Monthly Archives: October 2018

Why Fry the Planet? – 5G as Existential Threat [Updated]

By James Heddle and Mary Beth Brangan – EON – September 27, 2018

This will be in addition to millions of ground-based cells.

“Unlike some countries, we do not believe we should spend the next couple of years studying what 5G should be, how it should operate, and how to allocate spectrum, based on those assumptions…. Turning innovators loose is far preferable to expecting committees and regulators to define the future.” – U.S. Federal Communications Commission  former Chairman Tom Wheeler (June, 2016)

“The deployment of 5G constitutes an experiment on humanity and the environment that is defined as a crime under international law.”  –  International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space. (2018)

5G – A Wonderful, Wireless World… or, a Looming Global Public Health Conflagration?

“If the telecommunications industry’s plans for 5G come to fruition, no person, no animal, no bird, no insect and no plant on Earth will be able to avoid exposure, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, to levels of RF radiation that are tens to hundreds of times greater than what exists today, without any possibility of escape anywhere on the planet. These 5G plans threaten to provoke serious, irreversible effects on humans and permanent damage to all of the Earth’s ecosystems.”  So begins the International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space.

Creeping Telecom Coup 

The attempted telecommunications industry take-over that began with the Telecommunications Act of 1996 is now nearing completion as the industry-captured Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issues ever more rules restricting the rights of local elected bodies to regulate the build-out of public health-endangering and local authority-usurping 5G wireless technology – both ground- and space-based.

September 26, 2018, the FCC voted to ‘streamline’ the process for installation of their next generation technology, 5G.

From MDSafetech.org: “Far from being mobile, this technology will depend on thousands of  fixed “small cell” antennae throughout cities and residential neighborhoods, about 300 meters (~1000 feet) apart. In order to function, these short wavelength radiofrequencies (6-100 Gigahertz or GHz) will be pulsing at billions of times a second (1GHz=1 Billion cycles /sec) and will be continuously emitting radiation 24 hours a day.  In a addition, a newer technology which is used in the military for early warning missile radar systems, PAVE PAWS, is incorporated into these systems called phased arrays, whereby more powerful built in “beam steering” arrays scan back and forth from tower to device and from device to tower for easier connection with an individual’s movement, similar to the missile systems. Phased arrays are also used in AM and FM radio broadcast stations and proposed for automotive radar sensing.  The cell phones will operate with higher power and shielding for electrical interference but no apparent shielding for the user.  There has been no premarket testing for health or environmental harm. “

[ Download PDF ] (Developed by Paige Hutson)

Contrary to widespread misconception, 5G has nothing to do with better cell phone coverage or emergency response communication.  The ‘small cells’ are definitely not aimed just for personal wireless services, like phones. It’s aimed at providing the internet of things connectivity and HD video wirelessly to homes and offices.  And contrary to the claim that due to being blocked by trees, buildings, etc., the ‘small’ cells must be placed very close together (every 300 meters) and adjacent to homes, businesses, schools, parks, etc., Verizon’s CEO says they’ve “busted that myth.” 

“We busted the myth that foliage will shut it down. I mean that was back in the days when a pine needle would stop it. That does not happen. And these things — in the 200 feet from a home, we’re now designing the network for over 2,000 feet from transmitter to receiver, which has a huge impact on our capital need going forward. So those myths have disappeared. We’re charging ahead.” (May, 2018)

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Wargaming the Science on Cell Phones and Health

 

Reprinted from the Pt. Reyes Light:

War gaming the science on cell phones and health risks: A conversation with journalist Mark Dowie

We’ve been documenting the development of wireless microwave devices and the independent science on its effects for the past 20 years. So we were delighted by a recent confluence of events: the release of the National Toxicology Program peer-reviewed study and the publication of an article in The Nation, “How Big Wireless Convinced Us Our Cell Phones Are Safe,” focused on how industry war-gamed the science.Soon after, a major study was released in Italy that replicated the results of the National Toxicology Project study. Both found that the same rare cancers appeared in animal subjects exposed to both high and low levels of radio frequency electromagnetic radiation.We couldn’t resist interviewing Inverness resident Mark Dowie about all of it. Mark is a celebrated investigative reporter and historian, the author of many books, the winner of at least 19 journalism awards, a former publisher and editor of Mother Jones Magazine and the co-author with Mark Hertsgaard of the recent Nation article. Here is our conversation.

Jim: How did you decide to write this story?

Mark: [Mark] Hertsgaard, who’s the investigative editor of The Nation, asked me to do a big story on cell phones. I looked at the literature and found that cell phones have been beaten to death. It’s a shop-worn story, impossible to advance.

