Big Pharma Pesticides Caused Bee Collapse Disorder!

GEF @ 6:48 PM ET

Colony Collapse Disorder Debunked: Pesticides Cause Bee Deaths

by Heidi Stevenson

(NaturalNews) The great mystery of bee deaths has been solved. Colony Collapse Disorder is poisoning with a known insect neurotoxin. Clothianidin, a 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 is pending 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.

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Serious Barbeque Media

By- Bob Cesca @ 6:35 PM EDT

As we have observed throughout the last several years, the notion of fairness in journalism has been guided by a miscalculated rule that in order to report good news about a liberal or a liberal success, news reporting has to be counterbalanced either with unearned praise for conservatives or trumped up and parroted negative news about the aforementioned liberal or liberal success. Oh, and the reverse doesn’t apply. That’s the rule.

And so now that Senator Obama’s Berlin address is in the can, get ready for the backlash from the very serious corporate media. Get ready for profuse around-the-clock praise of Senator McCain and/or unfair, invented criticism of Senator Obama. Because reporting news, however accurate, about Senator Obama’s successful trip to the Middle East and Europe isn’t news. It’s obviously biased reporting against the McCain campaign.

That’s all we’ve heard from the McBush Republicans this week: griping about the press coverage of Senator Obama’s trip, as if such an epic event isn’t newsworthy. Although I’m sure the McBush camp would’ve been thrilled about such wall-to-wall coverage if Reverend Wright had been spazzing out on the wing of the Obama campaign jet, ripping it to shreds Twilight Zone style — Rezko and Ayers running around in turbans spray-painting “clinging to guns” on the side of General Petraeus’ helicopter.

And it appears as if the McCain campaign’s Gripe Surge is working:

HANNITY: Scott Rasmussen has a poll, 49 percent of Americans think the media is trying to help Barack Obama win. Only 14 percent think they’re trying to help you win.

MCCAIN: The American people are very wise.

When the press aired the Wright videos around the clock for approximately six weeks while continuing to refer to Senator Obama as “Osama bin Laden,” they’ve clearly been employing some kind of magic or trickery — some kind of scary reverse psychology. You know, to help Senator Obama. Thankfully the American people were “wise” to it.

The McCain campaign even turned their griping into a web video this week to prove that the corporate media loves Senator Obama more than they love Senator McCain. Setting aside the idea of a web video from the campaign of a man who is just now learning how to “get online,” it’s staggeringly desperate and ridiculous of them to produce such a thing. Reason the first: because the content of the video, apart from Chris Matthews “leg thrill” remark, is mostly just reporters saying things like, Is the media in love with Obama? which, of course, doesn’t prove a damn thing one way or the other. And, reason the second: because this other web video exists:

But several days of crotchety griping from both far-right talk radio and the McCain campaign has begun to show results. Here’s how.

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McCain’s War On Women

By- Suzie-Q @ 12:30 PM MST

McSexist: McCain’s War on Women

By Kate Sheppard, In These Times. Posted July 24, 2008

McCain is ignorant about pay equity, wants to overturn Roe v. Wade and likes to brag about his “sexual conquests” and visits to a strip club.

Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) campaign and the media would have us believe that herds of disaffected women voters will be stampeding to the Republicans this year because a woman candidate won’t be on the presidential ballot in November.

McCain’s campaign has been making a clear play for women voters in recent weeks, hosting conference calls with Republican women and touting that his policies on national security, the economy and healthcare appeal to women voters.

But the suggestion that women — and feminist women, at that — will be lining up behind him is a fairytale. At least, it should be. McCain’s record and policies on issues of importance to women are neither moderate nor maverick.

In The Nation, Katha Pollitt put it simply: “[T]o vote for McCain, a feminist would have to be insane.”

