In the 1990’s, when I ran an interdisciplinary yoga studio, one of the teachers had a catch phrase ‘Yoga for Everybody.’ We designed a post card with photos of a toddler and a yoga teacher, and a student supplied a picture of her golden retriever. They were each performing inspiring, instinctual and heart-warming expressions of Adho Mukha Svanasana – Downward Dog Pose.  

Yogajala reports that there are 10 benefits of Downward Dog:  1. Stretches the entire body, 2. Eases back pain and promotes good posture 3. Strengthens the upper body 4. Improves stability and balance 5. Full body strength building 6. Calms the mind 7. Boosts mental clarity and focus 8. Supports the digestive system 9. Regulates the nervous system 10. Alleviates tension headaches and migraines.

Full Disclosure: In my mind, I compare these benefits with issues associated with increased screen time, especially for children. By far, I am not alone. (For example, see: The EdTech Revolution Has Failed The case against student use of computers, tablets, and smartphones in the classroom from John Haidt’s Substack After Babel)

It’s Always Inflammation

But the point of my story is that soon after we created our downward dog postcard, the student who owned the golden retriever stopped in. She had recently taken the dog to the vet, and his inflammatory markers were sky high.

We had been using his image to promote concepts of stress reduction and mind-body balance, and his nerves were, in fact, on fire.

We were broken-hearted.

I was reminded of the story of her beloved pet when I listened, again, to a recent podcast with Dr. Tom O’Bryan and Nathan Crane about the difference between Healthspan and Lifespan, or Biological Age and Chronological Age.

We are older than our chronological age. We are living longer, but we are spending a greater portion of our lives in poor health. (This includes children, and mounting autism, ADHA, asthma, obesity, and auto-immune issues.) We are headed in the wrong direction.

I know that I am in the same boat as that dog, along with many others. The difference is that I have been fortunate enough to recognize that something is wrong.

According to Dr. Tom O’Bryan, others might be traversing through 30 years of Alzheimer’s development and not know it. The problem is that if we don’t recognize, assess, and address risks while harm is unfolding, invisibly, below the surface, – we can’t respond.

As Dr. O’Bryan stated, we keep throwing gas on the fire, and the fire is in the brain.

How do we make the invisible visible? The answer is: We look at the progression of inflammation. If we are courageous enough, we address the cause.

Telomeres

Regarding aging, I had previously heard Dr. Zach Bush raise a question about the possibility of adverse effects of RF and 5G exposure on the length of telomeres. Healthline explains: “Your DNA is located within the nuclei of your cells, where it’s bundled within structures called chromosomes. Each chromosome carries specific genetic information in the form of genes. As the cells in your body divide, your chromosomes need to replicate so that each cell contains a complete set of chromosomes in its nucleus. At the ends of each of your chromosomes are stretches of DNA called telomeres. Telomeres help protect the ends of your chromosomes from damage or fusing with nearby chromosomes. Keep reading to learn more about these tiny but important structures and why they could unlock the door to preventing disease and reducing the effects of aging.”

Non-repairable, Permanent Indicators of Genotoxic Effects

I also remember reading about a recent study about cell towers and chromosomal damage. “A newly published study found people who lived near telecommunications base station antennas (such as cell towers and telecommunications network antennas) with higher exposure to radio-frequency (RF) radiation from the antennas had significantly higher chromosomal aberrations s (non-repairable, permanent indicators of genotoxic effects) in their blood.  The peer reviewed study entitled “Evaluation of oxidative stress and genetic instability among residents near mobile phone base stations in Germany” was published in the journal Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety by renowned European experts of the Cancer Research Institute, Biomedical Research Centre, Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava, Slovak Republic, Germany, and the Cancer Research Centre, Medical University of Vienna.  – Enviromental Health Trust (Jun 13, 2024)

Chromosome abnormalities can be inherited from a parent (such as a translocation) or be “de novo” (new to the individual). This is why, when a child is found to have an abnormality, chromosome studies are often performed on the parents. -Source

At times, I have wondered how my life would have turned out if I had not ended up needing to learn about comet assay indices and de novo chromosome abnormalities, and was studying Sanskrit instead. I know the answer. I have an environmental illness progressing towards a disease diagnosis that could possibly have been prevented or mitigated against, but remains beyond my control due to an uncontrolled environment. But had I not been accurately informed about lifestyle choices that are harmful to me, I could be in much worse health, or already deceased, or making choices that are harmful to others.

I would rather know.

I wonder when we will consider the impact of a polluted EMF/RF environment, and genetic damage affecting younger populations, that is not inherited.

How Does Information Translate into Behavioral Change?

When I was in my late teens, ‘Russian Tea’ was all the rage. At the time, the processed food empire was heavily influenced by the patriotism of the Space Race. ‘Russian Tea’ was created by mixing powdered diet iced tea mix with Tang – the astronaut’s drink.

(Wikipedia notes that Kraft Heinz owns the Tang brand in North America. Sales of Tang were poor until NASA used it on John Glenn‘s Mercury flight in February 1962,^[5] and on subsequent Gemini missions.^[6] Since then it has been closely associated with the U.S. human spaceflight program, which created the misconception that Tang was invented for the space program.^[7][8] Tang continues to be used on NASA missions in the present day, over 50 years after its introduction.^[9] – Wikipedia)

I loved concocting Russian Tea, and I loved drinking it. At the time, the diet drink Tab was also advertised as nutritious for women because calcium was being added. Chemistry was king,

When the summer ended, I realized that Russian Tea was also delicious as a hot drink/hot tea.

Then I read that when the artificial sweetener was heated, it caused direct harm – to the brain. It was the last time that I drank Russian Tea or its components.

The experience changed my relationship with the authorities who regulate the food supply. I saw how a chemical product could be brought to market, then classified as carcinogenic, and then re-classified as safe, for example saccharin, or vinyl chloride.

I also know about the unscrupulous product defense field, and mercenary science, and compromised politicians and regulators.

Regarding sweeteners, I started to feel the discomfort that reveals itself when our beliefs are challenged, and when we feel that the societal structures that are supposed to protect us are not reliable or accountable.

Rather than avoiding the discomfort and gravitating back into denial, deep in my cells, when I looked at certain products, I was repelled. I leaned into it.

Regulatory authorities are not revising their science in response to real world conditions. Therefore. the public has to move and evolve faster. We are already witnessing a revolution is behaviors in regard to children and social media, led by parents, driving policy change. That revolution is sparking evolution, and we need it, because we are traversing a de-evolutionary, instinct-injured pathway.

I believe that if everyone had the chance to learn about inflammation progression that the world could shift on a dime. In fact, it can.

Nathan Crane and Dr. Tom O’Bryan

The interview with Nathan Crane and Dr. Tom O’Bryan is Shocking: Why Alzheimer’s and Dementia Diagnoses Are Rising, Dr. Tom O’Bryan | Nathan Crane Podcast

It is Time to Remove the Covid-Colored Glasses

As Dr. O’Bryan noted, pre-covid, in 2017, Blue Cross Blue Shield published an alarming report about increasing rates of early onset dementia in ages 30 to 64.

Reference: Blue Cross Blue Shield Association. “Early-Onset Dementia and Alzheimer’s Rates Grow for Younger American Adults.” The Health of America Report, 2017. Click here to read this issue. – Image from healthspan-vs-lifespan – theDr®

Sky-rocketing Neurological Death Rates

Prior to the Blue Cross Blue Shield report, before Covid, in 2015, Bournemouth University (U.K) researchers Colin Pritchard and Emily Rosenorn-Lanng published their study, Neurological deaths of American adults (55–74) and the over 75’s by sex compared with 20 Western countries 1989–2010: Cause for concern

The researchers showed that deaths due to neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s and dementia were, in fact, rising in the twenty-one Western countries, with especially alarming increases for women in the United States. In August of 2015, the Washington Post reported,” The study [] found that the disease is now being regularly diagnosed in people in their late 40s and that death rates are soaring. [] The problem was particularly acute in the United States, where neurological deaths in men aged over 75 have nearly tripled and in women risen more than fivefold.”

“Total Neurological Deaths include such disparate conditions as Parkinson’s disease, motor neuron disease (MND), hereditary neuromuscular conditions, prion disorders, degenerative diseases, including Creutzfeldt Jacob’s disease (CJD), and new variant CJD[50] though the incidence of the later appears to have relatively stabilized, returning close to pre‑2000 levels.[9,30,41] Earlier research found that dementia morbidity was occurring earlier and had disproportionately increased in some Western countries in people aged 45–74 years, with relatively larger increases in women[26,38,40] as women’s TND rates had risen relatively more than male rates in every country.”

” [] apart from Portugal, over the 20 years the USA had statistically significant greater rises in Total Neurological Deaths than 16 other countries, indicating disproportionate changes in neurological morbidity and mortality in American adults (55–74) and the over 75’s“

“Moreover, the extent of “early dementias,” often seen in people under 60, was virtually unknown 30 or more years ago and the more than doubling of the over 75’s Total neurological Deaths in the US within just 20 years, suggests that interactive multiple environmental and lifestyle factors are operating.

“Neurological diseases are considered to be “diseases of the elderly”[37] and that possibly the rises are essentially due to the “Gompertzian effect”‑that is, that as people live longer, they have diseases that previously they would not have lived long enough to develop.[7,14,43] This appears to have some validity, but the question is whether such substantial changes, occurring over a relatively short period, are mainly due to the Gompertzian effect? However, international changes in regard to cancer deaths[41,42] do not accord with a Gompertzian prediction, nor does this explanation account for changes between countries and gender especially in the USA, as other studies, while acknowledging an element of Gompertzian process, have suggested that environmental factors play a larger part.[2,24,25,”

“CONCLUSIONS The Gompertzian explanation appears limited, not least because it does not explain the USA position, but we avoid the temptation to speculate but point toward a number of studies indicating possible epigenetic factors influencing neurological morbidity,[3‑5,15,22,24‑26,32,36,44] suggesting that possible nongenetic influences on gene expression, may be entertained.[4‑6,10,12,13,16,20,32,41] The nature of any environmental factors are uncertain but there have been major environmental changes; including increased population, economic activity, substantial rises in road and air travel; increased home technology involving background electromagnetic fields (mobile phones, microwave ovens, computers), which are unique to these later years and these possible environmental factors cannot be ignored, especially as they probably interact.[6,10,27,28,33] This list of possible features might be described as “modern living” and the USA is the epitome of “modern living.””

In the study, death rates for cancer and cardio-vascular diseases were used as controls and compared with neurological deaths. (Note: Unfortunately, the World Health Organization modified their data categories to 20-year cohorts, instead of the previous practice of sorting by decades, further obscuring patterns of earlier neurological damage. There is a difference between dying of dementia at 55 vs. 74. He who controls the data controls the narrative.)

Several points discussed in the podcast with Nathan Crane and Dr. O’Bryan:

1. 14 of the 15 leading causes of death are chronic inflammatory diseases
2. Growing evidence suggests that autoantibodies precede the onset of symptomatic autoimmune disease by many years
3. During the podcast, Dr O’Bryan discusses research published in 2003, conducted on military veterans, demonstrating that biomarkers were present in stored blood in individuals who were subsequently diagnosed with Lupus, that follow a predictable course, years before the disease manifested.
4. Dr. O’Bryan describes the progression from normal immunity to benign immunity to pathogenic autoimmunity to clinical illness.
5. The predomal period is when a disease mechanism can be identified, before specific symptoms appear.
6. Individuals who are at risk to developing an autoimmune disease should be advised to refrain from activities and lifestyle which endangers their health and quality of life.

Although the interview with Dr. O’Bryan and Nathan Crane does not mention reducing exposures to radio frequency radiation powering wireless devices and infrastructure, a portion of the population has been reporting harm, for decades. And independent researchers have been swimming against the tide, validating symptoms and disability.

We need to backtrack to what we were learning about the damage to the brain, and the blood brain barrier, years before covid, and before the arguments about whether covid or vaccines are to blame for health harm.

The testing now available to evaluate biomarkers of brain inflammation leading to specific diseases could be conducted on those experiencing ‘Havana Syndrome;’ on those who comprise the Targeted Justice community; and those reporting Electromagnetic Radiation Syndrome, also known as EHS.

In particular, smart meters have unleashed significant neurological damage in some individuals, and further installations should be stopped pending independent investigation.

The Elimination Challenge – Keith Cutter

Keith Cutter of EMF Remedy has proposed an “EMF Elimination Challenge: A Vision to Change Lives and Heal the World Strategic Initiative #1”

“In my work, I constantly meet people who are on the path to becoming survivors of chronic synthetic EMF exposure. The pattern is always the same: a sudden realization that life is better without synthetic EMF. The specifics vary, but the stories follow a familiar theme. A school teacher falls ill when WiFi is installed in her classroom. A man gets sick after setting up a WiFi router meant for a warehouse in his small apartment. A homeowner moves to a beautiful country home, only to have her health instantly depleted by radar sweeping the area. A woman’s life is forever changed after solar panels are installed on her roof. These are just a few of the many stories I’ve heard from my clients.

In each case, lives are transformed in obvious ways upon exposure to synthetic EMF. Nothing teaches like this kind of experience—a clear and undeniable contrast between life with and without synthetic EMF exposure.

An elimination challenge or trial involves removing one or more potential triggers from a person’s environment, diet, or routine to observe whether symptoms improve or resolve. This approach is commonly used for suspected food intolerances, allergies, chemical sensitivities, or other conditions where specific exposures may be causing harm.“

Dr. William Rea

The late Dr. William Rea of the Environmental Health Center developed a protocol to determine which of his patients were actually sensitive to wireless frequencies. In a 2011 presentation to Building Biologists, he discussed “Solutions for Creating Healthy Buildings”

As part of is protocol, he began by eliminating RF exposure and establishing homeostasis in his patients, and then employing provocation testing.

Researchers involved in manufacturing science to deny the adverse effects of RF exposure are fond of invoking the nocebo effect and claiming that patients cannot determine whether or not they are being exposed to radio frequencies under laboratory conditions.

But if Dr. O’Bryan is telling us that harm can be occurring for 30 years before a disease is detected, and also telling us that predictive biomarkers are present even if we do not yet have a disease diagnosis, and if a portion of the population is reporting harm, and if other researchers including Dr. Magda Havas have provided evidence of changes in heart rate in some patients, isn’t it time for us to stop breaking our own heads and hearts?

Those who are far enough declining towards the development of disease to feel pain when exposed to cell towers, cellphones, and Wi-Fi and who may have already developed harm to tissue are “canaries in the coal mine.”

“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

Until, of course, it isn’t.

Want to take action?

Sign The International Declaration on the Human Rights of Children in the Digital Age

The dramatic transformation of our world into one increasingly enmeshed with digital technology is having a significant, and often negative, impact on the lives of our children.
In this International Declaration, we posit three fundamental legal rights of children regarding the deployment and use of technology: their right to be free from intentionally addictive devices, platforms and apps; their right to be free from excessive exposure to wireless radiation; and their right to be free from commercial exploitation. HERE

When a cybertruck is imported to Europe, it has to be modified in order to adhere with safety regulations not in force in the United States.

From an energy medicine perspective, allowing intimidating vehicles on the roads, and instinct-injured piercing devoid of recognition of the body’s energy anatomy, are related issues.

When we don’t understand the risks of ‘overcharge’ in ourselves and others, and we don’t understand when and how our subtle energies are being exploited, or how to protect ourselves, we are flying blind.”

I recently read a quote by Substack author Tijn Tjoelker of The Mycelium in his post Lessons from Zen and The Art of Saving The Planet.

This article is about his quote.

We are at the point where every mundane choice that we make throughout the day and night – about what we do with our time and attention, and whether or not we invoke a machine or device, large and small – either does or does not regenerate life.

Unexamined choices via our technology use and consumer habits have taken us beyond the edge of reason. We need a new roadmap,

A Short Historical Narrative of Feedback Loops: The Startle Response vs. Desensitization

I remember when cars were first outfitted with remote door locks. Car lights would blink and the horn would beep loudly, so that the driver could confirm that they had locked the vehicle – from across the street.

Initially, I jumped out of my skin on more than one occasion in parking lots, startled by the unexpected noise from an empty vehicle. How did we come to change our expectations and behavior regarding when and where and how we lock our vehicles – creating the demand for more sensors and expensive key fobs, with cars generating data? Should we celebrate that Meta’s glasses will remember for us where we parked the car? Or should we question that we would need the assist, because we have been empowered to not pay attention to what we are doing?

Mindless or Mindful?

Over time, the horn honking volume was adjusted. My energetic immune system and nervous system adapted to the sound, and now I rarely experience that startle response. I am desensitized.

We have not considered that in many cases, our desensitization not an adaptation. It is degenerative, especially regarding our relationships with technology, with the built environment, with authoritarian structures, and with each other.

We could instead be paying more attention to what the European Environmental Agency has coined, “Late Lessons from Early Warnings” by heeding more of our own physicality, as well as reports of harm being experienced by others.

This extends far beyond overuse injuries and postural problems caused by tech; by screen blue light harm; by epidemic myopia, including in children; and including unacknowledged damage to nature. The harm is preventable, and caused by failure to course correct in the face of evidence of maladaptation to misguided social norms.

Trauma expert Peter Levine noted, “In a herd of deer, we need some super-sensitive ones. They are the ones that will hear that teeniest little crack or smell the one or two molecules of scent from the mountain lion that’s stalking them. Their job is to use their hyper-sensitivity to alert the whole group.”

If we are going to address any of the current challenges facing humanity, we need to recognize and recover our relationship with our own independent sensory feedback systems. We need to hold ourselves accountable for ensuring that our man-made inventions, including AI, do not destroy our biology, or each other, or the nature environment with which we have co-evolved for thousands of years.

Tech is enabling us to adopt mindlessness and disconnect, when we need to be going in the opposite direction. We are treating the planet and ourselves – frivolously, while outsourcing harm from the Global North to the South, including mining and waste.

Some antidotes include self-awareness, simplicity, mindfulness, wonder, presence, community, compassion for others, reverence, and openness to accumulated wisdom from other cultures.

We have access to maps that can guide us back to an integrated, healthy and balanced relationship with one another and with our own energy fields, via energy intelligence, much of which has been codified by Eastern traditions, thousands of years ago. Many Westerners are already reaping benefits of Eastern teachings; we could incorporate much more wisdom regarding balance, and embodiment. We don’t have to continue traveling this road. We can change the GPS coordinates to conscious awareness.

A Short Comparision Study of an Energetic Exchange: Shopping

Here are 3 different scenarios describing a cashier processing a customer’s purchases in a store, relative to studying energy anatomy.

1. In the first scenario, the cashier displays basic social skills and interacts courteously with staff and the customers. Friendly smiles are exchanged. The cashier is ‘present.’

2. In the second scenario, the cashier is wearing revealing clothing, with a phone visibly tucked in her bra. She does not make eye contact with anyone. She is sending mixed signals indicating that she is distracted with her mind elsewhere, while at the same time drawing attention to her appearance.

3. In the third scenario, the cashier has pasty unhealthy-looking skin, wearing clothing that obscures her physicality, with extreme prominent piercings on her face. She avoids eye contact. Again, the unconscious messaging is that while acting like she doesn’t care, she desperately wants to draw attention to herself.

If we could perceive the energetic dynamics occurring in each exchange, before we became desensitized, what would we see?

What does this have to do with a cybertruck? Everything.

Strange Flows, Radiant Circuits, and The Penetrating Flow

Thousands of years ago, Chinese seers mapped out the electromagnetic pathways that sustain the invisible subtle energy field. This includes both Meridians and ‘Strange Flows.’

Some surmise that the name ‘Strange Flow’ may have been sourced from the idea that the behavior of these energies appeared unusual and unpredictable, until their functions were understood. For example, if we were to suddenly fall through ice into freezing water, the Strange Flows responsible for managing body temperature would take the helm and re-organize our physiology to help insure survival, faster than the process of conscious thought. This would include the Regulator Flow.

Energy Medicine teacher and author Donna Eden, who can ‘see energy’, describes the Strange Flows as “Radiant Circuits” because of the way they appear to her, as they flash “on” when needed, illuminating like Christmas lights. This contrasts with the action of Meridians, which are choreographed in a constant flow by the changing frequencies of the sun, over the course of the day and night.

