Same Company - New CEO: Obama's orders leave torture, indefinite detention intact

by Tom Eley

Global Research, January 23, 2009

On Thursday, President Barack Obama issued executive orders mandating the closure of the Guantánamo Bay prison camp in a year’s time, requiring that Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and military personnel follow the Army Field Manual’s prohibitions on torture, and closing secret CIA prisons overseas.

While the media is portraying these orders as a repudiation of the detention and interrogation policies of the Bush administration, they actually change little. They essentially represent a public relations effort to refurbish the image of the United States abroad after years of torture and extralegal detentions and shield high-ranking American officials from potential criminal prosecution.

In cowardly fashion, Obama staged his signing of the orders in a manner aimed at placating the political right and defenders of Guantanamo and torture and underscoring his intention to continue the Bush administration’s “war on terror.” He was flanked by 16 retired generals and admirals who have pushed for the closure of the prison camp in Cuba on the grounds that it impedes the prosecution of the global “war” and reiterated in his own remarks his determination to continue the basic political framework of the Bush administration’s foreign policy.

The continuation of the ideological pretext for wars of aggression and attacks on democratic rights ensures that the police state infrastructure erected under the Bush administration will remain intact. This is further reinforced by Obama’s assurances that his administration will not investigate or prosecute those officials--including Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales and others—who were responsible for the policies of torture and illegal detention.

The orders signed by Obama do not undo the Bush administration’s attacks on constitutional and international law. They do not challenge the supposed right of the president to unilaterally imprison any individual, without trial and without charges, by declaring him to be an “enemy combatant.” Nor do they end the procedure known as “extraordinary rendition,” by which the United States during the Bush years kidnapped alleged terrorists and shipped them to foreign countries or secret CIA prisons outside the US, where they were subjected to torture.

They do not affect the hundreds of prisoners--600 at the Bagram prison camp in Afghanistan alone—incarcerated beyond the barbed wire of Guantanamo. If and when Guantanamo is closed, the US government will simply ship alleged terrorists caught up its international dragnet to other American-run prison camps.

On the question of so-called “harsh interrogation techniques,” i.e., torture, Obama’s orders leave room for their continuation. White House Counsel Gregory Craig told reporters the administration was prepared to take into account demands from the CIA that such methods be allowed. Obama announced the creation of a task force that will consider new interrogation methods beyond those sanctioned by the Army Field Manual, which now accepts 19 forms of interrogation, as well as the practice of extraordinary rendition.

Retired Admiral Dennis Blair, Obama’s nominee for director of national intelligence, told a Senate confirmation hearing that the Army Field Manual would itself be changed, potentially allowing new forms of harsh interrogation, but that such changes would be kept secret.

Obama also announced a second task force that is to consider the fate of the 245 detainees remaining at Guantanamo. Earlier this week he suspended the military commission procedures at the prison camp, but has not abolished the military commissions themselves.

The new administration has ruled out the only constitutional remedy for those who have been held under barbaric conditions, without due process, for years—either releasing them or giving them a speedy trial in a civilian court, with all of the accompanying legal protections and guarantees. There has been a great deal of speculation that the administration may support the establishment of a special National Security Court within the civilian court system to try Guantanamo prisoners and other alleged terrorists. This would represent yet another attack on civil liberties, setting up a drumhead court system to railroad those charged with terrorism—something that could in future be used to repress political opposition.

According to NBC Nightly News on Thursday, the administration is considering keeping some 20 Guantanamo detainees, including the five alleged 9/11 conspirators currently facing military commission trials, imprisoned indefinitely without charges in a military brig within the US.

Commentators have noted that the Obama administration wants to prevent noncitizens detained as terrorists from being able to exercise habeus corpus rights.

Two separate measures taken Tuesday and Thursday by Obama point to a further major consideration behind his moves to close Guantanamo and finesse the issue of torture. On Thursday the administration requested a stay in the habeas corpus appeal to the Supreme Court by the only alleged enemy combatant now held on US soil—Ali al-Marri, of Qatar, whom Obama has called “dangerous.” Al-Marri’s lawyers are challenging the right of the president to arrest and jail individuals by declaring them enemy combatants, and it was expected that the Supreme Court’s hearing of the appeal would force Obama to reveal his position on the issue.

This followed Tuesday’s request for a stay from the Federal District Court in Washington in similar appeals that could affect the cases of more than 200 Guantánamo prisoners.

