Karen Churchill: Action Against 5G

Karen Churchill has extensive training in astronomy, physiology, biology, and frequency medicine. Karen is a full-time campaigner and a claimant on the judicial review case led by Michael Mansfield QC, which is challenging the UK government’s multiple failures in regards to wireless radiation, including 5g. Karen is one of the founders of Action Against 5G.

This is an edited segment from the weekly live General Assembly meeting on April 14, 2022. This presentation is also available on Rumble and Odysee. The full General Assembly Meeting is available in the Newsroom. A transcript of this presentation can be found below.

[00:00:00] [00:00:30] Dr. Jennifer Hibberd: Now I would like to introduce our next speaker, Karen Churchill. Karen Churchill has extensive training in astronomy, physiology, biology and vibrational medicine. She has a website at actionagainst5G.org. Just cause I think you’ll find that very interesting to go to after you listened to her, her talking with us. Karen is a full-time campaigner and a claimant on the judicial review case led by Michael Mansfield QC, which is challenging the UK government’s multiple failures in regards to wireless radiation, including 5g. [00:01:08] I will now turn it over to you, Karen, because I think taking this discussion further is all in your hands. Thank you. [00:01:16] Karen Churchill: Thank you, Jennifer. Good evening everybody. I was absolutely delighted to hear your talk Pri, it was so full of information that I became aware of three years ago when I started my campaign work and it’s just that body of information as a total story and the history, the truth of the effects, the sheer volume of science that’s available to show that there is this connection. And on a personal level I had my neighbor’s friend died of cancer and the oncologist said ‘between you and me, it’s hush, hush, don’t quote me on this’, which again was very telling to me at the time, because back in 2019, it was really taboo to talk about the links between RFR and any health effects. But it was the sheer body of work that you described that motivated me to feel like I need to do something about this. [00:02:16] I need to talk about it. I want to speak to the decision makers who are responsible for making these decisions that this rollout is happening. And so I set about conveying what you’ve conveyed so beautifully to us tonight to the decision-makers in Frome and my local council, my very parish council I started with and I was very surprised at the reaction that with that volume of information on the table, there was still a lot of resistance people who are very, pro-technology and the various responses towards me personally, through having shared that information. But I moved onto Frome after being inspired by Chris Baker’s work in Glastonbury. He had raised a petition there, and presented it to the council and they agreed that the precautionary principle should apply and they went ahead and set up a six months advisory committee where they brought in experts from all angles to look at your information and they’d agreed that it did apply and so I took this information to Frome. I did a talk, I think we had about 40 people attend, including the deputy mayor and she took the information back to Frome council and they voted, I think it was a fairly narrow margin, but to follow in Glastonbury’s footsteps. [00:03:42] Now at that stage, they warned us that when it comes to actually putting up the mast, there’s not a lot we can do, we don’t have control. And what I found in the campaign is there are, seem to be preset beliefs about the technology that it’s safer than it is. And also this inbuilt belief that’s been put into decision-makers minds that it’s coming anyway, there’s nothing you can do about it. You can’t refuse a mast on health and I wasn’t satisfied with that. You know there are a lot of laws in place about public health protection, there’s obligations of duty of care. And if, if there’s evidence that residents are suffering because of this wireless radiation, then we need to address that. [00:04:28] And certainly with the scale of expansion of this network as predescribed in a billion times, exposure for multiple devices. You know, the ridiculousness of having a exposure guideline for one device for six minutes, given the body of evidence, it’s so extreme, the, the weighting of how we need to apply precaution and how we need to take into account this information when we’re deciding whether to put a last up right outside the school or in a residential estate or wherever it is, we need to think carefully about what we’re doing on a mast by mast basis, cell by small basis and we need to hear from the canaries down the mine, people who are suffering from sensitivity and effects, and we need to listen to these warning signals and call for accountability. So I was very motivated. So we went on after Frome to get the precautionary principle in other towns in my district, which is called Mendip and Wells and Shepton M allet and one other within our districts. So we had four towns who had voted ‘yes’, we want the precautionary principle. But at this time there weren’t any mast applications in our area, but they were coming inin Bath. And I met a friend Bath, whose life is severely restricted by her exposure to wireless radiation. [00:06:00] She can tell how close she is to a mast before she’s even seen it. And that’s, that’s a very real experience. And she’d worked very hard in the local school because the children were getting sick at lunchtime when they were playing and they were asking for sick bags, they were reporting headaches, there were even even nosebleeds, and it took two years for the school to realize that there was a hotspot of interacting