InterOuts

European Maskirovka, Cognitive Dissonance, Projection & World War 3

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The year 2024 is here and still there is no solution on the horizon concerning the conflict raging in Ukraine. During this intense martial year, NATO and Ukraine have promised to their respective populations, a massive counter offensive supposed to sever the Russian troops they are facing and swiftly roll to the sea of Azov. From where these forces could threaten Crimea and subsequently reclaim the peninsula.

This narrative (Because it was one as it was not based on realistic projections) is promptly rebuked by the results of the counter offensive which is nothing less than a complete failure, delivering absolutely no results. Tremendous damage has been inflicted on the battered Ukrainian army and they have not even been able to reach the first line of Russian defense. For the majority of the European population and for those who receive their information from main stream media, the failure of the overhyped counter offensive came as a surprise. For those who since the ‘Ghost of Kiev’ knew better, the Ukrainian debacle was inevitable.

If the Western population still has hope for a Ukrainian victory, they are also entitled to have an explanation for the failure of their intelligence services to correctly assess the situation. The people of the west have the right to demand from their press why clearly no one saw that coming and on the contrary, why numerous journalists of the main stream media keep on to this day pretending that Ukraine is on a path to victory. Delusional is what jumps to mind, and undeniably, a whole lot of people are. However, it is a rather a cheap explanation which reveals nothing about the ‘Why?’.

Those who took their information from the ‘alternative media’ can today find some feeling of vindication in the ‘I told you so!’ moment, those same people have been however mind blown by the attitude of the majority of the population which seemed to swallow painlessly the most grotesques absurdities, never even once contemplating questioning the narrative. The war in Ukraine is far from over, this conflict has and is still driving us dangerously towards nuclear deflagration and the risk is even greater now than during the infamous Cuban Missile Crisis.

If we want to have a reasonable chance to see the end of the next year, we may have to seriously question our sources of information and each of us adopt a certain measure of control before jumping to conclusions or giving total support to a country which could well be the absolute contrary to what it has been previously depicted to be.

The ‘Gurus’ of the ’alternative media’, people like Brian Berletic, Garland Nixon, Alex Christoforou or Alexander Mercouris have given to their audiences very reliable analysis and astonishingly accurately predicted the situation in which Ukraine finds itself today. Where they do arguably less well, is providing the reasons why the population of Europe or the west in general have been so easily fooled or why most Western Journalists have been repeating proven lies and in many cases, still repeat them today. To be fair, Alex Christoforou and consorts have made several propositions that could explain this state of affairs. Let us go through some of them to determine if one is the direct cause or if the inaptitude of the western population to think properly, is a cumulative effect of several of the proposed reasons.

(Cognitive dissonance), Wikipedia can be trusted sufficiently (In this case) to give a reliable description of this state which is a common and natural experience and not a disorder. Wiki writes that in the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the perception of contradictory information and the mental toll caused by it. Relevant items of information include a person's actions, feelings, ideas, beliefs, values, and things in the environment. Cognitive dissonance is typically experienced as psychological stress when persons participate in an action that goes against one or more of those things. According to this theory, when two actions or ideas are not psychologically consistent with each other, people do all in their power to change them until they become consistent. The discomfort is triggered by the person's belief clashing with new information perceived, wherein the individual tries to find a way to resolve the contradiction to reduce their discomfort.

It was a child’s game to sell Russia as a baddy to the western population, the latter has been subjected to more than half a century of Hollywood propaganda which has depicted Russia as a perpetually cold place where the central government has a clear preference for military solutions to problems, is untrustworthy, corrupted, has no respect for human rights and even less respect for its civilian population. The leaders of Russia are said to be paranoid and cherish cloak and dagger intrigues. One must not forget either, the terrible Russian mafia or the vivid description of the hell lived by inmates in Russian detention centers. We have ‘learnt’ to know that Russian technology was bulky, unreliable and definitively backwards compared to the western military hardware. Before performing in the United States, the South African comedian Trevor Noah had a sketch where he explains that the Indian cinema industry otherwise known as Bollywood, was really inept at producing decent and believable baddies and to that effect only a Russian could play the role of a convincing murderous and tyrannical baddy. A sketch meant for a good laugh but which says a lot! The initial shock (for some) of the Russian invasion (special military operation if you prefer) confirmed to people the solidity and veracity of their beliefs. We heard an awful lot about the ‘unprovoked’ aggression from Russia which squared perfectly with their supposed attraction for military solutions, we heard about the massacre of Bucha (A lot less now), we were shown the Russian retreat from Kiev glorifying the Ukrainian army armed by western weapons infinitely superior to anything that Russian technology could produce and deploy on the battlefield. The over ecstatic main stream press whose enthusiasm can only be compared to the thunder of applause across European Parliaments when they were offered an authentic very modern reincarnation of Winston Churchill in the person of V.Zelenski, President of Ukraine. All of this meant to many that supporting Ukraine was probably the right thing to do.

