===Monica Lewinsky released the following statement on Hilary Clinton's run for President:"I will not vote for Hilary Clinton.The last Clinton Presidency left a bad taste in my mouth.
===
Let's hear it for Islam! https://www.youtube.com/watch?
===
Recently the EPA screwed up rivers and now the current "buzz" is the EPA has assisted in bee killings because they have been reluctant to admit the damage done by crop spraying with Neonictinoids. They were stung when it became known and were forced to acknowledge. (See 1 below.)
===
The U.N. still exists. Why? So man can look at himself and see his immorality and depravity? (See 2 below.)
===
In its desire to win contracts with Iran Italy, The Vatican and the entire West looked into the mirror and blinked. (See 3 below.)
===
A look back at Oslo. (See 4 below.)
===
This is from an old and dear friend. I served on The President's Commission on White House Fellowships with Bud. (See 5 below.)
====
Dick
========================================================================
1)
EPA forced to admit neonicotinoids killing bees
The results of a new risk assessment study by the Environmental Protection Agency has forced the agency to conclude that neonicotinoids have a detrimental impact on pollinators, including honey bees.
Neonicotinoids (AKA neonics) – manufactured by Bayer and Syngenta and peddled by Monsanto, Dupont and Dow — are the most widely used pesticides and can be applied as seed coatings or mixed with water used to irrigate plants. About 95 percent of all commercial U.S. corn and canola crops and most all commercial cotton, sorghum, sugar beets, fruits. vegetables, berries, leafy greens, and cereal grains are treated with neonics. The most widely used neonic is imadacloprid.
Under pressure from Big Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration and the EPA have long resisted efforts to link neonics to diminishing pollinator populations. But bee growers have long blamed neonics for their declining bee populations and the dreaded colony collapse disorder. In colony collapse disorder, bees simply leave the hive and disappear. Neonicotinoids affect the bees’ central nervous system and impair their ability to navigate, which would explain why they don’t return to the hive.
The effects of neonicotinoids
Canadian beekeepers note that they experience significant loss just after corn planting season. They blame the pretreated corn seeds, stating that air seed causes the neonicotinoid dust to fly through the air and drift onto plants near corn fields.
Researchers from American Purdue University found that bees that died or were dying as part of a die-off in the spring of 2013 demonstrated symptoms of neurotoxins and contained traces of neonicotinoids thiamethoxam and clothianidin and noted that seed treatments of field crops (primarily corn) are the only major source of these compounds.
A 2012 study by the European Food Safety Commission found that neonics pose an unacceptably high risk to bees and the industry-sponsored science upon which regulatory agency recommendations were based were flawed.
The EPA’s Assistant Administrator Jim Jones noted that if nectar brought to a bee hive contains 25 parts per billion of imadacloprid, “there is a significant effect” on the hive’s vitality. It can lead to less honey, fewer bees and a “less robust hive.”
Pollination plus superfoods
In addition to pollinating our crops, honey bees produce honey, which can be considered the ultimate superfood.
Based on the numerous health benefits, honey may provide more nutrients, vitamins and minerals than meat, eggs, milk, grains and vegetables. Plus, it contains only about 100 calories per teaspoon.
Unlike refined sugar, honey and other natural sugars — like those found in dates, figs and raisins — are live physiological sugars which contain the germs of life.
According to the Waikato Honey Research Unit, honey is now being accepted as a standard of care in treating skin ulcers as well as wounds and burns. Researchers indicate that applying honey to your skin helps reduce inflammation, swelling and pain; causes offensive odors to vanish; and promotes rapid healing of the skin, often with little scarring. In many cases, honey was more effective in treating infected lesions that were not responding to standard antibiotic and antiseptic therapy.
==============================================================
On Tuesday, the United Nations Security Council met to discuss “The Situation in the Middle East.” The situation in question wasn’t a war in Syria that has taken hundreds of thousands of lives or the rise of ISIS. Instead of tackling the difficult problem of how to end that civil war, which has drawn in forces from around the region and created millions of refugees, the UN preferred to devote its time and energy to a more familiar and, therefore, safer topic: Israel’s continued presence in the West Bank. What followed was a dreary and all too familiar debate in which Israeli settlement policies were slammed and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon rationalized Palestinian terror by declaring, “it is human nature to react to occupation, which often serves as an incubator of hate and extremism.”