Eden Energy Medicine explains, “The radiant circuits function to ensure that all the other energy systems are working for the common good. They redistribute energies to where they are most needed, responding to any health challenge the body might encounter. In terms of evolution, the radiant circuits have been around longer than the meridians. Primitive organisms such as insects move their energies via the radiant circuits rather than through a meridian system, and the radiant circuits can be seen in the embryo before the meridians develop. As in the way that riverbeds are formed, it is as if radiant energies that habitually followed the same course became meridians. Where the meridians are tied to fixed pathways and specific organs, the radiant energies operate as fluid fields, embodying a distinct spontaneous intelligence. Like hyperlinks on a website, they jump instantly to wherever they are needed, bringing revitalization, joy, and spiritual connection. If triple warmer mobilizes your inner militia, the radiant circuits mobilize your inner mom, showering you with healing energy, providing life-sustaining resources, and lifting your morale.” – Eden Energy Medicine

The Chinese seers and Indian sages devoted themselves to understanding and cultivating their electromagnetic energies through simple, eloquent, sustainable practices including mindfulness, exercise, herbs, meditation, visualization, and massage, as the foundation for a healthy, conscious life.

The Penetrating Flow is one of the “Strange Flows” of Oriental Medicine. The Penetrating Flow has a number of functions, and one is to rewire the body for reproduction. It is partly responsible for the re-distribution of circulation to the sexual zones of the body. Its action has been described as the gentle feeling of butterflies in the stomach associated with falling in love, which can evolve to a warm feeling in the vicinity of the underwear, (but humans can attach many diverse emotional expressions and experiences to physical intimacy, including violence.)

In a remarkable irony, the same deeply internal energy field that wires humans for intimacy also manifests the survival strategy of disgust and repulsion, for example, when we smell rotten meat.

The body literally reorganizes its energy to prevent us from ingesting something harmful. This aspect of the Penetrating Flow can also be activated in cases of overwhelming shock and emotional upset, for example, witnessing a gruesome accident, or hearing emotionally traumatic news that overwhelms our ability to integrate and assimilate. We lose our appetite, literally.

The Penetrating Flow should not be actively engaged all the time. We do not want to be in a constant state of either disgust or sexual arousal, because in either state, the body’s energetic, spatial, mechanical, and bio-chemical constitution has been altered, intelligently, for a reason, but not for prolonged application.

Seeking to Impact the Audience – Social Media, Telecommunications, and Politics as an Unprecedented Force Multiplier of Arousal, Disgust, and/or Disharmony

When disgust, shock, stress or arousal is running the show, other capacities are diminished.

For example, we need to be able to digest food.

But we are living in an age where the advertising industry, media, and entertainment industry are constantly attempting to activate and direct energies of either arousal or disgust within us, and/or to get us to eat or buy something – often at the wrong time, in the wrong place, and for the wrong reasons.

Divisiveness was stoked during the pandemic and fueled a misunderstood sense of power. Intolerance and hatred is not power. The dynamic can be re-assessed and addressed as a lower interfering energy, rather than sustained and amplified. Without question, our current political process is being driven by disgust towards those who don’t agree with us, from both sides of the political aisle, in different ways.

The underlying economic and political paradigm is one of exploitation, and “taking” from another, including subtle energy, data, self-governance, and the right to ‘the Commons,” now including space and the health of the oceans.

Who is Minding the Store?

The passage through adolescence and into adulthood can be viewed as learning to manage one’s own sense of personal power and self-mastery including one’s sexual energy, which includes the Penetrating Flow. The three scenarios above describing a cashier in a store can be interpreted via the dynamics of the Penetrating Flow.

The first transaction with an attentive cashier is neutral and does not seek to draw energy from one party to the other.

The second example of the cashier with the phone visible in the bra is less neutral. While seeking to appear not to be interested in others, dressing provocatively relative to cultural norms generally seeks attention from “the audience.”

Technology, social media, the internet, and ‘likes’ have exponentially amplified the negatives of seeking attention from ‘an audience,’ and the dangers inherent in an economic system and mass culture cultivating imbalance, energy illiteracy, and addiction.

Instinct Injured Power Dynamics vs. Intention

The third dynamic of piercing the face is more complex, and this is where we find the link to the cybertruck and displays of power.

Many cultures, past and present, have incorporated body piercing and tattooing for any number of reasons, including beauty, and preparing for war. For example, it has been reported that some Native American cultures tattooed Stomach 36, recognizing that activating and massaging the electromagnetic point known as 3-mile leg on the Stomach Meridian would increase endurance.

This is not a commentary on all manifestations of tattooing and piercing, throughout time.

This is about unconscious and unskilled manipulation and alteration of bioenergy, including non-benefiting and non-consensual impacts on others.

Discernment regarding tattooing and piercing has to do with intention, and with literacy (or lack of literacy) regarding the body’s energy fields.

When we don’t know what we are doing relative to these energies, we are lost in space and time, with unanticipated results, including the possibility of long-term health damage.

A ‘witness’ with a strong intuitional body will recoil with an inborn aversion to harmful piercings on the face, for example, those that activate the start and endpoints of the Meridians, even without any formal training in energy medicine. This is because our intuitional bodies carry intelligences far beyond the conscious mind.

One teacher calls this his “spiny sense” of heightened alert, when we need to pay more attention to our gut instincts.

When our inborn energy intelligence is operational and not desensitized, we cringe and recoil at the sight of a painful-looking metal stake impaling the face because the resulting overcharged energy field in an individual or group subconsciously transmits risks. The intuitional body registers danger.

The practice of activating ‘overcharge’ in the military in order to drive them into battle has been practiced in many cultures. One of the most horrific examples of loss of control occurred with the My Lai massacre, during the Vietnam War. (There may have been others, including in 2002, when four wives were slain by their soldier husbands in 6 weeks at Fort Bragg.)

Back at the store, the instinct-injured individual with the pierced eyebrows may experience the recoil of the observer’s aura as ‘power over another.’ This dynamic unconsciously feeds the ego of the individual with the piercings. The energy exchange between the two individuals is distorted and polluted by power dynamics, (although there are energy medicine strategies available for protection from metabolizing unwanted energies, including ‘zipping up’ the Central Meridian.)

This dynamic may be why the piercing was done in the first place – for attention. We will never be able to figure out if piercing and tattooing can be used for healing, until we look.

When we give a wide berth to the metal cybertruck with its blackened windows, we experience the same invasive expression of power-over-another.

We know why a Chechen warlord was driving a gun-mounted Tesla cybertruck.

We also know that Europeans have taken steps to make their roads safer. In a recent letter, the European Transport Safety Council, Eurocities, Clean Cities, Transport & Environment, POLIS – Cities and Regions for Transport Innovation, International Federation of Pedestrians, and the European Cyclists’ Federation opposed the approval of a cybertruck on the roads in the Czech Republic.

Carscoops reported, “Despite the required modifications, they sent a letter to the local government expressing serious concerns about the electric truck’s shape, weight, and size. Apparently, they believe that having a vehicle shaped like a giant, unyielding wedge might not be the safest choice on the roads. [] To gain approval as a privately imported vehicle, the Cybertruck’s infamous sharp edges were reluctantly dressed with rubber moldings, an attempt to make it slightly less dangerous for pedestrians—though one wonders if anyone actually feels safer. Additionally, the LED headlights and taillights were tweaked with yellow indicators to align with European regulations. [] Campaigners argue that even at this seemingly deflated weight, the truck fails to meet regulations for the N1 category when fully loaded. European laws require heavy vehicles to be fitted with speed limiters, a rule that seems to have been overlooked in this case. The letter doesn’t stop there. It highlights the truck’s enormous footprint, expansive blind spots, lack of crumple zones, and extreme acceleration, all of which they say pose a real danger to pedestrians and other road users. For these reasons, campaigners argue that the Tesla Cybertrucks currently on European roads should be de-registered and removed from public streets.Even With Rubber Edges, Critics Want Tesla’s Cybertruck Off Europe’s Roads (msn.com)

What we don’t know is why America ignores the implications of these armored cars,

Is it possible that the quest for self-mastery could eclipse monetizing – beyond the planet’s limits – the need for power imbalances? Can self-esteem be expressed as a force for good?

The Iceman’s Medicinal Herbs and Genetics

The story of Ötzi implies that 5,300 years ago, the practice of tattooing certain acupuncture points was linked to sophisticated, individualized health care.

Image Courtesy Flo Freshman

In 1991 “a spectacularly preserved mummy of a man who was murdered about 5,300 years ago” was unearthed. “The iceman, the oldest glacier-bound mummy ever discovered, was found by hikers in Italy’s Ötztal Alps in 1991, and since then, scientists have scrutinized almost every aspect of the man’s life,” as reported by Live Science. “Genetic analysis revealed that the iceman had a host of ailments at the time of his murder (by a blow to the head). For instance, Ötzi was a heart attack waiting to happen, with narrowed arteries, and he had arthritic knees and rotten teeth, a likely case of Lyme disease, and signs of stomach ulcers.” – Live Science

Possible evidence for care and treatment in the Tyrolean Iceman was published in the International Journal of Paleopathology Volume 25, June 2019, Pages 110-117. The article discussed findings about what he had eaten, and outlined genetic findings.

The Mummy and the Meridians: “Ötzi the Iceman’s Tattoos May Have Been a Primitive Form of Acupuncture”

One of the most fascinating aspects of the story is that the international community was able to discern that “Ötzi the Iceman’s Tattoos May Have Been a Primitive Form of Acupuncture.” “In addition, the iceman was inked; Ötzi was covered in 61 tattoos. The tattoos were all simple stripes with two crosses, so they didn’t seem to be decorative. Given the look and location of these tattoos, the researchers think the markings were a form of medical treatment.” “The tattoos are all located at body regions where the iceman had some health issues and probably experienced periods of pain. For example, he had degenerative diseases of his hip, knee, ankle joints and lower back. Most of the tattoos are located [on] the legs and the lower back,” Zink said.”[] “chest tattoos may have been used to soothe belly discomfort; he had intestinal parasites and a Helicobacter pylori infection. And some of the inked spots corresponded to traditional acupuncture “pressure points,” suggesting to some researchers that the iceman underwent a form of acupuncture, Zink said. (Most scientists believe acupuncture first arose in China, and the first written description of it derives from 2,200 years ago, but it could have arisen earlier in some other location, like Europe, Zink said.) At the time of his death, the iceman had a “medicinal mushroom” known as birch polypore in his digestive system. Birch polypore is thought to have anti-inflammatory and fever-reducing properties, Zink said. Ötzi had also consumed ferns, which could have been either a primitive food wrapper that Ötzi mistakenly ate or a treatment to kill off the parasitic worms that plagued the iceman, Zink said.” – Live Science

Smithsonian Magazine reported “What Ötzi the Iceman’s Tattoos Reveal About Copper Age Medical Practices. New study argues that the 5,300-year-old Iceman’s community boasted surprisingly advanced health care techniques.” The article’s lead photo caption reads, “The Iceman’s tattoos align with classic acupuncture points, and the plants found amongst his belongings have well-known medical applications.”

Science Magazine also stated,” 5000-year-old ‘Iceman’ may have benefited from a sophisticated health care system, New look at Ötzi’s tattoos and medicines suggest complex medical culture,” also linking to locations of his 61 tattoos to the healing science of acupuncture.

“Previous studies have found that Ötzi carried a number of suspected medicines either on him or in him. Fastened to leather bands in his equipment, researchers found the birch polypore fungus, which the Iceman may have used to calm inflammation or as an antibiotic. Scientists also found bracken fern in his stomach, which can be used to treat intestinal parasites such as tapeworm. And Ötzi was covered with 61 tattoos [] including dotlike points around joints, which some researchers believe may have been used as pain treatment akin to an early form of acupuncture.

In the new study, scientists took a closer look at Ötzi’s tattoos. Some lines and dots were directly over his wrist and ankles which suffered from degenerative diseases, and many correspond to traditional acupuncture points, they report in the International Journal of Paleopathology. The markings would have taken a long time to produce, and this sophisticated practice—along with the variety of herbs and medicines—would have likely been developed through a dedicated, systematic trial-and-error approach that was passed down through generations in the society in which Ötzi lived, the team concludes. All of this—combined with the sophisticated use of plants and fungi to treat ailments—suggests Ötzi was part of a culture with some knowledge of anatomy, how diseases arise, and how to treat them, the scientists say. What they don’t know is whether any of these treatments actually worked.” – Science.org

“What they don’t know is whether any of these treatments actually worked” Reflects that Our Current Mass Consumer Culture and For-profit Medical Culture is Sustained by Our ‘Not Knowing’ and Our Unwillingness to Look

Scientists were able to examine a 5,300-year-old corpse and recognize the direct connection with acupuncture maps. But “Science.org” reported that “we don’t know whether any of these treatments worked.” It wasn’t because the Western mainstream medical industry is not aware that Chinese medicine has mapped out the electromagnetic pathways in the body, as the foundation of both self-care and healing, designed to harmonize the organism with the Cosmic Current that choreographs all of life on Earth.

It also was not because scientists had no idea where the points or pathways are, or what capacities they might carry. A simple search online will offer links to images of the Meridian pathways and their point applications, available to all.

It is related to the fact that we do not want to evaluate the effects of our wireless devices and technologies on our electromagnetic energies, because if we did, we would have to address the harm. The centralized power structure does not want to let go of the top-down power, control, and concentrated wealth enabled by data, and the consumers do not want to let go of the convenience, sense of personal power and control, and the 24/7 dopamine drip.

The dismissive conclusion by Science.org is related to entrenched economic interests that foster insidious intellectual arrogance.

For example, in 2021, Psychology Today published, “Believing Acupuncture Works Doesn’t Mean It Actually Does, Acupuncture is alluring pseudoscience.’ In 2024, No, Washington Post, Acupuncture Still Doesn’t Work, was published by Forbes. In July of 2024, Science-Based Medicine published “Acupuncture and Evidence Based Medicine” The plausibility of acupuncture is very low, because there is no known mechanism, and outside of short-term pain and nausea reduction, for any medical application of acupuncture there is no plausible even theoretical mechanism.

We can assume that none of these organizations humbled themselves to attempt to understand the science that underlies Chinese Medicine. Recognition is power.

Albert Eistein observed, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”

Piercing the Energy Pathways

When we overlay piercings with available maps of the Meridian pathways and electromagnetic energies, we can see that the woman with the metal embedded in the inside corner of her eyes may be causing harm to her Bladder Meridian and the associated resonant field. The woman with the piercing on the outer edges of the Eyebrow may be adversely impacting the Gall Bladder and Triple Heater meridian energies. Indiscriminately activating these Yang meridians is most likely not without consequence.

Understanding and balancing these energies could instead become the basis of a healing and self-care renaissance.

When Things Don’t Look the Way They Should

My friend’s dog is miserable each October when the neighborhood is decorated for Halloween and monsters and goblins are flapping in the wind. His inborn alarm system is registering risk, because things don’t look the way that they should.

There are too many things in our environment that don’t look the way that they should look, that have been normalized by our unrelenting exposures and desensitization, as well as addictions.

One of the most alarming issues is the inescapable transmission of ubiquitous layers of artificial manmade EMF/RF/5G frequencies into the airwaves, juxtaposed with the practice of instinct-injured metal piercings, because metal acts as an antenna. Piercings can become unintentional antennas for harmful internalized exposures

International RF regulations regarding exposures do not account for metal in the body, including implants.

There should be an open debate about the safety of radio frequency and microwave radiation. – Home – RFInfo

Confronting ‘Overcharge’

Warriors have used various strategies to place themselves into a state of frenzied overdrive in order to inflict pain on others in battle, and our Penetrating Flows understand this mechanism. Our energy intelligence recognizes the risks and the imbalance, even if we do not possess conscious awareness.

We can’t come to understand or even study the actions of the Radiant Circuits by examining cadavers, or by studying laboratory animals under controlled conditions.

Our current science paradigm can’t support the level of integration that is needed to return each individual to self-mastery and self-sovereignty.

Insight and change can come from the choices of individuals, everywhere, to stop riding an unexamined, distorted technology wave.

We need to re-sensitize ourselves to our inborn wisdom; and to use our energetic capacities as good medicine for one another and our home planet. For example, the physical body has the ability to provide individual feedback about a particular food or medication. Our ‘scientific’ method of conducting double blind testing drugs against a placebo on groups is a gamble at best, and manslaughter in far too many cases.

Energy Intelligence in Action

We can redirect our focus to the still quiet sensory system inside that recoils at the sight of the unexamined juxtapositions of technology and biology… including earbuds near the brain, a person eating GMO altered industrialized junk food, a cellphone held against the head, a transmitter on a whale, a rocket laden with weapons and antennas heading into space, a cell tower next to a home or nursery school, a teen with low self-esteem encountering pornography or bullying on the internet, a child in the Congo mining cobalt, a connected vehicle spewing RF; a cell phone carried over the heart in a shirt pocket, tucked in a bra, or near the reproductive organs; a child throwing a tantrum and being soothed by a device, thousands of satellites filling the Low Earth atmosphere for which we have no trash pick-up.

Meta-studies by compromised experts and industry will not give us the right answers.

Many of these technologies have unleashed unspeakable harm on those who are more sensitive to artificial frequencies, especially women and children.

We need a new litmus test to determine whether a new invention, technology, or consumer product is designed to serve the greater good.

For example, the clean energy community indicted itself when it ignored the profound suffering and disability caused by wireless smart utility meters, installed under the guise of sustainability while enabling massive surveillance. If a manufacturer or government does not conduct appropriate pre-market testing, and does not address reported harm, claims regarding benefits are not legitimate. When those experiencing damage are on the receiving end of the disgust, marginalization, and ridicule that is powered by the Penetrating Flow and the manipulation of the media, dual use technologies causing harm don’t receive appropriate scrutiny.

Like the helix that represents our DNA, our inventiveness has been traveling away from the laws that govern our biology and our internal and external environment. We are at the bending, the point of tension where we need to shift our trajectory.

When we hit the sharp turn, we need to slow down. If you are at the fork in the road choosing between mastering more tech or learning from nature, chose nature.

“You, whose day it is, get out your rainbow colors and make it beautiful.” – Traditional Nootra Song

Resources:

Tracing Meridians with Donna Eden! YOUTUBE 7 1/2 MINUTES

Donna’s Daily Energy Routine “This is a quick and easy routine that you can do in just a few minutes to build your immune system, gain energy, feel younger, and relieve pain.”

Learn to Trace the Radiant Circuits: Tracing the Radiant Circuits with Prune Harris 6-minute video

Learn about The Need for Synthetic EMF Exposure Guidelines by Keith Cutter of EMF Remedy

Learn About Sensitivity to Electromagnetic Fields: Dr. Courtney Snyder: Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity in Children & Adults Symptoms, Brain Impacts, Factors That Increase Vulnerability, Diagnosis, Treatment, MTHFR, COMT, & Why Children Are Especially Susceptible (24-minute audio) (Biomarkers that have been used: Blood pressure and heart rate (to assess change in the autonomic nervous system) are also expected to increase; Salivary cortisol levels are expected to increase after exposure; Blood glucose levels are expected to increase after exposure. 

Learn About Sensitivity to Electromagnetic Fields from a Chinese Medicine Perspective: In May of 2002, “TCM Treatments for EMF Sensitivity | Acupuncture CEU Course” was taught by Wisconsin acupuncturist and functional medicine practitioner Michelle Meramour, Dipl.Ac. An introductory overview (1 hour 18 minutes) of the interactive day-long professional CEU training is available free online here. Michele created a body feedback system rooted in TCM acupuncture that uses Six Level Theory to diagnose and treat EHS.From Michele’s feedback system, in the first stage, EMF infiltrates the body via two meridian pathways: Small Intestine, and Urinary Bladder.   In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the Small Intestine is associated with the entire enteric nervous system, ie the ‘gut. Michelle Meramour explains “In the Body-Feedback system, the tai yang meridians (Small intestine and Urinary Bladder) correspond with the hypothalamus, which determines how information is processed through the autonomic nervous system. The hypothalamus then creates hormones via the pituitary gland and endocrine system connection. Symptoms of EMFs affecting tai yang include poor quality sleep, general hypersensitivity, ANS dysfunction, weak immune function, and moodiness.” As she addresses the other five levels of disharmony associated with the five additional meridian pairs, she discusses histamines, allergies, MAST cell activation, chronic inflammation, and manifestations of deeper levels of imbalance that are very familiar to the EHS patient and practitioner population, including cardiac conditions.