Thus, the immediate effect of the new administration’s moves is to halt civilian trials that could prove immensely damaging to the government by revealing systematic torture of the detainees and could potentially entangle high government officials.

John Taylor Gatto - Incomplete, Predictable People are the Products of Forced Schooling

John Taylor Gatto: On Life and Education

Old-Thinker News | Jan. 2, 2009

By Daniel Taylor

I made this compilation of various audio and video clips featuring John Taylor Gatto in an attempt to capture what I think is the spirit behind his work. It's easy to see how the spark of life can be squelched in the schooling system. Easily managed people make for an easy day for the elite of society. Incomplete, predictable people are the products of forced schooling. Ironically, we owe a great deal of credit for building our current society and schooling system to individuals who were dropouts. Some of these elites were John D. Rockefeller Sr. (high school dropout), Andrew Carnegie (elementary school dropout) and others.



To find out more about the true purpose behind schooling, be sure to check out John Taylor Gatto's books: Dumbing us Down, The Underground History of American Education, and his most recent, Weapons of Mass Instruction.



John Taylor Gatto speaks about schools and brainwashing


Evidence of Dumbing us Down - Charlotte Iserbyt


Education System by David Icke

Woman Convicted of Terrorism under Patriot Act for Spanking Children on Airplane

Tamera Jo Freeman lost custody of her children after an incident on a Frontier Airlines flight. "A woman spanking her child is not as great a threat to aviation as members of Al Qaeda with box cutters," says one expert.

One sign of a police state is the imprisonment of ordinary citizens for committing annoying acts. In America, over 200 people have been sent to prison for raising their voices on commercial airline flights, convicted of felonies under the laws of the Patriot Act.

One of those 200 people is Tamera Freeman, who spent three months in prison and was convicted of a felony for spanking her misbehaved children and raising her voice to a flight attendant. When the plane landed, she was arrested as a terrorist and eventually forced to plead guilty to felony crimes under the Patriot Act.

In another case, the LA Times reports, "a couple was arrested after an argument with a flight attendant, who claimed the couple was engaged in overt sexual activity. An FBI affidavit said the two were "embracing, kissing and acting in a manner that made other passengers uncomfortable.""

Kissing in public is an act of terrorism? Wow. It's sort of difficult to call America the "land of the free" if you can be arrested for kissing in public, isn't it?

Sure, screaming babies and couples sharing saliva may be annoying to everybody else, but are they acts of terrorism? "Making other passengers uncomfortable" isn't a felony crime, is it? Apparently it is. In fact, in America today just wearing a turban on your head is enough to make some people feel uncomfortable.

With the Obama Administration now taking over Washington, isn't it time we repealed the Patriot Act?

Let's take America back from the police state mentality of the Bush Administration, with all its false flag operations, surveillance laws and Patriot Act police state tactics. Or if we keep the laws in place, let's at least add the over-use of fragrance products on airplanes as an act of terrorism, too. Stinky perfume people are a legitimate threat to natural security because their artificial fragrance cloud can reach the cockpit and knock out the pilot…

Click to read:
Woman Convicted of Terrorism under Patriot Act for Spanking Children on Airplane


From Latimes.com: Freeman is one of at least 200 people on flights who have been convicted under the amended law. In most of the cases, there was no evidence that the passengers had attempted to hijack the airplane or physically attack any of the flight crew. Many have simply involved raised voices, foul language and drunken behavior.... more

FDA Approved Melamine - Sickening Children and Killing Babies Around the World

by Mike Adams

(NaturalNews) Following the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's setting of a "safe" level of melamine in foods, the World Health Organization (WHO) has announced its own safety level of 0.2 mg per kilogram of body weight per day.

In other words, the WHO says that a 150-pound person could safely consume 13.6 mg of melamine per day.

That's a lot of melamine. It's almost like a nutritional supplement dose. And the scary part about all this is that neither the WHO nor the FDA has any science whatsoever to back up this "safe" consumption guideline.

Melamine is an industrial chemical that has sickened hundreds of thousands of children in China and killed babies and pets across the world. It has no place in the food supply whatsoever. For these health agencies that are supposed to be serving the public to now claim that a person can "safely" eat 13.6 mg of melamine per day, every day, is simply outrageous. It is a betrayal of the very public these agencies are supposed to serve and protect.

Without any scientific evidence whatsoever, the world's health agencies are essentially endorsing very high levels of melamine in foods. How high? If a 150-pound person eats just one chocolate bar per day, and that chocolate bar is a 50-gram bar that's contaminated with melamine, the WHO would allow an incredible 272 parts per million of melamine in the bar, which is 272 times the allowable level of melamine contamination that has been put forth by the FDA!

