As 9/11 commemorations of the historic attacks took place alongside newer assaults on collective awareness by our mind managers, we need to understand that the menaces we are propagandized to see originating from evil outsiders are usually provoked and prolonged by Western governments, most especially the USA and Israel. Unfortunately, the false picture of the world that we get doesn’t only come from major media but also from what we call social media as well.
When horrible photos of a dead Syrian baby went “viral”—meaning it was seen, by design, everywhere anyone could possibly see it—the motivation of decent people was to protect escaping refugees from the horrors suffered by that poor child and hordes of others seemingly being denied by Europeans not allowing them into their homelands. Rarely was anyone moved to think that we might stop the need for people to escape the horrors of wars in Syria and other nations by ending our support, direction, funding and participation in those wars. This thought needs to go “viral” but that will only happen when media becomes truly social and is out of the control of the anti-social forces presently manufacturing ignorance among its subjects, however sincerely well intentioned those subjects may be.
When news of a hunter slaughtering a lion in Zimbabwe went “viral” some weeks before, the same well meaning action of a manipulated audience produced outrage, demonstrations calling for the murderer’s execution and worse, just as the current refugee situation has judgmental people nearly shrieking about heartless Europeans, fascists and racists everywhere but here, where heartless leadership distracts by showing selected ugliness to masses of people with no explanation offered except that “they”—evil others—are responsible. In this case, a human baby rather than an animal—greatly feared by most Zimbabweans, however misguided many Americans may be about its loving qualities—was the reason used to touch people’s hearts while removing from their minds any capacity to think. But the end result is the same, much desired by the manipulators and much to the loss of the public so lied to while being honestly moved: wrath or compassion directed at symbols with no historic, political or economic awareness of social problems greater than the electronic over-dramatized moments of personal tragedy for some that misses national disasters for millions.
The middle east bloodbath, which has at this point murdered hundreds of thousands, reduced millions to refugee status and destroyed places which were European created nations but at least had secular leaderships running materially developed political economies is overwhelmingly a creation of the USA, and its junior-senior partner, Israel.
First Afghanistan, then Iraq, then Libya, more recently Syria and Yemen and other nations in the Middle East were all direct results, though of a much longer colonial history, of the 9/11 attack on America. And that much longer history looms large in the treatment of Iran as some form of menace to humanity, so dubbed for having served as a subject of Western domination and having the unmitigated gall to desire its own rather than outside control of its national destiny by having a revolution and booting out its foreign overlords. How much longer can this situation go on without some of the worst fantasies and fabrications of the “terrorist” lobby in Usrael not forcing the horrid nightmares it creates to become physical reality? With an attack much larger than 9/11 taking place somewhere in the USA? Or Israel?
We have created far more enemies and hatred for us by our national destruction and human displacement policies, which have reduced the geographic area from what used to be secular nations to territories controlled by groups driven by religious zealotry to drive out infidels and murder any unfortunates seen as patrons or followers of those infidel invaders. While the financing and backing of the various fundamentalists offers a field day for the Western conspiracy cults who see no results of imperial backlash that are not attributable to the empire itself, some almost claiming they originate on the White House lawn, the more serious reality is that we have brought about a dreadful situation in the world and most Americans are still led to believe it is all about nasty people who want to kill us for no reason or who won’t take in refugees with little thought about why there are refugees in the first place.
As if that weren’t bad enough, the continued depiction of Russian, or Putin, as a threat to global capital (or puppies or kittens or health spas, it gets almost that stupid) escalates with civil war in the Ukraine, allegedly causing sleepless depression among sensitive USA leadership and its NATO lap dogs. That Russia might have some concern, given that the Ukraine not only is on its borders but was an invasion pathway during a war that killed millions of its people, and also numbers many Russians among its population, is hardly given a thought. After all, what does another nation or people matter when we contemplate the surface story with no background we are given about anything, except that we mean well and everyone else is monstrously evil?
