Colony Collapse Disorder Is a Fraud: Pesticides Cause Bee Die-Offs

Colony Collapse Disorder Is a Fraud: Pesticides Cause Bee Die-Offs – Waking Times : Waking Times.

May 16, 2013

Heidi Stevenson, Green Med Info
Waking Times

Years ago, Gaia Health informed that bee dieoffs are a direct result of pesticide nerve agents called neonicotinoids. The term, Colony Collapse Disorder, is fraudulent, designed to direct attention from the known cause. Agribusiness, the poison manufacturers making death-producing pesticides, is the other face of Big Pharma.

The massive bee die-off is not a great mystery. Colony Collapse Disorder is poisoning with a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids. Clothianidin, a neonicotinoid pesticide manufactured by Bayer, has been clearly linked to die offs in Germany and France.

Although the bee die-offs that have occurred recently are more severe, there have been many in the past from the same and similar products. In North Dakota, a lawsuit was filed against Bayer for the loss of their bees in 1995, the result of spraying rapeseed with imidacloprid. In 1999, the same product was banned in France for use as a seed dressing for sunflowers when they lost one-third of their hives after widespread spraying. In 2004, it was banned for use on corn. Recently, France refused to approve Bayer’s request to sell clothianidin.

 Clothianidin and imidacloprid are both members of a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids. They are well known as insect neurotoxins, especially with regard to bees. The spokesperson for the Coalition Against Bayer Dangers, based in Germany, stated:

We have been pointing out the risks of neonicotinoids for almost 10 years now. This proves without a doubt that the chemicals can come into contact with bees and kill them. These pesticides shouldn’t be on the market.

Not a Surprise

That neonicotinoids are potent neurotoxins, especially in insects, is unsurprising. They were developed for precisely that purpose. Bayer says that their use is safe for bees, when used according to instructions. This involves using a glue that keeps the pesticides stuck to the seeds on which they’re used.

There are many problems with this. Agribusiness corporations are known to evade anything that costs them money. The glue costs money. The equipment and personnel required to apply it costs money. More careful pesticide application to try to keep it from becoming airborne costs money. Obviously, both unscrupulous Agribusiness farmers and unknowing small farmers—not to mention home gardeners—will, at least occasionally, not use the glue.

Even then, it’s impossible to believe that a fair amount of these pesticides won’t become airborne. Further, their residue will poison the soil. It will be passed on into foods, which means that insects will come into contact with it there.

Pharmaceutical Connection

Isn’t it interesting that a major pharmaceutical manufacturer, Bayer, also makes a product that is a poison by design? Bayer is not an exception. Many, if not most, do business in both arenas. That alone should give pause for thought.

Here’s a list of corporations — not expected to be complete — that profit in both pharmaceuticals and pesticides:

• American Home Products
• AMVAC
• Astra Zeneca
• Aventis
• BASF
• Bayer
• Dow Chemical
• Dupont Chemical
• Merck
• Monsanto
• Novartis
• Pharmacia

Is it an accident that most of Big Pharma also manufactures pesticides? Is there a connection between the two types of products? Do the pharmaceutical arms of these corporations profit on the illness caused by the pesticide arms? You can decide.

Mythical Disease

Disease mongering is a well-worn technique used by Big Pharma to create new diseases—define, name, and make household terms—for the purpose of selling chemicals called drugs. The same technique has been used to cloak massive bee die-offs with an air of mystery.

Colony Collapse Disorder is a false name that serves to mislead the public into believing that there’s a new, mystery disorder, probably something very complex, that needs tons of money to be thrown at it so that every possible angle can be studied. The reason is simple. By misdirecting the public, and apparently many professionals too, the real reason for bee die-offs is obscured.

This is very much like the misleading pseudo science that supposedly debunks global climate change by giving a false impression that there is no consensus among scientists. By stirring pesticides into a mix of other supposedly possible causes, such as bacterial infections, fungal infections, and environmental stress—all assuredly concerns with bees, but none of them new—a false controversy is created. That results in precious time being wasted, while we really do move into a world without bees. At the same time, money is being thrown at scientists, who should know better, but being just as human as the rest of us, they’re tempted.

Eventually, the real cause starts to become obvious, as is happening now in bee die-offs. However, the guilty party, the one making obscene profits by selling neurotoxic poisons that destroy the earth, launches a campaign of disingenuous lies, misdirection, and lawsuits to continue to sell their contaminants as long as possible.

Meanwhile, we’re being told that we must prepare to live in a world without bees, as if it’s inevitable. All because of Colony Collapse Disorder, a cleverly marketed nonexistent disease. We live in fear of the implications of no bees, when the real threat is poisons manufactured for the sole benefit of obscene profits.

How to Avoid These Neurotoxins

Neonicotinoids are used in Agribusiness and home gardens. To help the reader avoid these products, here are some of their generic names, along with as many brand names as could be found.

• The neonicotinoids include: acetamiprid, dinotefuran, clothianidin, imidacloprid, thiamethoxam.
• Acetamiprid and dinotefuran are manufactured by many companies. Thiamethoxam is made by Syngenta. Only Bayer makes clothianidin and imidacloprid.
• Brand names for imidacloprid include: Kohinor, Admire, Advantage, Gaucho, Merit, Confidor, Hachikusan, Premise, Prothor, and Winner.
• Brand names for clothianidin include: Gaucho, Titan, Clutch, Belay, Arena.
• Brand names for acetamiprid include: Assail, Intruder, Adjust.
• Brand names for thiacloprid include: Calypso.
• Brand names for thiamethoxam include: Actara, Cruiser, Helix, Platinum, Centric.
• Neonicotinoids: acetamiprid, dinotefuran.

