here that Lyndon Johnson, the President of US during this time, was particularly focused on using physical environmental sciences—notably weather modification and the control of nature, as a tool within the US foreign Policy toolbox. By the mid-1950s, almost all fields of the earth sciences, including meteorology, upper-atmospheric research, ionospheric studies, solar-terrestrial relations, geodesy, terrestrial magnetism, and oceanography, were specifically identified as critical to the national military establishment of USG, under JFK administration. As VP to JFK, Johnson was the point man for the weather modification and space program at that time, so it was no surprise that he seeked to further that agenda in his foreign policy (notable towards Vietnam and India), as President.

As India ket grappling with the lack of rains and chance of an impending famine, Johnson saw it as a fantastic opportunity to pilot a weather modification program here. He exacerbated the opportunity by implementing a "short tether" policy, keeping the Indian leaderhip nervous about grain availability, by supplying just enough grains to India under PL 480, just in time. This served 2 purpose for USG - firstly it acted as a catalyst for heavy investment in the Agricultural sector by the erstwhile Indian government (to which the USG was a beneficiary in terms of supplying chemical fertilizers and so called "high-yield" seeds) to prevent future famines, and secondly, it allowed USG to play hardball with the Indian government to get permission for a military grade weather modification experiment for the near term horizon, under the guise of a joint agro-meteorological research project to study the cloud physics and rain producing mechanism. In my Post 4 of this series, I draw attention of the reader under section "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it" -

Now that we have established compelling evidence as to the existence of chemtrails and their inherent difference from the benign contrails, lets take a look at the brief history of chemtrails. This exercise will also help us establish the case for its existence once we see that programs uncannily similar in nature and secrecy to chemtrails, have already been successfully carried out under different pretexts (never has the real purpose been officially acknowledged in these projects)

Such projects are always publicly announced as Research or Study projects, when in fact, they are actually tinkering with the atmosphere. You may also recall my post India plays its own HAARP where we looked at the official narrative for the Indian HAARP aka MST Radar in Gadanki, Andhra Pradesh as an "excellent system used for atmospheric probing in the regions of Mesosphere, Stratosphere and Troposphere (MST) covering up to a height of 100 Km. It is also used for coherent backscatter study of the ionospheric irregularities above 90 km". If you choose to trust the government narrative on such secretive initiatives, you might as well believe in unicorns.

Confluence of Diplomacy and Geoengineering

Gromet Outlook.JPG

As Doel and Harper notes in "Prometheus Unleashed"

In the cloudless, still-dark early morning of Monday, January 23, 1967, a large unmarked U.S. military transport plane, several small disassembled aircraft resting in its belly, landed just outside New Delhi at 5 a.m. On board were atmospheric scientist Dr. Pierre St. Amand and his associates from the Naval Ordnance Test Station (NOTS), China Lake, California. They were in India to undertake a secret mission: the breaking of the crop-damaging Bihar drought, one of the greatest humanitarian crises of that time, by classified, military-developed weather modification techniques.

The Indian government under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi insisted that any comments on this project connect it to
agriculture, not military objectives. Thus, India and the United States were playing a high-stakes game of diplomacy with GROMET. If the rains came, and the crops were saved, India would be able to claim a scientific and agricultural breakthrough. If the project failed, and it later came out that the United States had been using classified military techniques under the cover of an “agro-meteorological survey,” both governments could be severely embarrassed.

It is critical to note here that the pilot run for Project Popeye (refer to my earlier post on this) was only recently concluded by USG under Defense Secretary McNamara, which would later be unleashed militarily on Vietnam. Additionally, at that time , it was illegal for the USG to conduct weather modification experiments on its own soil, without approval of the Congress. This backdrop led to some folks questioning if Project GROMET was indeed a pilot run for Project Popeye, so that US DoD could gather data and fine-tune the "weather weapon" in iterative steps.

Artificial Cloud Seeding

With the technology in place to seed the clouds, the wait was now on for the clouds to appear. Seedable clouds finally appeared in mid-February. The outcome was mixed. Some clouds produced heavy rain, others light-to-moderate rain. Large clouds responded better than small clouds did. Team members believed that “economically valuable amounts of rain” could be produced over much of India during and after the monsoon season when nonraining cloud cover was more abundant. The embassy reported that agencies throughout India were now aware of the project and were extremely enthusiastic. Interestingly, the GROMET team did not report how much rain hit the ground—an important measure of the project’s success. The dry air evaporated the falling rain. Clearly, rain that failed to land on the parched earth would not aid plants. It would be difficult to call the project “successful.” Reporting these events to Johnson, DoD concluded, “State and the scientists are sorting out what kind of statement to issue—if any.” It is unclear if any public statement was made. But absence of GROMET’s mention in later books on weather control by Indian authors casts doubt on its having been discussed outside of government circles.

Despite this lack of success, the State Department still wanted to include Pakistan in GROMET. Desiring to ensure regional stability, the United States needed to take an evenhanded approach to aid for the two adversaries, while assuring both India and Pakistan that neither was being given an advantage. As the summer monsoons approached, the wind would blow from east to west. The effect of seeding could carry over into Pakistan. The biggest fear: that rain would fall in India, robbing Pakistan of water. With Pakistan’s “almost psychotic fear of India,” it would not be a good idea for Pakistani leaders to become convinced that India was trying to steal its water.

Its a Wrap

Given the fact that within US. weather modification was increasingly deemed Unacceptable, combined with other technical, diplomatic and legal hazards of maintaining tight control and secrecy on such a project with such ambiguity and huge ramifications, GROMET went silent and possible was wrapped. However, it is very critical to note that the wrap of GROMET did not put a stop sign on Geoengineering in India, infact it was just getting started. GROMET might be considered as a bedrock for such future Geoengineering experiments. In early June 1967, Johnson sent a team sponsored by USAID to India to set up a permanent weather modification program despite potential legal and international complications.

If you get a chance to read through the last 4 posts in this series on Geoengineering, you may relate to the fact that India is a pivotal pillar in the supranational control of Geoengineering processes. The usual fingerprints of Geoengineering, namely Sequential Water Vapor release using Cooling Towers, NEXRAD Weather RADAR for the Frequency grid and finally the nano-particles of heavy metals via Chemtrails, are all easily visible in India. Finally, India plays her own HAARP through the MST Radar facility in Gadanki, Andhra Pradesh, which further confirms the participation of the county in global Geoengineering projects. At this point, one might safely conclude that we don't need Tansen and his Megh Malhar Raaga to artificially create rainfalls in India, the scientific infrastructure is in place to create it like clockwork.

References and Further Reading -