MAKE IT 13; A COVEN 

Reform the Supreme Court

BY FARRAH HASSENFacebookTwitte

\Reddit\\Em

Photograph Source: Mark Dixon – CC BY 2.0

Regardless of anyone’s views on abortion, the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson took away a reproductive right that a half-century of hard-fought judicial precedent had determined was constitutionally protected.

In doing so, the court set a dangerous precedent — that a person’s rights can be taken away.

Overturning Roe v. Wade was a triumph of politics and ideology over constitutional principles. It diminished the power and equality of women, along with transgender men and non-binary people, to make informed decisions about their own bodies without fear of government intrusion.

The opinion itself fails as an application of long-standing constitutional law. The justices arbitrarily discarded precedents they opposed, like Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, threatening the role of precedent in ensuring legal stability.

They selectively reasoned in Dobbs that abortion law should be left to the states, but conveniently did not grant that same level of deference when they declared a New York law unconstitutional for limiting concealed weapons.

This is hardly the first time that the ideologies of Supreme Court justices have shaped their decisions.

Preeminent constitutional law scholar Erwin Chemerinsky noted in his June 24 Los Angeles Times column, “From the 1890s until 1936, the court had a very conservative majority and declared unconstitutional over 200 federal, state, and local laws protecting workers and consumers.”

By contrast, the Warren court from 1954 until 1969 had the court’s only liberal majority, and “its decisions were progressive in a way never otherwise seen in American history.”

The Warren court famously overturned Plessy v. Ferguson with its Brown v. Board of Education decision, thus ending discriminatory “separate but equal” laws. But unlike Dobbs, the court in Brown overturned precedent to expand rights, not take them away.

Millions of people across the country are already experiencing the ramifications of Dobbs as Republican-controlled states systemically outlaw reproductive rights. Around 26 states, most in the Midwest and South, are expected to ban or severely restrict access to abortion.

In this strange, post-Roe America, accessing guns and controlling women’s bodies take priority over health care, housing, paid leave, and other rights needed to truly protect a “right to life.”

Even worse, the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe could signal a rollback of the fundamental right to privacy.

This right protects the use of contraceptives under Griswold v. Connecticut and same-sex marriage under Obergefell v. Hodges, among other protections. Although the Dobbs majority opinion ostensibly applied to abortion, this would not stop the current or a future court from reconsidering these precedents as well.

A strong majority of Americans support keeping abortion legal, according to Gallup and other polls. Gallup also found in 2021 that only 25 percent of the American public have confidence in the Supreme Court — the lowest approval rating in history for the court’s nine unelected, lifetime members.

Congress also shares blame. Democrats were quick to fundraise on the abortion issue for upcoming elections but they have not prioritized reproductive rights in the past. Meanwhile, Republicans are imposing conservative religious views on a country founded on the separation of church and state.

The Supreme Court may have the power to interpret the Constitution, but it is not above it. Congress has the authority to place a much-needed check on an increasingly unbalanced court such as by imposing term limits, adopting an ethics code, and impeaching justices to ensure accountability.

The end of Roe should also foster a larger discussion on the imperfections of our political system and the dire need for greater democracy. These structural cracks transcend any individual Supreme Court decision or president.

The Constitution begins with “We the People of the United States,” because we are ultimately responsible for realizing its promise. A right that can be revoked isn’t a right. It takes the sustained action of people to attain that more perfect and just union.

Farrah Hassen, J.D., is a writer, policy analyst, and adjunct professor in the Department of Political Science at Cal Poly Pomona.

Abolish the CIA

BY EVE OTTENBERGFacebook

TwitterRedditEmail

Richard Helms in the White House Cabinet Room, March 27, 1968. Photo: White House.

Just about every lousy U.S. foreign policy escapade from the 1950s to the late ‘70s traces back to the CIA. From the catastrophic1953 coup of Iranian president Mohammad Mossadegh, the 1954 regime change of Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz for daring to step on United Fruit’s toes, the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the many, some of them quite ridiculous, attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro, South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem’s demise, a possible right-wing Cuban link to the JFK assassination, the murder of Chilean general Rene Schneider and the overthrow of Chilean president Salvador Allende, the Watergate break-in and much, much more – the CIA’s fingerprints were all over these crimes. It got so bad that two high-level, echt-centrist government officials called for scrapping the CIA: senator Patrick Moynihan in 1995 and president Harry Truman in 1963. They were right.

