News World War Iii?

[Ed Norton]

So Tom S in Tn you want to stand before my little brother?

Seriously, I feel like that too sometimes.

 

[Tom S. in Tn.]

So Tom S in Tn you want to stand before my little brother?

Seriously, I feel like that too sometimes....

At the risk of being profiled as some kind of Muslim terrorist;
correction-should read: At the risk of being profiled as some kind of terrorist;

Realize my region of locale and accept my apology for political incorrectness. I wrote without thinking.
Tom S. in Tn.

 

[The Albatross]

I'm neutral on the topic though I read current events.

 

[VioletButterfly]

News is a "no go" here at chez VB. If I even flip through the channels, the local news is all about crime and the national news is about killings here/abroad or politics. These brief blips produce anxiety through the roof. I agree with the others - I would skip the news for now.

My head is not in the sand, however, and I do pray for our world leaders and the men/women fighting against these haters/murderers around the world. I also pray for all of us who are suffering around the world, whether in a real warzone and fleeing for our lives or for those of us who are fighting within our own minds to survive what we have endured. That being the case, I do what I can do each day and leave it all in the hands of He who makes ultimate decisions. Peace be with you. VB

 

[Justmehere]

Everyone input on this issue has been really interesting.

I very much agree about not watching the news. Thankfully, I do not watch the news myself.

(Edited to delete info that was too personal, sorry.)

 

[Anarchy]

There's a pretty extensive academic literature about crisis mongering being a prime tactic of governments to gain additional powers and to quell internal dissent.

Robert Higgs "Crisis and the Leviathan" (originally published by oxford university press, current 25th anniversary edn by liberty institute http://www.bookdepository.com/searc...lisher=&searchIsbn=&searchLang=&advanced=true ) is a good example of that.

There are a lot of current events running against the interests of the western governments and their favoured cronies, the collapse of the petro dollar system and the failure of quantitative easing to do anything other than inflate an even bigger speculative and highly unstable stock market bubble than the 2008 one, are two examples.

Although this youtube clip is fictional, it shows a leader beginning to loose his grip and attempting to re-gain it by crisis mongering. The fictional news stories could have come from any night since october 2008. our esteemed leaders are really quite needy!

If you begin to view the lamestream news as psychopathic gaslighting, and turn it off for at least 3 months, I think youll find quality of life improving greatly.

 

[Ronin]

I try to think of all those people that have a job out of that.

I mean, for some writing those kinds of articles means meals for their kids.

 

[Neverthesame]

@Cashew Very good point. Honestly I don't think the reporter or writer are even at fault with this modern theme of news media. Really the only way to point the "blame" is right back at ourselves. If there wasn't any demand for this kind of media. No one, especially if they are the breadwinner of their family. Would risk their paycheque to cover and report this kind of thing, if no one wanted to read it.

If scaring the shit out of people was how I was able to put food on my kids backs and clothes on their table. Would I do it even though I am morally opposed to the idea? Yes. At least untill I could find something at least as stable to replace it.

As for right now, I just happen to prefer the sound of sand over my head above the sound of a body count being recited. Though I can see how they would be the first one blamed. They are the face and voice we see and hear this from. Our pseudo human connection to these tragic events.

When or if the time comes that someone chooses to shut it out from their view, the face and voice telling them this awful stuff is likely to be blamed. Despite the fact that they were only being what they had asked for.

We really are a strange culture of balding ape, aren't we?

 

[Anarchy]

There is a market up to a point...

If it was totally and transparently shite, we'd turn it off, and the broadcaster or newspaper proprietor would loose their advertising revenue.

And almost all people, not just us few on the board here, pay particular attention to things which could harm us. We evolved / were created that way. Those who decided that they didn't need to keep a lookout and that their God would save them from lions tigers and hyenas, collected their Darwin awards and didn't pass go or collect the little bundle in the game of rearing the next generation.

So in that respect, yes, scary news grabs the attention, and sells advertising slots.