Fact Checking Endnotes:

The origins of acupuncture are implied to have been derived from “trial and error” by the Science.org. However, it is known there are individuals who have the ability to “see energy.” An alternative history indicates that the sages could ‘see’ energy and codified the knowledge for all. The alternative narrative also implies that many indigenous groups had/have the capability to ‘see’ energy, providing the ability to identify beneficial herbs, etc. even without use of the written word, but were reluctant to explain to conquerors how they accessed their expertise. His-story is his story…interpreted by the dominator culture, and subject to further evolution. Yours, mine, everyone’s.

Here’s our Complaint letter from Safe Tech Advocates

To hot springs community:

We love this sacred healing place with its legacy dating back hundreds of years.  All members of this region’s Native people went to the hot springs for safety, to enjoy the waters, and abide in peace. This area used to be a Victorian resort, a hunting lodge, and more. In modern times, the hot springs has taken on a sacred trust to be the guardians of the land, and have agreed to honor the legacy of the ancient native protectors.

Then came the wildfires, and it took years to rebuild this paradise.  This summer, we saw an EV charger in the middle of the forest in an area with burnt out trees from the last wildfire. People love your place but share, “The one thing that certainly is transparent about EVs is the fire hazard.” Please relocate the EV charger to a safer place given any fire can spread like wildfire. Please provide guests with a low Electromagnetic Radiation (EMF) option for fire safety. Please consider the responsible thing and investigate EVs, charging concerns and smart meters.

The hot springs wrote back only few words –  they take our concerns seriously. The EV charger in the forest haunts me, as if there is no escaping the fire controversies of tech, even in the wilderness, KCRA reported on Sierra Nevada’s latest EV fire in August, 2024: Hazmat teams stood by during a Tesla Semi fire.

Reinette Senum, former Nevada City mayor, wrote: “Tesla big rig recently crashed into a tree on Interstate 80 close to my hometown, Nevada City, sparking a fire that closed the highway for over 15 hours. Yes, you heard that right—an electric truck… turned into a flaming beacon of what could go wrong. Hazmat teams stood by, helpless, as the battery burned, emitting toxic smoke… Fortunately, this incident didn’t spark a cataclysmic forest fire like the one currently raging near Chico, known as the  Park Fire- the fourth largest wildfire in California, which has already consumed nearly 500,000 acres and continues to burn.”

EVs are up to 30% more likely to catch on fire while charging. What would ancestors hundreds of years ago have said?

Are EVs really clean, free, safe, and sustainable? Annie Leonard, in the Story of Electronics, talks about increased mining, industrial manufacturing, habitat destruction, and the creation of toxic waste.  These externalities are especially true for EVs.

EV charger fires command attention worldwide:
• 25 buses destroyed at a bus depot in Germany.
• EV fires at US charging stations: California, Colorado, Louisiana and Pennsylvania, Florida, and Nashville Tennessee.

“NFL wide receiver Randall Cobb and his family survived a house fire that apparently started with their Tesla charger in their garage.”

NY Post

“A Mercedes EV caught on fire recently,” Katie Singer shares. “Two and a half days after its owner parked a Mercedes EV in an underground parking lot, it caught fire, injured 23 people with toxic smoke inhalation and destroyed 140 other cars.” 

The list of fires goes on and on. Just google: “why do EV chargers fail”, or “why EV charging stations are bad”. According to research, “The number of EV battery fires that occur while connected to EV charging sits in the range of 18% to 30%.

EV fires are less frequent than gas cars according to Consumer Reports, yet insurers claim Hybrid fires come in number one. Autocar UK explains EV fires as “incredibly difficult to put out.”

The sustainability numbers don’t add up. 

• If 40,000 water gallons are needed for EV fires, how are EVs considered sustainable? 
• Fire fighters remain on the scene in New Jersey more than seven hours to make sure the battery doesn’t reignite and go into thermal runaway (you think the battery fire is out, but it isn’t).
• Lithium battery may reignite hours, days or weeks later (Tesla in a junkyard),
• Fires in electric vehicles… can reach 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, compared with 1,500 degrees in a gas-powered car fire.”

Downtown LA Lawyers are among many lawyers that put on their Physicist hat to explain about EV batteries: “thermal runaway are fires from defective failing batteries, it can release a large amount of noxious and toxic gasses, catch on fire, jet out flames or even explode on the spot. These injuries can be serious and even fatal, causing death to the person using the charging station.”

Why do we need lawyers to unpack the science so we can understand the dangers we were not told about by industry scientists or our regulatory agencies? “An electric car can be a high hazard when it is charging. Many factors can make it a ticking time bomb that will catch fire quite easily,” i.e., not charging the battery enough or over charging it, not keeping the car in the shade, here’s a complete list of many potential battery problems of what can go wrong:

EVs are the largest source of demand for lithium, and lithium mining means dire consequences for water, food supplies, biodiversity, and Indigenous rights. How will the electrical grid, already at capacity, be able to handle millions more EVs? The more EVs that require electricity, the more we dedicate land use to power generation devices.

The dirty secret behind EVs are the tens of thousands of children in the Congo, knee-deep, mining for cobalt used for EV batteries, toxic to touch, toxic to breathe, the ore can have traces of radioactive uranium. The demand is so great, companies can’t dig it out fast enough. What would the ancient natives, say about children mining?  Natives understood that all parts of an ecosystem connect – children, animals, and rock are dependent on each other in the ecological niche. Eco-philosopher John Muir stated:

“Indians walk softly and hurt the landscape hardly more than birds or squirrels.”

Leave no trace, preserve for seven generations, don’t ask why this land is out of balance, ask why are we out of balance? Our letter to the hot springs cites: The smart meters on cottages, are yet another fire/safety concern that could have been avoided with analog meters. Is it true smart electrical meters can cause fires? Yes. Fires have been reported after smart meter installations, along with shorting or burning-out of appliances and electronics. Are commercial establishments required to have smart meters? Please help us understand, given smart meter residential opt-outs. Smart digital meters lack adequate surge arrestors and circuit breakers to protect electronics from extreme voltage surges. Surge arrestors prevent fires and electrical equipment damage.

See Katie Singer’s substack for a deep dive – why all things smart are not necessarily environmentally safe. “Electrical technician Sean Polacik explains to Keith Cutter that smart meters aren’t meters. They’re data-collecting computers. Contrast this to traditional analog meters that measured electricity use, worked as surge protectors, and did not generate dirty electricity.”

Research shows, “Analog meters are safer, do not emit RF, and do not contain any flammable electronic parts, nor do they have a switching mode power supply (that will create RF frequencies that enter the electrical wiring of the house/electrical. More on the science around smart meter fires can be found here, here and here.

Its not hard to provide a low EMF cottage, here’s how:

Many people want to avoid exposure to artificial radiation, and we applaud the no electronics rule. No doubt this hot spring is in alignment with providing a low electromagnetic radiation (EMF) cottage, please consider retrofitting cottages with analog meters, or Bill Bathgate’s DE Filter Iron Maiden to reduce pulsed radio frequency? We are curious how many hot springs guests were EMF-disabled prior to the smart meter rollout? Many hope for a safe cottage, especially with mobility issues. Under the ADA, analog meters would likely be allowed. Please do the right thing.

Signed by water/forest protectors, activists and community change agents, the leaders of safe tech organizations, and ancestral guardians of the land – (we are also signing on their behalf)

For entertainment and informational purposes only, not to be construed as medical advice.

Note: The names of the Chinese Medicine meridians are capitalized, as is customary, to differentiate the Meridians from underlying organs with the same name.

“The consequences are profound if the American Cancer Society and others are getting it wrong regarding the dramatic increase in cancer in young people.”

Science Diplomacy?

Science diplomacy is a relatively new term, referring to the benefits of both diplomatic relationships, and cross-border shared science, especially relative to global challenges.

Nonetheless, the United States has systematically denied the implications of Russian EMF research, as well as some of its own recent and historical studies of radio frequency radiation and electromagnetic fields, including implications for cancer.

Agreement signed in 1976 by the United States to ignore Russian research and health findings in favor of military and industrial output:

“If the more advanced nations of the West were strict in the enforcement of stringent exposure standards, there could be unfavorable effects on industrial output and military functions.”

Speaking of Cancer

The American Cancer Society has just referenced a report identifying alarming increases in cancers, including deaths, in Millennials and GenXers.

The American Cancer Society points to obesity as a possible underlying cause.

What if they have it all wrong?

What if we are overlooking something obvious, right in front of us, right at the tips of our fingers?

What if Chinese Medicine could help us end this health disaster?

Missing the Message of Olympic Massage: Energy Pathways

There are a few articles “making the rounds” in the mainstream media about round bruises clearly visible on the bodies of Olympic swimmers. The bruising is explained by the press as being caused by an Asian massage technique known as “cupping.” Swimmer Michael Phelps brought widespread attention to the phenomenon during the Rio Olympics in 2016.  

(See photographs here: https://talksport.com/olympics/1986450/dark-circles-athletes-swimmers-bodies-back-marks-bruises-cupping/ )

But in the last 8 years, since Rio, Western society still has not learned much about the practice and its implications, as exemplified in an article by Eurosport.

The article quotes ‘health experts’ who imply that the benefits may be “in the head” “because it makes the athletes feel better.”

“Despite anecdotal evidence from athletes, the scientific community remains divided on the benefits of cupping. Studies have shown mixed results, with some suggesting minor improvements for conditions like neck or back pain, while others find no significant impact. Harvard Medical School said the evidence is too limited to make any firm conclusions. Pharmacologist professor David Colquhoun, from University College London, dismissed the technique to the BBC as just a bit of skin pulling that wouldn’t affect the muscle much. He said: “It’s what [British physician] Ben Goldacre would call – a voluntary tax on the gullible.” But many athletes along with celebrities like Gwenyth Paltrow, Justin Bieber and Jennifer Anniston seem to publicly endorse this form of massage therapy. And if Olympians think cupping makes them feel better, it could. The mind is one of the most powerful tools an athlete can wield during the Games. – SOURCE

What if it is Not ‘in the Head’ But in Unseen Electromagnetic Pathways?

Individuals with some background in the Meridian System of Chinese Medicine may be aware that cupping is not “in the mind/head,” nor would it be appropriately evaluated “in the muscles.”  Cupping has a foundation in an ancient science-based paradigm that mapped out electromagnetic pathways and activation points in the human energy field (and in animals as well) that we in the West have yet to understand.

Swimmers Shoulders

‘Experts’ Harvard Medical School, Pharmacologist professor David Colquhoun, and British physician Ben Goldacre (quoted in the cupping article) imply that the effects of cupping are either non-existent or imaginary.

Are Western experts quoted in the media not consulting the correct science-based paradigm?

And, is this an enduring expression of intellectual arrogance and cultural prejudice towards accumulated wisdom for which the West has no knowledge?

Small Intestine 11: Shoulder Blade

If the photographs of the cupping locations in swimmers are compared to the pathway of the Small Intestine Meridian in Chinese medicine, do new understandings arise?  

Activation of Small Intestine 11 for Olympic swimmers is a case in point.

A detailed explanation (including the evocative name, and applications for points) is available to Westerners, in reference books, and on –line, for example, here, for each point location on the Small Intestine’s pathway. Point locations possess specific qualities.

The acupuncture point “SI 11” , 天宗, is represented by “Tian Zong” in pinyin and “Celestial Gathering” in English, The acupuncture point “SI 11” , 天宗, is represented by “Tian Zong” in pinyin and “Celestial Gathering” in English. Of many possible clinical applications, it may be considered to influence the following issues/symptoms: Breast problems, mastitis, insufficient lactation, breast pain. Emotional issues, anxiety that presents with asthma, expands and relaxes the chest, asthma generally. Local point for channel pain within the shoulder, scapula region, elbow, arm, face and jaw.  A single acupuncture point is not commonly thought of as an empirical way to influence a TCM diagnostic pattern. SI11, however, is a strong candidate to be incorporated into an acupuncture protocol for patients who exhibit: Liver Qi Stagnation and/or Lung Qi Deficiency.  SOURCE

It seems obvious that activating the Lungs would support athletic prowess, but what is a Meridian?

How is it that a point on the Small Intestine Meridian would affect the Lungs?

Generally speaking, in the Western mainstream medical model and media, and in our daily lives, we have no idea. Yet. For householders in many Asian cultures, this is not the case.

Applying Expertise in Energy Medicine

The ancient Chinese seers were not focused on cultivating Olympic athletes. Although point description translations apply to symptom treatment, if one views the lines of energy that correlate to these pathways and to the related energetic fields, it is not difficult to imagine that they might help to activate, enhance, and stimulate athletic power – if we knew how.

Systems Analysis: Yoga

When Indian yoga was brought to the West, in many cases, it was taken out of its context and assimilated only in parts, primarily the physical exercises. Increased flexibility was the perceived result.

Despite the fact that yoga was providing benefits to many practitioners, an understanding of the overall energetic framework was missing in many American traditions. Posture flows were prescribed in an autocratic method by Indian masters without explanation, and/or teachers developed their own styles.  

When my colleague Daniel Orlansky began juxtaposing Indian yoga poses with the Meridians of Chinese Medicine, the connection between the ancient paradigms revealed itself. The poses could be classified by the meridians activated, and the poses could be practiced in an orderly and intentional fashion for increased benefit, to bring harmony to the entire energy system. 

The science behind the exercise forms came alive. (This experience of pattern recognition and transcendent thinking via one’s own direct experience, in fact, alters brain development in a beneficial way, as described in this study.)  

What does all of this have to do with cancer?

The Energetic Implications of 17 Increasing Cancers

It might seem insignificant to the mass culture that some competitive athletes have accessed an unusual, foreign, bruising form of bodywork that may have an impact on their performance, especially with the media implying that it’s “In their heads.”

But the consequences are profound if the American Cancer Society and others are getting it completely wrong regarding the dramatic increase in cancer in young people.

MSNBC: “Cancer rates in millennials, Gen X-ers have risen starkly in recent years, study finds. Experts have 1 prime suspect.”

“Experts are sounding the alarm as rates of 17 types of cancer in millennials and Gen X-ers have risen dramatically in recent years, a new study shows. For certain cancers, people born in 1990 face two-to-three times the risks that those born in 1955 did, according to the research published in the journal Lancet Public Health. The findings echo the recent worrying rise in young people developing colorectal cancer, but add more forms of the disease to the list of concerns.” []

Researchers with the American Cancer Society (ACS) assessed rates of 34 different cancers among those born between 1920 and 1990, based on how many were diagnosed with or died of the disease from 2000 to 2019.

On average, the rates of 17 types of cancer, including pancreatic, breast and gastric cancer, have risen with each new generation since 1920, the study found. Previous ACS research had shown that rates of 11 cancers, including pancreatic, colorectal, kidney, uterine and testicular cancer, had been increasing among young adults. The new study added eight more types of cancer to that list:

Gastric cardia cancer (a cancer of the stomach lining)

Cancer of the small intestine

Estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer

Ovarian cancer

Liver and bile duct cancer

Non-HPV-associated oral and pharynx cancer (only in women)

Anal cancer (only in men)

Kaposi sarcoma (a cancer of the blood vessel lining and lymph nodes, only in men)

Rates doubled or even tripled for some of these cancers, including kidney, pancreatic and small intestine cancers, in people of either gender. For women, liver cancer incidence has increased two- to threefold since the 1920s. Even cancers that seemed to be in decline for baby boomers and other older generations — including some breast cancers and testicular cancer — are now a greater risk again to millennials and Gen X-ers, the study found.

More young people are dying of some of these cancers as well; mortality from colorectal, gallbladder, testicular and uterine cancers has increased over the generations, as has the fatality rate of liver cancer, but only for women. “That really stood out because the concurrent increase in mortality [and diagnoses] suggests that what we see is not just an artifact due to potentially more frequent screening and diagnosis,” lead study author and senior principal scientist of surveillance and health equity science with ACS, Hyuna Sung, tells Yahoo Life. “Instead, it indicates a genuine increase in risk, with the increases in incidence sufficient to outpace improvements” in diagnostics and treatment.

While the new study doesn’t answer why this is happening, Sung and other experts have a prime suspect in their sights: obesity. Ten out of 17 of the cancers that are becoming more common over the generations have been linked to obesity, the study authors noted.” – SOURCE  

NBC News reported, “Gen X, millennials face higher risk of 17 cancers than older generations Researchers aren’t sure why but say a combination of factors, including obesity, more sedentary behavior, common medications or chemical exposures, is possible.”

“A study published Wednesday in Lancet Public Health found that Gen X and millennials are more likely to be diagnosed with 17 types of cancer, including nine that had been declining in older adults. Researchers aren’t sure why, but say obesity is likely a leading cause.”

“Rates of colorectal cancer — one of the 17 types — have been rising among younger people for decades, a troubling trend that sparked investigation into other types of cancer.”

Sung and her colleagues used cancer diagnosis and mortality data from two databases –– the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries and the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics –– to analyze cancer trends in people born between 1920 and 1990, who were diagnosed with cancer between 2000 and 2019.

The data included 34 types of cancer, nearly 24 million diagnoses and more than 7 million deaths. To get a better view of how cancer diagnoses and mortality rates changed in groups of people born around the same year — called a birth cohort — the researchers grouped people by birth year in five-year intervals. For example, people born in 1920 through 1924 were all one birth cohort.

Seventeen of the 34 cancers had increasing incidence in younger people. The risk was two to three times higher in people born in 1990 for pancreatic, kidney and small intestine cancers, compared to people born in 1955. Liver cancer diagnoses in women followed the same pattern.

“The most important thing it tells us is there is something that changed for the group of individuals born after this period of time. They have been exposed to some environmental or lifestyle factor that is leading to this shift,” said Dr. Andrea Cercek, a gastrointestinal medical oncologist at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, who was not involved with the research.  []

“All of these cancers are linked to the obesity epidemic. We know that’s the second-leading cause of cancer right now, behind tobacco use,” said Dr. Otis Brawley, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Oncology and Epidemiology Johns Hopkins University, who was not involved with the new study.

About 20% of cancer diagnoses in the U.S. are linked to excess body weight, according to the American Cancer Society. Obesity rates in the nation changed little in the 1960s and 1970s but increased sharply after that. About 13% of adults had obesity in 1980, compared to 34% in 2008, according to data from the Surgeon General. []

If obesity is a culprit, it’s likely one of several lifestyle and environmental factors that is leading to the rise. Other factors could be more sedentary behavior or something in the food or the water, common medications or chemical exposures or chemical agents, the experts said.” – SOURCE

Study: Lancet Public Health Differences in cancer rates among adults born between 1920 and 1990 in the USA: an analysis of population-based cancer registry data, Open Access Published: August, 2024 DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S2468-2667(24)00156-7 HERE

The Promise of Applying Meridian Science to Cancer (and Neurological Deaths, and Childhood Illnesses)

We have the potential to reconsider the rise in certain cancers, including and especially impacting individuals of reproductive ages, within the context of knowledge that is available to us regarding meridians and electromagnetic fields, from both China and Russia.  

We have the blueprints.

It seems logical that in order to determine if manmade artificial electromagnetic fields are interfering with health, that we would want to monitor the Meridians.

Looking at the image of the Large Intestine Meridian and the issue of colon cancer, are there implications for the meridian starting at the tip of the index finger, and the electromagnetic fields that are being introduced into the body via texting and using a computer mouse?

See #1 on the image. There may be no connection, but we have not bothered to ask.

Pulsed electromagnetic fields are being explored to treat cancer, in part because of the impact on the cell walls, as noted here.  Why have ubiquitous exposures not been studied or regulated for adverse effects on human health and the environment, despite reported harm?

We are holding an unsubstantiated assumption about safety.

Obesity as a Symptom and Not as a Cause?