A new book proves it. Jefferson Morley’s Scorpion’s Dance, the President, the Spymaster and Watergate, details decades of CIA funny-business, and there was loads of it. Indeed, if you ever wonder how the world got to be such a mess and who’s responsible, read this book. And there’s no reason to believe the nonsense has stopped or that somehow, despite the Taliban, the CIA is just quietly minding its own business and watering its poppy fields in Afghanistan.

No. The CIA trained terrorists throughout the greater Middle East and Nazis in Ukraine. They’re still at it, though their adventures on Russia’s border make for by far the most deadly possible disaster in a history riddled with them, for the simple reason that the Russia caper could go nuclear at any time. From the way they’ve behaved, it’s almost as if that’s what the CIA wants. If Biden can control the agency and avert nuclear winter and radioactive global mass death, I’ll be very impressed.

Morley’s book focuses on the relationship between president Richard Nixon and CIA director Richard Helms. Their somewhat uncomfortable, edgy teamwork led to debacles domestic and foreign. With Nixon’s approval, Helms illegally spied on the antiwar movement. Meanwhile the CIA-assisted the murder of General Schneider – because he supported a civilian transfer of power and would not undo Allende’s legitimate presidency, something which profoundly affronted the testy pride of Nixon and his advisor Henry Kissinger – encouraged fascist killers to go after Allende himself. It signaled that the U.S. not only would not stop their excesses, but also supported them.

 And Chile did not even threaten any vital American interest. It was of international insignificance to Washington. But Morley observes: “Chile mattered as Cold War theater.” And the U.S. stole the show. The anti-Allende coup provided a stellar performance of how Nixon and Helms deployed the CIA to the ruin of freedom, fairness, democracy and decency. It ushered in decades of overt fascism under Pinochet. But U.S. elites considered this worth it. Managing the public perception that Washington was winning the cold war remained paramount, and the gaudier the exhibition, the better.

This was and remains typical. Washington believes it must be seen as winning and its enemies as utterly depraved. “There is no disputing that the idea of staging a spectacular crime,” Morley writes, “and blaming it on Cuba as a way of overthrowing Castro was in circulation at the highest levels of the Pentagon and CIA in mid-1963.” Sound familiar? Substitute Russia for Cuba and Putin for Castro and you’ll see little has changed in 50 years. The CIA owns a very skimpy playbook, peppered almost exclusively with failed strategies, but this failure never seems to stop the agency from repeating the same idiocy, hoping for a different result – Einstein’s definition of insanity. And by that rule, Helms was one of the craziest of all. “Helms, like Nixon, favored action. Communism, they believed, had to be resisted everywhere.” Even with the manifest fiasco of Vietnam, Helms and Nixon still doubled-down on the strategy. Now, communism in the twenty-first century may be in retreat, but the fanatical, paranoid sense of a threat to America saturates Washington’s upper echelons. That combined with other governmental maladies is toxic.

“One of the chief legacies of Nixon and Helms was cynicism,” Morley writes, and later of the American people: “In the absence of a credible explanation of Kennedy’s death, mistrust of government exploded and conspiratorial thinking was legitimized.” And who’s to say it wasn’t legitimate? The CIA, the mafia, the anti-Castro Cubans all hated Kennedy, and their skullduggery all intertwined. Indeed, Robert Kennedy assumed some such lethal combo killed his brother, but Morley notes, he could not act on it until he became president. He very conveniently didn’t. And the JFK assassination was swept under the rug. As Morley writes of French president Charles De Gaulle: “Not long after Dallas, he predicted that American officialdom would shy from investigating the enigmatic crime of Dallas. ‘They don’t want to know,’ De Gaulle said. ‘They don’t want to find out. They won’t allow themselves to find out.’”

