In 1999, at the end of November and beginning of December, it rained, rained, rained, rained, rained so much, but so much that in one week it rained what corresponded to almost a year in the north of Venezuela. Some people wondered if we had been seeded with clouds, because the rainy season was until the first half of November and that same year the La Niña Phenomenon ended in March-April. There were elections in Venezuela, contrary to the wishes of the people in power worldwide..
I remembered Uncle Ho trying to get supplies and personnel to the front lines because the U.S. and Allied Armies, in a secret environmental operation they called Popeye (to poke or wink, mischievously), seeded clouds in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam by the Weather Reconnaissance Squadron from March 20, 1967 to July 5, 1972, depending, with Three to Five planes twice a day, sometimes three times a day. They used Udorn Airport in Thailand. A total of five hundred and two missions per year (two thousand six hundred and two in the five years) at a cost of eight thousand three hundred dollars each mission to seed (I don't know how to determine this) forty-seven thousand four hundred and nine clouds..
The result was a persistent, abundant and permanent rain that made the land wetter and caused landslides and floods, overflowed rivers and caused more floods. The objective of the Environmental War was achieved: the Vietnamese armies were unable to mobilize, transportation was useless because the roads and bridges were destroyed and the fields were flooded..
Not counting on their cunning, Uncle Ho invented bicycle transportation. He took supplies and personnel to the battle front on two wheels, but on bicycles. He moved with his armies under the shade and protection of the mountain and the trees resulting from the deluge of the Popeye Operation, with the tunneling of their settlements, he won the war..
For the incredulous and those who believe that this was and is a Fakenews that persists over time, there are valid testimonies and filmic critiques.
The movie Forrest Gump criticized Operation Popeye, when the character recounting his misadventure in Vietnam says that it always rained there, from top to bottom, from bottom to top, from right to left and from left to right, from front to back and from back to front.
Journalist Jack Anderson, which today's Wikileaks, published the secrets of Operation Popeye in the U.S. newspaper New York Time, a leak that led the House of Representatives and the Senate to speak out in the Senate Subcommittee on Oceans and Environment. This investigation was led by Senator Clainborn Pell.
In the United States, students and anti-war movements took up the defense of nature (the environment) against war. Barkeley University was a bastion of the student environmental struggle..
In the U.S. Congress, there was a discussion about Operation Popeye and they decided that no more environmental wars. Resolution 281 of the U.S. Congress, of June 1972, requests that the United States, together with other countries, prohibit international environmental warfare and that neither the environment nor geophysical activities be used as weapons of war.
Amendments were made to Resolution 71 (July 1973), HR 116 (1974), HR (1974), HR 234 (1974) and HR 28 (1975), to give a hard legal edge to environmental wars..
But so many lying characters appeared, stinging the eye, for this political trial of the operation. That was the case of Martin Laird, who passed a letter, later, to Congress in 1974 where he admitted that he lied and admitted that Operation Popeye was developed when he was Secretary of Defense in the Richard Nixon Administration..
The public did not know about Operation Popeye until 1974 and that it cost so much, with a total investment of twenty-one million dollars.
The siege of Congress was not enough, however there was its successor operation, Operation Agent Orange, using dioxin as a weed killer. This operation came about because of so much rain, Mac Namara promoted Operation Agent Orange because there was too much bush and the Vietnamese were "hiding" from the invading armies. They could not fight against such a hidden enemy and in the end, with so much bush, the Vietnamese won the Vietnam War against the US..
The insistence on the prevention of environmental wars became an issue of the United Nations Organization (ONU)
In 2001, through Resolution 56/4, the ONU General Assembly declared November 6 as the International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict..
This is a benchmark because covert operations use methods not authorized by the same legal body and powers of the United States..
The legal and Environmental Education battle has not yet been won, but I am proud that we are in the era of prevention of environmental warfare..
