Washington's War Part VIII - Narrative Collapse.

Desperately Seeking Exit Strategies - with Honour, with PsyOps. Panoptic Society.

US Lieutenant General Bierman recently affirmed that US Forces have been, for several years, preparing the Armed Forces of The Ukraine (AFU) for conflict with Russia while US NATO leaders simultaneously appeared to have an interest in peace negotiations concerning the attacks on the Eastern Ukrainian Provinces, recently admitted as a stalling tactic. The Ukraine is now being obliterated under industrial scale artillery fire and missile attacks.

This painting by the Ukrainian realist painter Volodymyr Orlovsky, 1842-1914, depicts a Ukrainian landscape and a Ukraine from a different time and one that no longer exists. There is little evidence that war planners consider such things. "To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire and where they make a desert, they call it peace" - attributed to Gaius Tacitus, Roman Historian, 56–117 AD.

Content Warning:

This essay, as with all prior essays, addresses the Capital Affairs of State and so deals with war and death, injustice and inequitable outcomes, the sorrows and miseries of those generally distant and deliberately suppressed, the ambitions of the ambitious in their pursuit of interests conveyed within the dress costume of the common interest, the bearing of false witness by The Political Class against recalcitrant foreign leaders who seek to pursue unapproved domestic national interests, the loss of privilege by the privileged as geo-political power and fortunes shift, the evasion of justice by evasive, iniquitous and unindictable war criminals masquerading as a legitimate leadership beneath the veil of a faux democracy, the commission of high crimes and misdemeanors by presidents, prime ministers and commissioners in the pursuit of economic, financial and political goals that place their nations and national interests at risk while leaving in their wake a trail of outcomes diametrical to repeatedly stated intentions, presented always as beneficial or at least anodyne yet contraindicated by other states' responses in allegedly intending to resort to the unjustified use of devastating weapons including nuclear weapons and so if any of this subject matter is likely to be found upsetting, distressing, disconcerting and otherwise incongruent with popular narratives and personal beliefs and the pervasive media messaging of high integrity mainstream broadcasters or otherwise not likely to instill a sense of detached Eastern equanimity and irrational calm, one's attention may be safely directed to the sixteen or so romantic novels and other short stories of Irish paperback writer, the late Maeve Binchy.

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Sections: Of Present Arrangements / Ukraine Narrative Collapse / Panoptic Society / Psychological Operations / Schizophrenic Society / End Note 1: Eve of Destruction - Barry McGuire. To be read in sequence. Feel free to reproduce, in part or full and to use in one’s own publications and communications. Free to subscribe.

>>> Of Present Arrangements <<<

In that ongoing nightmare that is a loss of Geo-political and Geo-economic dominance wherein they have nothing to counter the BeiJing One Belt Road World Economic Trade Global Project, with the powerhouse economies of Russia and The Global South signing on, The Washington Masters of Present Arrangements will no longer be kicking their geo-political can of legitimate external competitive challenges, in their universe read “threats”, down that metaphorical foreign policy road, their road to nowhere as they now flag with recent visibly standout events that The American Power Elite will break and destroy not just the principles on which their globalized economic order rested but also any foreign physical infrastructure and countries to retain their presumed leading position, always fraudulently pitched as a force for good in the world while simultaneously emphasizing American interest - their interests.

There can be little doubt in recognizing that the US contrived platform of post-World War II arrangements no longer serves the self-serving interests of Washington Power Elite interests, that they cannot maintain dominance in world affairs, that they can no longer easily subordinate all other countries, governments and leaderships, by means one way or the other, and demonstrably the other, and so have they decided that they want new arrangements, their New World Order and the only way they can achieve this is to break all existing arrangements. Their unshakeable belief - that they can and in the limit this rests upon their armed forces having Escalation Dominance and only them.

Of those post-World War II arrangements, General Leslie Groves, the military head of the US WW-II Manhattan Atomic Bomb Project, observed that The Project was always aimed at confronting Russia. By implication, the use of two nuclear weapons against non-military targets on a defeated Japan was to send to Moscow the message that Washington sits at the head of the post WW II Geo-Political Dining Table, along with painting a largely destroyed Russia as an incipient threat to justify both a buildup of a massive US armed forces and the transformation of The United States into a National Security State. China, incidentally, was also on the list of atomic weapons targets, another backwater state having fought both a civil war and a war against the invading Japanese Imperial Army that also left China destroyed. No matter. Communism, whatever it was, was on the march and the Russians were coming, as were the Chinese.

The United States came through the Second World War unscathed and industrially stronger than ever, with atomic technologies to arm up and which no foreign state could match and so the US had something to use against everyone, being anyone who did not behave as they were told. This no longer applies.

Washington, rebuffed by BeiJing in 2018 (refer prior Substack essay) is trying to impede China's advancement where it can do most damage - technology and notably high density I.C. technology. American semiconductor manufacturers cannot stay ahead of China's on their own efforts and so the strategy is to disrupt China's without disrupting their own, a difficult road. This is the technology war Washington has launched on BeiJing and it includes damaging Russia sufficiently to prevent it being a supplier to China's industrial inputs. Others will suffer more with the denial of cheap energy from Russia and cheap products into Western markets. The prosperity and low inflation experienced, notably in Western Europe and to which European leaders have spoken to as a thing of the past, along with cheap money, has evaporated as Washington's destruction of the Nord Stream Pipeline sends that difficult to refuse offer that there is nothing they will not do, or appear to, to maintain themselves front and centre in global arrangements.

"I was a high trained muscle man for Wall Street. Al Capone operated over three city districts. We marines operated over three continents". General Smedley Butler, 1981-1940 and first head of the US Marines.

Incidentally, in a highly prosperous post-WW II United States, the widely promoted fear that the country could be taken over by Communist internal subversion was frankly absurd, an example of deliberate foreign fear promotion that persists to the present day, examined below.

"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office" - Aesop, ancient Greek writer, 620–564 BCE. One might add, of those who make the laws, it is inevitable that they must view themselves to be above the law, for they are their laws.