Most of this foreign policy nightmare is reported to the American people as often infantile anecdotal trivia, with less meaning than exchanging restaurant menus or selfies on Facebook, but with far more dangerous implications than simple acts of personal vanity or carefree fun. Nations which are nuclear powers are being provoked by situations that all relate to struggles involving the continued desire of some to dominate others, and all because they think themselves a master race of self-appointed chosen people who have been given the responsibility of running the planet by some universal power unknown to the rest of us but having something to do with markets, branding, private profits and public losses.
The problem is that more and more profits are accruing to fewer and fewer people, while more and more losses are building up for more and more people. Those suffering the horrors that we are made to see as bits of electronic information that often pass in an instant without any context and do no more than get an emotional reaction which does nothing to solve the greater problems from which they stem. These images become a perverted form of selfies, which go viral to keep us unconscious, and do so under the control of those who manipulate us to help them gather even more profits, at our loss.
When what is called social media is used to bring people together pursuing solutions to problems that truly help, rather than cause more pain and suffering, they strengthen humanity and not just a few using a device to connect with a few others. But when the system is under the control of forces which use any and all devices to further their domination over us, they become anti-social media, and part of an anti-social political economic structure that must be changed in its entirety and not just in control of the devices we use to communicate with one another.
The filters between us see to it that what goes “viral” is frequently what markets well, but does not bode well for humanity’s future. We need to be more careful about everything we see and hear, and not just in and on major media but in and on the little devices we use for shopping and other personal pleasures, assuming we have any besides shopping. We need to be more critical and thoughtful of everything we see and hear before rushing off to judgment with nothing but a surface view of what often has extremely deep historic, cultural and economic roots. Most of what we get, whether on broadcast corporate media or on “personal” corporate media, warrants that we remember the adage: text without a context is a pretext. That was true before 9/11, but has become even truer since.
Frank Scott writes political commentary and satire which appears in print in The Independent Monitor and online at the Legalienate. Email: fpscott@gmail.com.
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Social media, consciousness control & 9/11
Posted on September 15, 2015 by Frank Scott
As 9/11 commemorations of the historic attacks took place alongside newer assaults on collective awareness by our mind managers, we need to understand that the menaces we are propagandized to see originating from evil outsiders are usually provoked and prolonged by Western governments, most especially the USA and Israel. Unfortunately, the false picture of the world that we get doesn’t only come from major media but also from what we call social media as well.
When horrible photos of a dead Syrian baby went “viral”—meaning it was seen, by design, everywhere anyone could possibly see it—the motivation of decent people was to protect escaping refugees from the horrors suffered by that poor child and hordes of others seemingly being denied by Europeans not allowing them into their homelands. Rarely was anyone moved to think that we might stop the need for people to escape the horrors of wars in Syria and other nations by ending our support, direction, funding and participation in those wars. This thought needs to go “viral” but that will only happen when media becomes truly social and is out of the control of the anti-social forces presently manufacturing ignorance among its subjects, however sincerely well intentioned those subjects may be.
When news of a hunter slaughtering a lion in Zimbabwe went “viral” some weeks before, the same well meaning action of a manipulated audience produced outrage, demonstrations calling for the murderer’s execution and worse, just as the current refugee situation has judgmental people nearly shrieking about heartless Europeans, fascists and racists everywhere but here, where heartless leadership distracts by showing selected ugliness to masses of people with no explanation offered except that “they”—evil others—are responsible. In this case, a human baby rather than an animal—greatly feared by most Zimbabweans, however misguided many Americans may be about its loving qualities—was the reason used to touch people’s hearts while removing from their minds any capacity to think. But the end result is the same, much desired by the manipulators and much to the loss of the public so lied to while being honestly moved: wrath or compassion directed at symbols with no historic, political or economic awareness of social problems greater than the electronic over-dramatized moments of personal tragedy for some that misses national disasters for millions.
