There's so much that's wrong in this world today, and certainly the least any of us can do is to be aware of them, not just the problems themselves (anybody can list them all: poverty,disease, war,corruption,greed etc.) but also to know the facts and details of these problems.
One problem that is really apparent in North america, even in Toronto is materialism. This rampant obsession and lust for material items and brands has become so widespread that materialism has ceased to become an obsession but more an addiction and ordinary and necessary part of life- shopping is up there with breathing oxygen and eating to survive.

(I can easily attest to materialism as shamefully, I used to put a lot of emphasis on CDs and brandname items for clothes and shoes. I have tried to cut my spending these last few years and curbed my attraction for brandnames except for sneakers)

I think materialism is the most obvious problem with society up here and especially Christians need to know that, that putting a lot of emphasis and enthusiasm on buying clothes, jewelry, Cds,DVDs, electronics and even cars saps us of our reliance and appreciation of God.

I recently bought and read my first copy of Adbusters, and the information is quite direct, detailed and of course, critical and largely accurate. The magazine is full of information, sometimes in the form of witty satires and sarcasm, on the prominenece of corporate control and manipulation of people in society in all aspects of life from shopping, eating, government and getting our news.
Adbusters is not just about materialism though, as corporations do control more than just our shopping habits but they also affect people in various ways such as exploiting lesser-deveolped countries taking advantage of cheap labour, weak economies, and political power.

Check this out and consider the society we live in- what the Flag of America
should be.

It's been a while since I posted. I went back to my country in May after an absence of almost 2 years. My stay itself was good but the condition of the nation was not, it was even worse than when I left. Crime was high, poverty still existed despite supposed growing economies, people were fearful and pessimistic about their future, and the politicians continued their inept, trivial, and incompetent rule over the nation's affairs.
What does all this have to do with this blog? Well, it showed that evil and oppresion and violence are spreading all around us, and Trinidad was a prime example, being an oil-rich, tropical nation renowned for its carnival and carefree attitude and genius of its people. Sure, places like North Korea, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and the African continent are all notorious for their poverty, backwardness and violence but slowly but surely evil is spreading and increasing in many places around the world. Someday the "developed-world" especially North America will be affected though not now.

On the ChristianScience Monitor website , there's lots of articles and commentaries on news and events around the world, but especially, there's a nice little weblog on events in Africa by the monitor's journalists there.
The address is http://weblogs.csmonitor.com/notebook_africa and the postings reveal brief but insightful info on the state of different countries and their peoples.