About the Author

Heidi Stevenson is Allopathy’s Gadfly. She’s an iatrogenic survivor whose prior career in computer science, research, and writing was lost as a result. She has turned her skills towards exposing the modern medical scam and the politics surrounding it, along with providing information about the effectiveness of much alternative medicine, without which she would not be here today acting as Allopathy’s Gadfly. Find her work on GaiaHealth.com

Related articles

• RT: US approves new pesticides linked to mass bee deaths as EU enacts ban (jhaines6.wordpress.com)
• Why are bees dying? Europe suspects pesticides, the US isn’t sure (bangordailynews.com)
• US approves new pesticides linked to mass bee deaths as EU enacts ban (rt.com)
• Pesticides Definitively Linked to Bee Colony Collapse (anh-usa.org)
• Dying bees raise alarm for humans (sacbee.com)

Bees ‘self-medicate’ when infected with some pathogens

ScienceDaily

Bees ‘self-medicate’ when infected with some pathogens.

(Mar. 30, 2012) —

Research from North Carolina State University shows that honey bees “self-medicate” when their colony is infected with a harmful fungus, bringing in increased amounts of antifungal plant resins to ward off the pathogen.

Français : Propolis dans la ruche English: Propolis in beehives Português: Própolis em colmeia Deutsch: Propolis an einem Bienenstock (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“The colony is willing to expend the energy and effort of its worker bees to collect these resins,” says Dr. Michael Simone-Finstrom, a postdoctoral research scholar in NC State’s Department of Entomology and lead author of a paper describing the research. “So, clearly this behavior has evolved because the benefit to the colony exceeds the cost.”

Wild honey bees normally line their hives with propolis, a mixture of plant resins and wax that has antifungal and antibacterial properties. Domesticated honey bees also use propolis, to fill in cracks in their hives. However, researchers found that, when faced with a fungal threat, bees bring in significantly more propolis — 45 percent more, on average. The bees also physically removed infected larvae that had been parasitized by the fungus and were being used to create fungal spores.

Researchers know propolis is an effective antifungal agent because they lined some hives with a propolis extract and found that the extract significantly reduced the rate of infection.

And apparently bees can sometimes distinguish harmful fungi from harmless ones, since colonies did not bring in increased amounts of propolis when infected with harmless fungal species. Instead, the colonies relied on physically removing the spores.

However, the self-medicating behavior does have limits. Honey bee colonies infected with pathogenic bacteria did not bring in significantly more propolis — despite the fact that the propolis also has antibacterial properties. “There was a slight increase, but it was not statistically significant,” Simone-Finstrom says. “That is something we plan to follow up on.”

There may be a lesson here for domestic beekeepers. “Historically, U.S. beekeepers preferred colonies that used less of this resin, because it is sticky and can be difficult to work with,” Simone-Finstrom says. “Now we know that this is a characteristic worth promoting, because it seems to offer the bees some natural defense.”

via Bees ‘self-medicate’ when infected with some pathogens.

Related articles

• Propolis tincture (nairdafi.wordpress.com)
• Increased honey bee diversity means fewer pathogens, more helpful bacteria, IU biologist finds (yubanet.com)

Tens of millions of Florida bees mysteriously drop dead in one day, beekeepers blame pesticides

Image via Wikipedia

Tens of millions of Florida bees mysteriously drop dead in one day, beekeepers blame pesticides.

(NaturalNews) Authorities have already ruled out disease, including the infamous “Colony Collapse Disorder” (CCD), as the cause of a recent honeybee holocaust that took place in Brevard County, Florida. The UK’s Daily Mail reports that up to 12 million bees from roughly 800 apiaries in the area all dropped dead at roughly the same time around September 26 — and local beekeepers say pesticides are likely to blame.

CCD is the term often used to describe the inexplicable mass die-off of honeybees around the world, which typically involves honeybees leaving their hives and, for whatever reason, never finding their way back home. Mass die-offs associated with CCD often occur at seemingly random locations around the world, and typically involve a gradual process of disappearance and eventual colony collapse — and the dead bees are typically nowhere to be found.

But the recent Florida event involved hundreds of colonies from 30 different sites in a one-and-a-half mile radius literally dropping dead all at the same time and leaving their carcasses behind, which is why authorities have dismissed CCD as the cause. Based on the appearance of the dead bees, as well as the synchronous timing of their deaths, pesticide sprayings appear to be the culprit in this case.

“I’m a pretty tough guy, but it is heart wrenching,” said Charles Smith of Smith Family Honey Company to News 13 in Orlando. His family’s company lost an estimated $150,000 worth of bees in the recent die-off. “Not only is it a monetary loss here, but we work really hard on these bees to keep them in good health.”

The Florida die-off coincides with a recent county-wide mosquito eradication effort, during which helicopters flew over various parts of the county and sprayed airborne pesticides. Officials, of course, deny that this taxpayer-funded spraying initiative had anything to do with the bee genocide, though.

“The fact that it was so widespread and so rapid, I think you can pretty much rule out disease,” said Bill Kern, an entomologist from the University of Florida (UF) to Florida Today. “It happened essentially almost in one day. Usually diseases affect adults or the brood, you don’t have something that kills them both.”

Many of the beekeepers who lost their hives in the mass killing raised their bees to sell to American farmers, who then used them to pollinate food crops. Because of their massive losses, many of these beekeepers could end up losing their entire beekeeping businesses.

Sources for this story include:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art…

http://www.floridatoday.com/article…

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news…

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/033781_honey_bees_pesticides.html#ixzz1ZuxgxM1n

14 signs that the collapse of our modern world has already begun

14 signs that the collapse of our modern world has already begun.