The FDA, you see, is outlining its melamine limits based on how much melamine is in the food. The WHO, on the other hand, is stating a limit of how much a person can consume, and the WHO limit is significantly higher than what the FDA limit would have typically exposed a person to.

What's really astonishing here, though, is not only that both the WHO and FDA think it's "safe" for babies, children and adults to consume melamine every day, but that these agencies support the daily consumption of multiple untested chemicals in combination!

For example, the FDA has declared bisphenol-A to be completely safe and has placed no consumption limit on it whatsoever. There is no limit on acrylamide consumption, either, meaning that a U.S. citizen could be consuming large amounts of melamine, bisphenol-A, acrylamides, phthalates, perchlorates and numerous other chemicals in highly toxic combinations that are all "approved" by the FDA!

I must emphasize there has been no safety testing done on melamine that could scientifically establish a "safe" consumption limit. Thus, the FDA and WHO are just blindly guessing at what a safe level might be. Consumers are guinea pigs, in other words, and if babies start dying or falling ill from all these chemicals at some later date, then they'll deal with it then (by denying they could have known the chemicals were dangerous, of course).

In other words, the health authorities of the world are now setting food safety standards in precisely the same way that a fifth-grade takes a history quiz… by guessing!

I have a radical idea: How about setting a standard that would require no industrial chemicals in the food supply?

And why is that so radical anyway? Shouldn't that just be common sense? Why are the FDA and WHO shoving chemicals down our throats and insisting they're all safe to eat?

Why have our food safety agencies become pushers of industrial chemicals?

China Beats United States in Achieving Universal Health Care

Natural News, January 22, 2009


China has announced a new health care spending initiative that aims to deliver universal health care to all its citizens. It all happens over the next three years through $124 billion in new spending by the Chinese government.

Notably, this puts China ahead of the United States in reaching a solution for universal health care. Yep, a Communist country steeped in Internet censorship, the oppression of organized religion and running a black market medical economy where you can buy "donated" organs for illicit transplants has actually beat the United States to the goal line of universal health care.

Meanwhile, the U.S. limps along with an economy based on sickness and disease, an out-of-control pharmaceutical lobby that practically writes U.S. law, and a ridiculously corrupt FDA that openly admits its own top decision makers are on the take from drug companies.

Perhaps we could learn something from the Chinese on this. In China, when their own FDA official was caught taking bribes, they executed him (http://www.naturalnews.com/021931.html). In America, corrupt FDA officials are rewarded with MORE money!


Now with the United States facing outright financial destruction AND a pandemic of preventable disease (which modern medicine conveniently forgot to help prevent), the real question is this: Will America end the era of Big Pharma domination and FDA corruption and embrace natural medicine? Or will the nation just burn like Rome as China becomes the next world power?


I'll say this much: Unless we end Big Pharma's domination over health care and radically reform the FDA, there will be no progress in U.S. health care results. A corrupt FDA and a profit-grubbing drug industry are not the recipe for a healthy, happy and productive population.

The U.S. is rapidly falling behind the rest of the world on all the things that matter: Education, science, manufacturing base, health, happiness and the economy.

But we're sure darn good at growing CORN! Nobody can beat us at that, can they? America is the Corn King of the world! Free high-fructose corn syrup for everyone!

By the way, Taiwan has had universal health care for more than two decades. For about $30 a month, all Taiwan citizens receive FULL coverage of both western medicine and Chinese medicine, including dental and prenatal care.

It's a simple, low-cost and relatively easy system of medicine to administer. And its solution-oriented approach makes U.S. health care authorities look like the complete idiots they truly are.

I've said it before: You can either have a nation of healthy citizens OR a highly-profitable sickness industry. But you can't have both. America has chosen to enrich a few powerful corporations at the expense of public health, and as a result, its prospects for an abundant future are growing increasingly dim by the day... just like its politicians.

Click to read:
China Beats United States in Achieving Universal Health Care


From Reuters.com: The reforms aim to improve the coverage of basic medical insurance, to set up a system of "basic medicines" covered by the medical insurance system, expand the network of local-level clinics, improve the public health system and initiate pilot reforms to the operation of public hospitals, it said.... more

The Creek Wins Project Censored Award 2009

Among this year’s winners of the Project Censored award is our very own Rock Creek Free Press. The Creek was recognized in Censored 2009 for its coverage of one of the year’s 25 most censored news stories: “Japan Questions 9/11 and the Global War on Terror,” February 2008. The Creek strives to publish the stories the corporate media refuses to cover, and we will continue to print the stories you won’t find anywhere else.