The late 1970s Frank Church congressional committee investigation of CIA and FBI abuses marked the zenith of government efforts to drag these shadowy criminal enterprises into the light. It’s been steeply downhill and a plunge into darkness ever since. After 9/11 came the insane war on terror, when things got much worse. With carte blanche from the George “Mission Accomplished” Bush administration, the CIA tortured innocent people at black sites all over the world. These pointless and gruesome atrocities were never prosecuted. In fact, Barak “I’m Good at Killing People,” Obama deliberately swept them under the rug and matters only deteriorated during his reign. But they plummeted to rock bottom under Joe “Russian Regime Change” Biden: Thanks to CIA and U.S. special forces in Ukraine, humanity gets to peer over the abyss at nuclear annihilation.

According to the New York Times June 25, “some CIA personnel have continued to operate in [Ukraine] secretly, mostly in the capital, Kyiv, directing much of the vast amounts of intelligence the United States is sharing with Ukrainian forces.” Because the Russians, of course, know this, it is a recipe for nuclear Armageddon. If the CIA pulls that off, that will be its worst atrocity yet, far, incomparably worse than its possible involvement in Kennedy’s assassination.

Biden proclaims he wants to avoid World War III, but his actions tell a different story. This is something for which he will pay at the polls in 2022 and 2024, but that is cold comfort. We could all be dead by then on account of his nuclear brinksmanship. “As usual it appears that the administration wants to have it both ways: assure the American people that it is being ‘restrained’ and that we are not ‘at war’ with the Russians, but doing everything but planting a U.S. soldier and flag inside Ukraine,” wrote Kelley Vlahos in the June 27 Responsible Statecraft. The Quincy Institute’s “George Beebe…wonders if Washington even knows how far it is going here.” It probably doesn’t and thus plays an iniquitously cavalier game with the fate of humanity. Who’s rolling the dice in that game? The CIA of course, just the sort of amoral gang dedicated to its own perpetuation regardless of cost that you don’t want anywhere near the borders of a nuclear-armed nation.

This is the agency Helms bequeathed us: Violent, criminal, secretive, lawless, it is an agglomeration of murderers and torturers who rampage across the globe with impunity. Former CIA director Mike Pompeo boasted of the agency that “We lied, we cheated, we stole.” Those, unfortunately, are merely the agency’s misdemeanors. It’s the felonies that should worry you. The CIA not only collaborates with Nazis, it trains them. And it does so right under the nose of a country deeply, tectonically offended by Nazism and, it happens, armed with more nuclear warheads than the U.S. So currently, the CIA flirts with the ultimate genocide, the extinction of the human species. It is an instrument of evil incarnate. Dissolve it.

Eve Ottenberg is a novelist and journalist. Her latest book is Hope Deferred. She can be reached at her website.

EMF Electromagnetic Fields Forever

BY KATHY DEACON

LONG READ
Facebook

TwitterRedditEmai

Power corridor near Rainier, Oregon. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

I

In the winter of 2001, the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH)—an organization established by trade unionists and health and safety activists to promote the implementation of the 1970 Occupational Health and Safety Act (OSHA) in the workplace–visited the Village Voice to measure the electromagnetic fields in some of the work areas.

In 1979, Nancy Wertheimer and Ed Leeper’s groundbreaking study had found a compelling association between childhood cancer and the “electrical current configuration” of houses in Denver, Colorado–it was followed by other studies with similar results. In the succeeding decades, EMFs received a fair amount of media attention. Those directly concerned with the problem—such as public health advocates and residents of communities where children lived near power lines—complained no action was being taken. The utilities countered with ridicule and accusations of fearmongering.

In June of 2001, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), an agency of the World Health Organization (WHO), finally weighed in, classifying EMFs as “possibly carcinogenic” (a 2b hazard) on the basis of “limited” evidence concerning childhood leukemia. However, many experts were unhappy with this nebulous 2b classification and believed the available evidence warranted a stronger response.

