Sigh. It's all a matter of perspective. Governments are there to maintain the status quo for their citizens. If you don't like another country, its because for it to maintain its status quo, your country is getting screwed over. All media is biased to see its own country in a positive light. It's not right or wrong, its a natural part of human psyche We all belong to our own small collectives, we evolved from tribe animals.
As you said, it's all a matter of perspective. Every human that lives in the country things different, but when the country ignores the nation peoples voice and only follows the interests of the big people, organisations, etc. it's not democracy.
But this is all vastly different from being lied to. People don't get into journalism to lie to the public, very far from it. They just relate the news to the demographic that it's targeted to. Humans do it all the time, you wouldn't speak to a child the same way as your boss. You don't speak to different religions the same way because they don't have the same frame of reference.
People who enter journalism are not bad people. They do a good job. But most journalists cannot report truths, because their bosses disallow them (or they have been bribed, simply) and independent journalists / whistle blowers are not enough heard by the world. The problem is the larger media organisations have a huge influence of peoples minds, because they are consumed so massively.
Here in Germany it's even worse, because the leaders of German medias are members of NATO organisations, they report about things they control!
Also, the whole going to war over oil is such a huge myth. But even if it wasn't I'm sure given the choice the vast majority of humans would be quite happy to sacrifice the lives of people from other countries to obtain the current standards of living. This stuff might as well be happening on another planet to them. If it means another decade of plentiful society, does it really matter what happens to a country with an entirely alien culture?
Think a bit. Imagine one day on earth without oil. ......... Everything would collapse, the whole system would break. The industry around the world would stop, panic would raise. So who controls the oil flow, ... controls the world, because oil equals force. We the humanity could already use other energy sources and get away from oil (i.e. electronic cars, but the refinery succeed to append huge taxes on those cars). They, specially the US, tries to keep us away from alternate ways, they want us to be dependent to oil, and they want to control it. The US wants to rule the world, not just live with the world.
Also it really pisses me off when people blame banks and oil corporations, like they are entities in of themselves. Like every single person working for them has control over what the company is doing. Seriously do some thinking on the subject. The employees are working for money in order to afford food, just like you. The people at the top you might think have all the power, really don't. They are employed by the share holders to make a profit just like everyone else in the company. Exactly the same as every bank. The problem is we live in a profit driven society, and it rewards making profit over everything else. But frankly we are genetically programmed to do it, the survival of the fittest has never really left us, it just has another form, and while fighting against it on a personal level is possible, society as a whole will never really change.
When I'm blaming the bank, I don't literally blame every employer of all banks, I know, they are wage slaves just like you and me. The problem goes deeper. In our "profit driven society" the range between poor and rich gets higher and higher, and the bank owners of the central banks are the most evil people on the system. For instance: The Federal Reserve (FED) is printing and borrowing money for / to the US. The US has to give this money back and pay interest rates. To pay those interest rates, they have to print and borrow even more money and that results in even more interest rates. In other words, it's a huge hole of exponential raising dept we can never pay back. And this was just one example of the corrupt system.
Look to the production sector of the world, from the 50s on, our production effort level has been raised massevely. Experts in the 50s told us, we will work only 10 hours per week in 2000. What happened? Well, we are getting ripped off. In this system, 75% of our work time is just to pay the highest people on top. And I'm not talking about the boss of the company you work at, I talk about the central bank leaders and the bosses of company group chains.
Why would they need to? Humans want to feel safe, its a fundamental part of us. Again we evolved from tribe animals that used weapons to protect itself from other tribes. Not much has changed really. There wasn't a spear salesman trying to promote conflict back then, it just happened because of cultural differences and to obtain resources. Spending money to start wars as a weapon manufacturer seems like a waste of profit when wars will happen regardless. Governments will be buying the weapons regardless of wars anyway to keep their tech competitive, hence police forces renting military hardware in america.
Today not only the US is paying 10 times more for arming than for education. Why? Because they want to keep people stupid. Those rich people on the top of the "wage slavery pyramid" rather want war, because war results in even more army, that makes more money that has to be print and borrowed. Also war is great for the economy. War results in broken places that has to be rebuild, those rebuilding is economic growth. The loser countries will - in back turn - get even more dept. The problem on WW3 is just, no country will invade another country, it will be an atomic war, and those will affect all people on the earth.
Governments have supported rebels in the past in order to remove unfriendly governments. They also support some questionable governments that suppress their people. Again your government doesn't really give a duck about the people of another country, because the majority of the people they represent don't care either. They are there to maintain the standards of living of the people they represent, not to improve the planet as a whole. How many times have you heard about people complaining about foreign aid?...
Unfriendly Governments? Think about your words: "It's all a matter of perspective". For instance, let's take the near east conflict. The US has arranged a Putsch to get an own leader to Afghanistan when Mohammad Mossadegh had the leadership in 1953. He was a democratic person who did good to his nation, too good: He did not allow the US to fetch the oil, rather he wanted to sell the oil to help his nation and reach a high economic growth level, the US did not like.
There are more leaders in history who did a good job, but did not want to swim with the system and accept US to be the leaders of the world. Countries who accept has to follow interests of the US before following interests of themselves, again it's a rip off. Leaders who don't follow will be pwned by a Putsch or simply killed.
Also the US sometimes help people in one place when fighting the same people in other places, just because on the first place there are even more treats to fight. They mostly create conflicts to tell their nation it's okay to invade those countries, just for the oil, just for the rip off. Everybody who fights for the west interests (oil) is a freedom fighter, everybody against the west interests is a terrorist, the US represents.
Weapons industries are just another cog in society. I doubt they have any more malicious intent than any other industry. Again its all about human nature and society as a whole, blaming one group is simply flawed.
This human nature is the malicious bad intent, which is called greediness. But this is just a small evolutionary step in human history. If the system would permit and spend more education, people would think a bit, the next generation could put down this greediness and build a world that works in harmony with the nature. Every person on this planet could own an own house, every person on earth could be fine and not hungry, healthy and happy with only 10 hours work per week. We could gain all our alternate resources without hurting the planet. But the humanity is still too stupid and over 60% of money is owned by 1% of humanity.
And the weapon industry - btw - is taking depleted uranium for ammo, because this material is very heavy. So we will never turn off all atomic reactors. And those depleted uranium pulverizes into nano particles when hit the target. And those nano particles can be carried by the wind around the earth, inhaled by human it can cause leukemia and cancer. So who is evil here?
