#850:The European Competence Initiative
From Sarah Benson:
Dear everyone
I would encourage you to read the document (link below), which sums up the aims of the Competence Initiative. It heralds a new era in awareness and preparedness to act in Germany on EMF/EMR pollution.
Additionally, I believe there is a possibility that the issue of Colony Collapse Disorder may be another milestone in raising awareness of the effects of EMR on living systems.
http://www.kompetenzinitiative.de/033ea299200014505/033ea299810017503/index.html
This is on the h.e.s.e website, see here: http://www.hese-project.org/hese-uk/en/main/index.php.
Sarah Benson
Exerpt from the Competence Initiative:
Competence Initiative
For the Protection of Mankind, the Environment and Democracy
Health is not a Commodity!
It seems to have become a regular occurrence that licenses to use spectrum frequencies for communication applications, the risks of which have not yet been researched, are auctioned off by the government. The previous German Red-Green federal government (Social Democrats and Green Party) filled its coffers with the billions obtained through the auctioning of the UMTS (3G. A. K.) licenses. In December 2006, the WIMAX frequencies were auctioned under the current Great Coalition government (formed by the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats). For 2008, a second UMTS auction has been announced.
According to the scientific knowledge from research conducted independently of industry, these auctions are a sell-out of public health. Numerous physicians and scientists protested against the introduction of the WIMAX technology at the time of the auction. Three months later, they received a reply from the Federal Ministry for the Environment, which quotes the weakest of all arguments put forward in the mobile policy debate: There was no evidence of damage at intensities below the existing guidelines. (DR. A. BĆā€“TTGER in letters to PROF. R. FRENTZEL-BEYME, PROF. K. RICHTER and DR. ST. SPAARMANN, March 2007). In the light of the wealth of indications and evidence for damage from seven decades of international high frequency research, it has to be asked just how much chronic illness, genotoxicity and environmental damage needs to be documented in order to unsettle the selective perception of today”™s governments.
From the WHO down to the consumer and environmental protection at regional level, there is a overwhelming amount of evidence and indications showing the extent to which the profit interests of large corporations hinder the development of effective protection measures. In the case of mobile communications technologies for example, the high proportion of industry financed research has a corresponding influence on the risk assessment of the products. The industry has even secured a right to participate in the funding allocation for research which is financed entirely by the state (according to PROF. R. FRENTZEL-BEYME in public statements). Independent researchers like PROF. P. SEMM, PROF. F. ADLKOFER, PROF. G. HYLAND, DR. L. VON KLITZING und DR. G. CARLO lose their research funds, when they point to severe health damage. The state is implicated in the business of the industry, when its legal obligation would be to create transparency and control its dealings.
The legal obligation to apply the precautionary principle is ignored and the question how the welfare state will cope with the resulting cost is a taboo. The ubiquitous violations of ethical and democratic political principles have motivated the creation of the “Competence Initiative”¯ as outlined below. An interdisciplinary association of physicians, scientists and technicians, the “Competence Initiative”¯ will work towards ensuring that the results of independent research and the citizens”™ right to protection are once more acknowledged and accepted by the authorities.
(Go to the web link for the full paper)