EVIDENCE is mounting that microwave ovens can cause cancer, food safety experts claim, writes Ian Fletcher. A report in watchdog magazine What Doctors Don't Tell You says parents should avoid microwaving children's food because the radiation destroys vital nutrients. It claims 10-year-old evidence, suppressed by Swiss courts, shows microwaved food can change the blood and warns: "Don't cook food in a microwave oven, especially for children, unless there is a genuine need for urgency."
The article that follows is from vol.2 no.4 of International Journal of Life Energy, published in Fall 1980.
MICROWAVES AND GOVERNMENT SECRECY
By Tracy Rohm
During the last few years the popular press has published dozens of stories about microwave pollution. You may remember first hearing about the microwave problem, however, in connection with their anti-personnel use in the famous incident in which the Russians were zapping the U.S. embassy in Moscow. That case involved the same kind of energy produced by radar, radio, TV, and microwave ovens, among other sources. The State Department declared the Moscow embassy an "unhealthful" post, due to a microwave level of 18 microwatts per square centimeter (of skin surface). Two of the three ambassadors who served in Moscow during the sixties and early seventies died of cancer, and the ambassador who was in office when the story broke in 1976 reportedly has either cancer or leukemia. Tests done on employees returning from Moscow showed abnormal numbers of chromosome breaks. But the Government kept the story secret as long as possible - even from those at risk. This has been the official pattern of approach to the whole problem, which is complicated and urgent, as Paul Brodeur discovered in writing his acclaimed book, The Zapping of America: Microwaves, their deadly risk, and the cover-up.
In fact, most city-dwellers may be getting zapped worse than the folks at the embassy. According to the Boston Globe's New England Magazine (Sept.24, 1978) levels in this area 2-10 times higher than the one reported from Moscow are not uncommon. And some places around airports and defense installations have levels a thousand times higher. You may be familiar with one or more of the following symptoms of low-level microwave exposure: irritability, fogginess, fatigue, moodiness, depression, memory loss, inability to concentrate, chest pains, not feeling rested after plenty of sleep, insomnia, headache, and so on. The most easily observed symptoms are probably grogginess and puffiness around the face when you wake up. Many of these symptoms can also be caused by general anxiety-tension, which is caused by all kinds of stress, including microwaves; but microwaves seem to cause "noise" directly in the nervous system, like adding static to a radio signal. It is actually possible to "hear" the microwaves directly in your brain, though no-one is sure exactly how. They usually sound like a high-pitched ringing or hissing, and can be heard even with your fingers in your ears. We have found that everyone is so used to the sound that you have to relax and really listen for it, but once you know what it sounds like you can hear it easily. People can usually agree on when they are louder and softer. Unfortunately, all of us in the cities are probably exposed to unsafe levels of microwaves. There may be a cumulative effect, even at low doses, and repeated or continual irradiation has been implicated in blood disease, cancer, and birth defects. Avoiding cumulative damage may depend on daily cleansing of the nervous system from the neural "noise" that microwaves cause. We have found acupressure massage and breathing exercises to be very effective. Small dioses of cannabis are also very useful in clearing and equilibrating the nervous system, especially in conjunction with breathing and massage.. These techniques are generally outstanding against anxiety-tension, and may be the best therapeutic approach to microwave damage short of preventing irradiation.
The allowable levels of microwaves in the Soviet Union are 1 microwatt/square cm. for the general population and 10 microwatt/square cm. for those working with microwaves in industry. So the Russians may have been violating their own law when they were zapping opur embassy. But the levels they used were way under the allowable levels in this country, which is 10 milliwatts/square cm., ten thousand times higher than the comparable Russian limit. By our law the levels of microwaves we are getting in the cities are fine, though the use of lower power levels against State Department personnel provoked an international incident. The Zapping of America traces the outlines of the military-industrial complex that has inhibited open research on the effects of microwaves. But it is more than economic concern on the part of the manufacturers of microwave devices that has kept the cover-up going. As the Moscow embassy incident suggests, some people have been in the game of employing microwaves for anti-personnel use even at low power levels. It is known that the Nazis were engaged in microwave research but that they were surprised by the Allied development of radar; their research, which was classified at the end of the war by Allied intelligence, may have been related to microwave antipersonnel weaponry. Curiously enough, the allowable U.S. levels were set by H.Schwan, a scientist who was head of the Kaiser Wilhelm Biophysics Institute in Germany during the war years 1937-1947; he is now at the University of Pennsylvania. He supposedly decided what levels were safe by calculating how much radiation would be required to heat a metal ball with the same mass as a human being - like a microwave oven. This approach ignored the potential for damage short of actual cooking of the flesh - such as damage to the nervous system, which after all conducts business by means of rather subtle electrical fields and currents. The effect of setting such high levels has been to make America a microwave playground, both for the TV, radio, and radar that cause much of the background pollution, as well as for those who use microwaves clandestinely as exotic weaponry. As the official posture on this question indicates, the interest in microwave weaponry has by no means been restricted to foreign powers. In one famous postwar American experiment, microwaves were used to stop frog's hearts. It is well-known that new technologies are often first used and developed for military purposes, and many people involved in the clandestine operations that grew around the Cold War must have immediately recognized the potential of a silent, traceless "heart-attack gun." Recent developments suggest that the imagination of the CIA and others is even more fertile than that.