(NaturalNews) A lot of people believe the world as we know it is going to end on December 23, 2012. Nonsense, I say. The far more honest answer is that the end of the world as we know it has already begun. And it doesn’t mean the end of the world; it means the closing of one era and the birth of a new one. It is a transition between the ages. This particular transition, however, promises to be the most tumultuous and costly transition humankind has ever seen.

But don’t wait around for December 2012 to look for the signs. Here are 14 signs that the world as we know it is unraveling right now. We are living through the end of one era and the birth of a new one. In the future, they’ll look back and call this all one moment in history, but when you’re living through it, it seems to move forward at almost a snail’s pace. But make no mistake: We are living through the opening chapters of the end of the world as we know it, and on the other side of all this will emerge a new world that’s very different from the one we know today.

#1 – Tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis – At first it seemed like a fluke; but now it’s a pattern. The weather is becoming increasingly extreme. Over 120 tornadoes recently struck the U.S. Midwest. Texas is on fire and suffering through an extreme drought. And where there aren’t fires and droughts, there are floods. This is only the beginning… watch for more freak weather over the next 18 months.

#2 – The silence of the bees – Colony Collapse Disorder continues to accelerate across North America. We already know it’s being caused in part by chemical pesticides (and possibly worsened by GMOs), but the chemical industry is engaged in a full-on cover-up to deny this truth while the pollinators of our world suffer a devastating population collapse. (http://www.naturalnews.com/028218_p…)

#3 – The failure of nuclear science – The Fukushima catastrophe proves one thing: Scientists are dangerously arrogant in their planning of large-scale projects, and they fail to account for the awesome power of Mother Nature. Nuclear science promised us clean, green energy — but now it has delivered a silent, invisible poison that’s infecting our planet.

#4 – The vicious pursuit of Wikileaks – In an age of such rampant deceit, there is no room for the truth. So those who tell the truth (Wikileaks) are viciously pursued as if they were criminals.

#5 – The rise of the medical police state – The armed SWAT raids on Maryanne Godboldo in Detroit are only the beginning (http://www.naturalnews.com/032091_M…). The truth is that the medical system uses guns to force its vaccines and chemotherapy onto children and teens across America. The medical system has become so utterly useless, corrupt and dangerous that it must actually invoke guns in peoples’ faces just to “convince” people to take its medicine. This is a gunpoint-enforced medical monopoly that exists as a threat to our health and our freedoms.

#6 – The increasing frequency of food shortages and crop failures – Notice the spike in food prices? That’s just the beginning: Food prices will continue to skyrocket in the years ahead due to extreme weather, the loss of pollinators and the global contamination of crops by GMOs. Real food is becoming increasingly scarce in our world. You might want to think about starting a home garden…

#7 – The runaway destruction of the world by energy companies – The radioactive fallout from Fukushima isn’t the only way in which energy companies are destroying our world: Don’t forget about the Deepwater Horizon and the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico — a spill that isn’t over, by the way. They’re still spraying Corexit in the Gulf one year later!

#8 – The continued GMO contamination of our planet – This may be the worst chapter in the coming collapse: The widespread genetic pollution of our planet through GMOs. This is a crime against nature and against humanity. It is a “gene spill” that may never be contained as it spreads its deadly DNA across the world’s food crops, leading to crop failures and starvation (http://www.naturalnews.com/032167_g…). The use of GMOs is the closest thing to “Satanic” that you’ll find in modern agriculture. The agenda behind this is pure evil.

#9 – The tyranny and criminal crackdowns targeting real food (raw milk) – When you can’t even sell honest farm food to your neighbors without being targeted and arrested by the cops, something is terribly wrong with the world. But this is happening today, all across America. Now the feds are even targeting the Amish! (http://www.naturalnews.com/029322_r…)

#10 – The escalation of the counterfeiting of the money supply – In a failed economic system approaching collapse, the moronic leaders can only think of “solutions” that actually accelerate their own downfall. The runaway counterfeiting of money by the Federal Reserve (with its “quantitative easing” and other counterfeit methods) is a classic sign that the end of our current system is fast approaching. The economic insanities are obvious to anyone who can still do math.

#11 – The plummeting intelligence of the masses – One of the most disturbing signs that we’re already in the collapse is the great dumbing-down of the masses. The drooling, CNN-watching television zombies who dominate our landscape offer absolutely nothing of value to the world. They are the “mindless consumers” who get vaccinated, watch television and eat processed, pasteurized junk food. They’re on psychiatric meds and believe everything the government tells them. Most of these people, of course, won’t make it through the collapse.

#12 – The complete and utter fabrication of the mainstream news – Much of the mainstream news is now utterly and completely fabricated these days: The reporting on Obama’s long-form birth certificate; the news about the war in Libya; the coverage of the economy and the U.S. debt… it’s all so utterly false and unbelievable that an intelligent person watching the news can’t help but explode with laughter. It is a sign of this collapse that the information sources relied upon by the masses are unable to report the truth anymore and must resort to weaving politically expedient fictions on everything from health care and medicine to the fate of the U.S. dollar itself.

