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Are cell phones beneficial to human and nonhuman life? What are the effects of cell phones on the landbase?

We’d have an even harder time rationalizing our inaction in allowing television and radio towers to exist (and I hope you’re not going to suggest it would be immoral to take out television towers, that migratory songbirds should die so we can watch The Best Damn Sports Show, Period on Fox Sports Net).

To the direct killing of birds we can add as a cost of cell phones the effect of speeded-up business communications, which decreases the quality of individual lives in a culture addicted to speed (“People who work for me should have phones in their bathrooms,” said the CEO of one American corporation256), and which decreases the ability of the natural world to sustain itself (the activities of the economic system are killing the planet: the higher the GNP, the more quickly the living are converted to the dead).

The question becomes, how do you take out a cell phone tower?

I need to say up front that I’m a total novice at this sort of thing. I am, to slip into the language of the mean streets, a goody two-shoes. My whole life I’ve rarely done anything illegal, not out of an equation on my part of morality and obedience (or subservience) to laws—at least I hope not—but instead partly because many illegal activities such as using illegal drugs repulse or scare me while others such as insider trading simply do not hold my interest. Even with those that do hold my interest—e.g., taking out dams, hacking, destroying (or otherwise liberating) corporate property—I’m not only almost completely ignorant of how to do it but fairly nervous about getting caught. Don’t get me wrong: I’ve raised a little hell in my time. Sometimes I go crazy and turn right on red without coming to a complete stop, and I routinely drive four or sometimes even nine miles over the speed limit. A few anarchist friends were trying to set up a talk where I’d share the stage with a couple of former Black Panthers. One of them did time for robbing a bank, the other for hijacking a plane. I thought a moment, then confessed, “I once shoplifted dog food from Wal-Mart.” High fives were exchanged around the table.

I have to add that were I more attracted to illegal activities I would probably curtail them because of what I write. I presume, my mom’s reality checks notwithstanding, that I’ve drawn at least a little attention from the powers-that-be, and the last thing I want to do is give them an excuse to pop me for something non-political (and frankly I’m not too keen on getting popped for something political either). If they want to come after me because of what I write, I’ll take them on, and if someday I have the courage to quit writing and take out dams (note the plural, dams: I don’t agree with the Plowshares tactic of turning yourself in if you destroy property belonging to the occupiers), they can try to catch me. But in the meantime, I’m not going to give them any cheap opportunities.

All of which is to say I’m a coward. I’m going to write about how I would take down a cell phone tower here in town, but I’m not going to do it. If I were going to do it, I wouldn’t be so stupid as to write about it, or even talk about it with anyone I didn’t know and trust literally with my life. And all of that is to say that you FBI agents reading this book (and the ones tracking my strokes on my keyboard) can go ahead and lose your erections. This book isn’t a confession. And even if your CIA buddies decide to play smackyface with me there isn’t much I can confess (unless you count the survey stakes I’ve removed, but I’ve already written about that, and besides, removing survey stakes is a fundamental human duty).

Recon is always the first step in any military action, so I drive my mom’s car to the cell phone tower behind Safeway. I take her car not out of some fiendishly clever plot to make it so that if anything happens she’ll get sent up the river instead of me, but because my car has been sitting on blocks in her driveway for more