I was contacted by JAGDISH MIRCHANDANI (jpsg@videotron.ca), a woman fighting the construction of a cell tower in Chateauguy, Quebec. She had read my petitions to the Auditor General.
She is a lawyer and activist who has her municipal government and local Bloc member onside. She is asking for contact with a wider group of like minded individuals to take their fight to a larger audience.
Here is what she wrote:
COALITION FOR FIGHTING INVOLUNTARY EXPOSURE TO ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION
WE CAN BUILD A POWER BASE OF CITIZENS IF WE CAN UNITE EVERYONE FIGHTING FOR THIS CAUSE FROM COAST TO COAST.
OUR CHALLENGE IS TO LOCATE EVERYONE AND CONTACT THEM. WE NEED THE HELP OF THE MEDIA TO GET OUR MESSAGE ACROSS.
WE NEED TO HAVE AN EVENT AT WHICH WE CAN GET THE FAMOUS ACADEMICS TOGATHER FOR A SYMPOSIUM. WE HOPE THAT THE MEDIA WOULD BE INTERESTED. WE COULD ALSO INVITE POLITICIANS ETC. AND OTHER CELEBRITIES. AT THIS EVENT, WE CAN INVITE (THROUGH THE MEDIA) ANY GROUP THAT IS FACING A SIMILAR CHALLENGE TO JOIN US.
ONCE WE CAN BRING AWARENESS OF THE DANGERS OF EXPOSURE TO ELECTRO-MAGNETIC RADIATION TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC, POLITICIANS WOULD HOPEFULLY BECOME MORE RESPOSIVE.
CHANGING THE LAWS, SAFECODE 6 AND THE EXCLUSION CLAUSE OF THE ENVIRONMENT ASSESSMENT ACT COULD BE A WORTHWHILE GOAL.
WE NEED THE HELP OF ALL POLITICAL PARTIES. I BELIEVE THAT IT CAN BE DONE.
WE NEED A WIDER BASE.
It seems we are always talking of a larger coordinated effort but we have yet to achieve it. We now certainly have a national base with which to achieve this goal. Please feel free to contact Jagdish, you know how supportive it feels to know someone else out there cares.
Sincerely
Frank
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Court to Defendant: Stop Blasting That Man's Mind!
Late last year, James Walbert went to court, to stop his former business associate from blasting him with mind-altering electromagnetic radiation. Walbert told the Sedgwick County, Kansas panel that Jeremiah Redford threatened him with "jolts of radiation" after a disagreement over a business deal. Later, Walbert, said, he began feeling electric shock sensations, hearing electronically generated tones, and getting popping and ringing sounds in his ears. On December 30th, the court decided in Walbert's favor, and issued a first-of-its-kind order of protection, banning Redford from using "electronic means" to further harass Walbert. No, seriously.
I recently took part in a BBC Radio 4 program, which took a light-hearted look into the "the real Manchurian Candidate" — and examined whether there is any truth in stories of mind control. It gave me a chance to talk about exotic non-lethal weapon concepts like the so-called telepathic raygun, the system which beams sound directly into your skull, and the "voice of god" talking fireball. Most of these projects are just lab experiments, or examples of Powerpoint engineering. But in some legal, policy, and business circles, electromagnetic brain assaults are being taken seriously.
Walbert's cause is supported by Jim Guest, a Republican member of the Missouri House of Representatives. He's working on proposed legislation to addresses electronic harassment, including a bill against the forced implantation of RFID chips.
The U.N. is also now taking the possibility of electromagnetic terrorism against people seriously. And for the first time this year's European Symposium on Non-lethal Weapons included a session on the social implications of non-lethal weapons, with specific reference to "privacy-invasive remote interrogation and behavioral influence applications." Those who believe they are being targeted are getting a bit of official recognition.
For some, this opens up a new business opportunity. There are already quite a few companies out there offering "Technical Surveillance Counter Measures," or sweeps to determine if you are the victim of electronic harassment. As well detecting the usual bugging devices, they can check if you are being covertly bombarded by microwaves which may be the cause of "headache, eye irritation, dizziness, nausea, skin rash, facial swelling, weakness, fatigue, pain in joints and/or muscles, buzzing/ringing in ears."
Much of this trade may come from people with symptoms caused by something less exotic than high-tech military hardware. But companies will no doubt be willing to sell them expensive protection measures, anyway. And as awareness of these developing technology projects increases, we are likely to be hearing a lot more about "electronic harassment," "gang stalking" and the like over the next few years.
And there is also likely to be what folklorists call "Ostension," or acting out. Now that there are so many websites explaining how easy it is to harass people by zapping them with a modified microwave oven, sooner or later someone is bound to try it.
[Photo: U.S. Army]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
U.N. Investigates Electromagnetic Terrorism
The health effects of electromagnetic fields are hugely controversial, whether it's power lines being linked to leukemia or the impact of mobile phone radiation on your brain. Which makes it particularly surprising that electromagnetic (EM) radiation is being considered as a possible terrorist weapon. A UNESCO Seminar last month considered the "Potential Threat as a Terrorism Agent" of EM fields:
The most obvious danger is use of electromagnetic pulses to disrupt communication. However EMF also pose direct threats to human health through mechanisms that are poorly understood. These involve different physical and chemical factors, as well as multiple effects on biological systems including humans. [my emphasis]
This seems a little unlikely. There's little agreement on the health risk of EM fields. So they would appear to be improbable terrorist weapons. Blowing up airliners is one thing; causing a fractional incidence in the rate of cancer over a period of months lacks the immediacy and obvious impact associated with terrorist actions.