#13 – The ongoing pharmaceutical pollution of our world – Beyond the GMO contamination and the radiation contamination of our world, we are also experiencing the mass pharmaceutical contamination of our planet. It’s not just the pharma factories that dump their products into the rivers (http://www.naturalnews.com/025415_w…); it’s also the fact that well over half the population is now taking drugs almost daily, and those drugs pass right through their bodies and end up in the water supply where they contaminate the fish (http://www.naturalnews.com/025933.html). Even beyond that, the drugs end up in the human sewage sludge that’s packaged and sold as “organic soil!” (http://www.naturalnews.com/029504_o…)

#14 – The radioactive contamination of the global food supply – Here’s one that’s really insidious: The global food supply is now contaminated with the radioactive fallout from Fukushima. We’re told the levels are “low,” but we’re not told the truth of how radioactive cesium isotopes persist in the food supply for centuries. How is the human race going to survive its exposure to CT scans, radioactive food, chest X-rays, TSA body scanners and even the secret DHS mobile X-ray vans that can penetrate your body with X-rays as you’re walking into a football stadium? The total radiation burden on the human race is now reaching a point of mass infertility. That may be the whole idea, actually.

December, 2012 may be a useful date as some sort of mid-point in the crisis, or perhaps as a trigger date for some further acceleration of society’s rapid unraveling. But make no mistake: We are already living in the collapse of our modern world. And you have a front-row seat! (Exciting, huh?)

Think about what’s happening around you these days. These are the signs of the last, desperate clutches of a civilization built on utterly unsustainable practices that don’t value life on our world. These are the End Times of the corporate oligarchy; the monopolistic for-profit corporation machine that destroyed everything in our world in exchange for a slightly higher quarterly earnings report.

In the quest for more money, humanity has sacrificed its food supply, its pollinators, it’s oceans, forests and soils. Greed-driven humans have used other humans as medical experiments and cannon fodder. We have created wars to sell more bombs, and we’ve invented disease to sell psychiatric chemicals.

These are the practices of a failed civilization… and one whose days are numbered. Watching it all crumble is far more interesting than watching it continue its destructive ways, of course, because those of us paying attention realize a future civilization must rise up in the place of this one after the collapse.

It would be nice if our future leaders remembered the importance of liberty and personal responsibility, of course. The answer to all the world’s problems, it turns out, is freedom — freedom in medicine, freedom in economics and freedom from government tyranny.

Because, let’s face it: The root cause of most these problems that are bringing down our world right now is bad government. It is bad government (Big Government) that approved the GMOs. Bad government enforced the medical monopoly and allowed the pesticides to kill the honeybees. Bad government drove us into inescapable debt and costly foreign wars. Bad government outlawed health freedom and protected the monopolistic practices of the food companies, drug companies and chemical companies.

The downfall of modern human civilization is, as you probably guessed, also the downfall of the very idea that Big Government creates a better society. Because if there’s one idea that needs to stay dead after the collapse, it’s the idea that We the People somehow need another group of people (government workers) to live off our hard work while hounding us with their false authority, directing every little detail of our lives.

What we need in our world isn’t more government, but more freedom. If we had freedom, integrity and personal responsibility, we wouldn’t even be facing the global collapse that has already begun. But alas, the human race is an infant species and it must learn some lessons the hard way, it seems.

This lesson should be long remembered: If you let the corporations, the banks and the governments run your economies, your farms and your lives, they will enslave you and steal your future while you sleep; they will inject silent poisons into the very world around you until you awaken one day to find that all you created has been destroyed. They will promise you paradise but deliver only death. Beware of any entity that is not a living person — no government, no institution, no corporation has a soul, nor a heart, nor a conscience. They are forces of organized destruction that decimate those things we hold dear while delivering to us things that will only enslave us or harm us.

Beware the corporation; the government; the non-profit institution working as a front group for private industry. Never allow yourself to be ruled over by any institution which exists only as a fictional construct organized from the projection of human greed.

And be ready for the acceleration of the collapse. Because if you are reading this, you are the future of the human race. You have a duty to stay alive, keep your genes intact, and be around to help create the Next Society after this one crumbles into history.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/032258_economic_collapse_2012.html#ixzz1a2Z5fHpE

Related articles

• Monsanto is secretly poisoning the population with Roundup (talesfromthelou.wordpress.com)
• Economic Doomsday: World’s Experts Predict ‘Total Disaster’ (talesfromthelou.wordpress.com)
• THEY WANT US DEAD! – Red Level Alert America (newsworldwide.wordpress.com)

14 signs that the collapse of our modern world has already begun

(NaturalNews) A lot of people believe the world as we know it is going to end on December 23, 2012. Nonsense, I say. The far more honest answer is that the end of the world as we know it has already begun. And it doesn’t mean the end of the world; it means the closing of one era and the birth of a new one. It is a transition between the ages. This particular transition, however, promises to be the most tumultuous and costly transition humankind has ever seen.

But don’t wait around for December 2012 to look for the signs. Here are 14 signs that the world as we know it is unraveling right now. We are living through the end of one era and the birth of a new one. In the future, they’ll look back and call this all one moment in history, but when you’re living through it, it seems to move forward at almost a snail’s pace. But make no mistake: We are living through the opening chapters of the end of the world as we know it, and on the other side of all this will emerge a new world that’s very different from the one we know today.

#1 – Tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis – At first it seemed like a fluke; but now it’s a pattern. The weather is becoming increasingly extreme. Over 120 tornadoes recently struck the U.S. Midwest. Texas is on fire and suffering through an extreme drought. And where there aren’t fires and droughts, there are floods. This is only the beginning… watch for more freak weather over the next 18 months.

#2 – The silence of the bees – Colony Collapse Disorder continues to accelerate across North America. We already know it’s being caused in part by chemical pesticides (and possibly worsened by GMOs), but the chemical industry is engaged in a full-on cover-up to deny this truth while the pollinators of our world suffer a devastating population collapse. (http://www.naturalnews.com/028218_p…)

#3 – The failure of nuclear science – The Fukushima catastrophe proves one thing: Scientists are dangerously arrogant in their planning of large-scale projects, and they fail to account for the awesome power of Mother Nature. Nuclear science promised us clean, green energy — but now it has delivered a silent, invisible poison that’s infecting our planet.