The Spleen/Pancreas, which is responsible for distributing chi to the different organ systems, may be one of the most vulnerable to electromagnetic pollution, along with the Kidneys, which are akin to batteries.

How does this relate to cancer rates?

The study’s authors propose that obesity may be contributing to the dramatic rise in cancer rates, (although only linked in 20% of the cancer cases)

There is another possibility – that obesity is a symptom, related to Spleen/Pancreas electrical pollution, and not a cause. Dr. Jack Kruse is one of the experts who proposes that obesity as well as blood sugar alterations are being caused by exposures to artificial electromagnetic fields, perhaps in an effort to insulate and protect the body? (Wide-ranging interview with Dr. Jack Kruse and the Power Couple here).

Attorney Dafna Tachover also spoke of the phenomenon nearly a decade ago when she became EMF injured.

Not all “in the Head” – and the Derogatory Use of the Word

Cupping wasn’t codified to support Olympic athletes, and the benefits of cupping can’t be quantified by using an overlay of the West’s limited understanding of massage.

The mainstream media and medical experts have downplayed the idea that cupping actually provides any benefit to athletes, implying that it may be “all in their heads.”

Unfortunately, this is not the only example of this dismissive attitude. Complaints of injury caused by exposures to wireless exposures, dirty electricity, electric fields, and magnetic fields have been denied and ignored for decades, in favor of the military industrial complex that has increasingly turned in on its own citizens via surveillance, akin to an auto-immune disease.

The Gall Bladder Meridian and Health

When I look at an image of an Olympic track and field sprinter at the starting blocks, I immediately envision the Gall Bladder Meridian in a deep contraction. The Gall Bladder meridian’s energy enables a hockey player or soccer player to anticipate which way the opponent is going to move, from right to left.  The reaction is faster than the speed of a thought processed through the conscious mind.

It operates on the same energy that allows a school of fish to move together.

In the West we have failed to recognize the need to recognize, cultivate and safeguard these frameworks.

Gall Bladder Meridian and Health Damages

When I look at the Gall Bladder Meridian image and note the way that the pathway wraps around the skull, I also see the basis for the many symptoms being reported due to technological overreach, in this case, harm associated with smart meters.

I see hip and knee pain, and headaches, and brain fog, and eye pressure, and a brain that is unable to detoxify – all of which can lead to disease, dysfunction, and the demand for medications and surgeries that do not address the underlying cause.

I also see breast tumors on the right side, in addition to colon cancers, perhaps because of so much right-handed mouse use.

I see major postural deviations from individuals hunched over devices, compressing the lungs and heart.

Why have so many people need to have their Gall Bladder surgically removed? Is this any wiser than the routine removal of tonsils in the 1960s? Or, is removing the organ akin to taking the light bulb out of the car’s dashboard warning light?

Another View of Fight or Flight

I have a theory, which is that the Gall Bladder is an electrical bodyguard, designed to directionally detect a hazard found in nature – a lightning strike.

The alarm system is worn out.

The term “fight or flight” was coined as a response to war (and studying male soldiers.)

Early Western studies of stress did not emerge from mystics seeking to determine how to become more efficient and effective conduits of the Cosmic Current.

A chronically over-charged, time-stressed society is not aware of the balance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, nor does it possess a roadmap for recognizing symptoms of imbalance. 

Cancer and infertility are “late lessons from early warnings.”

The ancient Chinese culture developed expertise in Meridians for self-care and householder use and identified and addressed energetic imbalances before they manifested as illnesses. They used natural methods including massage, pressure points, meridian tracing, herbs, medicinal foods, stretching, visualization, and meditation, and accessed care via experts only when needed.

Recognition of the brain’s glymphatic system, and chronobiology, are only in their infancy in the West, but were recognized thousands of years ago in the East.

An Eastern based mind -body practice can offer self-diagnostic and self-corrective strategies, through embodied observation.

Self-care and skilled care of loved ones, without technology, can be reclaimed.

Do we line up behind the promise of life on Mars via extreme resource consumption and artificial energy expenditure, or do we decide to learn how to harmonize our bodies with the Cosmos, here on Earth, using our inborn lifeforce and birthright, to master the lessons and receive the gifts of our own unique incarnation?

As Peter Levine observed, “In a herd of deer, we need some super-sensitive ones. They are the ones that will hear that teeniest little crack or smell the one or two molecules of scent from the mountain lion that’s stalking them. Their job is to use their hyper-sensitivity to alert the whole group.” Some individuals are like the dogs who warned sheep herders of an approaching storm.

Seventeen increasing cancers in younger generations is more than an alert, It’s an emergency.

Will we rethink our wireless dependencies and resulting demands on the environment?

In my opinion, if we are not willing to look at the RF/EMF issue, relative to cancer, to the Gall Bladder, to obesity, to childhood diseases and device addictions, to chronic illness, and to skyrocketing neurological death rates, we need to have our heads examined.

Learn more about EMF here:

The Need for Synthetic EMF Exposure Guidelines by Keith Cutter of EMF Remedy

Great Salt Lake is the largest saline lake in North America. The lake and its wetlands form a
keystone ecosystem that supports biodiversity and human economy throughout the Western Hemisphere. – Source

Framing Others

In Massachusetts and beyond, the Karen Reed murder trial is a made-for-reality-television- story that has divided a town and captivated the public’s attention CNN reported, “Her defense has accused off-duty police inside that Canton home of killing O’Keefe and framing Read.” The prosecution’s case [] has been hampered by a series of missteps and unusual investigative practices. Rita Lombardi, a local Read supporter outside the court, told CNN [] “This woman was framed, and there is overwhelming evidence, overwhelming scientific evidence that she was framed for murder by the very people we trust to protect us.”  Central to the trial is the question of how the police department conducted its investigation, and whether Karen Reed has been framed. The case is on-going.       

This article is not as titillating of a story as the Karen Reed trial – but asks a few questions.

Regarding the disappearing Great Salt Lake in Utah, what if the farmers and ‘climate’ are being framed, by the very people we trust to protect us? Are we unwittingly relying on ‘unusual investigation practices’?

My colleague Kate Kheel recently sent me an email. “On the way to Baltimore today, I listened to NPR’s coverage of The Great Salt Lake that is projected to be completely dry within 5 years. The reasons given included global warming and agriculture.

But surprisingly (not), the huge NSA data center erected in 2014 for surveillance purposes, and Facebook’s META were not mentioned. That got me to researching.”

Do we have an incomplete picture of what is driving what we call climate change?

“By computing the water usage rate, one could ultimately determine the computing power and capabilities of the Utah Data Center,” wrote the NSA’s associate director for policy and records, David Sherman, in an undated letter filed with Bluffdale in response to the Tribune’s public records request. “Armed with this information, one could then deduce how much intelligence NSA is collecting and maintaining.”

Who Counts What, – Counts

In November2023, in the article Military emissions – the weak point in the war on climate change? Army Technology reported that international climate accords do not take into account military emissions. ‘As the largest institutional consumer of energy in the US, the Department of Defense (DoD) has faced criticism for not instigating change on military emissions reporting.'[] “The US has a larger military expenditure than any other country, amounting to $877bn in 2022, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.” [] Scientists and academics from universities including Oxford, Columbia, Harvard, Lancaster, Stanford, Durham and Queens Mary have released numerous studies outlining the hundreds of millions of tonnes of military carbon emissions that have gone unaccounted for in the stocktake.”– SOURCE

Likewise, when we look at “farmers” and water consumption, are we also factoring in water-guzzling data farms?

In addition to ‘not counting’ military carbon emissions, how does the planet’s hydrological cycle respond when accurate data about data centers is not factored into consideration? Are we causing avoidable planetary desertification by not accurately counting technology’s footprint?

In reverse chronological order, some of the resources that Kate uncovered point to a possible scenario; the excessive water consumption of data centers via evaporation differs from farming consumption patterns and may be changing the climate and contributing to or causing drought, and not just in Utah,

AI’s Outrageous Environmental Toll: July 2024 (Futurism and Wired)

On July 14, 2024 in the Substack News Summary for Safe Tech International , we highlighted an article by Frank Landymore published by Futurism:  AI’s Outrageous Environmental Toll Is Probably Worse Than You Think 

He wrote, “Consider the obscene amounts of water that’s needed just to cool the data centers that train and host generative AI models, which is somewhere in the millions of gallons per year. Internal estimates from Microsoft about its data facility in Goodyear, Arizona, for example, show that it’s set to annually consume 56 million gallons of drinking water — which is more than a drop in the ocean for such a water-scarce region.

But as Wired reports, the way data centers waste water is even worse than how households would waste it by leaving the tap running. “The water that is available for people to use is very limited,” Shaolei Ren, a responsible AI researcher at UC Riverside, told the magazine. “It’s just the fresh surface water and groundwater. Those data centers, they’re just evaporating water into the air.” “When we get the water from the utility, and then we discharge the water back to the sewage immediately, we are just withdrawing water — we’re not consuming water,” Ren continued. “A data center takes the water from this utility, and they evaporate the water into the sky, into the atmosphere.” And once evaporated, that water doesn’t come back to Earth for another year. 

“For basic services, those were very light in terms of the amount of data that needed to go back and forth between the processors,” he said, estimating that these generative AI applications are 100 to 1,000 more times intensive. Other estimates put Google’s AI search in the ballpark of consuming ten times as much energy than a regular one.“ To re-iterate:

Those data centers, they’re just evaporating water into the air.” “A data center takes the water from this utility, and they evaporate the water into the sky, into the atmosphere.” And once evaporated, that water doesn’t come back to Earth for another year.

The quote is sourced from a July 11th Wired article. AI’s Energy Demands Are Out of Control, Welcome to the Internet’s Hyper-consumption Era. Generative Artificial Intelligence tools, now part of everyday user experience online, are causing stress on local power grids and mass water evaporation, by Reece Rogers.

March 2024, Great Salt Lake Utah, (NPR)

Farmers accused of drying up the imperiled Great Salt Lake say they can help save it In a lawsuit filed last year against the state, Deed’s group (Center for Biological Diversity) and others went on to call the drying Great Salt Lake — the American West’s largest and one of the world’s few remaining giant saline lakes — a looming ecological collapse.

That suit came on the heels of a report by Brigham Young University scientists that set off alarm bells for many in the state saying the lake could dry up within five years if no action is taken. The lawsuit seeks to force state leaders to drastically cut how much water farmers use and let it flow into the lake.

But as Spring planting time approaches, many farmers say fears about the lake drying up are being overblown. Environmentalists want to stop alfalfa farming in the desert. The Great Salt Lake’s shrinking is already killing the brine shrimp that feed migratory birds. []

Seed says Utah leaders just aren’t making the tough political choice to cut water to alfalfa farms and dairies north of the lake. “We can’t afford to continue to do that with our water in the West,” she says. “Those farmers need to be compensated so they can retire from farming.” This is a popular refrain right now from California to Utah where precious river water channeled through irrigation canals is used to grow thirsty feed crops, some for export, even as droughts in the West are getting worse with climate change. Utah is the second driest state in the country yet it also has the highest water use per capita. But farmers say they’re being unfairly maligned in the fight over the imperiled lake. []

January 2023, Brigham Young University

The NPR article links to the BYU study Emergency measures needed to rescue
Great Salt Lake from ongoing collapse (Download available, 34 pages) The BYU study states “Causes of decline After millennia of natural fluctuations, human water use has pushed Great Salt Lake into structural decline.

Since 2020, the lake has lost just over one million acre-feet of water each year [], much more than predicted by current hydrographic models [] If this rate of water loss continues, the lake would be on track to disappear in the next five years. The lake is now 10 feet and 6.9 million acre-feet below its minimum healthy level, which has only been attained once since 2002[]

Saline lakes are highly vulnerable to water overuse because they depend on a delicate balance between streamflow and evaporation. Consequently, there is a strong relationship between the area of irrigated agriculture in a saline lake’s watershed and the severity of its shrinkage Agriculture began affecting Great Salt Lake levels in the mid 1800s. However, it wasn’t until the 1900s that humans became the dominant force controlling the lake. Federal and state construction of dams, canals, and pipelines in the 1900s allowed more of the watershed’s natural runoff to be diverted for agricultural, industrial, and municipal use. These subsidized water projects led to unsustainable water consumption and plummeting lake levels through the 1960s.

Over the last three years, the lake has received less than a third of its natural streamflow because of excessive water diversions. In 2022, the lake dropped to a record elevation of 4188’—the lowest level on the state’s contingency charts10,18,64. The depletion of water is even more severe than it appears because groundwater is not included in these estimates. Approximately 26 million acre-feet have been lost from the lake itself, but twice that amount may have been lost from the aquifers around the lake due to water table drop. These empty aquifers could slow the rate of rebound after runoff is increased.” –BYU Study

February 2024: AI, West Des Moines, Iowa (Hyperscaler)

In February, HyperScaler published, Water Consumption of AI, How Tech Giants are Draining the Planet 2024.

The Extent of Water Usage by AI According to a recent study in Nature, the water consumption of AI is projected to reach between 4.2 billion and 6.6 billion cubic meters by 2027. This is equivalent to nearly half of the UK’s annual water consumption. The primary reason for this high water usage is the need to cool the servers that run complex AI models, especially those utilizing generative AI for processing and generating text, data, and other forms of information. These AI models operate in massive data centers, where chilled water systems absorb the heat generated by the servers. While some of this water can be recycled, a significant amount evaporates, leading to substantial water consumption.

Additionally, the production of electricity required to power these data centers indirectly contributes to water usage through energy production methods such as thermal power plants and hydroelectric dams. The growing water consumption by AI data centers has several negative repercussions on both the environment and society.

Environmental Impact The excessive use of water by data centers exacerbates the global water crisis, which already affects over two billion people who lack access to safe drinking water. Furthermore, it intensifies the effects of climate change, contributing to severe droughts, floods, and wildfires that jeopardize ecosystems and human communities.  Social and Economic Impact The strain on water resources can lead to conflicts and inequalities, particularly in regions where water is already scarce. For instance, in West Des Moines, Iowa, a cluster of data centers hosting OpenAI significantly depleted the local aquifer, reducing water pressure and impacting residents’ quality of life and property values. Additionally, popular AI services like OpenAI’s ChatGPT are heavy water users. Research indicates that generating responses from ChatGPT could consume as much water as a 500ml bottle for every 10 to 50 prompts, depending on various factors. Newer, more powerful models like GPT-4 are likely to consume even more water, though exact figures are not yet available. –Hyperscaler

The growing water consumption by AI data centers has several negative repercussions on both the environment and society. The excessive use of water by data centers exacerbates the global water crisis, which already affects over two billion people who lack access to safe drinking water. Furthermore, it intensifies the effects of climate change, contributing to severe droughts, floods, and wildfires that jeopardize ecosystems and human communities.

July 2022 Utah (Standard Examiner)

Yes, data centers use a lot of water. One Utah company shows it doesn’t have to be that way.

“The United States accounts for about 40% of the world’s large cloud and internet data sites. Utah is home to at least 25 “colocation” data centers, according to a Data Center Map estimate, most of them near Salt Lake City. Those sites, like Novva, rent servers to a variety of customers, from gas stations to medical companies. The figure doesn’t include big centers run by single entities, like the U.S. National Security Agency’s operation in Bluffdale or Facebook’s facility in Eagle Mountain.

And most data centers, regardless of their operators, rely on evaporative cooling to keep their servers at optimal temperatures. Some gulp down millions of gallons each month. “It’s a worse story than you can imagine,” Swenson said. “They’re using culinary water, not irrigation [water], so it’s been treated by the city. … It’s a complete waste of a resource.” [] Data centers further treat their water with chemicals to prevent things like scale buildup and Legionnaires’ disease. Some of the water is lost through the evaporative process, while the rest can be reused only a few times before it has to be flushed from the system. Unfortunately, Swenson said, “the places where evaporative cooling works the best are the places where there is the least amount of water.”

As climate change fuels drier conditions and the West’s current “megadrought” shows no signs of ending, some of those arid communities are protesting water-guzzling data facilities. In the early 2010s, Utahns worried so much about the NSA data center’s water consumption — along with Edward Snowden’s revelations that the agency was illegally spying on U.S. citizens — that a Republican legislator proposed shutting off its supply. [] Facebook’s parent company, Meta, has adopted sustainability goals for its own data centers. Still, it consumed 13.5 million gallons in the year between June and May at its 970,000-square-foot Utah site, according to information provided by Eagle Mountain.

The C7/DataBank center in Bluffdale — which is a tenth the size of the NSA and Facebook campuses — used 6.9 million gallons in the past year. Novva, meanwhile, has consumed about 1.1 million gallons since its servers went on line in January, according to West Jordan. In May, it used 585,000 gallons — its highest monthly rate of consumption to date. By comparison, Facebook used 1.3 million that month and the NSA chugged nearly 13 million gallons. [] Why some say data centers are worth their weight in water Beyond water consumption, data centers don’t create many jobs. They also eat up a lot of energy [] Still, the Utah cities that welcome the facilities say they offer a lot of benefits. [] In a statement, an NSA spokesperson said the agency is working to limit water use and be a responsible member of the community. [] What about data centers’ high energy demands? Water improvements aside, data centers devour a lot of electricity. – SOURCE

June 2017 Mesa, Arizona (NBC news)

Drought-stricken communities push back against data centers

As cash-strapped cities welcome Big Tech to build hundreds of million-dollar data centers in their backyards, critics question the environmental cost. But keeping the rows of powerful computers inside the data center from overheating will require up to 1.25 million gallons of water each day, a price that Vice Mayor Jenn Duff believes is too high. “This has been the driest 12 months in 126 years,” she said, citing data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “We are on red alert, and I think data centers are an irresponsible use of our water.”

The spike in use of data-intensive cloud services such as video conferencing tools, video streaming sites like Netflix and YouTube and online gaming, particularly as people quarantined during the pandemic, has increased demand for the computing power offered by data centers globally. And this means more data centers are being built every day by some of America’s largest technology companies, including Amazon, Microsoft and Google and used by millions of customers. According to the Synergy Research Group, there were about 600 “hyperscale” data centers, massive operations designed and operated by a single company that then rents access to cloud services, globally by the end of 2020. That’s double the number there were in 2015. Almost 40 percent of them are in the United States, and Amazon, Google and Microsoft account for more than half of the total. – NBC news

The spike in use of data-intensive cloud services such as video conferencing tools, video streaming sites like Netflix and YouTube and online gaming, particularly as people quarantined during the pandemic, has increased demand for the computing power offered by data centers globally. And this means more data centers are being built every day.

July 2015: Utah (Sage Journals)

From Data flows and water woes: The Utah Data Center

“Using a new materialist line of questioning that looks at the agential potentialities of water and its entanglements with Big Data and surveillance, this article explores how the recent Snowden revelations about the National Security Agency (NSA) have reignited media scholars to engage with the infrastructures that enable intercepting, hosting, and processing immeasurable amounts of data. []

Specifically, I explore the NSA’s infrastructure and the million of gallons of water it requires daily to cool its servers, while located in one of the driest states in the U S [] this article questions the emplacement and impact of corporate data centers more generally, and the changes they are causing to the landscape and local economies. I look at how water is an intriguing and politically relevant part of the surveillance infrastructure and how it has been constructed as the main tool for activism in this case, and how it may eventually help transform the public’s conceptualization of Big Data, as deeply material.”