>>> Ukraine Narrative Collapse <<<

In his less than widely publicized exposition on the nature of the present war in The Ukraine, the Ukrainian Defense Minister brought summary clarity to present and pressing affairs by stating in the simplest of terms that this was a Proxy War wherein The Ukraine provided the blood and The West provided the weaponry. Under a different configuration of Western moral sensibilities would this entirely accurate assessment have provoked wide ranging antiwar opposition and immediate comparisons with the recent and not entirely terminated US-NATO-UK and Allies' Afghan Campaign, absent any discussion of outcomes, such as they are. The Afghan Campaign, whatever it was, is now under an effective news blackout by The Free Press and important media hosts have instructed us that no one will ever know if that Campaign was good or bad. Just how the defeat in The Ukraine shall be managed is now the subject of popular myth and mystery and examined below. And so . . .

In response to the full mobilization of Russian professional soldiers for a much enlarged Russian campaign and anticipated very heavy attacks on what remains of the AFU, along with a large number of Russian volunteers applying to join the Russian Armed Forces, in contradiction of the London-Washington Mainstream Media agit prop of a failing Russian campaign and deliberate Western propaganda for reasons addressed below, the Kyiv Administration has requested that foreign European governments repatriate all Ukrainian men subject to mobilization orders under Ukrainian state law and deport them back to The Ukraine for conscription into the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Kyiv has, from the beginning of this campaign, mobilized their use of Barrier Troops, anti-desertion forces by another name and a feature of the actual battle space that just does not feature in the heroic war depictions of the Hollywood genre, read uplifting propaganda in the service of their Washington War Machine, another of the whole other stories.

Ukrainian military officers now speak to their recognition that The Collective West will not directly nor indirectly construct a military force that can challenge and defeat the Russian Armed Forces. This makes necessary the need for Kyiv to mobilize, train and bolster their armed forces from Ukrainian refugee men who departed for European countries, an inevitable and entirely predictable outcome from this Washington-EU-London failed Proxy War.

The Washington-London Lords of War see no way out but to double down - on The Ukraine. Factually, a new army of conscripts brings no force nor effect to the battle space. They cannot operate advanced military equipment individually nor in formation where training can take years, they cannot shoot accurately where training can take months and they cannot maneuver tactically where there is no upper limit on the experience needed for battlefield survival. Flagging that wider war that draws near, the German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock informed that European Union countries were in a war against Russia - Tuesday 24th January, 2023. Such leadership conduct places Germany at risk of attack, quite possibly a position that suits the German right of centre militarist political class who want a rearmament of Germany, as indeed is Japan rearming and with the support of Washington. This also puts Japan at risk. The Russian Government has flagged some years back that command and control centres in Western Europe, now including training centres, will be destroyed as circumstances arise and without specifying precisely what those circumstances will be.

What lies beneath - Washington cannot yield on that which underpins US Dollar global primacy, the arrangements that create the global demand for otherwise worthless US dollars. Russia and China have planned for years to operate outside of US Dollar arrangements, from Washington's standpoint an act of war. Russia has survived Washington's sanctions and its Proxy War. Washington cannot impose any sanctions on China without damaging its own economic prospects, which it has. Western analysts have consistently misread the nature, size and resilience of both the Chinese economy and the Russian economy, more mistakenly misreading the Russian economy by relying on the most misleading of economic data comparisons, GDP - Gross Domestic Product. Factually, the Chinese economy overtook the US economy decades ago and US dollar / renminbi comparisons of economic size ignores the chronic inflation that characterizes the US and other Western economies and, importantly, dollar for dollar equivalent comparisons between overly service based economies (the US) and manufacturing - export economies (China) or service based economies (the US and more generally The West) and resource - manufacturing economies (Russia) are invalid. That Russia has a manufacturing based economy, a so-called real economy, defines its capacity to wage war, wage prolonged wars and win those wars. The West can no longer wage any wars of scale against a peer competitor because an overly financialized economy has diminished its means to do so. The following Rand Corporation referenced study recognizes this.

That Dr. Angela Merkel's admission that the Minsk Accord negotiations with Russia were a deception to enable the arming of The Ukraine puts paid to any historic recognition that she was a great leader and was no more than a Washington proxy herself, the result of which is that Russia will not trust in any negotiations with Washington and will not negotiate an end to the war. It will end the war by winning the war. From this springs the inevitable question - What will Russia then do with the EU and NATO? By such time elections will have been run within these countries and new administrations may be in place and resistant to Washington's foreign policy agendas. This is by no means certain.

And so, as the Ukraine Proxy War enters its second year and the Western Mainstream Media continue to paint a picture of a miraculous Kyiv victory because they must . . .

Kyiv continues to resort to Barrier Troops, military units that are positioned to the rear of those unwillingly conscripted and sent to the actual line of contact, trained or untrained, prepared or insufficiently prepared, well armed or insufficiently armed and to bring to bear on those conscripts, as they express it, military discipline and so prevent the escape of servicemen from the battlefield. In a very real sense is this mode of warfare a war of attrition.

There is no International Legion of Defense except in name but there is a Legion of Defense, a creation of the Kyiv Government. There is no country prepared to commit its armed forces to go to war with Russia in The Ukraine. They offer no objection to citizen volunteers.

This actual mode of warfare has been described by some few Americans who volunteered to go to The Ukraine and realized how the conduct of this Proxy War did not conform to the uplifting heroic descriptions of what was sold to them as a Russian Safari. Russian Forces shoot back. Those few volunteers who managed to effectuate a difficult escape even as AFU commanders confiscated their passports, gave them little training and inadequate firepower and sought to use them as point men at the line of contact to draw Russian fire and so enable AFU regulars to direct return fire. According to those Americans, foreign volunteers died from Russian fire or by AFU blocking troops shooting them from the rear.

The war in The Ukraine will be finished on the complete destruction of the Armed Forces of The Ukraine along with The Ukraine as a functioning state and The West will not resort to the use of nuclear weapons to avert these inevitable outcomes. This does not preclude any desire to use such weapons as some of The Western Leadership Class do lack any moral inhibition in their use against Russia or other of their designated Enemies of The State - any foreign government that disregards US diktats. Here, that inhibition comes from the Russian Government making it clear that they will be obliterated on such a maneuver.

From the collapse of The Soviet Union, circa 1991 and to now, The West has brought about the circumstances that have enabled the Russian Armed Forces to become the most powerful, effective and dangerous armed forces in the world, certainly on the European continent and it appears from the strategy of the Russian Government in running a slow campaign that sufficient time will be given over to the Western Leadership to realize that there can be no physical nor resultant psychological victory over Russia. The extent to which the Western Leadership cannot face this psychological loss arising from a physical defeat at the hands of Russia is the degree to which other ally countries of the United States will be sacrificed in the name of saving democracy, read saving them.