#4 – The vicious pursuit of Wikileaks – In an age of such rampant deceit, there is no room for the truth. So those who tell the truth (Wikileaks) are viciously pursued as if they were criminals.

#5 – The rise of the medical police state – The armed SWAT raids on Maryanne Godboldo in Detroit are only the beginning (http://www.naturalnews.com/032091_M…). The truth is that the medical system uses guns to force its vaccines and chemotherapy onto children and teens across America. The medical system has become so utterly useless, corrupt and dangerous that it must actually invoke guns in peoples’ faces just to “convince” people to take its medicine. This is a gunpoint-enforced medical monopoly that exists as a threat to our health and our freedoms.

#6 – The increasing frequency of food shortages and crop failures – Notice the spike in food prices? That’s just the beginning: Food prices will continue to skyrocket in the years ahead due to extreme weather, the loss of pollinators and the global contamination of crops by GMOs. Real food is becoming increasingly scarce in our world. You might want to think about starting a home garden…

#7 – The runaway destruction of the world by energy companies – The radioactive fallout from Fukushima isn’t the only way in which energy companies are destroying our world: Don’t forget about the Deepwater Horizon and the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico — a spill that isn’t over, by the way. They’re still spraying Corexit in the Gulf one year later!

#8 – The continued GMO contamination of our planet – This may be the worst chapter in the coming collapse: The widespread genetic pollution of our planet through GMOs. This is a crime against nature and against humanity. It is a “gene spill” that may never be contained as it spreads its deadly DNA across the world’s food crops, leading to crop failures and starvation (http://www.naturalnews.com/032167_g…). The use of GMOs is the closest thing to “Satanic” that you’ll find in modern agriculture. The agenda behind this is pure evil.

#9 – The tyranny and criminal crackdowns targeting real food (raw milk) – When you can’t even sell honest farm food to your neighbors without being targeted and arrested by the cops, something is terribly wrong with the world. But this is happening today, all across America. Now the feds are even targeting the Amish! (http://www.naturalnews.com/029322_r…)

#10 – The escalation of the counterfeiting of the money supply – In a failed economic system approaching collapse, the moronic leaders can only think of “solutions” that actually accelerate their own downfall. The runaway counterfeiting of money by the Federal Reserve (with its “quantitative easing” and other counterfeit methods) is a classic sign that the end of our current system is fast approaching. The economic insanities are obvious to anyone who can still do math.

#11 – The plummeting intelligence of the masses – One of the most disturbing signs that we’re already in the collapse is the great dumbing-down of the masses. The drooling, CNN-watching television zombies who dominate our landscape offer absolutely nothing of value to the world. They are the “mindless consumers” who get vaccinated, watch television and eat processed, pasteurized junk food. They’re on psychiatric meds and believe everything the government tells them. Most of these people, of course, won’t make it through the collapse.

#12 – The complete and utter fabrication of the mainstream news – Much of the mainstream news is now utterly and completely fabricated these days: The reporting on Obama’s long-form birth certificate; the news about the war in Libya; the coverage of the economy and the U.S. debt… it’s all so utterly false and unbelievable that an intelligent person watching the news can’t help but explode with laughter. It is a sign of this collapse that the information sources relied upon by the masses are unable to report the truth anymore and must resort to weaving politically expedient fictions on everything from health care and medicine to the fate of the U.S. dollar itself.

#13 – The ongoing pharmaceutical pollution of our world – Beyond the GMO contamination and the radiation contamination of our world, we are also experiencing the mass pharmaceutical contamination of our planet. It’s not just the pharma factories that dump their products into the rivers (http://www.naturalnews.com/025415_w…); it’s also the fact that well over half the population is now taking drugs almost daily, and those drugs pass right through their bodies and end up in the water supply where they contaminate the fish (http://www.naturalnews.com/025933.html). Even beyond that, the drugs end up in the human sewage sludge that’s packaged and sold as “organic soil!” (http://www.naturalnews.com/029504_o…)

#14 – The radioactive contamination of the global food supply – Here’s one that’s really insidious: The global food supply is now contaminated with the radioactive fallout from Fukushima. We’re told the levels are “low,” but we’re not told the truth of how radioactive cesium isotopes persist in the food supply for centuries. How is the human race going to survive its exposure to CT scans, radioactive food, chest X-rays, TSA body scanners and even the secret DHS mobile X-ray vans that can penetrate your body with X-rays as you’re walking into a football stadium? The total radiation burden on the human race is now reaching a point of mass infertility. That may be the whole idea, actually.

December, 2012 may be a useful date as some sort of mid-point in the crisis, or perhaps as a trigger date for some further acceleration of society’s rapid unraveling. But make no mistake: We are already living in the collapse of our modern world. And you have a front-row seat! (Exciting, huh?)

Think about what’s happening around you these days. These are the signs of the last, desperate clutches of a civilization built on utterly unsustainable practices that don’t value life on our world. These are the End Times of the corporate oligarchy; the monopolistic for-profit corporation machine that destroyed everything in our world in exchange for a slightly higher quarterly earnings report.

In the quest for more money, humanity has sacrificed its food supply, its pollinators, it’s oceans, forests and soils. Greed-driven humans have used other humans as medical experiments and cannon fodder. We have created wars to sell more bombs, and we’ve invented disease to sell psychiatric chemicals.

These are the practices of a failed civilization… and one whose days are numbered. Watching it all crumble is far more interesting than watching it continue its destructive ways, of course, because those of us paying attention realize a future civilization must rise up in the place of this one after the collapse.