Ban’s comments provoked a furious and justified response from Israel. But what is remarkable about a debate that focused almost exclusively on the Israeli presence in the West Bank and gave short shrift to the current Palestinian terror campaign known as the “stabbing intifada,” is that so much of what was said about the policies of the Jewish state were uttered as if the history of the 22 years of efforts to end the conflict had never occurred.
When Ban speaks of nearly 50 years of Israeli occupation, he ignores the fact that Israel has repeatedly offered the Palestinian Authority statehood and withdrawal from almost all of the West Bank. If the goal of the Palestinians were truly statehood, they would have jumped on the deals put on the table in 2000, 2001, and 2008, all of which would have granted them sovereignty over this territory as well as a share of Jerusalem. Even the Netanyahu government, which is widely derided as intransigent by its critics, offered to withdraw from much of the West Bank and accepted a two-state solution. But Palestinian leaders have never been willing to accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders might be drawn. That’s why all discussion of Palestinian “frustration” is deeply misleading.
Whatever one may think should be the ultimate disposition of the West Bank, the Palestinian refusal to negotiate peace has made it obvious that the widespread belief that the settlements are the obstacles to peace is absurd. Moreover, Israel has already demonstrated what happens when it does what the international community wants and uproots settlements and hands territory to the Palestinians. The withdrawal of every single settler and solider from Gaza in 2005 led to the establishment of a Hamas-run terrorist enclave which effectively functions as an independent Palestinians state in all but name.
Moreover, the recent upsurge in Palestinian wasn’t the “natural” reaction to Palestinian frustration about the failure to bring about a two-state solution that the majority of them continue to oppose. The spark was the lies told by PA leader Mahmoud Abbas and the rest of the Palestinian leadership about alleged Israeli plans to harm the mosques on the Temple Mount. The driving force since then has been the same spirit of rejectionism that has animated the Palestinian national movement since its inception. Palestinian public opinion continues to view the Jewish presence in any part of the country as unacceptable. Whether Jews are sitting in a café in Tel Aviv or in a West Bank settlement, Palestinians think they deserve death.
It is not “human nature” — normal instincts that are presumed to exist in all people — that drives Palestinians to seek out random Israelis, whether they are young or old, male or female, or even pregnant, and to stab or shoot them. In this case, the “incubator” of hatred and extremism is not the Israeli refusal to give up land they know will be used as a launching pad for more terrorism but rather a Palestinian ideology that views territorial compromise as treason.
Nevertheless, it must be admitted that “human nature” does actually play a part in this discussion. Sadly, the willingness to treat Jews differently from that of every other people and nation on the planet is rooted in a virus of hate that seems impervious to efforts to eradicate it. Whatever the rights and wrongs of various aspects of a complex dispute between two peoples over one piece of land, it is clear that the indiscriminate killing of Jews remains the sort of thing that much of the world is prepared to tolerate. Comments such as those of Ban, even if they are accompanied by boilerplate rhetoric about terrorism being deplorable, serve only to further encourage the Palestinians to persist in their intransigence.
The only way to resolve the question of the West Bank is to persuade Palestinians to give up their quest to destroy Israel. But until a sea change in their political culture permits them to embrace reason, comments such as those of Ban have the destructive effect of encouraging them to believe the world shares their belief that murdering Jews is a laudable endeavor.
On the eve of the day that the international community uses to commemorate the Holocaust, there is something profoundly disturbing about the way Ban and the rest of the world body chose to rationalize the irrational hate that drives the Palestinians to kill Jews. The UN’s treatment of Israel is proof that the indifference to anti-Semitism that allowed the Holocaust to happen is yet with us. If this is “human nature,” it is proof that the vile hate that led the mass slaughter of European Jewry seven decades ago is still alive and well.
=========================================================
3)
The Humbling of the West
Europe and the U.S. bow and scrape to ascendant Iran
Some wonder how history will treat Barack Obama’s presidency. That depends on who writes the histories.
Secretary of State John Kerry’s account will fist-pump the Iran nuclear deal as the central foreign-policy event of the Obama presidency, a triumph for Western diplomacy.