The degree to which Washington can determine the post-war terms is dictated by the extent to which they have retained geo-political dominance. The operative term "determine", stemming from Washington's capacity to negotiate, was never highly developed as they always prevailed, largely against militarily inferior states. This applied to Vietnam which was not, in one sense, a complete US loss as Vietnam and surrounding countries were reduced to backwaters, more or less the outcome in Afghanistan. The position of Dean Acheson, American lawyer and former US Secretary of State 1949-1953, was to never negotiate honestly with Russia. The Ukraine stands out as US Armed Forces have, for several years, been preparing the battle space within The Ukraine for a victory over Russia. The Russian Armed Forces have been preparing for a victory over The West via their Ukraine Proxy. The West will be seen to lose soon enough and whatever negotiations ensue will be by the good graces of the Russian Government, hardly the desired outcome.

Ultimately state power rests on military power. A loss in The Ukraine, following the perceived loss in Afghanistan, brings into sharp focus the capacity of Washington to launch a war on China via their TaiWan Proxy. The arrival of that moment is the inflection point that defines the loss of Western global dominance and The Decline of The West. More than a matter of perception, the launching of a war on China, their ultimate objective, requires supply chains, materiel and arms manufacturing within which The West has lost dominance, a dominance that cannot be readily rebuilt. Industrial dominance and the majority of the world's energy reserves reside outside of The West and those countries are retreating from trade expressed in US dollars. Western economies operate on Consumerism and soft narratives and the psychological state of those in The West is a restraint that prevents their economies transitioning to true War Economies. The only transitioning in The West these days is transitioning from one's genetically determined gender to some other entirely obscure fantasy. Ultimately, it is a State’s capacity to successfully wage war that defines its geo-political dominance.

That Western Economies are entirely noncompetitive is evidenced in the actions of China to take oil from its suppliers and "pay" via infrastructure developments. The West cannot match this and its only option is war. Hence the recent emphasis from NATO that they cannot afford to lose in The Ukraine. This never was The Ukraine's war.

Further to Dr. Angela Merkel’s recent remarks, her unstated assumption was that the Russian Armed Forces were weak, underdeveloped and that the Russian Government under President Putin was unstable. In view of admitted outcomes, but not admitted nor recognized by all in The West, this has been cited as a Western intelligence failure. It is not strictly a Western Intelligence failure in the sense that Western Intelligence itself is a disjointed failure. They did their best. Their best just is not good enough. Dr. Merkel and other EU Leadership Luminaries may still believe their intelligence feeds and have taken this public position to claim credit for an emerging and glorious Ukrainian victory.

Russian Intelligence could not have missed the strategies and actions of US-NATO-UK interests in The Ukraine. They played a superficially straight game with their Western negotiating counter-parties, knowing full well that they were being deceived. The Russian Government pressed on with their armaments buildup. Actions by The West brought those remaining Russian people not behind their Government and President Putin largely behind President Putin and in further opposition to The West, as marketing delusions of a free and open society are seen to be, not exactly fraudulent, but misleading and inapplicable. That is, democracy of sorts in The West; servitude in The East.

Here the entrenched prejudices of certain of the Ukrainian Leadership have been utilized by the Western leadership who come with much historical experience in exploiting regional hatreds and small, simmering dislikes that lend themselves to easy manipulation. Those Ukrainian stooges are their useful idiots here. Capitalizing upon their irrational hatreds of other Slavic groups, notably Russian people, has worked sort of well, so far. Fewer from The West have died. Many more in The Ukraine may expect to.

The US-NATO-UK and Allies' Ukraine Proxy War on Russia enabled the Russian Government to reconstruct the Russian Armed Forces into a larger, more effective force with greater motivation and the support of the Russian population, the latter convinced that whatever economic deprivations they experience, if indeed there actually are any, sit well with them. President Putin experiences higher approval ratings and support, far beyond that of any Western political leader and this may explain why Democrat luminaries continue to request or plea for someone inside the Russian Government to kill President Putin. The Western Mainstream Media will avoid the obvious conclusion, say, in two years looking back, when President Putin remains President Putin. Clearly such crass foreign policy blandishments are meant for domestic, read US, political effect with no thought given over to the impact on Russian society, or Chinese for that matter. Washington long ago abandoned any semblance of a rational and credible Foreign Policy.

Pre-SMO planning recognized that US-EU-UK sanctions would follow. The reckoning of US-EU-UK Leadership Luminaries is that their sanctions would destroy the Russian currency and economy, thus tipping out the Russian Government for one amenable to Western diktats. This has also failed and the opposite of that sought has occurred.

Editorials by Western luminaries deliberately ignore Russia's red lines, that perpetual motion machine of an always more necessary, harder response against whoever is the object of our foreign anxieties, along with threats for the use of tactical nuclear weapons, that is, to apply greater Western Resolve, have the appearance of a Western Intelligence Agency psychological operation directed at Western audiences so as to prepare them for the inevitable notification of a Russian victory in The Ukraine, more precisely, that military outcome that cannot be hidden.  The purpose of this psychological operation is to admit the narrative that we actually would have won, if not for our better selves. That sentimental abstraction, entirely fraudulent, has great appeal as that towering and entirely mythic edifice of Essential Western Goodness remains virtually unassailable. In The West and only in The West.

Concurrently, many important people have "investments" in The Ukraine, deftly relieved from the Ukrainian State after the overthrow of the elected government in 2014, recognizably corrupt and replaced by a more amenable and recognizably corrupt one and so one responsive to Western requirements. Public declarations from US political figures to the Russian Government to remove President Putin appear as desperation and bring into question their personal financial interests in The Ukraine. They can expect to be relieved of those "investments".  Fortunes of war.

Some surprise and criticism stemmed from and was thus directed at the Russian Government for releasing captured foreign military personnel - NATO EU country officers, Canadian and US - after the taking of the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works, Mariupol District, in Eastern Ukraine by the Russian Armed Forces. Those officers were not to be put on trial in the Eastern Ukrainian Provinces as others less important were and so were returned home. What may be noted here is that Russian military objectives are not to be deterred by US-NATO-UK and Allied military personnel and actions and if they were to return to the battlefield knowing that their chances of remaining unharmed are far lower that the Ukrainian service personnel whom they train and direct, well and good. Fortunes of war.

