The Guardian has an insightful article on how in these times of austerity, the UK arms industry is booming.

And so the UK lays the seeds of instability, playing power games on far off shores, that will ultimately breed the next despot ruler we armed and then realised we had to overthrow, for the sake of humanity. What a farce!

Courtesy The Guardian – Full Story

Whenever we see people acting crazy, we have to find out why. There are always two sides to every story.

Why do North Koreans hate the USA?

I didn’t know any of this stuff.

Still Kim Jong-un’s attitude is belligerent, he’s provoking nations with far more firepower than North Korea has. I think to avoid potentially putting his people through similar atrocities that they faced in the past, he should change his attitude to one of reconciliation. We can’t change tha past, but we can try to strive for justice and learn from the mistakes of the past.

An insightful article from Al Jazeera on the sociopathic nature of the American phyche.

America, such a powerful force in the world has such deeply rooted problems, and becasuse its influence projects and corrupts so many nations, we are headed down a path to a completely sociopathic, fickle, immoral, money obsessed world.

Another horrific attack in London, the attackers have taken away the lives of those who had no argument with them and caused injury to others, in yet another act of senseless violence.

We are appalled at this, and the deaths of, as I write, seven people is making news headlines, wall-to-wall on some of the 24-7 news channels, and the country is clearly in shock after several other terrorist incidents in Manchester and London. I’m wondering though, what effect bombing of town and cities has on those abroad, the constant surveillance of drones, armed war over resource as much as, if not more than religion, threat from within in the form of sectarian violence, threat from without in the form of the powers of The West, a lack of food, no creature comforts, no escapism, perhaps no future. What kind of response will the public in those countries have to violence we impose on them?

There is a degree to which we create the environment that fosters terrorism with our own foreign policy choices in other countries and with our own need to control parts of the world, as is the impetus of capitalism, to control resource and exploit it. There is a degree to which we reap what we sow.

This doesn’t excuse, make palatable or make right the acts of those who kill to express their ideology. But one has to ask where will this end? Can anyone see steps to peace?

What is for sure, is that until both sides in this conflict are mature enough to admit their own faults, there will be no progress – just violence, deeper more entrenched values reiterated by what is perceived as the wrongdoings of the other side.  So to my mind this is a war, the path to peace involves honesty, integrity, removing hypocrisy, re-evaluation and above all else stopping all forms of violence.

So, Donald Trump has signed a multi billion (£270) arms deal with Saudi Arabia. Let’s hope the alliance with the US doesn’t break, and the face another stern test as they did with Saddam Hussain.

The deal will give Americans jobs, but are we seeing the beginnings of a vicious circle?  Weapons always breed violence, whether they remain in the possession of those they were intended for, or not.

You know I never believed America was the land of the free. When you consider the history of America,  you have to wonder just what the real American notion of freedom is?

America is a land of illusion, there is a dislocation between its beginnings and how it see’s itself, in all its self-reflective cultural product. Just as you can’t plant nettles and expect roses to grow, neither can you create a nation based on oppression and conquest and expect it to flower into something beautiful, benevolent and just.

What’s happening now, is that America’s mask of illusion is starting to slip, but the illusion is so strong that people are in a kind of paralysed state, like a kind of sleep paralysis, unable seem to be to unable realise, vocalise or even potentially to have real power to take action and inject the healing drug of reality and justice into the American system that would bring the change it needs.

Mehdi Hasan of Al Jazeera has written an insightful article on Trump’s “tinpot dictatorship”, and one wonders, what happens to the voice of democracy and freedom in this world, when the major proponent of it, although I would claim America to be a false proponent, is revealed to be false and effectively disqualifies itself by letting the mask slip and revealing its true hideouts nature.

America isn’t all bad, there are people that understand truth, justice, equality and freedom – but unfortunately, it isn’t those people who run the country.