Scientists discover what’s killing the bees and it’s worse than you thought

As we’ve written before, the mysterious mass die-off of honey bees that pollinate $30 billion worth of crops in the US has so decimated America’s apis melliferapopulation that one bad winter could leave fields fallow. Now, a new study has pinpointed some of the probable causes of bee deaths and the rather scary results show that averting beemageddon will be much more difficult than previously thought.

Image: kezi.com

Scientists had struggled to find the trigger for so-called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) that has wiped out an estimated 10 million beehives, worth $2 billion, over the past six years. Suspects have included pesticides, disease-bearing parasites and poor nutrition. But in a first-of-its-kind study published in the journal PLOS ONE, scientists at the University of Maryland and the US Department of Agriculture have identified a witch’s brew of pesticides and fungicides contaminating pollen that bees collect to feed their hives. The findings break new ground on why large numbers of bees are dying though they do not identify the specific cause of CCD, where an entire beehive dies at once.

When researchers collected pollen from hives on the east coast pollinating cranberry, watermelon and other crops and fed it to healthy bees, those bees showed a significant decline in their ability to resist infection by a parasite calledNosema ceranae. The parasite has been implicated in Colony Collapse Disorder though scientists took pains to point out that their findings do not directly link the pesticides to CCD. The pollen was contaminated on average with nine different pesticides and fungicides though scientists discovered 21 agricultural chemicals in one sample. Scientists identified eight ag chemicals associated with increased risk of infection by the parasite.

Most disturbing, bees that ate pollen contaminated with fungicides were three times as likely to be infected by the parasite. Widely used, fungicides had been thought to be harmless for bees as they’re designed to kill fungus, not insects, on crops like apples.

“There’s growing evidence that fungicides may be affecting the bees on their own and I think what it highlights is a need to reassess how we label these agricultural chemicals,” Dennis vanEngelsdorp, the study’s lead author, told Quartz.

Labels on pesticides warn farmers not to spray when pollinating bees are in the vicinity but such precautions have not applied to fungicides.

Bee populations are so low in the US that it now takes 60% of the country’s surviving colonies just to pollinate one California crop, almonds. And that’s not just a west coast problem—California supplies 80% of the world’s almonds, a market worth $4 billion.

In recent years, a class of chemicals called neonicotinoids has been linked to bee deaths and in April regulators banned the use of the pesticide for two years in Europe where bee populations have also plummeted. But vanEngelsdorp, an assistant research scientist at the University of Maryland, says the new study shows that the interaction of multiple pesticides is affecting bee health.

“The pesticide issue in itself is much more complex than we have led to be believe,” he says. “It’s a lot more complicated than just one product, which means of course the solution does not lie in just banning one class of product.”

The study found another complication in efforts to save the bees: US honey bees, which are descendants of European bees, do not bring home pollen from native North American crops but collect bee chow from nearby weeds and wildflowers. That pollen, however, was also contaminated with pesticides even though those plants were not the target of spraying.
“It’s not clear whether the pesticides are drifting over to those plants but we need take a new look at agricultural spraying practices,” says vanEngelsdorp.

Source: QZ.com

Fish Washing Ashore in California Could be Warning Sign of Coming Earthquake

By Susan Duclos

Three “Sea Monsters” as the the video of a CNN news clip calls them, have now washed up on California’s shores, two oarfish and a Saber-Toothed whale, all unlikely to be seen on the coast of California.

Three different articles and news clips I have watched this morning all mention the same thing, which is an Asian myth that when these Sea Monsters come to shore, they are warning of an impending earthquake, generally of massive proportions.

Via ENENews, who quotes CNN’s New Day:

CNN’s New Day, Oct. 18, 2013: There’s a Japanese legend that oarfish beach themselves to warn of an impending earthquake. And, in fact, dozens of them did just that in Japan about a year before the devastating Fukushima quake and tsunami in 2011.

Backing up that assertion is an article from May 2011, which shows that oarfish did, indeed, warn Japan of the major 2011 Earthquake, which caused the tsunami that devastated and crippled the Fukushima nuclear plant.

Is it a myth if they have evidence of it happening?

