In his letter-to-the-editor, St. Albert Gazette, April 9, Kenneth Kully doesn't seem to understand the nature of brainwashing. It is not directed by an organization or country to people outside its sphere, but those within it. The term and method was first used by the Catholic church to solidify its position within its own adherent group, and not directed towards confirmed heretics.
People are not brainwashed by foreign powers unless captured and subjected to various controls that often include sensory deprivation, but by the system in which they have lived, usually from a young age, to which they are accustomed and unquestioningly accept. It has to do with the need for many to feel good rather than do good, and to lazily slough off investigation for themselves. It has to do with the need for some to feel superior to other groups, and favoured by “God.”
The way things are going, where powerful countries twist or make up domestic and international law to suit themselves as they spy on their own citizens, we should be more discriminating about what we hear in the popular media.
It's a small, economically integrated world and many a war has been launched on lies and misinformation for the advantage of large Western corporations and in the name of privatization, the new god. That is the crux of the trouble in Ukraine which is ripe for plundering by the WB and IMF.
If the West rejects Russia, Russia can go where it's wanted within the BRICS nations, Brazil, India, China, South Africa, and Venezuela and Iran. A currency other than the dollar within this block will undermine the dollar and its reserve currency status, the actual reason for the invasion of Iraq: Saddam Hussein proposed oil trade in Iraqi currency, not the American dollar: repeat, Libya.
I believe British Columbia is already trading in Chinese yuan. We may not like where this is going, but maybe we should learn to live with it.
Preventing an economic collapse and world war is a worthy and moral objective to which we should dedicate ourselves. Putin does not deserve all the bad press, especially when compared with U.S. presidents since, and including, George H.W. Bush.
Have we already forgotten the first gulf war, the second, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, the unfair treatment of Iran and Syria? The trouble-making and hijacking of democracy in Egypt?
It is clear to me who is brainwashed here. The cruel treatment of the helpless citizens of foreign countries on some pretext or other, including supposed humanitarian intervention in a mess we ourselves have engineered, is unacceptable, and we should not be cajoled into thinking it is.
Fair accommodation to other nations and consistent policy is sound policy.
Doris Wrench Eisler, St. Albert
