Human history is full of accounts of suffering humanity, oppressed by tyrants, struggling to exist in totalitarian societies where basic human rights remain an unrecognized quality of life but for the privileged; the wars that are launched without end, victimizing hapless civilian populations unable to escape the horrors of conflict. In Africa where wars rage and bankrupt leaders unable to pay their military conscripts urge them to loot and to rape as payment for their services, the horrors of war prey on the most vulnerable, leaving immense populations in unstable environments where farmers cannot grow their crops and everyone becomes susceptible to mass starvation.

The nation leading the free world and recognized as the sole world power in wealth and influence, accustomed to showcasing itself as the very epitome of democratic liberty now sees the rise of a disaffected majority whom a cannily sinister opportunist and rabble-rouser has elevated followers to fascist-like grudges against others within their society, pitting supporters of polarized ideologies against one another, surrounding himself with violent thugs to suppress the opinions and appearance of adversaries at his rallies.

The president of Syria has been viciously attacking his own sectarian citizens who inflicted injury on his pride by appealing for equality; his response was to embark on years of bloody attacks against citizens he views as 'lice' and 'terrorists', opening his country to the infiltration of Islamist terrorist groups whose atrocities match in viciousness those that the regime has launched against his civilian citizens. Europe has been engulfed in an unstoppable flood of refugees from conflict and migrants from oppression, coming out of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Eritrea and elsewhere where failed Islamic states and their Islamic sectarian and tribal enemies prey on the helpless.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard has thumbed its arrogant nose at France, China, Russia, the United States, Britain and Germany the signatories to the infamous agreement that lifted sanctions on the Republic for its purported assent to the demand that it suspend its nuclear program ambitions to create a nuclear warhead for the increasingly refined ballistic missiles it is producing. Although suspension of its ballistic missiles' refinement was an element of the agreement, Iran has proceeded to test-fire two new missiles flaunting its promise to destroy the State of Israel by enscribing on them "Israel must be wiped out".

Official Turkey is behaving in a manner that displays shock that yet another car bomb has destroyed the lives of dozens of Turks in Ankara, wounding many more others, in an attack that it blames on the Kurdish PKK, the outlawed militant wing of its Kurdish political party agitating for a sovereign state of its own. How can this be surprising when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has empowered the Turkish military to launch ongoing attacks against villages in the majority Kurdish areas of Turkey, claiming them to be sheltering terrorists, and in the process killing countless Kurdish civilians, citizens of Turkey?

North Korea's pugnacious little dictator has announced that his nuclear scientists have perfected a powerful hydrogen bomb which they are prepared to mount on an intercontinental ballistic missile to target Manhattan. Pyongyang has a message and Kim Jong Un has delivered it, that North Korea does not appreciate the UN Security Council damning it for its nuclear enterprise. No surprise that North Korea and Iran facilitate one another's research in nuclear technology.

Ah, but the morning papers have delivered one outstanding piece of good news. That a Palestinian primary school teacher encourages his very young students to turn away from violence. For his peaceful enterprise Hanan al-Hroub, a teacher in the West Bank, was the recipient of the second annual Global Teacher Prize, presented to him with a million-dollar cheque in Dubai. A pity that those same children will encounter vastly different messages as they migrate up through the Palestinian Authority education system and are exposed to its vitriolic curricula investing young Palestinians with the message that their Jewish neighbours are 'occupiers' of Palestinian land and must be held to account through vengeful violence on the way to achieving blessed martyrdom.