Daniel Lubetzky

Shoot for the moon.  Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.

-Harriet Green
CEO, Premier Farnell (and member of the OneVoice/PeaceWorks Foundation Board of Directors)

In a remarkable sermon, Syria’s highest Sunni religious authority spoke courageously and powerfully about religions requiring humanity and respect, including these statements:

“If the Prophet Mohammed had asked me to deem Christians or Jews heretics, I would have deemed Mohammed himself a heretic."

Sheikh Ahmed Hassoun also “said Islam was a religion of peace, adding: ‘If Mohammed had commanded us to kill people, I would have told him he was not a prophet.’”

If you haven’t seen the documentary Food Inc. – you have to.  Like Michael Pollan’s books, this movie will change the way you see food and the world.

If we as consumers and citizens don’t do something quickly to fight back against the food industrial complex, by voting with our dollars, by informing and educating others, and by advocating to the government for more transparency, freedom, and a level playing field for natural foods producers, then the epidemics of diabetes, obesity, environmental degradation, food contamination and inhumane treatment will threaten us further.

Some highlights:

• Chicken and meat processing is so inhumane, and scary, it makes you feel you can’t avoid but to become a vegetarian – unless you live near Joe Salatin
• The Food Industrial Complex is abusive, greedy, and scary;
• corn engineering has created high fructose corn syrup, and the corn lobby has resulted in subsidies for obesity-inducing products;
• Price distortion from government subsidies causes poor people to buy cheap unhealthy foods made up of corn-derived empty calories – contributing to diabetes and obesity;
• Otherwise herbivore cows that naturally should feed from grass are now primarily fed corn, causing e-coli contaminations and diseases;
• Chicken die from the fast weight they put on; and they are treated as tools in an industrial machine – no lives;
• Monstanto is evil. They hold a ruthless monopoly over soybeans.  They intimidate and sue farmers to use their genetically-modified seeds. Federal and state government agencies have been bought off and serve the interests of the food industrial complex.

Serious work ahead.

Here is a really nice rating from Calorista.com.  They totally get KIND.

Ken Kunze, former CMO of Heineken and a very impressive guy, shared this very funny and effective guerrilla marketing effort by Coca-Cola.

I have received about twenty forwards from proud Jewish friends about Israel’s humanitarian contributions to Haiti – most frequently this CNN video. It is sad how this humanitarian mission gets twisted by opponents (or extreme supporters) of Israel into a political issue.  Disregarding that noise and not connecting it to Mideast policies, a picture is clearly emerging that Israeli technology and services have been at the cutting edge in Haiti, as reported by TIME:

Eight hours later, they were still there waiting for treatment, but Loremas knew that his 18-year-old niece Richline was one of the lucky ones. Like his little sister, whom he had deposited at the same field hospital the day before, she would be getting the best care possible in earthquake-ravaged Haiti. The Israeli hospital can treat only about 100 people a day, but it is the paramount medical center operating in Haiti in the aftermath of the Jan. 12 earthquake. It receives the cases that other hospitals find difficult and cannot manage. Upon entry, patients are photographed, and then they and their electronic records are digitally tracked around the tent complex with bar-coded bracelets. Ninety percent of those in Israeli hands have complex crushed limbs and bones — crush syndrome. But given the severity of the injuries and the conditions in apocalyptic Port-au-Prince, the hospital has had an amazing success rate: of the more than 400 people treated by Jan. 19, only eight had died.

My friend Naif Al-Mutawa is one of the best and most impressive social entrepreneurs, and greatest hopes for this century.  He created a compelling series of Comics, headquartered out of Kuwait and primarily aimed at Muslim youth – creating positive role models with a foundation from Islamic religion.  The 99 is a group of super-heroes, each of whom possesses a super-power derived from the 99 attributes of Allah in the Koran.   The execution and story are so well done, they should appeal to all. Check out this trailer…

Useful NYTimes article about how to travel more cheaply in 2010 – good tips to know.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is investing in community-based solutions to childhood obesity.

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UC Berkeley has done an interesting study about the role of altruism and generosity in human evolution, stressing the importance of kindness to our survival.

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