From a wall in the John F. Kennedy Museum:
Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
Senator Robert F. Kennedy, June 6 1966 (South Africa address)
When my team members first connected with Paul McCartney, none of them imagined he would become such an engaged and passionate leader for the cause of peace among Israelis and Palestinians. Not only did he passionately embrace the work of OneVoice Israeli and Palestinian youth leaders and rally behind the courageous partnership of the Noa and Mira singing duo, but he now also wrote to President Obama to let him know about OneVoice, and encourage him to support their work!
Cathy Arnst wrote a compelling article in BusinessWeek here, about the Food Industry’s complicity in fostering obesity in society. While individuals ultimately have to be responsible for their actions, misleading advertising and claims definitely contribute to this epidemic, as I have written in the past (ie, Corn Refiners Assoc lying re HFCS, COKE lying about soft drinks – and claiming it is all natural, dilution of "natural" claims because of so much deception by big food cos, etc.).
Now Arnst brought forward many studies and sources – from Dr. David Kessler to a study in the health journal The Milbank Quarterly – that compare Big Tobacco’s dirty tricks to how large food companies are behaving….
Over the last few weeks I have been receiving emails from all sorts of organizations trying to inspire fear about the Obama Administration’s policies towards Israel. From Obama’s efforts to drive towards a two-state solution, to Jordanian King Abdullah’s effort to expand the Arab Peace Initiative to encompass all 57 Muslim nations, it is disturbing to see those threatened by these overtures try to manipulate them to look bad for Israel. How can peace with its neighbors and acceptance and normalization of relations with the Arab and Muslim world be against Israel’s interests? Nobody is trying to sell out Israel’s interests. And the best way to confirm this is to read Obama’s words, rather than the interpretations and manipulations by others. So here below is the transcript of the press conference with President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Transcript of press conference with President Obama and PM Netanyahu
May. 18, 2009
SPEAKERS: PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA
PRIME MINISTER BINYAMIN NETANYAHU
[*] OBAMA: All right, everybody. Just tell me when everybody’s set up.
Great. Well, listen, I — I, first of all, want to thank Prime Minister Netanyahu for making this visit. I think we had a (sic) extraordinarily productive series of conversations, not only between the two of us, but also at the staff and agency levels.Obviously, this reflects the extraordinary relationship, the special relationship between the United States and Israel. It is a stalwart ally of the United States. We have historical ties, emotional ties. As the only true democracy in the Middle East, it is a source of admiration and inspiration for the American people.
I have said from the outset that when it comes to my policies towards Israel and the Middle East, that Israel’s security is paramount, and I repeated that to Prime Minister Netanyahu.
It is in US national security interests to assure that Israel’s security as a (sic) independent Jewish state is maintained.
Great news for getting OneVoice’s recent polls – which highlight the grassroots mandate for a two-state solution – into the conversations happening at the top levels of DC policy-making: yesterday in his opening remarks for the US Senate Hearing on the Middle East with Tony Blair, Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana (R) – who is the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee Republican leader – cited the recent OneVoice poll as evidence of grassroots acceptance for a negotiated two state solution:
President Obama has stated clearly that a comprehensive peace between Israel and the Palestinians is in the national interest of the United States. He says he wants results, not just a process. He has assigned a new special envoy, our friend Senator George Mitchell, to engage in the detailed diplomacy required of such an effort. When we met with Senator Mitchell several weeks ago, he spoke with energy and pragmatism about the task at hand. We also heard from King Abdullah of Jordan three weeks ago, who communicated the support of leaders of the Arab states for “decisive action” toward a settlement. In addition, there is substantial support within Israeli and Palestinian societies for a resolution to the conflict. A recent poll, published by OneVoice, found that 74 percent of Palestinians and 78 percent of Israelis want a two-state solution.
Senator Lugar’s full remarks are here: http://lugar.senate.gov/press/record.cfm?id=313018&&
This statement demonstrates that America’s leaders are hungry for public support for the two-state solution, and hopefully our poll will provide them with momentum to aggressively pursue peace negotiations.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb highlights the dangerous (and inequitable) way the US Government and other countries have handled the recent abuses that brought out the financial crisis:
2. No socialisation of losses and privatisation of gains. Whatever may need to be bailed out should be nationalised; whatever does not need a bail-out should be free, small and risk-bearing. We have managed to combine the worst of capitalism and socialism. In France in the 1980s, the socialists took over the banks. In the US in the 2000s, the banks took over the government. This is surreal.
Think about it! It’s crazy.
The full article, which is excellent, is in the Financial Times (and below).
We are honored that BusinessWeek chose PeaceWorks among 25 of "America’s Most Promising Social Entrepreneurs."
If you like what we do, we’d appreciate you voting here for us – PeaceWorks Holdings – as the top 5 will be featured in the magazine.
In another sign that our society is going to have a reckoning if we don’t alter our diet and start eating healthier more wholesome foods, an alarming study shows that 20% of toddlers are obese.
Seeing the sugar lobby take up the Corn Refiners Association is amusing. Each peddles empty calories in the form of sugar or high fructose corn syrup. HFCS should be appropriately avoided as it’s artificial construct and introduction in the early 80s correlates too closely to the rise of obesity and the diabetis epidemic. It is downright dishonest to call HFCS natural, as the refiners aim to do.
But it is also true that ‘an empty calorie is an empty calorie’ and while some sweet in moderation can add to our taste, people aiming for a healthy diet should focus on wholesome ingredients that have nutritional depth. Hence KIND.
Roger Martin, Dean at the Rotman School of Management at University of Toronto, gave an interesting presentation at the Opening Plenary at the Skoll World Forum today:
Whether or not Barack Obama is your President or, as is the case for me, another country’s leader, most of you, I suspect, watched the President’s inauguration speech and did so with rapt attention. It was certainly a lovely, inspiring and motivating speech. I cried a few times, even though guys aren’t supposed to do that. I suspect each listener took away something special and unique to you from the speech. For me, one sentence grabbed my attention; that riveted me:
“As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.”
I study and write about leadership, which of course makes it a privilege for me to be among all the great leaders in this room. And in my study of highly successful leaders across a wide variety of organizations, I found the most common theme – the most universal characteristic – to be a form of thinking exemplified by President Obama’s quote.
That common theme was when highly successful leaders are faced with an apparent choice between two opposing and unsatisfying options, they show the inclination to refuse to choose and the capacity to instead engineer a course of action that is superior to each of the apparent options.
…
...In my work, I found that great leaders harness the inherent power in the tension between opposing ideas, options or models to forge a new better model. That is the Power of Paradox.