The Corporation

This documentary will blow your mind.

The other side of this is the exploitation of people around the world who make these products.
watch another piece of the doco on illuminate network
www.illuminatenetwork.blogspot.com

WWJD

What one ordinary person can do, if we all responded in the way that Sue has what a different world we'd live in.

you are either part of the problem or part of the solution. (Martin Luther King)

Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against
love.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.
http://www.mlkonline.net/quotes.html

World Environment Day

Today (5/6/68) is World Environment Day (www.unep.org/wed)... a day to "give thanks"... a day to reflect on the gift of what Walter Brueggeman calls our "un-makeable world."

I got this email from Fraser ... it looks like a great practice of redistributive economics... its seems timely to share it today..

Hi ya ... have you heard about Freecycle?

I have been a member of this for around 6months, and i absolutely love it.

Freecycle is a web community that is committed to "reusing" rather than "refusing" stuff that you don't want or need any more.

It is free to join and all items are free, it is broken down into local communities to make it easy for items to be given/collected

There are a variety of items listed ranging from furniture through to books and computers

the website is http://www.freecycle.org/group/NZ/New%20Zealand

I have benefitted from freecycle by receiving items such as old garden tools no longer wanted by others but wanted by me, CD's and other items

I have also helped others by listing an old piano I no longer needed - it ended up going to a young girl in waiuku who had been wanting a piano to learn on

Fraser
Kids worker
FAiTh KidS MiNiStRY

Economic humour, and God knows we need to laugh

A friend of mine sent me this cartoon. Enjoy the giggle.

Entitled to what?

The latest discussion paper from the Social Policy and Parliamentary Unit of The Salvation Army has gone to press. The Rainbow of Entitlement explores something of consumerism and what we feel is rightfully ours. You can get a look at it by emailing me (malcolm_irwin@nzf.salvationarmy.org) or by going straight to www.salvationarmy.org.nz/socialpolicy.

Let me know what you think.

The Economics of Grinch

The Budget of 2009-2010 (http://www.treasury.govt.nz/budget/2009) is grim and expectingly forecasts a future of grimness and grinch-like economics. There is a lot of what is and little imagining of what could be. Its largely disappointing with the same old same thinking getting even more time to "work". And slashing some $166 million from foreign aid is simply a hypocritical practice of protectionism, isn't it?

Enough griping. Dream a little with me. What are the alternatives? What could we do? What could we do differently? How could you and I change how we interact with the economy? Where could you and I collaborate in our communities to witness of newness?

Subsidies for All?

The reintroduction of subsidies for US farmers will ease the pressure of the recession for the US. However, this is a move that puts many countries including New Zealand into a less than desirable position. Subsides mean that the farmers receiving a subsidy will continue to produce products, possibly more (because it is cheaper), and thus the market suffers. It suffers because the price of the product drops due to over supply or US farmers being able to supply product at a cheaper price, therefore developing countries or smaller countries will struggle to sell their product and or struggle to sell it at a price which covers production etc. Not only is this move selfish in the face of a global recession by an economic super power. But also hypocritical to revoke subsidy privileges from developing countries, while applying them to your own( yes WTO has done this). Developing countries will continue to suffer under unfair trade rules in this recession. The millennium Development goals including, the reduction of global poverty by half by 2015 in the light of this, become harder and unlikely to be met.
In the face of this big global issue we need to ask, What Can I Do?
• buy locally,
• buy fairtrade or other ethically produced products from developingcountries.
• http://www.avaaz.org/en/ A site to petition world leaders on current issues
• Email our Ministers of Foreign affairs and Trade & share your concerns:
Murray McCully mmccully@ministers.govt.nz.
Tim Grosser (associate) tgroser@ministers.govt.nz.

Attention

Body products has joined the list of Fair Trade certified Products.
Dr Bronners has a range of products from soaps to conditioner that are not only Fair Trade but also Organic and the bottles made from recycled materials. you can't get any better than this.
His Philosopy, is a bit out there but says a lot,they are written on the labels of his products "Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together, all things connect." 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration can solve every problem on God's spaceship earth barring none!" "How to love, for love is God and God is love."

http://www.drbronner.com/index.html


0 comments

Efficient Incarnation?

The conversations I'm involved in keep on coming back to what is a false though nagging source of tension ... management or mission... maintaining what we have or prophetically re-imagining what could be... fiscal responsibility or responsive trust... what is the difference? If I could make the call, (and many may thank God I can't), I'd err on the side of the missional and the prophetic... I think that is closer to who God is and closer to who we were called to be...

"The prophet is the one who, by use of... tools of hope, contradicts the presumed world of kings, showing both that that presumed world does not square with the facts and that we have been taught a lie and have believed it because the people with the hardware and the printing press (and the official rubber stamp) told us it was that way. And so the offering of ...(hope) is a job not for a timid clerk who simply shares the inventory but for people who know something different and are prepared, out of their own anguish and amazement, to know that the closed world of managed reality is false. The prophetic imagination knows that the real world is the one that has its beginning and dynamic in the promising speech of God and that this is true even in a world where kings have tried to banish all speech but their own."

(Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, emphasis mine).

what is dominating where you're at? which is our future? which is the real world?

A New Kind of Protest

Some comments or thoughts simply "stick", eh. I've had this thought from Shane Claiborne camping in my head for some time now and I can't seem to exorcise it from my thinking:

"Protestors are everywhere, but I think the world is desperately in need of prophets, those little voices that can point us toward another future... Most people are aware that something is wrong. The real question is, What are the alternatives?"

(Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution)

I feel that this is the challenge, or at least its a challenge to me. I have spent too long defining myself and letting myself be defined by what I'm not. There is enough dooms-day prophets clamoring for the headlines with anxious complaints of what can't be done, what has to be managed, whining of scarcity. There is not enough of what Walter Brueggemann calls the practice of the prophetic imagination.... conversations, communities, creative experiments that shift the focus from what is to what could be... practices of renewal, practices of the resurrection... There is not enough hopeful, liberating speech... speech that embodies, energizes, and resources alternatives... or if there is, then, I have to say from where I sit there is definitely not enough sharing of stories.... it could be we're stuck in our own silos... desperately trying to engage with the noble cause of changing history with only what we have and what we know.... unwittingly repeating and reinforcing the same fragmented individualism and isolationism that has caused the mess we're in... is it time for something different... a new kind of protest... is there enough energy left to create some sort of forum that could energize alternatives... not a committee (good God that would simply be "hell on earth")... a movement of people who hang flesh on and speak of better ways... a network of people sharing and telling a different story .... what could you say to this? what do you think?