Blog Archives

Fairtrade - Misleading conscience consumers or making a difference?

5/29/2014

For a more balanced view, we urge you to:

Read The Canadian Fair Trade Network's response to the SOAS report.
Watch the CTV Ottawa interview with Marika, Escaravage, Communications and Community Relations Specialist with Fairtrade Canada.
Read "Unpeeling the Impacts of Poverty" by Harriet Lamb CEO of Fairtrade International in Bonn, Germany who highlights some third party research

The report entitled "Fair Trade, Employment & Poverty Reduction in Ethiopia and Uganda, published by the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at London University has reached media headlines globally and also here in Canada with The Globe and Mail. Why? The report states that "This research was unable to find any evidence that Fairtrade has made a positive difference to the wages and working conditions of those employed in the production of the commodities produced for Fairtrade certified export in the areas where the research has been conducted."

Section 4.2 of the report, starting at page 121 outlines the Recommendations based on its findings and makes for enlightening reading.

0 Comments

Time - the precious gift of life

5/28/2014

0 Comments

On his death bed, Alexander the Great summoned his generals and told them his three ultimate wishes:

The best doctors should carry his coffin;
The wealth he has accumulated (money, gold, precious stones) should be scattered along the procession to the cemetery, and
His hands should be let loose, hanging outside the coffin for all to see.

One of his generals, surprised by these unusual requests, asked Alexander to explain. Here is what Alexander the Great had to say:

I want the best doctors to carry my coffin to demonstrate that, in the face of death, even the best doctors in the world have no power to heal.
I want the road to be covered with my treasure so that everybody sees that material wealth acquired on earth, stays on earth.
I want my hands to swing in the wind, so that people understand that we come to this world empty handed and we leave this world empty handed after the most precious treasure of all is exhausted, and that is TIME.

Author unknown - Thanks to Stan Lemieux, St. Patrick's Fraternity, Montreal, for sharing.

TIME is our most precious treasure because it is LIMITED.

We can produce more wealth, but we cannot produce more time.

When we give someone our time, we actually give a portion of our life that we will never take back.

Our time is our life.

May God grant you plenty of TIME and may you have the wisdom to give it away so that you can LIVE & LOVE in peace.

0 Comments

The Ravina Project

5/20/2014

0 Comments

The Ravina Project set out to reduce the carbon footprint of Gordon and Susan Fraser's home in an old Toronto neighborhood. Today, their home continues to be the experimental test bed enabling the couple to generate and publish a wide range of data, to test new theories to increase efficiencies in the generation of solar power and to produce technical papers across several disciplines over the next five years.

Gord and his scientist wife, Susan, both in their late sixties, publish all their work/data on their website. You can read all their Project Papers. Much of their data are published on Solar Data and House Data. Data specific to papers written by them is found on Raw Data. You can sign up for daily Tweets: @ravinaproject with the hashtag #resilience.

Definitely worth visiting is their page on Global Warming whose effect is Climate "Weirdness". Here you will find a mine of interesting documents to better understand the scientific conclusion that we humans are causing global warming and had better start making changes, the sooner the better.

Bottom line, listening to Gord is that if we are to use renewable power such as solar energy, we will need to produce huge collectors for the diffused power. He wonders where are the mining, the supply chain and the training of people globally to support this? For their home alone, they need a solar power collector 25 metres squared on the side of the house, the batteries would take up half the basement to store the power for night-time. We need to start building renewable harvestors today. We have a huge planet and lots of talent. "We did it with our house and you can do it with yours!"

May 5, on CBC's The 180, Jim Brown interviewed Gordon Fraser, Director of The Ravina Project, Toronto, Canada. This science project began with a blackout in 2004 where with his wife, Susan, they have invested their own money to turn their home in to a Green Power science project with a view to inspiring and empowering others to likewise.

In his report "Towards a Cooling Planet", Gord asks the question "Will our industrial base allow us to rollout and replace with renewables, 50% of our current fossil fueled power generation over the course of 65 years?" Jim Brown also asked him a similar question and his answer was "No", not based on what they know today from their project whose efficiency results are impressive. In Winter, they are about 33% more efficient than they were before and even on the hottest day in Summer, they do not need to use an air conditioner. They have managed to achieve all that with their 1920s home over the years by:

using a boiler to heat the house and provide domestic hot water,
insulating the house, changing the siding, putting up curtains in key areas in cold weather,
replacing windows and doors,
using more energy efficient light bulbs and power bars on all 'instant on' devices,
installing 1.5 kW (now 2.8 kW) of solar panels on a tiltable structure, batteries to run the house in times of blackout, and the interface to the power grid.

0 Comments

The devil is not welcome at Harvard

5/15/2014

0 Comments

This advocacy united Christians in a procession which concluded with a Mass at St. Paul's Church, near Harvard.

As our Holy Father, the Pope asks us to "go out" and be "reconciled", we see the solidarity of young people firmly determined to make a stand in respect for their faith.

In its efforts to be politically correct, Harvard University appeared to support the Cultural Studies Club at Harvard who with the Satanic Temple intended to hold a "Satanic Mass". Catholic students were offended to say the least and with the help of God and CitizenGo advocated for support and the "ritual" has been cancelled. Read more from CitizenGo.

0 Comments