Peter Rhodes on cyber war, sneaky war and propaganda in the 21st century
It's war, comrades, but not as we know it. The good news is that the conflict in Ukraine is unlikely to cost a single British life.
The bad news? If the Kremlin unleashes its formidable powers of cyber and sneaky warfare, we may suddenly find we have no money in our bank accounts, our phones are silent, all NHS hospitals are closed for stocktaking and, according to the Land Registry, our homes are now the property of a Mr Ivor Biggun of St Petersburg.
Oh, and there's something sticky on your front door handle.
As the ripples spread from Kiev, the received wisdom is that China may be emboldened by the West's disunited response and think, yup, this is a good time to invade Taiwan. But who's to say the Uighur Islamic minority in western China may not look at the fragmentation of Ukraine and think, yup, this is a good time to break free from China? A lesson of history is that when stuff happens, we tend to be looking the wrong way.
Meanwhile, RT, the Moscow-funded TV station, pumps out the worst sort of propaganda, the sort that spreads your enemy's message but does it in your own language. A succession of British apologists for the Kremlin on RT tell us that Putin is solely concerned with the welfare of the people living in the breakaway eastern flank of Ukraine. Yeah, right, as they say in Kiev.
It's a free country and if you wish to watch RT, by all means do. But when it talks, in all seriousness of “Putin's peace-keeping mission,” be aware that if Putin were caught machine-gunning babies in the streets, it would still be a peace-keeping mission.
And now, the latest absolutely genuine and unbiased report from us at RT on the glorious and essentially peaceful peace-keeping mission in peaceful Western Russia (formerly Ukraine): “Tell us, typical citizen, how do you see events?” “Well, speaking as a typical citizen, I am delighted to be liberated by the peace-loving Russian commandos of the heroic Berserk Battalion who have saved us from the genocidal Ukrainian crypto-Nazis, although to be honest with you, we'd never heard about the genocide until Comrade Putin mentioned it last week. Please stop hitting me.”
At times like this, with war in Europe and the peace of the world in the balance don't you find yourself asking one crucial question: What would Jeremy Corbyn do now?
