THE FLAMES OF PROGRESS
I have been entrusted with the International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space, but I find myself bewildered -- bewildered by the devastation around me; by the destruction of the cathedral of life into which I was born; by the silencing of the songs of the fifty million other species with whom I was raised; by the failure of my fellow human beings to care or to notice. How can they not miss their brothers and sisters? How can they not miss the magnificent symphony? How is it possible?
“The oceans are dying,” wrote Jacques Cousteau in 1970. “Can anyone believe it is possible,” wrote Rachel Carson in 1962, “to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life?” “I have seen too much,” said microwave researcher Allan Frey in 1969, explaining why he did research on animals and not humans. “I do not feel that I can take people into these fields and expose them and in all honesty indicate to them that they are going into something safe.”
Yet here we are half a century later: there will soon be more plastics than fish in the oceans, the world uses four times more pesticides per year than in 1962, and five billion people are holding open sources of microwave radiation in their hands.
The Earth is burning, yet no firefighters come. In the face of certain catastrophe, everyone is going about their business as if everything is fine, as if by magic the synthetic fibers in our clothing and the rubber tires on our automobiles will stop becoming microplastics in the sea; as if the few insects left in the world will magically escape the pesticides that we apply to our lawns and the radiation from the cell phones into which we speak. Everyone is still going about their business as if everything is fine. Isn’t it time that we stop? And since the most immediate threat to life comes from our cell phones, isn’t it time to throw them away?
ASSISTANT NEEDED
I need help with organizational, clerical, and phone work. The clerical work ideally should be done by someone who lives here in Santa Fe or plans to move here. The organizational and phone work could be done from elsewhere in the United States. I cannot continue to do this work without an assistant. It is too draining to do it all by myself and I simply don’t have the time.
All of the world’s major environmental organizations need to be contacted systematically and professionally and brought on board. Outreach to Elon Musk and his board of directors needs to be coordinated and followed through. A systematic media campaign needs to be mounted. Contact with Stop 5G groups worldwide needs to be maintained. Funds need to be raised. An organization to end the use of cell phones needs to be created (see below).
Please contact me if you have excellent secretarial skills, especially if you live in Santa Fe or plan to move here, or if you can help with phone calling and organizational tasks. There is money for one full-time position. Above all I need a kindred spirit: someone who does not own a cell phone, who loves nature, and who is not into conspiracy theories.
LEGAL UPDATE
Our federal lawsuit in New Mexico is still pending. As a reminder, we are asking the court to declare that a city ordinance, a state law, and a federal law are invalid because they deprive us of our constitutional rights: our right to life, liberty and property; our right to free speech; and our right to petition the government for redress of grievances. Our motion for preliminary injunction asks that antennas be prohibited from being placed on the sidewalks of Santa Fe in order to protect the rights of the plaintiffs, who have previously lost homes and/or businesses to cell towers. The court has not yet ruled on our motion.
A comparable lawsuit was filed last week in the Netherlands against the Dutch State. On February 25, the Dutch foundation Stop5GNL issued a summons to the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate, asking that 5G be prohibited “unless it is demonstrated with sufficient certainty, by consensus of the scientific community, that 5G does not pose a danger to public health in the long term.” The lawsuit will be heard in the District Court in The Hague.
SEVERE DECLINE IN BAT POPULATIONS
If insects are vanishing all over the world, one would expect insect-eating bats to be starving to death. And there is evidence that it is so. The decline of bats in the United States is being blamed on a fungus that causes white-nose syndrome, a skin condition that has been detected in bats in 40 states and 7 Canadian provinces. But what is weakening bats so much that they are getting a fungal disease? And is it really the fungal disease that is reducing their numbers? Or is it starvation?
In July 2006, when John Ackerman and two other cavers entered Bat River Cave in southeastern Minnesota, the walls of the bat gallery -- a chamber with an underground waterfall – were thick with three species of bats. In the winter of 2010-2011, a count was made: 4,112 bats were hibernating in the cave. On February 9, 2020, Ackerman and four other people went back into the cave: only 82 bats were left, a 98 percent population decline.
In Pennsylvania, five insectivorous bat species are on the endangered species list, and the Pennsylvania Game Commission reports a 99 percent decline in bat populations in that state.
“This is our worst ever year for starving bats found in the wild,” said Hazel Ryan of the Kent Bat Group in England in the fall of 2019.