The objective of the Russian Armed Forces is to destroy the Ukrainian Armed Forces, by killing all of them and leaving those remaining so disabled as to be of no further use. Subsidiary benefits that accrue to the Russian State are the taking of all Ukrainian prime agricultural land, Ukrainian industry and mining and the extent to which that is true is the degree to which this is a War of Capitalist Objectives. Western "investors" lose. Russia wins. The precise opposite of stated Western objectives. Fortunes of war.

Information flowing from The Ukraine from certain on the ground personnel point to the continuing corruption with AFU officers to sell off armaments and avoid a shooting match with Russian Forces and the action of Ukrainian blocking troops forcing unwilling Ukrainian conscripts into the line of contact and shooting anyone who is retreating, for whatever reason. Fortunes of war.

The President of Russia recently remarked that Russia manufactures some three times more air defense missiles per year than the United States. Russia's Military Industrial Complex overall manufactures comparable numbers of missiles as all other states combined. This is another significant statement on the balance of military power, more precisely imbalance, that has with studied efficiency been kept off the front pages of the Western Mainstream Media . The capabilities of an advanced armaments industry and armed forces arises from a complex technology specific infrastructure that develops over many decades, underpinned by a scope of resources that few countries have and, naturally, the import of unsanctioned, used washing machines from The West as a source of I.C. chips, among other things.

Convincing agit prop requires convergence with reality - some convergence. The all too obvious fear of the Western Thought Leadership Class is that they exhibited signs of actually believing their own false messaging narratives that can be rendered manifestly unconvincing in any direct conflict with the Russian Armed Forces where Western command and control centres and military assets located in The West are destroyed by Russian Forces. The reason the better informed in The West, notably Pentagon Generals, will avoid the any precedent events that would lead to such confidence destroying outcomes. The principle objective, arguably the only one that the Western Thought Leaders have any control over is control of the domestically, inwardly directed false narratives to maintain their otherwise dwindling confidence in their entirely fraudulent leadership.

Washington's two or three strategic maneuvers to maintain its global dominance, income and high dollar value, sanctions on Russia to break the Russian economy and a Proxy War to exhaust the Russian Armed Forces are now both demonstrable failures. These strategies can only have been manufactured by people who are ideologically warped beyond any clear sense of reason wherein, in the first instance, they completely misread the true nature of the Russian economy. That is, straight comparisons of countries' Gross Domestic product (GDP) are essentially meaningless, despite the not infrequent use to compare relative economic performance. Here, the belief that Russia's economy is on some par with, say, Italy's or even to compare it as inferior to the United States, entirely absurd comparisons as Russia has the majority of the world's resources and a small population, an economy based on manufacturing and not services, as the United States significantly is and a superior armed forces and industrial - military war machine. In the limit, it is the capacity of a country to sustain war that defines it's geo-political dominance.

“Potentially the most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition between Russia, China and Iran" - Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard, 1997.

And now to present realities, the recent Rand Corporation study from the people who were boosting by whatever means available to weaken and destroy the Russian State (the lives of the poor Ukrainian people), this think tank paper entitled "Avoiding a Long War". The title itself now expresses the hopes and desires of The Washington Masters of Present Arrangements to have worked that now illusive Short War where Russia was to lie disabled and bleeding. No such outcome and key points from this latest bought and paid for Pentagon outlet include Table 1 (page 7) that cites benefits of The Ukraine to US national interests - no highly significant benefits. Might have been written of that twenty year Afghan Campaign. Evidence itself that this ally state was used, read sacrificed, and it did not work out for these two of three parties - The United States and The Ukraine. It worked out for Russia. The timing could be significant in that Washington desires to convince Moscow to cancel its entire offensive to crush what is left of The Ukraine and do some deal. There will be no deal. The offensive will continue.

Foreshadowing Psychological Operations to effectuate some form of termination of their Proxy War, Rand analysts caution that "a dramatic, overnight shift in U.S. policy is politically impossible - both domestically and with allies - and would be unwise in any case. But developing these instruments now and socializing them with Ukraine and with U.S. allies might help catalyze the eventual start of a process that could bring this war to a negotiated end in a time frame that would serve U.S. interests. The alternative is a long war that poses major challenges for the United States, Ukraine, and the rest of the world" - page 26. Read - this war they can not win and things must now move quickly. Again, it is U.S. interests that are paramount.

One could add - They failed Waging Aggressive War 101 and that one fundamental question - "What do we gain and in doing so what will we lose?”

Elsewhere in the report they caution that "Moreover, U.S. leaders may pay a political cost domestically and with allies opposed to any sanctions relief". Indeed they would.

It is noteworthy that the Western public were not brought to a position of high engagement regarding the Afghan Campaign and thus a hasty and unceremonious US and Allies’ Forces exit caused little concern for the Mainstream Media in washing over the implications. Lying was easy. Really easy. The Western public has been brought to a position of high engagement with operations in The Ukraine, where they now hate all things Russian and would be hard pressed to explain why in any coherent sense, a sort of disordered thinking, dealt with below. For Washington, Act II of The Ukraine Proxy War Saga: Desperately Seeking Exit Strategies - with Honour. Unlike Afghanistan, this will take time. They know it. Psychological Operations are to deal with that.

"Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play" - Dr. Joseph Goebbels.

>>> Panoptic Society <<<

Jeremy Bentham, English social reformer (1748 - 1832), is credited with formalizing and advancing the principles of The Panopticon, a means of social control and administration applied to the containment of a prison population. The cost of constant surveillance was addressed as a pressing concern to be relieved. As he effectively wrote . . .

The modern Panoptic Prison as a model for the modern Panoptic Society.

The architectural principle comprised an annular outer building, constructed on a large circle or part circle with a Guards' Surveillance Tower located at the geometric centre, on a smaller radius. The surveillance tower has wide windows opening to all of the interior, enabling a three hundred and sixty degree view with a minimum of distraction. The circular, multilevel, outer building is divided into cells extending the width of the annular building. Cells are conceived as having two walls with iron bars, one to the inside, in geometric line with the windows of the Surveillance Tower, the other, facing to the exterior, allows the cell to be visible with natural light. Each side of each cell is a solid wall. With the Surveillance Tower interior darker and with the effect of back lighting (daytime), those in the Surveillance Tower can see all of those in their cells yet none can see the surveillance guards or indeed if there are any surveillance guards at any particular time.