”Four milligauss is when you have to begin to worry,” the NYCOSH representative said. The reading he found at my desk was 11 mg. But at the editorial reception desk facing the second-floor elevator it was 15mg (about the average occupational dose of a utility lineman), and higher still upstairs near a refrigerated area containing the Voice’s old main-frame computer.

 Although these unexpectedly high readings didn’t set off any alarm bells at the Voice, as soon as I purchased an F.W. Bell triaxial gaussmeter, a number of coworkers asked to borrow it so they could quantify the newly revealed risk in their apartments. (Of course I had surveyed my own and was reassured to find the levels there safely below 1 mg.)

However one evening on my way home from work, as I stood on the sidewalk waiting for the light to change, I happened to glance down at the meter–and noticed it registered an alarming 30 mg–and when I got to the middle of the street–a phenomenal 82 mg!

Outside the Barnes and Noble on Union Square, the EMFs measured 65 mg, and in the vestibule–where a mother and child huddled to get out of the cold–25 mg. A guard stationed just inside the entrance bathed in a steady field of 15 mg, and not until I reached the middle of the store did the large black digits on the face of the gaussmeter drop to between 1.1 and 1.2 mg—a reassuringly low level. But in the center of the main floor of ABC Carpet the EMF measurement was 12 mg.

On every street and sidewalk, the EMFs far exceeded supposedly safe levels—sometimes by 20 times or more.

    When I phoned the NYCOSH rep the next day to describe the details of my evening stroll, he just laughed and said, “I know.” Occupational health and safety experts, it turns out, had long been aware that high-current wires under the city streets–leading into and out of step-down transformers under virtually every city block–created EMF “hot spots” all over town.

However, he said a threshold appears to be reached beyond which higher fields don’t necessarily have an increased biological effect.

At any rate, given the intense controversy over power lines in suburban schoolyards—it seemed odd the (unshielded) ones beneath the city streets and sidewalks had escaped public attention. It occurred to me to write an article about it for the Voice.

I found an editor who was enthusiastic about the idea. “Jeezus,” he said. “That sounds like a great story.” But he insisted I pitch it to the editor-in-chief myself.

He became serious and matter-of-fact after I told him I was given a 1000-word assignment—approaching it with total gravity, as though it were his own byline at stake.

“I forgot to mention when we spoke yesterday–there’s someone you need to contact right away. His name is Roy; he’s from an organization called the Chelsea Alliance—they’re fighting to prevent Con Edison from constructing a block-long power plant [in a semi-residential area, on the site of a popular flea market]. Their objection to the substation is that it would introduce these high electromagnetic fields you’re taking about.”

“I should definitely mention it in my piece,” I said.

“Mention it? I’d think you’d want to do more than mention it. . . . This isn’t a science journal, you know—it’s a newspaper. I can’t see anything so far that would make your article especially timely now. For the Voice, you’ll need a hook to make it relevant.”

(To me, the existence of these fields all over the city was as “newsy” as you could get.)

When I called Roy, he described the struggle his group had been waging against Con Ed for the better part of a decade. He was surprised to hear about my city sidewalk measurements, having thought such high EMF levels occurred only in the vicinity of substations.  I arranged to meet him outside his building.

He had given me the address of a dilapidated walkup on West 24^th St. When I arrived I entered the vestibule, rang the bell, and was immediately buzzed in.

As I started up the shabby gray carpeted steps, a sneakered man with shaggy brown hair came bounding down.

I said, “I’ve brought along the gaussmeter.”

 He asked if he could borrow it for a moment to check out his apartment and was back in a matter of seconds, tripping down the steps, and I followed him out the door.

It’s 26 milligauss here,” he said standing just outside the entrance and gestured toward an empty parking lot.

“That’s where Con Ed wants to put the substation. Unfortunately it’s going to abut the wall of my apartment. .. . Con Edison claims there will be about 45 milligauss coming out of the walls of the substation, but they can shield it and get it down to 4 mg.”

“Four milligauss–that’s still the dose they say may cause cancer.”

 “I know, and here’s the thing . . . Back in 1992, at a hearing on a proposal to expand another substation at 40^thStreet, Con Ed estimated there would be 125 mg fields coming from the rear wall. And they were claiming then that they didn’t have the technology to shield it.”