So I said, “I think the story is how industry has been war gaming science”—‘war gaming’ is their term, not mine—and gave him the history going back to military research that was done on microwaves during the Cold War, then up to the present, and how so much of it has been suppressed, classified, hidden and distorted by wireless defenders who tore pages from the playbooks of the tobacco and fossil fuel industries, then used the same P.R. firms, the same law firms. All to do the same thing: manufacture doubt about the harmfulness of this technology. Hertsgaard said, “Okay. Let’s go with that.”

Jim:  Did you find anything surprising that you didn’t expect?

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We Almost Lost SoCal

Nuclear-Waste-Dump by-the-Sea

September 26, 2018

The controversial loading of high-level nuclear waste in thin-walled steel canisters into concrete silos just yards from the beach at Southern California Edison’s shutdown San Onofre nuclear plant has been temporarily halted by potentially game-changing events that happened early in August.  Some experts say the near accident could have been as serious as Chernobyl and Fukushima all rolled into one.

Here are background video reports and commentary from systems analyst Donna Gilmore.
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UN No Nukes Day – Envisioning a Peaceful, Post-Nuclear Planet

International Day for
the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons


Sculpture depicting St. George slaying the dragon. The dragon is created from fragments of Soviet SS-20 and United States Pershing nuclear missiles. UN Photo/Milton Grant

“The total elimination of nuclear weapons remains the highest disarmament priority of the United Nations.”

Securing Our Common Future: An Agenda for Disarmament

What better way to honor this day of planetarian intentioneering than with the eloquent statements of participants in the recent Hiroshima Day Commemoration at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in Livermore, California, a key hub in the U.S. nuclear weapons complex ‘Doomsday Machine.’

Here is EON’s coverage of this spirited yearly event, featuring Key Note Speaker, celebrated Pentagon defense analyst-cum-whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg.
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Iowa Oil Train Spill Poses a Question

June 23, 2018

Silent drone footage from the Lyons County Sheriff Department:

On June 22, 2018 there was a 31-car derailment of an oil train in a flooded region of Iowa, leaking crude oil into the Rock River. The Lyon County sheriff admitted, “We don’t know how much is leaking or how bad it is.”

See also:

Two trains derail in SE New Mexico over the weekend

 ‘Chernobyl in a Can’
The previous month, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) held a series of public meetings in New Mexico on a proposal moving through Congress – HR 3053 – that could result in thousands of metric tons of radioactive waste from the nation’s nuclear reactors being shipped across country to that state for ‘temporary’ storage. (see previous post)

Public opinion ran consistently 5-1 in opposition.  Many speakers cited the serious transportation risks involved. Continue reading

The California – New Mexico Nuclear Connection

Citizen Solidarity at Both Ends of a Proposed U.S. “Fukushima Freeway”

Californians learn that the two industries which most threaten human survival are facing off in New Mexico’s ‘Nuclear Alley.’

By James Heddle – EON  – June 7, 2018

[ Also posted on Counterpunch.  An earlier version of this article is posted on Reader Supported News in three parts:  here here   and  here. ]

Interstate solidarity against consolidated interim storage (CIS) – activists from New Mexico, Texas and California. (from left) Ace Hoffman(CA), Sharon Hoffman(CA), Rosemary Blanchard, Leona Morgan, Nick Maxwell, Noel Marquez, Hanh Nguyen, Sue Schuurman ( behind Hanh next to Torgen) Torgen Johnson(CA), Robin Seydel, Cal McManus, Cody Slama. Photo: Anon.

Target: ‘Nuclear Alley,’ New Mexico

Recently – un-reported in the scandal/crisis-pre-occupied American main stream media – New Mexico has become the epicenter of an on-going national controversy: how to responsibly manage the tons of radioactive waste accumulated at all the nuclear energy reactors around the country so far in the Nuclear Age.

Why, New Mexicans and others around the country are asking, has this region suddenly become the potential target destination for all of America’s radioactive waste? Continue reading

New Mexico’s ‘Nuclear Alley’ just says “No!” to More Radioactive Waste – EON Reports


 

Nuclear Alley U.S.A.

June 4, 2018

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 2018, HR 3053, known as the Shimkus Bill, passed the House last month on its way to the Senate.

It calls for restarting the failed Yucca Mountain Project in Nevada, and establishing a system of Consolidated Interim Storage (CIS) sites for radioactive waste around the country until Yucca is operational.

First on the list of possible ‘temporary’ CIS dumps is a site proposed by Holtec International and the local Eddy-Lea Alliance just outside Hobbs, New Mexico.

Its just over the border from Andrews, Co., Texas – where another high level nuke waste dump is also proposed.

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