Letters to the Editor, August 24, 2014
Double standards rife worldwide
Frequent news reports from the mainland describe the efforts of the Communist Party to root out corruption among its officials.
Sexual failings call for titillating headlines, but everyone knows that these efforts by the party are not aimed at promoting morality, but at stemming the ethical decline and ultimate failure inherent in absolute political power.
Even so-called democracies are guilty of hypocrisy. Their laws focus on personal sins and their media loves to expose sexual abuses, but they ignore more serious behaviour that causes carnage among civilians around the globe.
One good example is Singapore, which ruthlessly cracks down on drug use and importation. You can be hanged there for drug smuggling, but if you are an approved exporter of lethal weapons you are an honest citizen and a patriotic Singaporean. Singapore is also a military supporter of Israel, whose actions in Gaza have caused far more deaths of children than of Hamas militants.
Singapore also sponsors frequent huge aircraft and arms fairs where weapons producers are welcome to display their state-subsidised products.
So when zealous government cadres announce their efforts to stamp out personal vice, perhaps they should be asked to explain if they are in any way concerned about the suffering and deaths caused by their expanding military exports to combatants in Africa and the Middle East.
Of course, they are happy to imprison narcotics dealers because drugs make their citizens lazy and waste police time, but they are even happier to promote weapons exports because they make their supporters rich.
Morality and policy, as all party cadres are taught, mean that when common people do something it is wrong, but when officials do it it's OK.
J. Garner, Sham Shui Po
Double standards rife worldwide
Frequent news reports from the mainland describe the efforts of the Communist Party to root out corruption among its officials.
Sexual failings call for titillating headlines, but everyone knows that these efforts by the party are not aimed at promoting morality, but at stemming the ethical decline and ultimate failure inherent in absolute political power.
Even so-called democracies are guilty of hypocrisy. Their laws focus on personal sins and their media loves to expose sexual abuses, but they ignore more serious behaviour that causes carnage among civilians around the globe.
One good example is Singapore, which ruthlessly cracks down on drug use and importation. You can be hanged there for drug smuggling, but if you are an approved exporter of lethal weapons you are an honest citizen and a patriotic Singaporean. Singapore is also a military supporter of Israel, whose actions in Gaza have caused far more deaths of children than of Hamas militants.
Singapore also sponsors frequent huge aircraft and arms fairs where weapons producers are welcome to display their state-subsidised products.
So when zealous government cadres announce their efforts to stamp out personal vice, perhaps they should be asked to explain if they are in any way concerned about the suffering and deaths caused by their expanding military exports to combatants in Africa and the Middle East.
Of course, they are happy to imprison narcotics dealers because drugs make their citizens lazy and waste police time, but they are even happier to promote weapons exports because they make their supporters rich.
Morality and policy, as all party cadres are taught, mean that when common people do something it is wrong, but when officials do it it's OK.
J. Garner, Sham Shui Po
