Welcome to Hell. Please Wipe Your Feet

The art of war: the artist who sketches under cover at arms fairs

In this article, the artist has sketched what appears to be a woman next to two missiles in a pose more suited to that of women draped across the bonnets in 1970s car shows. I suppose that this is just a side-show to the general perversity of commerce in this line of business. The fact that these events  try to keep out anyone not directly involved in the buying and selling of weapons and all their terrible peripherals, perhaps indicates some measure of shame at what goes on at these places. I'd like to think that this shame might be the wedge for their downfall but I am probably wrong. I am not sure how the marketing department for the missiles in question thought of using glamour to sell their deadly products; it strikes me as spectacularly inappropriate but maybe it just distracts from what the abominable end purpose of the product actually is.

I've always had a problem with arms fairs. They seem to attract the representatives of some of the worst regimes in the world, dazzling them with crowd-control devices which are illegal to use in this country. Many of these things look like something that would be carried by various special types of Star Wars Stormtrooper. Let's suggest that this country cannot produce or sell on anything which is illegal to use domestically. The trouble then is of course how do we know how much actually is illegal here. This is where my lunch hour fails me because I can't really do the research from my desk. Let's say what would be immoral to use in this country regardless of it's legality. And now a level up I begin to worry about the many people hiding behind keyboards who state they would happily do horrible things to anyone daring to express an opinion a fraction of a degree to the left or right of their own beliefs. Morality is a flexible thing. This is of course ethics and therefore introduces a whole new level of complexity. I have to tell myself that spinny-chair generals would never act on these threats and that their feeling of safety and immobility while using social media, like excess alcohol, accounts for the lack of filters.

We are delicately balanced between anarchy and civilisation and I have to believe that in the long term, as it has been with my little country for my lifetime, it will stay as it is, hopefully at some point without arms fairs.