Memories of Greenham Common peace camp
ColdWarKid | 22.08.2005 15:29 | Repression | World
"In Peace Women fear electronic zapping at base"
"The American military at Greenham Common has an intruder detection system called BISS (Base Installation Security System) which operates on a sufficiently high frequency to bounce radar waves off a human body moving in the vicinity of this microwave perimeter fence."
In a Hearing before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, U.S. House of Representatives, on Military Construction Appropriations for 1985, General Schneidel made an indiscreet reference to the possibility of the use of microwave technology at Greenham Common.
"The concept of our operations is to protect the highest value resources on the base...We have a set concept that provides for security while in garrison and certainly in wartime, when it deploys off the installation and into the operational mode.... Whatever the case may be, where the system is not full up with all the required sensors, fences and lights, people will be assigned to compensate for those shortfalls in the equipment."
Since the deployment of the microwave security system, the number of U.S. personnel guarding the installation has dropped dramatically. The deployment of this security measure was further indirectly confirmed through the year-end Report of the Department of the Air Force Headquarters 501st Security Police Group: The Greenham Common by-laws went into effect and the super fence was constructed....
It is not clear whether the Greenham women were deliberately targeted by a microwave weapon or were irradiated by prolonged proximity to a microwave security fence. But since the US authorities at Greenham did not alert the protesters to the dangers of such a fence, it comes to much the same thing. The effects of non ionizing radiation on humans were well known to the U.S authorities via Project Pandora.
The late Kim Besly, a veteran peace campaigner and frequent visitor to Greenham Common, in the conclusion of her report on electromagnetic radiation, written on 30 October 1986, asked:
"Do we have to wait three generations for hard evidence?"
Liz Westmoreland from Peace and Emergency reports that several women peace campaigners from Greenham Common are suffering from various types of cancer.
ColdWarKid