first and third worlds juxtaposed

so, i was doing a very first world thing this morning – running on a treadmill in a fancy new gym. one of those gyms where the rows of exercise machines face a banjk of televisions playing anything from sport through music videos to cnn. it is a cacophony of silence – visual overload with no sound at all beside the hum of the artificial tar beneath your soles.

anyway, i digress. so the cnn tv was showing a “secret” video of the starvation taking place in zimbabwe. speechless-inducing footage showing our neighbours foraging leaves for food, or sick-from-malnutrition children and the like. a dire situation.

and then, on the ticker bar below these images is the first world problem.
“GM may need to ask for second bail-out”. or something to that effect.
so they want government bail-out because they haven’t run their business wisely? because they have bet on oil and not on clean energy, and and and…

i know there are jobs and lives and families at stake.

but what a difference in needs.