War, Famine, Plague and all that
It is no secret that “news” media in the developed world is owned by a few corporate empires the ultimate owners' of which are financial operators whose reach extends into manufacturing, wholesale and retail trade, extraction industries, big agriculture and food, healthcare, petrochemicals, engineering, internet technologies and even, through networks of patronage and influence, into politics.
In terms of revenue genaerated the news and entertainment corporations are small fry but so long as they are the information source of choice for the majority, these businesses punch above their weight in terms of social impact. An ill - informed population is a compliant population and the purpose of mainstream media, once to educate and inform is now to distract, deceive and direct away from the real issues towards trivialities and gossip and ensure most people are are sufficiently dumbed down and diverted from the real issues, by feeding you pointless irrelevant social trivia.
As long as we (the majority of us at least) are distracted, we will be unable to organize, get involved, protest or seek change, which is exactly what corporate media wants, and is exactly where they have you. You don’t think so? Answer the following questions:
We have been at war in Afghanistan for over 13 years, there are no British combat troops active now but we still have a presence; why? What are we fighting for? Who are we fighting? How many people under 35 can even find Afghanistan on a map after over 15 years of war? What are the Taliban all about? What could we have learned from the history of thast country before launching an invasion.
How about Iraq, America's war? It has been said many times that most Americans including one former President, if aske d, could not find Iraq on a world map. British, European and American combat troops withdrew from Iraq in 2015 but are now in the process of returning as Islamic state forces, touted from territory they occupied by Rusia and Iran, threaten to go guerilla? Why did we go to war in Iraq and overthrow the dictator Saddam if we werren't prepared to go the distance? Who are we fighting in Iraq? What do they want? What do we hope to achieve? Who TF are the Daesh?
How about Syria? Who are we fighting? Who are the ISIL? Who are the Alawi? Who or what is ISIL? What do they hope to gain by taking on the western powers? Are we with or against Assad? Why are we helping Al-Qaeda in their effort to overthrow Assad? how do Syriac Christians fit into the picture and what is a Syriac Christian anyway?
Let’s look at Libya? Why did we (the FUKUS axis -France, the United Kingdom and the United States) bomb it daily for seven consecutive months? Why did we engage in a regime change campaign when there was no regime in waiting to replace the one we overthrew? Why did we support Muammar Gadaffi, then help kill him? Why did our leaders allow Libya, the most prosperous state in Africa under Gadaffi to become a lawless, chaotic, failed state after we bombed them to save them from an oppressive dictator?
How about Egypt? Who is the current dictator of Egypt and why do we support a dictator in Egypt when we murdered Gadaffi and have fought a five year war to oust Assad? How do we support this Egyptian guy? And if we are worried by Assad's record on human rights, why do we support the brutal Wahhabi Muslim tyranny in Saudi Arabia.
How about Russia? Most people in the NATO states do not have a clue that we are now very close to a war with Russia, but then again most peoplet the respective times a never saw World War I or World War 2 coming either. Why do we now have troops in the all the Baltic States on the border with Russia? Why are we installing missiles close Russia’s border? What or where is Kaleningrad?
Where is the Ukraine in relation to the USA or EU? What is the relationship between Ukraine and Russia? Does Russia pose a threat to the USA or any NATO state? Why are NATO and the EU eager to recruit Ukraine to their membership when to do so would violate a treaty signed with Russia in 1991? As NATO and the EU have violated that treaty several times already by recruiting Poland and the baltic states, how far can Russian parience be stretched?
You would be hard pressed to find any Russian military bases outside Russia, and those there are exist only to protect approaches to Russian territory. It was not always so, the old Soviet regime surrounded itself with satellite states for the purpose of creating a bufffer between its own territory and any invasion from the west or south. How many military bases does the USA maintain outside of its borders and how many of those are sited close to Russia's borders in NATO member states? Not only that, also the US State Department has a habit of installing strike missiles in those bases, a quite different proposition to putting air defence systems using surface to air missiles in states bordering Russia.
Why did the USA spend 5 billion dollars promoting unrest and engineering a coup against a democratically elected government in the Ukraine and why did the EU support it? Why did the foul mouthed neocon US ambassador, Victoria Nuland say, and what did she mean, when she so eloquently said: “F... the EU”? Why do media continue to present Barack Obama as the peacemaker and joybringer when his administration is the most right wing and hawkish the USA has had on everything except gay related issues.
OK, we haven't even touched on famine, pestilence and plague, which may seem like natural dissters we have no control over, but since World War Two the leading military powers have been experimening with weather control (famine) and biological warfare (pestlience and plague). And don't get me started on Electro - Magnetic Pulse (EMP) weapons.
Do you see my point now? These foreign policy failures and doomsday weapon research projects cost billions of £$€ and yet taxpayers are required to kep funding them at a time when systemic debt and ongoing current account deficits are hamstringing efforts to recover from the 2008 economic crash and trashing jobs and lifestyles. And all the time the media feeeds us celebrity chit chat, animal stories, junk science (how many breakthroughs in the war on cancer were announced last month) and scare stories.
Switch to new media, feed your inner sceptic.
Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse (image source)
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