Then contradicting information started to trickle slowly but surely in. Angela Merkel, Francois Hollande and Petro Poroshenko respectively the heads of Germany, France and Ukraine during the Minsk Agreement, admitted that they lied to the Security Council, to their population but above all to Russia, when all of them said that the Minsk Agreements were only designed to buy time for arming Ukraine and that there was no intention since its inception to ever implement it. This astonishing revelation is a true bomb, a European diplomatic Maskirovka aiming to fool Russia as well as the international community about the true military and political intentions of Ukraine.

Some people would argue that one does not have to look further for Russia to invoke cassus belli, how does someone intelligent recognising the enormity of the situation cope with this information? Have we not been told that it is Russia the liar? How could it be that it is European leaders who are revealed to be devious? Should we remind our readers that the Minsk Agreement is enshrined in International Law? How many among us understand that these three ex heads of state have a direct responsibility in causing the worst war on the European continent since the end of World War Two and should in a normal world, face an international criminal court? The main stream media of course bears the main responsibility for not bringing this information to the public by simply not covering the statements or doing so in the most mundane way. There are those who justified the actions of those ex European leaders by pointing that Ukraine was only trying to get back its lost territories. Suddenly the unprovoked aggression takes on another dimension. There are numerous other factors that can show that Russia was effectively provoked into this conflict like the orchestrated coup against an elected Ukrainian government in 2014, coup openly supported by officials of the United States who even participated in the selection of the post-coup Ukrainian government. Hammered as evidence of Russian barbarity at the onset of the conflict, fewer people speak now about the massacre of Bucha because it could well be that this one was another false flag. However quite early in the war, it was recognised (albeit reticently) by some western commentators that the Russian military was avoiding as much as possible to hit civilian targets, others were forced to admit that it was effectively the case when faced with what Gaza is subjected to today from the hands of the Israeli military. How to fit that one with the legendary cruelty of the Russian army? Certainly they must be short supply of ammunition and missiles unless they would have targeted the towns indiscriminately and relentlessly though there could not be another forbidden reason, a humanitarian one. And like two plus two together is four, the main stream media assures us since day one, that the Russians are effectively short in artillery shells as well as in missiles, irrelevant of the fact that Russian production of shells has surged and there is no sign of it abating in a near future. They are still pounding the Ukrainians while Russian missiles are striking strategic enemy positions on almost a daily basis. Nevertheless, there is not one week passing without an article in MSM trumpeting that Russia has run out of missiles. Recently an astonished western public learned that it is Ukraine suffering from shell hunger and flirting with shell starvation for the 2024 horizon.

And if those examples are not sufficient, what about this sentence? “Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country”. Have you not heard it on and on, justifying the sanctions supposed to put the Russian bear on its knees? Freshly from a visit to Ukraine, the late senator McCain coined this famous quote on CNN’s State of the Union show. As everyone who has followed geopolitics in the past decade knows, Mc Cain was viscerally Russophobic and he did actively participate in the events on the Maidan in Ukraine in 2014 encouraging the protestors to take action against a democratically elected government, needless to say a blatant meddling in the internal affairs of a sovereign state. You of course would have believed in such a catchy quote, it even solidified what you knew about Russia (mainly from Hollywood), furthermore, the non-elected European official insisted and guaranteed that the Russian economy was in ‘tatters!’. You remember this euphoric (some would say with insight, hysterical) lady announcing in triumph the death sentence of the Russian Economy supposedly overwhelmed by the imposed sanctions? Of course you do and of course you would have conveniently omitted to read this article of Forbes, six years ago published on the 6th July 2017 and titled ‘Sorry Senator McCain, Russia No Longer Just 'A Gas Station Masquerading As A Country’. If you did, you would not have experienced a degree of cognitive dissonance today when you learn that the Russian economy is diverse and booming and that the sanctions have not only backfired but they are now biting the European hands that have created them spreading recession and austerity in Europe. What about the vaunted NATO Hardware? The Russians as you know and accepted long ago are poorly equipped mainly with old ineffective Soviet era hardware. Your ‘natural’ experience of cognitive dissonance must have been intense in front of this place they call the ’Bradley Square’, littered with destroyed American armoured vehicles of the same name. What was the most difficult to explain to yourself, the Bradleys? The burning German Leopard tanks along the front or the death trap called the CAESAR? (A wheeled self-propelled howitzer sent by the French to the Ukrainians) We could continue this list on and on but cognitive dissonance is not the only factor that has been put forward to explain the reaction of a supposedly educated public.

