What the social media is all about

Since the start of the war in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the world saw the United Kingdom leading the Western World to ostensibly fight in the name of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a country not officially a member of the alliance or much more contributing to the coffers of the European Union.

The US and its poodle state in Europe to date will never understand why the continent is being brought into the abyss of nuclear catastrophe.

Is it for the cause of freedom and democracy as the neoliberals like to hanker or that behind the eagerness to plunge the continent is to revisit man’s greatest devastation of humanity?

Or is it because mankind is again being blinded by the profiteers to resuscitate their dying economy to satisfy the US military industrial complex?

US has been so successful in manipulating the social media for while it talks much about freedom, seldom did the world realize it was the US that first introduced this most precious aspect of human freedom, all because some fortunate members of our race managed to own and have the capital to systematically direct and manipulate our freedom.

It is not only freedom they curtail but limit us also on what we are going to say.

Their ownership of the social media went beyond censoring us on what we are going so say, which by logical deduction is the natural domain of the state.

The ownership of the social media is now being capitalized by the owners on what we are going to say.

The role of the fact-checkers is totally unheard of before the advent of this new medium. Their role is much dangerous than by censorship because there is in them the role of pre-empting what the individual contributor to the social media is going to say, which is essentially illegal.

Allegedly, a crime of libel is being pre-empted. However, a crime has to be committed first to make one liable for it.
To pre-empt what one has to say like playing the role of fact-checker is in fact the role of a state.

First, everybody knows that it is the owner of the social media that appoints and selects their fact-checkers.

Second, as fact-checker-owners, they have their set of prejudice on what should be allowed or not allowed, and weighing the values on what should ultimately be allowed to appear by the owner in the social media.

Third, pre-censorship is even more drastic than censorship because the contributor is being prohibited from writing and this is done not by the state but by a private entity that now takes on the cloak of owner of the social media.

Their ownership has allowed them to usurp the role of private owners to say what they have in mind, which is the purist form of freedom.

We talk much about this because it has been the West that has been talking loudly of freedom not knowing that even before Russia launched its alleged invasion of Ukraine, the US had already imposed a worldwide sanction on Russia like a ban on its state-owned television, RT.

People who have their cable station and subscribe to this channel are automatically denied from seeing RT.

The whole issue of banning RT has become complicated for it seems the tentacles of the US social media is already well entrenched in this country.

Individual subscribers to RT are visibly affected because they are the ones paying the local cable station which includes RT as one of its channels.

The local station that subscribed to this channel does not seem to mind this censorship, for it seems they are not directly affected.

In other words, the Philippines is doing the censorship for America’s giant social media outlets for free.

We are presenting this to the whole world because the US is in fact imposing a unilateralist policy on the social media.
Russian news and other social media broadcast are simply being omitted from beaming to countries to prevent them from broadcasting their interest to this country which was considered logical during the Cold War.

Today, Russian television is not only being omitted but is totally ignored. As one western journalist would comment, US would rather ban views from the other side of the fence but can tolerate fake news much that they contribute to increase circulation and muddle the issues to the intelligent understanding of the reading public.

The very concept of globalization today is being taken advantage of by foreign mass media to erase the core issue which is normally jurisdictional.

They cannot operate without a permit from the governing authority.

Take, for instance, the appointment of local editor to its publication which traditionally would require Filipino citizenship to emphasize loyalty and registration in the country’s Securities and Exchange Commission, which today is blatantly ignored.

In fact, to facilitate wider coverage, many of these foreign-operated radio and TV stations entered into some kind of partnership with local network, thereby enhancing further news coverage and promoting the interest of their countries obviously without the permission of the government.

Many believe the former owner of Twitter was tricked by Elon Musk to grab his offer of $44 billion, an offer no businessman could hardly resist.

When he attempted to back out, Twitter then threatened to sue him, not knowing that Elon had things tapped in his sleeves.

That was when he started to come out with condition like firing many executives possibly in return to buying Twitter at such a fantastic price.

Many of those who were fired could not do anything, for it seems it was the price they could do to save the company.
What many do not know, due to the power of US-fueled social media, is that Ukraine’s application for membership in NATO is the very reason why conflict is now raging in the former Soviet Republic.

Russia, at the outset, objected to Ukraine’s membership in the alliance seeing it as part of the collective conspiracy to expand eastward.

Thus, for several years since 2014, Russia has warned NATO not to embark on such expansionist scheme that would destabilize the balance of power in Eastern Europe.

Now, that war has actually commenced supposedly between Russia and Ukraine, this war has been termed by geopolitical analyst as “proxy” war for the fact that said war is actually being carried out by countries actually desirous in wanting to achieve victory through conquest, and the classic Western style of brokering the war while others are physically carrying on the costly war, unburdened by the toll and consequences of what it will take.

Physically, it is Ukraine, its land and people are the ones taking the brunt of the fighting.

The US, UK, and some of the NATO members contribute to finance the war while Russia contributes wholly its manpower and expenses to carry on the war.

This explains why the war in Ukraine has been termed proxy war because proxy war carries technical connotation.

The parties are not directly involved to raise the issue that it is not directly at war with any of the parties.

These countries now openly participate in a war by sending supplies and materials and even sending mercenaries in guise of supplying countries with defensive weapons.

Soldiers fighting in countries without declaration of war put at risk their status as mercenaries and cannot be treated as prisoners of war.

The concept of proxy war has allowed other countries to send in arms, but strictly speaking such constitute intervention which under the Geneva Convention is not allowed.

In fact, under the same convention, there is no such thing as “defensive” weapons being permitted to be exported to countries such as Ukraine.

Such technical terms as defensive weapons are now used by NATO to circumvent the stringent condition by most countries like warplanes, helicopters, precision-guided missiles with certain range and payload, radars, jamming, transmitters, devices and hand-held devices to attack low-flying aircraft and tanks to give them leeway to be allowed under the Geneva Convention.

Britons were captured while fighting for Ukraine. Their families insisted they were long-serving members of the Ukrainian military and not as mercenaries.

The UK and Ukraine have condemned the sentences for violating international laws protecting prisoners of war.
John Harding, Dylan Healy, and Andrew Hill will be tried in the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic.

The Foreign Office condemned the exploitation of civilians as mercenaries but the British government has not said anything about their involvement, except to say they were separatist rebels and using them for propaganda purposes.

What puzzles many is though UK is a member of NATO, it is not a member of the European Union.

As far as UK’s interest is concerned, UK should delineate its political interest from its economic interest.

UK’s political interest is truly limited by its economic membership, it having withdrawn from the EU.

(rpkapunan@gmail.com)