radiation in the playground. So I really admire her work and her persistence in uncovering this hotspot. And again, it further motivated me to to bring the attention of decision makers, to things like hotspots. [00:06:41] A very fundamental thing struck me, you talked about intensification in a lift or a car, but within the exposure guidelines that the governments are relying on you know, the Econet themselves say that if you have metal implants within your body, the exposure guidelines are not appropriate because the action of the RF within the body, when it interacts with a metal implant is unpredictable, and our local decision-makers aren’t aware of this. [00:07:14] So we went to Bristol and Bath, big city councils, we raised petitions. We got over 1700 signatures in Bath and we went to the council. They, they did not listen. They did not respond. They didn’t answer the science. We were criticized for giving them too much information, then we were asked to give less information, but they didn’t answer, nor did Bristol, and yet on an individual basis, if we sat and had coffee with a councillor and talked gently with them and talked about the information, there tended to be an agreement that yes, there could well be a problem. [00:07:56] So I was determined and I, I felt that how can you do your job, even if we accept the current guidelines, in the process of a planning application, there is the telecoms themselves create a document with a exclusion zone. So they admit within this exclusion zone, you’re not safe, even at the current guideline levels. [00:08:21] So I said to the the head councillor, how can you ensure you’re doing your duty to protect the public, if you don’t know where this exclusion zone is. So we asked and we asked again, please, can you provide it, please can you provide it? And when it came to, I asked him to speak about this issue at the planning meeting, when we were objecting to a mast that was going up in inside a sports ground. And eventually they agreed that it would be sensible to know where these exclusion zones are. So the next and mast that we objected to, we were given the exclusion zones, and low and behold, a man’s house and his whole garden was inside an area that was labeled safe only for eight hours. And so we pointed this out to the council who then proceeded to change the plan and pretend the mast was for 4g instead of a 5g. [00:09:22] And they felt unable to, because of this mantra that you cannot oppose a mast, as long as you’ve got a certificate, they have no power. And what we showed them is that you do have an obligation and a responsibility to weigh up the evidence and to protect the residents. But they went ahead and passed the mast anyway. [00:09:46] So we complained to the central body of the government, who, again, their only commitment was to measure the radiation after the event. So this whole story exposed, how there was no responsibility being taken, even at the exposure levels that are set by the government, which we know from Pri’s information, aren’t adequate. [00:10:10] This was a deeply disturbing to me and we continued campaigning and we found another mast close to a school in Brighton. And in this instance we said, look, here are the exclusion zones, we want you to take account of this information. Again, they passed the mast, they didn’t take account of the the fact that the school playground was very…. in this instance, they didn’t even have an exclusion zone, so we had to borrow and calculate it for ourselves, which again is absolutely unacceptable. But we did it and we showed them that there was a problem and they ignored it. So in this case, we challenged that decision by a judicial review process and they conceded and it cost that council 13,000 pounds because they conceded did that they hadn’t taken into account the proximity of the school and the public health [inaudible]. It was on a, on a technical matter and there still wasn’t this full commitment to looking at how safe the distance and the full body of information about non-thermal effects. [00:11:19] So we pressed ahead and we brought up the fact that it cost that amount of money to that council to not be fully accountable. So we’d broken through the barrier, but yes, they have a responsibility to assess the evidence beyond accepting the certificate. And then we went back to Frome who, by this stage, they under pressure from the government, they overturned the precautionary principle. Now, when they voted for the precautionary principle, they agreed that until there was evidence of safety, they would not endorse the rollouts. But the justification for overturning the principal was more to do with the COVID and the supposeed need that would be fulfilled by 5G, which again, wasn’t really logically argued. So we got 200 objectors to the mast, it was on a trading estate, it was an upgrade from the 4G to 5G. There was a gentleman, who has had brain surgery and back surgery and he had metal implants in his body, is already suffering because of the proximity to the 4G mast. And we wrote to the council and we asked before they even consider the mast, please, can you answer these questions. Please can you answer to the science, the epidemiology studies that show within 500 meters, there is this increased risk. We suggested that they go to the telecoms company and file a non-compliance report with this evidence as a way of having a report to answer to this evidence, which suggests that they ask central government for reports in answer to this evidence, and again, they didn’t reply. And they’ve just said, we’ll just treat this as an objection. So again, there’s this roadblock after roadblock, non-engagement with the specifics, each step of the way. But we were pleased at the planning committee, there