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Rocky Mountain Environmental Health Association

Cell Phone Task Force

This page contains the following sections -

Introduction

This page will present links and dicussions regarding the Cell Phone Task Force.

Dear Friends,

After I sent out my last newsletter (almost two years ago), warning about plans to WiFi the earth from space, I dedicated myself to publishing my life's work, The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life. After much difficulty, the book was finally released on Earth Day of this year. It is "easy to read, hard to put down, sublimely poetic, and scientifically rigorous," says architect Jennifer Wood. "A mind-blower," writes psychologist and author Chellis Glendinning.

If you have not yet read it, this book is different. It will alter the landscape surrounding our issue and make it possible for legislators and judges to change course. Although it has been selling well in our circles, it now needs to come to the attention of the mainstream press and the medical and scientific establishments, worldwide. I am meeting with a publicist later today. In light of what is happening (see below), the publicity campaign is essential and urgent. It will cost money; please donate what you can on our website:

Unless we win not only hearts, but minds, of ordinary people, we will win some skirmishes but lose the war. And the stakes are far too high and too imminent.

Smart everything, but...

My colleagues around the world -- the small dispersed cadre of activists fighting desperately to prevent 5G from breaking out everywhere -- are working tirelessly, without enough support and with precious little money, to educate members of Congress and members of Parliament, who are just as addicted to wireless technology as their constituents. 5G, for those who don't yet know, is the two-letter word for an audacious plan to "educate" everything you own and buy: expect "smart" cities, "smart" cars, "smart" businesses, "smart" homes," "smart" clothing, "smart" hairbrushes, "smart" milk cartons, and "smart" diapers.

In the U.S., industry organizations like the CTIA and the Wireless Infrastructure Association are intensely lobbying Congress and state and local governments to abolish all zoning laws that regulate antennas and towers. The number of wireless sites needed for 5G is mind-boggling, with experts predicting a small cell tower on every block in every city, others predicting cell sites in most buildings, and some predicting ten billion cell sites in the world in just a few years.

There are three bills are pending in Congress to facilitate this:

Eleven states have already passed laws abolishing zoning regulations for small cell towers in the public rights-of-way: Iowa, Colorado, Kansas, Texas, Arizona, Indiana, Minnesota, Florida, Virginia, Delaware and North Carolina. Similar bills are pending in California, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Wisconsin. A similar bill became law just last week here in Santa Fe, New Mexico (see below).

Although the 5G standard has not even been released yet, Verizon is already testing a pilot version of it in eleven cities: Ann Arbor, Atlanta, Bernardsville, Brockton, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Miami, Sacramento, Seattle, and Washington, DC. Chinese telecom giant Huawei, together with Telus, has already achieved speeds of 30 gigabits per second in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Bell and Nokia have achieved high speeds in the 73 GHz frequency range in Mississauga, Ontario.

And for those who are still under the illusion that fiber optics is a substitute for wireless, the wireless industry itself is investing billions in fiber: it is the only way they will be able to build a 5G network with fast enough speeds. Telus, for example, is investing one billion dollars on fiber in Vancouver alone in order to support the necessary wireless speeds.

Don't forget about the satellites!

The threat from space, even though it is actually greater than the threat from 5G on the ground, is still not much discussed, even in our circles. In part, this is because everyone is so occupied with preventing zoning regulations from being abolished and antennas from sprouting outside their front doors. But in part, it is because outer space is still out of mind and few scientists, let alone the public, understand the grave implications of having ten thousand microwave antennas directly in the magnetosphere. See chapter 9 ("Earth's Electric Envelope") and chapter 17 ("In the Land of the Blind") of my book.

OneWeb's first 720 satellites were approved by the FCC in June. So many satellites are being contemplated by so many companies that NASA is partnering with private industry to create orbiting factories that will manufacture satellites on a continuous basis in space using 3-D printers.

Efforts to get this issue before the United Nations have been fruitless up to now, but they must continue.

Fiasco, and opportunity, in Santa Fe

Last week, the Santa Fe City Council faced down more than 150 angry citizens and unanimously passed its own 5G ordinance, 9-0. Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and their contractors and vendors, are salivating. It is a calamity, and an opportunity. In addition to all the fundamental issues that exist elsewhere -- health, safety, environment, due process, free speech, etc. -- there were numerous violations of procedure having to do with ethics and conflicts of interest.

The Mayor's mother and two brothers own several radio and cell towers. The wife of one of the bills's sponsors, who is also the person who made the motion to pass it, is a telecom lawyer. The City Attorney was caught in a number of lies. Some of you have seen the email that I sent out last Thursday to my Santa Fe list. We also have issues of historic preservation: Santa Fe is America's oldest capital and second oldest city, and the entire downtown area and its surroundings consists of historic districts. Well, this bill also makes cell towers in the public rights-of-way exempt from our historic preservation ordinance.

As soon as the minutes are adopted next Wednesday, the bill becomes law. We are preparing a lawsuit, and when we go to court, we are prepared to challenge the constitutionality of section 704 of the federal Telecommunications Act, which prohibits the regulation of cell towers on the basis of health. A local radio host said before the vote that section 704 should be overturned, and that Santa Fe could be ground zero for a legal challenge if this bill passed. Again, this will require money.

Of course, donations are needed for both projects that I have discussed in this email: paying a publicist, and paying our lawyers. Anyone who can assist us with fundraising for either or both projects, please contact me immediately. Donations can be made on the Cellular Phone Task Force's website (see link, above). Or, checks can be sent to:

Cellular Phone Task Force
P. O. Box 6216
Santa Fe, NM 87502

Anyone who can assist with these campaigns in any way, please email or (better) call me.

Arthur Firstenberg
(505) 471-0129

References -


Follow the links below to learn more about RMEHA and Environmental Illness.


Revised '31-Jan-2018,9:26:38'