Another fine mess: Laurel and Hardy did it this time

There aren't many who didn't find Laurel & Hardy knee-slapping funny. Yes, their humor was mostly visual. And yes, they were a couple of sad sacks who never had a plan to achieve their ends, in fact it was clear from the start they'd most likely never even get started. But, we loved them in spite of all their innate shortcomings, for they never hurt anyone, not even themselves.

Oh, how different in the farce of epic proportions that just played out on the British Isles.

When I see Boris Johnson and Niall Farange, I can't help but think of the famous hapless duo, but the hard-hitting reality of it is: they are willing to exact any cost to serve their own ends, and before it's all over millions of us are going to have to pay for it, in more ways than one. Oh, don't get me wrong, as the old saw goes, "the people have spoken" ... or at least they think they have. For all the ranting, raving, ravaging, and in the end, death, that was perpetrated on all of us, it's pretty the same, old, same-old. Except for the nice mess you've put all of us in.

Even if you draw a personal analogy and look at Great Britain and the EU as old married couple, you realize that it's hard to live too long with an abusive partner: one who's in he marriage, but not really; one who declares his fidelity, but within limits; one who loves it when things go well, but tries to blame you for his own shortcomings; one who always wants more than he gives, well, because he always gives you the feeling that he's somehow better than you and deserves just a little more.

Divorce papers have been filed, and now 40 years of almost togetherness has to be unraveled. If that's not a fine mess, I don't know what it. On the Continent, we all knew that's what's coming. My reaction from taking in the news from several sources in several countries is that this was apparently not so clear to the British electorate. The number of Google searches regarding "what happens next" after the Brexit more than tripled. You'd think you'd have worked that out ahead of time.

Of course, Mr. I'll-give-you-a-referendum Cameron, who is typical British-EU style was for leaving then staying then letting everyone else decide and then staying again, it politically cowardly fashion didn't resign as promised, he decided to postpone it till October. Why? What's still to decide? Everyone knows what needs to be done now, but Cameron doesn't appear to be the one who wants to do it.

What is more, our Stan & Ollie stand-ins are claiming there's no need to rush into exit negotiations. I might not have liked them before, but should this turn out to be true, it will only confirm my suspicions that they just might be what I took them for before: snake-oil salesmen. The farther to the right you go on the old political spectrum, the more oily they become. You wanted out. The people said "out", so get on board and see that you go. That's how it's supposed to work. But, I can't say I can see a real plan at work there, but it would be hard to make out amongst all the posturing the supposed winners. Not a word of substance from a one of them. But I didn't expect any.

The result of the referendum was fairly close overall, but the regional distribution of in-and-out votes was revealing. England, except for London voted out; Gibraltar, Scotland and Northern Ireland voted in. In other words, the referendum showed the rest of us quite clearly just how unified the United Kingdom is at heart, namely not at all, and that is going to bring us yet more time-consuming trouble before the exit negotiations even begin, if they ever do.

The most crucial knock-on issue of this whole debacle, of course, is Scotland. The vote had hardly been tallied with the Scottish prime minister let us all know that her country's independence referendum is back on the table. They'll probably even get busy about it and push it through again. (Rumor, not unexpectedly, had it Northern Ireland was considering its options in this regard as well.) To top everything off, they'll likely vote to leave Great Britain. And then? What then? The EU can't in good conscience take them in. It's not just that all the agreements which now need to be unraveled have been agreed to with a third party and therefore cannot be legally binding, and it's not just that there is no rulebook for parts of a whole doing anything.

I don't know if it's clear to everyone that for the past two years, the United States, in particular, but the EU (against its own best interests and suffering under the undue neoliberal pressure being exerted by -- you guessed it -- the UK) have been trying to sanction Russia into submission for doing precisely that: accepting the vote of a quasi-autonomous region and taking them into their fold. Over there it was a violation of human rights and international law; over here, it's going to be what? Democracy? I don't see that the EU can do a damn thing for anyone in the UK any more and the integrity of the UK itself has been threatened.

And then there's my favorite side effect that not a single politician, talking head, or journalist on either side of the Channel even mentioned during the last month, but it should have been on everyone's mind: NATO. The UK voted to leave the EU, that is true, but they aren't leaving NATO, that's for sure. They, like their across-the-pond heroes, love waging war too much to even consider that. The crisis within the EU has become a potential military crisis. Should the exit negotiations get too difficult -- in common parlance, if the divorce should get too messy -- there are always ways to get everyone rallying around the flag. NATO should know, it's what they do best, and so now, at this very critical juncture in history (and the Brexit isn't the biggest issue), when the USA and NATO are so openly provoking Russia that even American and toe-the-line European politicians and journalists are starting questioning their true motives this biggest of all side shows had to take place. They say that in comedy, timing is everything, and right now, I don't hear anybody laughing.

Great Britain will now have the dubious distinction of electing what will without a doubt be the most far-right national government in Europe. Yes, yes, we have practiced having ultra-right factions in supposedly democratic governments ever since the coup in Kiev, and we're more comfortable with the idea now, but it's much easier to shrug off a second or third-world country, is it not? It's something we've very good at in the West, and now all the rest of those self-seeking, self-serving, militaristic crypto- and neo-fascist elements have found the legitimacy they have long sought but never deserved. They will feel energized and, worst of all, legitimized, so that's yet another major factor that the rest of us are going to have to deal with in the near future as well. Well, perhaps we should be thankful for the fact that we can now address the issues that need to be addressed to preclude this nonsense from spreading ... if we're wise enough to see the opportunity we've been given. (But of course we can't get to that as long as the Leavers are hanging around and why aren't they now so keen on leaving?) Oh well.

Politically, socially, economically, militarily: what a fine mess we have.

