akrish

So I’ve been reading The Economist a bit recently and they have a lot of international news. Unfortunately most of it isn’t good. Reading it this morning kinda got me depressed. Here’s what I read:

1. Brazil: Teenagers in Brazil, specifically Rio de Janeiro, are walking around with machine guns selling cocaine and marijuana in open-air markets. Policemen, officials and ordinary people are pretty much turning the other cheek. Pretty scary, but I guess the good news is that the mayor is supposedly trying to clean things up, but he hasn’t gotten very far. Read about it here.
2. The rest of the Americas: Venezuela has a reported murder rate of 48 in 100,000. That’s the second highest in the world, second only to El Salvador (another central american country). Pretty much I don’t want to go to South America. I don’t understand how people can live and be productive if they’re constantly fearing for their lives. Oh by the way, that’s just the reported rate, it doesn’t count most police-related deaths, prison deaths, and others. Read this article, it’s really scary.
3. India: The Ganges is ridiculously polluted, and so is a lot of India for that matter. So my question is… the Ganges is supposedly holy right? then why is it so polluted? Shouldn’t it be something that Indians are proud to take care of? Maybe I’m just being naive here but I really don’t get it. The problem is that, since the Ganges is holy, people continue to bathe and drink the water, and then they get sick. But again there’s some good news in that there are environmentalists that are working to clean it up, but so far they haven’t been very successful. Read about this here.
4. China: Olympic athletes are refusing to compete in endurance events because they’re worried that the pollution will affect their performance in the future. This just makes me really sad. Pretty soon people won’t want to go outside because there’s too much air pollution. Kind of reminds me of Wall-E…

And don’t even get my started on the middle east. That region is just a disaster.
And now to cheer you up…