Project Censored is a media research program working in cooperation with numerous independent media groups in the US. Project Censored conducts research on important national news stories that are underreported, ignored, misrepresented, or censored by the US corporate media. Each year, Project Censored publishes a ranking of the top 25 most censored nationally important news stories in the yearbook, Censored: Media Democracy in Action, which is released in September.

Between 700 and 1000 stories are submitted to Project Censored each year from journalists, scholars, librarians, and concerned citizens around the world. With the help of more than 200 Sonoma State University faculty, students, and community members, Project Censored reviews the story submissions for coverage, content, reliability of sources and national significance. The university community selects 25 stories to submit to the Project Censored panel of judges, who then ranks them in order of importance. All 25 stories are featured in the yearbook, Censored: The News That Didn’t Make the News.

Rock Creek Free Press is proud and honored to be recognized by Project Censored for our coverage of America’s most censored stories.
— the Editor

U.S. Government Monitored All Americans: Faxes, Phone Calls, Emails and Internet Communications

By Mike Adams, January 22, 2009



NSA whistleblower Russell Tice has spilled the truth on the Bush Administration lies about domestic surveillance, going public with a shocking revelation that the NSA actually spied on all Americans, not just terror suspects.

All communications of all Americans were being monitored by the NSA, including phone calls, faxes, emails and other computer communications. The NSA also specifically targeted journalists and news agencies, monitoring their communications 24/7.

This means the U.S. government has a database of every phone call, email and communication made by journalists over the last several years.

The Bush Administration, of course, insisted that its surveillance efforts were limited to terror suspects and that the American people were safe from such programs. This, of course, was another great lie by the Bush criminals.

Told ya so. I remember receiving hate mail from Bush supporters who said the idea that the U.S. government was spying on its citizens was "insane paranoia." Turns out their own emails, phone calls and faxes were monitored, too. The very people defending the police state are being monitored by it! (Isn't it always that way?)

I say it's time to investigate the crimes of the Bush Administration and go for criminal prosecutions of those who approved these outrageous domestic spying programs. So far, though, Obama has said he'll do no such thing. It's better to look ahead than dwell on the past, he says, which is his way of saying the high crimes of the last eight years are going to be swept under the rug and forgotten. There is no justice in America, and the biggest criminals of all are getting away scot free.

And the NSA spying program? It's still on. Your phone calls are still being monitored. Nothing has changed.

Full story:
U.S. Government Monitored All Americans: Faxes, Phone Calls, Emails and Internet Communications


From Blog.wired.com: Just one day after George W. Bush left office, an NSA whistleblower has revealed that the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program targeted U.S. journalists, and vacuumed in all domestic communications of Americans, including, faxes, phone calls and network traffic.... more

The 'Beautiful Truth' about cancer - WILD APPLAUSE for The Beautiful Truth in SF!

One of 2008's most notable documentaries, "The Beautiful Truth" is about an all-natural treatment for cancer - a subject that in another director's hands might be dry and foreboding but is here illuminating, touching, funny, sad, rage-inducing, provocative, entertaining and hopeful. It's Michael Moore without the truculence, PBS without the pretension, CNN without the commercial grandstanding.

"The Beautiful Truth" tells the story of Max Gerson and his Gerson therapy, a treatment that requires around-the-clock intake of organic fruit-and-vegetable drinks. To detoxify the body, coffee-based enemas are also employed - a fact that director Steve Kroschel frames with mild amusement through drawings and interviews with small-town Alaskans who question Gerson's ideas.

The small town is home for Kroschel and his son Garrett, an inquisitive 15-year-old who is the documentary's front man. Garrett begins by knowing nothing about Gerson therapy and ends up (with the help of his filmmaker father) traveling the United States and Mexico to meet people with expertise on the treatment, alternative cancer therapies, and the U.S. food industry, whose chemical additives have been linked to obesity and other health problems.

