News that rocked the world.......

Not these days.

However, the first political awareness and stirring I had about was watching JFK and tricky Dick Nixon in debates in 1960. I was swayed to follow JFK.

If someone hypothetically speaking were swayed like that (to begin with), they wouldn't have any solid political convictions, would they?

Several years ago a magazine (I think it was Time or Newsweek) devoted an entire issue to running photographs of every person in the USA who was killed by a firearm that week. It was a sobering issue. There were hundreds and hundreds of them. Some were murders, some were suicides, some were accidents, some were people killed by a supposedly empty gun. Some were poor, some rich. Some looked like they had everything to live for. Some were children.

That day I changed from being neutral/slightly against gun control to being in favor of gun control.

However, you didn't switch parties or change from a liberal to a conservative. One viewpoint was changed (albeit conservative)..No?

True.

But virtually all of us are conservative on some issues and liberal on others. If we did a complete flip overnight on all our positions on everything we'd be pretty shallow. And that would be one H*** of a news item to do that to us.

When the twin towers fell, I asked myself the question "Why do Arabs hate Americans" (I'm not American, but I was curious).

That lead me to books on :

- the differences between the Middle East and Western Culture
- the recent history of the Middle East (since the end of WW1) including the formation of the Middle Eastern Kingdoms after the fall of the Ottoman Empire
- the American run coup in Iran
- the propping up of dictators
- Saddams deals with the US
- the American bases in the Middle East
- Israel
- American military aid to Israel
- Afghanistan (when the Russians invaded)
- Middle Eastern Terror
- The formation of Al Qaeda
- US dependence on Oil
- political motives for military 'interventions'

Reading those lead me to read books on 3rd world debt to the west (around $3.2 trillion dollars and growing), aid to the 3rd world (about 1/20th of the interest they pay us), 3rd world poverty, tax havens, multinationals, foreign policy etc.

It lead me to realise that politicians don't want us to ask questions or look too deeply. It lead me to realise the corruption amongst our world financial, corporate, and political systems.

I see it now very much as a case of "We're comfortable, so we don't need to question"