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Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Thursday, July 12, 2018
Starving and Bombed Children of Yemen Seek Entrapment in Flooded Thai Cave
In short, while the 12 boys and their coach were rescued after 17 days trapped in a flooded cave in Thailand which required a sophisticated and expensive international effort, during the same period around the world, 850,000 children were killed by human adults. Why is this paradox?
( July 11, 2018, Victoria, Sri Lanka Guardian) While
the world watched and waited with bated breath for the outcome of the
substantial global effort – involving over 100 cave divers from various
countries, 1,000 members of the Thai Army and 10,000 others in various
roles – to rescue a team of 12 young football players and their coach,
who were trapped inside a flooded cave in Thailand for 17 days, 850,000
children were killed by human adults in other parts of the world, many
of them simply starved to death in Yemen or other parts of Africa, Asia
and Central/South America.
But other children were killed in ritual sacrifice, many children were
killed after being sexually trafficked, raped and tortured, many were
killed in wars (including in Yemen), many were killed while living under
military occupation, many died as child soldiers or while working as
slave laborers, and vast numbers of other children suffered violence in a
myriad other forms ranging from violence (including sexual violation)
inflicted in the family home to lives of poverty, homelessness and
misery in wealthy industrialized countries or as refugees fleeing
conflict zones. See ‘Humanity’s “Dirty Little Secret”: Starving, Enslaving, Raping, Torturing and Killing our Children’.
Why did the world’s corporate media highlight the flooded Thai cave
story so graphically and why do so many ordinary people respond with
such interest – meaning genuine emotional engagement – in this story?
But not the others just mentioned?
And what does this tell us about human psychology and geopolitics?
Needless to say, a great deal.
During the Thai cave drama, major corporate media outlets, such as the Washington Post and the BBC,
were routinely releasing ‘breaking news’ updates on the status of the
rescue effort. At high points in the drama, reports on this issue were
overshadowing major political and other stories of the day. At the same
time, there were no ‘breaking news’ stories on any of the many myriad
forms of violence against children, which were (and are still) killing
50,000 children each day.
So why the corporate media interest in this essentially local (Thai)
story about a group of 12 children trapped in a cave? And why did it
attract so much support, including foreign cave divers, engineers and
medics as well as technology billionaire Elon Musk, who flew in to
investigate rescue options and assist with the rescue effort. They and
their equivalents are certainly not flying in to rescue children in a
vast number of other contexts, including where the provision of simple,
nourishing meals and clean water would do wonders.
Well, in essence, the story was a great one for the corporate media,
simply because it reported on something of little consequence to those
not immediately impacted and enabled the media to garner attention for
itself and other (western) ‘heroes’ drawn into the story while engaging
in its usual practice of distracting us from what really matters. And it
was an easy story to sell simply because the media could use a wide
range of safe emotional triggers to draw people into the dramatized
story without simultaneously raising difficult questions about the
(appalling) state of the world and responsibility for it.
In simple language: like sports events and other forms of entertainment,
the cave rescue provided a safely contained time and space for people
to feel emotionally engaged in (this case) a real-life drama (with
feelings like fear and relief allowed an outlet) while carefully reinforcing their unconscious feeling of powerlessness to do anything about it and their acceptance of this.
This is why it was so important that expert rescue efforts were
highlighted: the key media message was that ‘there is nothing you can
do’.
Of course, in this context, this was largely true. The problem is that
the corporate media coverage wasn’t aimed at this context. It was aimed
at all those other contexts which it wasn’t even discussing, let alone
highlighting: the vast range of issues – including the many ongoing wars
and endless military violence, the threat of nuclear war, the climate
catastrophe and innumerable threats to our biosphere posed by such
activities as rainforest destruction, the refugee crisis, military
occupations, as well as the ongoing violence against children in so many
contexts as touched on above – that need a great deal of our attention
but for which the elite uses its corporate media to distract us and
reinforce our sense of powerlessness.
Another aspect of the story was the way in which it highlighted the
‘accidental’ nature of the incident: no one was really responsible, even
the hapless coach who was just trying to give his young players an
interesting excursion and whom, according to reports, none of the
parents blamed.
By focusing on the logistical details of the story (the distance into
the cave, the narrowness of certain passages, rescue possibilities,
equipment, the threat of monsoon rains…), without attributing blame, the
media could reinforce its endless message that ‘no-one’ is responsible
for the state of the world. Hence, no individual and no organization is
responsible for doing anything either. Again, this message is designed
to deepen a sense of powerlessness and to make people disinclined to
act: to make them powerless observers rather than active participants in
their own fate.
As an aside, of course, it should be noted that in those contexts where
it serves elite interests to attribute blame, it certainly does so.
Hence, elites might contrive to blame Muslims, Russians, Palestinians or
the other latest target (depending on the context) for some problem.
However, in these contexts, the story of ‘blame’ is framed to ensure
that elites have maximum opportunity to act as they wish (often
militarily) while (again) engendering a sense of powerlessness among the
rest of us.
The tragedy of the Thai cave incident is that one man died and many boys
spent 17 days in a situation in which they were no doubt terrified and
suffering genuine physical privation. But elite media cynically used the
event to distract us from vitally important issues, including ongoing
grotesque violence against children in a large number of contexts, and
to reinforce ‘The Delusion “I Am Not Responsible”’.
In short, while the 12 boys and their coach were rescued after 17 days
trapped in a flooded cave in Thailand which required a sophisticated and
expensive international effort, during the same period around the
world, 850,000 children were killed by human adults. Even in Thailand
during this 17-day period, apart from those children violated and killed
as a result of sex trafficking and other violence, 119 children drowned
(at the rate of seven each day). See ‘Swim Safe: Preventing Child Drowning’.
Obviously, these children were ignored because there was no profit in
reporting their plight and helping to mobilize an international effort
to save them.
So what can we do?
Well, for a start, we can boycott the corporate media and certainly not
spend any money on it. What little truth it contains is usually of even
less value (and probably gets barely beyond a good sports report).
Instead, invest any money you previously spent on the corporate media by
supporting progressive news outlets. They might not have reported
events in relation to the Thai cave rescue but they do report on the
ongoing violence inflicted on children in more grotesque circumstances
such as the war in Yemen. They will also report and analyze important
global events from a truthful and life-enhancing perspective and will
often offer strategies for your engaged involvement.
If you want to understand why most people are suckered by the corporate
media, whose primary function is to distract and disempower us, you will
get a clear sense from reading how adults distract and disempower
children in the name of ‘socialization’. See ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.
If you want to nurture children to be powerful agents of change who will
have no trouble resisting attempts (whether by the corporate media or
any other elite agent) to distract and disempower them, you are welcome
to consider making ‘My Promise to Children’.
If you are easily conned yourself, you will vastly enhance your capacity to discriminate and focus on what matters by ‘Putting Feelings First’ which
will, among other things, restore your conscience, intuition and ‘truth
register’, vital mental functions suppressed in most people.
You are also welcome to consider participating in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’ which
maps out a fifteen-year strategy for creating a peaceful, just and
sustainable world community so that all children (and everyone else) has
an ecologically viable planet on which to live.
And for the vast range of other manifestations of violence against
children touched on above, you might consider using Gandhian nonviolent
strategy in any context of particular concern to you. See Nonviolent Campaign Strategy or Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy.
You might also consider signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’ which explicitly identifies the role of the corporate media, among many other elite agencies, in promoting violence.
Am I pleased that the 12 children and their coach in Thailand were
rescued? Of course I am. I just wish that an equivalent effort was being
made to rescue each of the 50,000 children we will kill today,
tomorrow, the next day and the day after that.