The skateboarding Garrett is a perfect stand-in for a general audience that knows little about Gerson (who died in 1959) or his medical philosophies, which are advocated today by his daughter Charlotte, and practiced by scores of patients whose cancers were considered death sentences by the medical establishment. We meet a woman who, five years earlier, had Stage IV ovarian cancer (the most lethal stage), and says she beat her illness with Gerson therapy. We meet a woman who was riddled with tumors but whose recovery is attributed to juicing and organic foods. And we meet (through historical photos) Albert Schweitzer, the Nobel Prize-winning philosopher who said his diabetes was cured by Gerson's diet and that Gerson was "one of the most eminent geniuses in the history of medicine."

We also meet Gerson through archival video taken of him at his professional prime, but "The Beautiful Truth" is more about the present than the past, and Kroschel does an admirable job of weaving in related subjects, including obesity and food additives; the possible dangers of mercury tooth fillings; and the medical establishment's reliance on corporate money.

"The Beautiful Truth" has its faults, most notably in its omissions. While the film gives time to critics of Gerson therapy (including Bay Area doctor and radio host Dean Edell), who say there's no medical evidence of its success, "The Beautiful Truth" doesn't adequately elucidate their opposition. For example, the Gerson Institute's clinic is in Mexico because it uses drugs that the Food and Drug Administration bans for cancer treatment, but the documentary doesn't stress that. Nor does it mention that a onetime supporter of Gerson therapy, an Oregon naturopathic physician named Steve Austin, tracked Gerson patients and found few cases of cancer recovery.

Still, "The Beautiful Truth" succeeds because of its sympathetic provocation: Its engaging narrative and personal stories force us to question the U.S. medical establishment's rejection of Gerson's therapy and to question the establishment's relationship with the pharmaceutical industry. Audiences will be inspired to seek more information about the therapy, natural treatments for cancer and the American food industry's reliance on artificial additives to make tasty products. After watching this film, even buttered and salted popcorn - a staple of the moviegoing experience - takes on added (and disturbing) significance.

Bayer Knowingly Sold HIV-Contaminated Vaccines, Say Internal Documents

From Natural News

Here's a little-known truth about Bayer that needs to be revisited. In 2006, it was discovered that Bayer found out a vaccine it was selling in the United States was accidentally contaminated with HIV.

In order to cover its tracks, say the journalists in this video (below), Bayer pulled the vaccines off the market and sold them to consumers in Japan, France, Spain and other countries, where hemophiliacs were then contaminated with HIV due to the vaccine.

Watch the video yourself
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wg-52mHIjhs


And yet, despite these apparent crimes, no Bayer executives ever faced arrest or prosecution in the United States.

A Bayer spinmeister had this to say: "Bayer behaved responsibly, ethically and humanely... [and its actions] were consistent with regulations."

Sure they did. Don't forget that Bayer is the same pharmaceutical company linked to Nazi Germany's medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners. They have a long and dark history of being involved in the manufacture of chemical weapons. As stated on CorporateWatch.org (http://archive.corporatewatch.org/profi...):

" IG Farben continued to grow during the inter-war period as one of the most powerful chemical and pharmaceutical companies in the world. Products included polyurethanes and the first 'sulpha' drugs. It is during Nazi-era Germany and WW2 that IG Farben (Bayer) entered its most sinister phase. IG Farben as the leading chemical company in Nazi Germany took over chemical plants across Nazi occupied Europe, used slave-labour in their factories (including operating their own concentration camp), conducted medical experiments on those held in the concentration camps and manufactured the poison gas used to kill thousands. At the end of the war the 1945 Potsdam Agreement called for the break up of IG Farben into its constituent companies. Twelve IG Farben employees and directors were jailed for war crimes at the Nuremburg Trials."

Anybody who takes anything made by Bayer is, in my opinion, supporting a corporation that has been committing crimes against humanity for nearly a hundred years.

Bayer Pesticide Chemicals Linked to Devastating Collapse of Honeybee Populations

(NaturalNews) German government researchers have concluded that a bestselling Bayer pesticide is responsible for the recent massive die-off of honeybees across the country's Baden-Württemberg region. In response, the government has banned an entire family of pesticides, fueling accusations that pesticides may be responsible for the current worldwide epidemic of honeybee die-offs.

Researchers found buildup of the pesticide clothianidin in the tissues of 99 percent of dead bees in Baden-Württemberg state. The German Research Center for Cultivated Plants concluded that nearly 97 percent of honeybee deaths had been caused directly by contact with the insecticide.

"It can unequivocally be concluded that a poisoning of the bees is due to the rub-off of the pesticide ingredient clothianidin from corn seeds," said the federal agricultural research agency, the Julius Kuehn Institute.