But news photographs in recent weeks are producing a different history. These photos document the abject humiliation of the West by Iran. Americans who plan to vote in their presidential election should look hard at these photos, because the West’s direction after this will turn on the decisions they make.
The first photo is of a hallway in Rome’s Capitoline Museums, a repository of art dating to Western antiquity. Out of what the government of Italy called “respect” for the sensibilities of visiting Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, the museum placed large white boxes over several nude sculptures, including a Venus created in the second century B.C.
Then, because Mr. Rouhani will not attend a meal that serves alcohol to anyone, the nominally Italian government of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi declined to serve wine.
They did so for the same reason that beggars grub change in front of Rome’s churches. Freed by the Obama nuclear deal with Iran, Italy’s tin-cup businesses signed about a dozen deals with Mr. Rouhani this week, totaling $18 billion.
The bowing and scraping to Mr. Rouhani continues this week as France and Germany sign more deals. This is not economic re-normalization. Rather than reform its weak, politically unstable economies, Europe is content to make itself a dependency of the aborning Iranian empire.
The second photo of Western submission depicts what appears to be a glee-filled meeting between the president of Iran and the leader of the world’s Catholics, Pope Francis, who gave Mr. Rouhani 40 minutes of his time.
The Vatican argues this is realpolitik by a pope trying to protect Christians in the Middle East by inducing Iran to play an “important role” in the peace process.
Set aside the “role” Iran has played in the death of a quarter-million Syrians and the refugees now destabilizing Europe. One still may ask: Why such public and jolly photo-ops with this person?
The U.S. State Department’s religious-freedom report says in 2014 Iran executed at least 24 individuals for the crime of moharebeh (enmity against God). And surely that understates the total killed.
The persecuted in Iran include Bahais, Sunni Muslims, Christians (notably evangelicals), Jews, Yarsanis and even Shia groups.
Mr. Rouhani is grinning in this photo because he knows these people can’t move Iran’s culture out of the 16th century.
The third photograph is of 10 sailors from the U.S. Navy who are kneeling in rows, hands on their heads, on the deck of an Iranian boat.
The Obama administration hasn’t provided an explanation for how this “deviation” and capture by Iran in the Persian Gulf happened.
Instead of outrage over Iran’s treatment of the sailors, Sec. Kerry praised the Iranians’ “cooperation and quick response.”
Cooperation? Iran humiliated the sailors by making them kneel in the style of an Islamic State execution ceremony and then humiliated the U.S. by releasing that photo.
Meeting in a congratulatory ceremony with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps members who took the sailors, Iranian supremo Ayatollah Khamenei said, “This event should be considered God’s work.”
One is tempted to tip one’s hat to the Khamenei-Rouhani strategy team. Iran took the West’s measure with its nuclear brinkmanship and the West bent.
Some may say the Italians are the Italians, the pope has his reasons, and Barack Obama and John Kerry are just finishing their apology tour. But that understates the long series of political compromises and cultural surrenders that have brought the U.S. and Europe to this point.
Italy’s repudiation of its own heritage to accommodate Iran’s president is a significant symbolic event. The Capitoline’s Venus isn’t just a naked lady carved out of marble. Just as the naked man and woman in Masaccio’s “Expulsion from the Garden of Eden,” painted in 1423 at the dawn of the Renaissance, are hardly figure studies.
In her recently published book arguing a relationship between the Western artistic legacy and democratic evolution, “David’s Sling,” Victoria Gardner Coates says these works “are not isolated aesthetic objects; part of their value as historical evidence derives from their role in the public life of the communities that produced them.”
Unless that public life is forgotten. Western schools may no longer teach the Battle of Thermopylae, but one may assume Hassan Rouhani knows the details of Persia’s historic loss to brave Greece in 480 B.C. as if it were yesterday.
Putting a white box over a Venus to placate a Rouhani is a loss in the Persians’ return trip to the West.
==========================================================================
4)The requiem for the Oslo Accords warrants a unity government
By Isi Liebler
The controversy over the Oslo Accords, which bitterly divided the nation over the past quarter century, is no longer a contentious issue. The late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin personally told me on numerous occasions of his concern that the deal with Yasser Arafat, whom he despised as a murderer, was a gamble that Israel had to take in order to satisfy itself and the world that it had sought every opportunity to achieve peace.
