Rant

As soon as I published my post yesterday I heard about the bombings in London. Since then I've heard plenty of comspiracy theories...whoever did it, and for whatever reason, it's absolutely disgusting that innocent people are killed, and that innocent families are destroyed as a result, to advance somebody's political agenda.

My condolences go out to everyone whose lives were affected by this latest event. But while everybody's watching out for news on this latest attack, attention is being diverted once again from poverty in Africa...and poverty in the rest of the world for that matter...and a whole bunch of things that also really matter and are on a much huger scale and can be HELPED if the world would only pay attention to them long enough to actually do something. How about Zimbabwe's situation? 70% unemployment, 4 million starving people, the government is knocking down the slums and driving the poorest citizens out of their homes in the middle of (their) winter and call it "urban renewal." It got an editorial in yesterday's Globe, but most people have forgotten about it already. It's like in Hotel Rwanda (If you haven't seen it yet, SEE IT), when an American journalist tells the African who's trying to save his family and friends from slaughter that people in the rest of the world will see coverage of the genocide on TV, think "Oh that's terrible" and then go back to eating their dinner.

I'm a poli-sci student...I hear lots of complaining about the media giving shallow coverage to things. But aren't we also to blame? The media gives shallow coverage because we have shallow interests. Maintaining an abstract idea of poverty and violence and AIDS rather than seeing them as issues affecting real pople with real lives protects us from feeling guilty when we do nothing about it, even go about our business in ways that perpetuate the problems. But I'll try to leave my cynicism at that for the day.

In fluffier news, I had a really good beer yesterday at the Tribeca. It's called Griffon, it's made in Montreal and it's BEAUTIFUL. Bruno has great taste in beer. Go Bruno!