The pesticide was applied to rapeseed and sweet corn seeds along the Rhine River Valley, which borders Baden-Württemberg to the west and south.

"Beekeepers in the region started finding piles of dead bees at the entrance of hives in early May, right around the time corn seeding takes place," said Walter Haefeker, president of the European Professional Beekeepers Association.

A total of two-thirds of all bees in the entire state are believed to have been killed by the chemical.

"It's a real bee emergency," said Manfred Hederer, president of the German Professional Beekeepers' Association. "Fifty to 60 percent of the bees have died on average, and some beekeepers have lost all their hives."

Clothianidin, marketed in Europe under the brand name Poncho, is a widely used insecticide in the neonicotinoid family. Like all neonicotinoids, it is a systemic pesticide that is applied to the seeds of plants and then spreads itself throughout all plant tissues. Based on nicotine, the neonicotinoids function as neurotoxins that attack the nervous systems of insects such as honeybees.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has classified clothianidin as "highly toxic" to honeybees. The chemical was approved for U.S. use in 2003 and German use in 2004.

Clothianidin manufacturer Bayer CropScience, a subsidiary of chemical giant Bayer, blamed the honeybee deaths on incorrect application of the pesticide. Before seeds are sprayed, a fixative should be applied to keep the poison from spreading into the rest of the environment. In the current situation, Bayer says, the fixative was not applied and clothianidin spread into the air.

But beekeepers and pesticide critics rejected this explanation, calling for Germany to follow France's footsteps in banning the chemical - and indeed, all neonicotinoids.

"We have been pointing out the risks of neonicotinoids for almost 10 years now," said Philipp Mimkes, spokesman for the Coalition Against Bayer Dangers. "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."

While stopping short of a total ban, the German Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety acted quickly upon release of the study data, placing a provisional ban upon all seven pesticides in the neonicotinoid family. These chemicals may not be used in Germany until the manufacturers can supply enough data to convince the government that they are safe.

The seven provisionally banned pesticides are the clothianidin-based brands Poncho and Elado; the imidacloprid-based brands Antarc, Chinook and Faibell; methiocarb-based Mesurol; and thiamethoxam-based Cruiser

Six of the seven products are made by Bayer, while Mesurol is manufactured by Syngenta.

Bayer's neonicotinoids have been blamed for killing honeybees before, most notably in France. There the company's best-selling pesticide, imidacloprid, was banned from use on sunflower seeds in 1999 after being blamed for killing off a third of the country's honeybees. In 2004, France extended the ban to sweet corn seeds. The government rejected Bayer's application for clothianidin use in France only a few months ago.

In North Dakota, a group of beekeepers is suing Bayer, alleging that imidacloprid was responsible for Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) in that state in 1995. One-third of North Dakota honeybees died that year after imidacloprid was applied to rapeseed there.

Imidacloprid is marketed in France under the brand name Gaucho, but is also sold as Admire, Advantage, Confidor, Hachikusan, Kohinor, Merit, Premise, Prothor, and Winner.

Around the world, honeybee stocks are in decline, which scientists have warned could have devastating impacts on global food supplies. A total of 80 percent of world food crops are primarily or exclusively pollinated by honeybees, amounting to 130 crops and $15 billion worth of food each year in the United States alone.

Yet two million honeybee colonies have been lost in the United States in recent years, with massive dieoffs also reported across Europe and in Taiwan, where 10 million bees recently disappeared over the course of only two weeks.

"If nothing is done about it, the [British] honeybee population could be wiped out in 10 years," warned U.K. Farming Minister Lord Rooker in 2007.

While in many cases bees have actually been found dead, as in the Baden-Württemberg incident, beekeepers have been particularly alarmed by CCD, in which the bees simply vanish, leaving empty hives behind them.

Neonicotinoid pesticides have been suggested as a possible cause of CCD, with advocates of this theory noting that since the pesticide spreads through all plant tissues, bees might be exposed through the pollen of treated plants. At least one study concluded that neonicotinoids are likely to become concentrated in bee hives in high levels, transported by contaminated pollen.

A number of studies have found that in low doses, neonicotinoids produce symptoms consistent with CCD. Termites exposed to imidacloprid experienced disorientation and immune system failure, while bees exposed to low levels of the chemical experienced impaired communication, homing and foraging ability, flight activity, and olfactory discrimination and learning.

Sources for this story include: www.guardian.co.uk, pubs.acs.org, www.allheadlinenews.com.