“They think it’s all over… it is now!” is, in England’s annals of football related quotes, probably only matched by “football is not a matter of life and death; it is more important than that”. Whatever the case, with most of us now recovered from just over four weeks of “the beautiful game”, we face the unfortunate reality that football is not the only activity that can be seen as a “game of two halves”.

When much attention turned to Brazil in mid-June, there were other issues begging for attention and action. There was In Nigeria the abduction by a vile group that has joined the seemingly borderless conspiracy and drive to hijack Islam for the sake of a platform for banditry. In Syria, the alliance of opponents to the Assad dynasty was starting to morph into something altogether more menacing and loathsome as masks slipped off to revealed ambitions to at any cost establish a Caliphate. In Europe, unsavoury groups in Ukraine went on a head-to-head that gave opportunity for proof that the mistrust and dislike between the world’s bigger powers had not been confined to history. Again to Africa where the relatively unknown Mano River Union (between Guinea,  Liberia and Sierra Leone) was getting a look in as the rightfully dreaded Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) was received by unbelievable “ostrichism” or shameless politicking.

In all, while displays of men chasing balls thrilled at stadia, public viewing places, private living spaces and cyberspace, there were matters begging for those with the wherewithal to keep their eyes on balls that were truly matters of life and death and could not simply be declared over by a commentator. The beautiful game was being played in beautiful settings against the background of a far from beautiful world whose affairs could be seen in two halves: one enjoying illustrations of the best that man can be while the  other was subject to the capacity for badness that the many lessons of history have been unable to eliminate. Sadly, just as we might have been tempted to think it couldn’t get much worse, we have had reminders of the depths to which we as a species are prepared to commit our superior intelligence.

People we have loved and admired have been exposed as wicked and willing enough to grievously assault the innocence and safety of children and recent statements from the Vatican suggest strongly that humanity is failing children in more ways and to greater degrees than most can imagine. Where I am going with this is the perplexing tendency of an inconsistency in our disdain when it comes to the suffering of the young and innocent people..

A few weeks ago three Jewish teenagers were abducted and brutally murdered almost certainly for what they are and hence for what they were judged as representing. The reaction from Israel was swift and the pursuit of the murderers started. In a region known for literal application of an ‘eye for an eye’, a Palestinian boy’s burnt body was found. Rockets were by now flying from Gaza which in turn had many bombs dropped on it. Innocent children were getting killed in large numbers and platitude of regret were put out alongside what were effectively warnings that the situation wasn’t about to improve. I am no expert on the conflict that was being played out here but I have seen or read enough of the now predictable escalation of the region’s tensions to make me suspect tactical victories are pursued without reference to strategic and enduring solutions. I am even tempted to think the leaderships on both sides are more than happy to go to their graves with records of victories on the battlefield that leave nothing but extremely difficult pursuits for a genuine and lasting peace. But what about the anger of the rest of us? Why the seeming acceptance of certain atrocities while others are subject to our disdain and instigate our anger? Why is it that bombs reigning down on the innocents in one place receives more indignation than similar incidents in another?

Would I be wrong in thinking most of us were brought up to see wrong as wrong with deeds not needing to be qualified by who did it or even who did it first? I am not going to pretend I lack understanding of collateral damage which has too often seen innocent people killed or left suffering. My struggle starts when such suffering starts to look more like an objective than a consequence. More confusing ensues when I see anger that looks like it is manipulated or regulated and by what to me has at times seems like a surrendering of our views and values to those of the media moguls.

After years of ardently rejecting conspiracy theories of all sorts, I cannot help feeling there was more to Britain’s phone hacking than a ruthless drive for newspaper sales. My non-scientific observation tells me of attempts by some to achieve the ability to regulate our perceptions of and reactions to situations. As bad as I see the abuse of children, I have difficulty with how the same people who express blanket revulsion when reporting these crimes somehow vary reactions to killings of the innocents. I also find my thinking drifting toward a correlation of sorts between the reaction to what are in effect atrocities and an Islamophobic tendency sweeping the media. Could It be that the anger about the rise of Islamist extremism is generating a media-induced quiet satisfaction when victims known or perceived to be Muslims?

Whenever there are incidents, I look at the headlines side-by-side with and go through social media and cannot help thinking there has been a frightening surrender of instincts to the ‘tuning’ skills of the media who now seem able to dictate when to be disgusted or accepting; when to celebrate or get angry; when to protest or just shrug shoulders. I believe this is worrying as the moral compass is getting recalibrated on the basis of the thoughts and sentiments of the few but powerful people who control the media and we don’t need to look hard to see how disturbing that could become. This media influence has even been evident in Sierra Leone where politically motivated reporting took precedence over a nation’s need for a united fight against what is potentially the most serious health crisis it has faced.

Today, Mr Putin is the man to hate for his proxy war in east Ukraine has resulted in nearly three hundred people plummeting tens of thousands feet to their deaths. Meanwhile, in another place there is a ground offensive that is killing innocent people and forcing many out of their homes, all in the name of degrading their government’s military capability. The indications are that there will be spectating of and even cheering for the invasion. How much of this we will read about, I suspect, depends on how angry or not the media people think we should get but is probably no less than if Mr Putin’s expeditionary tendency hadn’t come back to haunt him .

In the final analysis, until we get into some honest brokering of these matters, we won’t have the luxury to think it’s all over as these matter of life and death will persist to remind us in a very not beautiful way that life can get to be of two halves. The media have their agenda to get our money and then, if we let them, our instincts for our instincts govern how we vote and the media have the way we vote very much in their sights.