It would be nice if our future leaders remembered the importance of liberty and personal responsibility, of course. The answer to all the world’s problems, it turns out, is freedom — freedom in medicine, freedom in economics and freedom from government tyranny.

Because, let’s face it: The root cause of most these problems that are bringing down our world right now is bad government. It is bad government (Big Government) that approved the GMOs. Bad government enforced the medical monopoly and allowed the pesticides to kill the honeybees. Bad government drove us into inescapable debt and costly foreign wars. Bad government outlawed health freedom and protected the monopolistic practices of the food companies, drug companies and chemical companies.

The downfall of modern human civilization is, as you probably guessed, also the downfall of the very idea that Big Government creates a better society. Because if there’s one idea that needs to stay dead after the collapse, it’s the idea that We the People somehow need another group of people (government workers) to live off our hard work while hounding us with their false authority, directing every little detail of our lives.

What we need in our world isn’t more government, but more freedom. If we had freedom, integrity and personal responsibility, we wouldn’t even be facing the global collapse that has already begun. But alas, the human race is an infant species and it must learn some lessons the hard way, it seems.

This lesson should be long remembered: If you let the corporations, the banks and the governments run your economies, your farms and your lives, they will enslave you and steal your future while you sleep; they will inject silent poisons into the very world around you until you awaken one day to find that all you created has been destroyed. They will promise you paradise but deliver only death. Beware of any entity that is not a living person — no government, no institution, no corporation has a soul, nor a heart, nor a conscience. They are forces of organized destruction that decimate those things we hold dear while delivering to us things that will only enslave us or harm us.

Beware the corporation; the government; the non-profit institution working as a front group for private industry. Never allow yourself to be ruled over by any institution which exists only as a fictional construct organized from the projection of human greed.

And be ready for the acceleration of the collapse. Because if you are reading this, you are the future of the human race. You have a duty to stay alive, keep your genes intact, and be around to help create the Next Society after this one crumbles into history.

4 signs that the collapse of our modern world has already begun.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/032258_economic_collapse_2012.html#ixzz1Od5imU1R

Honeybee End?

Image via Wikipedia

 

The mysterious collapse of honey-bee colonies is becoming a global phenomenon. Declines in managed bee colonies, seen increasingly in Europe and the US in the past decade, are also now being observed in China and Japan and there are the first signs of African collapses from Egypt, according to the report from the United Nations. Beekeepers in Western countries have been reporting slow declines of stocks for many years, apparently due to impaired protein production, changes in agricultural practice, or unpredictable weather. In early 2007, abnormally high die-offs (30-70% of hives) of European honey bee colonies occurred in the U.S. and Québec; such a decline seems unprecedented in recent history. This has been dubbed Colony collapse disorder (CCD); it is unclear whether this is simply an accelerated phase of the general decline due to more adverse conditions in 2006, or a novel phenomenon. More than a dozen factors, ranging from declines in flowering plants and the use of memory-damaging insecticides to the world-wide spread of pests and air pollution, may be behind the emerging decline of bee colonies across many parts of the globe.

Bees are generalist floral visitors, and will pollinate a large variety of plants, but by no means all plants. Of all the honey bee species, only Apis mellifera has been used extensively for commercial pollination of crops and other plants. The value of these pollination services is commonly measured in the billions of dollars.

Currently being used as pollinators in managed pollination are honey bees, bumblebees, alfalfa leafcutter bees, and orchard mason bees. Humans also can be pollinators, as the gardener who may hand pollinates squash blossoms.

Declines in managed bee colonies date back to the mid 1960s in Europe but have accelerated since 1998, especially in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom.

In North America, losses of honey bee colonies since 2004 have left the continent with fewer managed pollinators than at any time in the past 50 years.

Chinese bee keepers, who manage both western and eastern species of honey bees, have recently faced several inexplicable and complex symptoms of colony losses in both species.

A quarter of beekeepers in Japan have been confronted with sudden losses of their bee colonies.

In Africa, beekeepers along the Egyptian Nile have been reporting signs of CCD although to date there are no other confirmed reports from the rest of the continent.

There seem to be multiple factors involved in CCD. Habitat degradation, including the loss of flowering plant species that provide food for bees, is among the key factors behind the decline of wild-living pollinators.

An Anglo-Dutch study has found that since the 1980s, there has been a 70 per cent drop in key wild flowers among, for example, the mint, pea and perennial herb families.

Parasites and Pests, such as the well known Varroa mite which feeds on bee fluids, are also a factor.

Other parasites include the small hive beetle, which damages honeycombs, stored honey and pollen. Endemic to sub-Saharan Africa, it has spread to North America and Australia and may come to Europe.

Bees may also be suffering from competition by ‘alien species’ such as the Africanized bee in the United States and the Asian hornet which feed on European honey bees. The hornet has now colonized nearly half of France since 2004.

Air pollution may be interfering with the ability of bees to find flowering plants and thus food.

Electromagnetic fields from sources such as power lines might also be changing bee behavior. Bees are sensitive as they have small abdominal crystals that contain lead.

Herbicides and pesticides may be reducing the availability of wild flowers and plants needed for food and for the larval stages of some pollinators. Laboratory studies have found that some insecticides and fungicides can act together to be 1,000 times more toxic to bees.

Some insecticides, including those applied to seeds and which can migrate to the entire plant as it grows, and others used to treat cats, fish, birds and rabbits, may also be taking their toll.
Studies have shown that such chemicals can affect the sense of direction, memory and brain metabolism in bees

The management of hives may also be adding to the problem. Some of the treatments against pests may actually be harmful to bees and a growing habit of re-using equipment and food from dead colonies might be spreading disease and chemicals to new hives.

