The revolt that began in Kiev, Ukraine, on November 20, 2013, was a simulated one. The subsequent conflict in the Crimea that emerged in the last couple of weeks was also a simulation. Both situations were presented to the outside world as real.
However, as the American sociologist William Isaac Thomas wrote in 1928,
It is not important whether or not the interpretation is correct -- if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.
Added on March 12, 2014
Real consequences caused by false interpretations of faked situations do not make these situations any more real.
