Hypocrisy and Double Standards

The biggest news during the last couple of days was the shooting incident at Virginia Tech University in the good Ole US of A. A crazed gunman, a student himself, had killer 32 fellow students and had committed suicide afterwards. If you don’t know about it, then you are definitely not living in this planet. If it had happened anywhere else in the world I would be shocked, but this is America. These kinds of incidents happen on a regular basis. High school students going on a rampage in their schools and killing students, employees shooting down the office and coworkers, these seems to be normal things in America.

Why these things happen I can’t say. There seems to a lot of nutcases loose over there and coupled with easy access to guns… well what else is there to say? A recipe for disaster. America is not the land of dreams everybody thinks it is. I recently saw on the Tyra Banks show that over 70% of Americans live from one paycheck to another. They have no savings at all, and if they loose the job they are out on the streets. They showed undercover cameras in places where homeless people live and it was not a pretty sight. I frankly think that our beggars in SL live a better life. At least our people care enough to give them some money. No wonder people are depressed and going on killing sprees. They must feel like that is the only way out. They have no hope and once hope is lost, it is the beginning of the end.

What I am cheesed off about is the way that the international media is behaving. It’s like that there is nothing else happening in the world but this. Tragedies don’t happen anywhere else but in America. Everyday people are not dying in Iraq from bombs and gunmen, people are not dying of violence in Palestine, Iran, Afghanistan etc. No mention about those people. Oh of course I forgot, they are not in America. The British PM has given a special new conference saying how shocked he is, but he’s never shocked by the violence in Iraq since him and his pal started it all. It’s confirmed that the gunman was of South Korean decent, so now what? Is it attack South Korea next?

Everybody has bees in their bonnets about the situation in SL. When the armed forces are defending against attacks, its violation of human rights, but when the terrorist attack, they are just playing around and having fun. The world is full of hypocrites who work on double standards. All these NGO’s who rise up and shout against supposed human rights violations in SL are keeping silent about Iraq and Afghanistan. Why? Because in those situations the human rights violations are done by the civilized world, i.e the same countries that hand out their paychecks. So of course they won’t go against the hand that feeds them now would they?

Things are unlikely to change in the near future. The powers that are will keep on dictating to those who are powerless. These hypocrites will apply their double standards to oppress those who can not stand against them and keep on helping their allies. Sadly this is how the world runs. The funny part is that they don’t even seem to notice their hypocrisy and are shocked to learn that the rest of the world hates them. It’s no wonder that terrorist organizations like Al Quida and Hamas are thriving.

The situation is similar to a story I heard at a sermon some time back: A hospital is cleaned by two cleaning ladies and is kept spot less. They work diligently at their jobs to keep the hospital as clean as possible. But their home however is the opposite. Full of garbage and unclean. My suggestion for the powers that are, try to clean your own houses first before you try to clean up other peoples houses. Sometimes you might find out that the other peoples houses are much more cleaner than yours in the first place

All of that said about the world, my sincere sympathies goes out to the families of the people killed in this incident and all the people who die everyday all around the world due to acts of violence. It is what their fate has in store for them. You can not cheat death; the only hope is to believe that death is not an end, but a beginning of a new journey.

23-01-2007

P.S.

Barely a week goes by and another shooting incident in America, this time out of all places, at NASA, by one of their engineers. The gunman goes into a building at the Johnson Space Center in Houston Texas and takes about three people hostage and later shoots one of them and then ends it all by killing himself. Police say that there was some dispute between the gunman and his victim. Since he only shot one person and himself, he didn’t get as much air time in the media unlike the Virginia Tech incident. I guess you should take out a minimum number of victims before you get prime time coverage in the media.

The undeniable truth is that human beings are violent by nature; it’s a throw back to our animal instincts. As the world became civilized, people began to suppress their violent behaviors and to use diplomacy to resolve issues. Sadly it seems as time progresses we are reverting once again back to our animal nature. The greed for money and power, coupled with poverty, stress and depression makes for an excellent recipe for disaster.