EU Moratorium on Neonicotinoid Use.

Since January 2013 the European (Union) Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has been trying to introduce a 2 year moratorium on the use of Neonicotinoid pesticides in order to research whether they function as a neurotoxin killing the honey bee population. Although this sounds like quite a dull and technical subject it's actually quite an important one because honey bees are responsible for around 80% of crop pollination. So without honey bees there aren't food crops and without food crops there aren't people.

As with any form of environmental protection the UK has been deeply opposed to this. However their main problem has been that their only argument against more scientific research is that there isn't currently enough scientific research available. As a result they've attempted to turn any debate about Neonicotinoids into a debate about anything and everything except Neonicotinoids and ultimately a referendum on the UK's role within the EU. Their latest effort ahead of today's vote was to draw a comparison between Neonicotinoids and the Saudi and Qatari Irregular Army's (SQIA) use of Sarin in Syria. After all Sarin is an organophosphate that started out life as a pesticide. Neonicotinoid pesticides were introduced as a replacement for organophosphate pesticides after we discovered that they were wildly dangerous often killing the farmers that used them.

So in preparation for the Neonicotinoid vote we've had a slew of incidents such as today's failed assassination attempt on the Syrian Prime Minister in Damascus that seem to indicate that the SQIA could win the war at any moment. This has been accompanied by lots of indications that the SQIA winning in Syria would be the last thing the world wants. This has included overt things such as the SQIA's attempt to shoot down a Russian civilian passenger jet with those infamous Man Portable Air Defence Systems (MANPADS) and the siege of the Libyan Foreign Ministry which demonstrates the type of 'freedom' that this sort of western intervention in the Middle-East North Africa (MENA) region has brought. It has also included indirect things such as the highly questionable conviction of three British men in Dubai, UAE on drug possession charges. The fact that the men were extensively tortured prior to what is laughably described as a trial is supposed to remind us that the values of the SQIA's main backers are very different to the value system in the west on in Syria's immediate neighbour Israel. Therefore the UK was hoping that EU members would vote against the Neonicotinoid ban after being tricked into thinking they were voting in favour of the Syrian government being allowed to use any means necessary (including Sarin) in order to defeat the SQIA. After all as an irregular force the SQIA are not protected by the laws of war or any international convention preventing the use of bioweapons such as Sarin.

In the end this seems to have had if anything a negative effect. Although the UK switched it's position from "abstained" to "against" two other member states (I'm trying to find out who) changed their position to "in favour" while there was a large shift away from "against" towards "abstained." However the 15 votes in favour were short of the super majority needed to institute the moratorium. Therefore the European Commission - the bureaucracy that holds the EU together - exercised it's right to introduce the 2 year moratorium which will begin at the end of 2013.


In other news today I've mainly been sleeping. That's because I think I'm going to need all my energy tomorrow to trying and find something positive to say about the growing litany of increasingly poor decisions that is Rihanna's Diamonds World Tour. I sincerely hope the CIA handlers do the same. That's because if they break the momentum for just one day I'm sure they'll lose their target blindness and start making decisions based on what is actually achievable rather than what they wish was achievable.

19:35 on 29/4/13.