Yesterday’s loony tunes become today’s reality. Here are some recent examples.
Gulf war syndrome, whose existence has been denied by the Ministry of Defence for over a decade, is now being admitted. As the Telegraph’s version of the story put it:
‘Soldiers sent to the 1991 Gulf war were given a combination of vaccines that were known to cause serious side-effects and that were not licensed for use in Britain. Lord Bach, the defence minister, admitted yesterday that this was done despite warnings of the risks issued by the Department of Health and the deputy chief medical officer.’
How long before depleted uranium is acknowledged as being a killer?
Chemtrails, the aerosol spraying of grids of chemicals in the skies over America, which has been a part of the conspiracy theorists’ ‘paranoid agenda’ about America for three or four years, has been partially admitted. NASA has acknowledged spraying Trimethylaluminum. This is not the whole story but it’s a start. (1)
Mobile phone masts make you ill.
A Dutch study had found that the base-station masts for the 3G mobile phones make people feel ill.(2) This has fuelled a growing Europe-wide campaign of direct action against mobile masts in which people respond to official inaction about the masts by knocking them down. (3)
Electro-magnetic fields cause cancer.
A study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology found a statistically significant link between cancer and workers in the electricity generation industry and concluded: ‘The association between EMF exposure and prostate cancer mortality warrants further investigation.’ (4)
Related to which, at < http:// members.dodo.com.au/~maisch/emfacts/papers/case-histories.html > is a case study of chronic fatigue and the use of electric blankets.
The source in this field is Citizens’ Initiative Omega at < www.grn.es/electropolucio/ omega2002.htm > They recently added a paper from Indian scientists which shows chromosomal damage caused by mobile phones with the kicker that smoking and drinking make the damage worse! See ‘A Preliminary Study to Assess Possible Chromosomal Damage Among Users of Digital Mobile Phones’ at
< www.hese-project.org/Dr/Gadhia/Gadhia.htm >
Notes
1 < http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/20jun_TMAclouds. htm >
2 At < http://slink.com.com/slink?212215 > There is much more on this at
< www.grn.es/electropolucio/omega2002.htm >
3 There is a selection of stories about masts in the UK on the BBC web site at
< http://newssearch.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/search/results.pl?scope=newsifs&tab= news&q=mobile+masts&x=13&y=8 >
4 Charles, Loomis, Shyl et al, ‘Electromagnetic Fields, Polychlorinated Biphenyls, and Prostate Cancer Mortality in Electric Utility Workers’ American Journal of Epidemiology 2003; 157: pp. 683-691.
Radio Enoch
At the site of Radio Netherlands < http:/ www.rnw.nl/real radio/dossiers/html/hateradiouk.html > there is a fascinating little piece, ‘Radio Enoch’, about a far-right pirate radio station in the UK in 1978 which includes this:
‘The National Front, a right-wing UK political party with views broadly similar to those of Radio Enoch, always denied any connection with the station. Indeed, it is unlikely to have been involved, as it was itself the target of criticism from Radio Enoch, which described the Front as far too naive and far too inflexible. The station announced a mailing address in northeast England, and officials of the Home Office paid a visit there. They found a 19-year-old man who insisted he had nothing to do with the station, and was simply acting as a mailing address for the station, a service he also performed for other organisations for a small fee. Despite intensive efforts to locate the transmitter, the authorities never succeeded.’
More information on this would be welcome.