Projection is another terminology often heard on the alternative media, in psychology Projection is a process of displacing one’s own feelings, thoughts, or behaviors onto someone or something else. Although it is a positive process as being the base of empathy, in its malignant form, it is a defence mechanism in which the ego defends itself against disowned and highly negative parts of the self by denying their existence in themselves and attributing them to others, breeding misunderstanding and causing untold interpersonal damage. Psychological Projection can be horribly destructive and define the way that confused journalists and misinformed politicians have coped all along this conflict and the examples illustrating it use are legion, here’s some of them. We already spoke about the supposed imminent total depletion of the Russian missile stockpile when in fact it is Ukraine facing this problem. Russia is an authoritative state with no or little tolerance for opposition. Only a total fanatic can pretend that the Russian Federation is a paradise where all the democratic principles and human rights are thoroughly enforced and respected. However, Russians in general do not suffer more from the non-respect of their human rights than the average citizen of the European Union and many would argue that in fact, they face less violation of their rights. Ukraine claimed to be a beacon of democracy and has been exposed as a country with rampant corruption, a country which abolished the Russian language as an official one thus depriving part of its citizens their undeniable rights. Ukraine has outlawed the main opposition political formation even accusing them of treason. The President of Ukraine has proclaimed that the country would not be called to vote until the cessation of the hostilities which will send doubt on his legitimacy in a country whose government is sending thousands of men to their death on a monthly basis. Zelenski cannot ignore that its two main backers, the United States and the United Kingdom have had elections even in wartime. Winston Churchill, the man to whom Zelenski has been abundantly unjustifiably compared, even lost an election at the end of the Second World Conflict while he was at the peak of his popularity in the world. Ukraine is in fact a mockery of democracy, tying people to lampposts for popular justice to take place. Ukraine indulges itself in extraterritorial killings, targeting journalists and those it considers as a threat. Here again it would be impossible to list all the violations of democratic principles by the Ukrainian State, non of these however are attributed to Ukraine but in a text book example of Psychological Projection, these nefarious traits are said to plague the Russian society.

More projections? The Russian army is throwing poorly armed human waves undettered by the enormous human losses. Actually, there is no evidence at all that either the Federation of Russia or the Ukrainian armed forces have used human wave tactics which are arguably highly unproductive. The articles that have appeared on main stream media speaking about human waves were only an exercise of propaganda with no evidence whatsoever of this happening on the battlefield. Here again, one can spend hours with abundantly detailed occurrences of psychological projection during this fratricidal conflict but for the sake of sanity, we will mention only the last one making the rounds. In this one, Vladimir Putin is desperate for a cease fire as he cannot get out of the so called stalemate on the battlefront. The western media also hammer the fantasy that the battered Ukrainian army has successfully destroyed 80 percent of the Russian armed forces as one of the main reasons motivating the Russian President. The supposed success attributed to Ukraine is so fantastic that we will not insult the intelligence of anyone debating the matter. Let’s say ‘From the Start’, that no one knows at this very moment to what extent the Kremlin is interested in a cease fire and on what terms, but one thing is certain, it is the west and mainly the United States who are desperate for a ceasefire before the next US Presidential election, so desperate that they are almost blackmailing Zelenski so that he engages in negotiations. There is no doubt that we will encounter many more cases of projection until finally the conflict is over, but let’s examine another psychological unbalance which is afflicting more and more commentators with the spectre of the approaching debacle.

It may well be that the end of the year holidays and the ‘magic’ of Christmas has helped to you avoid being a victim of a cranium meltdown. Slowly, albeit with extreme pain, you were able to swallow with your hard earned Christmas pudding some few facts that we will examine without further Ado.

