This week, the European Parliament passed a resolution on ‘hybrid warfare’. 470 MEPs voted in favour of it. This resolution holds that the EU is under attack from ‘sophisticated cognitive-psychological methods’ which include ‘reflexive control, a technique rooted in Soviet military theory that introduces specific informational inputs to limit a target’s perceived choices and steer decisions toward the influencer’s strategic goals’. It holds that ‘there has been a drastic increase in cognitive warfare’ on the citizens of the EU, and that ‘the success of modern military operations and the effectiveness of public institutions increasingly depend on the control of cyberspace and on the strategic use of digital resources and information systems.’ It goes on to say defence spending in regard to ‘internal security’ is ‘equally required’; that the EU is in a state of ‘phase zero’ warfare; and that ‘existing EU foreign and security policy frameworks, calibrated for consensus-based deliberation, generate structural latency that adversaries actively exploit; whereas this in-between state demands a fundamental reassessment of EU decision-making architecture in the security and defence domain.’ It all sounds a bit insane, doesn’t it. Deeply paranoid. Dangerously paranoid. The list of MEPs who voted in favour of this resolution is reproduced below. I’d encourage citizens to contact them to ask why they think citizens’ current discontent is rooted in ‘cognitive warfare’ rather than the manifest decline in most people’s living standards across the EU over the past number of years. You could also ask to what degree they intend to ‘control’ and ‘strategically use’ the internet, and indeed what they envisage defence spending for ‘internal security’ will consist of - given internal security is in most EU states usually a matter for the police, and is financed through the budgets of interior ministries or departments of justice. And why, you could ask, do they think that the power to decide by consensus on matters of war and peace should be taken away from EU governments, and who, then, do they think should be empowered to decide for all of them - and for all of us? For Irish voters, you could ask your MEPs - highlighted below - why they’re voting in favour of the extensive cooperation between and integration of EU Member States and NATO envisaged in the resolution, since neutral Ireland is not a member of the NATO military alliance, and its public has no desire to be.