California has seen swarms of minor earthquakes, with a recent 6.5 magnitude hit, with another 6.5 hitting Mexico on October 19, according to USGS.

For generations we have heard the expression  one day California is going to have “the Big One,” because experts and scientists have warned it is going to happen, meaning the mother of all earthquakes is going to devastate the state…. are these sea creatures warning of it now?

In March of 2010, British newspaper The Telegraph published this article that speculated about an oncoming powerful earthquake there after dozens of giant oarfish have been found washed ashore on beaches in Japan and some caught in fishermen’s nets.

Is it a myth if they have evidence of it happening?

California has seen swarms of minor earthquakes, with a recent 6.5 magnitude hit, with another 6.5 hitting Mexico on October 19, according to USGS.

For generations we have heard the expression  one day California is going to have “the Big One,” because experts and scientists have warned it is going to happen, meaning the mother of all earthquakes is going to devastate the state…. are these sea creatures warning of it now?

Source: Wake Up Americans

Los Angeles May Become GMO-Free Zone as City Council Considers Ban

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Two Los Angeles City Councilmen Friday announced the introduction of a motion aimed at protecting homes, schools, community gardens and public spaces from contamination caused by plants and other genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

Image: www.annarbor.com

The motion calls for a “GMO-Free Zone” across the city’s more than 502 square miles that would ban the growth, sale, and distribution of genetically engineered seeds and plants.

City Councilmen Paul Koretz and Mitch O’Farrell introduced the measure at a news conference at City Hall.

“A growing number of problems are being traced to GMOs, including the worldwide disappearance of honeybees (through “colony collapse disorder”); concerns over “seed drift” (for example the recent finding of GMO-pollinated wheat growing in an Oregon farmer’s field); the evolution of “superbug” insects which are growing immune to
the pesticides engineered within GMO crops; and European studies which raise the question of how GMOs impact human health,” according to a statement released by the Council members.

Last October, Koretz and the rest of the City Council voted unanimously to pass a resolution supporting Proposition 37, which requires genetically engineered foods to be properly labeled and prohibits such foods from being marketed as “natural” in California.

Fifty-two percent of residents in Los Angeles County voted in favor of Prop. 37 last year, according to the motion.

Source: CBSLA.com

McDonald's revenue down, blames economy instead of unhealthy products

From Forbes:

"Was the introduction of the pumpkin spice latte too little, too late? McDonald's MCD -0.82% released its third quarter 2013 earnings on Monday morning, and the results were mixed, with better-than-expected earnings per share but revenue that was on the light side — which the company attributed to a challenging global environment."

Then:

"In a statement, CEO Don Thompson attributed the third quarter’s mixed results to a challenging global environment. One particular weakness was sales in Asia/Pacific, Middle East and Africa (APMEA), which declined 1.4% for the quarter. Third quarter operating income declined 12%, which the company said reflected “weakness” in China, Japan and Australia due to an “ongoing” challenging macro environment."

Image: forthefunoffit.wordpress.com

Of course it's not McDonald's fault, it's some other reason: trust them, they care about you! Let's not mention the fact that people are simply eating less fast food. And let's not mention the fact that McDonald's reputation has taken a huge hit in the last year after revelations that Chicken McNuggets aren't really "chicken" after all.

This, combined with the growing food consciousness swelling around the world and the heavy opposition to processed and GMO foods, seems to be a recipe for disaster for the 'Big Food' chains as they face ever stiffer competition from healthier alternatives like Chipotle, which has already vowed to label GMOs in their food.

The problem with McDonald's argument that the economy is to blame is that it runs contrary to political establishment and mainstream media rhetoric that the economy has recovered.

So who's lying? Is the government lying to us and saying that economy is recovered to keep people calm, just like they are doing by refusing to acknowledge that the entire Pacific ocean is now polluted from the continued meltdown at Fukushima. Many analysts think that the economy is actually in worse shape than it was before the recession started, given the 17 trillion national debt and the highest percentage of people not in the work force in 35 years. Maybe by economic recovery they mean that the stock market is soaring to new highs due to the $1 trillion being pumped directly into the the banks from the Federal Reserve each year: making the 1 percenters richer than ever, while driving record numbers of working class Americans into poverty and government assisted living

And let's not even talk about the mainstream media coverage. The last mainstream article about Fukushima didn't even bother to mention that the radiation has already been pounding the West Coast of the US and Canada, nearly all tuna being caught in the Pacific have record levels of radiation contamination, and very well could be responsible for the two Oar Fish and Saber Toothed whale that have recently washed ashore in California.