[] during the Obama Administration, the NSA has created a colossal network of backup hard drives ensuring that failure at one facility is easily recovered from another. The NSA spreads and duplicates storage across multiple locales, including in Georgia, Texas, Colorado, and Hawaii, with a sizeable expansion at its headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland (scheduled to open in 2016). This $860 million 70,000 square feet of datacenter space in Fort Meade is estimated to require 60 MW of energy to run and makes huge demands on water; up to five millions gallons a day. This location would then detour wastewater (“gray waters”) from the Little Patuxent River, for the purposes of cooling its servers. – Sage Journals

March 2014 (Wired)

Why Does the NSA Want to Keep Its Water Usage a Secret?  The National Security Agency has many secrets, but here’s a new one: the agency is refusing to say how much water it’s pumping into the brand new data center it operates in Bluffdale, Utah.  According to the NSA, its water usage is a matter of national security. If it revealed how much water it’s using in Bluffdale, the agency believes, outsiders could get a good idea of the scope of NSA surveillance. “By computing the water usage rate, one could ultimately determine the computing power and capabilities of the Utah Data Center,” wrote the NSA’s associate director for policy and records, David Sherman, in an undated letter filed with Bluffdale in response to the Tribune’s public records request. “Armed with this information, one could then deduce how much intelligence NSA is collecting and maintaining.” But, oddly enough, water usage has become a very contentious issue for the NSA. An anti-government group called the Tenth Amendment Center is calling for Utah to simply cut off the NSA’s water supply, saying that water is the $1.5 billion data center’s “Achilles Heel.” And last month, a state Republican lawmaker named Marc Roberts said he would introduce a bill that would do such a thing. – Wired

2014: Victory! NSA water records to be released in Utah This month, the Utah State Records Committee ruled that the City of Bluffdale must release water records pertaining to the massive NSA data center located there.  Salt Lake City Tribune reporter Nate Carlisle pursued the information, and his success shows how a series of small, seemingly insignificant actions can lead to a major victory. The committee voted unanimously to require the city to make details of the NSA’s water use public last week. “We felt the law was on our side,” Carlisle told KUTV News. “We also felt there was a public interest in knowing how much water the NSA is using in Utah, so Utahns are informed about the role of the NSA in their state.”  The city of Bluffdale and the NSA were both initially unwilling to give up the details about their arrangement. Water usage estimates range between 1.2 and 1.7 million gallons of water per day, but the NSA was very ambiguous regarding the specific figure, insisting it was a matter of “national security.”  See Short I minute video:  No Water = No NSA Data Center. #NullifyNSA campaign from OffNow.org, https://www.youtube.com/embed/8ANUo8BnYoo

July 2024 Politico Did You Know? The Politics of Reclaiming “Safety“

In the July 25th Safe Tech International News and Notes we included an article from Politico: AI and POLITICS: What voters want on AI from Trump But what would voters actually want, if Trump won? 

The article indicates that many Americans are questioning the wisdom of lax regulation, while re-thinking safety. Questioning the explosion of surveillance of U.S. citizens, fueling the demand for more data centers and more water and energy consumption, may be emerging more quickly from the right than the left.

“The Artificial Intelligence Polling Institute asked nearly 1,000 respondents last week, sharing the results exclusively with Digital Future Daily. The online poll asked them to rate the sometimes conflicting views that Trump allies and the man himself have expressed on AI. What they found might give pause to open-source acolytes and out-there accelerationists alike — and, perhaps unexpectedly, to the Republicans who are ready to line up behind Trump’s desire to repeal President Joe Biden’s sweeping AI agenda. 

Those who responded to the poll, while often conflicted, have serious concerns about the safety of the technology itself. [] The poll also tackled an AI-adjacent issue that has become a key GOP talking point: AI’s thirst for energy. Trump recently suggested that Biden-era environmental regulations would stymie the technology’s development. A mere 33 percent of Trump voters agreed that “regulations should be eased on power generation” for AI, with 37 percent opposing such a move and 30 percent saying they weren’t sure. [] Asked whether Trump in a second term should prioritize keeping the U.S. ahead of China on AI or keeping Americans safe from it, they prioritized safety by a margin of 15 points. HERE

The Case Against Water Metering Infrastructure

In the 2023 report Emergency measures needed to rescue Great Salt Lake from ongoing collapse, researchers at Brigham Young University included a list of things NOT TO DO. The list includes the call not to: Build more infrastructure. There continue to be calls to build more reservoirs and pipelines as a response to the ongoing drought. However, our current situation is not caused by inadequate surface-water storage. In fact, reservoirs represent a major source of consumptive water use. We don’t have enough water to keep current full, and most suitable reservoir sites have already been developed.

In addition, policies to control water consumption via the use of RFR (radio frequency radiation) powering wireless smart meters are examples of poorly conceived tech infrastructure solutions that will

a) create more data and the demand for more data processing and data centers

b) increase surveillance

c) create a built-in cycle of obsolescence and increased e-waste for meters and infrastructure

d) discriminate against certain classes of customers on the basis of health

e) consume resources unnecessarily

See more here:

Smartmeters Health and Safety FAQs – Environmental Health Trust (ehtrust.org)

Physicians for Safe Technology | Smart Meter Radiation Health Effects (mdsafetech.org)

(In addition, scrutiny of the impact of microwaves on the structure of water, for example from installing antennas on water towers, increasing the ambient RFR exposures, and installing wireless meters and banks of meters, is inadequate, despite reported harm. )

Previously, fire alarms only sent a signal when there was a fire. We are now creating over-lapping mesh networks that continuously send signals, unnecessarily, and without regard for safety or for the environment. Smart meters are often promoted for their ability to detect leaks. They do not have to transmit continuously in order to address this need.

Closing Thoughts:

1. When we don’t account for all forms of energy and water consumption, we do not have accurate data, despite the enormous growth and grotesque water and energy consumption of data farms.
2. When we give military and security NSA interests a free pass for planetary environmental impacts, our data and decision making is corrupted.
3. When we attribute blame to farmers and climate, it seems like someone else’s distant problem, and responsibility.
4. The decision to diminish water access for farming and to ignore water use by data farms will have consequences.
5. Our consumption of data is being insidiously increased, without our conscious awareness, including by the introduction of AI.
6. Our unexamined, increased demand for data, (activated by the lockdowns and trauma) offers one avenue for personal decision-making and empowerment. We can begin to embrace digital sobriety, needed in nearly all ways, nearly everywhere, and needed now. Rather than blanketing the planet and its atmosphere with wi-fi, we need a tsunami of awareness that recognizes the Rights of Nature, including the Great Salt Lake’s rights.

Highly Recommended:

Financial Sense Newshour’s Jim Puplava speaks with Mark Mills, Executive Director of the National Center for Energy Analytics about the collision between policy goals and economic realities when it comes to green energy, growing electricity demand from AI, data centers, and onshoring of semiconductor manufacturing. Mark explains how the US is not building enough electrical plants to keep up with demand, let alone enough wind and solar, so it will have to be provided by natural gas and coal, which is also seeing exploding demand globally. Mark also discusses the role of nuclear power, small modular reactors, and why places like Germany and California are seeing outright deindustrialization due to their aggressive green energy policies by not factoring in the difficulty, if not near impossibility, of switching away from the use of hydrocarbons and nuclear for electricity production. This is an eye-opening interview packed full of economic and financial market insights that you won’t want to miss with one of the smartest and brightest minds when it comes to understanding the current conflict between policy, energy, and reality.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/financial-sense-r-newshour/id306759846?i=1000655229628 (1 hour 13 minutes)

(National Center for Energy Analytics Fact-based Perspectives on Energy “NCEA’s scholars are devoted to data-driven analyses of policies, plans, and technologies surrounding the supply and use of energy essential for human flourishing.”)

Related Article:

When Politics and Physics Collide The belief that mandates and massive subsidies can summon a world without fossil fuels is magical thinking. – Mark P. Mills

There’s another category error in analogizing energy tech to computer tech. Consider the IMF’s musings on smartphone substitution and energy substitution. Unshackling the personal phone from wired connections didn’t doom wires and cables for communications—instead, it created an enormous expansion in communications traffic that, collaterally, drove greater need for wires and cables. 

[] neither political rhetoric nor financial largesse can make the impossible possible. 

Be on the right side of history.

Incrementalism Controlled by Industry: Labeling and ‘Light’ Cigarettes? Are We Going to Do This Again?

Transcendent Thinking

Several stories have been featured in the Safe Tech International News Substack about research confirming the benefits of hand-written notes over keyboards and screens, for comprehension and retention.

University of Southern California researchers have also reported recently that ‘transcendent thinking’ actually increases brain size.

“The more a teen grappled with the bigger picture and tried to learn from the stories, the more that teen increased the coordination between brain networks over the next two years, regardless of their IQ or their socioeconomic status. This brain growth—not how a teen’s brain compared to other teens’ brains but how a teen’s brain compared to their own brain two years earlier—in turn predicted important developmental milestones, like identity development in the late teen years and life satisfaction in young adulthood, about five years later.

In previous studies, the authors had shown that when teens and adults think about issues and situations in a transcendent way, many brain systems coordinate their activity, among them two major networks important for psychological functioning: the executive control network and the default mode network. The executive control network is involved in managing focused and goal-directed thinking, while the default mode network is active during all kinds of thinking that transcends the “here and now,” such as when recalling personal experiences, imagining the future, feeling enduring emotions such as compassion, gratitude, and admiration for virtue, daydreaming or thinking creatively.

The findings reveal a novel predictor of brain development—transcendent thinking. The researchers believe transcendent thinking may grow the brain because it requires coordinating brain networks involved in effortful, focused thinking, like the executive control network, with those involved in internal reflection and free-form thinking, like the default mode network.” Source

The implications of the research on devices and cognition and learning for school budgets and a growth economy beholden to Ed Tech companies are staggering.

And therefore, not being addressed.  

Inclusive Thinking

In a previous blog, I noted that Nate Hagens interviewed Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti, the Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria, discussing ‘hospicing modernity’ (also the title of her new book)”in order to move beyond the world we’ve come to know and the failed promises that “modernity” has made to our current culture.”

“It is related to opening that lid as we expand our capacity to see the different moving layers of complexity, to let go of the attachment to certainty, control, coherence, and consumption of things, to be able to sit with difficult, painful, and complex things without feeling overwhelmed or immobilized.”  

“We, here, we talk about developing the stomach. To face the amount of shit that we need to compost without throwing up, without throwing a tantrum, and without throwing in the towel.“   Source

I would add another category to her guidance.

We are in need of future-makers who can sit with the complexities, who will not throw a tantrum, will not throw in the towel, will not throw up, and who will not throw others under the bus.

It’s not an exact fit, but the tech industry as a whole has been somewhat like the Grinch –hating the Whos. 

The Whos are the community of individuals who have been seeking to steer the tech industry and society off of the collision course with biology, including harm to the environment and human health, caused by inappropriate and unsafe technology choices, especially wireless.

https://www.best-poems.net/poem/how-grinch-stole-christmas-by-dr-seuss.html

This is exemplified by the ‘smart’ meter debacle.

A wave of opposition started to build around 2010 when smart meters were installed, and some people got really sick.

Others were hurt, but didn’t’ recognize why, (nor did their health care providers in most cases.)

See the short new film from Americans for Responsible Technology: (About 5 minutes)

If only it were just the utilities and the wireless industry that hated the Whos. But it wasn’t.

Many leading environmental “green energy” groups and politicians were so concerned about the planet that they joined the tech industries, in hating the Whos.

They did not mind in the least throwing the Whos under the bus, diagnosing them as mentally ill with an imaginary condition, and then moving to a more politically correct narrative – “these people are really suffering but it has nothing to do with us.”

The industry mantra was mistaken for appropriate research, policy making, and medical care.

Thinking About Right Timing

We could be fifteen years ahead in addressing the outdated science, and the tobacco science, literally, that is underlying much of our wireless tech expansion. 

These are actual tobacco scientists, being referenced by the NCSL (National Conference of State Legislators) to federal decision makers in 2012.

As the European Environmental Agency notes in its case studies of Late Lessons from Early Warnings, a focus on safety fosters innovation.  And failure to adopt the Precautionary Principle increases costs and carnage.

Many industries could pro-actively yield to emerging evidence of harm and pivot to appropriate course corrections and analogue options, instead of playing deny/defend/attack Whack-A-Mole, as the smart meter industry did when issues with privacy, billing, hacking, security, fires, green-washing, grid pollution, planned obsolescence, and injuries emerged.

When companies and empires fail to respond in a timely manner to risk and harm, the tension becomes more destructive over time. This cannot be blamed on those speaking to truth.

Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti observed, “We’re working with sanctioned ignorances that are rewarded. So whenever you present this information, there is a response and a reaction to deny this information again.”

This can change.

Incrementalism Controlled by Industry: Labeling and Light Cigarettes? Are We Going to Do This Again?

In his book The Cigarette Century, Allan Brandt wrote, “It is my hope that The Cigarette Century provides a strong foundation for a critical discussion of new strategies to avert a potential global health disaster.” [] “The development of new medical knowledge demonstrating the dire harms of smoking ultimately shaped the evolution of evidence-based medicine. In response, the tobacco industry engineered a campaign of scientific disinformation seeking to delay, disrupt, and suppress these studies. Using a massive archive of previously secret documents, historian Allan Brandt shows how the industry pioneered these campaigns, particularly using special interest lobbying and largesse to elude regulation.”

Many new and powerful voices are emerging in conversations about tech downsides.

For example, momentum has coalesced around the exemplary research on children’s mental health by Jon Haidt and Zach Rausch, reflected in the U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, endorsing “government-mandated warning labels on social media, akin to those that a previous Surgeon General called for in 1964, on cigarettes.” Source

Is incrementalism workable and appropriate?

Should we celebrate repeating the tobacco wars?

Thinking That Protects Seven Generations vs. the Do-Gooder

The description of “Hospicing Modernity” notes, “This book is not easy: it contains no quick-fix plan for a better, brighter tomorrow, and gives no ready-made answers.

Instead, Vanessa Machado de Oliveira presents us with a challenge: to grow up, step up, and show up for ourselves, our communities, and the living Earth, and to interrupt the modern behavior patterns that are killing the planet we’re part of. Machado de Oliveira breaks down archetypes of cognitive dissonance—the do-gooder who does “good enough,” then retreats to business as usual; the incognito capitalist who, at first glance, may seem like a radical change-maker—and asks us to dig deeper and exist differently. She explains how our habits, behaviors, and belief systems hold us back . . . and why it’s time now to gradually disinvest.

Can the movement to address children, smartphones, and social media not enable delay, disruption, and suppression of science in addressing harm caused by manmade, artificial radiofrequency radiation?

Will our ancestors and descendents look back incredulously, not understanding how a so-called ‘dumb phone’ in the hands of a child mirrored the adoption of light cigarettes? When we could have done so much more?

As my Canadian substack colleague Barb Payne observed, “I have not yet noticed anyone acknowledging that wireless connectivity is like a gateway drug to screen addictions. If wireless connectivity is not available everywhere at every moment, people of all ages would not as often fall prey to screen addictions or social media content.”

Healing the Past, Present, and Future

In the early days of the smart meter debacle, two military experts, one from the UK, and one Canadian, began speaking publicly about the dangers of smart meters, including the non-thermal effects of non-ionizing radiation.

When Jerry Flynn was introduced to his audience in 2012, he noted, “I shouldn’t be here, I should be home in my garage making things out of wood.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-F3nf47kAs&t=64s   1 ½ hours

Over the last 14 years, I have met many individuals – artists, homeopaths, chiropractors, acupuncturists, yoga teachers, scientists, teachers, pilots, engineers, writers, herbalists, firemen, meter installers, organic farmers, physicians, cooks, musicians, film makers, electricians, professors, parents, and children, – who have set aside what they thought their lives would be, to work on the very unpopular campaign to address unsafe tech. Some are extremely ill; some have been rendered homeless, some have perished.

Michele Hertz, instead of gardening, sculpting, or painting, is talking to politicians in New York about a smart meter bill, working with NYSUMA – New York Safe Utility Meter Association.

Solstice Darkness and Light

Will sanctioned ignorance prevail in New York?

Michele and others working alongside her do not belong under the bus. As new activist movements emerge with new concerns about technology, will those who have gone before, who are literate in electromagnetic harm, have a seat at the table?

Including those who know how obscenely cell phones and smart meters are ‘safety tested’?

Cognitive dissonance unfolds when discomfort rears its head.

Instead of feeling nauseous towards our sordid history with these exploitative industries and their regulators, the distaste and exclusion is directed towards those identifying the problem.

Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti noted, “We are talking about the ability to say the buck stops here in my generation.” Together. Now.

Solstice Balance

This week’s solstice offers a powerful opportunity to reflect on the balance of darkness and light, supported by the Cosmic Current and Natural Law, which choreograph our lives. The Solstice offers the invitation to consider relationships, not only for children and social media, but between all of humanity and the Earth.

For the North

As the Earth experiences its moment of balance and equipoise, “They Tried to Bury Us, They Didn’t Know We Were Seeds”

Acorn Image Courtesy Artist and Mother Michele Hertz

The South

For the South: “After the longest night, tomorrow we sing up the dawn. There is a rejoicing that, even in the darkest time, the sun is not vanquished. As of tomorrow, the days begin to get longer as the light of day grows. While the gentle winter sun slowly opens its eyes, let us all bring more light and compassion into the world.” ― Dacha Avelin

Leaf Image Courtesy Artist and Mother Michele Hertz

We need to go back to basics, to reclaim our ability to grow our brains on the basis of transcendent, inclusive thinking -, and not the ungrounded tech dreams that are becoming nightmares. The stakes are very high.

“And what happened then? Well, in Whoville they say that the Grinch’s small heart grew three sizes that day” ― Dr. Seuss

We can turn to one another, bless the mess, and sigh relief as we miss the near wreck.

Be on the right side of history.

In case you missed it:

Overview of Digital Technology: Marking Four Global Days of Action, June 2024 Approaching the Solstice, Guest Post by Kate Kheel of Safe Tech International Here

For entertainment purposes only and not to be misconstrued as medical advice

A reader recently contacted me who said that when she is exposed to RF, her face scrunches up, and her family members can see it.

“to let go of the attachment to certainty, control, coherence, and consumption of things, to be able to sit with difficult, painful, and complex things“ – Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti

I had the privilege of listening to a podcast this week with Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti, courtesy of my colleague Kate Kheel.

“We, here, we talk about developing the stomach. To face the amount of shit that we need to compost without throwing up, without throwing a tantrum, and without throwing in the towel. “   

I feel more optimistic than I have in a decade about the rising numbers of individuals tuning into the downsides of the mass society and economy being drunk on tech, especially wireless  –  and I’ll revisit this phenomenon of throwing up. This is a commentary on recent articles, including some that I didn’t post, while compiling recent news for Safe Tech International’s substack community. I discuss some themes I have written about previously, including Chinese Medicine and energy medicine.

I touch on: writing by hand vs. keyboards, Chinese computers, Wi-Fi on school buses, international policies on cellphones and schools, Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti and sanctioned ignorance, the Chinese Luni-solar calendar, Solar Flares and Geomagnetic Storms, precision agriculture, satellites, lower earth orbit, the senses, electroreception in fish and humans, scientific diplomacy, skin research, chronobiology, electromagnetic bodyguards that protect the Brain, the Gall Bladder, the Glymphatic system, homing Instincts and the Vivaxis, and the energetics of disgust, vs. intestinal fortitude, Radiant Circuits, and joy.

If you would like to start receiving Safe Tech International’s news summaries click here.

Why Writing by Hand Beats Typing for Thinking and Learning

This week I posted a news brief that explained more clearly why hand-writing is preferable to keyboards.  NPR reported, “In kids, studies show that tracing out ABCs, as opposed to typing them, leads to better and longer-lasting recognition and understanding of letters. Writing by hand also improves memory and recall of words, laying down the foundations of literacy and learning. In adults, taking notes by hand during a lecture, instead of typing, can lead to better conceptual understanding of material. “There are actually some very important things going on during the embodied experience of writing by hand,” says Ramesh Balasubramaniam, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Merced. “It has important cognitive benefits.” A slew of recent brain imaging research suggests handwriting’s power stems from the relative complexity of the process and how it forces different brain systems to work together to reproduce the shapes of letters in our heads onto the page. Research suggests kids learn to recognize letters better when seeing variable handwritten examples, compared with uniform typed examples. This helps develop areas of the brain used during reading in older children and adults, Vinci-Booher found.“

There are some very important things going on during every embodied moment, and problems when we ask the body to un-integrate itself, for example with virtual reality headsets.

Fly Like an Eagle: Chinese Keyboards 20,000 Characters

This week, I also read IEEE Spectrum’s featured article, The Forgotten History of Chinese Keyboards by Thomas S. Mullaney, a professor of Chinese history at Stanford University. “[] one of the most successful and celebrated systems—the IPX, designed by Yeh—featured an interface with 120 levels of “shift,” packing nearly 20,000 Chinese characters and other symbols into a space only slightly larger than a QWERTY interface. Other systems featured keyboards with anywhere from 256 to 2,000 key. [] Yeh started with the most complex parts of the Chinese lexicon and worked back from there. He fixated on one character in particular: ying 鷹 (“eagle”), an elaborate graph that requires 24 brushstrokes to compose.

