Hello Martin.
I made contact with an acquaintance here in Las Vegas who recently came over from Italy. She was kind enough to watch the video several times and translate it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6N40k87lug
The first part she could not make out due to the quality (or lack thereof) of the video and the dialect being spoken. She said that she lived in that area for a long time, so she was very upset about the video showing the damage being caused to those animals in an area she knows well.
She also told me: "My grandmom, my mom and my uncle have Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, and apparently also my grandfather died from a brain tumor (this was never entirely cleared). They lived all their life in front of a big TV repeater, at less than 50 yards distance from it. I also lived around it for about 20 years".
My comments: Those cellular antenna showing on the photo she sent me were added to the tower some time ago when cell phones were introduced in Italy (in a BIG way). She said the cell phone companies are VERY powerful in Italy and they "spin" the news (just like everywhere, it seems) and get the media to studiously avoid mentioning the cell phone and cell tower connection to all the illness/symptoms, instead blaming it on TV antenna (which may be adding to the lack of sleep problem). You can spot at least 6 cell phone antenna on the tower. I have attached her translation (from Italian to English) for your use and circulation.
Ken
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Translation of Italian TV News Video of deformed farm animals in a small town:
A woman says: "Show the animal in the camera, show its deformed feet."
A man: "Then we'll move it and we'll film the other two."
TG News: "The long nights of Volturino, the place where nobody ever sleeps. Somebody says it's all to blame on the electrosmog. In Apulia there is a place, Volturino, near Foggia, where a lot of people suffer from insomnia. Some people say it is due to all the antennas and the TV repeaters around here.
The reporter: "This is a little neat village on the Daunian Subappennines, and it has been renamed as "the village which never sleeps". Its name is Volturino, near Foggia."
A woman: "I am awake all night, and I have a migraine, but when I go to Rimini (Northern Italy) I sleep fine, and I don't have high blood pressure there."
The insomnia is not due to the many nightclubs, then. The University of Bari provided the data obtained from a study that lasted 2 years, about the problem these people are having in this place. At least 53% of the sample of people studied in this survey cannot sleep well.
A researcher, M.D. Maria Pia Prudenzano, says: "There is also a high incidence of depression and anxiety, but it is impossible so far to determine the causes of these symptoms." This research took in examination people constantly exposed to electromagnetic fields. These antennas can be seen from anywhere in this village of Volturino. There are 140 TV antennas*, and many of them have been erected illegally.
There is no certainty that electromagnetic fields influence sleep patterns but a study funded by the European Community concluded states that they definitely influence DNA and chromosomes. It looks like the inhabitants of Volturino already noticed this, since there is quite a number of cases of these alterations in animals around here.
M.D. Carmine Lepore is a G.D. here. He says: "I noticed a series of behavioral symptoms, that range from insomnia to anxiety and forms of depression that seem to hit children more than other people."
Antonio Gagliardi is fighting against electromagnetic fields since 1986. His association performed measurements, surveys, filled out petitions and sent complaints to the local courts. He says: "We measured between 2 and 5 voltmeters, which by law is considered to be fine, but if you see how many psychodrugs are consumed here, this shows that the parameters used by the law are not correct."
The Mayor of Volturino says: "We, the inhabitants of this village and the surrounding areas, all agree on the fact that we want to relocate these antennas somewhere else."
The M.D. Carmine Lepore says: "We need serious researches, performed with a scientific method, in order to clinically confirm these observations we are making, and make them useful scientifically, also in order to be able to confirm or reject the hypothesis connected to the influence of electromagnetic fields."
[*Note from translator: Cell phones are BIG business in Italy, with an average of 2 cell phones per person, including the children, so in this newscast they mention "TV antenna" but don't even mention the cell phone towers and antenna. Quite possibly the "140 TV antenna" mentioned are in actuality mostly cellular phone towers (base stations) and relay antenna. In the video, that was a cell phone tower with several antenna (or mobile telephone "mast" as they often call them in Europe) shown closest to the farm with all the deformed animals.]
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How big will the cell phone suit be?
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Ontario files $50-billion suit against tobacco manufacturers
Andrea Hopkins
http://www.globeinvestor.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090929.wtobac0929/GIStory/
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Toronto — Ontario said on Tuesday it has filed a lawsuit seeking $50-billion in damages from tobacco companies for health care costs incurred by taxpayers since 1955.
In doing so, Ontario became the third of Canada's 10 provinces to sue the country's tobacco manufacturers, all of which are units of foreign tobacco makers, including Philip Morris International Inc., British American Tobacco PLC and Japan Tobacco Inc.
The lawsuit by Ontario was planned under legislation passed earlier this year, and seeks damages for past and ongoing health care costs.
Ontario says tobacco use costs the province $1.6-billion a year for health care and causes about 13,000 deaths annually. It said smoking is the province's No. 1 cause of illness and premature death.
The legislation allows Ontario to directly sue tobacco companies for alleged wrongdoing and allocates liability among tobacco companies by market share.
A spokesman for Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd., Canada's leading tobacco company and a wholly owned unit of British American Tobacco, said the Ontario lawsuit made no sense, given that the product is legal, regulated and taxed by the government.
"It's a little bit hypocritical to sue the legal tobacco manufacturers when the governments have been a partner of the industry for many decades now," spokesman Eric Gagnon said.
"They are the ones that legislate the industry. We operate, we do a legal product. [They also] collect billions of dollars in taxes, so to turn around today and sue the legal industry makes no sense whatsoever," Mr. Gagnon said.
He said Canadian governments collected $7-billion in taxes from tobacco in fiscal 2008-09, which ended in March. He said taxes make up 60 per cent to 70 per cent of the price of a pack of cigarettes in Canada.
Tobacco opponents applauded the long-awaited lawsuit.
"We're very pleased by this announcement – it is very significant. The tobacco industry has been engaged in decades of wrongful behaviour in Ontario and Canada and they need to be held to account," said Rob Cunningham, senior policy analyst at the Canadian Cancer Society.
"We see these lawsuits as being important to reform tobacco industry behaviour so they will not repeat the wrongs of the past. It is a question of justice," Mr. Cunningham said.
British Columbia and New Brunswick have already launched similar suits – B.C. has a 2011 trial date – but the move by Ontario is significant because most provinces are preparing similar suits, Mr. Cunningham said.
"Ontario being most populous province I think is going to influence the actions of the other provinces," he said.
All but two provinces have created legislation to lay the groundwork for similar lawsuits.
After years of battling lawsuits, Big Tobacco in 1998 agreed to pay U.S. states more than $200-billion (U.S.) to help pay for the costs of treating ailing smokers.
The Ontario case is expected to take years to resolve. Mr. Gagnon said Imperial Tobacco would not settle the Ontario case out of court.
© The Globe and Mail
