A big thank you to Stop 5G International for creating this fabulous video for the Global Protest day on 25 April, 2020.
Campaigning
Somerset Scrutiny Meeting on 5G
Following on from Devon County Council’s 5G Scrutiny meetings, Somerset County Council’s Scrutiny council met at Shire Hall in Taunton on 11 March.
This is the full video recording of the meeting filmed by Devon campaigner John Kitson:
N.B. An annotated version is currently being prepared which has detailed rebuttals of the claims made by the industry and PHE speakers.
This is what “Somerset Live” has to say about it:
Notice that “Somerset Live” calls someone who works for BT, a nurse and the director of mobile UK “experts”
Here’s some commentaries by some of the Somerset campaigners:
I am glad John Kitson (5Gawareness.com) filmed it so we will be able to watch the speakers when he puts it up on his website. I think the councillors’ questions to the telco’s and Somerset PHE were excellent and showed they had been listening to our presentations. The councillors were aware that the telco’s presentations made no reference to health. It appeared that whenever the local Somerset PHE officer had a difficult question, she said we would have to take it up with central PHE rather than her answering it.
I think nearly all the scrutiny councillors wanted to take it to a Task and Finish Group, which is the outcome we wanted. The fact that the speakers met beforehand and divided up all the subject areas so that each speaker was talking about one specific area really made a difference. It appeared organised, coherent and a powerful testimony about the varied dangers from 5G and the rest!
Charlie
Wednesday 11th March 2020 – Somerset County Council Scrutiny Meeting with BT, Mobile UK and the County’s representative from PHE in attendance. Eleven of us spoke in favour of stopping 5G.
County councillors were treated to a range of well-informed 3-minute presentations from us of the dangers of 5G and existing 4G. We covered health, cyber security, wildlife, ICNIRP, insurance, etc etc. And thanks to the preparation work done by others (Louise and Karen), we got a very sympathetic response from the councillors. They are listening.
In contrast, councillors expressed disappointment with BT and others. They felt fobbed off with either poor answers or no answers. The best that the telcos could offer is lower latency and the possibility for millions of emergency calls to be made. The councillors criticised the telcos for not addressing the health concerns or impacts on biodiversity.
One councillor in particular referred to his worry about field mice, which was touching, and made the point that, even if we do not suffer cancers or health problems ourselves, we have a bigger problem if biodiversity is damaged and we have no food. The councillors were repeatedly told that there is no new evidence that there are any health effects or disruption to wildlife.
The telcos dismissed bee colony collapse disorder as having anything to do with phones [i.e. healthy bees mysteriously vanishing, leaving the queen and food]. In their opinion, the phenomenon pre-dates mobile phones. We were unable to point out that the phenomenon we are referring to was first identified by the US environment agencies in 2006 when some beekeepers lost nearly 90% of their hives. (We have since written to the committee with this information.) Councillors were told in no uncertain terms, however, that if the cider apple harvest were to fail in Somerset due to the loss of pollinators, there would be a riot! That message got home.
The councillors asked the telcos about ICNIRP and the heating issue. They were told that ICNIRP has looked at 25,000 science papers, that ICNIRP is a multi-disciplinary body which includes biologists [? who?]. The telcos also referred to power densities being measured at phone masts, and showed how they decline with distance [inverse square law] and are well-within the guidelines, but at no point did the telcos reference the polarised variable pulsing of the signals – which is actually the trigger for the biological harm.
On childhood cancers, the PHE representative said that the proportion had gone up because other causes of death had declined. She also muddled the statistics by quoting back at us figures that included children aged 1-18. We had cited the children’s cancer charity who base their statistics on ages 1-14. To include the older group 14-18 means that those have passed their driving tests are among those statistics – so no wonder there are other causes of death.
She mentioned electro-sensitivity. She said that PHE do not doubt that the symptoms are real. She said that what is in dispute is the cause.
