According to some who believe in signs and prophecies, based on the ancient Mayan calendar, the world may have ended by the time you read this, in which case you won’t be reading it! Maybe those people know a thing or two because, given the current state of play, would it come as a great surprise if the world were to actually come to an end?

But, regardless of any prophecy, I can guarantee right now that the world will shortly be coming to an end – for many people. US-backed conflict in Syria will fuel even more death and destruction in that unfortunate country. The US is banking on it. Where would its plans be to dominate the world if it could not rely on killing and brutality brought about by stoking ethnic and sectarian conflict? Such tactics have already caused hundreds of thousands of deaths in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan. The strategy persists and the killing goes on.

What is happening in Syria at this moment is symptomatic of a criminality that too often goes unquestioned, that is too often regarded as normal and thus acceptable thanks mainly to the mainstream media. People have been softened up to accept barbarity as normal and thus as acceptable by a global corporate media that takes as fact whitewashed official statements and press releases justifying militarism and consequent mass murder by the US government, the British government or any other number of governments.

The result is that this criminality pervades all aspects of life in 2012.

Thanks to a toothless mainstream media, it is regarded as normal and thus acceptable that the international system of trade and finance has allowed capital to be shifted around the globe at ease, resulting in big profits and environmental degradation, easy money and cheap labour, private gain and public havoc. All of this is done according to the warped rationale of the market, supported by dogma masquerading as economic theory.

It is regarded as normal and thus acceptable that the food and pharmaceuticals industries work to sicken and treat us and that ‘big oil’ works hand in glove with agribusiness to impose a system of water intensive, chemical-industrial agriculture at the expense of biodiversity and environmental sustainability.

US militarism is implemented on behalf of bankers and any other number of corporate interests and is carried out under the lie of ‘humanitarianism’ or the ‘war on terror’. The profiteering nuclear energy and resource extraction industries are destroying democracy and placing people and environments in jeopardy in India.

The mainstream media serves to make barbarity acceptable.

Governments are working overtime to attack and deceive their populations on behalf of rich corporations, which have succeeded in bending the machineries of state and media to their will. The end-result is diminishing democracy, the increasing influence of international finance, the destruction of local economies, science pressed into the service of a worldwide arms industry, endless conflict over finite resources and unnecessary suffering.

There is an alternative and it entails debunking the myth that the endless pursuit of high GDP growth on the back of increased power for the market, speculators and huge corporate concerns is how we define normality. The current system is not only ecologically destructive and fuels and relies on perpetual conflict, but wrongly privileges urban over rural and promotes the excessive consumption of energy to engage in unnecessary work to produce unnecessary goods that have a built-in planned obsolescence. This socially divisive, wasteful and unsustainable system is tied to an image of the world laid down by powerful transnational corporations and which is translated into policies by the IMF, WTO, World Bank and national governments.

This is the current state of play. It’s become matter of fact. It’s become acceptable.

It’s also quite normal that 130 countries have recognised opposition forces in Syria as the legitimate ‘government’ there, even though the US, NATO, oil rich Gulf states and Israel have done their damnedest to interfere in the workings of a sovereign state in order to create civil war and bolster the position of the said opposition. It’s quite normal that many of those 130 countries only support such tactics because not to do so would incur the bullying of the US in terms of economic, military and political aid or support being cut or other pressures and sanctions being applied. And the mainstream media regards this as constituting the will of the ‘international community’, of ‘independent’ sovereign states acting according to conscience.

Where would we be without such a media? There are many examples from across the world of how we could address the problems we currently face and of how we could challenge what is spoon-fed to us as ‘normality’.

Unfortunately, those who comprise the US-led military-financial-industrial complex and who control and own the corporate media have no interest in solutions. From Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and General Electric to BP, Shell and others, they seek to maintain the current system at all costs.

And that entails seeking to impose their warped version of normality through media propaganda and the barrel of a gun, the attack of a drone and all illegal means necessary. Those who refuse to cave in to US-led hegemony could well face a similar fate as Syria. You don’t need to refer to the Mayan calendar to know for some the end could be near. The message from the US is that it will be – if you fail to fall into line.