Cob: globalization

[Bob]

Dear Rob,

Thank you very much for that alert about the World Bank and world poverty.
 I wholeheartedly agree with your logic.  If we are concerned with cob
building because of its reduced impact on the environment then we are
concerned with the impact our life style has on the environment and that
includes people all over the world.  Too few people, because we buy almost
everything that is produced far from where we are we forget the conditions
they are made under, the plantations they are grown on where the land has
been maneuvered away from the poor villagers, the sweat shops where
children work long hours, etc. we do not realize how closely  tied together
our world is.  The news papers don't tell us the connection between the
poverty in the Third World where millions of people are displaced from
their traditional villages and the unemployed boys who have little better
to do than join in the bush wars, weapons supplied by our government in the
name of foreign aid.

Our increasingly crowded world, and economic ties,  is getting so compact
there is no escape. We are all, thus, neighbors who impact each other.  Our
way of living, our consumer practices, are stoking the engines of this
globalization, feeding the world bank that would be almost powerless
without the money we as consumers or as tax  payers pour into it. If the
cob-net were only a sewing party it would still be appropriate to alert
each other.

Global Exchange is one of the finest organizations, one of the most
levelheaded and courageous I know. I highly recommend connecting with them
even to readers of this in other parts of the world.    .I have slept on
hard floors in mud huts in India, walked with the followers of Gandhi,
slept on palm leaf mats with my students in Zanzibar, Africa, with beggars
in Arabia and North Africa, in a primitive home with more than 12 people in
a few rooms in a cooperative village in Nicaragua, yet I know how little I
know about the global human family. Thanks Rob for sticking your neck out.
I want to hug it with appreciation, not choke it, and hope most of the
others are with me. Cob building is a great way to reduce our impact both
on the environment and on the poverty in the world.  If our mud "huts" are
roomier and more comfortable then most at least we know we are not taking
food our of their mouths.  Maybe we are developing techniques, because of
their simplicity, that could  benefit them like biodigesters for
sanitation, cooking gas and purified fertilizer.  

Bob Luitweiler