Another World Cup season ended Sunday this week. As delirious joy and bubbling beer guzzled down millions of elated German soccer team fans no doubt and their beer mugs runneth over we heard that in Argentina outrage and disappointment spilled into street riots and soccer fans there violently clashed with local police.

Meanwhile Facebook jubilantly reported that the Germany vs Argentina match clinched 281 million interactions making it the most talked-about sports event in the site’s history. And Twitter also announced 618,725 tweets got sent every minute at the end of the match and that’s again a new record for an event.

At the same time as World Cup fans watched intently the action on the soccer field, over in another part of our globe, death toll and fatalities continue from the latest round of fighting in the Gaza. This new round of fighting simply sparked off when members of Hamas in the West Bank murdered three Israeli students there on June 10 which ignited retaliation with some Israeli extremists killing a Palestinian youth and then Hamas and other Gaza groups reacted by launching dozens of rockets into Israel which then responded with more air strikes. But the tragedy is, very sadly the bulk of fatalities, as it invariably happens in all modern warfare, is always the civilian population, the ordinary folks, the children, the disabled persons with less means of escape, the women and the family breadwinners who still need to get on with their jobs.

Today around the globe, violence and fighting is not limited to the Gaza but is a daily affair – just look at your local news. Not a single week ever passes now without reports of shooting, murder, kidnapping, bombing and military clashes.
The very day after the World Cup ended, on Monday evening, a security source alerted the BBC that Libya’s Tripoli International Airport was hit by new rocket attack. 12 planes damaged according to the BBC report. Tripoli international airport is Libya’s main link with the outside world.

Yesterday after the tragic news of the Malaysian Airlines plane disaster broke through I was stunned for a while. Then in the late evening, the idea came to me that I should gather some of the past 5 days world news headlines and piece them together and post them to share with my blog viewers. So here it is.
World News which caught my attention these five days and I wonder if it grabs you too.

• Sunday, 2014 July 13 : World Cup results – Germany’s victory over Argentina

Monday 2014 July 14 :

• Rocket attacks on Tripoli International Airport in Libya

• Women rejoice after Church of England approved consecration of women bishops for the first time in history.

• Another day of defiant weapons test from North Korea. A day after launching two ballistic missiles a base near the border with South Korea, Pyongyang on Monday fired a barrage of artillery shells into waters near its eastern sea border with the South. South Korean officials confirmed nearly 100 missile, rocket and artillery tests by North Korea this year, an output seen as significantly higher than past years.

• Tuesday 2014 July 15 : Children in South Sudan famine suffering mass malnutrition and starvation as international relief aid agencies fall short of fundraising targets.

• Wednesday 2014 July 16: Tunisians shocked after deadliest attack on its armed forces as gunmen with rocket-propelled grenades and rifles raided checkpoints near the Algerian border which resulted in killing 14 soldiers and wounding at least 20 others. Islamist militants including fighters linked to al-Qaeda, are believed to be hiding out in the border region. Tunisia’s security forces are under pressure to secure not only their western border with Algeria but also the eastern border with Libya.

Thursday 2014 July 17 :
• Against the backdrop of rising stock market with the Dow touching new highs in past months, the stock prices of Time Warner, Walt Disney and Viacom were in the limelight featured in today’s business news with all three stocks clocking new all-time highs in early Wednesday trading after Rupert Murdock’s 21st Century Fox confirmed it recently made a $80 billion bid for Time Warner.

• Bolivia about to be the first nation to legalize child labour from age 10. While most countries are striving to reduce child labour, the Congress in Bolivia has approved the proposal to legalize child labour from age 10 and all they require now is their President’s signature.

I wonder why the children are facing starvation in South Sudan while 80 billion US dollars are coughed out for a company takeover which profits only their shareholders? I don’t understand this! Do you?

• Malaysian Airlines MH 17 shot down in Ukraine – 295 people on board as it crashed. A tragic coincidence? Oh, no ! This is the second tragedy in a few months hitting the Malaysian Airlines after that earlier mysterious disappearance of MH 370 which cluelessly vanished over the South China Sea on March 8 this year with 239 people on board.This time, Malaysian Airlines plane MH17 carrying 295 people on board crashed after being shot down by rebels in Ukraine, near the Russian border. There were 280 passengers and 15 crew members. The plane was en route from Amsterdam to Malaysia’s capital city Kuala Lumpur. Ukranian military and pro-Russian rebels have accused each other of shooting down the plane, both sides deny responsibility.

Just imagine that –“both sides deny responsibility”after 295 innocent lives were blown to bits with a shot from their firearm ! Have the ones responsible for the shooting lost their conscience ?

Following that, I was appalled to learn that an upcoming movie“star” and citizen of a first world country mind you, glibly responded to the MH 17 crash on his Twitter page : “Anyone wanna buy my Malaysian Airlines frequent flier”

And guess what? After eliciting a barrage of angry criticism from the online community, he turned around to accuse his critics of being uptight and even remarked that if they didn’t like his remark they needn’t go to his page!