I contacted professor Sinerik N. Ayrapetyan, who organized the conference, to find out more. Ayraptyan was polite and helpful, but stressed that his expertise lies in the molecular and cellular effects of microwaves on organisms. He would not comment on clinical studies, much less on large-scale applications like terrorist use.
It seems that the title of the conference was changed at the last minute to "Electromagnetic Fields: Mechanisms of Action And Health Effect," with no mention of terrorism. Ayraptyan explained that this was because the World Health Organization was one the main sponsor and requested a shift to focus on health effects, because "WHO is not a military organization."
However, scanning the agenda, there are still some signs of a military presence. The logo of the U.S. Office of Naval Research Global figures prominently. And it was interesting to note the presence of
Andrei Pakhomov, a familiar name in nonlethal weapon circles who carried out some of the basic research behind the Active Denial System — the U.S. military's "pain ray."
Pentagon interest in the effects of radio waves and microwaves goes way back. A recent article by John McMurtrey — who has amassed an impressive collection of papers on this topic -–
looks at declassified papers on the aptly named Project Bizarre. This was part of Project Pandora, which was started after the discovery in
1953 that the Russians were irradiating the U.S. Embassy in Moscow with low-power microwaves. Nobody knew what the potential health effects of this sort of low-level exposure were, but there was a suspicion that the Russians did not mean well.
The microwaves may have been to jam U.S. monitoring equipment; they may have been a way of remotely powering Russian bugs within the embassy; or they may have had a more sinister purpose. Project Bizarre involved the controlled irradiation of Rhesus monkeys with microwaves to determine whether it had any effect on their behavior. The work was carried out by Dr. J. C. Sharp and H. M. Grove.
The monkeys were trained to get food by pushing a lever in response to lights and audible tones.
One tone frequency signaled a time out period where any response to gain food within ten minutes reset another 10 minute delay requiring non-response. When a red light came on food was available by lever pressing where each subsequent food pellet required a geometric increased number of lever responses. Subsequently another time out period was tone signaled, where on successful non-response, a different tone frequency signaled food availability only by the 50 second delayed response previously discussed.
Project Bizarre found that microwave exposure seemed to disrupt the monkey's perception of time, causing them to misjudge intervals and perform badly compared to monkeys that had not been radiated. Although these results have not been confirmed — and this topic remains controversial — McMurtrey has tracked down other studies at assorted military laboratories (mainly on rats) with similar results.
"Microwave exposure inter-response time and sequential task performance reports herein totaled 10 studies, fully half of which originated from military laboratories who solely conducted the pulsed investigations showing the greatest performance deterioration," he writes.
McMurtrey suggests that the Russians were essentially trying to drive embassy staff mad and that the effects of the radiation might produce symptoms similar to schizophrenia. The Moscow embassy was given electromagnetic protection in 1976, including wire-mesh "mosquito screens" on the windows.
It remains to be seen whether terrorists will try the electromagnetic approach. I suspect the White House already has quite good EM shielding (to block electronic eavesdropping rather than external zapping). And with all the other threats to worry about, this one surely does seem fairly remote for the time being
Date: June 30, 2009 1:19:21 PM EDT (CA)
Wireless Technologies Cause Harm to Children andAdults, Legislators and Journalists Are ToldWashington, D.C., June 30, 2009; Today The National Institute for Science, Law and Public Policy ("NISLAPP") mailed a report on the health hazards of wireless technologies to Governors, Members of Congress, President Obama and his Administration, as well as to thousands of health and environmental journalists.Legislators and journalists are being urged to learn about the health consequences of microwave radiation exposure from cell phones, neighborhood antennas, wireless net works, wireless routers, DECT portable phones, and the potential health consequences of further chronic exposures from wireless broadband and new wireless utility technologies.The National Institute for Science, Law and Public Policy is encouraging all to become engaged with this important public health issue impacting adults and children, as well as animals and nature. Co-authored by Dr. Magda Havas, Assoc. Professor of Environmental and Resource Studies at Trent University in Canada, and Camilla Rees, Founder of www.ElectromagneticHealth.org, "Public Health SOS: The Shadow Side of the Wireless Revolution" reviews the independent science on the health hazards of wireless radiation and offers recommendations to the public on how to live more safely in a wireless world. It answers 110 questions posed by the audience at the Commonwealth Club of California, the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum, at an event co-organized by Wide Angle Health, LLC, Citizens for Health and the American Academy of Environmental Medicine.Globally, public health officials and health advocacy groups are increasingly concerned about symptoms people are associating with rising levels of indoor and outdoor microwave radiation, known as 'electrosmog', including sometimes debilitating symptoms experienced near cell phone towers (http://sn.im/kt6pe). In addition, they are troubled by the impact this radiation may be having on children, who are more vulnerable. Schools increasingly...