But the chatter about the voting decisions of former presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) supporters continues. Much of the recent talk has focused on PUMAs (the acronym stands for “Party Unity My Ass”), a group supposedly so angry about the Democratic primary that they won’t vote for Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.). But as blogger Amanda Marcotte reported, PUMA PAC was started by a McCain donor, according to the Federal Election Commission.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t angry Clinton voters. But the number of progressive or even moderate voters who would seriously consider voting for McCain is much smaller than the media would have you believe. Unfortunately, McCain’s propaganda seems to be working, at least on those who aren’t aware of his record on issues of concern to women voters.

A February Planned Parenthood poll of 1,205 women voters in 16 battleground states found that 50 percent of women voters don’t know McCain’s position on abortion, and that 49 percent of women who backed McCain were pro-choice. Forty-six percent of women supporting McCain said they’d like to see Roe v. Wade upheld — though McCain says he supports overturning the decision. When they learned of his position on Roe, 36 percent of women who identified as both pro-choice and likely McCain voters said they would be less likely to vote for him.

These moderate, often suburban, middle-class women could be critical swing voters this election. At the time of the Planned Parenthood poll, Obama held only a 5 percentage-point margin over McCain with its swing-state demographic, 41 percent to 36 percent.

Planned Parenthood concludes that these findings suggest “that just filling in McCain’s actual voting record and his publicly stated positions on a handful of key issues has the potential to diminish his total vote share among battleground women voters by about 17 to 20 percentage points.”

“The only reason [McCain is] saying he’s going after Clinton voters is because if he doesn’t win their votes, he’s not going to win this election,” says Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood. “Even though I think it’s a real wash-up for him, he’s got to find some more voters somewhere. That’s the political math here.”

MORE

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More About Kill, Burn, Loot

By- SadButTrue @ 3:00 PM EDT

I was just going to put this in comments, but this post from Anthony – Kill, Burn, Loot (5/7), deserves demands a more elaborate response. READ ANTHONY’s excellent post first, then this. This is just an addendum, really – a reaction particularly to Anthony’s mentioning the Jamie Leigh Jones story. As it happens somebody over on my home turf (Les Enragés.org) mentioned the LaVena Johnson case today in comments.

Three years ago, on July 19, 2005, Army Private First Class LaVena Johnson was found dead in Balad, Iraq. Her body was found in a tent belonging to the private military contractor KBR. She had abrasions all over her body, a broken nose, a black eye, burned hands, loose teeth, acid burns on her genitals, and a bullet hole in her head. The Army labeled Johnson’s death a suicide. (Story from Democracy NOW!)

Just imagine how Jamie Leigh Jones must have felt after she heard the story of LaVena Johnson. Flashbacks to her incarceration in the shipping container? Panic attacks? Vomiting followed by dry heaves? Recurring nightmares? All of the above and more? And always the thought, “there but for the grace of God go I.”

Jamie Leigh was denied justice and will continue to be denied justice because:

-not being military, KBR and other Iraq contractors are not subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
-Under a deal set up early in the Iraq occupation by L. Paul Bremer, contractors are not subject to Iraqi law
-They are outside the jurisdiction of American criminal courts.
-They would potentially be subject to lawsuits in American civil courts, but all KBR employees are required to sign agreements barring them from filing such actions.

Of course it goes without saying that these multinational corporations are going to do everything they can to thwart any potential lawsuits generated by the actions of their employees. That’s just the way soulless and amoral corporations work. But more should be expected from government, which has a very high obligation to police any territory under its control, particularly territory that it has invaded contrary to international law, ostensibly to bring freedom, democracy, stability and the rule of law to the region. Nor can we credit them with some incompetent lapse of judgement in this matter. They were informed of the situation and chose not to respond. I have video proof, which is I think one of the most shameful performances in a Bush pResidency rife with shameful performances.

The freakin’ moron tries to laugh it off! Mass murder, rape, human trafficking for slave labor and forced prostitution – they’re all just jokes to him! He is beneath contempt. “I don’t mean to dodge the question, although it would be kind of convenient.” Heh heh. Heh heh heh.

