Mainstream media finally reporting the truth about cell phones

Recently, the news media has reported on a Swedish study, which showed a five-fold increase in malignant brain tumours among young people who used a cell phone for at least a year before the age of 20. This study was included in the peer-reviewed journal, *Pathophysiology, along with 15 other studies from researchers in six different countries, which all showed cause for concern. As in the past, Health Canada reaffirmed its position that it “currently sees no scientific reason to consider the use of cell phones as unsafe. There is no convincing evidence of increased risk of disease from exposure to radio frequency electromagnetic fields from cell phones.”

This is hard to fathom, as all of the independent studies tracking those who used cell phones for over 10 years show increased risk – all of them. Health Canada was also privy to data from the six-year, $28.5 million research program by the North American wireless industry, which showed single and double strand DNA breakage and damage to cell nuclei from cell phone use way back in 1999.

With millions of Canadians using cell phones, and with parents providing their children phones for “safety,” Health Canada has a duty to take action to protect all of us. It took decades for [Health Canada] to raise the alarm about tobacco. Children and parents can’t afford to wait decades for warnings about products from an industry that uses the tobacco [industry’s] public relations playbook.

– Milt Bowling, president and CEO
Clean Energy Foundation

(*L.Hardell, etal., Epidemiological evidence for an association between use of wire less phones and tumor diseases, Pathophysiology(2009),doi:10.1016/j.pathophys.2009.01.003)

Common Ground the first to report cell phone hazards

I was thrilled to see a full-page photo, with headlines linking brain tumours to teen cell phone use, on the cover of The Province on March 16. Finally, mainstream media is also reporting on the hazards of cell phone use. This is cause for celebration.

Many of us are overwhelmed with information coming at us from all directions, most of it contradictory. My son exclaimed recently, “Everything seems bad for you.” He is not alone with this thought. It takes multiple exposures to the truth for a message to take effect and it is so much more effective if relayed by those with significant public standing or respect.

Hats off to Common Ground magazine for being the forerunner in its bang-on reporting of many pertinent issues, with articles about PharmaCare’s drug addiction bankrupting public health to Twin Towers of Deception [September 2006] to Make Water a Human Right [March 2007]. Regarding cell phones, I remember reading the article Cell phones: Invisible Hazards of the Wireless Age in CG’s December 2006 issue (almost two and a half years ago!). That was an eye opener for me. I had just bought almost everyone in my family, including the young ones, a cell phone.

I want to congratulate Common Ground magazine for being the first here to alert us about the safety of cell phone use. CG has the wisdom, foresight and courage to lead with educating the public on areas sometimes taboo and contrary to the “official” message out there.

I have been reading CG magazine now for many years and I conclude that CG feels not only passionate, but it comes from the place of kindness and soul. Lastly, this issue of cell phones (and cordless phones, wireless internet and cell towers) is fixable with currently available knowledge. May our health concerns triumph over short-term corporate profits. May our eyes remain open, kindly and soulfully.

– Bebe Law, Burnaby

Bernie made off with billions

I always enjoy your very lucid and insightful writing, Mr. Olson. Our family lost $3 million with Bernie. Yah, I’m angry with him, a fellow “Yid” – non-pejorative when pronounced in the Old Yiddish as “Yeed” – who just mowed ahead as if the bulimic frenzy could never end. But, as my brother says, to the mostly non-Jewish public (and capitalist class) this is just a bunch of Jews eating each other up. Is he psychopathic? Dr. Michael Parenti says it best: “Is it the outcome of the personal avarice of people like Bernard Madoff? In other words, is the problem systemic or individual? In fact, the two are not mutually exclusive. Capitalism breeds the venal perpetrators and rewards the most unscrupulous among them. The crimes and crises are not irrational departures from a rational system, but the converse: they are the rational outcomes of a basically irrational and amoral system. (Capitalism’s Self-inflicted Apocalypse by Dr. Michael Parenti, http://michaelparenti.org/capitalism apocalypse.html)

Starting in the early 70s, my father started investing with a friend, who invested with another broker, who invested with Madoff. We knew there was this guy on the New York Stock Exchange who was supposedly doing arbitrage with our money. We were enthralled with getting 12 percent per year. But we were never permitted to know who the guy was. On December 7, 2008, we found out in the media, confirmed by a letter from our friend, who also didn’t know who Madoff was until then.