Image by AnShenTCM from Pixabay Note the complexity of the Chinese characters.

“Things that make you go hmmmmm”…..Does the intricacy of the Chinese written language and the research regarding hand-writing vs. keystrokes have implications for cognition and brain development?

Whereas China and Russia have already banned cell phones in schools for a number of very good reasons, including protecting children’s eyesight, the U.S is promoting installing Wi-Fi on school buses. See: Rosenworcel Defends FCC’s Authority to Expand E-Rate to WiFi Hotspots “It is time for an E-Rate program that supports the educational needs of students and library patrons and permits them to learn without limits,” Rosenworcel, a Democrat, said in a letter to Capitol Hill lawmakers posted to the FCC’s website on May 22.

The (no limits) FCC doesn’t recognize rising mental health issues in children, including bullying and unsupervised access to social media which is why Senator Cruz opposes funding Wi-Fi on school buses, in addition to the increased RF exposure to children, exacerbated by connecting from a moving vehicle.

Tech-ed industries are ignoring the fact that reading in a moving vehicle makes some people throw up, because the body actually isn’t designed for this, and it causes unnecessary and unhealthy physiological stress.

ACTION ALERT Protect Children from Wi-Fi Exposure on School Buses | AlignAct. Learn more here.

Do we keep investing in more tech to grow the economy, while ignoring human health and the nature environment? Could we divert funding for school infrastructure expansion and tech upgrades, including security, towards teaching calligraphy, wellness, art, music, and paying teachers?

See Prof Tom Butler, Ireland: A Critical Review of Digital Technology in Education: A Pause for Thought in 2024 “[] radiation interferes with the children’s ability to learn and also has significant other harmful effects, including on the students’ sleep, vision and attention.”

See also Environmental Health Trust: INTERNATIONAL POLICY BRIEFING Governments, Health Authorities and Schools Enacting Policy to Reduce Radiofrequency Radiation Exposures

“Sanctioned Ignorances”

Nate Hagens interviewed Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti , the Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria, discussing what she calls ‘hospicing modernity’ –”in order to move beyond the world we’ve come to know and the failed promises that “modernity” has made to our current culture.”  HERE (1 ½ hours)

She noted, “We’re working with sanctioned ignorances that are rewarded.”

This is diametrically opposed to ancient China. If the sages advising the emperor failed to accurately predict the spring thaw, the punishment was death. We would have a lot of dead ‘experts’ including lobbyists and tobacco scientists. if we employed capital punishment and stopped cultivating and sanctioning willful ignorance. They work in plain sight, with no need to hide, in this age of rampant regulatory capture. Medscape confronted tobacco science, as did the World Health Organization historically. so too can utility regulators, legislatures, and the public.   It’s not rocket science.

Counting by Observation – Not Imposing Inaccurate Parameters

In ancient China, as the result of observation and meticulous record keeping (using intricate brush strokes that enhance brain development) an underlying electromagnetic cycle of 12 years was identified. It is depicted in 12 animals seen parading through the Chinese New Years, usually coinciding with the second New Moon after the Winter Solstice. The West observes from a distance, unaware of the complexities transmitted via the qualities associated with the animals, for example, pandemonium when the dog gets into the chicken coop. (The sages were aware that teaching via metaphor also enhances learning and cognition. because it connects both the left and right brain hemispheres.

The sixty-year cycle of the Chinese luni-solar calendar was introduced by Emperor Huang Ti in 2637 B.C. It could be informing not only biodynamic gardening but also health care, because the human body is synchronized by the electromagnetic patterns within the cosmic current, – daily, by the solar year, lunar month, seasons, and in longer cycles, with implications for right timing.

Unless those energies are polluted with interference.

Smart watches and cell phones are out of synch with the cosmos, even more amplified during daylight savings time-initiated as the result of war. We do not know where we are in time and space, or if the guideposts are changing. This makes it challenging to recognize being out of right rhythm.

How One Counts, Counts

As opposed to aligning with the twelve animals cycling through 5 elements, creating a sixty-year cycle, the West has systematized itself to quantifying data by decades and centuries, perhaps sourced back to humans counting on ten fingers.

Now, the World Health Organization has shifted its categories for death into 20-year cohorts, obscuring the earlier onset of skyrocketing and devastating neurological illnesses. See; Bournemouth University (U.K) researchers Colin Pritchard and Emily Rosenorn-Lanng, Neurological deaths of American adults (55–74) and the over 75’s by sex compared with 20 Western countries 1989–2010: Cause for concern. “Have USA total neurological deaths (TNDs) of adults (55-74) and the over 75’s risen more than in twenty Western Countries?” The answer is “Yes.”

A lack of understanding of the synchronization between the cosmos and human life on Earth has worrying implications for plans to colonize Mars or the Moon – not to preserve the light of human consciousness, but to fuel more economic growth and resource acquisition.

We could actually use so called “artificial intelligence” to re-classify data and explore new patterns. But the data has to be collected in the first place. We have instead opted to ridicule reported harm caused by wireless technology, for example, from the pollution caused by the ‘smart grid, with renewables and so-called energy efficiency causing high voltage transients to radiate into occupied living spaces.

Examples of junk data include mis-categorizing microwave hearing as tinnitus from an unknown source, reclassifying certain types of tumors, and not counting all fatalities, for example from industrial exposures. (See: Making a cancer cluster disappear – Center for Public Integrity)

Solar Flares and Geomagnetic Storms

Solar flares were also in this month’s news with adverse effects on precision agriculture. “Strong storms can knock out electric grids, and a storm in 1989 knocked out the entire power grid in Quebec, affecting six million people.” “404 Media published an article that documented problems experienced by the GPS navigation systems in John Deere and other brands of tractors. Precision GPS allows John Deere tractors to navigate precise straight lines using Real-Time Kinematic technology that is accurate to within a few centimeters. Farmers were warned about planting new line crops like corn during the current storm since inaccurately aligned planting makes it impossible to precisely run tractors during the rest of the season for weeding, watering, and fertilizing the rows or crops. The current storm hit during the week when farmers in the Midwest were planting many of their crops.”

Precision agriculture is promoted, for example, to determine when crops need to be watered by sending signals from tractors and fields to satellites and back to computers. This data is being harvested to fuel commodities trading.

In earlier epochs when the sky served as the clock and the calendar, farmers followed guidance passed down for generations about living in the rhythm of nature and knew when to water.

The satellite frenzy has no disposal plan. As Space4Peace noted, “Out of 34,260 objects tracked in orbit, only around 8,300 are functioning satellites while the rest are junk, such as broken satellites or discarded rocket stages.” Can we become more knowledgeable about and protective of the electromagnetic frequencies that sustain life on Earth, including the importance of LEO – lower earth orbit, which is rapidly being transformed into an orbiting junk yard?

If we can’t figure out how to live in harmony on, and with, the planet we co-evolved with across eons of time, how can we become ‘an interplanetary species?’

The Senses

At her site Highly Sensitive Refuge, Heather Lawson published her article Scientists Believe We Have More Than 5 Senses. What Does That Mean for Highly Sensitive People? “Research suggests humans may have up to 33 senses, not five. How many of them could impact your high sensitivity — and sensory overload?” The article references this link: How many senses do humans have? “Defensible answers are: 3: the number of physical types of stimulus: light (photons), chemicals (smell, taste, and internal sensors), mechanical (touch and hearing). 9: vision, hearing, touch, taste, smell, pain, mechanoreception (balance etc.), temperature, interoreceptors (e.g. blood pressure, bladder stretch). 21 (see table below) Of course the real answer is that this is the wrong way to look at it. Sensing doesn’t cause perception: real perception is all about integrating information across senses, across time, across space if you are (as is normal) moving around partly in order to perceive better.

“If we go beyond humans then there are many more again: sonar in bats (and some moths); infrared in pit vipers; ultraviolet in bees; magnetic fields detected by some birds (and just possibly, humans too). And perhaps most surprising to humans: the electric senses found in various fish species. Electroreception: the detection of nearby things, particularly other fish, by the electric field they radiate. Active electrolocation, where a fish emits an electric field, and senses how it is changed by nearby objects (especially other fish).”

Electroreception in Humans – is in the Meridians

“Real perception is about integrating all information, especially evidence of harm.”

What if we have more than 33 senses, but we don’t know how to process them? What if we understood the implications of the knowledge that we evolved from fish?

The Chinese recognized electroreception in humans, and we can witness it in real time with our own eyes. If you watch a group of 5–7-year-olds who are just learning to play soccer, watch for the child on one team who can dribble around every other player on the field. He/she didn’t learn it from a drill; the child has a stronger inborn electromagnetic sensory system along the outside line of the body, which tells him/her which way to move. The athlete is responding energetically, via the subtle energy body, faster than the thought process of guessing which way the other player will pivot.

The sensory intelligence is the Gall Bladder Meridian, which runs along both outside edges of the body. Not all humans are endowed equally with Gall Bladder energy, but everyone has it, even if the organ has been removed, and the energy can be cultivated, or abused.  

Scientific Diplomacy – Learning from China and Russia, and Women

If the West were to embrace the teachings of the Chinese seers, we could understand that the Gall Bladder, like all the Meridians, responds in real time to the environment as an electromagnetic, sensory, protective apparatus with mechanical capabilities. Every organ system manifests periods of low and high tides, choreographed by the Sun. Gall Bladder is considered to be an electrical bodyguard for the Heart and the Brain, due to the Law of Midday/Midnight. 

Recognizing Bodyguards: Safeguarding the Brain

Image by Acupuncture Box from Pixabay

The Gall Bladder Meridian (blue on top of skull, working alongside Triple Heater circling around the ear and jaw) can contract, tightening the plates in the skull to protect the Brain from unsafe exposures. This is one probable underlying component of reported symptoms of EHS, or sensitivity to electromagnetic fields., also referred to as microwave poisoning. The defense offers inborn protection against something found in nature- a lightning strike.

We can track an individual’s particular pattern of damage through the Meridians as they alter their functionality, to protect the Heart and the Brain from pollution.

One way the body can do this is through rebellious chi, when energy goes in the wrong direction – by throwing up.

Another way is to have a hollow body organ empty quickly, out of rhythm – like a sudden need to use the restroom or a nosebleed.

This capacity is one reason why the hollow organs are viewed as bodyguards for the other organs in Chinese Medicine and classified as Yang.

The Chinese mystics, astronomers, and healers, with their 20,000 symbols and desire to understand patterns, attempted to identify and treat the cause, and not the symptoms. – the roots and not the branches.

Is Removing the Gall Bladder Akin to Taking the Bulb out of Warning Light?

A contracted skull creates a brain that is pressurized, overheated, dehydrated, and unable to detoxify. (The West has only very recently discovered the brain’s glymphatic system.)

The Gall Bladder alarm has been sounding for quite some time, warning humans that something is out of balance. So has the explosion of chronic childhood illnesses. The Spleen, which distributes Chi throughout the organism, is also under fire especially in women and children, via the tonsils, thyroid and auto-immune illnesses. This has been going on for more than sixty years, (although routine tonsillectomies have fallen out of favor.)

One yogi who came to the U.S. 60 years ago was fond of saying that Americans lost the owner’s manual to their bodies. The Eastern mind-body self-care teachings that align with the cosmic current go against time as money, mass for-profit medicine; standard of care; emphasis on surgery and drugs: mandates; and other modern constructs.

As opposed to the electromagnetic meridian system’s capacity to contract the skull, the idea that health care should align with the planet’s electromagnetic energies, (for example avoiding unnecessary surgery at the full moon to reduce bleeding) causes others to lose their heads, with the vitriol historically resulting in the witch trials.

Image by kian2018 from Pixabay A Chinese Medicine practitioner palpates the pulses of the different organs via the wrist. Research on cadavers does not illuminate the energetic foundations of a health imbalance.

Just because modern society does not recognize or utilize the accumulated wisdom of the East or indigenous societies does not mean that it will always be this way. We can change this. We have access to the maps. We can learn how to use them.

The canaries with ‘electromagnetic hypersensitivity’ are exposing individualized patterns of electromagnetic distress between the differing meridians and deep internal organs, against the changing backdrop of time, caused by electromagnetic pollution. Many others are experiencing injury and don’t know it.

Skin That Keeps Track of Time

Chronobiology is ancient in the East. The research field of chronobiology is very new in the West. ”Chronobiology is a field of biology that studies how our body’s natural cycles—mental, physical and emotional—are affected by solar and lunar rhythms. For example, the circadian rhythm, a 24-hour cycle of physiological processes that happen throughout the human body, is a vital cycle in the study of chronobiology. When these processes break down, or abnormalities occur in the human body, it’s the study of chronobiology that could be the solution.”

Artificial manmade fields apparently disrupt the symmetry between the body and the cosmic current.

Science Daily recently reported that Synchronization between central circadian clock and circadian clocks of tissues preserves their functioning “Two complementary research articles reveal that central and peripheral circadian clocks coordinate to regulate the daily activity of skin and muscles. The coordination between the two clocks (central and peripheral) guarantees 50% of the circadian functions of tissues, including vital processes such as the cell cycle, DNA repair, mitochondrial activity, and metabolism. Synchronization between the central brain clock and peripheral ones prevents premature muscle aging and improves muscle function, suggesting new strategies to tackle age-related decline through circadian rhythm modulation. The peripheral clock of the skin integrates and modulates brain signals. In the study published in Cell Stem Cell, the team has demonstrated that the skin circadian clock is pivotal in coordinating the daily physiology of this tissue. By integrating brain signals, and sometimes by modifying them, this coordination ensures the correct functioning of the skin.”

Researchers looking for circadian clocks may be discovering the Meridian pathways and/or the 108 Marma points and 72,000 Nadis of India’s Ayurveda, one at a time. What if we looked at the maps?

Homing Instincts – the Vivaxis

In 2000, Australian naturopath Judy Jacka published her book, The Vivaxis Connection, based on the earlier work of Canadian Francis Nixon. Before humans relied on satellite-enabled GPS systems, is it possible that our ancestors who were the most resilient and who survived the demands of challenging environments were also the ones who had the best-developed navigational skills? And what if those skills were not just intellectual, such as navigating by the stars, but were also housed in the energy body itself as another inborn physical sensory system, designed by nature, to help ensure our survival and ability to find our way home? Do humans, like other animals, possess a forgotten inborn homing system?

Dowsers use their bodies as a source of information via subtle energy, for example, to locate water. Churches historically used dowsers to determine placement on a power spot. Does everyone possess the ability to dowse?

The theory of the vivaxis is that a specific location is pause-locked into the energy field at birth. This homing mechanism would have huge implications for survival in earlier times.  Judy explains how this capacity is diminished, and one factor is electromagnetic pollution.

Energy medicine teacher Donna Eden, who can see energy, has been working with the vivaxis for years.  (This includes consideration of migraines as a vivaxis on the Gall Bladder meridian.)

“Without Throwing Up” – Disgust vs. Diplomacy

When Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti addressed the need “to face the amount of shit that we need to compost without throwing up, without throwing a tantrum, and without throwing in the towel“ she warned that not everyone has the intestinal fortitude to read her new book “Hospicing Modernity Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism.”

“It is related to opening that lid as we expand our capacity to see the different moving layers of complexity, to let go of the attachment to certainty, control, coherence, and consumption of things, to be able to sit with difficult, painful, and complex things without feeling overwhelmed or immobilized.”

The Chinese identified the specific pathway in the body related to disgust, where one’s energy field shuts down in response to something un-digestible. It is the Penetrating Flow. The Penetrating Flow also carries Joy, as Donna Eden teaches here in a free class about the Radiant Circuits. (Radiant circuits operate alongside the Meridians, but are activated when needed, for example due to a temperature extreme like falling through the ice.)

Addressing Intellectual Warfare

The ability to detect spoiled food is an evolutionary capacity, and a specific part of the brain is associated with ‘disgust’.

It is not evolutionary to be disgusted by consumers reporting harm to health and the environment from inadequately regulated industries.

We are being indoctrinated into warfare against China and Russia, as well as against ourselves via surveillance tech. The mass media is programming our electromagnetic frequencies and cognition via our emotions.

We can instead use the knowledge of the Radiant Circuits and become absorbed in and entranced by the opportunities we face, and mesmerized by the ancient and indigenous knowledge that can inform our work.

We have the hardware to do this, running in our physicality.

As Paris Marx notes, Tech Won’t Wave Us.

Superspreaders

I learned recently that researchers have studied what they call Key Misinformation Superspreaders,- older women. Here is a short list, courtesy my colleagues at Safe Tech International.

Whichever tech leaders and policy makers stop perpetuating disgust towards each other, and to the men, women, and children who recognize the harm unfolding via tech overreach first (especially wireless) – will be accessing our evolutionary capacities.

Everything else is just pretend progress, pretend sustainability, pretend energy efficiency, pretend conservation, pretend renewables, pretend education, pretend earnings, pretend justice, pretend research, pretend accessibility, pretend science, pretend military prowess and pretend freedom.

When we hold a cell phone to the ear, the ancient seers (who could see energy) would tell us that we are draining our Gall Bladder and Triple Warmer chi and stealing vitality from other organ systems, because of the increased, artificial, external demands on the body.

The Vedic masters might have described it as “burning the Ojas.” “Our vitality, immunity, vigor, skin, sleep, digestion, spirituality and physical strength are all directly influenced by our reserve of ojas. A plentiful reserve of ojas is reflected in the luster of the eyes, radiance of the skin (that glow so detectable in babies and pregnant women), potent fertility, tenacious immunity, strong digestion and clarity of mind.”– John Douillard

While the ancients didn’t have to give advice about Wi-Fi and cellphones, they recognized fatigue and imbalance.

Opening the mind may literally require putting down the phone.

Gall Bladder is associated with courage. Nurturing the Gall Bladder protects the Brain and the Heart, and that is what makes us human.

There is incredible joy is this humble journey, but it is not for the faint of Heart.

As Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti noted, “We are talking about the ability to say the buck stops here, in my generation.”

Recommended: Vanessa Andreotti: “Hospicing Modernity and Rehabilitating Humanity” | The Great Simplification 125 (youtube.com)

Medscape recently removed physician education courses funded by tobacco giant Philip Morris…because it was “a perversion of ethics.“

A deep dark secret of the clean energy /smart grid movement? Justification for the supposed safety of wireless smart utility meters came from product defense ‘experts’ who work for the tobacco industry, including Philip Morris.

Utility commissions, policy makers, and clean energy groups were not concerned. 

This will not end well.

The Story of Medscape’s Ethical Course Correction Regarding Compromised Expertise

A recent headline by Medical Express reported, Medscape removes education courses for doctors funded by tobacco giant “Medical education provider Medscape has bowed to pressure and agreed to permanently remove a series of accredited medical education courses on smoking cessation funded by the tobacco industry giant Philip Morris International (PMI), The BMJ and The Examination have found.

The global company has acknowledged its “misjudgment” in a letter to complainants and says it will not accept funding from any organization affiliated with the tobacco industry in the future. [] The move comes after an investigation by The BMJ revealed the PMI deal and the widespread protests among doctors and academics in reaction to the partnership. [] Tim McAfee at the University of California, San Francisco and former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Office on Smoking and Health, called PMI’s partnership with Medscape, “the ultimate example of the fox not only signing up to guard the hen house but offering to sit on the eggs. “It is a perversion of ethics surrounding continuing medical education to allow the very companies that caused and profit from the continuing epidemic of tobacco-related death and disease to be involved in any way,” he says.”The tobacco industry cannot be allowed to influence medical education, health practitioners, or patient care in this way as it desperately seeks to secure its future profits,”- Professor Ruth Malone at the University of California San Francisco,.” – Source

The British Medical Journal Investigation of Infiltration by Tobacco Science

On April 28, The British Medical Journal published its investigation, Medscape caves in on courses funded by tobacco giant Philip Morris, while medics fear global push into medical education.  “The move comes after a BMJ investigation revealed the PMI deal and widespread protests among doctors and academics in reaction to the partnership. Critics had said that the content tended to portray non-cigarette nicotine products as relatively harmless, therefore aligning with the commercial interests of PMI, which also sells e-cigarettes, nicotine pouches, and snus.

