This is weird: the only other thing I've written for Barbelith was on Aum Shinri Kyo.
Here, from a select subcommittee report:
quote:http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1995_rpt/aum/part06.htm
4. The Former Yugoslavia
At some point, the Aum became very interested in the ideas and inventions of Nikola Tesia, a scientist who experimented in the fields of atmospherics, electromagnetics, fluid dynamics, and geodynamics in the early 1900's. According to an official of the International Tea Society in the United States, a representative of the Aum in New York City, Yumiko Hiraoka, inquired into the Aum becoming a member of the Society. In January 1995, Hiraoka, the manager of the New York Office, sought to obtain from the Society a number of books on the inventions of Tesia, his patents, and writings. When the Staff inquired as to why the Aum would be interested in Tesia's work, the official speculated that they may have sought information on Tesia's experiments with resonating frequencies. He stated that Tesia had experimented in creating earthquakes and that Tesia was quoted as saying that with his technology he could "split the world" in two. He also noted that Tesia had developed a "ray" gun in the 1930's which was actually a particle beam accelerator. According to the official, this gun was reported to be able to shoot down an airplane at 200 miles.
The official also told the Staff that upon Tesia's death the U.S. government had seized most of his papers and research notes. When members of the Society have requested information on Tesia's work under the Freedom of Information Act, much of the material has been "black penned" for national security reasons.
It was for this reason that the Aum sent some of its members to the former Yugoslavia. The Staff has confirmed that from February to April of this year, six members of the cult traveled to the Tesia Museum in Belgrade. There they studied Tesia's writings on something known as the Tesia Coil, a coil used for alternating current. The members also studied Tesia's work on high energy voltage transmission and on wave amplification, which Tesia asserted could be used to create seismological disturbances.
I'm gonna have to look up when that Kobe Earthquake took place. |