“So this 45 mg estimate they are giving you is pure bullshit?”

“That would appear to be the case.”

“And the technology to shield it still isn’t there?”

“Oh maybe, I don’t know. But it would be very expensive—and I just can’t see Con Ed footing the bill. Most metals won’t do the trick—you need to have just the right combination of aluminum sheets and aluminum alloys or steel, ferromagnetic and other metals. It’s difficult work and very often isn’t done properly.”

“And if it weren’t done properly?”

“They’d just say, ‘Sorry.’ We would have no recourse to agencies or to regulations of any kind. The ones that are currently on the books deal only with acute effects of high-voltage transmission lines.”

We slowly began walking west on 24^th Street, toward a growing crowd of young people. The building they are leaning and standing in front of is the Gay Men’s Health Crisis. “Sixty-five milligauss,” Roy says, glancing at the meter.

“Yo, Roy,” someone says. Everyone turns and looks over. But Roy is preoccupied, due perhaps to the high street-level readings and his sudden understanding that this proposed substation is but the head of an octopus in an endless sea of these creatures.

 Altogether my article is shaping up nicely. I have discussed it on the phone with Louis Slesin, the editor of Microwave News (microwavenews.com), who is very supportive and faxes me copies of research studies. By contrast, Con Ed’s response comes across as bland, evasive boilerplate.

Nevertheless, as I keyboard the piece into the Voice’s Atex system and then message the editor, my optimism is tempered by a slight feeling of dread.

The next morning, when I call up my article, a note from him at the top, highlighted in bold caps, gives me a jolt:

KATHY, I THOUGHT DURING OUR DISCUSSION WE AGREED THAT THE PUBLIC HEARING ABOUT THE SUBSTATION WAS TO COME AT THE BEGINNING OF THE PIECE. YOU PUT IT AT THE END, ALMOST AS AN AFTERTHOUGHT. I CAN’T EMPHASIZE STRONGLY ENOUGH THAT THE SUBSTATION HAS TO BE THE FOCUS OF YOUR ARTICLE. I SUGGEST YOU MOVE IT TO THE LEDE.

I call and leave a brief message on his voicemail.

The phone rings around 10:30.

“Kathy, I got your message. I can’t believe you’re doing this. Believe me there’s absolutely no way they will run your article without a news hook. I thought we’d been over this. The hearing absolutely has to come first.”

While hardly prepared to abandon my original theme–including the question of how EMFs under city sidewalks might affect the homeless—I revise the piece. I put the hearing in the lede and then go on to describe the substation a bit further down. The final edit proceeds smoothly. The editor is cordial and reserved and when we’ve finished he tells me I’ve written a fine piece.

On Friday evening, it is in the features queue.

On Monday, as soon as I log on, I check just to be sure. Yes, 5Deacon—which is how they’ve slugged my piece—is running.

Around four or five, I go over to Starbucks, and when I come back, routinely check the lineup again—but this time I have to look twice. My piece, “5Deacon,” is in notes form—which means it’s been placed on hold.

My first response is to call the editor. I dial his number, get his tape. Unable to continue copy editing, I make my way over to Starbucks again, plant myself down in the window, watch the animated crowds, and mechanically circle the block. When I get back to the Voice, he has still not returned my call.

I phone a second time. This time he picks up; his hello is groggy and breathless.

“I got your message,” he says. “It sounds as if they’re holding your piece.”

I head for the smoker—it truly reeks in there, but it’s the only place you can go to sit down. I come upon a young editor.

He says, “You look really beat.”

I tell him my article was killed.

“Maybe they’ll run it next week.”

“It won’t be timely then. The hearing will be over.”

“Why don’t you just put it on the Web site?”

Was it really as simple as that? It certainly would have been lovely seeing my byline in the print edition, but these days readers did increasingly turn to the paper’s Web site.

When the editor comes in, I say, “Look, can’t we just run it on the Web?” He says, “Huh? . . . Oh sure, no problem.” So at nine o’clock that evening, my piece appears on the Voice’s Web site as the lead feature. It’s the best way anyone could have chosen to publicize the hearing.