Hristio Boytchev reveals how an ambitious deal between a leading medical education provider and the tobacco industry collapsed this week. The medical education provider Medscape has bowed to pressure and agreed to permanently remove a series of accredited medical education courses on smoking cessation funded by the tobacco industry giant Philip Morris International (PMI), The BMJ and The Examination have found. Medscape has acknowledged its “misjudgment” in a letter to complainants and says that it will not accept funding from any organisation affiliated with the tobacco industry in the future.

The move comes after a BMJ investigation revealed the PMI deal and widespread protests among doctors and academics in reaction to the partnership. Critics had said that the content tended to portray non-cigarette nicotine products as relatively harmless, therefore aligning with the commercial interests of PMI, which also sells e-cigarettes, nicotine pouches, and snus.1

An internal Medscape document seen by The BMJ and The Examination also hints at the true scale of the multimillion-dollar deal between PMI and Medscape.

Other PMI funded programmes with different continuing medical education (CME) providers have also emerged, including in Saudi Arabia and South Africa []. This apparent global push by the tobacco giant into certified medical education has been met with alarm and calls for certification bodies to issue a ban. Pamela Ling, director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California, San Francisco, applauded Medscape for its U turn, adding that tobacco companies had a long history of using social scientists and other expert voices to normalise tobacco and nicotine use and to downplay the harms.3 “However, the entry into the world of medical education is particularly audacious,” said Ling. “In the past, medical education sponsored by the manufacturers of the leading preventable cause of death would have been ridiculous. As tobacco companies remake their image into pharmaceutical-like nicotine purveyors, it appears they have been emboldened to enter this arena.”45

Nick Hopkinson, professor of respiratory medicine at Imperial College London, commented, “It’s astonishing, given the strict ethical codes that exist to exclude the tobacco industry, that Medscape thought that it would go unnoticed or be tolerated. They will need to undertake a thorough assessment as to how this appalling decision was made and ensure that policies and processes are in place to ensure that it cannot happen again.”

Call for Global Ban Medscape’s backpedalling was welcomed, but critics demanded that tobacco industry funded medical education should not be accredited by the responsible bodies in the first place. “I am very pleased that Medscape is doing the right thing,” Anthony Gerber, director of pulmonary research at National Jewish Health, told The BMJ. But he added that there remained a significant problem with accreditation bodies allowing programmes to be sponsored by tobacco, “and the medical community needs to exert pressure to reverse this policy. If PMI and others really want to help undo the incomprehensible damage they have done and continue to do, there are ways to acceptably donate money—but sponsoring CME with your name attached as a ‘whitewashing’ effort is not one of them.” Source

See Also:  BMJ Investigation Exclusive: Outcry as Philip Morris International funds smoking cessation courses on Medscape: Anna Gilmore, professor of public health and director of the Tobacco Control Research Group at the University of Bath, UK, said that Medscape had “now lost all credibility and has some serious questions to answer. PMI (Philip Morris International) lost all credibility decades ago, despite its ceaseless and highly misleading attempts to rehabilitate its image. It has now sunk to a new low.” Nicholas Hopkinson, professor of respiratory medicine at Imperial College London, said, “The idea that lethal and immoral tobacco industry has a role in medical education is absurd.”

See Also: Medscape severs ties with tobacco industry after backlash over $3M Philip Morris International deal  “As a pulmonologist, I find it just simply outrageous that Medscape is laundering Philip Morris’ propaganda with this CME,” said Nick Mark, a doctor in the Seattle area.  Mark also noted that the slide decks for the courses did not include disclosure of Philip Morris International’s involvement. Medscape’s choice of speakers, or ‘faculties’, for the courses has also caused consternation internally due to their links to the tobacco and vaping industries.

See Also:  Industry-funded medical education is always promotion—an essay by Adriane Fugh-Berman “But perhaps the most damaging effect is the omission or minimisation of product harms.”

The Cigarette Century Launched the Mercenary Product Defense Industry

In 2009, Fast Company reported, What is the product-defense industry? How does it work, and who’s behind it? We asked David Michaels, author of the exposé Doubt Is Their Product. “FC: What exactly do product-defense companies do? They combine science with public relations to help clients avoid regulation and litigation. I have yet to see a study published by a product-defense firm that conflicts with the needs of the study’s sponsors. The intent is to cast doubt on real science. The industry has deep roots in the fight over tobacco.” [] “Some of the big ones are Exponent, Gradient, ChemRisk, and the Weinberg Group.” – https://www.fastcompany.com/1139299/manufacturing-doubt-product-defense

World Health Organization re: Tobacco Science

In Nov. 2023, the World Health Organization announced New WHO campaign highlights tobacco industry tactics to influence public health policies. “WHO supports countries in defending evidenced based tobacco control measures in the face of industry interference. The tobacco industry continues to lie to the public, using different ways to spread misinformation, including through: Front groups and third parties, [], Funding scientists and biased research. [] The tobacco industry has a long history of lying to the public, even insisting that smoking does not cause lung cancer.”

Smart Meter Expert: Tobacco Scientist for Phillip Morris

The Truth Tobacco Industry Documents archive (formerly known as the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library) at UCSF reports 199 documents for Peter Valberg under the category Philip Morris. (He is also listed under R.J. Reynolds)

The same week that Valberg testified on behalf of the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities to override citizen and expert health testimony regarding smart meters, his testimony was used in Ohio to deny a plaintiff’s eligibility in a class action lawsuit against Philip Morris. 

Phillips vs. Philip Morris Companies (truthinadvertising.org)

Tobacco Wasn’t the Only Beneficiary of Valberg’s Expertise

In 2016, the Center for Public Integrity published its investigative series Science for Sale. “Science and opinion have become increasingly conflated, in large part because of corporate influence. As we explain in “Science for Sale,” an investigative series by the Center for Public Integrity and co-published with Vice.com, industry-backed research has exploded — often with the aim of obscuring the truth — as government-funded science dwindles.” Valberg’s work is featured here Meet the ‘rented white coats’ who defend toxic chemicals, and here Making a cancer cluster disappear.

Re: Vinyl Chloride: “Eventually, 33 people around McCullom Lake developed brain tumors. [] The current owner of the plant, Dow Chemical, denies that people in the community were exposed to vinyl chloride, though it settled the case with the brain cancer victims about a year ago. During the litigation, the company hired expert witnesses who cited the Mundt study to prove that the brain tumors couldn’t have been caused by vinyl chloride. One such expert, Peter Valberg of Gradient Corp., wrote that the families in McCullom Lake were citing early studies linking vinyl chloride to brain cancer but failed to cite more recent reviews. “These in-depth summaries and updates of worker cohorts do not support a causal link between VC exposure and brain cancer,” Valberg wrote. Aaron Freiwald, the lawyer for the McCullom Lake families, said the scientific consensus today doesn’t account for the fact that workers were excluded from industry brain cancer studies. “We established that even one accounted-for brain cancer would completely shift the data,” Freiwald said. “If there are at least three additional cases, it seems pretty clear that the literature on vinyl chloride and brain cancer as it is has to be rewritten.”

Scientists who misrepresented the safety of cigarettes and deadly chemicals need not be worried about job security.

They found plenty of work crisscrossing the country to talk about wireless smart meters.

Smart Meter Fall from Grace: Employing Mercenary Scientists and Product Defense Experts

The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), established in 1975, is a “nonpartisan public officials’ association’ composed of 7,000 state legislators. In 2012, the National Conference of State Legislators distributed a document created by the Telecom Utilities Council in 2012 to address smart meter health concerns.

The original link https://www.ncsl.org/documents/energy/Oldak_PPT.pdf and the page are no longer available on the NCSL website. The powerpoint can be accessed via web archive here https://web.archive.org/web/20130609063217/http://www.ncsl.org/documents/energy/Oldak_PPT.pdf.

The presentation is dated August.

In May, the IARC classified RF exposure as a class 2B possible human carcinogen, negating Valberg’s earlier testimony in Maryland. The NCSL was either itself misinformed or colluding with the industry. The error has never been addressed.

Tobacco Science Representing Industry in Utility Proceedings

Valberg of Gradient in Maryland, Vermont, Michigan, Massachusetts – and many other proceedings: “Creating research to fit one’s needs, concealing unwelcomed information, assembling an expert group to advance a favored outcome – blue ribbon panel, manipulating public perception about credible science.” Other states including Nevada, and Canada, relied on Exponent.

Iowa, 2018

Valberg testified before the Iowa Utility Board Court Case on behalf of Alliant Energy. Proceeding Filed with the Iowa Utilities Board on August 31, 2018, SPU-2018-0007: “Because the RF cannot damage biological molecules or biological structures, it is not a threat to health.” [] “No public health agency has identified the RF from smart meters as hazardous to health. In fact, a large number of scientific groups have reviewed research findings on potential health effects of RF waves.” Do FCC guidelines only address the thermal effects of “smart meters” and neglect “non-thermal” effects that may be dangerous? “No. RF exposure limits were developed by the FCC specifically to protect against all known hazards of RF energy. The limits were established after a thorough review and evaluation of the scientific literature and ample opportunity for comment by all interested parties.”

Judges overruled requests to impeach Valberg as a witness based on his history and reputation as a White Coat, it because Valberg was their only expert witness.”

The testimony regarding non-thermal effects is inaccurate. FCC guidelines do not protect against non-thermal effects.

Utility commissions across the country should have clarified this distinction with the FCC, rather than providing a platform for mercenary science to prevail. This was a grave error by state regulators authorizing the deployment of meters and imposing exposures on communities and households, in association with access to essential services of electricity and heat.

Mercenary Science for Smart Meters in Public Relations and Industry Front Groups

1. Field Testing Itron Smart Meters in an empty field – for signals only, based only on guidelines for thermal effects, 2. Florida Power and Light (Valberg) 3. Baltimore Gas and Electric 4 Industry Group IHS (Valberg) 5. Industry Front Group Smart Meters (Valberg) 6. Oncor Texas (Valberg)s 7. Industry Front Group SGCC (Valberg) 8. Utilities Telecom Council (Valberg) 9. Arizona APS (Valberg)

One industry front group for smart meters was the 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative, (now renamed the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative) which included no consumers. Valberg’s work is here: Testimony of Dr. Peter A. Valberg | Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative (smartenergycc.org)

Ethical Decision Making; Refusing Tobacco Scientists as Providers of Health Education vs. Smart Meters

Each sentence can be re-written, substituting the term smart meters for tobacco; and the name of each state’s utilities and utility commission for Medscape’s ethical lapse.

Sunshine and Sand

In a presentation given in Eugene, Oregon a decade ago, Peter Valberg attempted to downplay the scope of the IARC classification of RF as a Class 2B possible human carcinogen:

See the 49-slide pro-smart meter presentation here: The Smart Grid Landscape: What about RF Health Effects ? (smartgridawareness.org)

Climate scientists have been quick to point to the fossil fuel industry’s adoption of the tobacco industry playbook. But the clean/green energy/environmental justice movement has been unwilling to address the tobacco experts shoveling the smart meter safety stories, despite profound suffering and direct harm to human health.

Missing in the smart meter debate is the contribution of citizen science, and real-world reports of harm that should, by now, have evolved our scientific understanding of the non-thermal effects of non-ionizing radiofrequency radiation and the impact of dirty electricity.

Also missing is the expertise of the independent scientists, researchers, and health professionals documenting damage.

For example, Comment of Beatrice A. Golomb, MD, PhD in opposition to MA DPU 20-69: “I am opposed to the MA DPU conducting a targeted smart meter/time of use billing pilot for EV customers. According to a survey we conducted, smart meters were the single most common “trigger” for people newly developing intolerance to nonionizing radiation (i.e., for developing “electrosensitivity”). These findings comport with findings by others. See also the Australian study by Lamech on health problems arising with smart meter use 1 . Sincerely, Beatrice A. Golomb, MD, PhD Professor of Medicine UC San Diego School of Medicine 1. Lamech F. Self-reporting of symptom development from exposure to radiofrequency fields of wireless smart meters in Victoria, Australia: A case series. Altern Ther Health Med 2014;20:28-39. – 12640308 (comacloud.net

The light of day needs to shine on the history of smart meter deployment authorizations across the country, and the role that mercenary science is playing in the clean/green energy economy, because regarding health and safety, the foundation is built on sand.

“The idea that lethal and immoral tobacco product defense industry has a role in medical education utility regulation is absurd.”

“Perhaps the most damaging effect is the omission or minimisation of product harms.”

Nomophobia is the fear of being without a mobile phone, which can lead to Anxiety Disorder and Panic Attacks.

What is coherence? Does it require access to a device?

Cultures of Coherence

There is something rare and precious about driving in the Cape Ann fishing port of Gloucester, MA. The city has a culture of courtesy on the roadways, built on a foundation of attention, presence, waiting, and….yielding.  

This is a coherent field.

Gloucester drivers yield to large, refrigerated tractor trailers carrying fish along impossibly narrow streets. Drivers yield, to wide turns, to trucks seeking to enter the roadway. The tractor trailers always create a delay in the traffic flow due to sheer size and weight, but drivers yield. No one honks.

If a Gloucester driver approaches a vehicle from the opposite direction waiting to make a left turn, the Gloucester driver will slow down or stop and wave the other car across its path – especially if other cars are also lining up and blocked by the turning driver.  

Those that don’t yield ‘aren’t from around here.’

A friend once remarked that it is ‘totally ridiculous’ to yield to an approaching left-turning driver if you are the only other car on the road. The other driver can easily wait another minute or two and turn after you pass.  But he didn’t understand the culture of courtesy and the grace of making eye contact, waving a driver through, and receiving a small nod of gratitude in return.  

My friend did not perceive or recognize the unified, coherent, field – of patience and presence that nurtures the greater good – with the knowledge that the driver behind you in the rear-view mirror is also paying attention and will also yield, and not blare the horn at you. Unassisted by tech.

It’s a touchstone – of humanity.

Drivers Not Driven by Time Urgency

I think that one reason why the seaside community offers the gifts of patience, presence, courtesy and Time to others is due to the relationship Gloucester holds with the rhythms of the sea, and the Laws of Nature.

It is about Time… but not the time shown on a cell phone or ‘smart watch’, – the industrialized, inanimate, left-brained averaged form of time -which is a tool to coordinate, manipulate, surveil, control, and monetize the masses, and which is irrelevant to the rhythms of the life force and the cosmic current.

In Gloucester, locals know that the highest tide on Monday is not going to happen at the same time on Friday, or on the same day next month. Fisherman and surfers do not rely only on the Gregorian calendar which rules the modern lifestyle, or a clock out of synch with the sun. They live the rhythms of the full and new moons and the tides. The sky still serves as a timepiece.

Each interaction on and off the roads, every day, is an invitation for connection and collaborative ‘right rhythm,’ which is local, inclusive, relevant, and grounded in biology.

We have been missing the boat.

The Cut Bridge and the Art of Waiting

Drivers in Gloucester cannot predict or control when the cut bridge will need to be raised, temporarily closing the vehicle road as boats travel from the harbor to the Annisquam River, or vice versa.

On a summer day, there can be a very long line of boats and crafts of all sizes. The drivers simply wait, in a most civilized manner. Travelers not impatient and not on devices look out on the horizon where the sea meets the sky, connecting with Nature, – and yielding.

You can watch a 5-minute video of the Blynman Canal Draw Bridge Gloucester MA here – patiently, as if you were a part of the coherent field.

Every horizon, in every moment, can offer a moment of calm and integration, and a reset, not via the World Wide Web, but via coherence with the Web of Life.  

We are reaching a critical choice point.

Those Lost at Sea

I believe there is another reason for Gloucester’s respect for one another and for Nature.

The names of the deceased lost at sea are engraved on the Fisherman’s Memorial, some recent.  “Men [] honored here:  5368”

One of 10 plaques mounted in a semi-circle, with the names of those lost at sea, at the Fishermans’ Memorial in Gloucester MA “Numbers alone can never chronicle the loss of human life, yet the statistics reflect the magnitude of Gloucester’s sacrifice. On these plaques are the names of men known to have been lost. This memorial also stands to honor those men and ships lost without record. Men known to be lost at sea and honored here: 5368 Of the nearly 1,000 ships lost, those lost with all hands: 265, Thousands of widows struggled to survive and raise their children and many of those fatherless children entered the trade of their lost fathers. Between 1860–1906, a staggering 660 ships sank. While many of the fishermen were saved, 3880 men were lost. A single storm in 1862 claimed 15 schooners and 120 men, while another devastating storm in 1879 took the lives of 159 men.”

Maybe these losses are one reason why many locals do not delude themselves into believing that humans, machines, or technology are detached, or separate from, or superior to the natural world. There is no illusion that some portion of humans at a distance, with tech, can or should be in control.

When Exiting a Coherent Field: Harmonizing with Incoherence

It is usually not possible or safe to practice “Gloucester driving courtesies” in other locales, because the coherent, unified cultural field is not present. It is especially not possible when approaching a driverless vehicle, or with a car following too closely behind, or a driver on a device, who is not integrated and present. Off island, over the bridge, safety and courtesy are not sustained by others because ‘the field’ is often one of detachment, rushing, and/or competition.

In living history, over the last few decades, humans have shifted further and further into these incoherent energies.  

It’s about our inattention, distraction, and our devices.

Outsourcing Attention, and Response-Ability

While driving, those rushing, and those on screens, do not recognize that they are outsourcing the responsibility for their safety and the safety of others – to others on the road.

Attentive drivers have to be on the lookout for cars that are not staying in their lane, with drivers who are distracted and in a state of incoherence.  

Technologies, as currently adopted by humans, have created this culture, and it is getting worse, not better, and it’s not only on the roads. 

When in the gym, a portion of patrons will be sitting on machines, texting or scrolling or adjusting their music, oblivious to the effects on others in the space, – who are waiting.

In the grocery store, some portion of shoppers will be talking on the phone or looking at the phone while heading down the aisle, or stopped in front of some section of the store, oblivious to others in the area,  – waiting.

Some portion of walkers on the rail trail will be talking on a cell phone or texting, and looking at their device, outsourcing the responsibility for coherence to others.

By definition, when a human being focuses on a small screen, they are directing their senses away from the outer environment. This narrowed screen-based focus is literally damaging posture and eyesight, including in children. Screen use and social media are also disturbing the balance of brain chemicals serotonin, dopamine, gaba, and acetylcholine.

We are no longer aligning with one another in the present time and place, fully embodied in all of our senses, nurturing the greater good.

The cost of lack of integration with both the inner and outer environment and with each other is unfathomable.  

The number of humans at any one point in time who are wholly aware of their environment, of others, of nature, of their own bodies, is at an all-time low on Earth – due to devices.  

“Smart Meters: My Name is Marguerite”

Over a decade ago, I witnessed coherence, community, and compassion when wireless smart utility meters began to be installed in Maine. A sweet elderly woman contacted our Massachusetts activist group asking for help. She started to suddenly collapse in her kitchen after a wireless smart meter was installed. Her son contacted us also, explaining that she was in her 80’s and perfectly healthy until the day the meter went in. Her family had reached out to many decision makers including industry, ecology groups, and politicians involved with the deployment of smart meters, to no avail.

Her fourteen neighbors, upon hearing her plight, immediately chose to opt out of having a smart meter installed on their homes. They were not willing to accept that the supposed energy and cost savings were worth the price of destroying their neighbor’s health.

This question of smart meter harm should have been addressed decades ago. In the meantime, deployments continue, and decision-makers in some areas are prohibiting the practice of opting out, and/or imposing punitive surcharges.

This represents an incoherent, unstable, unsafe field that must be sustained at great expense, through falsehoods, manipulations, and abuse of power.  

We are safer, in all ways, when everyone is watching out for others and for the coherence of the field, and not lying, exploiting, or treating others as collateral damage. Device use is sustaining an artificial reality about the safety of wireless tech – to sustain wireless tech. AI will not solve this.

