Ecological Justice Border Crossings ~ Part 7
5G...Guilty By Association
Cara Judea Alhadeff
October 2022
Child entranced by a digital device. Child are particularly vulnerable to wireless radiation. Click the image to enlarge.
The colossal scale of industrial technologies (Big Data, Big Telecom), fifth generation of wireless networks (5G), digital mining, AI, Interactive Design (IxD) (including neuroengineering, brain-computer interaction, cognitive state-aware AR/VR, and IxD for gene expression) is currently impacting our world with a ferocity few of us seem to be capable of resisting.
This rhizomatic narrative is an extension of my Mother Pelican installments from 2021 and 2022:
The long-term physical harm caused by involuntary exposure of RF Radiation Exposure/ Radio Frequency Electromagnetic Fields should be cause for extreme alarm. [4]
What happens when those in power and those compliant censor dissenting voices—manipulating the concepts of equality and the greater good to justify defamatory claims while stripping civil liberties and eradicating possibilities for debate and mutual learning (i.e., censorship based on difference)? The following incident demonstrates such malfeasance.
Soon after we had moved to a new “neighborhood” within the Ecovillage that was more aligned with our ethical-educational daily life choices, another educator/activist was aggressively scapegoated and eventually forced to leave the community because she protested dangers of electromagnetic pollution. She remained permanently banned from the premises. Riddled with “electromagnetic hypersensitivity” (EHS), [5] the outspoken woman refused to be silent about the unprecedented dangers of electromagnetic pollution and the multi-trillion dollar 5G industry.
The electrosensitive woman shared that her medically-diagnosed heart condition was a result of her exposure to 5G and wifi. Unlike Sweden, where EMF sensitivity is considered a canary in the coalmine—qualifying as a legal disability, our ecovillage-community members claimed that because her ideas threatened their convenience-cultural norms (for example, fast internet access [6]) she was unable to “integrate.” She was banished. Scapegoating maintained business-as-usual. We learn from the history of religions that cruelty of all kinds is a learned, imitated behavior: “…if a suitable scapegoat is not found, the group or mob will implode;…great violence is necessary to alleviate the internal destructive violence of the group.” [7]
Because this 5G-refugee[8] “made” people feel uncomfortable about their daily life choices in the context of capitalist-techno-euphoric culture, the community reproduced the very values and behavior of the mainstream that we had purportedly rejected. Rather than exploring how we can learn from new perspectives (even if—or especially!—if it challenges our understanding of our world), the community reified fear and silencing embedded in xenophobic practices. My partner and I were among the few who stood up for her civil rights (protecting individuals from discrimination) and her civil liberties (freedom of speech).
Practicing social ecological theories in action, we asked our community to reconsider overall policy and procedure: Are we satisfied with the way our community navigated a potential member who "caused" tension? Are we setting a compassionate and life-enhancing example for our current community members? Is this how we want to be seen by our children / outside visitors / communities / neighbors / educators? In a world that is divided and polarized, are silencing, banishment, and ostracism the tools we wish to use? Can we look deeply within ourselves to understand and connect with people who think and behave differently than we do? Can we transcend our own limitations to the point of full acceptance of others—not because we tolerate them, but because they are giving us an opportunity to learn about ourselves and the world around us?
Also, because the children witnessed the process (or lack) of the electrosensitive woman’s exile, we requested a discussion involving the children so they could learn that there are actually a variety of positive and constructive ways to approach difference and convenience (sustained through status-quo norms) in community. Given the ecovillage’s expulsion response, we requested that members organize intergenerational conversations about the history of scapegoating and how it has led to community disintegration. For the adult members, we offered various resources that address multiple cross-cultural perspectives—how we all see "reality" very differently, and how those differences are inevitable and critical to our humanity. We suggested a research team be formed to further investigate the impact of EMFs and the politics of 5G. For example: how 5G lays the foundation and sustains the infrastructure for ‘smart homes,’ digitized economic system, and micromanaging the worldwide population through Bill Gates's ‘internet of things’ (IOT): “5G will enable the creation of the 'Internet of Things': not only cars, trucks, and home appliances, but virtually everything we buy is being outfitted with antennas and microchips in order to be connected to the wireless cloud that will take over the business of the world from human beings.” [9]
As a result of our educational suggestions and defense of our friend, my partner and I were put on a kind of surveillance-probation. Eventually, I was told that due to our politically “radical” positions, we were gradually being “frozen out” of the community.
