Folks, and Ghislain
Take a look at the last sentence in that message forwarded by Ghislain:
'NB Bayer, Syngenta and their associates are busily savaging the latest scientific report from Harvard.'
He means, in addition to a few others, the people who posted here recently on the Harvard paper. Allen, Dean, Randy, Bill, and all the others, you are now 'associates' of agrochemical companies because you criticised the Harvard junk science. The Bee-L discussions were pointed out to the author of that circular when he posted in various places celebrating the Harvard study as yet more proof of the evils of neonicotinoids, so he knows about your posts. You argue for rational thought, and you get called an associate of an agrochemical company.
This message came from Graham White, a one-man propaganda machine based in the Scottish borders. His posts are all over the internet now, often under the name of Borderbeeman and in some newspaper websites as Borderglider. This Dutch video he is now promoting is a nasty piece of work which, in soft tones, does a one-sided hatchet job on Dutch scientists trying to find the truth in all this morass of propaganda and poor science.
Mr White in his circular even implies that the scientist being criticised in the videos takes research money from Bayer. That is a lie. The TV programme makes it plain that the organisation to which he belongs (it employs hundreds of people particularly in areas such as plant genetics and biotechnology) has dealings with Bayer, not Dr Blancquiere himself. The only scientist in the video who - to my knowledge - has had research money from Bayer is the French scientist Dr Bonmatin. He is the one who 'found' effects at very low levels of imidacloprid when all other studies were saying that such levels were safe, and so he fell out with his funders.
If anyone reading this has any trouble believing how twisted and unreliable the programme is, see the repeating of the scandalous comments made about Jerry Bromenshenk in the third video at 10 min 28 secs. I hope that you have your lawyers at the ready Jerry.
Beekeepers have every right to be suspicious of the agrochemical industry. In the Netherlands in particular there seem to be problems of widespread environmental pollution caused by over-use of these pesticides. But videos like this are nasty character assassinations of people who will not compromise their scientific integrity, and it is an unpleasant thing to see.
Gavin
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