There's a psychology experiment, done with students, to find a route through a maze for a cartoon mouse. Alternate papers have a slice of swiss cheese for the mouse at the end of the maze, or, an owl swooping with its talons out at the start, and a mousehole at the end.

The maze takes under 90 seconds. But for up to an hour or more afterwards, those students who got the owl, will score around 50% lower in tests measuring creative thinking, than the students who got the Swiss cheese.

This has been understood intuitively by people in positions of coercive power, for thousands of years. It's a few years since I read sun tzu's 2500 year old art of war, so can't pull any direct quotes from it,
But Niccolo Machiavelli certainly makes the point, using the example of the Spanish kings using war as a distraction, in his advice on statecraft to the young Cosimo di Medici, "The Prince".

There are plenty of other good examples of this understanding.

Before I leave the dark side alone. It's worth remembering that, certainly in Britain, one of the conditions for getting a broadcasting licence from the state, is to broadcast approved" news" bulletins at a set time intervals...

Also check out the ownership of the major American TV channels.

Conflict of interest? You bet!

when the owner of the TV broadcast also makes war planes

There's an old adage that the job of an editor is to print / broadcast as many of the proprietors views and prejudices as the advertising customers will tolerate.

 

[Tom S. in Tn.]

............. I just have to say, for a PTSD psych forum, I sure am learning and gaining a lot from this discussion here.
I never guessed any one else could share these thoughts.
Tom S. in Tn.

 

[void]

(I was going to do this as a poll but decided it was better as an open-ended question.)

Some people...

There are many conventional wars occurring in many regions and I suspect you are referring to a conventional World War. A conventional World War has not begun, though obviously that could emerge at some point. If it happens, you will know...whether you watch the News or not.

There are many other different TYPES of war, which are far more impactful than conventional war.

All of these types ARE global, many have already been won.

Those who don't know what I am talking about are proof of their victory.

Sleep well.:sleep::sleep::sleep:

 

[Anarchy]

There are many other different TYPES of war, which are far more impactful than conventional war.

Sun Tzu alluded to most of them 2500 years ago

Although clearly he couldn't short sell and hence crash an adversary's government bonds, as such things weren't around back then.

Similarly, the US dollar system, which has remained since Tricky Ricky Nixon, renaged on the Bretton Woods agreement, is another historically recent target. If a more attractive alternative to US dollars can be offered, then the massive overseas holdings of dollars for activities like oil trading, will find their way home to the last place on earth where they have any purchasing power... More paper money chasing the same goods, usually results in a hyper inflation.

Saddam was willing to accept Euros for oil, he got invaded and hanged. Khadaffi was proposing a gold dinar for oil trading, he received airstrikes in support of a revolution, and got buggered with a broomshank.

Russia, China and India are not so easily dealt with, and are cooperating on replacing dollar hegemony with their own paper money. They will be able to print their own purchasing power at virtually zero cost, just as the united state has since WWII.

For some examples of what I think @void is referring to

First of all, the Fabian manifesto of 1884 (100 years before Orwell's fictional 1984 is set)

Check (?Czech) out Jan Kozac's "and not a drop of blood is shed". This was pretty much the playbook for the Czech and Slovak communists taking over the post WWII democracy and subverting it into a one party state.

Also the writing and interviews of Yuri Bezmenov / Thomas Schuman (same person), a KGB operative who defected and settled in Canada, becoming a journalist and broadcaster.

The BBC timewatch documentaries describing operation Gladio, if they are still available on YouTube etc, describe actual verified historical examples of manipulating and inciting patsies into committing terrorist acts in Europe, from the 1960s through to the 1980s.

In terms of defence
A look at either of Bush the dumber's wars, and their continuation by the big 0, is instructive.

In both cases, the state was taken within weeks. That is the easy bit.

In neither case, can the people be considered to have consented to the occupation or to the current puppet regimes.

In both cases, a variety of groups are competing to gain the levers of coercive power, and the parasitic living that those levers give access to.