McCarthy-like fear-of-association dominates the ways in which we accumulate and distribute “knowledge.” Like the pervasive, coercive silencing during the McCarthy Era, currently, those who question representation of Big Pharma and industry-funded science in mainstream media (such as NPR) are framed within an anti-Democratic position–frequently associated with climate-deniers and flat-landers (flat-earthers). As with Communist alliances monitored by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, there is an implicit “guilt” by association: no one is publicly able to question or even mention 5G without being considered a conspiracy theorist. As a woman of color whose written and visual work has been subjected to myriad forms of censorship, I am particularly sensitive to erasure of difference and non-conformist perspectives.
Matter Adheres to Matter, one of many of my analog color photographs that was censored in both art and non-art settings. [10] Click the image to enlarge.
My previous two Mother Pelican essays explored the transition from industry-funded science to applying biomimicry as a guide to help heal our climate-chaos infrastructures. However, we cannot begin to even consider the possibilities of cultural and planetary healing through profound shifts in our evolutionary trajectory when those who disseminate mass-information justify censorship through profit-based motivations and socially-accepted misinformation. Ranging from academia to alternative sub-cultures, the attempt to censor discussion of 5G technology is a blatant example of a global impediment to repairing our broken world. [11] 2021 marked one of the most devastating Anthropocentric intrusions in the history of humankind: normalizing the 5G rollout signifies a totalitarian singularity more despotic than Orwell ever imagined.
Cell Tower Tree, Beaver Creek, Colorado. Click the image to enlarge.
The act of questioning in and of itself is perceived as a threat to the (illusory) stability of democracy. The censorship politics surrounding 5G are a case in point. During the publication of one of my recent articles critiquing the green economy (another contentious topic that magnetizes censorship), [12] the commissioning editor informed me that I was not permitted to refer to the corporeal or planetary toxicities of 5G given the apparently rampant 5G critique associated with conspiracy theory. For fear of being discredited by academic audiences, I have encountered a handful of editors who did not allow me to make any reference to 5G. For example, not only have perspectives that question mainstream industry-funded science been repeatedly suppressed (even within academic contexts that are explicitly examining environmental racism, greenwashing, and corporate-led, hyper-consumer-driven climate chaos), but illuminating connections between oppressive political agendas that result in repressive refugee status has also been silenced.
One editor refused to print my identification of those who have to flee their communities for dire health reasons as refugees. His rationale was that: “A refugee is specifically designated according to the UN convention on human rights as an individual who is persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, member of a particular social group, or political opinion.” I highlight this writer-editor power dynamic that resulted in further silencing research about 5G technocratic industries because in fact, if we don't recognize how our status-quo democracy worships techno-fixes and operates on the illusory grounds that digital technology is neutral, we will wreak even more catastrophic humanitarian and ecological havoc. As climate chaos continues to encroach, we must be extraordinarily attentive to power relationships that continue to colonize our bodies, consciousness, and planet—maintaining interlocking oppressive status-quo systems.
Why is it acceptable for environmentalists, scientists, academics, etc. to hold accountable the fossil-fuel industry, but not our relationship to 5G and its concomitant technologies of addiction/convenience? When we understand that from 2012 to 2015, the expansion of the wireless cloud was equivalent to adding 4.9 million cars to the roads, and now with our Covid-Era online education, commerce, communities, etc., we cannot help but see how 5G will exponentially increase energy use.
How can anyone be concerned about the climate crisis without addressing the eco-social-corporeal implications of 5G? Why is compliance seen as a neutral/apolitical/unbiased/objective) position? Does questioning our military-science-industrial complexherently render us suspicious and subject to the vagaries of conspiracy theory? Lumping in those of us who question taken-for-granted normalcies with those who contend the lunar landing never actually happened or dinosaurs never existed?
Howard Zinn distinguishes between a totalitarian state and democracy: “To go along with whatever your government does is not a characteristic of democracy.”
