Global Wi-Fi From Space

Global Wi-Fi From Space

Dear Friends,

The printed newsletters I send out normally go mainly to members who
have donated to the Cellular Phone Task Force. It is one of the things
they pay for, and requires significant time and money to put together
and mail.

However, there have been some requests that the newsletter I mailed last
week also be sent out in electronic form so that it can be forwarded.
Since the matters discussed in it are of such critical importance, I am
attaching it to this email, which I am sending to everyone on my email
list. If you value what is in it, please consider making a donation to
our organization. Donations can be made on our website at
http://www.cellphonetaskforce.org/?page_id=196.

I consider plans for global WiFi from space to be a planetary emergency.
It must be prevented. Please contact me if you wish to be involved.

Arthur Firstenberg
(505) 471-0129

November 15, 2014

                                  “Just a little rain falling all around

                                  The grass lifts its head to the heavenly sound

                                  Just a little rain, just a little rain

                                  What have they done to the rain?”

             

Board of Directors Arthur Firstenberg President Santa Fe, NM Kathy Hawk, B.Sc. Butler, PA Duane Dahlberg, Ph.D. Frazee, MN Marcia Frumberg, M.S.W. Plano, TX Marilyn Garrett Aptos, CA Erica Mallery-Blythe, M.D. UK Tim McNerney Northampton, MA Janet Palmer Patagonia, AZ Jolie Andritzakis Secretary Santa Rosa, CA

                                                              - Malvina Reynolds

Dear Members and Friends,

        On September 23, 1998, 66 satellites, launched into low orbit by the Iridium Corporation, commenced broadcasting to the first ever satellite telephones. Those phones would work equally as well in mid-ocean, and in Antarctica, as in the middle of Los Angeles—a remarkable achievement.

        But on that date exactly, electrically sensitive people all over the world experienced stabbing pains in their chest, knife-like sensations in their head, nosebleeds, asthma attacks, and other signs of severe electrical illness. I interviewed 57 electrically sensitive people in six countries. I, and many others that I interviewed, were so sick for the next two to three weeks that we weren’t sure we were going to make it. I suddenly lost my sense of smell on September 23, 1998, and it still has not returned to normal. Statistics published by the Centers for Disease Control reveal that the national death rate rose 4 to 5 percent during those two weeks. Thousands of homing pigeons lost their way during those two weeks, all over the United States.

        Several companies are now competing to provide not just cell phone service, but WiFi, to every square inch of the earth from satellites in space, or from balloons, or from drones. There isn’t much time.

        At the end of this newsletter I will share a few thoughts about what is possible, and the obstacles we face.

  

WI-FI IN THE SKY

Tesla Motors CEO Wants to Put WiFi Everywhere

        In 1994, Bill Gates and Craig McCaw envisioned an “Internet in the Sky.” Their brainchild, Teledesic Corporation, planned to launch 840 full-sized satellites into low earth orbit in order to cover the entire planet. WiFi had not even been invented. The time was not ripe. 

            Last weekend, however, billionaire Elon Musk announced that both the time and the technology are now here. His company, SpaceX, is planning to launch 700 “advanced micro-satellites,” at a price tag of around $1 million each, to accomplish what Gates and McCaw envisioned two decades ago. Musk, who is also the CEO of Tesla Motors, said details will be released in about two to three months.

So Does Google

         Google is not so ambitious: it is not planning to send WiFi quite everywhere. After all, it is planning to do this from balloons flying at an altitude of 60,000 feet. It would require over 250,000 balloons to cover the entire globe. So, as a start, Google wants to send up enough balloons to cover the entire 40th southern parallel. A pilot experiment was conducted in June 2013 in New Zealand’s South Island, where about 30 WiFi balloons were successfully deployed. In May-June 2014 Google tested its balloons in Piauí, in northeast Brazil. And on October 6, 2014, the FCC gave Google a permit to test its WiFi balloons for six months above Stanley, New Mexico, a small town only 35 miles from where I live.

            Astro Teller, head of the project, said he expects a permanent set of balloons to be up and running in one or more countries by June of next year.

           

So Does Facebook

         Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg laments
the fact that only 40 percent of the people on the
planet use the Internet. He is partnering with mobile
phone companies Qualcomm, Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia,
Opera Software and Samsung to remedy that unfortunate
situation. His new Connectivity Lab will develop satellites, lasers,
and solar-powered drones to “beam internet to people from the sky,” he
announced on March 28 of this year.