I’d like to laugh along with you, asshole, but I’ve got a sudden urge to sharpen the blade and oil the runners on my trademark guillotine right now.

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Obama looks to Europe as partner

anthony @ 19:47 BST

White House hopeful Barack Obama has told Berliners the US and Europe have drifted apart and it is time for them to come together again.

“If we’re honest… we know that sometimes, on both sides of the Atlantic, we have drifted apart and forgotten our shared destiny,” he said.

Thousands of people turned out to hear him make the only public speech of his current world tour.

His words were broadcast live in Germany, where he is a popular figure.

He began the speech by paying tribute to the Berliners who held out against Soviet pressure during the blockade after World War II.

Appealing for a renewed partnership with Europe, he identified terrorism, nuclear proliferation, drugs and climate change as global challenges.

The BBC’s Steve Rosenberg reports from Berlin that the Illinois senator, 46, is very popular in Germany, where surveys suggest three-quarters of people want him to be the next US president.

Mr Obama will be hoping that once TV pictures of him addressing cheering crowds of Berliners have been beamed back to America it will boost his image as an international statesman, and his chances of beating Republican rival John McCain this autumn, our correspondent adds.

Anthony: Below I have posted addresses to the people of Berlin by two American Presidents.

Kennedy – I am a Berliner – Ich Bin Ein Berliner

Kennedy in full cold-war rhetoric flow. (I prefer Obama’s more conciliatory tone)

Reagan – Tear Down This Wall

Reagan in similar vein:

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Mukasey: Vice President Is ‘Obviously’ In Executive Branch

By- Suzie-Q @ 11:00 AM MST

Mukasey Contradicts Cheney And Addington: Vice President Is ‘Obviously’ In Executive Branch»

Think Progress- By Satyam at 10:10 am

Last year, House investigators revealed that Vice President Cheney exempted his office from an executive order designed to safeguard classified national security information by claiming that the Office of the Vice President is not an “entity within the executive branch.”

Cheney’s chief of staff David Addington reaffirmed before Congress last month that the Vice President’s office is “attached” to the legislature:

[P]erhaps the best that can be said is that the vice president belongs neither to the executive nor to the legislative branch, but is attached by the constitution to the latter.

Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee yesterday, Attorney General Michael Mukasey had an entirely different take than Addington and Cheney on the matter:

It’s my own belief that the Vice President is a member of the executive branch. … The Vice President is obviously one of the closest advisers to the president, and he is a close adviser to the president within the executive branch. That in my view is where he sits.

Watch it:

The idea of ambiguously tying Cheney to the legislative branch seems to be grounded in political convenience rather than fact. Cheney himself has said (on camera) that “the vice president’s become an important part of the administration of the executive branch.” Some other examples:

– In 2001, the White House argued that a probe into Cheney’s energy task force “would unconstitutionally interfere with the functioning of the executive branch.” [Link]

– Cheney said that a probe concerned “meetings in the Executive Branch between the Vice President and other individuals.” [Link]

– On April 9, 2003, Cheney lauded a recent court ruling, stating, “I think it restored some of the legitimate authority of the executive branch, the president and the vice president, to be able to conduct their business.” [Link]

Rather than the Vice President title, Cheney apparently prefers to be tagged with the label “unique creature.”

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$5000 reward offered for Rice’s citizen’s arrest

Sudhan @18:50 CET

stuff.com.nz, July 24, 2008

A $5000 dollar reward is being offered to any Auckland University student who can make a successful citizen’s arrest of United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during her visit to the country this weekend.

Auckland University Student Association (AUSA) president David Do said the arrest would be for her role in “overseeing the illegal invasion and continued occupation” of Iraq.

“It is hard enough living as a student in Auckland these days without having a war criminal coming to town, so we thought we’d give our students a chance to make a dent in their student loans and work for global justice at the same time.”

