Text of first meeting of Athens, Greece, Chemtrails/Geoengineering Action Committee December, 2010
http://www.enouranois.gr/english/epistolesenglish/indeepitropiagona.htmGood evening.
We came together this evening to speak to people. And to begin with to speak to our friends in Cyprus about the creation of a committee of struggle because our friends in Cyprus who are involved with the aerial spraying established such a committee this year and set an example for us and we want this evening to start the process, and the dialogue so that a similar movement can start here in Athens.
Perhaps we should say who we are. My name is Wayne Hall. I live in Aigina. I have been involved with the aerial spraying for 7-8 years. Mr Katsaros will say….
Nikos Katsaros. I am a scientist at the Democritus research centre.
I am Catherine Collin. I am half French and half Brazilian. I live in Athens and I see chemtrails every day, I see spraying every day and I want to get involved more systematically.
This year there have been some developments with the subject. For a start, after the failure in Copenhagen a lot of discussion started generally about something called geoengineering. And this geoengineering became a subject of discussion and finally of an initiative by a group called the ETC group which founded a movement called “Hands off Mother Earth”. I don’t know if Mr. Katsaros wants to say anything about that initiative because we supported it, concretely. We put on our site an open letter to “Hands off Mother Earth” to make it clear that we support the initiative that was started by the ETC group and the movement called “Hands off Mother Earth”. I don’t know if Mr. Katsaros wants to say anything about that:
Nikos Katsaros: Yes, for a start let’s say a few words about what this chemical aerial spraying is, or these chemtrails, as they are called. Many people throughout the world, and particularly in the NATO countries have observed aircraft, without distinctive markings, leaving white trails which by contrast with ordinary trails do not disappear within a few minutes but instead remain in the sky for a long time and many times spread out, and moreover the aircraft that leave these chemical trails behind them don’t go in straight lines but leave grid patterns or go in zig zags and this has made many people wonder what is going on and what they are spraying us with and although to date no responsible answer has been given, governments have allowed the idea to get around that something is being done for the good of humanity, that it is a means of dealing with the greenhouse phenomenon, in other words global warming or climate change, so in these aircraft trails, in the fuel they put particles of aluminium and barium which, when expelled with the exhaust, reflect the sunlight. Less sunlight reaches the earth, and the temperature falls. So the greenhouse phenomenon is dealt with, using particles of aluminium and barium. We should note here that both aluminium and barium are toxic substances. However long they remain in the sky at some point they will fall to earth, they will pollute the water-table and from there the food chain and they will not only affect human health but also damage the environment.
WH: Mr. Katsaros….
Nikos Katsaros: This is the reason for our opposition to this spraying – nobody knows exactly what it is, but this is what they have allowed to leak - and no government gives a responsible answer .
WH: Mr. Katsaros do you believe that the objective of the spraying is geoengineering, that it aims, as is implied by certain statements, not official statements, at geoengineering, that the purpose of the spraying is geoengineering?
Nikos Katsaros: To start with geoengineering is a new branch of science which has appeared in the last ten years and is aimed at handling large planetary phenomena. One of those phenomena is climate change. So part of geoengineering involves at the planetary level, dealing with the greenhouse phenomenon. And famous scientists such as Paul Crutzen who received the Nobel Prize for discovering the ozone hole recommended something similar to what is happening with chemtrails, with aerial spraying of chemicals. That is to say he recommended that particles – in this case sulphur – should be lifted up in the atmosphere at a great height. That the sunlight be reflected from them, that less sunlight should reach the earth and the greenhouse phenomenon be deal with in this way. So geoengineering – which also proposes other solutions – includes that activity which is called aerial spraying or chemtrails and we as action committee are opposed both to the chemical spraying and to geoengineering, because the consequences of planetary experiments of this kind are unknown and they should not be implemented before we are sure that they will not have consequences for the environment, for human health and for the water table.
WH: Catherine do you believe that the spraying is for geoengineering purposes?
Catherine Collin: Perhaps. Perhaps yes, perhaps no. I have been sick because of the spraying in Athens. And my two cats were vomiting when the spraying was very intense. Mr Katsaros is certainly right that the spraying can have very bad consequences for health.
WH: Certain people who don’t believe in climate change – skeptics – think that the spraying is for other purposes. That’s why I’m asking.
Catherine Collin: Yes, climate change is a misleading idea. For as long as we talk about climate change we don’t talk about t the spraying. We remain on the subject of whether there is or is not climate change. Climate change might exist for other reasons apart from human causes. It could be because there was a shift of the Earth’s axis when the comet Phaethon passed. Many comets have come close to the Earth. There has been a shift of the axis, and that may have something to do with it.