Update on Lawsuits

Pettipas

            Trial in the case of Pettipas v. Bell Alliant is set for April 20, 2015.  Edna and Marshall Pettipas of Afton Station, Nova Scotia, were injured in 2007 by a cell tower that was built behind their house, and Edna has developed breast cancer and had a bilateral mastectomy. 

            On July 18, 2014, the Pettipas named the following doctors, scientists, and engineering consultants as their expert witnesses:

·      Enrique Navarro, PhD, Professor of Physics, University of Valencia, Spain;

·      Horst Eger, MD, of Naila, Germany;

·      Anthony Miller, MD, of Toronto, Canada;

·      Martin Blank, PhD, Retired professor of Physiology and Cellular Biophysics at Columbia University;

·      Kumar Biswas, ND, of British Columbia;

·      Jonathan Fox, MD, of Fall River, Nova Scotia;

·      Ben Boucher, MD, of Halifax, Nova Scotia;

·      Magda Havas, PhD, Associate Professor of Environmental and Resource Studies, Trent University, Canada;

·      Walter McGinnis, of McGinnis Electric in Victoria, BC; and

·      Patrick Last, building biologist in Salisbury, New Brunswick.

            The Pettipas still need to raise money to bring all these experts in for trial in      
April. Tax-deductible donations to their cause may be made on our website (http://www.cellphonetaskforce.org/?page_id=196), or using the form at the end of
this newsletter.

Firstenberg

            My two lawsuits have been assigned to a three-judge panel of the New Mexico Court of Appeals. In both cases, I have argued that people with electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS) are protected by municipal, state, and federal disability laws, just like people with any other disability. I have also asserted our rights under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution.

            In Firstenberg v. Monribot—now Case No. 32,549 before the Court of Appeals—I sued my neighbor, Raphaela Monribot, in order to establish my right to live in my own home. I asserted that for an electrically sensitive person, wireless technology is a private nuisance, and that my neighbor may not operate a nuisance that injures me and deprives me of my home. An amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief in support of my position was filed with the court by
94 organizations in 22 countries on 6 continents, representing hundreds of thousands of people.

           

            In my other case, Firstenberg v. City of Santa Fe—now Case No. 33,441 before the Court of Appeals—I asserted that by approving technology which causes a segment of the population injury amounting to torture, eviction from their homes, and exile from their city, the city has deprived them of life, liberty and property without due process of law, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. The city has also denied them the equal protection of the laws, also in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. I asserted that to do this to people who have committed no crime is illegal, unjust, and unconstitutional.

            Both cases have been assigned to the same three-judge panel and are pending. I have asked for oral argument.

Morganroth Cases

            In 2001 and 2002, Michael Murray, Baldassare Agro, Pamela Cochran, Richard Schwamb, Dino Schofield, and David Keller, who all had brain tumors from their cell phones, filed suit in D.C. Superior Court, asking for more than $1 billion in damages each. For more than a decade the industry and the plaintiffs have played tug-of-war with these cases, sending them back and forth between federal and state courts, and fighting over whether the plaintiffs’ claims are preempted by the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

            Although these high-profile cases have long been forgotten by the media and the public, these lawsuits, and 24 other brain tumor cases, are still very much alive and are still being hotly contested in the D.C. courts. There are 60 industry defendants, including Motorola, Nokia, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, Mitsubishi, Apple, BlackBerry, the IEEE, ANSI, the CTIA, and the FCC. All of the plaintiffs, or their heirs, are represented by Jeffrey B. Morganroth of Morganroth & Morganroth, a law firm in Birmingham, Michigan.

            On August 8, 2014, Judge Frederick H. Weisberg seemed to hand the plaintiffs a partial victory when he admitted the testimony of five expert witnesses for the plaintiffs. They are:

·    Dr. Michael Kundi, professor of epidemiology and occupational health at the Medical University of Vienna;

·    Dr. Igor Belyaev, head research scientist at the Cancer Research Institute at the Slovak Academy of Science in Bratislava, Slovakia;

·    Dr. Wilhelm Mosgoeller, professor and medical doctor at the University of Vienna Medical School’s Institute for Cancer Research;

·    Dr. Abraham Liboff, professor emeritus of physics at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan; and

·    Dr. Laura Plunkett, pharmacologist and toxicologist in Houston.

            In allowing the experts to testify, Judge Weisberg wrote: “Federal law is the supreme law of the land, but there is no constitutional provision that says federal facts are the supreme facts of the land. Federal law can preempt state law, but it cannot preempt scientific fact. The scientific truth, whatever it may be, lies outside of the FCC’s regulations about what is ‘safe’ or ‘unsafe.’ ”

            However, the tug-of-war continues and trial has been postponed yet again. On October 1, 2014, Judge Weisberg permitted the defendants to immediately appeal his ruling allowing the experts to testify. The cases are back, at least temporarily, in the hands of the D.C Court of Appeals.