She also tried to maintain that there is a constant review of the science, even though she could only refer to the last published AGNIR report in 2012, which one councillor pointed out is out of date. The best that she could quote since then is the 2015 SCENIR report which found no connection between phones and cancer. [This report also pre-dates the NTP findings of clear evidence of cancer in 2018.] There were no other published reports that she was able to mention. [PHE does not accept NTP.] So much for up to date reviews…
It seems likely that the Scrutiny Committee will decide to proceed to a Task & Finish Group which will give us an opportunity to provide the committee with more in-depth information. Everyone did brilliantly, given that 3 minutes is a challenging discipline. And there was fantastic support from so many who came from far and wide, Bristol, Glastonbury and other places. The atmosphere was electric [forgive pun] and they were definitely on the back foot, with the councillors clearly sympathetic to our campaign. Onward and upward…
Lucy
N.B. We are collating the various 3-minute talks given by the Somerset campaigners. Please Contact us if you would like to have a copy for use or as inspiration for Scrutiny meetings with your local council.
Devon County Council Spotlight Review of 5G: Some Positive News
In November last year, Devon County Council were the first county in the UK to bring 5G to their Scrutiny Committee. The County Council’s Corporate Infrastructure and Regulatory Services Scrutiny Committee began investigating 5G as part of a spotlight review. People across Devon were asked for their views on 5G, as the council launched a “call for evidence” on the technology. The Devon campaign group also compiled a dossier of experts in the field which was submitted to the Scrutiny Committee as part of the review. Members of the public were then invited to meet the council for discussions. Campaigner Lucy Wyatt reports back on the day:
A week or so ago (18th Feb 2020) groups of us went down to Devon to participate in a Devon County Spotlight Review of 5G. Essentially there were several sessions throughout the day in which we could join in round table discussions on the 5G issues of cyber security, wildlife and health. Each table had a facilitator and a councillor present who asked us each in turn our view. The cynics among us could easily have dismissed it all as a PR exercise, all very Delphi technique except that….
… as our session progressed, it became apparent that something amazing is starting to happen in Devon.
Thanks to all the hard work of the Devon group (and they have been tireless in their persistence since the summer, regularly attending council meetings), several councillors indicated to us that they are now becoming really quite concerned. One councillor in particular who had been really quite difficult months earlier, has now indicated to Stop5G Devon that he is “with them in more ways than one”. Once these councillors wake up they cannot unwake.
This is a fight for democracy and freedom. As a result of our experiences with Devon County Council, my proposal is that we don’t ask for bans or moratoriums or precautionary principle or anything specific in our discussions with Councils. We ask them to work out what we should do, together as a community. They are our community representatives. These people are our best allies. They are our bulwark against tyranny from central government. They are our protection. It only needs one major county to start to question and take up the baton….
Our role is to wake them up. Ask the questions, sow the seeds, raise the doubt, present the evidence.
The message needs to be simple. And thus more effective. The simple message is that
exposure to Radio Frequency ElectroMagnetic Radiation damages DNA in all living cells
and it doesn’t make any difference what the technology that is being used, or what the frequency is – 5G/4G any G. Anything that is exposed to a polarised, variable pulse can be damaged. It isn’t a smooth sine wave. Biological harm at below thermal levels.
The sources of that damage are anything wireless/wifi – phones, whiteboards in schools, towers, antennas, pulsed arrays, microwaves – at all parts of the non-ionising spectrum. There are then the manifestations of that exposure which are the cancers, the loss of fertility, the early on-set of dementia, the brain fog, the nosebleeds, the ADHD, the electro-sensitivity. And it affects people, children, birds, bees, trees – all living organisms.
We are already seeing the consequences of decades of exposure – which is the stalling of life expectancy in humans. It stalled in 2017 [viz the Marmot Review – published on 25th Feb 2020]. And even decline in some parts of the UK, with widening health inequalities – not surprising given that densely packed urban areas with lower incomes have more mast exposure. As well as the catastrophic disappearances of birds and insects as the electro smog expands and we get better signals on our phones.
PHE are desperately clinging to ICNIRP because the claim that harm is only from heating allows them to ignore biological harm. But ICNIRP is a house built on sand – undermined most recently by the Italian Court of Appeal in Turin in January 2020 which rejected its evidence because of conflicts of interest. We need people to understand that ICNIRP is being discredited in Europe. It has no medical authority anyway. It is just a matter of time…
Lucy Wyatt
Stop 5G Global Protest Day
On 25 January, 2020 was the first Global 5G Protest Day. It was organised by a small group who set up a new website for the purpose. The day was a great success with 270 events in 36 countries – so a huge thank you to the organisers at Stop5G International for the inspiration and the co-ordination.
