Politics

We are subject to being affected by messages. We know this is true in advertising. Companies spend millions and millions affecting us. We are affected by volume. The more messages, the more we are affected by them.

The companies that spend the most on advertising turn the most people into customers.

Of course there is crummy advertising and clever advertising.

Trump spent years getting a well-known public face on The Apprentice. When he turned to politics, people already knew him.

He repeated his message and affected people. Biden did the same and beat Trump.

Politicians hired companies to profile people they could affect. The companies hacked into people’s profiles and delivered just the right message that would push people’s buttons.

A politician needs skill and needs to understand that people are affected by messages. The more messages the more they are affected.

Trump launched his original platform on the message of Drain The Swamp. Now on June 5 this year he has launched Swamp The Vote USA.

Now we have a dirty player in the game. He bought an internet social media company so he could tailor the algorithm to swamp the platform with messages in support of one candidate and smother messages from the other side.

He is not listening to people, he is using unfair, hidden means to affect people.

Postscript

It is not just straight consumerism or politics. Notice how bands playing on stage have made bigger and bigger displays. The bigger the display the more it burns into and affects the person.

Letters From An American

I subscribe to Letters From An American, written by Heather Cox Richards.

Because what she wrote yesterday is so relevant to what I am saying, I am repeating a chunk of it here. You can read the full article here.

Early this morning, X owner Elon Musk posted to his more than 200 million followers: “Yes, they are literally using YOUR tax dollars to import voters and disenfranchise you! It is happening right in front of your eyes. And FEMA used up its budget ferrying illegals into the country instead of saving American lives. Treason.” On Wednesday, Dana Mattioli, Joe Palazzolo, and Khadeeja Safdar of the Wall Street Journal broke the story that Musk has been financing groups with ties to Miller since 2022.

But of course, it is NOT happening in front of anyone’s eyes.

The Russia – North Korea border is at the Tumen River that opens into the Sea of Japan. China’s border is at the Friendship Bridge upstream.

The Friendship Bridge connects the Russian town of Khasan with the North Korean town of Tumangang.

To get to the open sea, Chinese goods cross into North Korea by road. Then overland to the port of Rajin further down the coast, a port that was built by the Chinese.

To reach the Sea of Japan by sea, Chinese ships have to leave from Shanghai or Dalian and travel up the strait between South Korea and Japan.

Just this summer Russia proposed that they and North Korea allow China to navigate the Tumen River to the sea.

If that was all that was proposed it wouldn’t make much difference to China. The river is too shallow to allow large ships to pass. And the Friendship bridge is too low.

But the proposal is to dredge the river to allow larger vessels to navigate it, and to demolish the Friendship Bridge. And presumably to rebuild it but higher to allow large ships to pass.

Large ships would include the Chinese Navy. If the project happens it would mean a strategic change in the region.

I’ve been thinking about the interception of the drones and missiles from Iran. What would have happened or might have happened if America, Britain, France had not stepped in? What might have happened if the Jordanians had not allowed the use of their airspace? Then what might the result have been?

And I’m trying to picture it from the point of view of the Iranians who must have thought that a good number of their drones and missiles would get through. Perhaps they did not expect that the Americans and the French and the British and the Jordanians would all coordinate efforts to stop the rockets and missiles and drones.

And so the question might be what might have led them to think that the Americans, the British and the French would not have it all coordinated and worked out and immediately do what was needed?

And it might be we can link it back to the killing in the aid truck of the food aid workers by Israel in error.

And President Biden’s response, which went from criticism to threat.

My feeling is that President Biden is a politician, by which I mean that he understands people.

He understands when he can say something and then simply jettison it in the face of something else later on.

He understands people and he understands how to give out messages.

I don’t think in all the time of his presidency he’s ever put a foot wrong in terms of giving out messages.

So I wonder whether Iran simply read America wrong.

That is, they assumed that he, President Biden, would be so annoyed with Israel that he, the United States, would not come to Israel’s aid and that therefore Britain and France would not and that therefore Jordan would not. And that that was the miscalculation by the Iranians.

There is a counter-argument that the intention of the Iranians was to draw out the truth of the affiliations of the Americans, British, and French – and perhaps even more specifically of the Jordanians. Unless the ordnance that was directed at Israel is small potatoes for Iran, then it was an expensive gambit.

I can’t see it as a gambit so far as the USA, Britain, or France are concerned. If anything, the news seems to be that the moral outrage of anti Israel protesters is wearing thin with a lot of people. But Jordan – that may be a weak point, although whether the whole of Iran’s gambit turned on this? Maybe.

The Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic is an autonomous enclave of Azerbaijan. It is separated from the rest of Azerbaijan and completely surrounded by other countries. It shared a tiny sliver of border with Turkey on the west.

It was formerly owned by what was then Persia (now Iran) and then in the early 1800s after the Russian-Persian war, by Russia.

That changed again with the 1917 Russian revolution when it was contested by Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Fast forward to 1990 when it declared independence from the USSR to show solidarity with the nationalist movement in Azerbaijan, and the following year it declared itself the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic within the newly independent Republic of Azerbaijan.

That decision to ally with Azerbaijan resulted in conflicts and cross-conflicts with Armenia, Turkey, and Russia – who all had an interest in the region.

Nagorno-Karabakh

Nagorno-Karabakh is another region close by, internationally recognised as being part of Azerbaijan but run as an independent state by the Armenian ethnic majority. Not being a country, it isn’t marked on most maps and I have coloured it fuchsia on this Google map.

The Lachin Corridor

In a statement to the United Nations on 18 September 2005, the Foreign Minister of Azerbaijan, Elmar Mammadyarov, said “It is the issue of communication of the Armenians living in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan with Armenia and that of the Azerbaijanis living in the Nakhchivan region of Azerbaijan with the rest of the country. We suggest the using of the so-called Lachin corridor – which should be called “Road of Peace” – by both sides in both directions provided that security of this road will be ensured by the multinational peacekeeping forces at the initial stage”

Update 2022

On 22 Dec, Michael Carpenter of the US Government published a long thread on Twitter. One tweet was a warning about a “A military flare-up in Nagorno-Karabakh if Prime Minister Pashinyan does not cater to corrupt Russian interests in Armenia.”

Update September 2023

The BBC and other news outlets are reporting today about demonstrations that have been taking place in Nagorno-Karabakh’s regional capital Stepanakert. The demonstrators are demanding the reopening of the Lachin Corridor linking the Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia

For nearly nine months the corridor has been blocked by Azerbaijani authorities, resulting in shortages of food, medication, hygiene products and fuel.

What a mess.