John Allen used to see bats regularly where he lives, at Maori Island in Grovetown, New Zealand, but they have disappeared because there is no food source for them. “It's absolutely incredible,” he says. “There are no insects flying around at night now. You can leave your windows and doors open with the lights on and nothing will fly in.” Allen blames agricultural pesticides. But it is happening all over the world. “Almost everybody over the age of about 50 years old,” says biology professor Dave Goulson of the University of Sussex, “can remember a time when any long-distance drive in summer resulted in a windscreen so splattered with dead insects that it was necessary to stop occasionally to scrub them off.”
And “without insects,” Goulson observes, “a multitude of birds, bats, reptiles, amphibians, small mammals and fish would disappear, for they would have nothing to eat.” And insects, because of their small size and high rate of metabolism, are affected much more severely than larger creatures by RF radiation. After just ten minutes’ exposure to a cell phone, the metabolism of a honey bee comes to a virtual standstill, causing effective starvation. Insects are disappearing because they are starving to death, and bats, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish are going hungry because there are no insects.
"IF NOT NOW, WHEN? IF NOT ME, WHO?"
Most people who call me for information are calling me on their cell phones. Most people who are signing the International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space are signing it on their cell phones. Everyone wants their cell phone but they want me to stop 5G for them and it is impossible. They need their cell phone when they travel. They need it for their business. They need it for their family. They need it for their friends. Or they think 4G is safe, but not 5G. Or they “only” have a flip phone. Or, thinking they are doing good for the planet, they keep their phone “only for emergencies.” They think their phone is not irradiating the birds and the insects and their neighbors like the towers are. They think that if they keep the phone at some distance from their head, that they are safe, because they believe the myth that there is a dose-response relationship. They think that if they only keep their phone for emergencies, the towers do not have to be there. But if even one person wants to be able to use a cell phone wherever they go in case of an emergency, the entire wireless infrastructure of the planet has to be there. Which means no insects, no birds, and very shortly no life and no planet. And there is not just one person who wants to be able to use a cell phone in an emergency, there are seven billion.
Steven Lucas writes from California:
“Why would someone protest a product and system that they continue to pay monthly to use? Imagine if a board member at Mothers Against Drunk Driving opened a bottle of Rum and started handing out Rum and Coke drinks to calm everyone before the meeting. It makes no sense.”
Antoinette Jansson writes from Norway:
“Compare the use of cell phones with smoking cigarettes, in public, while in a protest march, worldwide, against cancer, against the tobacco industry. Imagine that film cameras would be there, of the big broadcasters, filming the cigarette smokers protesting against cancer and tobacco.”
Melissa Chalmers writes from Canada:
“I am continually stunned by advocates having cell phones or using any sort of wireless. Do you think staunch advocates against GMO's are buying the stuff? It's like members of PETA advocating while wearing a fur coat. How can anyone take someone like that seriously? Why would anyone listen?”
It is abundantly clear that we are losing -- losing the fight and losing our planet -- because for almost everyone on Earth, the danger from EMFs is an abstraction. It is noise, like the buzzing of a fly, and nothing more. Government officials cannot hear it. Judges cannot hear it. They look at the supplicants before them, who are talking some nonsense that makes no sense to them, and who are also treating it like an abstraction. So many of the EMF scientists own cell phones. So many of the EMF activists own cell phones. The lawmakers, the CEOs of the telecom companies and satellite companies, and the activists who are fighting for other environmental causes, they look at us who are saying, “You are killing us,” and they see cell phones in our hands and they don’t believe us.
A worldwide organization needs to be created, whose members do not own cell phones, whose purpose is to end the use of cell phones on Earth.
For most people this seems like an impossibility, but that is because they do not remember that only 25 years ago almost no one owned a cell phone, and that young people did not get cancer, diabetes, heart attacks and strokes like they do today. And the air was full of butterflies and birds, and the streams were full of tadpoles and frogs. It is because no one has explained to them what radiation is. No one would willingly use a radioactive phone, but that is essentially what everyone is doing. Radio waves and gamma rays are only two ends of a continuous spectrum; they are essentially the same phenomenon and have the same disastrous effects on our bodies and our planet.
The train that we are on is a train to nowhere. On either side, through the windows, can be seen insects, and birds, and frogs, and if we listen we can hear them buzzing, chirping, and croaking.
Please contact me if you would like to participate in the creation of an organization that will get us off this train.
Arthur Firstenberg
P.O. Box 6216
Santa Fe, NM 87502
USA
phone: +1 505-471-0129
info@cellphonetaskforce.org
https://www.5gSpaceAppeal.org
A pdf of this newsletter is available here:
www.cellphonetaskforce.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/The-Flames-of-Progress.pdf
