Daniel Lubetzky

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….

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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.

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….as part of a tour I organized for Young Global Leaders of the World Economic Forum to Jerusalem, here Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia founder) wears a cardboard kippa in front of Western Wall.

Paul McCartney, the newest member to join OneVoice’s Honorary Board of Advisors, has recently written to President Barack Obama making him aware of OneVoice. While performing in Tel Aviv last year, Paul’s message was to bring people together via the power of music – a sentiment that is shared by two singers, Noa, an Israeli Jew and Mira Awad, an Israeli Arab, who are members of OneVoice Israel.  They performed a song together for the Eurovision song contest titled There Must Be Another Way.

 “This seems to me like a great idea, the symbolism of two people from both sides coming together to spread their message of peace via music is exciting and inspiring for me. I hope President Obama looks into this organisation and feels that OneVoice could be part of a peaceful solution.”

Link to the story

Ethan Bronner of the New York Times wrote an interesting – and sobering – article about the dwindling numbers of Christians in the Middle East.

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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:

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.

A testament of how excellent the leadership from King Abdullah and Queen Rania of Jordan has been, and of how deficient the leadership has been from Israeli and Palestinian leaders in contrast, is contained in the views of young people here in Jordan.

At the World Economic Forum/Young Global Leaders conference, I’ve had a few interesting conversations with young Jordanians – not the high-level participants, but ordinary day-to-day people.  Here is what is interesting:

• most of them are proud of their Palestinian heritage;
• When I ask them if they see their identity more as Palestinian or Jordanian, most of them say it’s the same thing – 70% of Jordan is Palestinian;
• But when I ask them (and press them) on their future fate – would they want Israel, Palestine (West Bank and Gaza) and Jordan to be part of a confederacy; would they want Jordan to absorb any of the Palestinian land; other options – they all uniformly confess that they rather leave things alone and let Jordan be Jordan, and let the Israelis and Palestinians continue to kill each other if they so desire.

It is striking how uniform these perspectives are.  "Israelis don’t really want peace.  And frankly Palestinians don’t want peace either," they tend to say. 

So let us stay out of it, they think, and let Jordan grow and thrive, and not be stuck by recriminations of the past.

So the Jordanian Royal couple didn’t just do something very bright by marrying – the inheritor of the Hashemite Kingdom with an attractive Palestinian woman – but also by the vision and policies they have created.

Now, if young people across the border of Israel and Palestine, with family and heritage there, want nothing to do with all the conflict, imagine how does the rest of the world relate?  More and more people I talk to feel the same way: if the Israelis and Palestinians are not prepared to compromise, let them keep fighting.  The more cruel comments, broadly felt but not broadly acknowledged, tend to end with "let them kill each other."

Can this be a wake up call to Israelis and Palestinians to realize they need to recognize that freedom and security for them will not come if the other side doesn’t get the same?

Governments should be a lot more assertive about rooting out spam, phishing, viruses, and scams.  While private sector solutions address this, the amount of waste that it is creating on the system – and just the environmental cost of added server activity for all this dirty trash – is enormous. 

Below is a picture of the amount of good content (24%) VS. Spam and Threats that were blocked by our company recently.  It is staggering.

“When you hire someone, you look for brains, energy and integrity,
and if they don’t have the third, integrity, you better watch out,
because the first two will kill you.”

- Warren Buffett, as told by Robert A. Iger, who also added
‘curiosity’ as a valuable trait (NYT 5/3/09, B2)

Sent from my iPhone – pardon typos
.

From an article in the NYT by Ron Lieber, good financial advice from unusual sources – religious:

Those who structure their standard of living to allow a little surplus control their circumstances. Those who spend a little more than they earn are controlled by their circumstances. They are in bondage.

By N. Eldon Tanner, Church leader