"who owns the banks and the media chains?"

The richest people, that's who. ;-)

It's mass marketing and mass media that controls the masses in North America, Riginslinger. Read the book "1984" and you will see immediately how it is done...with or without the aid of religion...only in our society it's done through the excesses of consumer marketing and media rather than through a dour, Stalinistic type of regime.

You simply control the media and the merchandise and the flow of cash. The media provides the flow of information. The public's impression of reality is formed by that flow of information.

Meanwhile, you create an indefinable and largely fictional foreign "enemy" whose location is very uncertain and who can never be eliminated, thus creating a war that will never end. This permits continual maintenance of a huge military and a huge surveillance network.

The fearful public demands protection from the mythical threats that are waved before them daily by the compliant media. This permits extension of police powers and domestic surveillance, and curtailing of civil rights.

Anyone who seriously bucks the system can be labelled a "terrorist", and be held without trial, quite possibly tortured. People are encouraged to report nonconformists and "suspicious" individuals who might be "terrorists". They are encouraged to inform on their neighbours and co-workers.

And so it goes.

All this can be done with or without using religion as a motivator. If you have a public who are easily affected by religion...as in the rural USA or in Iran...then you will use religion to control them. If you have a public who are not so inclined, as in the UK or Canada, then you don't use religion to control them, you use other common motivators.

It doesn't matter about religion, it's just one of a great many similar mind tools used to advance control over a populace.