Newsletter (22 October 2003)

I will try to provide news from Japan on a regular basis

Dear Klaus,

The other day, it was mentioned in your newsletter that there is very little information coming from Japan. I will try to provide news from Japan on a regular basis. I was sending news to Arthur Firstenberg, but I have not heard from him since January. Has anyone heard from him recently? I am beginning to get concerned and pray that he has simply found a really good place to hide.

There is a language barrier which takes real effort for most people here to overcome. There is also a sense of despair here, as Japan has a history of following destructive delusions to their ghastly conclusions, and the citizens are along for the ride, like it or not. One of the hallmarks of Japanese culture is a duality of reality, with 'official reality' and 'the real truth' given equal status in the public mind. A couple of ways of conceptualizing this irrational state of affairs are

  • how things appear is more important than how they really are, and
  • a lie is acceptable if it can be rationalized as for the overall good of the people.

The result is stability, with challenges to the powers that be thwarted at the start, and an inability to make changes even when they are clearly necessary. It is not all bad, though. There is good research underway in Japan, and that will continue because the powers that be do not feel threatened by it. (Pressure may come from outside Japan to stop research, however.)

There is an active movement against masts in Japan, and a surprising level of awareness among the citizens of regarding health effects. The forces of suppression are also active. The battle goes on silently, so for example one week, posters go up at train stations in Tokyo urging people to consider others' feelings and not use their cell phones on the trains (it's called 'manners'), and they depict someone using a phone and little lightning zaps coming out from the antenna and the people around clearly annoyed. The next week, these are replaced with identical posters, except without the lightning zaps, and the emphasis on the sound being the problem. (I wish I had had my camera and the foresight to use it!) The rumor somehow gets spread that the big to-do is all about the sound. Then everyone is encouraged to use 'etiquette mode,' which eliminates the ringing tones or equally annoying trendy jingles, while allowing users to continue irradiating everyone silently. Then some other posters go up regarding pacemakers, encouraging people to turn off their phones on crowded trains. Commuters, possibly addicted to their phones, ignore these.

http://www.gsn.jp/english/index.htm ), one of the NGOs actively addressing the problem of non-ionizing radiation in Japan, found all of the passengers using cell phones despite signs prohibiting their use.

I discussed the possibility of addiction with the Gauss Network. They've taken a conservative stance on it, saying it is very hard to prove addiction. This does get talked about in society, though, enough to where one TV program accosted some young ladies at random and got them to give up their phones for a few days. These girls reported no hardship, so the program concluded there was no addiction. Real scientific of them, eh?

Regarding observed health effects in Japan, I should draft a simple table of various effects noted in the press (never explicitly stated as the effects of radiation, that would be going too far), the timing of their appearance, the sources of these reports, the official explanations, and references in EMF research regarding these same effects.

Off the top of my head, these would include flu-like illness, depression, suicide, insomnia, chronic fatigue syndrome, allergies, classroom breakdown, aggressive behavior, autism, memory loss and other disorders.

I would have remained blithely (??) unaware of this if not for a friend who came down with a five-month flu, whose doctor confided in her, because she was a foreigner and he didn't want to cause a panic among the Japanese, that this was epidemic, and that he thought it was due to some kind of pollution. He wouldn't say what kind of pollution. My friend turned to me, the environmentalist with a bachelors degree in chemical engineering, quietly battling the government regarding chemical pollution. We of course assumed the culprit was a new chemical pollutant. My friend was sicker than she had ever been in her life. I did not have an immediate answer, but started searching the journals. Somewhere, someone will let the cat out of the bag.

Well, that someone was Arthur Firstenberg, bless him for getting an article published by Earth Island Journal! He'd listed all my friend's symptoms and some others which I'd been experiencing on the trains and had been perplexed by. The timing of this, and the location!  The realization really hit hard.

My friend in central Tokyo with new antennas going up all around, and me on the trains, with people all around using these new-fangled toys—researchers in Japan have recently pointed out that when several people use their phones simultaneously on these trains, the radiation levels may exceed even ICNIRP's standards. More studies are underway on cell phone use in enclosed metal environments.

I will write again shortly about a recent trend in Japan in healing using 'nigari,' a seawater product used in preparing tofu, which is abundant in magnesium.

Yours truly,

Patricia Ormsby

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Miscellaneous

I am in touch with their investigator, helping her to locate people who suffer from the antennas,  not that it's so hard to find these people, but the crew concentrates in central Israel and I report them about cases in north Israel.

