Tag: Berkeley

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Berkeley citizens blocking AT&T’s illegal 5G installation forcibly removed by city cops

Fascism, that is.

For Immediate Release

In the dark of night, police back AT&T in clash with Berkeley neighborhood over 4/5G antennas 

Stand off!  Berkeley police do AT&T’s bidding, forcefully removing residents who were trying to prevent wireless antenna installations in the public commons.

October 6, 2020, Berkeley, CA

Long before 1:00 AM on October 5, twenty people arrived for two vigils in north Berkeley in hopes of stopping installations of “small” cell wireless antennas on utility poles in the public rights of way at Monterey Market and near Berkeley Natural Grocery. Workers arrived at 3:30 AM and called police. Seeing that they would not leave of their own accord, Berkeley police forcibly removed the people. Grounding wires were installed, but not the antennas and meters.

Former Planning Commissioner Clifford Fred who lives nearby said, “I’m shocked that city officials knew that AT&T violated Berkeley Municipal Code 16.10.040 by not notifying people within 500 feet of the 1321 Gilman or 1550 Hopkins poles before the controversial cell towers were approved, but let AT&T get away with violating the city laws. Officials used to care but now are keen on letting big telecom companies have their way.”

Because neighbors and activists had prevented work eight times in recent months by refusing to leave three sites when workers arrived, ATT had beat them to the sites on September 21, noisily setting up tall chain link fences at 2:00 AM, then waiting until 7:00 AM, when Berkeley law allows work to begin, to install ancillary equipment. Since then, an elder and a young neighbor have slept in a tent on site. This week, “pole protectors” beat the workers to both sites, but were dragged across the street by police.

Cynthia Papermaster, who wondered if her arm was being broken as she was hauled off, said, “More important than my pain is that we were removed from a public sidewalk so that a private multibillion dollar company, with help from local cops paid by our taxes, could perform non-essential work in the middle of the night against Berkeley’s laws.”

Jason Winnett wrote of the incident to the City Council, “I exercised my constitutional rights where crews were attempting to erect a cell tower which has been protested, clearly unwanted by residents.  According to my understanding, there were actions by private parties as well as Berkeley police that have questionable legality… 24 hours later, I am experiencing lingering injuries, pulled muscles from being handled roughly.  I was appalled to witness women in their 70’s, concerned citizens, who after being up in vigil all night, were roughly handled by a large number of young, strong officers… We seem to be heading into what is known as fascism.”

Sargent Ronnie Hernandez asked a co-founder of WIreless Radiation Education & Defense (WiRED), Phoebe Sorgen, what the fuss is about.  She replied, “Antennas emit EMF/RF microwave radiation that sickens people and harms flora and fauna. They increase fire risks, and overloaded, weathered poles sometimes fall! Business and property values plummet nearby. 5G is an energy glutton, too. Wired connections—whether copper or fiber—will always be faster, greener, safer, more reliable, and more secure than wireless. We need to preserve our right to privacy. Furthermore, there’s no ATT service gap here, and the people don’t want it. It’s only about greed.”

ATT has permits to install twelve more antennas, many near residences, schools, and healthcare facilities. Most of the permits expired in August, but were extended until 2021, though the public had urged the City Manager to exercise her option of requiring ATT to reapply. WiRED, which has been lobbying and educating locally for the past three years, hired Ariel Strauss of Greenfire Law to craft stronger local laws and lobby for them.
###

Press Contact:  Phoebe Sorgen
Phones: 510-528-9428 home/main
510-919-6431 cell
Email: phoebeso@earthlink.net

photos available upon request.   90 sec. vimeo: https://www.instagram.com/p/CFiKb8oDZb4/?fbclid=IwAR1eK7nctEA2k4kbRbFy7NcHIZIY_V9JXxiTUyC8FZ3x4dR2j2_eGk8gH

peer-reviewed studies: https://ehtrust.org/science/

https://ehtrust.org/science/research-on-wireless-health-effects/

WiRED: http://www.GoWiRED.org

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NFU

Another “leftist” heard from

If you don’t recall my email about UC Berkeley moving its entire curriculum online, click here to reread it; then get a load of this response, from a member of the “Action Greens” list-serve.

(This response was sent to me by one Dean Tuckerman, who presented it to me as if he weren’t Dean Tuckerman; but since he responded AS Dean Tuckerman to my brief reply, he must be he.)

I find his livid take on what I wrote as startling as his eagerness to have me see it. Perhaps he should spend less time in that mask, as the hypoxia is making him irascible, and none too thoughtful.

—–

Hi Mark,
I forwarded your post to the ActionGreens listserve. Here’s one comment, from Dean Tuckerman:

Absurd and bullshit. Teaching online if done correctly could get more students from all over the world to get an education. I don’t want to speak for dead people, but Mario Savio would have probably said “hunh” to this silly argument.

An argument like “Bill Gates had something to do with computers therefore anything that uses a computer is his fault.” is insulting to all the tech workers who actually designed and built the computers that gates profitted off.

This argument is as bad as the illumlnati crap we sometimes see on this list.

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?”
Rabbi Hillel (Pirke Avot 1:14)

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NFU

UC Berkeley offering online courses ONLY next semester

This is actually a national disgrace, as countless members of the US professoriate, freaked out by the terroristic propaganda they’ve been avidly absorbing from the New York Times and NPR, and, therefore, knowing nothing about COVID-19, or the most rational responses to it, are OUTRAGED at the thought of going back to teach in-person, evidently thinking it’s okay for their students to pay that sky-high tuition, and sink into a lifetime of debt peonage, to “learn” via Zoom. They also evidently think that their going AWOL won’t result in their employers going out of business; so this academic cave-in to pure terror is not just grossly unfair to the students, and their families, but ultimately suicidal, too.

That Berkeley in particular is going all-“remote” (a boon to Bill Gates and his plutocratic cohorts in Big Tech) is especially appalling, as that’s where Mario Savio started the Free Speech Movement; and now the Berkeley faculty will be teaching all their classes under full (albeit covert) surveillance, as Zoom is notoriously insecure. As one who teaches courses on propaganda, with students from all over—including China—speaking freely of their experiences of state “persuasion,” I see “online instruction” as a danger to their safety, and an excellent reason for them to clam up. (That’s just one reason why I myself intend to teach for real again this fall, even though I’m 70, and, therefore, statistically more vulnerable than countless younger colleagues who will be spending this next term gratuitously “sheltering in place.”)

As Giorgio Agamben has argued, this academic fealty to the paranoid ideal of “biosecurity” on campus is as flagrant a betrayal of their calling as it was when the Italian professoriate pledged allegiance to Fascism under Mussolini.

Article link: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/UC-Berkeley-to-begin-semester-with-fully-remote-15423997.php