WH: My view is that in the situation we are in it doesn’t make much difference whether the purpose of the spraying is - some people say things like this – to kill us or to decrease fertility and so on, or whether the purpose is to prepare the ground for the genetically modified plants of Monsanto that are resistant to aluminium or whether it is to facilitate the operations of HAARP, or whether the purpose is what they say, to reduce the level of sunlight that reaches the earth. The fact is that all these ideas are considered to be conspiracy theories and so are kept outside the permitted boundaries of public discussion. The only thing that is beginning now to be permitted is the subject of geoengineering because – particularly after the failure of the Climate Summit in Copenhagen - governments, and particularly the US government are trying to secure the consent of the public to the idea that geoengineering is acceptable, an acceptable solution to the problem of climate change.
And so this determines the framework of the discussion. The discussion is permitted, and so for that reason we have this discussion.
Part 2
Would you like to say something?
Nikos Katsaros: Yes, it is to be expected, Wayne, that from the moment that no government says officially why this chemical aerial spraying is taking place, conspiracy scenarios will be generated. And a lot of those conspiracy scenarios mention that after the aerial spraying some people experience headaches, dizziness, discomfort and we have the specific instance a few years ago in a town in Canada, Hispanola, 90 percent of the population of the area, after such aerial spraying, experienced something that seemed like flu and called the Canadian government health service who examined the inhabitants and found that 90 percent of the population were indeed suffering from a strange kind of virus infection but they never told those people where the infection had come from, what the facts were, and what exactly was happening after the chemical spraying. So the requirement is – and we in our movement insist - that the responsible governments of every country where this chemical spraying has been observed should give a responsible and objective answer on what is happening and if what we say is happening, why it is happening, what purposes it serves, and how we can be protected from such experiments, so geoengineering, which is a broader subject, but includes the chemical spraying, must be dealt with accordingly, because there have been international conferences and geoengineering is now a recognized branch of science which introduces specific measures and planetary experiments to forestall phenomena that concern, that affect, the whole planet.
WH: Mr. Katsaros, you recently went to Cyprus, where you were invited there by some parliamentarians and I believe bya group of citizens - THE group of citizens, the action committee, to be specific,, but perhaps you can describe to us your trip to Cyprus.
Nikos Katsaros: I saw that in Cyprus there is a real democracy. I say that in the sense that in Greece we have been struggling for years to get the Greek parliament to give an official answer to the question of whether this spraying is occurring and why. And so far nobody has given us an official answer. On the contrary they have ignored us, whereas in Cyprus the parliamentary committee for the environment of the Republic of Cyprus was convened and all the parliamentarians of the committee for the environment of the Cypriot parliament were present and at the same time they had summoned senior officials of the Foreign Ministry, the Defence Ministry, the Interior Ministry, the Environment Ministry, the Health Ministry, the Agricultural Development Ministry and senior state officials from the Water Service, the Meteorological Service, the Civil Aviation Authority and a number of other state functionaries and at the same time they had invited a representative of the British base at Akrotiri.
So it was a wide-ranging and very serious discussion on the phenomenon of the aerial spraying, which was convened, I should point out, in response to a position paper delivered by the Citizens’ Initiative against Chemical Aerial Spraying and to the testimonies of the Citizens’ Initiative against Chemical Aerial Spraying a number of responses were given by the relevant functionaries and finally there was unanimous acceptance by the Environment Committee of the Cypriot Parliament of the position paper delivered there that after chemical spraying special planes should be sent up and should collect in special filters and that then there should be analysis and an official answer be given as to what substances are to be found in this chemical spraying, why it is being conducted and if is not being conducted to provide reassurance to the Cypriot people because there is a prevalent anxiety that this aerial spraying is being carried out from the base at Akrotiri, probably, so that it influences many phenomena including various other protests that have made their appearance there.
But the fact is that the Cypriot parliament has shown a responsible stance to this subject, and I believe that they will go forward also with the commitment they have undertaken for experiments to be conducted to show whether something like this is occurring in Cyprus or not and the committee of initiative against chemical spraying will carry out inspections and make use of the media to inform people what is happening with this spraying.