So one of the cases I wanted to tell about is a doctor, genicologist, who is sandwitched between 2 cellular installations, his room window is in front of the antennas and his room has 120 V/m measured today. The  people who are in the waiting room, are cooked by "only" 50 V/m. When he said it to the management, twice, this is the answers he got:

a. If you don't like it don't come to work.

b. It's electromagnetic radiation. It does not do anything.

Another case is installation of 12 antennas with infra structure ready for 40, (they do it all the time) it is an arm distance from the bedroom of an old person, who lives near this installation for 1.5 years. He and his neighbours say they don't feel bad (symptoms), but they say that they are afraid to feel anything, because otherwise they will be labeled as having a psychological problem.

Hospitals in Israel erected base stations in hospitals, in one them close to the children department. It is an experiment for Wi Fi, so that the doctors will have wireless computers. The benefit, they say - is that they don't have to speak with the patient about his sickness history - they just press on the computer and have the data. One doctors told he had showed a child a movie with the computer, a movie on asthma. This way he can really do something meaningful for the patient, he felt. He said he is really waiting for making video conferences with other doctors in the hospital, and using more the multimedia, all of this for the benefit of the patients, of course ! [Good guys. Did they take some radiation measurements?]

Transformers, cellular antennas, power lines - or should it be called "a radiation celebration"- all of this in one station, the distance from houses is 15 meters, 50 meters from kindergarten and school, in the center of Israel, on the border between the cities Herzliya and Ranana. It's the second picture, don't miss this monster- station.

http://www.green-party.org.il/Herzliya/News.htm

The green party of Herzliya wrote to the environment and infra structure ministers, and to the maires of Ranana and Herzelia, they wrote that this is a social unjustice, because it had been built without informing the citizens, they also protest against the health hazards.

Gillette gives up on 'smart' tags: Gillette has abandoned the use of radio-frequency identification RFID smart-chips in its products after a trial of the surveillance technology at a Cambridge Tesco attracted protests by residents concerned about civil liberties. Gillette announced it was abandoning the use of RFID after the story was covered in the firm's home-town newspaper The Bostone Globe. (The Ecologist October 2003)

 

Comment Dr. Miguel Muntané:

If you don't like it don't come to work otherwise they will be labeled as having a psychological problem

So one of the cases I wanted to tell about is a doctor, genicologist, who is sandwitched between 2 cellular installations, his room window is in front of the antennas and his room has 120 V/m measured today.

*  If you don't like it don't come to work, otherwise they will be labeled as having a psychological problem.

and

Delay tactic in mobile telephony. Just keep those scientists busy with their research, and leave us in peace to built more masts

1. Christoffer Johansen (Danish cancer society)  now says that mobile telephony is dangerous, but definitely not the masts!

2. The government has decided that they will give money for research into 3G mobile telephony.

3. The mobile telephone industry is even happier: Just keep those scientists busy with their research, and leave us in peace to built more masts.

Dr. George Carlo. (October 1999). "I am especially concerned about what appear to be actions by a segment of the industry to conscript the FCC, the FDA and The World Health Organization with them in following a non-effectual course that will likely result in a regulatory and consumer backlash."

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FCC Inspects Astoria Cell Tower After Months Of Tenant Protests

by Keach Hagey, Chronicle Reporter October 16, 2003

Residents called the FCC to inspect towers on the roof of their building at 32-42 33rd Street on Tuesday.

The Federal Communications Commission conducted its first inspection of a New York City cell phone antenna atop an Astoria apartment building on Tuesday, a major victory for residents who have been protesting the tower for months.

The residents claim that T-Mobile, the cell phone company that has been renting roof space at 32-42 33rd Street since this past spring, improperly installed three of the nine antennas, allowing people in a nearby  building to be exposed to radiation levels in excess of FCC guidelines.

You could go right up to the face of the panels and touch them, said John Campos, a resident of a nearby building. He has been one of the leaders of the group protesting the towers, which meets every Tuesday and recently formed a non-profit organization called the Astoria Neighborhood Coalition.

Omega see also: http://www.nydailynews.com/boroughs/story/122250p-109904c.html

Although the allegedly illegal antennas were removed during the summer shortly after the problem was brought to the attention of a T-Mobile representative, the residents filed the complaint on the grounds that the cell phone company knew all along that it was potentially putting residents in harms way.

Campos knows what the cell phone companys original plans were because they blew off the building one night into his neighbors yard. They detailed the positioning of the panels, showing one third of them directly facing the roof of the adjoining building. Both buildings are owned by Nathan Katz, who signed the rental deal with T-Mobile.

On the Fourth of July, dozens of residents gathered on the roof to watch the fireworks, unaware that they were being exposed to microwave radiation at close range.

