I saw a recent headline in the Guardian which read," Revealed: the £1 billion of weapons flowing from Europe to the Middle east.” I suppose this was meant as an exposé, to shock us, perhaps make us throw our arms in the air in horror, and shout “Surely not”. However common sense would tell you that there is a lot of fighting going on in the Middle East and most of it is done with very powerful and sophisticate weaponry. Where do they think all that comes from, did they believe that it was all made in Syria, Iraq and Libya? Of course most of the weaponry used in that region will come from the worlds biggest arms dealers, who happen to be American and European. They are not made in some cave in the mountains of the Middle East. When ever there is brutal violence with powerful weaponry you can rest assured that the big arms dealers will be supplying both sides, business is business. So yes, £1 billion worth of weaponry, and more, will be flowing to the Middle East from all the big manufacturers, and they will be praying on their bended knees that the brutality and the killing continues. What a wonderful boost for the Western economy, just think how much they have made from the Middle East. From 2001 in Afghanistan to 2016, in Syria, think of all those whirring machines churning out replacements for all that destructive material. Massive profit margins, what a wonderful investment, the policy of permanent war, is a government gift to the arms industry. The arms industry, like states, has no morality, they are in the business of supplying weapons to those who wish to use them, and states love the arms industry. It gives them the means to defend their power base and expand their influence. If we want to get rid of war, then we have to tackle the arms industry and the state. In today’s world, they are two sides of the same coin.
Figures for arms expenditure 2015:
USA; $597.5 billion, percentage of GDP, 3.9%
UK: $56.2 billion, percentage of GDP, 2%
That's a lot of your tax money flowing into the pockets of the shareholders in the arms industry. Think of the death and destruction caused by that expenditure, and what else it could have been spent on, if we lived in a sane world. The UK is the worlds 5th. biggest arms budget, the USA is the world's biggest spender on arms, by a long way.
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