Each cell occupant stands out, the Surveillance Tower sees all, yet each cell occupant only sees oneself, sees no other cell occupant to their side and sees no Surveillance Tower occupant, should there be any. The cell occupant is atomized and dissociated from all others, alone, perfectly individualized, yet constantly visible. The Panopticon reverses the principle of the dungeon and its functions - to enclose, to deprive of light and to hide. It preserves the first and eliminates the other two and is projected as more humane than the dungeon.

Visibility is that trap. They are always watched or believe so.

So, each cell occupant is in place, securely confined, seen from the front but the side walls prevent contact with any companions. Indeed, one cannot form companions. The cell occupant is now the object of information, never a subject in communication, only an object. The arrangement of the cell enclosure room, opposite the central tower, imposes on him an axial visibility; but the divisions of the annular building, those separated cells, impute lateral invisibility. This invisibility is the guarantee of order and control. There is no danger of a plot, an attempt at collective escape, the planning of new crimes for the future, bad reciprocal influences; if they are patients, there is no danger of contagion; if they are madmen there is no risk of their committing violence upon one another; if they are children, there is no noise; if they are workers, there are no disorders, no theft, no coalitions, none of those distractions that slow down the rate of work, make it less perfect or cause accidents. The crowd is abolished and replaced by a collection of separated individualities.

From the position of the supervisor, there is a multiplicity that can be numbered and controlled. From the standpoint of inmates, they are alone. As Bentham expressed it. And so . . .

“The chief characteristic of the mass man is not brutality and backwardness, but his isolation and lack of normal social relationships" - Hannah Arendt on social atomization and extreme individualism in The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1948.

The Panopticon induces in the mind of the inmate, but now say subject or citizen, a permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power arrangements. The belief of a permanent visibility is the perfection of differential power arrangements since even a discontinuance in its action of surveillance is that perfection of power that renders its actual exercise unnecessary. It is now a matter of what the surveilled believe.

The architectural arrangement is now a machine for reifying and enforcing a power relation independent of any who exercises it. The prisoner, now also read subject or citizen, is caught in a power relation which turns entirely on their beliefs. What matters is that the inmate, subject or citizen, knows that they are constantly observed, yet now has no need in fact of being so. It is here that Jeremy Bentham laid down his fundamental principle that power should be visible and simultaneously unverifiable. Of The Panopticon. Visibility - the cell inmate will constantly have before one’s eyes the tall outline of the central tower from which he is viewed from. Unverifiability - the cell inmate must never know whether he is seen at any one moment, but he now believes for certain that he may always be so.

So as to make the presence or absence of a surveilling presence, read any surveilling presence, unverifiable, within The Panopticon, prisoners in their cells are unable to ever see a shadow of any presence within the Centre Tower. Jeremy Bentham envisaged Venetian Blinds on each window of the central observation hall sectors and interior partitions that intersected the hall at right angles, in order to pass from one quarter to the other, not doors but angular openings, for the slightest noise or a glimmer of light would betray the presence of the surveillant. It remains black. The Panopticon is a machine for dissociating the surveilled from the surveillant. Within the peripheric ring, one is totally seen, without ever seeing. In the central Surveillance Tower, one sees all and yet is not ever seen.

The Panopticon is now that machine that reifies disymmetry, disequilibrium and difference, as Bentham expressed it. The Panopticon is a marvelous machine which, whatever use one may wish to put it to, produces homogeneous effects of power. It is indifferent. Thus, it matters not who exercises power. One could add that in this sense is architecture like a gun, although few would view architects as they would gun manufacturers. Both are vectors of power relations.

And so to the essence of the matter. A real subjugation issues forth mechanically from an entirely fictitious relation. As Jeremy Bentham expressed it, it is not necessary to use force to constrain the convict to good behaviour, the madman to calm, the worker to work, the child to application, the person to the observance of regulations. Panoptic institutions could be light yet secure. There were no more bars, no more chains, no more heavy locks; all that was needed was that the separations should be clear and the openings well arranged. The heaviness of the old 'houses of security', with their fortress-like architecture, could be replaced by the simple, economic geometry of a 'house of certainty'. The efficiency of power, its constraining force has passed over to the other side - to the prisoner. He who is subjected to a field of visibility and who knows it, assumes responsibility for self-constraint that he applies upon himself, inscribing within himself the power relation in which he becomes the principle of his own subjection. By this very fact, the external power discards its physical weight and so its effects are a perpetual victory that avoids any physical confrontation.

And so with parallels to present arrangements, Jeremy Bentham foresaw the surveillor as a manager who could observe all employees under his orders and to judge them continuously, alter their behaviours, impose upon them the methods thought best. An inspector, as he expressed it, arriving unexpectedly at the centre of the Panopticon, can judge at a glance, without anything being concealed from him, how the entire establishment is functioning. And in a parallel with modern and now pervasive surveillance mechanisms, Jeremy Bentham recognized that the Panopticon functions as a laboratory of power. Due to its mechanisms of observation, it gains in efficiency and in the ability to penetrate into people's behaviour. Knowledge follows the advances of power and so may the surveillor discover new objects of knowledge over all the surfaces on which power is exercised.

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It is evident in the construction of modern Western society and the Digital Revolution to control it, along with analogue electronics, software and marketing techniques that now make surveillance pervasive, inescapable and due to status anxieties, sought after in so far as most desire the trappings of a surveilled modern life - the Smart Phone, the social media account and the membership of ephemeral on-line groups that act as windows to the individual's personality, that the surveilled person is complicit in their surveillance. All can be watched, yet the surveilled cannot see the surveillant for the surveillant is, at the first level, a software algorithm. All electronic transmissions are stored, examined by artificial intelligence software robots and determinations made using tens of thousands of psychographic parameters as a part of profiling everyone. There is no evidence that such profiles are accurate nor predictive of behaviour, yet they are to be used for predictive interceptions before any civil acts have been committed.

Thoughts now can be thought crimes and thought crimes come with that more usable descriptor of Pre-Crime. By such means may fascist elites take another’s thoughts and define them as motives and it is that motive that reified as Pre-Crime and the basis for arrest.