The Ukrainian Counter Offensive was a total failure, point blank. The west has no way to out produce the Russian shell or missile production in the foreseeable future. You finally reluctantly accepted that Ukraine will not liberate ‘Crimea’…ever. Finally, you came to terms with President Barack Obama who said( I never knew he was capable of such intellectual prowess and first heard it from A. Mercouris) that “in Ukraine or more prosaically in this region Russia will always have escalatory dominance”. You are not a military expert and even less a geopolitical hotshot but you can at the bare minimum count with your ten fingers and add two plus two which will lead you to the inevitable conclusion that this war in Ukraine is sort of… unwinnable. Congratulations, you finally made it. Unfortunately for you the relief will be short lived because with absolute astonishment, you are reading in the press that even knowing and partly acknowledging these facts that you so masterly uncovered, your leaders are proposing as a solution to send more money to the corrupt Ukrainian Government while hawkish figures are proposing to send more weapons to the battered nation. Europe is throwing its financial reputation in the dustbin of history by stealing Russian assests that it had previously illegally frozen but still they want more war. How can it be explained? Do not panic, you do not need to book an emergency appointment to your psychiatrist or the local charlatan as you are totally right, it is in effect your political leaders who are being irrational which is apparently provoked by what behavioral scientists define as the escalation commitment which ‘ is a human behavior pattern in which an individual or group facing increasingly negative outcomes from a decision, action, or investment nevertheless continue the behavior instead of altering course. The actor maintains behaviours that are irrational, but align with previous decisions and actions.’ Some readers would have recognised this pattern as the sunk cost fallacy, a related term used by economists and well known in casinos and gaming parlours. During the Vietnam War, a letter was sent from George Wildman Ball (American Diplomat and Banker) who wrote to President Lyndon Johnson to explain to him the predictions of the war outcome: The decision you face now is crucial. Once large numbers of U.S. troops are committed to direct combat, they will begin to take heavy casualties in a war they are ill equipped to fight in a non cooperative if not downright hostile countryside. Once we suffer large casualties, we will have started a well-nigh irreversible process. Our involvement will be so great that we cannot—without national humiliation—stop short of achieving our complete objectives. Of the two possibilities, I think humiliation would be more likely than the achievement of our objectives—even after we have paid terrible costs. It makes it more understandable that many facing those ‘Sunk Costs’ now double down on their commitment but it also means that the probability that tomorrow, we face a wider conflict with greater existential risks.

If those psychological explanations raise the veil in a certain way by giving some very humane reasons to otherwise very irrational reactions, it does not explain however why the information was flawed to start with. In other words, the narrative about Ukraine itself does not come from any mistake of interpretation but a patiently built strategy and the people who are behind it are those ultimately responsible for the human carnage and the economic troubles we are facing today. How did we come to that? Whatever are the answers to this question, they are as multiple and exotic as the psychological ones but one fact remains, it is time that we tell the public in general that they too bear a great deal of responsibility which comes with their hard won rights. Neglecting those, social, civil, political and cultural obligations because they are as boring as they can be, gives a free hand to unscrupulous and poorly educated politicians and journalists…that is how it has come to be.

Final Note: “Contrary to what I used to do when writing an article, I did not support this one by a panoply of links coming from ‘experts’ to validate my arguments, but the redaction of an Editorial allows you some freedom in that sense and having done so constantly for years one can legitimately take a break. I have to confess that I broke my resolutions for the New Year in this very first article, yes I did it again! I used Wikipedia as reference to the ire of many who work with me but I swear I will amend as I do genuinely think that Wikipedia carry a load of genuine and science worthy information and undeniably is very easy to access. But unfortunately Wikipedia is plagued now with what appear to be an increasing amount of unverified or un-updated information, worse it seems that Wikipedia does sometimes have a one sided approach concerning subject as various as, Science, Politics or Military which is obviously intolerable for an Encyclopaedia with such a planetary reach. But the intent to this final note is the much necessary self-questioning that one has to do after this kind of work subsequently asking to oneself “… And if I was not after all the victim of all this Freudian Dissonance mambo jumbo?” . For one thing the realities and actual conditions on the battlefield vindicate my views and if between 2015 and 2022 my colleagues and I numerously voiced and wrote that we thought that the western allies had no intention to implement the Minsk Agreements, it was only guess work in what others could describe at this time as a projection case. But since then we were vindicated again when the truth came from the horses mouth when Merkel, Hollande and Poroshenko admitted that much. If there would be a cognitive dissonance that I would be susceptible to be a victim of is the so called ‘massacre of Bucha’ because this is the only case that I have not been able to have a final opinion because the only information available comes from the Ukrainians and blurry satellites pictures delivered by their backers. I do not say that Russian soldiers are incapable of such a horror, (Ultimately history has constantly proven that any man can be a disgrace to his so called humanity) what I imply however is my incapacity to collect evidence to formulate a concrete opinion it also shows the insanity of accusation of war crimes or an attempt to punish them during an ongoing conflict. Having made that clear I think that this Editorial has come to its rightful end. My only hope for the year 2024 is that we all see the end of this folly and let this end not be in the middle of radioactive ashes.

PS. there is something that the author of these lines cannot get around. If the Swedish kings, the Polish Barons, Napoleon and Hitler despite all their might were not able to defeat the Russians, how could you seriously think that a senile Biden, a confused Macron, allied to a comedian President would succeed?