(The following article is from the October 16-31, 2009, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

From the Antifascist Calling blog, http://antifascist-calling.blogspot.com, Sept. 19, 2009

Although so-called non-lethal weapons (NLWs) have been around for decades and range from CS gas to pepper spray and from the low-tech water cannon to the Taser, their use by military and police agencies world-wide are designed to ensure compliance from hostile "natives." It's a safe bet that migration from the military to civilian law enforcement agencies will continue at its current break-neck pace.

     In this context, San Diego's East County Magazine and progressive Liberty One Radio reported, ironically enough on September 11, that the San Diego Sheriff's Department stationed a Long-Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) during recent town hall forums.

     Manufactured by American Technology Corporation (ATC), the firm's LRAD 500-x is a dual-purpose device: a powerful hailer and a non-lethal weapon capable of producing ear-shattering sounds highly-damaging to their human targets.

     ATC's technology has been deployed in Iraq as an "anti-insurgent weapon" and off the coast of Somalia to fight off desperate "pirates," that is, former Somali fishermen whose livelihood has been destroyed by over-fishing by foreign factory fleets and toxic dumping, including nuclear waste, by Western polluters.

     Developed for the U.S. Navy in the wake of the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, cruise ship Captain Michael Groves "successfully repelled pirates off the Somali coast using non-lethal weapons including an LRAD. Groves has since filed suit against Carnival Cruise Line, claiming he suffered permanent hearing loss as a result," East County Magazine reports.

     The BBC noted in 2005 that the "shrill sound of an LRAD at its loudest sounds something like a domestic smoke alarm, ATC says, but at 150 decibels, it is the aural equivalent to standing 30m away from a roaring jet engine and can cause major hearing damage if misused."

     According to ATC's web site, "LRAD resolves uncertain situations and potentially saves lives on both sides of the device by combining powerful voice commands and deterrent tones with focused acoustic output to clearly transmit highly intelligible instructions and warnings well beyond 500 meters."

     ... Far from being employed as a means to "reduce casualties," its actual use lends itself to the opposite effect. In Iraq, for example the U.S. Army's 361st Psychological Operations Company noted that "The LRAD has proven useful for clearing streets and rooftops during cordon and search, for disseminating command information, and for drawing out enemy snipers who are subsequently destroyed by our own snipers."

     In a civilian setting, one can easily envisage "rioters" being sonically blasted prior to street clearing operations by heavily-armed SWAT teams. Kevin Keenan, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union told East County Magazine:

     "It's very concerning. It is fine for the Sheriff's Department to have new less-than-lethal weapons, but for their interactions with individuals these still-dangerous weapons need to be used only as substitutes for firearms. They can't be used as just another tool on the tool belt. As we've seen with tasers and pepper spray, these types of weapons are being used to subdue people even though they pose the risk of serious physical harm."

     ... As Neil Davison, the author of the recently published "Non-Lethal" Weapons points out, military and police moves towards "effects-based" NLWs are consistent with requirements "for weapons with greater range, more precise delivery, and rheostatic effects from `non-lethal' to `lethal'."

     Davison cites the LRAD and other acoustic devices as "the only new technologies that have emerged" in the last several years and pointedly notes that "all these weapons have emerged from the private sector."

     That they have should hardly come as a surprise.

     After all as Homeland Security Weekly reported in 2007, "homeland security spending is a massive and highly lucrative new market." With an expected growth rate between "eight and ten percent annually over the next five years" the publication claims that "the addressable U.S. market over the next five years will be in the range of approximately $140 billion, a 21 percent increase over our five-year estimate made in 2004."

     ... While schools go unfunded, infrastructure collapses and affordable health care for all is an unattainable pipe dream, police and intelligence agencies are having a field day - at our expense. Call it part of the "counterterrorism stimulus" package that our corporate security masters are hell-bent on shoving down our throats.

     However you slice it, there's a lot of boodle to be had by enterprising defense and security grifters. Alongside current multibillion dollar outlays for "biodefense" and counterterrorism initiatives by a multitude of state and federal agencies, the development of ever more dubious "non-lethal" weapons, implements for compliance and control during the capitalist meltdown, will enjoy a steady growth curve long into the future.