Do not attribute to stupidity that which can adequately be explained by greed & corruption. \------------------ The USA's foreign policy since 1950 described in one simple sentence: "The enemy of my enemy; who used to be my friend; is now also my enemy." \-------------- Many question Chinas commitments to Russia, but they are based in naked self interest. The USSA navy can block energy supplies to China, as done to Japan pre WW2. But the USSA cannot stop the overland flow of energy between Russia and China, freeing China from the USSA energy death grip. This infuriates the bankster/MIC hence their war against Russia. China knows they are next, if Russia is allowed to fall. Given how many times the Europeans have screwed China, they will never again make the mistake of trusting the western devils \---------- When I moved to the UK to study, after living abroad in Asia, growing up in Eastern Europe, and having been on holidays in almost a quarter of the world, I was having a very open mind. I never really watched TV in Romania because I had many friends and a busy school life. When I studied in Asia, the same happened, I had to study and to interact with many wonderful friends, so no TV either. Up until the age of 21 I only experienced study, travel, life with real friends and no TV (just internet for my Facebook). When I moved to the UK, as an Eastern European, it was a bit harder to make the same amount of friends and social life as I was used to. I did have my University and I studied, but in my free time I had several attempts to recreate my old social life, and I was hitting walls again and again. Firstly, people were cold and polite and that's where it all ended. Then, when I tried to have any kind of conversation, I couldn't make up how they see life in general. I was wondering, what do those people in UK think, because they don't talk about what they think, they don't discuss, they don't share ideas within their social circles. They don't talk about the world in their free time. In their free time, they already "know" what they "know". But how does one get to "know" without talking about it with anyone, without asking or learning it from other people?! It was like they all knew the same "thing" and they acted in accordance, but they never discussed it, they never mentioned it, never learned from each other. Where was the "personal opinion?". You'd be surprised, but people from less developed countries build their "personal opinions" from their own real life experience only, and they talk about it. They tell you about their family, their neighborhood, about their own life, past, future, dreams, expectations, opinions. What makes them happy, what makes them sad. In UK I never heard "OH, that's how I think UK is", or "that's how life really is", or things that I was used to exchange as a normal normal conversation. Where did that common knowledge came from?! I was many times like, how do these people get their view on life if they don't share ideas and experiences among themselves, if they don't respond to reality?! They just act funny and laugh and they know everything about the world without a single inquiry. They behaved in a way that didn't imitate the real life (in school, in parties, in clubs, in pubs, in friends meeting together, in cafes, in lecture halls, in group projects, etc), so where did that aspiration (or inspiration too) came from? That cycle of "seeing - processing - judging - learning - talking about it - sharing it - showing it - others seeing it" was missing, links were missing. After more than a year, it dawned on me that I needed to start watching TV to understand the people. I realized that maybe the TV would reveal to me what those people thought and aspired for. And I was right, after "consulting" the TV, I understood what people thought and their behavior in general made way more sense. Every day, the "News" told me exactly what people thought or feared about the world. Reality shows told me what people aspired for, what was cool or not in their point of view. I could finally see where the common knowledge came from. I couldn't have picked it up without the TV. The real people of UK were not like the "TV" ones. Yet they were aspiring for it, but were not the same. It was some kind of aspiration for something else while forgetting who you were. The reality was not in any way matched with what people were fed through the TV. Their minds were like decoding life as it was on the TV, but in reality it was something else, life was just... the real truth, the real normal natural life. I don't know how to better explain it, sorry, but I could see the "hypnosis". Reality was not like TV, yet people's minds were in TV mode all the time. "How's life?" "Oooh, look at me I can dance like Lady Gaga".