( I don’t need to mention his name – it’s all over the internet. All I wish to add is if this was his idea to attract publicity in an attempt to boost his career, it’s a very bad idea )

And if anyone can’t believe an educated person in a first world country behaving this way, here’s a real one for you! But I’m not too surprised. I’ve observed with dismay and apprehension that increasingly people are growing so egocentric they have lost human sensitivity. I suspect this has in no small way derived from an education and upbringing based on a socio- cultural ethos so greatly elevating individualism and personal freedom and inadequate on community/global responsibility.

Sounds like we live in crazy times but really it has been always a crazy world if you ask me. And in my opinion the best evidence of this is the never-ending Gaza conflict which has been going on all of my entire lifetime – I mean literally, no exaggeration. I recall five decades ago – it was during my elementary schooldays, when the two words “Gaza strip” first fired the curiosity of my young mind. I kept hearing my father talk about the fighting going on there and listening to the radio news repeatedly broadcasting news updates endlessly it seemed.

My father’s occupation as a wireless operator in the newsroom of an international new agency explained the fact that our family never missed any significant world news although we didn’t own a television then – but we had a radio and it was turned on practically all day as far as I remember.

I asked my Dad why these people were fighting and initially he told me it’s complicated and I was too young to understand. Later one day, I asked “What’s this Gaza strip?” And Dad said “It’s a strip of land on the west bank of the Jordan river between Israel and Palestine and both sides are fighting for their rights to own that land.”

Oh, now I see – it’s ownership of land they’re fighting about. It must be a huge piece of territory, I thought to myself. I proceeded to look it up in my atlas which was among my compulsory school text-books. Imagine my surprise and disappointment to discover my atlas showed the Gaza as a tiny strip of land!

Imagine that was half a century ago and fifty years have passed but they’re still fighting over the Gaza strip and I’m fifty years older but still fail to understand why they humanly cannot or rather refuse to resolve this conflict. Naturally I realized as I grew up that the historical and cultural ramifications of that conflict went far beyond that tiny strip of land. It involved dispute over the entire West Bank and even the Holy City Jerusalem which were held sacred to both sides, so that added to the problem among a multitude of other unclear border delineations with both sides staking their claims and counter-claims and fighting and squabbling ever since.

Meanwhile the world watched hoping for the peace settlement but the faint initial glimmer of hope that emerged with the end the Six Days War in June 1967 was soon snuffed out as the ceasefire agreements were shortlived and none of them played out. And so the skirmishes continued till this day – unresolved and the rest of the world by now may already have given up hoping.

Dad said fifty years ago that he thought I was too young to understand. Surely fifty years after, now I shouldn’t be considered too young to understand? However I confess after all my reading and research ( there are volumes of documented information in libraries and online, on Wikipedia and elsewhere for anyone interested to read up) but I believe like me, you’ll surrender in the end and honestly have to admit you still can’t understand – and guess I never will understand this perpetual conflict.

Sure it’s a border conflict and some see it as a religious and cultural conflict. But surely all countries will have border issues and religious and cultural diversity problems which they will have to agree to resolve some way or other and strive to do so as best as they can without shedding blood and losing human lives on either side.Personally I find it hard to call this one a religious conflict since neither side is really fighting to defend their religion but rather I see they’re fighting mainly because (1) Hatred of each other (2) None will give in.

This seems to me not unlike children hitting at each other, ignoring the truth that in every tussle there will end up a winner and a loser ( as in the World Cup) unless of course, both sides agree to stop and let’s shake hands. However with Israel and Palestine, we know all previous attempts at initiating peace talks had failed and after more than five decades, today it seems to many that the hope of peace in the region looks more dubious than ever. It’s a worrisome trend since the thought of one vanquishing the other is not exactly a civilized nor humane solution.

It is also a sober reminder to us who have the privilege and blessing to be able to live and raise our families in relatively peaceful environment that we should never take peace for granted. We must treasure it and actively contribute in whatever way we can to ensure that peace be preserved for our children and the generations going forward.

And if some of you have been noticing I’ve not written on this page for a long while, it’s because I’ve decided a better way to serve this crazy world is not to try to find meaning from what’s happening but instead, to try and create meaning and purpose in my life by living and giving the diminishing time I have remaining in this world to be a helpful and useful person on a daily basis and performing small and simple tasks : Offer a hand, a patient ear, a shoulder, a hug, a cookie, a hot bowl of soup, a warm blanket … a new pair of shoes … or indeed, a little poem, a short story, skit that I’ve written, hopefully to inspire or set someone pondering.

Meanwhile I feel it’s almost a fulltime job which gets tougher day by day simply to uphold my faith, make it unshaken in the midst of many daunting challenges and temptations in this spiritually disconnected world. It is my hope that eventually the world will come to the realization as I’ve come to conclude that it is futile to dream of permanent peace while denying the Prince of Peace his reign.