Russia and Ukraine

[Leonardo17]

Getting fed up with a lot of this rubbish. This isn’t a complicated war: Russia invaded Ukraine. Large swaths of the world have condemned the invasion and are assisting in Ukraine’s defense.

There really isn’t a lot more to it than that. Ukraine cozying up to NATO doesn’t justify the invasion. Neither does alleged Ukrainian corruption, the ‘de-nazification’ of Ukraine, the establishment of a Greater Russia - nothing.

Jeezus pleezus, this isn’t rocket surgery. It’s pretty clear who the bad guys are.

Boru

   It is simple indeed. In fact, the very principle of democratic rule relies on the ability of the ordinary man to understand the main issues of the world that are usually very simple in nature.
   But since the 1930’s, human beings have been able to apply scientific methodology and the discoveries in areas like sociology and psychology in a bid to be able to control the behavior of human beings and in particular the behavior of masses. This technology is called propaganda. (There is a very good 1989 book by Noam Chomsky on that called “Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies”.) In the 2000’s I watched a documentary with an elderly German Woman who was reporting how as a young women she had attended one of the public speeches of Adolf Hitler. The woman was saying ‘If in that moment, somebody had asked ‘who is ready to be immediately decapitated for our Führer’ any one of us would have jumped on the stage and showed his/her readiness to die for the Führer”. So As Albert Camus puts in in his book called “The Plague”, “The pest microbes are still present in some deep corner of our closets, waiting for the suitable time to come alive again”.
   And I am making this anecdote simply to remind everyone that this propaganda technology has evolved. If I am wrong, than how did they get a person like Donald Trump to be elected as the president of the U.S.? I am not going to elaborate on this methods, but one of these methods is to blur the mind of the opponent when you know you are unable to win them to your own side. And the method for this is the method of spreading pseudo realities. These are alternate realities that will not have an entirely convincing effect on the target population but will cause them to have doubts on some basic realities.
   I also agree that the effects of this aren’t going to be too great either. But these will still mess with our minds. Because, yes the issue is quite simple. But there are so many details, like Europe being dependent on Russian Gas, the economic and political instabilities in the UK, China’s role as a potential ally of Russia, my regular person of a leader who has just promessed to make me a gas hub of Europe like Kuwait of the UAE (I just cannot stop dreaming about it, in 5 year time I will be a sheikh with 5 Rolls-Royce or so…). So What I mean is, there are many interlinked subjects, and for un-educated minds like us (meaning people who do not have a college degree on political science or international relations), each one of these subjects is seen as a fertile ground where propaganda can be added to.
   They have many means for that now. Social media in particular. In my news channels I see for instance how they take some Kremlin images from 2015, put these videos in different context, put them on twitter, spread them and say something like “The Glorious Russian army’s most sophisticated Armata Tank is 2 hours away from Kiev” (for instance).
   So even if you don’t believe it, it will create unnecessary cluster in your mind and you may find yourself pondering on issues that aren’t even real while the real factual events that are truly happening are right there in front of your eyes and you don’t get to see them. Or at least that’s my theory on the subject. So my mind is a sacred temple. Just as I choose the most interesting books of the writers who have received many recommendations by well-known publishing houses etc. to read during the weekend, I prefer watch and read news channels that are references in their own area. I occasionally read other newer and less experienced news sources that I know to be independent and trustworthy sources but when I do that I will usually double-check these information with the more deep rooted news sources of the world.
   In a nutshell: My mind is not a garbage can in which anyone can decide to throw anything simply because they want to. I also try to keep is short and focused. Simple, basic and accurate information that is limited in both content and length seems to be the best option for me.