           

NATIONAL PARKS THREATENED

Navy to Turn Olympic Peninsula into Electronic Warfare Training Range

Deadline for Comments: November 28, 2014

            Due to massive public outcry, the comment period for this terrifying Navy project has been extended until November 28, 2014.

            Briefly, the Navy is proposing to turn a large part of Washington’s magnificent Olympic Peninsula, as well as a portion of northeastern Washington, into Electronic Warfare training ranges. A giant antenna resembling a house-sized golfball will be installed at the Naval Station at Moclips, just outside the Quinault Indian Reservation. According to the data in the Environmental Assessment, I calculate that it will have an effective power of 5 million watts. It will be capable of sending 64 simultaneous beams at frequencies of between 2 and 18 GHz. The golfball will be only 40 feet off the ground.

            In addition, three mobile, truck-mounted antennas will be moved around between 15 different sites in the Olympic National Forest, and three more mobile antennas will operate from 8 different locations in the Okanagan and Colville National Forests in northeastern Washington. They will each have a power of 100,000 watts, and will be in use 260 days a year, 8 to 16 hours a day. The city of Forks will be directly in the line of fire, right between three of these locations and the Pacific Ocean. The locations in the Colville National Forest are next to the Colville Indian Reservation, about 70 miles northwest of Spokane, and one is only 3 miles from the city of Oroville.

            UHF transmitters will also be added to an existing tower on Octopus Mountain for communication with aircraft and ships. The Navy’s EA-18G Growler jets, stationed at nearby Whidbey Island, are the centerpiece of the Navy’s electronic warfare program. Made by Boeing, the Growler’s “vast array of sensors and weapons provides the warfighter with a lethal and survivable weapon system.” The Navy already has 80 supersonic Growlers stationed at Whidbey, and is asking Congress for funding to add 36 more.

            The Quinault, Colville, Makah, Hoh, and Quileute Indian Reservations, as well as a large part of Olympic National Park, will be bombarded by radiation from air, sea, and land if this Environmental Assessment is approved.

            Send your comments by November 28 to Greg Wahl, USDA Forest Service, 1835 Black Lake Blvd SW, Olympia, WA 98512. Be sure to reference “Pacific Northwest Electronic Warfare Range Environmental Assessment # 42759.” Or, you can submit your comments elec­tronically at: https://cara.ecosystem-management.org/Public//CommentInput?Project=42759

            The Navy is also accepting public comments on its plan to add up to 36 additional Growler jets to its electronic warfare fleet at Whidbey Island. Comments can be submitted at whidbeyeis.com/comment.aspx. Or, they can be mailed to EA-18G EIS Project Manager, Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC) Atlantic, 6506 Hampton Blvd., Norfolk, VA 23508. Be sure to write “Attn: Code EV21/SS” at the top of your comments. Comments on this project are due January 9, 2015.

Streaming Wireless in Yellowstone?

            “Can Old Faithful compete with Netflix?” asked a headline earlier this month. There are already cell towers inside Yellowstone Park, but the bandwidth is not very good. You can speak and text on your cell phone, but you can’t do much else with it. However, if CenturyLink gets its way, a $34 million fiber-optic line will soon run through neighboring Grand Teton National Park and into Yellowstone. People could then upload pictures and stream video on their smartphones and tablets while hiking. Negotiations are underway with the National Park Service.

WHOLE FOODS INSTALLS WIRELESS “APPLE PAY” NATIONWIDE

Please Call 512-542-0878 to Request Accommodation

            Every checkout counter at every Whole Foods store nationwide is being equipped with “Apple Pay.” “Apple Pay” allows customers who have an iPhone 6 to pay by passing their iPhone over the credit card reader.

            This means that every credit card reader now emits microwave radiation. It means that everyone has to stand inches away from a wireless device in order to check out. And if you want to pay by credit card, debit card, or food stamps card, you have to handle a wireless device. In Santa Fe, these wireless units were installed one month ago.

            I have requested accommodation for electrically sensitive people at the Whole Foods stores in Santa Fe. I requested that Whole Foods remove the Apple Pay device from one checkout counter in each store so that people with this disability can shop. I have not yet received an answer. However, this affects every store in the country, and hundreds of thousands of people with disabilities, most of whom do not know about the new wireless devices and will not know why they become ill while checking out at Whole Foods. I suggest people call Whole Foods’ global customer service number, 512-542-0878, and ask that all stores nationwide be made accessible to electrically sensitive people by removing Apple Pay from one checkout counter in each store. People who wish to help with this campaign should contact me.