For example, according to secret files obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, microwaves were used as part of the CIA's MK-Ultra mind-control program, which was designed to produce "incapacitating or discrediting behavior" in enemies, including American dissidents. However, despite the efforts of a few researchers to uncover the details of MK-Ultra and other projects and despite the sordid material that has come out, there has been a virtual blackout on the specific subject of microwaves. Overall, the official revelations about mind-control have been spotty and do not cover the tumultuous periods following the Kennedy assassination - the Vietnam War and its attendant domestic protest, through Watergate and since. It may be that information on microwaves is so sparse because they are the key element in the entire mind-control effort and because the mind-control project is continuing today. A careful review of the literature will show that most publications about mind-control have been reports of basic research or mishaps in the course of experimental projects. Despite the particular vulnerability of the United States due to lax restrictions, and despite government admission of wholesale interference with domestic groups (e.g. the FBI's Cointelpro program), little has appeared about actual cases of mind control. But although it is difficult to obtain accurate information in this area, this thesis - that microwave use is widespread and ongoing - seems to account for several otherwise unexplainable recent events.
The clandestine use of exotic mind control techniques is easier to comprehend if one takes account of the current psychiatric practice and historical background of mind control, so we will leave actual techniques and cases for a later point. The use of crude electroshock, neurosurgery, and "chemical straightjackets" (e.g. the phenothiazines etc.) bu the psychiatric profession bespeaks a behavior-modification approach with plenty of fancy theoretical justification. The implantation of electronic devisces which can be used to "decapacitate" prisoners if they should violate travel or other restrictions is openly discussed in the correctional journals. The official ideology clearly poses no real safeguard against clandestine excesses in the mind-control area. Nor are the ideas behind mind-control particularly exotic. Most people don't realize that there is precedent for this technique in "witchcraft." Instead of hypnotism, drugs were used to place the subject into a stupor; the main drugs used were henbane and Stromonium (European jimson-weed or Datura), which is known as the "herb of unremembrance." With the subject drugged and asleep, the "spellcaster" could safely sit by his side and whisper repeated commands in his ear. Upon awakening the subject would perform the desired action without knowing why. It has been discovered that LSD's effect of "loosening" or temporarily abating conditioned behavioral and thought patterns - the same effect which can be used to facilitate and spped psychotherapy - can be exploited in order to "reimprint" a whole new personality. This is reportedly the way in which Patty Hearst was brainwashed. A gentler form of the same principle is evident in the idea of putting a tape recorder under your pillow to help learn a language. Of course if there were some way to talk in someone's ear without being next to them, the perpetrators of the mischief would be completely safe, and the use of drugs to gain access to the mind through stupefaction or increasing suggestibility (in the case of Stromonium and LSD, respectively), would be unnecessary. Which brings us back to microwaves.
Recently Allard Lowenstein, a well-known New York City politician, was murdered in his office. You may recall that he was shot by a former associate named Sweeney, a young man who had been known in his student days at Stanford for his integrity, intelligence, and vision. During the 60's Lowenstein, then Dean of Students at Stanford, had recruited many students to help the Freedom Riders, civil rights workers in the deep south. While the students were there, a dentist came from New York and did free dental work on them. Subsequently, Sweeney became convinced that his behavior was being influenced by some external source; he eventually decided that the CIA had used the occasion of the free dental work to place a receiver in one of his teeth. He blamed Lowenstein for involving him in a mind-control program as well as for his father's death by heart attack. After shooting Lowenstein he placed his firearm in the "in" basket on his secretary's desk and sat down to await arrest - clearly the murder was a planned statement. The affair was the occasion for a revealing use of the media in order to create a climate of "disinformation." Throughout their coverage the Boston Globe adhered closely to the line that Sweeney thought the device in his teeth was a "bug" - that is a listening device - while the New York papers accurately reported that he thought the device was a receiver that was used for behavior-control input. Of course the "bug" idea is technically implausible - the media went out of their way to make Sweeney look like a kook, and dropped the story like a hot potato after two days. Of course this approach invites speculation even more than the usual milk-it-for-all-it's-worth style of the media in unusual stories. If they aren't talking about something that is clearly at least colorful, new, why not? Sweeney, who was a leading student activist at Stanford, and therefore a logical target for a mind-control program, became so convinced that he actually was a target that he actively considered having his teeth pulled in order to remove the device. In taking the even more drastic step of murdering his former mentor, he apparently thought he was bringing a serious problem to public attention. But while he may indeed have had a receiver in his teeth - the technology is available - the state-of-the-art in mind control has probably advanced beyond the need for such implants.