WH: Mr. Katsaros let’s talk a little about the significance of the stance of the Cypriots, because what happened in Cyprus may well be unique. It’s an initiative of the Cyprus Greens, who have a parliamentarian, Mr. Perdikis, who is actively involved with the subject of the spraying. That is something that has no counterpart in any other state in the world, for a Green party to become involved with this specific subject, despite the fact that there have been many appeals from citizens to the Green parties. There was no response. Only in Cyprus, and perhaps, our hope is now that this will act as an example, and it will spread.
We should not forget that three Green parliamentarians in Germany took out a lawsuit against the German government that this chemical spraying is taking place and they have not been informed. So it would be good for the moment, whether it is the movement in Cyprus or the Greek movement here or wherever else such movements are established to pressure their responsible governments so that they give honest and responsible answers to the question of the chemical aerial spraying that hundreds or thousands of people in the world are constantly observing. So too our action committee aims to pressure the Greek government and the responsible functionaries to give a responsible answer. The same, I believe, should happen in other countries, because citizens’ movements exist there too. Many of them, of course, direct questions to their governments. These questions are not answered but the more this demand from the citizens intensifies for their governments to answer, the more urgent it becomes, so that at some point they will be obliged to tell us what is happening. If it is happening for the good of humanity why isn’t it publicized so that all the scientific community, everyone who can, can help solve the problem of the greenhouse effect or climate change as they describe, as they give us to understand.
WH: Let’s talk about a new development which is the moratorium that was passed at the UN international convention on Biological Diversity. This moratorium was a product of the initiatives of the ETC group as we have mentioned. They managed to secure the support of almost all states with the exception of the United States and a few other insignificant instances – essentially all the states of the world support this moratorium, which means now that geoengineering, and specifically what is called Solar Radiation Management , which is the phenomenon that is linked with chemtrails in the popular consciousness, is now illegal, and this development is something that should become known.
It was buried by the media. Few people know about it. But despite that, the moratorium was passed and the question now is: what is our reaction?
We have found out who went from Greece to that Convention and who represented Greece there. And I think that the next step is to speak with these people and to ask them what their opinion is of the reasons that the Greek state signed a moratorium that it is clearly not observing. What do you say to that?
Nikos Katsaros: This is truly a very serious matter because for a start many people who heard from us about the chemical spraying, the chemtrails, either thought that we were ridiculous or that we were dreamers and in many cases we became the butt of ironic remarks. And now we have the United Nations in a conference that took place on biological diversity officially recognizing that there should be a moratorium, in other words a suspension, of geoengineering activities, and specifically a suspension of all activities that are either programmed or are already occurring in the form of chemical spraying for the next five years .
So we have official recognition from the United Nations that such experiments are either taking place or are about to, and because this sows doubt about people’s safety from the chemical spraying, there is a moratorium, that is to say a halt to this activity for the next five years, so it is official recognition and I address myself to all those who thought us marginalized, made us the object of ironic comments, thought us silly people with our heads in the clouds that the United Nations itself acknowledges that this is happening or is programmed to happen and warns that it should not do so.
And this is the other great responsibility of the Greek government and the president of the Environmental Committee of the Greek Parliament, who was present and voted for that moratorium, to tell us specifically whether in Greece this spraying is taking place, if it is planned and what the authorities are planning to do, finally. The authorities, the state must answer this question.
And we, as active citizens, and Catherine also, and you, and all of us, must help, must pressure the government to give an official answer. Given that it VOTED that moratorium what measures it plans to take. We can’t wait any longer.
WH: Mr. Katsaros I was born in Australia and I still have some links with Australia and because of the initiative we are taking I discovered that in Australia too certain chemtrails activists have found the names of the people who went to Nagoya, and they will ask the same e question there.
Catherine, you have lived in many countries. Do you think it is possible for us to ask the same question in many states?
Catherine Collin: Yes, yes, in France, from where I came, there are people who are anxious about chemtrails, what they see, what they feel. And in Switzerland. And in Brazil.
WH: Of course many people have a suspicious attitude to the moratorium. Particularly the skeptics, and people who are not in love with the UN. They have the view that perhaps the UN is worse than the spraying. Have you seen that phenomenon anywhere?
Catherine Collin: I have read that the UN has a vested interest in having control geoengineering. It wants to have the upper hand, to be in control . The moratorium is just for show, finally.
WH: The ETC group thinks that it is preferable for the UN to have responsibility rather than the United States or the Royal Society in England. The Royal Society has started a relevant discussion in England. Up until now, as the ETC group says, it is more or less an Anglo-Saxon initiative, all the discussion on geoengineering. Because not many other states participate in the discussion on geoengineering and particularly not the poor countries. That’s why the ETC group believes that it is better for control, and discussion on geoengineering to take place in the United Nations.