Transporting bees from one farm to another in order to provide pollination services increasingly unavailable from nature could be an additional factor. In the United States, trucks carrying up to 20 million bees are common and each year over two million colonies travel across the continent. Mortality rates, following transportation, can be as much as 10 per cent of a colony

The full report, Global Bee Colony Disorders and other Threats to Insect Pollinators, can be downloaded at:

http://www.unep.org/dewa/Portals/67/pdf/Global_Bee_Colony_Disorder_and_Threats_insect_pollinators.pdf

: Honeybee End?.

Related Articles

• UN Warning: Collapse of Bee Colonies Now Global (friendseat.com)

Decline of honey bees now a global phenomenon, says United Nations

By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor

 

The mysterious collapse of honey-bee colonies is becoming a global phenomenon, scientists working for the United Nations have revealed.

Declines in managed bee colonies, seen increasingly in Europe and the US in the past decade, are also now being observed in China and Japan and there are the first signs of African collapses from Egypt, according to the report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

The authors, who include some of the world’s leading honey-bee experts, issue a stark warning about the disappearance of bees, which are increasingly important as crop pollinators around the globe. Without profound changes to the way human beings manage the planet, they say, declines in pollinators needed to feed a growing global population are likely to continue. The scientists warn that a number of factors may now be coming together to hit bee colonies around the world, ranging from declines in flowering plants and the use of damaging insecticides, to the worldwide spread of pests and air pollution. They call for farmers and landowners to be offered incentives to restore pollinator-friendly habitats, including key flowering plants near crop-producing fields and stress that more care needs to be taken in the choice, timing and application of insecticides and other chemicals. While managed hives can be moved out of harm’s way, “wild populations (of pollinators) are completely vulnerable”, says the report.

“The way humanity manages or mismanages its nature-based assets, including pollinators, will in part define our collective future in the 21st century,” said Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director.

“The fact is that of the 100 crop species that provide 90 per cent of the world’s food, over 70 are pollinated by bees.

“Human beings have fabricated the illusion that in the 21st century they have the technological prowess to be independent of nature.

“Bees underline the reality that we are more, not less, dependent on nature’s services in a world of close to seven billion people.”

Declines in bee colonies date back to the mid 1960s in Europe, but have accelerated since 1998, while in North America, losses of colonies since 2004 have left the continent with fewer managed pollinators than at any time in the past 50 years, says the report.

Now Chinese beekeepers have recently “faced several inexplicable and complex symptoms of colony losses in both species”, the report says. And it has been reported elsewhere that some Chinese farmers have had to resort to pollinating fruit trees by hand because of the lack of insects.

Furthermore, a quarter of beekeepers in Japan “have recently been confronted with sudden losses of their bee colonies”, while in Africa, beekeepers along the Egyptian Nile have been reporting signs of “colony collapse disorder” – although to date there are no other confirmed reports from the rest of the continent.

The report lists a number of factors which may be coming together to cause the decline and they include:

* Habitat degradation, including the loss of flowering plant species that provide food for bees;

* Some insecticides, including the so-called “systemic” insecticides which can migrate to the entire plant as it grows and be taken in by bees in nectar and pollen;

* Parasites and pests, such as the well-known Varroa mite;

* Air pollution, which may be interfering with the ability of bees to find flowering plants and thus food – scents that could travel more than 800 metres in the 1800s now reach less than 200 metres from a plant.

“The transformation of the countryside and rural areas in the past half-century or so has triggered a decline in wild-living bees and other pollinators,” said one of the lead authors, Dr Peter Neumann of the Swiss Bee Research Centre.

“Society is increasingly investing in ‘industrial-scale’ hives and managed colonies to make up the shortfall and going so far as to truck bees around to farms and fields in order to maintain our food supplies.

“A variety of factors are making these man-made colonies vulnerable to decline and collapse. We need to get smarter about how we manage these hives, but perhaps more importantly, we need to better manage the landscape beyond, in order to recover wild bee populations.”

Decline of honey bees now a global phenomenon, says United Nations – Nature, Environment – The Independent.

Einstein was right – honey bee collapse threatens global food security

“if the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, man would have only four years to live”.

Between 80pc and 90pc of animal pollination of crops comes from domesticated honey bees Photo: GETTY

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, International Business Editor 8:30PM GMT 06 Feb 2011

Almost a third of global farm output depends on animal pollination, largely by honey bees.

These foods provide 35pc of our calories, most of our minerals, vitamins, and anti-oxidants, and the foundations of gastronomy. Yet the bees are dying – or being killed – at a disturbing pace.

The story of “colony collapse disorder” (CCD) is already well-known to readers of The Daily Telegraph.

Some keep hives at home and have experienced this mystery plague, and doubtless have strong views on whether it is caused by parasites, or a virus, or use of pesticides that play havoc with the nervous system of young bees, or a synergy of destructive forces coming together.

The bee crisis has been treated as a niche concern until now, but as the UN’s index of food prices hits an all time-high in real terms (not just nominal) and grain shortages trigger revolutions in the Middle East, it is becoming urgent to know whether the plight of the honey bee risks further exhausting our already thin margin of food global security.

The agri-business lender Rabobank said the numbers of US bee colonies failing to survive each winter has risen to 30pc to 35pc from an historical norm of 10pc. The rate is 20pc or higher in much of Europe, and the same pattern is emerging in Latin America and Asia.

Albert Einstein, who liked to make bold claims (often wrong), famously said that “if the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, man would have only four years to live”.

Such “apocalyptic scenarios” are overblown, said Rabobank. The staples of corn, wheat, and rice are all pollinated by wind.