For years, I was able to give money to the campaigns to help free Leonard Peltier, Lori Berenson and the prison abolition movement – ironically, victims of the same system that produced Madoff. That charity can’t happen as liberally any more.

Our family is lucky. We had enough diversification to still be comfortable – just through luck and privilege rather than being smart. This cliché about being a smart investor is ruthlessly guilt-laden and blames victims for getting poor, in keeping with our dominant ideology. For instance, the New York Times reported that, in the weeks before Madoff’s collapse, two other giant funds removed at least hundreds of millions to a few billion from Madoff. That left nothing for anybody else – ending the Ponzi scheme. Others with more power knew something the relative peons weren’t privy to. And it urges us to ask the question: What is it about our system that leads to this anyway.

All the money in stocks, bonds and their equally socially useless derivatives comes from unpaid labour somewhere in the world, accumulated by the few over weeks to centuries. For an engineer, a teacher, an apple picker and a toilet cleaning person – anybody working more than two days a week (the amount of time it takes to meet our basic needs) – is creating unpaid surplus value for the accumulating class. Less than five percent of the global population has amassed more than 60 percent of all the wealth by this centuries-long process. Madoff was small fry in this global dynamic. Focussing on him diverts us from the real issue. Let’s work together to put people before profits in all aspects of life.

– LarryWartel, Victoria, BC

Democracy is evolving

Democracy is an ideal, a fragile state that requires our ongoing attention in order to be preserved. It is a gift passed to us by our parents and grandparents, paid for by their blood and tears. Democracy has finally arrived after millennia of serfdom, dictatorship and slavery. Finally, we hold the privilege of voting for someone to represent us in government. Never before have we enjoyed this freedom. By voting, we demonstrate our willingness to uphold democracy. This, however, is only a beginning. Democracy has been an unfolding process conditioned and stabilized by history and tradition, but nevertheless aided and developed over time – the most recent advances, of course, being the extension of suffrage to women and the lower classes and all races.

Democracy is now ready for the next evolutionary stage, a state that has to do with how our votes are counted. Under our present voting rules, only votes for the winning candidate have the power to elect anyone. Second and third place finishers split up the remainder of the vote, thus making it very difficult to win a seat. This is a distortion created by the simple mechanics of the system and limits the competition in the riding. This condition limits the scope of political debate and erodes public support for democracy.

On election day, consider your ballot carefully. The decision you make will be your only input into the governance for the next four years. You get to place an X next to one of four or five candidates and that is your only option. If the candidate of your choice does not win, your vote does not provide you with representation in government. Now consider another kind of ballot. On this ballot, you may choose from one to nine or 10 candidates. There may be more than one candidate from each of the larger parties. You get to rank your choices, marking your first choice 1, one your second choice 2, and so on until you have ranked as many candidates as you wish, or all of them.

Under these new rules, voters will have far more influence. Representatives owe most of their allegiance to the voters back home in their district and less allegiance to the party, which, at present, determines how they will vote. Under this new system, a new political caucus may arise within the district with support from across party lines. With the proposed closing of a hospital, for instance, this new set of voting rules promises a fairer outcome, more consensual politics and a more stable government. The large-scale swings in policy that happen now when governments change will be no more; instead, policy will evolve more slowly and will be capable of responding to very long-term issues like global warming and social systems. Our present system is entrenched in a bipolar, left/right, conflict-based model, which cannot accommodate the political, social and cultural diversity of modern society. It is a 19th century artifact that has its roots in the earliest beginnings of democracy.

On May 12, a referendum on the provincial election ballot will ask you to choose between the present “First Past the Post” electoral system and a new system called BC-STV or the Single Transferable Vote. BC-STV is the recommendation of the Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform, a group of 160 of your peers, who were selected at random from the list of voters. After extensive study and consultation with the public, the Citizens’ Assembly designed and built a new voting system that belongs to the citizens of BC. This system is our system. On May 12, vote yes for BC-STV. It’s your system bought and paid for by you. It is your right, so take it. For more information on BC-STV or to volunteer, visit www.bc-stv.ca

– Tim Jones