In Reply to: Now, CLiff, I'm so disappointed in you posted by Fiona on Thursday, 20. October 2005 at 15:58 Bali Time:
We western folk have been letting/making people starve for thousands of years, but it's a new phenomenon on Bali, and one we (as a group) helped create. So it's partially our responsibility to minimise the harm that we have done. This is our moral duty, not an act of altruism.
It was mainly foreign investment (mostly done for the benefit of tourists) that pretty much took the food from their mouths in the first place. And now they can only get food if they perform some service for us. We created their dependency on us. And too many people think they're Mother friggin' Theresa because they slip someone a couple of bucks to braid their hair. (Mr_Ken isn't an extreme example of this attitude... I've seen much worse examples of it.)
I think it's simplistic and shallow to simply look at how things are today and not wonder how that situation came to be, and what can be done to avoid the problem in the future.