A Tribute to Arthur Firstenberg; “A Very Dangerous Man”
When I heard of Arthur Firstenberg’s passing back in February, only days after his death, I felt all of the wind go out of me, as if someone had punched me in the gut. It was as if I viscerally felt the gaping hole his sudden departure from this earthly plane had left in our waking matrix. There goes a mighty force, a powerful advocate for the millions of marginalized “canaries” (or “WiFi Refugees”) like him, and like me, is what I thought. And with that force sucked out of the planet, I felt the loss keenly, feeling so much more alone in my plight now that such a powerful advocate had left us.
I did not know Arthur personally. I am not sure who really did know him on that level. For all of his public advocacy work, he seemed to be quite a private person, not letting many get too close. Before I learned that he was known as a first-rate curmudgeon I had tried to contact him during the years my partner Sam was attempting to make a film about the plight of the WiFi-Refugee canaries (with me as the central focal point/star), but what ultimately morphed into my book instead (WiFi Refugee; Plight of the Modern-day Canary). Having fled from Washington, DC in 2015 to the Sonoran desert in Arizona, from our new location Sam thought he might even be able to drive up to Santa Fe and meet Firstenberg in person for an interview. But we soon learned he was not so accessible and would not be available for the unknown likes of us.
His incredible 2017 book, The Invisible Rainbow; A History of Electricity and Life, has served as a powerful educational tool, with an impressive reach of over 100,000 copies sold, and has heavily influenced my own work, along with his newsletters (from which research I heavily drew for my latest soon-to-be released book on tech addiction and EMF harm: The Red Shoes; Our Devil’s Dance with Technology and How We Can Stop it). The Invisible Rainbow documents the rise of non-native, manmade electromagnetic fields in our world and how these alien fields have directly negatively impacted all biological life coinciding with this unchecked increase and proliferation of these poisonous fields.
In 2019, my partner and I learned of our utility companies plans to ‘upgrade’ our meters to “smart” radiofrequency-spewing weapons, which if installed would mean another forced eviction for us and other ‘canary’ neighbors. Together with these neighbors, in trying to rally the community and convince them of the harms of EMFs (to help us fight the smart meters and secure our homes), we shared excerpts from Firstenberg’s newsletters and book with other skeptical neighbors (and also with the utility company). One of these neighbors reacted by calling Firstenberg “a very dangerous man” in a written message to our online community bulletin board, without offering any reason for this harsh decree. Whatever the intent behind it, that simple statement served to effectively undermine our campaign, sowing the seeds of distrust and suspicion among our would-be supporters.
As Claire Edwards (who worked closely with Firstenberg on drafting and promoting the International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space[i], which was translated into 31 languages and reached millions) points out in her own tribute[ii], for some reason Firstenberg refused to speak of EMFs as a weapon, even while continually pointing to its biologically destructive effects (killing insects, birds, plants, animals, and humans). Possibly he feared being labeled with the dreaded “conspiracy theorist” label, or perhaps he truly believed all of the destruction (at the hands of the wealthy few industries and governments covering up known harmful effects) was simply misguided, or the result of greed, and not intentional to harm humanity.
However, EMF weapons, labeled as such by militaries, do exist (in the form of lasers, masers, phasers, tasers, etc., after all, what military could resist such a powerful, inexpensive, silent, stealth weapon?), and doubtless Firstenberg knew this too. While Firstenberg focused his research and warnings on communications technologies, this too was experimented with for weapons’ applications (as happened with the Moscow Signal from 1960-1976, covert pulsed microwave radiation targeted at US embassy workers in Moscow[iii], and more recently with the “Havana Syndrome”; microwave-induced sickness through intentional covert microwave weapons targeting of US Embassy working in Havana, Cuba and other international embassies from 2016-2019[iv]).
But whatever the case may be, as Firstenberg himself so often warned, EMFs did harm and did ultimately kill him, whether used as DEW (direct energy weapons, as some speculate) or not. His exposures to EMFs, as he self-disclosed, weakened and sickened him, gradually destroying his fragile health, after his first damaging exposures in the ‘90s, from his own cellphone use (he had been an early adopter of the tech) and early supporting infrastructure in New York City, where he lived at the time.
While Firstenberg did not easily grant interviews, he was featured in what turned out to be a Harpers’ magazine (doubtless industry-funded) smear campaign against canary warnings about EMF harm, this past October (2024). In this smear piece, Firstenberg’s litigation efforts, especially the one launched against his neighbor (who refused to turn off her Wi-Max and remediate other exposures that were harming him), were deemed “petty”[v]. But had this neighbor agreed to accommodate him (he had offered her $10,000 to do so) he would probably still be alive. (So maybe not so “petty” after all.)
As it is, Arthur Firstenberg’s death was officially chalked up to an “undiagnosed illness”, to which I am sure Arthur is not just rolling in his grave, but pounding on the casket. (We can only hope his outrage will leave his ghost anxious to continue in his advocacy work from the other side.)
It is true, Arthur Firstenberg was “a very dangerous man”, because he was dangerous to the wireless tech industry, who can only continue to rake in obscene profits at the expense of public health if the public remains ignorant to the harms their addiction to (intentionally designed) addictive products are causing them.
Had Firstenberg lived, he would doubtless have blown the whistle loud and clear as to the worldwide fallout (human, animal, insect and plant deaths and disease) linked to the recently launched and activated “upgraded” military-owned, military-grade Skynet satellite fleet[vi]that was scheduled for early 2025 (with some sources listing launch dates of February 25, 2025, the very day Firstenberg died, after first having ‘inexplicably’ suffered whole-body paralysis).
As Arthur Firstenberg wrote in his seminal book, The Invisible Rainbow, “How many will it take before people no longer feel too alone to say, ‘Your cell phone is killing me’, instead of ‘I’m electrically sensitive’?” Indeed, how many? How many more canaries like this amazing crusader have to die from your cellphone use for the millions of canaries to be able to openly say this and be taken seriously?
Arthur, we do feel more alone with your passing, we thank you for your efforts and your life. While we hope you rest in peace, and we also hope your spirt lives on, giving an extra spark to those left behind, helping us to keep the flame alive.
[i]https://www.5gspaceappeal.org/the-appeal/
[ii] https://forlifeonearth.weebly.com/obituary-arthur-firstenberg.html
[iii] Armen Victorian, Project Freedom Network, “The Military Use of Electromagnetic Microwave and Mind Control Technology”, https://jacobsm.com/projfree/the_military_use_of_mind_control.html
[iv] So impactful were these attacks that the State Department carried out an investigation in 2019 to find the cause of the symptoms of the Embassy workers that ranged from vertigo, dizziness, headaches, fatigue, hearing loss and memory issues—all symptoms also consistently reported by people with microwave illness or EHS. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine found that “directed, pulsed radio-frequency energy (as) the most plausible mechanism” to explain Havana Syndrome. (San Francisco Chronicle, December 6, 2020, “Radiation Ties to Ailments of US. Envoys,” Ana Swanson and Edward Wong.)
[v] Evan Malmgren, “The Fever Called Living; On the plight of environmental-illness refugee”, Harper’s,October 2024
[vi] Yes, Skynet, the same name given to the company in the Hollywood Terminator movies that created the ‘terminator’ robots designed to terminate humans!