II

Flash forward to 2022. A mammoth truck pulls up in front of our house. Three men wearing shirts with IBEW logos get out; they explain they’re putting in new utility poles—which they proceed to do.

It’s heartening to find organized workers at one’s doorstep–I mention the EMFs emitted from the lines. Living in involuntary proximity to a distribution power line for the past 20 years, there’s been no escape from EMFs. I’ve read how they cause oxidative stress; and can reasonably be presumed to result in adverse health effects if the exposures are prolonged or chronic. One of the men says, “It’s not electromagnetic radiation you have to worry about. It’s microwaves and radiofrequency radiation.” The others agree.

Radiofrequency (RF) radiation from long-term cell phone use is associated with gliomas and acoustic neuromas–I know that–but what does this have to do with the power line? [Months later–after noticing small metal boxes popping up on utility poles and learning that Verizon and some of the other networks are rolling out 5g here on the North Fork I finally understand. As each and every cell phone company installs its own separate antennae every two or three blocks–there will be no escape from interconnectivity– or RF radiation–in the coming “Internet of Things.”]

Standing just under these new 5g antenna boxes with my own Cornet Electrosmog meter (which measures RFR (coming just before microwave radiation on the gamut ranging from EMF to gamma radiation), I observe the meter shows no response. Could it be the antennae are not yet hooked up? On the other hand, when the meter is placed near my 6s iPhone, it flashes wildly—triple-red, triple-yellow, yellow-red, yellow—lighting up like a Christmas tree whenever I click on any new icon or a Web site. Eventually, as I settle down to read, it settles back on green (safe) as long–as I do not initiate any new activity.  My husband’s iPhone 7, however, is another matter—it keeps blinking red for some time after he shuts it off. The really frightening thing—on both phones:  Even at a distance of two or three feet, the meter’s red light (danger signal) flashes. It’s been pointed out cell phone companies don’t own up to the true amount of RF radiation their phones are emitting (measured in SAR [Specific Absorption Rate] testing, which uses models of the human head and body filled with liquids that simulate the RF absorption of different tissues)—even their self-reported measurements are higher than what the FCC recommends (see Sam Roe, Chicago Tribune, August 21, 2019). And the newer phones appear to be just as bad. Some speculate the recent unexplained rise in colorectal cancer among young people could be related to habitually carrying phones in their pants pockets.]

On top of all this, I still worry about EMFs from the low-voltage distribution line just outside my door. The WHO maintains that current research does not confirm the existence of any health consequences.

One of their reassuring “fact sheets,” (Q&A 2016), claims that residential power-line exposure usually falls below 2 mg—and people tend not to reside in the same houses for very long. Aren’t they overlooking all the homes situated near low-voltage distribution lines? It was upon just such homes—in which EMF levels are much, much higher than 2 mg–that Wertheimer and Leeper—and other scientists studying childhood leukemia—built their research.

Louis Slesin, the editor of Microwave News (microwavenews.com)—a Nader-like figure in the realm of low-level radiation–observed a while back that “the public has been misled time and time again . . . by those who are supposed to serve as the world’s experts and to protect us from EMF/RF hazards: the members of the International Commission of Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection, ICNIRP for short.”

The WHO’s 1996 International EMF Project–initiated and managed by Dr. Michael Repacholi–conducted its scientific work in collaboration with the ICNIRP, an independent nonprofit that Repacholi himself also chaired for many years. Critics charge his dogmatic position that EMFs have no biological effect except for a purely thermal effect long put a damper on scientific research. Perhaps it’s not surprising, since from the outset industry was always a partner at the table.

A major article by Mark Hertsgaard and Mark Dowie in the March 29, 2018, issue of the Nation (“How Big Wireless Made Us Think That Cell Phones Are Safe: A Special Investigation”) details how Motorola funded Repacholi’s research when he was director of the WHO’s EMF program. “Motorola’s payments were bundled with other industry contributions and funneled through the Mobile and Wireless Forum, a trade association that gave the WHO’s program $150,000 annually. In 1999, Repacholi helped engineer a WHO statement that ‘EMF exposures below the limits recommended in international guidelines do not appear to have any known consequence on health.’”