A most effective mode of censorship is self-censorship and moderation in one’s verbal use of language. This is a widespread and observable feature of modern life.

All these are the precursors now in place for the rise of a coherent, ideologically strong and dangerous political demagogue in the form of a charismatic performative genius who promises renewal, a connection with past glories entirely false, that bridge to the ever illusive golden future, who speaks to internal threats which must be suppressed and speaks to foreign threats which must be subdued through war and through war comes renewal, as they would have others believe.

Further . . .

Automatic vehicle number plate readers and automatic face recognition systems, typically associated with the People's Republic of China, are placed in-situ in Western countries and along major roadways and footpaths for continuous tracking and processing by computer systems. As Jeremy Bentham understood, the expense of the human presence at all points of surveillance is to be dispensed with. It now has. These present arrangements proceed with no first level humans. Only when exceptions are flagged will the surveillance operative be notified.

So, via Psychological Operations, the public become complicit in their own enslavement as they learn, or as so intended, that the object of fear, their object of fear, is the other, like them and not the overseer, the surveiller, who they cannot see, who they never will see but the overseer is always present yet not present and they, the public, are seen.

The benign merchandiser, heavily dependent on information systems, does not miss these things. The public is invited to emplace, in their homes, an artificial intelligence driven device for their interactions, that listens continuously, answers questions but not all questions for it is filtered yet it always listens. Behaviours are profiled. This is an invitation that the public pay for, an invoice rather than an invitation, as they also pay for that all-pervading, portable surveillance unit and personal marker, the smart phone. An outcome emblematic of the highest of the high frontiers of public manipulations. Young women especially the most easy of targets and who compete with each other to spend months of their salaries on these desirable accoutrements of modern living and then to devote much time in their use. What fools they are. Such fools they remain.

It costs in other ways. This capability for a totality of personal surveillance was the desire of Chief Propagandist of the German Nazi Party, Dr. Joseph Goebbels who advanced in his career to Nazi Reich Minister of Propaganda, thereafter Reich Plenipotentiary for Total War. The parallel - those in charge advance in their careers by implementing the principles and practices that they applied when in lower level positions. This will not stop unless they are stopped yet they cannot be stopped as they cannot be seen and their effects are subtle and slow. The subtlety is in the truth and not in the lie.

"Good propaganda does not need to lie, indeed it may not lie. It has no reason to fear the truth. It is a mistake to believe that people cannot take the truth. It is only a matter of presenting the truth to people in a way that they will be able to understand. A propaganda that lies proves that it has a bad cause. It cannot be successful in the long run" - Dr. Joseph Goebbels.

>>> Psychological Operations <<<

The failure of Washington’s Ukraine Proxy War is a failure of Psychological Operations because, in the limit, there must be physical outcomes that are congruent with that vector of applied Psychological Operations - Mainstream Media Messaging. There are not.

Defining Psychological Operations in terms of results: A confidence in the narrative, built over time and that is subliminal, delivered by deceptively familiar and trusted personalities physically remote from oneself who have cultivated rapport with an audience far distant and so they and their narratives go unquestioned for to challenge the narrative is that heretical act of an outsider.

As evidence that the Western Public is treated as fools, with no implication that they are, the Ukrainian State shall be rescued when more majorly advanced and incompatible Western weaponry is supplied to The Ukraine even as such equipment is designed to operate in formation as a battle group and requires personnel who come with years of training, that key determinant that receives no comment - that is, you can ship equipment, you cannot instill decades of training. Furthermore the Russian Government continues to advise against the provision to the AFU of such weapon systems even as they are proving less effective yet claimed to be superior to Russian military equipment - that is, to destroy US flagship equipment in this war where Russia is not absolutely threatened would be to make known superior Russian capabilities best preserved and kept secret for a possible future and wider conflict with The West, further still Western Mainstream Media have resorted to informing one and all that the Russian Armed Forces are learning to defeat Western supplied weapons - that is, they really were not so advanced or the Russian Armed Forces were better than could even be admitted to. And so . . .

The accumulated stress from these totalizing, strategic and tactical misfortunes in this now near kinetic war on Russia, that failed US-NATO-UK Ukrainian Proxy War, their instrument of ongoing capitalist survival, now read the Proxy War to end all (of their) Proxy Wars, is showing in those fracturing Corridors of Ignorance, generally referred to as The Executive within the Washington-London-EU Circles of Governance as they outpace each other in demonstrating their diminishing grip on present realities and ones they themselves effectuated and reified. They know they have lost, their geo-political success paradigm of the pillaging of foreign, weaker states has gone past due as those territories of most interest can hit and have struck back very softly with devastating effects. As the Russian President sought to correct or rather define that unfolding history known as The Immediate Future - "We have not started anything yet".

It is about to start.

From recently declassified US documents dealing with the War on Afghanistan . . .

" . . . officials issued rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hid unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable. Several of those interviewed described explicit efforts by the U.S. Government to deliberately mislead the public and a culture of willful ignorance, where bad news and critiques were unwelcome".

That the Washington-London-EU Mainstream Media continue to run narratives of a miraculous Kyiv victory despite evidence to the contrary is not just a result of the sometimes referenced intelligence failures of Western Agencies but is a direct policy derived from the principles of Psychological Operations and the management of the minds of the nation's Domestic Human Capital. Detuning of scientific knowledge and the promotion of magical thinking take front and centre position for the targets of Psychological Operations who are as much the human capital of foreign states as are the targets of one's own public. Especially in the targeting of foreign countries is it the intention to weaken the will to fight withing the minds of the target country's armed forces and also weaken the support by the population for their leadership.

Well before any war becomes kinetic, it is the overarching objective of those waging Psychological Operations to avoid a kinetic war by convincing the leadership of a foreign country that it really is in their national interests to align their national policies with those of the state waging the propaganda campaign against them. The target of Psychological Operations is the nation's people and their most effective influencers to their domestic public perceptions of anything is via their own leadership. The leadership in turn, as leadership aspirants and junior members of government, are themselves programmed to the culture and values of the Western civilizational experience, in fact, supremacist ideals of The Washington Consensus.