According to FCC regulations, if a cell phone company has plans to install any panels that might be directly accessible to the public, it must first conduct an environmental assessment survey. The survey costs about a quarter of a million dollars, which of course they didn’t do. They just took down the antenna to destroy the evidence, said Evie Hantzopoulos, another coalition leader, who lives across the street.

In response to the coalitions efforts, T-Mobile sent community liaison Jane Builder to inspect the antenna site in July. According to Campos, Builder determined that the site was unacceptable and immediately had the station shut down and the offending antennas removed from the roof. Now he feels that the company is trying to cover up a situation that was potentially hazardous.

On October 8th, T-Mobile released a statement that the antennas were removed due to aesthetic modifications and that a radio frequency survey it commissioned indicated that the antenna operations are in compliance with the FCC.

We took it down and put a sheath around it so that when people look at it, they are not looking at something that looks like an antenna, said T-Mobile spokeswoman Laura Altschul, adding that the company was responding to neighbors concerns about having to stare at an antenna.

To suggest that this antenna was removed for aesthetic purposes is disingenuous, Campos said. We have photo documentation which shows how they were positioned and the fact that people were able to stand in front of them, which according to the FCC, is a potential violation of safety, not aesthetics.

But, according to a September 24th report by the Pinnacle Telecom Group, an independent engineering team hired by T-Mobile, the site is safe. Inspectors came out to the site on September 18th to take readings of radio frequency radiation on the roof, inside the building and at street level. On the rooftop, they determined that the RF level was six percent of the maximum limit allowed by the FCC. In the hallways and stairwells of the building, it was two percent. Note that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has stated that continuous human exposure to RF fields up to and including 100 percent of the FCC limits is considered safe, the report stated.

The coalition is not accepting the results of the survey. This is basically a shallow attempt by T-Mobile to cover up the fact that this site was potentially out of compliance with the FCC regulations, Campos said. The survey they conducted does nothing to address the long-term, non-thermal effects of continuous, low level RF radiation and was not complete in measuring the existing RF levels, Hantzopoulos said. In her presentation to Community Board 1 on September 16th, she complained of the worrisome, everything is safe mantra of the telecommunications companies.

They tell us that studies have shown that everything is fine. What they are not saying is that they can prove that these things are safe. What they are not saying is that scientists around the world are finding that indeed, we should be concerned. She pointed to the example of Dr. George Carlo, who was hired by the telecommunications lobby to head up a $25 million research project to  prove cell phone radiation is safe, but then quit after six years of research because he found evidence of DNA damage and links to brain cancer. Were behind the science on this, Campos said. The problem is that all the research done in this country is funded by the telecommunications industry. It was all done in the late 80s and early 90s.

Because of the lack of convincing research proving that long-term exposure to RF radiation is safe, the coalition argues that communities ought to be notified when a tower is going up, and ought to be able to find out just how many antennas there are in the neighborhood. Until recently, these requests could have been granted by the community board. According to Zoning Regulation 22-21 of the city charter, telecommunications companies must apply to the Board of Standards and Appeals for a permit to build in a residential neighborhood. That permit application requires a public hearing with legal, consultant and architectural fees up to $75,000 per application. However, in 1998, Deputy Commissioner of Buildings Richard Visconti issued a technical memo allowing the telecommunications companies to bypass this long and costly process. There is nothing in the city charter that allows a commissioner of the DOB to nullify a zoning regulation with a technical memo. So what Visconti did was illegal, Hantzopoulos said. Campos further argues that Visconti not only broke city law with his memo, but also broke federal law by requiring the towers to be under six feet tall to bypass zoning, while FCC regulations require that the towers be more that 6 feet off the roof in order to be exempt from FCC scrutiny. As a result of these blanket exemptions issued by the FCC, together with Viscontis technical memo, no government agency is keeping track of how many cell phone base stations there are in the city. Often the cell phone companies don’t even have a clear idea of how many of their own towers they operate. We don’t have a general map of it, Altschul said, adding that she couldn’t even estimate the number of antennas in the metropolitan area.

This week, Senator Charles Schumer issued a report criticizing cell phone companies for not fixing service in the citys 65 dead zones, where cell phones often fail, and calling for an inquiry into whether service gaps violate federal law. He cited a J.D. Power study that ranked New York City last in customer satisfaction and call quality in the 27 largest markets. The major providers being investigated are: Cingular, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint PCS.

