Shura of the Bees? Or--Colony Collapse Begins At Home

On April 15, the Independent newspaper quoted Albert Einstein, who once said that if the bees disappeared, "man would have only four years of life left".

Now, Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has now hit half of all American states. This alarming phenomenon occurs when a hive's inhabitants suddenly disappear. The vanished bees are never found, but thought to die singly far from home. Since last autumn, the West Coast is thought to have lost 60 per cent of its commercial bee population, with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast. And since I mentioned this two months ago, CCD has since spread to Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece.

German research has long shown that bees' behavior changes near power lines. Now a limited study at Landau University has found that bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby. The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously home-loving species from finding their way back to their hives. Can this be?

And what else is missing? The US is currently holding 18,000 Iraqis in detention, many “disappeared” and neatly catalogued with retina scans. What else is missing? The basic rights of Habeus Corpus. What else is missing? The incriminating emails that Karl Rove and his staff have sent about political firing of US Attorneys.

As the website Law.com reports; “Since the day he arrived at the Department of Justice in February 2005, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has "shattered" the department's tradition of independence and politicized its operation more than any other attorney general in more than 30 years. So says Daniel Metcalfe, a senior attorney at the department who retired in January, before the current controversy over the firing of U.S. Attorneys erupted.”

John Edwards and John Kerrey were defeated in the last Presidential election. Some people said that it made no difference who won anyway. Some people seem to always think that way. Some of them are “one issue” voters whose brains can apparently only hold one piece of information at a time: Abortion or Adultery; Israel or Palestine.

But we face so many other urgent issues as well. And it seems we need disasters to wake us from our political and moral sleep. Immediately after the massive devastation of Hurricane Katrina, Edwards wrote, “During the campaign of 2004, I spoke often of the two Americas: the America of the privileged and the wealthy, and the America of those who lived from paycheck to paycheck. I spoke of the difference in the schools, the difference in the loan rates, the difference in opportunity. All of that pales today. Today … we see a harsher example of two Americas.

Edwards went on to remind us, “Thirteen million children -- nearly one in every five -- lives in poverty. Close to 25 percent of all African Americans live in poverty. Twenty-three percent of the population in New Orleans lives in poverty. Those are chilling numbers. Because of Katrina, we have now seen many of the faces behind those numbers…. Poverty exists everywhere in America. It is in Detroit and El Paso. It is in Omaha, Nebraska and Stockton, California. It is in rural towns like Chillicothe, Ohio and Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Nearly half of the children in Detroit, Atlanta and Long Beach, California live in poverty. It doesn't have to be this way.”

Since then, the war in Iraq has continued its tragic spiral, creating at least “two Iraqs” and maybe more. And in an Essay “Two Americas” writer Brian Downing added this warning to Edwards’ lament: “Divisions between red and blue America and between rich and poor are well known. But another one, related but not quite identical, exists as well. There is a deep divide between those who honorably live the traditions surrounding war and those who dishonorably capitalize on them, between those who fight wars and those who plan them. This divide, troubling if not infuriating to most veterans, is perhaps even more dangerous than the others.”

The US claims Iran is a danger and the only question seems to be just who will send unmanned robot aircraft to bomb its nuclear sites. And proliferation proliferates. As the Times reported on April 15, in the front page lead, “Two years ago, the leaders of Saudi Arabia told international atomic regulators that they could not foresee no need for the kingdom to develop nuclear power. Today, they are scrambling to hire atomic contractors, buy nuclear hardware, and build support for a region system of reactors. So, too, Turkey is preparing for its first atomic plant, and Egypt has announced plans to build one on its Mediterranean coast…”

Is this Colony Collapse Disorder of another kind? A collective madness? The care of Nuclear power and its long-lived wastes almost requires the continuation of authoritarian regimes. We cannot only blame Israel and the US for this, but it is worth noting that the head of the UN Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, Hans Blix, has said that if the US genuinely wants to prevent the proliferation of other nation's nuclear programs, it should present itself as a role model and "completely" halt the development of its nuclear arms.

Like the US, Muslim Regimes are holding tight to their power. It may be that there are, as the Times has said, “Two Turkeys”, very different political cultures in uneasy dialogue with each other. But in Nigeria, we have had another “election” that keeps the governing regime firmly in place. The leaders of the political opposition in Russia “the Other Russia” are being arrested, and even the famous Chess player Kasparov will have to pay 200 dollars to get out of jail. It’s not easy to be in opposition, though that is supposed to be a necessary part of the democratic process. And in the Maghreb, we have a new appearance of suicide bombers blowing themselves up in tiny clouds of absurdity and dust—also good for police budgets.

Nobel Prize Winner Sherin Ebadi noted that some Muslims have justified despotic governments, “under the pretext that democracy and human rights are not compatible with Islamic teachings and the traditional structure of Islamic societies.”

However, Ebadi also noted in her speech that it was “of extreme concern to observe that under the pretext of cultural relativity, international human rights laws and standards are breached not only by their recognized opponents, but also by the Western democracies —with hundreds of individuals arrested in the course of military conflicts in Afghanistan and elsewhere, have been imprisoned in Guantanamo, without the benefit of the rights stipulated under the Geneva conventions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.”

Perhaps the bees know something we do not.