Psychological Operations presses on with Fact Checkers and Disinformation Staffers, with the implication that one now is to outsource what residue of critical thought remains - to them and people entirely anonymous from oneself and so an appeal to the superficially compelling - thought without substance. Alternatively, sapping the will to think within the minds of targeted audiences. Fact Checkers impliedly transcend political thought and ideology and thus are posited as independent and vastly knowledgeable, with no interest in the tawdry political gimcracks that define the contemporary Western political discourse. By such means do they own The Truth.

Factually, they own nothing. Factually, to fact check any so called fact in complete depth requires the entire university professorial board of political historians, all with decades of experience, at least. Fact Checkers, so called, have not been alive long enough to know enough nor to know what they do not know and thus need to know, of which you are not to know. But they know - and they know how to conform. Fact Checkers and Disinformation Staffers remain, as always, well paid by the National Security Apparatus and serve as national security or major political party operatives under a deceptively different name.

For those time poor, although that is readily rectified by not watching television, an objective is to overwhelm them with inputs from what appears diverse sources yet they run remarkably similar narratives. Psychological Operations deliberately weaponizes existing communications media along with creating new purpose directed media channels, with the objective of conforming individual thought to a country's national interests. Except that this mechanism is compromised by the tawdry, disputative, internally conflictual and interfering nature of the dominant political parties and political heavyweights who exercise outsized influence, regardless of good sense.

Recent examples include the US Democrat Party (the DNC) which recognized that their political messaging was losing effectiveness and the generally pro-Democrat liberal media had lost credibility over their amplifying of foreign threats and making one person, Donald Trump, the centre of all things. Both the US Republican and Democrat Parties have been in disarray with the arrival of that expedient political outsider, President Donald Trump and of whom is continued to be accorded relevance due their advancing irrelevance. It was DNC strategy via the favours of their liberal mainstream media to have Donald Trump, 2015 Republican primaries presidential aspirant, become the Republican candidate via their overwhelming media support which then, within forty eight hours of Donald Trump so becoming the Republican presidential candidate, reversed their position and sought to continually attack him up to the day of the presidential election and for four ongoing years.

An example of those DNC Masters of Political Science achieving an outcome diametrical to their stated intentions and so yet again must we generously accord credit where credit is richly deserved. The same DNC Masters remain in charge.

The psychological war for the mind of the Russian populace has been lost. This war for the Russian Mind was a crucial strategy to undermine confidence in the Russian Leadership and have President Putin removed, presumably by those favourable to direct favours and Western leadership objectives and so break up the Russian State for their collective enrichment. Of the alleged futility of the Russian SMO in The Ukraine, the Russian populace is hardly convinced by Western agit prop and in the latest application of Russian Armed Forces strategy, volunteers for the armed forces have shown up in several tens of thousands whereas those in The Ukraine are attempting to escape conscription and near certain death and disablement, as reported. This runs counter to MI6 and Central Intelligence prepared scripts. London Mainstream Media are more extreme than the messaging out of Washington Media and both regions ran the most persuasive and pervasive anti-Russia campaign ever mounted.

What appeared as entirely puerile narratives early on - Russian troops are surrendering to Ukrainian households and begging Ukrainian grandmothers for food - had their basis in the standard mind influencing broadcasts that accompany or precede military campaigns, save that their British Defense Ministry and MI6 inspired narratives were both unrealistic and massively ludicrous, even as an uncritical and unknowledgeable public might find them superficially convincing, their hope.

Convincing false narratives must come with some elemental truths and these agencies' performance here is the indicator that whereas they may know how to write and broadcast false narratives, they had no accurate status of Russian Forces or were unable to utilize it due to a lack of military experience and analytical skills. This has led to their Mainstream Media outlets presenting war fantasies of Russian losses that were too easily discredited, notably that the Russian Armed Forces is about to run out of munitions, soon thereafter reported to be destroying Ukrainian infrastructure and killing foreign Western advisors at their training centres in The Ukraine. It is Western States that are in difficulty here and the Russian Armed Forces appear relaxed with The West shipping off as many armaments that they can manage, depleting their own stores.

Actually, there are foreign threats to US dominance but none that can be easily put to their less than interested populace.

It is noteworthy that the majority of the populations of Western and Eastern European countries oppose any conflict with Russia and this continues to suppressed under an avalanche of Mainstream Media lies and EU states' policies. There must remain in place that constant drip feed by the Western Mainstream Media of anti-China and anti-Russia agit prop while the British and EU economies and the US economy continue their decent into stagflation, despite erroneous dollar for dollar GDP comparisons between the economies of Russia and China with Western states which do not stand up as all Western economies deindustrialized to The East, are overly based on services, over-populated and resource scarce. This is a crisis of The Western Leadership that must be managed for their survival - the why of Mind Control and Psychological Operations, now directed inwards on their own populations.

Courtesy of the British Ministry of Defense - Integrated Operating Concept (undated) page 5 paragraph 3 part thereof - “The triumph of narrative increasingly determines defeat or victory and hence the importance of information operations. They can be used to support conventional military operations and those utilizing proxies and deniable para-military forces, military coercion, offensive cyber operations, and of course lawfare".

Western Mainstream Media narratives point to the use by Russia of mercenaries or PMCs so-called, Wagner Special Forces and indeed their presence is recognized, along with Chechen Forces. These narrative presenters deliberately miss the all too apparent. The Ukraine is a client state of Washington-NATO-UK interests and the Armed Forces of The Ukraine is their mercenary army, trained by them, equipped by them and directed with their real-time intelligence and military planning. The AFU is The West's deniable para-military force. The trigger point in The West of their wholly deceptive Ukraine narrative will be the loss of Kyiv and the removal of their Client Government. The fraud of the wondrous Ukrainian democratic government simultaneously surfaces as bilge oil as the rest sinks. That event the Russian Armed Forces has avoided bringing about and not a difficult maneuver for them to destroy Kyiv and the Kyiv Government.

The real game is the Long Game and that game is to destroy the AFU and its capacity as a proxy to wage war and collapse the credibility of The West. One might interpret this as "sending a message". If you take us on, on some other country's balance sheet, you will be destroyed and we negotiate the post-war arrangements with them, if we negotiate at all but certainly not with you. The Ukraine as a country is finished.

Beyond the principle that convincing agit prop requires some convergence with actual reality, there is the all too obvious recognition of the Western Thought Leadership Class that they exhibited signs of actually believing their own false messaging narratives, narratives that can be rendered manifestly unconvincing in any direct conflict with the Russian Armed Forces wherein Western command and control centres and military assets located in The West are destroyed by unstoppable weapons. The reason the better informed in The West, notably Pentagon Generals, will avoid the precedent events that would lead to such towering confidence destroying outcomes.