Dr Rice will be in Auckland on July 26, where she will meet with Prime Minister Helen Clark, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Opposition leader John Key.

She will make her first trip to New Zealand after attending a meeting of the Asean Regional Forum this week in Singapore.

– NZPA

Tags: Auckland University, citizen’s arrest, illegal Iraq invasion, reward, US Secreatary of State Rice

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Put Karl Rove in Jail

by Geezer Power…9:32 am

Sign

The

Petition

This obnoxious little porker has been implemental in almost all of the crooked dealings of Bu$hco, the unnacountable gang of slime dwellers that stole our government, our money, our freedom, our resources, our honor, and the very way that we live and breath. This neoconservative nerd is about as funny as a heart attack as he thumbs his nose at us to emphasize how ludicrous this whole administration really is. Lets put him in jail so that we can get started on a modern version of the Nurenburg Trials…G:

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Kill, Burn & Loot (5/7)

anthony @ 11:09 BST

From Martial Law, Inc. KBR: A Halliburton Subsidiary, by Andrew G. Marshall:

KBR in Afghanistan and Iraq:

As Dan Briody wrote in The Halliburton Agenda, “When troops were deployed to Afghanistan, so was Kellogg Brown & Root. They built US bases in Bagram and Kandahar for $157 million. As it had done in the past, KBR has men on the ground before the first troops even arrived in most locations.” (Briody, p.219) It was reported that KBR “was awarded a $100 million contract in 2002 to build a new U.S. embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, from the State Department.” (Peterson)

As the Center for Public Integrity reported, “KBR, Inc., the global engineering and construction giant, won more than $16 billion in U.S. government contracts for work in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2004 to 2006—far more than any other company.” (Perry)

Indeed, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq presented Halliburton and its subsidiary, KBR, with an amazing opportunity of war profiteering on a scale never before seen. Not only was the company enriching itself, but its former CEO, Dick Cheney, currently Vice President of the United States, “sold most of his Halliburton shares when he left the company, but retained stock options worth about $8m,” and the Guardian reported in 2003 that KBR “is still making annual payments to its former chief executive, the vice-president Dick Cheney.” (Bryce and Borger)

In December of 2005, the Chicago Tribune reported that, “A proposal prohibiting defense contractor involvement in human trafficking for forced prostitution and labor was drafted by the Pentagon last summer, but five defense lobbying groups oppose key provisions.” The lobbying groups, “say they’re in favor of the idea in principle, but said they believe that implementing key portions of it overseas is unrealistic. They represent thousands of firms, including some of the industry’s biggest names, such as DynCorp International and Halliburton subsidiary KBR, both of which have been linked to trafficking-related concerns.” (Simpson) However, human trafficking experts have criticized the move by the lobbying groups, and told “the Pentagon that the policy would merely formalize practices that have allowed contractors working overseas to escape punishment for involvement in trafficking.”

The allegations of human trafficking include, “the alleged involvement of DynCorp employees in buying women and girls as sex slaves in Bosnia during the U.S. military’s deployment there in the late 1990s,” and that, “Middle Eastern firms working under American subcontracts in Iraq, and a chain of human brokers beneath them, engaged in the kind of abuses condemned elsewhere by the U.S. government as human trafficking,” which pertained to KBR. The Chicago Tribune then reported in 2006 that, “some of KBR’s subcontractors, and a chain of human brokers stretching to South and Southeast Asia, allegedly engaged in the same kinds of abuses routinely condemned” as human trafficking. (Simpson)

Jamie Leigh Jones

In December of 2007, it was reported that, “A Houston, Texas woman says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident.” The article continued, “Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she’d be out of a job.” (Ross, Sauer and Rood) Jones filed a lawsuit against Halliburton and KBR, and “says she was held in the shipping container for at least 24 hours without food or water by KBR, which posted armed security guards outside her door, who would not let her leave. Jones described the container as sparely furnished with a bed, table and lamp.”

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