was a vote 7-6 they voted against the policy, the government policy and agreed that there wasn’t enough evidence of safety, which was a real breakthrough because they’re in a very difficult position the local councils. They have the responsibility to make this assessment. They’re led to believe that they don’t have the responsibility, but in law they do. Because even though the policy is set, that they’re not allowed to set health safeguards other than that, in planning law, they have a responsibility to weigh all the evidence and no one single policy can be treated as statute. But a lot of the planners don’t know that. [00:13:56] So, we have to gradually help inform them and to see that they’re in a sticky position, you know, their residents are getting sick and if they decide to not make this decision correctly, we will judicially review and challenge that decision on the basis that they made that decision. So both ways they’re in a corner because of the central government policy, that is, is not adequate. [00:14:23] So what the government have done, they’ve relaxed the planning laws, so we have less ability to challenge masts. And so now we can still object to freestanding new applications but it’s a prior approval rather than a full planning application. So the decision will now be made by the case officer. So i.e., An employee of the government, rather than our representatives, our councillors. But it doesn’t mean to say that we stop because there’s still lots of scope to gradually inform our decision-makers and ask them to answer to this science. We really need to point out to them that they are liable. [00:15:09] And I’ve started telling the councils that in Pittsfield, the counselors there have realized that their residents have become sick after putting up a 5G mast and they’ve actually committed to issuing a cease and desist order. And what I would like the message to our council is; it’s too late after it goes up, we need to look at the information before it goes up. [00:15:33] But if it does go up and people are getting sick, then again, we need to ask our decision makers to follow through with their responsibilities. And, you know, we will be asking. I’ve received three emails today, from people that are telling me how sick they are since a mast has gone up in their area. The, these reports are coming in from across the country. [00:15:59] So what I feel motivated in this campaign is to inform everybody that’s listening throughout the country, together we can say ‘no’, we can say ‘no’, we can call for accountability. And we must. The laws are there, we have to find out what they are and use them and keep calling for accountability. [00:16:23] And if we’re being sick, we want our local councils to also issue a cease and desist. I would much rather go through the information process and collectively call for ‘we do not consent’. We do not consent to an environmental toxin that is harming us. And for 3 to 5% of the population are having severely restricted lives. [00:16:49] We do not consent to relaxing the laws in order that you can roll this out more quickly when people are sick. And I haven’t even started to talk about the environment, the effect on the bees on the insects and the life cycle of the products, the energy consumption. It’s ridiculous to think that this is an answer to climate change. [00:17:12] That’s a whole other subject. The main thing I want to convey is, you know, we started this campaign with the mantra, we can’t stop it, you can’t object on heath. We can, we must, and there is the legal framework to use in order to call for that accountability. [00:17:30] Dr. Jennifer Hibberd: Thank you so much, Karen. Your campaigning and strength of mind to voice your concerns and to rally changes in the community throughout the UK is inspiring and motivating. Really amazing. Thank you so much. And as you said, you barely kind of cracked the nut. You’re a voice for millions. You really are. We appreciate you sharing your path to a better way. Everyone makes a difference. Make your voice heard. Thank you so much. David, please engage any questions that you find there for Karen. [00:18:01] David Charalambous: One of the questions that’s coming up Karen; what top tips can you give to others wishing to campaign? [00:18:06] Karen Churchill: I would say like the top tip is keep it simple. The message is really simple. A 500 meter setback is fully justified by the science. And we’ve got the New Hampshire commissioning the work of Dr. Kent Chamberlain, who synthesizes that message for us very, very clearly. So that’s one way of approaching the council with that 500 meters setback. [00:18:30] The science shows that this is supported. Please can you answer it. Please can you ask the central government to answer to this science, or please can you say ‘no’ to this mast. In a recent meeting, we were assured that what the pivot point is have we met a threshold of evidence to show that this is harmful and with the body of science that we can put in our objections underneath this very simple headline, then the simple headline should open the door. Cause we’ve got to break the mantra of people’s belief that it’s safe. The mantra that planners cannot set health safeguards because of policy. Policy is just policy, whereas there are responsibilities to make an evidence-based decision at the local council level. [00:19:24] So if we keep it simple with a simple headline that at least a 500 meter setback is required, we need equal rights for people suffering with EHS and we need to show the local council that the responsibility is falling on your shoulders. And in a way, it shouldn’t, the government should be giving them a safe guideline, but the government is not using a safe guideline. [00:19:51] And that brings