Yet, complicity is integral to our contemporary US democracy. In order to shed our habituated obedience to convenience-culture, we can no longer ignore that 5G is not a regulated public utility. We must examine how these digital technologies are unquestioningly considered the next frontier, the edge of progress in a vertical hierarchy of imagination—obliterating the infinite possibilities of exploring what already exists, while ignoring both the messiness and the magic of our everyday worlds.
NOTES
[1] Stovner, L. J. et al. 2022. The global prevalence of headache: an update, with analysis of the influences of methodological factors on prevalence estimates. The Journal of Headache and Pain 23, Article No 34.
[2] Antunes, F. et al. 2021. Prevalence and characteristics of chronic pain among patients in Portuguese primary care units. Pain and Therapy 10:1427-1437.
[3] American Brain Foundation 2022. Brain Diseases from A to Z. https://www.americanbrainfoundation.org/diseases/
[5] Destabilizing our natural immunity, EHS is another diagnosis emerging from our sci-fi age of microwave technology. The Public Utilities Commission (PUC) ignores the World Health Organization's warning: “Those suffering from EHS have a legal disability, yet disability laws are rarely enforced. Potentially disabling electromagnetic bombardments begin in the womb with ultrasound technology, continue with infants in the crib by way of 49-megahertz frequency baby monitors, and persist throughout our lives through electric blankets, microwave ovens, fluorescent lights, utility power lines, cell phone towers, smart technologies, and an ever-growing smorgasbord of wireless devices.”
[9]The Invisible Rainbow: The History of Electricity and Life. White River Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2017, 386.
[10] In San Francisco’s City Hall, my censored image of a mirrored shaved head was interpreted either as testicles or hairy breasts. In the Oakland Federal Building, the same image was censored for racialized interpretations: it was Black History Month— the head was seen as a head, as opposed to testicles and breasts, but this time as a head of enslaved bodies. Also, the justification for removing this particular image included references to the Oklahoma Federal Building Bombing as well as the monks who had been recently burned in Tibet. I was accused of depicting and even celebrating the mutilated, fragmented bodies of subjugated ethnic others. For further discussion of the complexities of censorship see my Viscous Expectations.
[11] See my cross-cultural, interfaith exploration of tikkun olam.
Dr. Cara Judea Alhadeff, Professor of Transdisciplinary Ecological
Leadership, has published dozens of interdisciplinary books and
articles on critical philosophy, climate justice, art, epigenetics,
gender, sexuality, and ethnic studies, including
the critically-acclaimed Zazu
Dreams: Between the Scarab and the Dung Beetle, A Cautionary Fable
for the Anthropocene Eraand
Viscous
Expectations: Justice, Vulnerability, The Ob-scene.
Alhadeff's
theoretical and visual work is the subject of documentaries for
international films and public television. She has been interviewed
by
The
New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Pacifica
Radio, NPR, and the
New Art Examiner.
Alongside
Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Vandana Shiva, Alhadeff received the
Random Kindness Community Resilience Leadership Award, 2020. Her
work has been endorsed by Noam Chomsky, Bill McKibben, James E.
Hansen, Paul Hawken, SHK-G, Eve Ensler, Alphonso Lingus, Avital
Ronell, and Lucy Lippard among other activists, scholars, and
artists.
Alhadeff's
photographs/performance-videos
have been defended by Freedom-of-Speech organizations (Electronic
Freedom Foundation, artsave/People for the AmericanWay, and the
ACLU), and are
in private and public collections including and San Francisco MoMA,
MoMA
Salzburg, Austria,
the
Kinsey
Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and reproduction, and include
collaborations with international choreographers, composers, poets,
sculptors, architects, scientists. Her art-based and pedagogical
practices, parenting, and commitment to solidarity economics and
lived social-ecological ethics are intimately bound. Former
professor of
Philosophy, Performance, and Pedagogy at
UC Santa Cruz and Program Director for Jews Of The Earth, Alhadeff
and
her family
live in their eco-art
installation repurposed schoolbus where
they perform and teach creative-zero-waste
living, social
permaculture, and cultural diversity.
She is always eager to collaborate with other activists, scholars,
and artists from other disciplines. If you are interested please
contact Cara via email at photo@carajudea.com
or
via her websites, Cara
Judea
and
Zazu
Dreams.
See also this article: Social
ecology pioneers return to Nederland.
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