IT STARTED, as so many things do these days, on Facebook. A small group on the social networking site set up by a young Colombian named "scar Morales Guevara, Un Mill"n de Voces Contra Las Farc (a million voices against the Farc) was an internet-based plea for an end to the violence perpetuated by the Farc, the Colombian Marxist guerrilla group that controls vast swathes of the country's cocaine trade and has more than 800 prisoners in captivity in the jungle. If you'
This one, however, grew. Word spread online, particularly among Colombians both in their home country and abroad. Then, one day, someone suggested doing something proactive, something to send a message to both the terrorists, and the Colombian gover
nment.
The group's members, which yesterday numbered 238,776, concurred.
That something will take root next Monday, in 133 cities around the world, including Tel Aviv, Boston and Edinburgh, when a peaceful protest will be held against the Farc and its actions.
In Edinburgh, it will take the form of a rally, at St John's Church on the corner of Princes Street, timed to start at 5:30pm – close to when the midday rallies in Colombia will take place.
"It doesn't matter where you're from," the organiser and Colombian expat Claudia Guerrero tells me. "This is something that affects everybody."
Is she right? Should we care about a guerrilla movement that operates thousands of miles away in a country we have little contact with?
Well, by the looks of the Facebook group, many people do. They are appalled by the human rights abuses perpetuated by the Farc – many of their prisoners are kept in chains, some in leg irons, while its members rape, murder and steal their way through local jungle communities unable to defend themselves.
But they know, too, that this is not merely a Colombian, or even a South American problem.
With cocaine abuse on the rise – user levels of the drug have doubled in Scotland in the past five years – the actions of the Farc are coming home to roost in nightclub toilets and drug-rehabilitation units across Edinburgh and Glasgow.
I keep reading that social networking sites are dangerous; that they pose a threat to young people, isolating them from their friends and communities and shattering traditional society.
But tales like this make me think that we aren't always seeing the bigger picture.
Perhaps it's part of a sea change, a new way of standing up to a world that's changing so fast we can barely keep up with it.
Perhaps it's merely armchair activism that won't make a difference. Perhaps it's too soon to tell.
But in these globally uncertain times anything, surely, is worth a try.
Michelin's map is missing a cityTHIS year's Michelin star ratings, announced last week, were something of a damp squib, particularly in Scotland, where the Champany Inn in Linlithgow was the only new addition, while the Ballachulish House Hotel regained the star it had lost the previous year.
While our capital now boasts three Michelin-starred restaurants – Martin Wishart, The Kitchin and Number One at the Balmoral, its larger cousin in the west still languishes without a single twinkle.
Many in Glasgow's food community felt that 2008 would be the city's year, perhaps for the highly regarded Brian Maule at Chardon d'Or – who once held two Michelin stars at London's Le Gavroche – or Paul Tamburrini, head chef at the Hotel du Vin, or David Maskell, head chef at Michael Caines at ABode.
But it was not to be.
"I don't know what they're looking for any more," Maule told a newspaper last week. Perhaps that big sign on the M8 that reads WELCOME TO GLASGOW?
• THESE management types never learn, do they? Not happy with using, oh, I don't know, real words to describe things, they have to employ terms that sound like they were invented by a Labour focus group chaired by Loyd Grossman. The latest phrases to get the treatment include lunch with a colleague – inter-departmental liaison facilitation, apparently – and daydreaming: workspace-specific perceptual abstraction.
Sounds like a large amount of ageing, testicular-specific nonsense to me.
Even a tragic death is reduced to entertainmentSOME of the coverage of actor Heath Ledger's death has been gruesome. While there has always been a grim fascination with celebrity deaths – think of the paparazzi who flocked to take pictures of Marilyn Monroe being taken away in a body-bag, for example – Ledger's passing, perhaps the most high-profile young Hollywood death in the new millennium, has taken things to a horrifying new level.
His grieving ex-fiancée, Michelle, and their two-year-old daughter were pursued relentlessly by a raggle-tag scrum of photographers, one website provided live streaming videos of the New York funeral home where the actor's body was taken, while a particularly odious church group vowed to picket Ledger's funeral because of his portrayal of a gay man in the movie Brokeback Mountain.
It's a depressing reminder that, for some media outlets, death, even at its most tragic, simply remains entertainment.
The full article contains 859 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
