[A. G. Maisey]

Divide and conquer?

Yes.

But divide and rule is perhaps the more correct dictum.

There is no taking of control whilst the populace is otherwise occupied. That control is maintained by keeping the populace occupied with matters that prevent them from thinking about the management of their society by government.

What Barry has described is exactly the practical application of the principle.

However, whichever political party may appear to be managing government, that political party's leaders are themselves being managed by the people, groups of people, and organisations which are at the top of the societal tree.

Anybody here remember Vietnam?

Remember what happened to the Dow every time there were rumours of peace?

And what happened after each major offensive?

Where has the middle class in developed societies gone?

Does the period during which the decline of this middle class has occurred correspond to the period during which western capital has transferred its manufacturing operations to China, its administrative processes to India and Singapore, and whatever other transferable processes it can identify to places where wage rates are very much below what the wage rates are in developed countries?

What is the nature of the employment that remains available for the present and rising generations in developed countries?

Blind Freddy can see that there is no longer the foundation in industry nor commerce which produced the middle class that arose following the industrial revolution.

The wheel of history has turned and wealth, and along with it, position in society, is now in the process of polarising to the situation that was in place in Europe prior to the industrial revolution.

Before this polarisation is complete, there will be a lot of very unhappy people in the populations of the developed countries. If the elite wish to have a reasonable chance of controlling these people , and of managing the economies of these countries, it is necessary for the populations of these countries to be re-engineered into docility and obediance.

There are many tools that can be employed to achieve these ends, and one of these tools is the disarming of the populace. You cannot disarm any group of people that believes in the sanctity of weaponry, nor its necessity to maintain civilian life and protect personal property.

Thus, where a society is already very stable and well controlled, as it is in Australia, you can immediately indoctrinate the community, commencing in school, with the belief that only sociopaths and criminals possess any form of weapon.

Where a society is a little less well controlled, you need to create the conditions where people will believe in the lesser of two evils. By encouraging a proliferation of civilian weaponry in a society that already has severe social schism, and at the same time setting in place social policies that exacerbate that schism, ultimately you will produce a situation where murder and mayhem will become routine. At this point you offer the solution, and that solution will involve severe restrictions that would not be tolerated in a well ordered society.

Those of us with an interest in weaponry are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. We probably all should have been born at least 100 years ago. We are dinosaurs, we all know what happened to the dinosaurs. But we are human dinosaurs, and as humans, we have the power of reason. We may not be able to stop the wheel of time from turning, but we can deduce what it may crush next, and we can step to one side. Along with our collections.

It is important, I believe, to view this entire process with an appreciation of the time frame that could be involved. I think world population is due to peak somewhere within the next 50 years or so. If China continues development at its present rate it will dominate world trade, and by extension, world economics and military power, within 20 to 30 years. Probably the completion of US societal re-engineering cannot be seriously advanced within a time frame that will impact greatly upon anybody reading this. However, there is no doubt that in the more ordered societies of Western Europe, and in my own country, Australia, we can expect to see a continued truncation of civil liberties.Within my lifetime I expect to see many of my present "privileges" (in this country we do not have "rights") reduced or removed. My age is 65.