me on to talk about the legal case that we’re taking against the government. And with Michael Mansfield QC, he researched this subject for a good six to eight months leading up to deciding to support and take on the case. And he could see that the government were not answering to the science, the guidelines, and not only that, they would set up a special board who had the responsibility of looking at the science and then they didn’t meet. They weren’t funded. Then they were collapsed. They’re not answering to people with vulnerabilities. They’re not informing people with metal implants. They’re not informing the councils that they should be informing their local residents, that if they have a metal implants, these guidelines do not protect them. [00:20:44] So the central case that it was an amazing piece of work to bring together the scientific evidence of harm. We included in our case people at a particular location in London where people were experiencing burns within two hours of being at this location, feeling sick. And then after this particular exposure, there was ongoing chronic electro sensitivity and one lady had to resign from her job, she had to be completely isolated, wooded area outside of her home for a few months to recover. And now they’re both chronically unwell. [00:21:24] So we brought this into the case and to open a door to the plight of everybody else across the country who is suffering these effects and just, this double bind that the local councils are in they’re being told you can’t set health goals, yet by law, they have to weigh it up. That’s a very unfair, double bind that the local councils are in. What I would like to see is campaigns informing the local councils of this dilemma and encouraging them to look for change of policy or to not make any decisions on any masts and to resolve these issues. [00:22:05] This is a piece of law that came in, in December, 2020 from Europe, with European Electronics Communication Code. And in the pre recycles at the beginning of this quote, it says that public health should be made imperative. There should be criteria against which to measure health effects. Precautions should be taken into account. Recent science should be taken into account. Now we’re presenting recent science to the councils, postdating the latest guidelines. And we’re asking you need to answer to this. You know, Lennart Hardell, who Dr. Bandara mentioned has just done a recent study with a 5G mast to on a rooftop. And the people in the flats immediately under it are sick. And that is just study after study showing the same thing. So we’ve gathered a lot of materials and, you know, we’re so grateful to all the researchers in America who paved the way for us. And I’m very grateful to Oliver Percival, who’s built a fantastic website called https://rfinfo.co.uk/ .We have template letters. We have lists of studies. What we find is different councillors and decision-makers have different areas of interest. It may be the environmental effect or the bees or the birds, it may be, they have children. And in this latest decision, a lady councillor realized ‘I don’t, this mast by my home. I’ve got two young children’. [00:23:35] The other interesting thing to point out to local council is, it’s part of the planning procedure is to consult with schools. Now why consult with a school, if children are equally vulnerable at home, why? Government need to answer to this. It’s a hangover when 10 years they said that children were more vulnerable, but the latest guidelines have come out and they haven’t adapted the guidelines for that vulnerability. They claim that they haven’t got the data. As campaigners, we need to point out to the decision-makers the likely illogicality of not having sight of where the exclusion zone is. We have so many examples of masts where these are opposite a flat, you know, an apartment block and then it could well be that those, the exclusion zone is falling in to those buildings opposite. But when you have a telecom producing an exclusion zone report that is not available to the council, there is no checking. it’s only checked by Ofcom if requested, if the level is higher after the event. And the other thing to point out that is that Ofcom are reporting radiation levels that don’t match what we are measuring. In Bath, we saw 10 volts per meter. Now that’s 10 times what Ofcom and central government is saying that they’re finding on the street. We don’t have to measure, we’ve only found a hundredth of [inaudible], all is, well. It’s not. People are suffering and we need collectively to call for accountability and say, we do not consent. I’m all for protection, but the bees can’t protect themselves and protection measures are expensive and the core of the problem is they are allowing this and we need to be in our power to say, we do not consent. [00:25:26] Karen, that was amazing, your talk. We could talk more and more and we will. This is not the end of our conversation with you. We will carry this forward on another occasion too. Now, if there’s any questions, I would love you to go into the chat and interact with people there, and once our next speaker Magda has completed her talk, I would like to bring all of you together if time permits to talk amongst yourselves to bring more information forward, because you’re pointing out the complacency and general probably lack of awareness and this is a learning process and a wake up time for people to realize what technology is doing in our communities and around us. And just because you can’t see, it doesn’t mean it’s not there. And I think that’s a complacency [inaudible] for everybody. So speaking up like you are and making people aware is phenomenally important. So thank you so much for being with us today. [00:26:20]