In contrast, Shimon Peres, then foreign minister, in response to a few critical questions I posed in the days after the Oslo announcement, lost his cool and angrily stated, “They took Entebbe away from me, but they will never do the same with the peace process.” Today Peres is possibly the sole remaining senior politician who still maintains that the deal with Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization should be retained as the basis for a peace settlement.
The consensus, extending beyond right-wing politics, which recognizes the failure of the Oslo Accords, was articulated by the former director general of the Foreign Ministry, Professor Shlomo Avineri, an esteemed intellectual doyen of the Zionist Left. In an article published last October in Haaretz, Avineri enumerated a host of reasons on both sides that contributed to the failure. But overriding these was the fact that the Palestinian position did not consider the conflict as territorial but regarded all of Israel as a colonial implant which had to be uprooted. Avineri concluded that we are obliged to face the reality that there is no way Israel could achieve any mutually acceptable peace agreement in the foreseeable future.
His views were echoed by one of the key architects of the Oslo Accords, former minister Yossi Beilin, who, at a recent U.N. Media Seminar, stated explicitly that the Oslo Accords must end. As he said, “Too many Israelis fear that a one-state marriage would destroy either our identity as a Jewish state or our claim to democracy. And a two-state divorce is unlikely to produce a prosperous and stable Palestine.” He concluded that the best solution now would be an Israeli-Palestinian confederation.
The final nail in the coffin of the Oslo Accords was the announcement by the head of Israel’s Zionist Union and leader of the opposition, Isaac Herzog, who admitted, “I don’t see a possibility at the moment of implementing the two-state solution.” He told French President Francois Hollande that “we have to be realistic. … It cannot happen at this time. Hatred and incitement among the Palestinians are just too great.”
Unsurprisingly, Herzog blamed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the impasse, but the fact remains that the leader of the Israeli Left has effectively joined the Israeli consensus which believes that under the current circumstances, the creation of an independent Palestinian state is not even on the horizon.
However, in no way does that imply that there has been any strengthening of support for those calling for annexation of all the territories, who remain a very small proportion of the electorate. Most Israelis recognize that they cannot retain their Jewish identity if they absorb millions of additional Arabs. But in the short term they seek at least to separate themselves from the Palestinians. A small but noisy group of delusional far leftists still consider the duplicitous Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas as a peace partner.
But Herzog seems to be attempting to sever connections between Labor Zionism and the post-Zionists and anarchists. Indeed, he has shaken up the political community by lurching to the right and calling for extending Sharon’s separation barrier to protect the major settlement blocs -- areas that would remain in Israel irrespective of what happens to the Palestinians. Herzog makes it clear that in any future confidence-building initiatives and outreach to the Palestinians, the Israel Defense Forces would of necessity retain control of the West Bank and Jordan Valley.
With Herzog on board there is now a consensus for the major policies toward the Palestinians, extending from the left Zionist Union through to Avigdor Lieberman’s far-right Yisrael Beytenu.
Having attained this consensus, it is simply outrageous that the various political leaders fail to act in the national interest, temporarily set aside their own political ambitions, and unite in the face of the great pressures we face. This is particularly egregious given the dangers we are likely to encounter in the coming months, during U.S. President Barack Obama’s remaining term in office.
The entire Middle East, apart from Israel, is a bubbling cauldron of barbarism reminiscent of the Dark Ages. At our doorstep, mass murder, executions and massive population displacements are rampant as the Sunnis and Shiites butcher each other. ISIS now poses a threat throughout the entire world.
In his desperation to appease and grovel to the genocidal Iranians, Obama has lifted all sanctions and they will now be receiving in excess of $150 billion dollars, much of which U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry concedes will be used to intensify its global terror operations and plans to wipe Israel off the map.
Europe is in chaos and the impact of millions of Muslim refugees will further destabilize the area and intensify the record high levels of anti-Semitism. Unfortunately, this has not diverted the EU from furthering its biased and selective harassment of Israel.
At such a time, one would have expected the U.S. to support or use its influence to defend its longstanding ally. However, while presidents in their last year in office are usually lame ducks, it seems clear that Obama is determined to continue pressuring Israel and will use the Europeans to do likewise. There are even hints that the U.S. may abandon us at the U.N. by refrain from a veto, enabling the Security Council to pass resolutions pressing Israel to return to the indefensible 1949 armistice lines.
