Smart meters vs. our precious bodily fluids

Reading some of the anti-smart-meter rhetoric, I've been vaguely reminded of General Ripper's speech from Dr. Strangelove. Turns out that reaction wasn't so far off:

Agenda 21 critics grow more vocal

....Often dismissed as a fringe cause, the anti-Agenda 21 movement, with close ties to the tea party, is gaining traction nationally and in Wisconsin. The Republican Party of Wisconsin and some candidates for office here oppose Agenda 21, although battles against programs such as Green Tier appear to be led by citizen activists....

Accusations that the U.N., formed in 1945, represents a threat to national sovereignty and individual liberty are as old as the organization itself. What’s new is the extent to which this sentiment has taken hold as a grass-roots movement, often to oppose environmental initiatives sought by those who have never heard of Agenda 21.

A dizzying array of books, websites, handouts and DVDs seek to expose the nefarious intent behind the pact, signed by President George H.W. Bush, including claims the plan seeks to relocate people into a few dense urban centers. Anti-Agenda 21 activists inveigh against high-tech “smart meters” installed by utility companies, which they allege are surveillance devices.

(Emphasis added.)

It seems to me that if the Madison progressives who've signed onto the anti-meter crusade realized its deep ties to the Tea Party/birther movement, they'd be a bit more skeptical of the information we've been presented.

Update: I highly recommend this great post on a related bogeyman, "electrosensitivity":

Dirty, dirty electricity

....[E]lectrosensitivity should have been on the radar (see what I did there) long before modern electronics came along. Judging by the field strength near all the irons, refrigerators and vaccuum cleaners, people should have been complaining about electrosmog back when Betty Friedan was writing The Feminine Mystique.

What’s more, another in a long series of provocation studies just found that people can’t actually tell from their symptoms whether an electric field is on or off.... It was for this reason that a recent review paper pondered whether hypersensitivity to EMF results from wireless systems and electrical devices or is instead psychosomatic or fictitious.

In 30 years, 25,000 studies have failed to find a definitive link between adverse health effects and “dirty electricity.”

But these are not enough to placate fears. As the WHO states, that’s because the studies don’t rule out the possibility of very small risks. Human health studies are bad at distinguishing a small effect from no effect at all (emphasis added).