Some UK photos can be found here and Ireland here.
The next global protest day will be 25-26 April, 2020. Let’s ramp it up!
Protests in the UK included:
London
Bristol
Bath
Brighton
Jersey
Derby
Exeter
Torquay
Dorking
Eastbourne
Isle of Man
Isle of Wight
Moray
Edinburgh
Cardiff
Reading
Worthing
and in Ireland:
Dublin
Monaghan
Co. Sligo
5G Appeals Presented by Campaigners to No. 10 Downing Street
Anti-5G campaigners presenting the 5G Space Appeal and 5G Appeal to No. 10 Downing Street yesterday (22nd January 2020)
As of 23 January 2020, the 5G Space Appeal has been signed by 194,913 doctors, scientists, environmentalists , bee keepers and citizens from 204 nations. Let’s keep on campaigning and create a ground swell of resistance that the Government cannot ignore!
And thank you to the nearly 250 scientists from 42 nations who signed the 5G Appeal which has been given to the UN. All of these scientists have peer-reviewed papers on the biological or health effects of non-ionizing electromagnetic fields used for wireless communications. These scientists have criticised the World Health Organisation for not fulfilling its role to protect people.
Campaigner Chris Newton expresses concern over the increase in exposure to (non-ionising) radiation that occurs with the introduction of 5G wireless technology. It includes millimeter wave frequencies (microwaves) that are not well understood and also lower frequency 700 MHz waves that penetrate more deeply into the body.
The biological effects of pulsing millimeter wave radiation includes activating the calcium channels in cell membranes which causes DNA damages amongst other things. He urges that the plethora of biological effects is why we must invoke the Precautionary Principle – particularly in the light of damage to young people and resultant fertility problems likely to surface many years later. If the 5G rollou continues, we will get increasing densification of mobile signals which will be catastrophic.
Frome Town Council Invokes the Precautionary Principle
“Until there is a consensus that 5G wireless radiation is harmless to humans and the environment, Frome Town Council adopts the precautionary principle and opposes the roll out 5G in the town.”
The campaign group were delighted with the vote 9-4 for in favour on July 17th 2019.
How we did it
The campaign began in March, with biweekly meetings where a small group organised the printing of some leaflets. A team of three delivered house to house and on car windscreens in the hospital and supermarket car parks. A space for a talk was kindly offered by the Cornerhouse pub. We put up posters on notice boards in the town and on the huge monopole lamppost outside the hospital advertising the talk.
We set up a petition online 38degrees and printed it out and put this up on Facebook.
We invited all the local councillors, three attended including the Deputy Mayor.
The talk aimed to share the basics of what 5G is and why an exponential increase in radiation whilst there is already so much evidence of harm from 4G pulsed non ionising radiation is reason enough to at the very least slow down and invoke the precautionary principle. The atmosphere was calm, friendly, soft chairs, lots of home-grown flowers in vases on all the tables. It lasted about half an hour and then we opened up to questions and contributions from the floor. It was interesting as some people came expressing relief and gratitude for the opportunity to talk about the subject, others genuinely didn’t know anything about the topic. There was a wee bit of heckling from two people at the beginning which was met by a helpful audience member reminding them firmly they were asked to save questions until the end.
We had Dr Martin Palls report printed out in full on the table and the Phire leaflets. This was helpful for those who wanted to know “Is this fake science?”
We did several mornings in the Town centre with banners collecting signatures. We invited a journalist and he put a piece in the Frome Times. We then held a second talk at another venue in Town. Again the Deputy Mayor attended and despite one of the speakers veering into the more negative conspiracy angle despite being asked not and being somewhat insulting to her she reported that the Council had raised the Precautionary Principle and it would be voted on at Full Council on July 17th.
We are thankful for all the work done in Glastonbury to secure the result there as this very much helped sway the decision in Frome.