When American Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro accuses Israel of adhering to “two standards of law” in the West Bank -- one for Israelis and one for Palestinians -- and criticizes the failure of Israel to adequately control Jewish terrorism, claiming that “too much vigilantism goes unchecked,” it sends clear signals that we should gird ourselves for further onslaughts from the U.S. administration.
It is unprecedented for the U.S. to publicly besmirch an ally in this manner. Shapiro disregards our government’s implementation of the tough policy of treating Jewish extremist suspects in a similar manner to Arab terrorists. Such statements ignore the Palestinian religious fanatics who are incited daily to kill Jews and be rewarded with Paradise. It was utterly insensitive of Shapiro to make such utterances the day after a mother of six had been murdered in her home and on the day a pregnant woman had been stabbed.
This wretchedly biased condemnation of Israel took place as Obama outraged the traditional allies of the U.S. by groveling toward the Iranians, the foremost global sponsors of terrorism, who displayed their disdain for him by reiterating their contempt for the U.S. and publicly humiliating American sailors who they claimed trespassed their waters.
The outburst by Shapiro therefore has to be viewed within the context of an impending new European onslaught against Israel.
One of the strongest weapons to deter Obama from throwing us to the wolves would be the formation of a unity government. This would refute the myth that the fault lies with an extreme right-wing Israeli government and undermine the reasoning that justifies pressuring such a government to make unilateral concessions. It would strengthen the American people’s support for Israel and would perhaps shake up and bring on board the Jewish communal leadership whose shameful silence in the face of some of the U.S. statements besmirching Israel has been deafening.
Netanyahu, Herzog, Yair Lapid and Avigdor Lieberman should get off their high horses, work in the national interest and agree to form a unity government. The people of Israel are entitled to this during these trying times of mounting global hostility. If they have any sense of responsibility, our leaders should ask themselves how history will judge them if they fail to rise to this occasion.
=================================================================
5)
Dear Richard,
The Iowa Caucus is February 1st, and the road to the White House is anything but certain.
 Because of my unique experience as a political advisor, business attorney and independent consultant to CEOs, I'm frequently asked my thoughts on this most unusual political era. While I don't have a crystal ball to predict the definitive outcome, here's what I know for sure:
Win or lose, today's political candidates reflect a cautionary tale for business leaders. Like it or not, America is now fully immersed in a "new reality" and the leader who fails to adjust will surely lose whether in politics or in business.
In this issue, I share my views on these developments and what it means for you. And remember, I'm here to help you apply these important and timely lessons to your company and your leadership so you can avoid making the same costly missteps. Contact me and let's visit soon.
|
|
Politics (Not) as Usual
Today's Political Climate Reveals Vital Lessons for Business Leaders
The Iowa Caucus is February 1st, and it's anything but "politics as usual."
What makes this year's caucus particularly significant is that our current uncertain political climate has implications that go far beyond the Iowa Caucus—and far beyond next November's election booth.
Regardless of your personal political persuasion, there is no denying we find ourselves fully immersed in a new reality here in America. And in politics and in business, leaders of all kinds are scrambling to adjust to this new blueprint required for future success.
Today many of our nation's political candidates are learning these painful lessons in the glare of the public spotlight, with advisors who failed to recognize the new reality and are scrambling to adjust. However, we can all learn from their experience and avoid making the same missteps in our own companies and with our own constituents. Here's what you need to know:
The "old" rules no longer apply.
American voters have made it very clear: They are dissatisfied and they demand change. Candidates looking for strategies from four, eight or 12 years ago are dramatically missing the mark. The same is true for your company. If you're using an old playbook, you are missing vital opportunities in the here and now. Worst of all, you're letting your competitors step in to a fill a powerful void in your leadership absence. How has your industry changed? Has your strategy adjusted? If not, what will you do to address current issues?
The American public is angry.
Right now their sentiments are directed at political leaders and what they view as the "establishment." But it won't be long until these sentiments are directed toward businesses viewed as part of the "establishment." As a business leader, are you ready? How will you respond if you're taken to task? If you're not already preparing, you should be.
Not all advisors are created equal. |
No comments:
Post a Comment