Or is McDonald's lying to us, denying that their inferior products are the actually the cause of their lost profits and their shift to "healthier" food is too little, too late?

McDonald's has a vested interest in the media thanks to their massive advertisement spending, causing large networks who profit from their ad money to think twice about running a negative story on them. This could explain the fact that alternative media outlets have recently taken McDonald's to task over strange fibers, or Morgellon's, that were found in chicken nuggets while the mainstream has been silent, all the more reason to support independent media outlets like NaturalCuresNotMedicine.com.

So what are your thoughts? Is McDonald's telling the truth about the economy, or is the government telling the truth that the economy is good and McDonald's products are to blame for their decreased revenue? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Drug companies bought their way onto FDA advisory panels

by Ethan A. Huff – Natural News

It is now an undeniable fact that the pharmaceutical industry weaseled its way onto key U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory panels, which were instrumental in shaping the way drugs are safety tested and approved. According to The Washington Post (WP), a recent public records request has revealed that drug companies purchased special access onto these panels, where they were given the keys to the kingdom in swaying decision-makers about official drug policy.

Image: NaturalNews.com

Based on critical information gathered from hundreds of leaked emails, pharmaceutical companies have doled out hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years to attend private meetings with the FDA, many of which were geared towards the regulation and approval of painkiller drugs. Drug companies would reportedly shell out upwards of $25,000 or more per meeting to have their voices heard, a small price to pay for direct access to the $9 billion American painkiller market.

According to the WP, officials from both the FDA and the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) would regularly meet with pharmaceutical representatives in private to discuss regulatory protocols, co-write scientific papers and collaborate on various ways to help streamline the drug approval process. And the only parties who actually paid to attend such meetings were the drug companies, a fact that one official from the NIH expressed serious concerns about in an email, referring to the whole scheme as a “pay to play process.”

Others who have since reviewed the emails agree, noting that, while the FDA did not necessarily benefit financially from these private meetings, many FDA officials went on to work as pharmaceutical consultants. In other words, FDA staff who agreed to grease the palms of the drug industry during these private meetings were later rewarded with high-paying positions in the drug industry. This is just one glaring example of how the line between the regulator (FDA) and the regulated (pharmaceutical companies) has been blurred beyond recognition.

“These e-mails help explain the disastrous decisions the FDA’s analgesic division has made over the last 10 years,” said Craig Mayton, the Columbus, Ohio, attorney who made the public records request to the University of Washington, to the WP. “Instead of protecting the public health, the FDA has been allowing the drug companies to pay for a seat at a small table where all the rules were written.”

Big Pharma, FDA corruption runs deep

It is no longer a conspiracy theory, then, that the drug industry owns the FDA. In this particular case, it was two academics by the names of Robert Dworkin, from the University of Rochester, and Dennis Turk, from the University of Washington, who allegedly orchestrated the painkiller plot. But there have been many other plots with the same ultimate end, a fact that NaturalNews and many others in the so-called “alternative” media have been shouting from the rooftops for years, but that the mainstream media has ignored, until now.

“Shame on the FDA and NIH for sending representatives to this panel, cooked up by two unethical professors and their drug company cronies,” wrote one WP commenter about the scandal. It should be noted that FDA officials actively participated in the painkiller scheme, all the while knowing full well that the private meetings they attended were hatched by Big Pharma. “Congress should come down hard on both agencies for participating in what was clearly pay-to-play, with awful consequences for the health of many suffering Americans.”

Such consequences include a flood of dangerous analgesic drugs to the market that were approved based on questionable or flawed safety studies. According to MedpageToday.com, the drug industry was successful during these meetings in convincing the FDA to adopt an “enriched enrollment” guidance for safety trials that eliminated patients who experienced adverse reactions. These and other modifications made it much easier for drugs to be declared safe and effective, and thus gain rapid approval.

Source: NaturalNews.com