A similar pattern of corporate interference recurred in the WHO’s response to RF from wireless communication. In 2000, the IARC Interphone study into possible links between cell phones and two forms of brain cancer received 20 percent of its $24 million budget from wireless trade associations. Although the study found the heaviest cell phone users were 80 percent more likely to develop glioma, the industry’s Cellular Telecommunication and Internet Association managed to convey a sense of ambiguity about the findings when they spun it to the media. And the work of scientists such as Lennart Hardell, whose studies produced important evidence about the effects of cell phone radiation, was denigrated by industry-funded scientists.

Just as industry funding helped prepare the groundwork for EMFs’ classification in 2001 as a 2b “possible” carcinogen, it also paid off big-time in 2011—when the WHO met in Lyon, France, to discuss how to classify the cancer risk posed by cell phones. With industry-funded experts on its working group—and their additional “invited specialists” advising the group–the working group classified cell phones as only a 2B (possible)— and not a 2A (probable)–carcinogen. In the decade leading up to this, industry-funded scientists had placed pressure on colleagues—and attacked those investigating the effects of radiation.

As Hertsgaard and Dowie write, “That result [the 2b classification] enabled the industry to continue proclaiming that there was no scientifically established proof that cell phones are dangerous.”

In 2016, a U.S. government initiative— the National Toxicology Program (NTP) strengthened the case for reclassifying RF radiation as a “probable” carcinogen when it found that male rats exposed to cell-phone radiation developed cancer. But two years later, in 2018, when a former drug company executive took over leadership of the program under the Trump administration, the senior scientist directing the study backtracked; and using essentially the same data, they claimed there wasn’t any risk.

As the actual signals and durations relevant to chronic exposure from mobile communication evolve and greatly intensify—and remain unexamined–a precautionary approach is called for. A significant number of experts believe that EMF and RFR likely pose health risks and more research is needed. Yet the government/industry policy is to roll out 5g first and investigate later, if at all.

Several months back, I emailed Louis Slesin about electric cars–an integral part of our renewable future—that will hopefully help to save the planet from fossil fuels. I asked him if manufacturers will make any effort to shield EC passengers (I’ve read they can be exposed to complex combinations of RFR and microwaves as well as EMFs), and does it matter whether or not they do.

Louis Slesin: “At this point no auto company that I am aware of even acknowledges the issue. The only company I have ever heard of taking it seriously is Volvo and that was a long, long time ago.

“The richest man on the planet is building cars that will expose passengers to complex EMFs. And there is no evidence that he or his company is taking the problem seriously. If Musk spent as much time even considering the issue as he does cryptocurrencies, we might have some answers!

“As far as I can tell he and Tesla simply ignore the issue, as do the other auto makers.

“In the future, I would bet, all cars will be electric.

“And you are right about the field effects being non-linear. I am working on a story about this right now. A paper came out a couple of weeks ago that clearly show that the lowest fields can sometimes cause the largest effects.

“Non-linear effects came up during the peer review of the NTP study [The $30 million National Toxicology Program animal study of RF-cancer link].

“As for your last Q, whether any of this matters. I don’t know, but it should be investigated.”

Kathy Deacon can be reached at stradella3@msn.com.

Uncertainty and Hope Set the Stage for Colombia’s Future Leftist Government

BY ANTHONY PAHNKEFacebook

TwitterRedditEmail

A former leftwing guerrilla – Gustavo Petro – has been elected to Colombia’s highest office.

What is clear is that Petro has left his revolutionary past behind him. The group of which he was part – M-19 – negotiated pardons from the Colombian government for its members before becoming a political party in the late 1980’s. Since then, Petro himself became firmly committed to electoral politics, serving as mayor of Bogotá twice, and running for President of Colombia three times before winning in his last attempt.

What is not so certain is Colombia’s political future.