In connection with anti-personnel uses of microwaves, one Defense Intelligence Agency report notes that "sounds can be induced by signal modulation at very low average power densities." In other words, microwaves can be used to make words sound inside your head; at the proper ferquency the brain may act something like a radio receiver. Placing phrases or ideas in the head of a subject may actually be quite easy. The DIA report on this was very circumspect, neglecting to report any research in this country beyond the discovery of the principle, while suggesting that the "other side" already possesses weapons based on this and other principles. The possibility of using microwave technology in this way may shed some light on certain domestic incidents. For example, David Berkowitz - Son of Sam - thought he heard voices telling him to kill; he said the voices came from the dog - Sam - of a neighbour. This neighbour turned out to be an "ex"-Army communications man, who had a house packed with electronic equipment. Berkowitz was found to be sane enough to stand trial, but apparently there was little inquiry into his actual motives for committing the murders, and certainly no speculation in the media as to what had actually happpened.
In the Jonestown case the lack of serious media inquiry and analysis was striking. We saw gory pictures and heard plenty about cults and "mass suicide" but no hard questions were raised. Recently Mark Lane published a book pointing to government and media collusion in covering up the truth about the massacre: The Strongest Poison refers to the corrosive effect of government secrecy and lying on freedom of the press. The Black Panthers, who had very close connections with the People's Temple, reported that Jones, complaining of government interference weeks before the massacre, said "Every thought in my head is coming from the CIA." Several months ago, the "staff of a House subcommittee called for an investigation into persistent rumors of CIA involvement in the Jonestown massacre"; that one line appeared in the "Miscellany" section of the Globe's evening edition, which hardly balances the lurid coverage of the event. Was Jonestown a mind-control experiment that was terminated? If the government manipulates cults does it also establish them? Gossip about mind-control methods used by various cults is widespread and some cults have been linked to intelligence activity. By their own admission several U.S. agencies carried on a widespread surveillance and harrassment program against cultural and political groups during the late 60's and early 70's.
Microwaves could be used in two ways against a group. General irradiation can cause irritability and could be used to make it difficult for members of a group to work together. As the Jonestown incident suggests, mind control technology, if it does in fact exist, could be used to manipulate group behavior, especially through its leaders. The limited available evidence indicates that such technology does exist, and we have tried to show that recent events support the thesis that it has been used against American citizens. In any event, the failure of the government to address the questions that have arisen invites speculation.
Towards the end of WWII a group of MIT undergraduates were fooling around with homemade grenades. After testing several smaller devices during the day they decided to throw their piece de resistance off the frat house roof, at four AM, so as not to disturb anybody. When the bomb squad arrived they found every light on for blocks in violation of the wartime blackout, and people were hanging out windows everywhere. Except in the frathouse; the guys had slyly turned out the lights and crept into bed. It didn't take long for everyone to figure out who was responsible. We are confronted with a similar "darkened house" strategy today in the government, with chilling effects on the media's independence. Secrecy in a government is analogous to shame in a patient. We have seen that the clandestine use of microwaves entails secrecy, and it is well-known that paranoia and schizophrenia are the operational hazards of intelligence work; consider the ruinous effect on an individual's peace of mind that maintaining a cover story might have. What we are dealing with in public life today is an institutionalized anxiety-neurosis; dirty tricks are a symptom of this, and so is weapons fetishism. The problem is worst in the highest levels of government, where there is the most decisional responsibilty, the most pressure, and therefore the highest anxiety level. Unfortunately the result is bad decisions; weapons fetishism in policymakers results in ever more nuclear weapons. Just as shame prevents the unburdening of the individual conscience, secrecy keeps the government locked into an increasingly insane policy line. And secrecy is another example of the disease. A current example of the way secrecy prevents flexibility in policy is Jimmy Carter's insistence on defending American support for the Shah. Official silence on accusations that there was a dark side to American involvement in Iran is tantamount to an admission of guilt. Why not clear the air? Jimmy Carter didn't originate the questionable practices, and the American people were certainly not informed. But secrecy seems to make it easier to get stuck in a mistake. It certainly violates the democratic principle of citizen participation in policy formation, which requires an informed citizenry.
This country is suffering from an epidemic anxiety neurosis which concentrates on the decision makers. Not only does it impair the public's physical and emotional health, to the point where it threatens the social fabric, but it has caused us to arm ourselves to an an insane degree, and it may yet propel us over the line into a catastrophic war. The microwave pollution contributes directly to the still-rising anxiety level, and the secrecy which attends the clandestine use of microwaves may be preventing us from solving the more commonplace pollution problem. We recommend that everyone look into acupressure massage and breathing exercises, and that cannabis be restored to the pharmacopoeia and its proper medicinal use be explained to the public. There are two reasons for this approach: continuous clearing of microwave damage may provide the best defense against cumulative effects such as cancer; and because lowering the general anxiety-tension level may be the best way of taking the pressure off the entire situation and thereby preventing a nuclear war. The stakes are high. But the effectiveness of the therapeutic techniques we teach is remarkable; we invite you to check it out and to discuss these or any issues with us.
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