In response to residents concerns, Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. is planning to submit four pieces of legislation to the City Council in the next two weeks that would call for a council hearing on the issue, demand a city Health Department study of the effects of exposure to radiation, mandate that the DOB keep track of the towers and allow the city to begin regulating their placement. Vallone said the last piece is proving the hardest to draft. According to Altschul, the reason for this is clear: cell phones would not work if antenna sites were limited to non-residential areas.

©Queens Chronicle - Western Edition 2003

Editorial

Residents Need A Voice, Not Just Less Static

Queens Chronicle, October 16, 2003

Can you hear me now? How about now? If you live in New York City and own a cell phone, no doubt you’ve had this conversation. In fact, you’ve had it more often than residents of any other major city, according to a J.D. Power study last year that ranked the metropolitan area last among the 27 largest markets in call quality. This must change, but the solution is not as easy as some politicians are claiming.

This week, Senator Charles Schumer used the Power study, along with some research by his staff, to criticize the citys wireless service, which he called terrible. He demanded an inquiry into whether carriers inability to fill in New Yorks 65 dead zones, where service often fails, constituted a violation of federal law. The solution to this problem, Schumer said, is simple: just build more transmitters.

Meanwhile, all over Queens, the people who live, work, study and pray beneath the shadow of these transmitters are digging in their heels in protest. Parents from St. Helens School in Howard Beach kept their children home on the first day of school. A group of Astoria residents has formed a non-profit organization to either change the laws or sue the city. Like cell phones themselves, resistance to using private infrastructure to support wireless antennas is not going to go away.

One could dismiss these groups as alarmist if our federal agencies didn’t have such an infamous track record for greenlighting new technology first and settling lawsuits later. The government says it doesn’t see any health problems, but then it said the same thing about lead paint, asbestos and tobacco.

To further complicate the issue, the Federal Communications Commission and the Food and Drug Administration the agencies responsible for making sure the low frequency microwave radiation that carries our wireless conversations doesn’t also give us brain cancer or anything else base their regulations on research largely funded by the telecommunications industry.

But even the most impartial research team would run up against the same basic problem: The technology is so new, and the possible health consequences so long-term, that there is simply no way to know right now whether we should be worried about living next to an antenna.

Logic would say that, if this is the case, we should at least try to keep these things away from our homes and schools. But heres the kicker: the service wont work under these restrictions. In fact, as more and more people do away with their land lines entirely in favor of cheaper and more convenient mobile phones, we are looking at a not-too-distant future where cell phone antennas are as normal a part of a building as telephone lines, and people refer to old-fashioned wired telephones as antennaless.

As it now stands, no one not the FCC, not the city Department of Buildings, not even the carriers themselves can say how many of these antennas are in the city. Towers go up on apartment buildings without tenants or community boards knowledge, the result of clandestine cooperation between landlords and carriers. Parents are helpless against schools looking to make a buck by renting roofs.

In two weeks, Astoria Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. will introduce legislation addressing these concerns, beginning a conversation the city should have had years ago. As we sit down for this talk, lets remember that simply demanding better service, without regard to where and how the gaps are filled, is irresponsible, and we should encourage our elected officials to consider school zones as well as dead zones.

©Queens Chronicle - South Edition 2003

Reader Opinion

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Non-Lethal Weapons: Terms and References

http://www.zarc.com/english/non-lethal_weapons/nlt-usaf.html

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Mind Control

# Electromagnetic Weapons

# Microwave Weapons

# Non-Lethal Weapons

# ELF (Extremely Low Frequency) Weapons

# Directed Energy Weapons

# Acoustic Weapons

# Psychotronic Weapons

# RF (Radio Frequency) Weapons

# Soft Kill Weapons

# Less-Than-Lethal Weapons

http://www.angelfire.com/or/mctrl/

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The rise of a new movement

AlterNet

by Tom Hayden

“There is rising a new movement in the world. It is bigger than the movement of the 1960s. Yet it is barely seen by the experts and analysts. They look only at the behavior of institutions and politicians, not the underlying forces that eventually burst into visibility. The first strand of this new movement is the global opposition to the war in Iraq and to an American empire."

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17000

Drowned albatross colony is a dire omen for the future and other stories

http://www.enn.com/news/2003-10-22/s_9516.asp

Ecuadoreans sue U.S. oil company over pollution in Amazon

A decade after Texaco pulled out of the Amazon jungle, the U.S. petroleum giant went on trial in a lawsuit filed on behalf of 30,000 poor Ecuadoreans who say the company's 20 years of drilling poisoned their homeland.

http://www.enn.com/news/2003-10-22/s_9665.asp

Asia's elephants are losing the battle for living space

Asia can be a very crowded place, especially if you are an elephant.

http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/22551/story.htm