More to the point – the historical absence of the left in governing the country, a complicated party system, as well as years of mass demonstrations, present distinct challenges for the incoming administration. Still, there is reason to be hopeful, as well as excited, concerning Colombia’s prospects.

One reason for uncertainty involves the somewhat unique political path that Colombia has taken.

Specifically, there was Chávez in Venezuela, along with Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and Bolivia’s Evo Morales, who were considered part of what in the 2000’s became known as Latin America’s “Pink Tide.” Leftist in orientation, while varying from the more radical approach seen in Venezuela, to the reformist direction taken in Brazil, these governments defied US influence and turned away from neoliberal policies that had characterized the region’s politics for most of the 1980’s and 1990’s.

Colombia swam against the “Pink Tide.”

To illustrate, compare some of the initiatives that were led by Colombia’s former rightwing President, Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010), with what Rafael Correa (2007-2017) did in neighboring Ecuador.

Uribe, for instance, accepted billions of dollars in US military aid – part of Plan Colombia – to fight his country’s decades long civil war against leftist insurgents. Additionally, Uribe granted the US access to multiple military bases and promoted free trade deals between the two countries.

Correa, who became President in 2007, had the US vacate a military base. Instead of seeking out more free trade deals, the Ecuadorian President had his country quit one.

Quite simply, what leftwing rule will look like in Colombia is unclear.

Far from an aberration, Uribe’s time in power was part of the country’s experience of decades under rightwing leadership.

One reason for this dynamic is found in how Colombia’s party system developed over time.

Beginning in the 1950’s, two parties – the Colombian Conservative Party and the Colombian Liberal Party – alternated in power for the rest of the twentieth century. Controlling elections, as well as political appointments throughout government, Colombia’s party duopoly was elitist and exclusionary. In part, the political alienation that this system caused contributed to the rise of leftist guerrilla movements in the 1960’s. Central among these groups was FARC – (Las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia/The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia).

Uribe, while rightwing in terms of his politics, did not belong to either of the two dominant parties. This was part of his allure – as an outsider, it was thought that he could pacify the leftwing guerrillas, rightwing paramilitary groups, and drug cartels that were violently destroying the country. The results of his efforts are mixed, as while Colombia is more secure than before coming to power, Uribe’s government was racked by corruption scandals and connected to human rights abuses.

Regardless, with Uribe, Colombia’s party duopoly collapsed. Evidence is seen in the most recent 2022 elections to Colombia’s House of Representatives and Senate, where sixteen different parties gained seats.

The point is that governing in such a system can be tricky. Known as Coalitional Presidentialism, leaders who become President must negotiate with multiple competing parties to forward a common policy agenda. Not only is it difficult to bridge differences, but a President must negotiate with rivals who themselves may want to take charge someday.

What adds still more uncertainty to the present Colombian political moment are the string of protests that have unfolded over the past few years.

Demands for an increase in spending on education and healthcare, as well as general discontent over the slow implementation of the peace accords with FARC, were catalysts to the widespread demonstrations that began in 2019 before simmering down early in 2020. Student groups, labor unions, and Indigenous-led organizations were among those protesting. Queer and trans youth, as well, emerged as leaders in the actions. With the COVID-19 pandemic slowing the protests, a proposed tax reform triggered a renewal of demonstrations in 2021.

From how to navigate a complex party system, to responding to the demands of protestors, this is the complicated political context where Petro finds himself.

However daunting, this moment is also exciting, with the incoming President making various commitments, including transitioning the state-run oil company into the production of renewable energy and reexamining Colombia’s trade deals with the United States. He also has pledged to address inequality by raising taxes on unproductive, large-scale landholdings and providing free education.

The boldness of Petro’s proposals, as well as the tenacity that he has shown in vying for the Presidency on three separate occasions, shows a leader seriously committed to change. Popular support appears in his favor, from the streets, to the ballot box. For far too long, rightwing rule has unjustly subjected too many Colombians to violence, political exclusion, and poverty.

For these reasons, there’s hope.

Anthony Pahnke is a Professor of International Relations at San Francisco State University. His research covers development policy and social movements in Latin America. He can be contacted at anthonypahnke@sfsu.edu