The world is a failed fruit-cake.

If you thought the noise about the Chechen-American brothers in Boston had died down, you are mistaken. It is still at fever pitch. The commentary on blogs and web-sites are running hot and are now blamed for jamming even the levers and cog-wheels on North Korean nuclear weapons.

Someone has estimated total cost of the 6000 police, 2000 vehicles, 22 helicopters with Boston businesses and shops as well as all subway, rail and transport closed down for a couple of days, of being between 800 million and 1 billion dollars. One man is dead and the other, a teenager, can’t speak.

http://www.thetranscript.com/ci_23067670/marathon-manhunt-could-cost-1-billion?source=most_viewed

The only business allowed operating during the ‘search’ was the Dunkin Donuts shops in Watertown! Residents were allowed to stock up on donuts but advised to stay indoors and ration the donuts as good as possible. Scuffles were reported breaking out as long queues of donut customers fought over limited supplies of the chocolate coated ones.

Bruins and Red Socks (whoever they are) postponed their games.

A fertilizer factory that apparently been allowed to operate within a housing estate exploded and so far 14 have died and two hundred injured.

That same night or nights Iraq held an election and 55 people were also blown up in a string of attacks. Those costs no one seemed to have blogged much about. I doubt if the Dunkin Doughnuts patrons would even have bothered giving it a second thought.  The local action is what was central and closest to hearts and minds. Here in Australia it was very much the same and the hunt for the bombers just about the only news item  during the entire day apart from something about a horse named Black Caviar leaving for a paddock somewhere and being patted by people, some showing unbearable grief and anguish with tears in their eyes

http://au.news.yahoo.com/latest/a/-/latest/16831382/black-caviars-owner-reveals-anguish-of-retirement-decision/

Of course, a tragedy is a tragedy and it is silly to compare them but it does strike me that a tragedy in America overshadows tragedies elsewhere. Perhaps we are numb to tragedies happening in the Middle East or those countries at war and are unsettled much more with those that happen in the West or close at home. I don’t know why that is so. Is it all because of geography or different cultures? I thought we were a global village now!   Someone’s son or daughter is someone’s son and daughter. (Or father, mother friend, wife, husband).

http://rt.com/news/iraq-election-attack-killed-876/

When those children were killed at Sandy Hook I would have thought that gun ownership would have been tackled as a first step. How can violence ever be stopped when people are allowed unlimited guns? How come this latest attempt to at least start to rein in and do something about the millions of guns being held in American Households failed again? What do people do with all these guns? Do they take them out, fondle them and oil them followed by looking down their muzzle, perhaps take aim, just for practice? Do they fantasize protecting their homes against robbers or foreign armies?

Are American people really  safe with all those guns in circulation? It defies logic and common sense. Surely the Constitution can be amended. Wasn’t it amended before?

Ps: Of course national disasters are in a completely different category. None the less those that have died in China during the last earthquake are just as dead and just as missed by friends and family.

The interview with the two brothers Chechen father, sitting there so forlornly on his bed, his boney knees stuck out, looking for an answer. How could his sons possibly have come to that; all so sad? Not all that long ago, there they were, in the sandpit letting it run through their fingers, saying ga,gah and gra, grah; lovely boys, uttering their first words with the world at their feet. And now?

The world is a failed fruit cake.

Ps. Since Sandy Hook as at 26April 2013 another 926 people have been shot dead in the US.