Nikos Katsaros: I would like to add here that these skeptics who don’t recognize the initiative and this decision of the United Nations to some extent are perhaps justified on that point because there is indeed an article in the United Nations charter that forbids experiments aimed at climate change because they are afraid that probably, in this way, regulating climate change, they will very likely develop the next generation of weapons of mass destruction.
But with this initiative of the United Nations it is at last recognized that nobody has the right to manage the sunlight reaching the earth because this management of solar radiation is aimed at bringing changes to the climate with unknown consequences, or consequences that will benefit only certain individuals, for reasons that are still unknown.
So it is very positive, and everyone from their own viewpoint should support this decision taken by the United Nations and responsible governments, particularly those that signed it, should declare explicitly and categorically what measures they plan to take and also to pressure the governments of the great powers , like the United States to give their reasons why they did not sign and what their purpose is.
WH: As far as the ETC group is concerned, which started the “Hands off Mother Earth” initiative, I believe, and I think all of us believe, that their negative stance towards geoengineering is honest, But not everything they say in relation to geoengineering is honest. For example that the geoengineering programmes have not been put into application on a large scale. Perhaps this lack of frankness on the part of the ETC Group was in a way the tax they had to pay to be more inside the action, more inside the discussions, than we are, for example. But we should not accept direct collaboration or dialogue with them unless they are prepared to give us reassurances that they will stop talking to the media about whether chemtrails exist or don’t exist. That is the subject that preoccupies the media.
It is not a subject that preoccupies us, because we know what we believe. I don’t believe that in reality it preoccupies the ETC group either. But the ETC group operates within a certain system. When journalists come with questions, they have to say something to them. But I think that if they want collaboration, or discussions, with us, they will talk with us, and not with the media. This is perhaps a hard stance, and of course it does not exclude support, because we support them, without qualification. But if it is a matter of collaboration and discussion, we want honesty. I don’t know what you want to say about that. About the ETC group.
Catherine Collin: Yes, we agree completely.
Nikos Katsaros: I would like to add that because many of those who are listening to us don’t know who the ETC group are, that there are – all over the planet – various initiatives, with different views, both in relation to geoengineering and in relation to the specific subject of the aerial spraying. All of them have a common purpose, to publicize the matter, because whether it is being developed or whether it is already in application, this is a positive step, in my view, that there is recognition that such experiments are being planned, or are happening and they must be prevented, so we should applaud the initiative and embrace this initiative of the United Nations, but the most important thing is that we should pressure the governments, particularly those that signed it.
WH: In relation to climate change, many activists against chemtrails are skeptics
Part 4
But you don’t have to be a skeptic in relation to climate change to agree that a bigger problem than climate change are the practices that are being proposed – purportedly as a means of dealing with climate change: geoengineering, nuclear energy, pollution trading, genetic modification of plants, use of plants not as food but as fuel.
All of these phenomena are being justified in terms of dealing with climate change. That is a big problem.
Nikos Katsaros: That is a big problem and certainly behind it there is great power, specifically big international corporations that are trying to gain advantage, in any way possible, publicizing the negative consequences of climate change. I continue to be optimistic that there is time to avert the phenomenon of climate change if an agreement can be achieved among the states of the world, that it should come about through the initiative of the United Nations and that at the same time there should be exposure of those big international corporations who work to exploit the phenomenon of climate change for their own benefit to acquire ever greater profit and we should note that private companies have emerged everywhere on the planet, which promise to cause climate change, that is to say to cause droughts in one area or to bring rain to another area, and even to exploit them for private purposes. So we have to struggle by every means to stop big corporations from exploiting this phenomenon for their own advantage.
It is real, it exists, but some interpret it in their own way , so that the big corporation can derive as much benefit as possible, whether they are Monsanto, whether they are big pharmaceutical companies, they are big companies producing agricultural products.
WH: Well, have we got anything else to add to what we have said?
Yesterday, from what I heard, a meeting was held in Larissa, with many people present and a local committee was formed. And the organizer of that meeting in Larissa says that such initiatives and such meetings will take place elsewhere also. Can we believe that today we are commencing a networking at the national level, and let’s hope that….
Nikos Katsaros: It is something very positive and initiatives will have to be taken by other people in other parts of the country for the purpose of pressuring the responsible government to give responsible answers and at the same time to take concrete measures and inform the Greek people of them.
WH: Well, the initiative is in your hands now.