The principle objective, arguably the only one that the Western Thought Leaders have any control over, is control of the domestically, inwardly directed false narratives to maintain the otherwise dwindling confidence in their entirely fraudulent and self-serving leadership. Their oft repeated objective, that Russia must suffer a strategic defeat, is unobtainable, the furthest of those bridge too far bridges. That this became an annunciated, principal objective is emblematic of a bankrupt humanities educated Western Leadership Class who understands nothing of fundamental science, technology, nor military affairs. That this Washington Proxy War was led by years of preparation by United States Armed Forces, intelligence agencies and allies is a defeat for the United States and allies.

>>> Schizophrenic Society <<<

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay was a study of crowds, 1841. He wrote - "Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly and one by one".

Possibly the best defense against Mainstream Media Psychological Operations, from any source domestic and foreign, is the possession of broad scientific and technical knowledge as Science is grounded in fact and Technology defines the limits of capability. To that end, one could avoid watching television and listening to mainstream radio and also avoid those people who do for it frees up time for productive personal pursuits and also avoids advertising manipulations and advertorials, now pervasive. Those who watch television come with imaginary friends - their favourite media personalities and stars. Include those who read popular fiction, for those who read popular fiction believe of popular fiction that reading popular fiction makes them better people. It makes them no better, but could make them worse, some toxic.

The Religious Class and their adherents traditionally come with their imaginary friends, their Pantheon of Gods. They frequently talk to their imaginary friends, claim to never feel alone and some claim they talk to them. This has been the subject of contemporary psychiatric analysis, examined in a prior Substack essay. And so . . .

Theirs’ the most acceptable form of schizophrenia in a schizophrenic society, yet normalized. The necessary outcome of successful Psychological Operations worked upon society - a schizophrenic society.

Schizophrenic minds exhibit thinking characterized thus - disorganized, delusional, unstructured along with chronic anxiety along with substance abusing, that colourless term for illicit and prescription drug taking, also characterized by depression and over-eating and higher suicide rates.

Many causes are attributed to the class of schizophrenic related conditions, yet the one cause that remains unexamined and glossed over with studied efficiency is other people, now in plague proportions. One need not look for problems. They have a way of bringing them to oneself. It is the city where people are most prevalent and it is those within cities who exhibit more unstable behaviours.

Thought Insertion - a psychiatric condition defined as the delusion that one's thoughts are not one's own, but rather belong to someone else and have been inserted into one's mind. In some instances should this qualify not as a psychiatric condition but a state of inner clarity. The forgoing, precisely what advertising executives intend, along with consequent actions, read directed behaviour to a merchandising purchase of their intent, despite their self-exculpatory explanations to the contrary and what the Masters of Psychological Operations admit to as their core mission, examined previously. Psychiatrists do not entirely miss this but seem unlikely to attribute causes to a deliberate agency and the extent to which that is true is the degree to which they themselves are politically compromised, perhaps unconsciously so.

Thus should it come as unsurprising that those in the industries of Entertainment, Mainstream Media and the Intelligence Agencies enjoy high rates of drug addiction, alcohol consumption, manipulative interpersonal behaviours and higher rates of suicide, read slow suicide from self-harming behaviours that they generously visit upon others.

This Thought Leadership Class, as they like to think of themselves and the Leadership Class more generally, are a criminal class and one that Aesop averred to thousands of years past.

Thus does this serve to contrast that other war - their war on independent media and independent thought and of those countries that have protective legislation such as the United States in particular, the breakdown of American First Amendment rights. Australia does not have this and the populace has been helpfully instructed by The Leadership Class that a Bill of Rights is unnecessary, a matter that the Mainstream Media remains entirely silent about.

So what will be left? Popular Fiction.

End Note 1: Eve of Destruction - Barry McGuire.

Eve of Destruction was a popular antiwar song recorded by Barry McGuire, 1965. Intended as a B side track, it was released as a single after a Los Angeles radio station played a pre-release rough recording to a surprisingly strong, very positive reception. The song title and words were emblematic of a sense of doom pervading Western countries, stemming from their governments' foreign wars and which received far broader and more critical coverage than do their wars these days, by the approved media.

"Violence flarin', bullets loadin'

You're old enough to kill but not for votin'

You don't believe in war but whats that gun you're totin'?

And even the Jordan River has bodies floatin' . . . We're on the eve of destruction".

Written by songwriter, musician and producer, the late Philip Sloan, it reflects the folksy, overwrought, left leaning, simpering sentiments widespread at that time and as now that singing about foreign wars or anything for that matter actually makes any difference. It does not. Of the many folk song singers and writers, they come and go, leaving behind not a residue of evidence that any of their work, such as it was, changed anything. They understood nothing of Geo-Politics nor Global Finance, they believed that reading fiction makes them better people (some still do) and they had no entrees to the centres of real power. Quite possibly they made things worse by acting as a pressure release valve for those in opposition to prevailing foreign policies who might otherwise have become politically organized. They spread foolish ideas and a most effective way to spread a foolish idea is to put it to music. In a real sense were they self-deceiving frauds to the extent that they actually believed in what they were doing. Otherwise, or perhaps in any case, they cashed in.

Sloan himself claimed that the words of his song brought about the US Twenty-Sixth Constitutional Amendment, 1971 to lower the voting age from 21 to 18. From the historical record, only Sloan himself was to make that claim and no-one of any consequence ever did. Self-importance and self-delusion remain the defining traits of this Entertainment Class.

From the forgoing springs forth the obvious question - If street protests make no difference, why have the US and UK Governments criminalized street protests in sufficiently vague language that could be now applied to an individual taking a stroll? There is a difference and that difference is in the socioeconomic circumstances that applied during past antiwar protest movements - the protestors were well off or sufficiently so. Now, many in the UK and the United States faceg financial insecurity, job loss and, for some, bankruptcy within States that cannot rectify domestic economic inequalities, now more extreme. Hence these enhanced coercive laws against street gatherings and union organizations, their activities and plans monitored in cyber-space. For them, expect things to get worse. It relieves one of disappointments.

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary" - Henry Louis Mencken, 1880-1956, American newspaper man.