The Art of Pausing – With and For Others

What do humans usually do when forced to wait, – that new behavior adopted the last two decades?

Humans detach, and scroll, and text, individually, everywhere.   

We didn’t realize what the consequences were of screen-centric behaviors adopted during the pandemic, and the harm it has caused to the” field” of our consciousness.

Whether intentional or accidental, a growing portion of the population is either drunk or drowning in wireless frequencies, including children.

We face countless choices every day, about how to fill spaces in time.

We have been acculturated to look at a small screen that in itself seeks to manage and control our reality, just as previous generations were acculturated to smoke cigarettes. Both have been justified as beneficial to health.  

Excessive “device-ing” is an increasingly unconscious and addictive choice, altering our reality, not for the better.

Right vs. Left Brained Consciousness

Part of this unbalanced dynamic has been caused by loss of right-brained, holistic processing discussed here recently by Kate Kheel of Safe Tech International.  “The 2009 treatise, ‘The Master and His Emissary, The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World’ by Iain McGilchrist discusses at length how the different world views of the left and right hemispheres of the brain impact us both individually and as a society.

The left sees the world in parts, is detailed oriented, and has a single-minded focus on achieving a given task. In Iain’s words, it favors, “manipulation – grabbing, getting and controlling” and is an inanimate universe. It’s like a map of the world which leaves out the sentience, flavors, and nuance of the actual world. The right hemisphere sees more holistically and senses our interconnectedness with all life. Iain explains, “[It] sees not the representation but the living presence.” The right brain understands that life is ever morphing and evolving, and experiences an animate universe of richness, complexity, potential, and imagination.  In principle, the two sides of the brain complement one another enabling us to go about our daily activities and accomplish necessary tasks (more left brain skillset), while still sensing we are part of a grander interconnected and integrated living system (a right brain skillset).

Iain opines that since the Enlightenment, our Western civilization has moved increasingly to the left (i.e. left-brained thinking), “…drunk on the belief that it knows everything and can fix everything.” – Kate Kheel

(See the 2021 4-minute overview of the book about the asymmetrical brain with Iain Gilchrist here.  See the entire 1-hour interview here.  See the Feb. 2004 46-minute Creed Culture interview with Dr. Iain Gilchrist here. In this episode, Luke and Iain discuss his work, focusing on the importance of rediscovering the sacred, viewing the world holistically, and engaging the imagination alongside our reasoning faculties.”)

AI is a force multiplier of the imbalance between right and left-brain processing.

Replacing ‘Sailing Too Close to the Wind’ with ‘Digital Sobriety’.

There are an increasing number of efforts emerging towards establishing coherent fields, by challenging inaccurate narratives about tech, including wireless.   

# 1 Digital Sobriety, To Protect Nature

Guidelines governing wireless exposures have never considered the effects of RFR on the nature environment.

On April 17, Arthur Firstenberg of the Cellular Phone Tack Force published his alarming narrative “Whirling fish, bees, worms, sheep, turtles, penguins; More Than Fifty Species Of Fish Circling And Spinning Until They Die” culled from reports from the public – i.e. citizen science. See his other newsletters here.

See also: Microwave News

https://microwavenews.com/short-takes-archive/review-emf-and-rf-effects-flora-and-fauna

#2 Digital Sobriety, to Protect Children – It’s Still a Man’s World

Guidelines governing wireless exposures have never considered the effects of RFR on pregnant women, infants, and children.

Read about how cellphones are tested on a dummy – that represents the head of a male military recruit: We Are Not SAM.

Regarding mental health, John Haidt’s “After Babel “ Substack (free to all subscribers) chronicles his extraordinary research around the supposition that “the transformation of society in the 2010s was not caused by anxious college students. They were simply the “canaries in the coal mine” — the first generation whose social lives have moved onto smartphones and social media platforms. As soon as they did so, in the early 2010s, an epidemic of mental illness began.” Learn more here.

#3 Digital Sobriety, Regarding Neurological Health, EHS, Brain Cancer, DNA Damage, and More

Guidelines governing wireless exposures have never considered the non-thermal effects of RFR, assuming that the only mechanism of damage is heat.

See the Bioinitiative Report 2022:

See EMF Medical Conference 2021 59 videos (29 hours) of highly informative expert presentations and panel discussions. Trailer and more details: https://emfconference2021.com/online-cme-ce-courses/

The Return of Reason: Replacing NOMOPHOBIA (Fear of Being Without a Cell Phone) and FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) with LOMO (Less on Line – More on Life)

Those not yet actively questioning technology and technocracy are outsourcing responsibility for the safety of the Earth and humanity to those who are not ready, willing and able to confront an incoherent worldview.

Wireless, in particular, is a harmful environmental pollutant. Nature does not recognize placing radio frequency transmitters on wildlife as conservation, or AI’s grotesque water and energy consumption or carbon credits as progress towards stewardship. Technology harmful to biology is violating the Laws of Nature. Promoting AI alongside scarcity and carbon narratives, and smart grid/smart meter manipulations that deny access to basic services when needed, is obscene.

We face a perilous crossing.

Digital Sobriety and Scientific Diplomacy

As individuals, we can begin reclaiming our own habit fields, to move towards digital sobriety and scientific diplomacy in response to real world damage already unfolding.

Most likely we can and will continue to use devices and technology, but first we need to backtrack to hold ourselves accountable for coherence, true inclusion, and safety.  

From mining to energy consumption to water use to disposal, we have unleashed a tsunami of outsourced damage, with new sights set on colonizing and exploiting space -competitively.

We need to make our choices and decisions about tech more conscious, more inclusive, more ethical, more truthful, and more protective of nature and human health, everywhere.

Screen Time (Perhaps) Can Recede to its Rightful Place

One way to start is to hard wire wherever possible as the first choice (especially in schools), and the minimize using screens and devices when in motion, for example when driving and walking.

There are so many good reasons and opportunities to forgo screens altogether, or to share screen experiences, rather than seeking faster, more ubiquitous wireless connections.

“Red, right, returning.” This Earth Day, more than ever, we need to call ourselves home.

“The real energy crisis, which exists upon this world, is the spiritual energy crisis and if this was solved all other crises would cease to exist” – George King – Western Master of Yoga

Image courtesy EPIC | Electromagnetic Pollution Illnesses Canada Foundation (EPIC) (iexistworld.org) To order bumper stickers and other LOMO items, send an email to epic@iexistworld.org.

Image by congerdesign from Pixabay

Encyclopedia Brittanica describes Love Canal, as “a neighborhood in Niagara Falls, N.Y., U.S., that was the site of the worst environmental disaster involving chemical wastes in U.S. history. The Love Canal area was originally the site of an abandoned canal that became a dumping ground for nearly 22,000 tons of chemical waste (including polychlorinated biphenyls, dioxin, and pesticides) produced by the Hooker Chemicals and Plastics Corporation in the 1940s and ’50s. In the following years, the site was filled in and given by the company to the growing city of Niagara Falls, which allowed housing to be built on it. In 1978, however, state officials detected the leakage of toxic chemicals from underground into the basements of homes in the area.

Subsequent investigations established an abnormally high incidence of chromosomal damage among the area’s residents, presumably caused by their long-term exposure to the toxic chemical wastes. Much of Love Canal was then evacuated, the abandoned land being purchased by the state of New York. The canal was capped and fenced off, and the buildings around it were razed. After protracted litigation, 1,300 former residents of Love Canal agreed to a $20,000,000 settlement of their claims against the Occidental Chemical Corporation, which had taken over Hooker in the late 1960s, and the city of Niagara Falls.”  – Source

The Crucial Role of Citizen Science

The Brittanica narrative fails to describe the revolutionary impact of citizen data-gathering that unfolded over a three- year period in upstate New York, fueled by a mother with a sickly child.

Citizens took science and data collection into their own hands.

The Center for Health, Environment and Justice explains,

“Lois Gibbs was raising her family in Love Canal, near Niagara Falls in upstate New York, in 1978 when she discovered that her home and those of her neighbors were sitting next to 20,000 tons of toxic chemicals. That shocking discovery spurred Lois to lead her community in a three-year struggle to protect their families from the hazardous waste buried in their backyards. By trial and error, Lois and her neighbors developed the strategies and methods to educate and organize the community, assess the impacts of toxic wastes on their health, and challenge corporate and government policies on the dumping of hazardous materials. Her leadership led to the relocation of 833 Love Canal households.[]

Homeowners were never given any warning that their property was located near a chemical waste dump. From the late 1950s through the 1970s, people repeatedly complained of odors and substances surfacing near or in their yards and on the school playground. The city, responding to these complaints, visited the area and covered the “substances” with dirt or clay. []

[ ] Lois began talking with other parents in the neighborhood to see if they were having problems with their children’s health. After speaking with hundreds of people, she realized that the entire community was affected. In June 1978, she started the Love Canal Parents Movement.

On August 2, 1978, the New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) issued a health order recommending that the 99th Street School be closed, that pregnant women and children under the age of two be evacuated, that residents not eat out of their home gardens and that they spend limited time in their basements. A few days later, the state agreed to purchase all 239 homes in the first two rings of homes closest to the canal.- Source

Chemicals were the culprit when Love Canal residents were told not to eat the food growing in their gardens. What happens when the economic growth engine is powered by another environmental exposure impacting gardening – for food?

The European Environment Agency published two volumes of Late Lessons from Early Warnings. Based on case studies and delays in necessary corrective action, in Volume 1(EEA, 2001), twelve key lessons for better decision-making were offered, including

“- Acknowledge and respond to ignorance, as well as uncertainty and risk, in technology appraisal and public policymaking

– Ensure that real world conditions are adequately accounted for in regulatory appraisal

– Ensure use of ‘lay’ and local knowledge, as well as relevant specialist expertise in the appraisal gathering”   – Source: Late lessons from early warnings II – Summary.pdf 

By not accounting for real world conditions and not heeding layperson and local knowledge, the United States and other countries are decades behind in terms of the evolution of radio frequency science and protection of human health and the environment, regarding non-ionizing radiation.

The Pittsfield Tower

During the pandemic, the exact day that a cell tower was activated in a residential neighborhood in Pittsfield, MA, a young girl came downstairs and told her mother that she felt “buzzy” and anxious.  She was correctly describing the experience of being induced by the artificial man-made frequencies that were now blanketing her home and neighborhood, from a Verizon cell tower.

On the one hand, she was housebound by decree; on the other hand, her house, yard, and neighborhood were now making her sick.

She was not the only one who reported symptoms, and the Pittsfield tower is now at the center of on-going legal action involving seventeen nearby residents.  

The Pittsfield Cell Tower – What If You Cannot Grow Your Own Food on Your Own land?  

Although less instantaneous, in addition to health issues, neighbor Charlie Herzig and his wife Judy’s land and garden have also been affected by the cell tower.

As an experienced farmer growing food to support his extended family, Charlie’s story is a cautionary tale extending far beyond one neighborhood.

On March 2^nd Children’s Health Defense TV Good Morning CHD’s Kim Mack Rosenberg interviewed Courtney Gilardi and Charlie Herzog of Pittsfield.

The show can be viewed here: https://live.childrenshealthdefense.org/chd-tv/shows/good-morning-chd/wireless-intrusion/ (Charlie Herzig speaks candidly, starting at about 10 1/2 minutes)

The audio version is here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/08aPj9rnxOBSiB23YwIorr (56 minutes total)

Here is a partial, lightly condensed transcript (by Safe Tech International) of the section of the interview where Charlie described harm to his family’s food supply and his garden.

Charlie’s Garden vs. the Cell Tower

Kim: You’ve worked hard your whole life, including fighting for your country when called, so thank you for your service. You built a house with your own hands, and I understand that you and your wife plan to spend the rest of your lives in this house surrounded by wildlife and wonderful neighbors. So let’s talk first a little bit about the neighborhood situation. I understand you joined the litigation in support of your neighbors, particularly Courtney and her girls, because you hated to see children getting sick as a result of what Verizon was doing with the cell towers so close to a residential neighborhood. Tell me a little bit about your decision to join the litigation and what you hope to have come of this.

Charlie Herzig:  I just can’t see where anybody or any company can ever cause harm to children especially, just in the light of profit. I mean, everybody has the right to have a happy life, and there’s no need for in this day and age to have communication towers that are causing harm to people when they can do it other ways and still accomplish the same thing. And my hope is that at some point this is going to go away, and Courtney and her family can move back into their house. I mean, we have one family that sold already. We have another family that’s selling the house next door to me because they just can’t put up with it anymore. My wife and I are both retired. We built a place to retire out of. And win, lose, or draw, we’re here. We can’t move, so we’re hoping this gets resolved.

Loss of Pollinators

Kim: Thank you. And much appreciate you joining in this litigation. I understand that we mentioned that you built your own home. I understand it’s a self-sustaining house you built with your own hands and that you love the outdoors. You have gardens in your yard. And when you grow food, that food needs pollination. Right?

Charlie Herzig:  Yes.

Kim: They need to be pollinated, lots of these plants. Can you tell me what you’ve seen in terms of what’s happened to wildlife around you since the tower’s activation, everything from large wildlife, like big deer, down to the bees?

The Bees Disappeared First

Charlie Herzig: Well, the first thing that disappeared were the bees. And it was the bees that had hives. I still do get a few, very, very few cellophane bees, which are solitary, that live in the dirt. And obviously, it doesn’t seem to affect them much, but they aren’t very effective at doing my big gardens because I have to, especially all my squash related plants, I have to every morning go down with a small paint brush and pollinate my plants or else all my squash die and rot. That was the first thing.

Disappearing Predators: Hawks, Owls, Fox, Bobcat, Coyotes

And then the predators started disappearing, the hawks, the owls, the fox, the bobcat, the coyotes. All those started disappearing. And my rodent population, the small rodent population, not the rabbits and stuff like that, but the little ones, the mice and the voles and stuff, the ones you can’t really stop even with a small fence, they’d get through. Last year, I lost almost 2/3 of my gardening to small rodents. And that’s one of the things that sustains us and part of our financial existence in our lifestyle.

Kim: And have you noticed the larger wildlife disappearing too?

Charlie Herzig:  Yes. We used to have a lot more deer. I haven’t seen a bear in maybe three years, no, two years. I saw one three years ago, but we used to get them through the yard all the time. And it’s turned into a desert. We used to have flocks of turkeys that would come through the yard that would be as many as 40, 50, in a flock. I haven’t seen a turkey in two years. They’ve just totally avoided the area.

Kim:  So it sounds like your area was very, very abundant with wildlife just a few years ago.

Charlie Herzig:  Yeah.

Hand Pollinating

Kim: You’re pollinating your gardens yourself. You’re not able to rely on bees any longer.

Charlie Herzig: No. No, I can’t. The wind pollinators like peas and beans and things like that, they’re okay. It’s just the ones that have to have some kind of insect to pollinate that I have to do by hand.

Kim : So that’s got to be a tremendous amount of … I’m just imagining going and using a paint brush, as you described, to pollinate your plants-

Charlie Herzig:  Every day [ ] you have to determine what’s a male flower, what’s a female flower, and how to pollinate them.

Kim: And you said this is a garden that you and your wife rely on for-

Charlie Herzig:  And my three kids.

Kim: So this has been a real burden on your and having to do this, and a real challenge I’m sure.

Without Predators the Mice and Voles Population Exploded

Charlie Herzig   Usually, I start running out of food just about the time that I start harvesting in the spring, and I ran out in November this year because of the rodent population that just totally devastated my gardens. They ate everything. And I’m not the type of person that’ll put poison out. I don’t agree with poisoning wildlife. I just try to avoid them as best I can.

Kim: So am I correct that with the decrease in your predators, your hawks, your owls, things that would eat mice and voles, the mice and vole population has-

Charlie Herzig: Exploded. []

Charlie Herzig: I was in the Army. Well, I did what I needed to do. What they asked me to do, I did. And in turn, I believe that we are due a healthy, happy retirement, and a longevity as long as it can be. I just can’t see how the companies, the telecommunication companies, can willingly, knowingly, affect people’s health just for a bottom line.

Charlie Herzig:  [ ] all our computers and TV are hardwired. We removed our smoke detectors, which were wireless. We removed the wifi completely from the house. So everything in the house now is hardwired.

Kim: And when you removed all that, it’s my understanding that both of your symptoms didn’t improve.

Charlie Herzig:  No, they stayed the same.

Kim: Which obviously points to the tower as a causal factor there.

Charlie Herzig:  Yes. []

Kim: And I know this is sort of a little bit secondhand, but you heard from one of your neighbors, who spoke directly with the people constructing the tower that’s near your home, tell me how the workers, what you heard, how the workers described you all, who are living in close proximity to the tower. I understand that it’s at 877 South Street in Pittsfield.

Charlie Herzig:  They called us the cost of doing business and collateral damage. That’s what they said this neighborhood was. And it’s like they know what’s going on, they know what they’re doing, but they do it anyhow. They purposely hurt people for a profit. And that’s just not right on anybody’s mind. You know?

Health Issues

In the CHD interview, Charlie also described the disabling health effects that he and his wife Judy began experiencing, including fatigue, sleep interruption, and ringing in the ears.

(See Physicians for Safe Technology: Cell Tower Radiation Health Effects   and Environmental Health Trust Peer Reviewed Published Research on Cell Tower Radiation, Base Station Radiation and Health Effects)

Note that these symptoms associated with cell towers were reported in France in 2002.

Not Just Cell Towers – When Data is Not Collected There is No Data-Based Decision Making

Cell towers are not the only concern.

Like Lois Gibbs in New York, when Paul Harding started waking up abruptly with his brain racing at 3:15 am, after a smart meter was installed near his bedroom, he found that others were reporting the same thing. See his story here. Reports of smart meter health harm have not been quantified, other than through the efforts of citizen science and advocacy – which has not been recognized or supported by policy makers and denied by industry.

When citizen science and corporate beliefs collide, isn’t it time to pause and ask questions? How much longer and further can society kick the can down the road?

Pollinators can’t shield their homes. And humans shouldn’t have to.

This is the 3^rd article in an ongoing series by Safe Tech International highlighting first person accounts of harm to the natural environment caused by wireless technologies.

DNA and Developmental Damage from Cell Towers on the Greek Island of Samos: Effects on Insects, Flowers and Vegetables featured Diana Kordas’ observations. “When 4G came in, we saw big declines in many species of insects, among them fireflies and certain types of spiders, which seemed to vanish overnight.5 6And it was after 4G came in that in one area of our property we started to see carrion flies with damaged wings. Some of these flies had deformed wings, some had vestigial wings, and some had no wings at all. For generation after generation, they have bred and produced more flies with the same defects. By now, the number of carrion flies in this area has fallen dramatically.”

Equinox Elephant in the Ecosystem: Dying Plants and Trees vs. Wireless Antennas featured the work of German researcher Cornelia Waldmann-Selsam, including one-sided and crown damage in trees in locations of high RF readings. About 1920 electrical engineers discovered that trees act as receiving antennas of radio waves. From 2004 different research groups have published effects on germination, growth and cellular metabolism in laboratory experiments. Research findings and observations that have been emerging since the 1930s as well as our own on-site visits to damaged trees provided the impetus to our tree documentations over many years, including RF measurements, and our study. In the vicinity of all mobile phone base stations we visited, we found RF radiation-related tree damage.”

Did You Know? FCC: A Complete Failure to Respond to Comments Concerning Environmental Harm Caused by RF Radiation

In 2021, “The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in the historic case EHT et al. v. the FCC that the December 2019 decision by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to retain its 1996 safety limits for human exposure to wireless radiation was “arbitrary and capricious.”  The court held that the FCC failed to respond to “record evidence that exposure to RF radiation at levels below the Commission’s current limits may cause negative health effects unrelated to cancer.” Further, the agency demonstrated “a complete failure to respond to comments concerning environmental harm caused by RF radiation.” – Source

To learn more about the Pittsfield Tower lawsuit, see the CHD television show 15-year-old Activist Stands Up to Big Telecom or listen here.  

Pittsfield Massachusetts Cell Tower Community Links:

http://www.stoptower.com

https://www.change.org/p/pittsfield-city-council-stop-the-pittsfield-cell-tower

http://www.facebook.com/pittsfieldcell