For the reasons you posted above. Then again, I'm probably spending that money on something stupid anyway.

Take Care

Give what you can, the West's economic wealth is jsut concentrated plunder. If you get it out of the money cycle and put it into good use, like egg laying, possible generational food sources, then you are finding a way to give back through time, to spread the wealth back to a more natural equilibrium.

I think the more entrenched you are in the economy, the more you give, the greater the tide has changed in centralizing wealth.

It may not 'do anything' but I assure you the wealth doesn't evaporate. It's better to teah a man to collect duck eggs than feed a person an omlette.

I generally support non-centralized micro loans, micro RE power, micro sustenance... Got to re-establish areas of "microbial" mat, nourishing new rhizomatic networks of change, of adaptation.

-Jim

At the place where I work, which is grant funded, we gave the donor of the grant a holiday gift donation to Heifer Int'l of trees grown "in her honor" (not really; she doesn't get her name on them or anything). I figured that might at least start to compensate for all the trees pulped to make the catalogs that Heifer sends us every freakin' month.

...as Adam Hintz says, for exactly the reasons you outline Dom.  Just more fuel for the fire that is already burning red hot.  But I'm not about to tell anyone what they should or shouldn't do with their money, time, food, goats, heiffers, ducks etc.

DQ is very clear in his latest book ("Write Sideways") that he is against the idea of excess food production to feed the "starving masses". He points out that the people are still starving, so it's not helping.

 Intellectually I understand that it's probably better to let nature take its course and weed out the people whom the local land can't support.  But personally, I would find it very difficult to look a starving person in the face and say, "No, you can't have any of this food. You may die, but in the long run it will help your people." 

"Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living." - Mary Harris "Mother" Jones

In my opinion, whether or not to feed the starving masses is a moot question. It is a question of values, of "do we do this or not?" But we forget that this is not our choice, that we are not gods, that we do not get to decide who lives and who dies. This is an unanswerable question; the ecology of the entire planet, of the entire universe "determines" (relates?) these things. Our egos, our hypothetical questions do not.

This isn't some lofty, abstract dismissal of a tangible, practical question. This is a tangible, practical dismissal of a lofty, abstract question. I can't even conceive of "feeding the whole world". How many parts must we divide the world into to be able to have a "whole world" that we are supposedly able to feed or not based on mere whims?

Questions like these make me angry. This isn't my fault, and it's not my place to do anything about. I can't think about people starving in Africa. I can't save the whole world. And yet I've been brought up by my entire culture to think this. I've been brought up to play god, to meddle, to manipulate, told that I have the power to create the world of my choosing. And I don't. Not like that. That's a lie, a disemppowering, despairing lie.

So here are my thoughts -- don't put this shit on me. I refuse to feel guilty, to accept blame for my so-called actions or inactions. I just won't. Call me insensitive, heartless, uncompassionate, call me whatever you like, but I don't give a fuck about playing god.

Sun Ovens comment.

-Jim 

See, people get all randy about talking about the evilness of corporations and about how we're raping the third world and all that.  But corporations aren't like some entity out there make of metal and dollars - their made of people.  And what's more, they only survive at the whims of people; YOU AND ME, and blaming them doesn't do anything - it just shunts it off to another persona of our civilization.  Like Dr. Jekyll blaming Mr. Hyde for all the bad stuff, but its still you after all.

Feeding people - yeah, its something.  It prevents suffering of those individuals; but not for long and certainly not in any sustainable way.  If you feed people well enough they'll reproduce, prolonging the suffering of those people.  You have to link food to reproduction, or you will not cure the suffering that is the problem that I personally have with providing ineffectual aid.  And as long as these people are dependent on us they won't vlue what they have, they won't care for their land and diversify and form new civilizations of their own.  I really feel like mother culture feeding them is one humongous bribe to keep them from breaking off and forming rival cultures, environment be damned and suffering be damned.

But I don't blame corporations for exploiting them.  

The problem, however you figure it, is consumption.  Your consumption supports the corporations.  Their consumption is the root of their problem.  Corporations consume people's time, the environment, and resources in order to provide for the waste of the first worlders (but don't think the third worlders wouldn't waste just as much if they had the opportunity - mother culture rings just as strongly in their ears as it does ours).

So, if you want to keep people from starving: or you want to stop corporations from exploiting, or you want to decrease the suffering of others, or your own suffering - the most you can do is just stop consuming.

Just stop.

Consume less; stop spending your money.  Save it, invest it in some land and nurture it back to health - better yet coax it into a state of production that provides for whatyou need without taking away from the ecosystem that was already their.  Add to the diversity rather than taking away from it.  Create, rather than use; retain, rather than waste, and learn that it is okay to be a little hungry - and that the rest of the world isn't a problem you can solve, but at least you can keep from adding to the world's troubles first by not funding the machine that is destroying our planet and our own souls: this culture.

And stop blaming Mr. hyde - coporations are us, and when we no longer believe in them they will stop having a place.

As for me - I'm going back out to my little plot of land to pick up some more trees and innoculate them with dowel spawn for shitake mushrooms so that in a few years I'll hav esomething to eat myself.  And without anything but my own time, some excercise, and nature in action; and the environment gets to stay too - my shitake logs live beneath the expanse of old-growth forests as much a part of nature as I hope to be in time.

Dom 

Um, yeah.. nice oversimplification. That's like saying, "Farms and agriculture aren't killing people, they're made of people.".

Totalitarian agriculture 'only survives at the whims of people'.

Slavery only 'survived/s at the whims of people'.

Wage Slavery... same thing.

What's your point? We have a choice of treating people like shit? If so then I'd agree.

Blame isn't the point, finding the cause of the effect is the point.

Why not ask WHY these people on their own lands aren't making their own foods?

The effect is that they are starving, easy enough. What's the cause? Certainly isn't not that 'the land is useless' or anything similar. Pleanty of animals, even humans are known to survive on even the most 'uninhabitable' land.

Much of the starving is done on Africa. Africa's lands should be excellent for food production.

I don't blame the hyena for making a meal of a defenseless leopard with a broken leg, but they will when they get the chance. Corporations only DO what they are allowed to. They're the ones setting up shop in these poor countries sure, but it has to be legalized first. The trail must be blazed first, agreements must be made, like NAFTA and others.

Yeah this is what needs to happen, but knowing that is simply. HOW to do it is the trick, isn't it?

Paul Hawken talks a lot about this in The Ecology of Commerce, and main point I saw over and over is that we're not paying the true value of things. We're paying very cheaply in the wealthy countries because we are taking advantage of the 3rd world.

If the rest of the world is not a problem we can solve then that's it, we're done for, because the rest of the world HAS to be affected too. Even if the U.S. or even half the world completely reverted and started living in a way that wasn't killing their lands, that doesn't magically quarantine them safely away from the damage-doers. We're paying so cheaply because we're not paying for the costs of all the pollution, which will have to be cleaned. We're paying cheaply because when laws get made to stop actions in one area, agreements are made and those corporations/people whatever--whatever you want to call it, it's the same thing--set up shop where it IS legal to do what they want, or it's MADE legal by a poor government who needs money to buy arms(Iran-Contra etc) so they can invade nearing poor peoples and become richer and powerful so they can BE, as you said, like us.

Ok I'm starting to think we don't disagree at all. I was adressing merely the cause of the starvation in many countries, but if you're talking about the big picture, the taker problem then yeah it's not just exploitation it's much more complex.

What you said sounds good. I just wish we could get a few billion more doing it. We need to unbind ourselves with the same laws that allow the corporations to do what they do.

What other kinds of mushrooms do you have?