The middle east bloodbath, which has at this point murdered hundreds of thousands, reduced millions to refugee status and destroyed places which were European created nations but at least had secular leaderships running materially developed political economies is overwhelmingly a creation of the USA, and its junior-senior partner, Israel.
First Afghanistan, then Iraq, then Libya, more recently Syria and Yemen and other nations in the Middle East were all direct results, though of a much longer colonial history, of the 9/11 attack on America. And that much longer history looms large in the treatment of Iran as some form of menace to humanity, so dubbed for having served as a subject of Western domination and having the unmitigated gall to desire its own rather than outside control of its national destiny by having a revolution and booting out its foreign overlords. How much longer can this situation go on without some of the worst fantasies and fabrications of the “terrorist” lobby in Usrael not forcing the horrid nightmares it creates to become physical reality? With an attack much larger than 9/11 taking place somewhere in the USA? Or Israel?
We have created far more enemies and hatred for us by our national destruction and human displacement policies, which have reduced the geographic area from what used to be secular nations to territories controlled by groups driven by religious zealotry to drive out infidels and murder any unfortunates seen as patrons or followers of those infidel invaders. While the financing and backing of the various fundamentalists offers a field day for the Western conspiracy cults who see no results of imperial backlash that are not attributable to the empire itself, some almost claiming they originate on the White House lawn, the more serious reality is that we have brought about a dreadful situation in the world and most Americans are still led to believe it is all about nasty people who want to kill us for no reason or who won’t take in refugees with little thought about why there are refugees in the first place.
As if that weren’t bad enough, the continued depiction of Russian, or Putin, as a threat to global capital (or puppies or kittens or health spas, it gets almost that stupid) escalates with civil war in the Ukraine, allegedly causing sleepless depression among sensitive USA leadership and its NATO lap dogs. That Russia might have some concern, given that the Ukraine not only is on its borders but was an invasion pathway during a war that killed millions of its people, and also numbers many Russians among its population, is hardly given a thought. After all, what does another nation or people matter when we contemplate the surface story with no background we are given about anything, except that we mean well and everyone else is monstrously evil?
Most of this foreign policy nightmare is reported to the American people as often infantile anecdotal trivia, with less meaning than exchanging restaurant menus or selfies on Facebook, but with far more dangerous implications than simple acts of personal vanity or carefree fun. Nations which are nuclear powers are being provoked by situations that all relate to struggles involving the continued desire of some to dominate others, and all because they think themselves a master race of self-appointed chosen people who have been given the responsibility of running the planet by some universal power unknown to the rest of us but having something to do with markets, branding, private profits and public losses.
The problem is that more and more profits are accruing to fewer and fewer people, while more and more losses are building up for more and more people. Those suffering the horrors that we are made to see as bits of electronic information that often pass in an instant without any context and do no more than get an emotional reaction which does nothing to solve the greater problems from which they stem. These images become a perverted form of selfies, which go viral to keep us unconscious, and do so under the control of those who manipulate us to help them gather even more profits, at our loss.
When what is called social media is used to bring people together pursuing solutions to problems that truly help, rather than cause more pain and suffering, they strengthen humanity and not just a few using a device to connect with a few others. But when the system is under the control of forces which use any and all devices to further their domination over us, they become anti-social media, and part of an anti-social political economic structure that must be changed in its entirety and not just in control of the devices we use to communicate with one another.
The filters between us see to it that what goes “viral” is frequently what markets well, but does not bode well for humanity’s future. We need to be more careful about everything we see and hear, and not just in and on major media but in and on the little devices we use for shopping and other personal pleasures, assuming we have any besides shopping. We need to be more critical and thoughtful of everything we see and hear before rushing off to judgment with nothing but a surface view of what often has extremely deep historic, cultural and economic roots. Most of what we get, whether on broadcast corporate media or on “personal” corporate media, warrants that we remember the adage: text without a context is a pretext. That was true before 9/11, but has become even truer since.
Frank Scott writes political commentary and satire which appears in print in The Independent Monitor and online at the Legalienate. Email: fpscott@gmail.com.