However, animal pollination is essential for nuts, melons and berries, and plays varying roles in citrus fruits, apples, onions, broccoli, cabbage, sprouts, courgettes, peppers, aubergines, avocados, cucumbers, coconuts, tomatoes and broad beans, as well as coffee and cocoa.

This is the fastest growing and most valuable part of the global farm economy. Between 80pc and 90pc of pollination comes from domesticated honey bees. Moths and butterflies lack the range to penetrate large fields.

The reservoir of bees is dwindling to the point where ratios are dangerously out of kilter, with the US reaching the “most extreme” imbalance. Pollinated crop output has quadrupled since 1961, yet bee colonies have halved. The bee-per-hectare count has fallen nearly 90pc.

“Farmers have managed to produce with relatively fewer bee colonies up to this point, and there is no evidence of agricultural yields being affected. The question is how much further this situation can be stretched,” said the report.

Rabobank said US bee colonies were shrinking even before CCD struck because cheap imports of Asian honey had undercut US hives. Note the parallel with the demise of the US rare earth metals industry, put out of business when China flooded the world with cheaper supplies in the 1990s. This is what happens when free trade is managed carelessly.

China has its own problems. Pesticides used in pear orchards wiped out bees in parts of Sichuan in the 1980s. Crops are now pollinated by hand using feather brushes, a laborious process as one bee colony can pollinate up to 300m flowers a day.

Germany, France and Italy have banned some pesticides, especially neonicotinoids (as in tobacco) that harm the memories of bees.

The British Beekeepers’ Association has called for an “urgent review” of these chemicals, fearing we may lose all our bees within a decade if we are not careful. US beekeepers have made similar pleas. The US agriculture department’s Bee Research Laboratory has found evidence that even low levels of these pesticides reduce the resistance of bees to fungal pathogens.

Leaked documents from the Environmental Protection Agency confirm that clothianidin used on corn seed is “highly toxic”, may pose a “long-term risk” to bees, and that previous tests were flawed.

Critics alleged a cover-up: Rabobank said we should be careful not to vilify agro-industry. The world needs food and fertilizer companies to keep finding ways to raise crop yields, if we are to feed over 70m extra mouths each year, and meet the demands of Asia’s diet revolution, offset water scarcity in China and India, and divert a great chunk of the US, Argentine, and EU grain harvest into bio-fuels for cars.

With pincers closing in on world food output from so many sides, we have little margin for error. Scientists are coming to the rescue. Research is honing in on the fungus Nosema, and the Varroa mite, but not fast enough.

Rabobank calls for a step-change in the global response, and in the meantime for tougher rules, so that beekeepers do not have to fight alone, starting with curbs on pesticide use during in daylight hours when bees are foraging.

Apian atrophy is a more immediate threat than global warming, and can be solved, yet has barely risen onto the policy radar screen. This is surely a misjudgment.

Einstein was not always wrong.

via Einstein was right – honey bee collapse threatens global food security – Telegraph.

Call to ban pesticides linked to bee deaths worldwide

A new generation of pesticides could be to blame for Britain’s vanishing honeybees, a study has shown.

The chemicals, which are routinely used on farms and garden centres, attack the central systems of insects and make bee colonies more vulnerable to disease and pests, researchers say.

The claims, which appear in an unpublished study carried out at the US Department of Agriculture‘s Bee Research Laboratory, add to the evidence that pesticides are partly responsible for the mysterious decline of one of the world’s best loved  insects.

Dying? Honeybees are being wiped out by new pesticides that have left them far more vulnerable to disease, the top U.S. bee expert has warned

Wildlife campaigners today called for urgent research into the links between the chemicals and the collapse of bee colonies around the world.

Scientists are baffled by Britain’s disappearing honeybees. Since the 1980s numbers have fallen by half.

The new study, led by Dr Jeffrey Pettis, one of the U.S.’s top bee experts, found that exposure to a class of pesticides called neo-nicotinoids makes bees more susceptible to infection – even at doses too low to be detected in the creature’s bodies.

Neo-nicotinoids, which were introduced in the 1990s, are applied to seeds and are found in low levels throughout a growing plant – including in its pollen and nectar.

They were introduced to replace controversial organo phosphates because they appeared to be harmless to mammals and people and are used on oil seed rape, wheat, sugar bed and garden centre plants.

The U.S. research has yet to be published, but is discussed in a new documentary film The Strange Disappearance of The Bees.

Neo-nicotine insecticides attack the central nervous system and are absorbed by every part of plants that are treated with them. Bees and other pollinating insects can absorb them and carry them back to their hives or nests

Insect charity Buglife today said previous studies in France had found a link between pesticides and vanishing bees.

Director Matt Shardlow said: ‘This American study shows that even at levels where you can no longer detect the substance in bees, it is still having an impact on their health.

‘People have been wondering what is the cause of the decline of bees and moths and bumblebees in Britain. And the research is further evidence that pesticides are a potential cause.’

The Co-op is so concerned about neo-nicotinoids it has banned them on its UK farms.

Bayer – the German chemical giant that makes many of the neo-nicotinoids used in Europe – insisted its products did not harm bees.

A spokesman said it was difficult to comment on unpublished studies and that it was impossible to look at the methods used by the researchers.

‘I’m sure there are some very interesting effects Dr Pettis has seen in a laboratory, but in reality, when you get to what’s important to everybody which is what happens in the field, you don’t see these things happening,’ he said.

‘Bees are very ,very important insects to BayerCropScience and we recognise their importance.’

Honey bees are essential for British farmers and are thought to contribute around £200million to the economy by pollinating crops on farms, allotments and in gardens.

Call to ban pesticides linked to bee deaths worldwide | Mail Online.