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END NOTE

                       

            The prospect of WiFi from space was a primary reason our organization was formed in 1996. A year earlier, Sarah Benson had contacted me from Australia and impressed upon me the emergency nature of this threat. Teledesic Corporation’s plan for an Internet in the Sky was an imminent danger to life on earth, and Sarah urged me to join her in starting a global opposition, in order to prevent it.

            Teledesic did not get off the ground, but our fears were confirmed on September 23, 1998. Cell phone service from space disoriented birds, injured many people, and was lethal to some. There was nothing we could do about it, so we all adjusted to the new environment as best we could.

            A few years later, scientists in Ukraine, analyzing fifty years of Russian and Ukrainian research, issued another urgent warning. Large fleets of communication satellites delivering massive amounts of data from low orbit, they said, could cause changes in cell structures, physiological processes, DNA, and behavior in all life on earth. They predicted a “catastrophic increase in the number of cases of cancer.” Their paper, “Influence of High-frequency Electromagnetic Radiation at Non-thermal Intensities on the Human Body,” was published as a supplement to our journal, No Place To Hide, in February 2001.

            At about the same time, in 2001, WiFi became a reality here on earth, and before we knew it, it invaded people’s homes on a large scale, to such an extent that it is impossible to buy a laptop computer today that is not equipped with it.

            Now, plans for an Internet in the Sky are back. This time they are likely to succeed, because the profit to be made from joining every person on earth to the social media network is now greater than the expense that would be incurred in making it happen. But the opposition has become more difficult to organize, and the primary reason is that, unlike in 1995, almost everybody owns a cell phone. People are so used to carrying around their phones in their pockets at all times that they are unable to think of them as dangerous. Even many electrically sensitive people that call me these days, desperately ill, call me from their cell phones and do not want to hear that the first thing they have to do, for their own sake and for the sake of our planet, is throw them away.

            Our organization was named “Cellular Phone Task Force” because it was obvious from the beginning that wireless technology would destroy our world, and that the foundation and driving force behind all cell towers and telecommunications satellites, and now WiFi, Smart Meters and all the rest of it, is the cell phone.

            We face several other problems in uniting all the people who are against this. For example, the solution that used to work for electrically sensitive people—pack up and move to a safer location—no longer works, because there is no safer location left. This fragments us, because people are spending more and more of their time and resources in an effort to find safety for themselves and/or to try to get cured—an effort that is increasingly futile. It is our planet now that desperately needs to be cured. It is the electrically sensitive that, although suffering severely, are in some way the healthiest people, the most attuned to the planet and to the disaster that is befalling it. Like it or not, it is up to us to open the eyes of those who cannot yet see what is happening.

            And unscrupulous entrepreneurs are preying on our population. Large sums are being spent on therapies that do not work, pendants, pyramids, and plug-in devices that are useless or harmful, and filters and shielding materials that are at best inadequate and at worst dangerous. Unorthodox practitioners are telling people their EHS is caused by “Lyme disease” and are selling them expensive “Rife machines” to cure it, which, however, are nothing but generators of electromagnetic radiation and are guaranteed to make them sicker. We are being distracted by tales of “chemtrails,” an elaborate hoax that was invented in 1996 by white supremacist Larry Wayne Harris, and that has been deliberately disseminated by powerful interests in order to dilute our energies and discredit us.

            The unadorned truth is not easy to face. Naturally everybody wants there to be a magic fix—a machine that will kill the invading bacteria, a device that will erect a force field around you, reflective paint that will keep it all out of your house. Nobody really wants to know that the inevitable result of being able to fly to Paris whenever you want is ugly trails in the sky, or that the inevitable result of being able to use a cell phone in an emergency is an Internet in the Sky, raining microwaves.

            The books that are being published, the lawsuits that are pending, the scientific research that is being conducted, and the individual campaigns that are being mounted, all over the world, are crucial. But they are not enough. The fight against Smart Meters cannot be won if it is only about Smart Meters. The opposition to electronic warfare will not succeed if it is only about electronic warfare. The construction of refuges for the electrically sensitive is futile if the coming rain of data is not prevented. None of these efforts can succeed unless the conversation becomes open, candid, and unified. This is possible.

            The filing of an amicus brief in court by 94 organizations from all over the world—North and South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and Africa—shows that it is possible. This is the first time that so many people have cooperated in a unified effort to establish the rights of people with EHS, and the harm that electromagnetic radiation is causing to our world.   

                                                                                                           

                                                                        Arthur Firstenberg

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