Free trade isn't fair trade, if you're big enough

Instead of a lot of theorizing and legalistic mumbo-jumbo, let me try to make clear what TTIP means in practical terms. Hence, a couple of mini-cases, which is no easy task, since my American friends pretty much have no say in anything any more and the few consumer protections they had are continually legislated into oblivion by a pro-big-business Congress. The real impacts, though, for all the diehard States-rightists will be that they will no longer matter because a small town in Oklahoma won't be able to do anything that might discriminate against a company in Poland.

For example, say Smalltown High School has a deal with a local caterer for providing school lunches. The caterer provides jobs for two-dozen employees and procures all its raw materials from local producers. The time comes to renew the contract. It will have to be put up for public tender and this tender must be open to anyone in the trade-agreement area. A Roumanian entrepreneur has to be able to bid on the job just like the local caterer. The local caterer, however, must now conform to international legislation, the local rules no longer apply. Getting in consultants, not the least of whom are familiar with international law, increases the caterer's overhead and has to increase prices. The Roumanian wins the contract, the caterer has to let most of the staff go, so the Roumanians pick them up are just over half of what they were making before. All the raw materials are sourced from discounters worldwide, prepared in Vietnam and frozen before being sent to Oklahoma for thawing and feeding the kids. The other local suppliers feel the pinch, let staff go, but there are no other jobs around. The kids are still getting lunch, but some of their parents are now unemployed or even unemployable.

Or, Midsize City has plans to develop a new shopping mall just outside of town. The plans are for 500,000 sq. ft. of retail space and A&B, a Swedish clothier has signed a long-term lease for 30,000 sq. ft of space. Complications in the implementation arise and the mall will end up being smaller than originally planned. In negotiating with all the prospective tenants, A&B's square-footage gets reduced to 10,000 sq. ft. Less space, less profit over the 25-year lease, so they sue the city for the expected profits over the duration of the lease. The suit, however, cannot be argued in local or state courts, rather it will be referred to an independent court organized under the terms of the trade agreement. Midsize City loses, but is broke because with money spent on legal fees and compensation, it no longer has any money to complete the mall, and so it now gets sued by everyone involved because they all expected to make money on the deal.

Unrealistic scenarios? Not at all. In both cases, should things really go sour, I don't doubt for a minute that a major player -- perhaps a major fast-food chain in the first scenario or a real-estate hedgefund in the second one -- jumps in to fill the void. And we all know, in the end, just how well that works out.

For all of you who think that government is worthless anyway, just who are you going to turn to for help? For those of you who think that the local government should at least care about the local citizenry, what support can it offer? For those of you who think that some form of governance is necessary to ensure the safety and security of the community, what does the community even have to say? No, it won't happen right away and it won't happen all at once but sooner or later, everything described here will come to pass and there won't be a thing you can do about it.

Does your health insurance mandate buying generic medications? After TTIP, patents can be held forever, no more generics, except for what's on the market at the time of the ratification. In fact, all intellectual property will always belong to the property holder and we know how well that works out for small companies and individuals now.

It's up to you. You can sit back, do nothing, and take whatever comes whenever it comes your way, but the past weekend made exceedingly clear to me that big business has anything but my interests at heart, and they've got the best allies money can buy.

If you think government is bad, try big business

On the February 26 & 27, there was a conference on the pending free-trade agreement between the USA and the EU, known as TTIP. It was the most interesting two days I've spent in a long time. About 500 people from all over Germany showed up, and there was the odd visitor/speaker from Spain, the UK, the USA, and France there as well. There could have been others, but I didn't run into them.

The EU, or better, the European Commission (EC), is pushing hard to get the negotiations over with this year. In October last year, over a quarter of a million people showed up in Berlin to protest the agreement, and despite strong opposition, a citizen's initiative collected over 3 million signature on a petition to the EC to stop the negotiations. Of course, none of this has stopped anything and the 12th round of negotiations took place in Brussels last week as well. While I am aware that most of my Europeans friends and acquaintances are familiar with this proposed treaty, with the negotiations on the transpacific agreement completed and the clown car and circus of the primaries blaring at full volumne, I'm not sure how many of my American compatriots are, so here's the deal and why you should care.

The last big agreement of this sort was NAFTA, which I'm sure just about everyone has forgotten, but they shouldn't have. Despite all the hype of the government at that time about benefits and economic growth, the impact to the American worker couldn't have been more devastating: more than a million jobs lost, unions busted, wages depressed, and job security thrown out the window along with most regulation and legal restrictions on irresponsible industrial activities nullified.

No, NAFTA didn't cause the financial meltdown in 2008 nor is it solely responsible for global warming, but I can assure you that unlabeled Frankenfood, Nestle's plundering of the Great Lakes while Flint's children are poisoned, and a $15bn lawsuit against the US (which they have little chance of winning ... so pony-up taxpayer) because the people shutdown Keystone XL are the result. But, NAFTA was only a dress rehearsal for the real thing which TTP and TTIP are bringing to us now.

The pro-TTIP propaganda is the same as it was with NAFTA: economic benefits beyond belief for all, which is anything but the case. Truth be told, this is a treaty by big business and for big business and this time they're not going to let little things like national soverignty, the will of the people or elections of any kind get in their way. Why do I think so? Well, how about the fact that

• the negotiations are conducted by non-elected governmental appointees
• all negotiations are conducted in complete secrecy
• elected officials (members of Congress, the EU or EU-member-state parliaments) have no access to the text of the agreement except under certain limited and restrictive conditions
• anyone who does get access to any part of the agreement is forbidden to talk to anybody about anything they read
• the treaty, being a matter of international law, supercedes any national law of any signatory country

just to name a few of the most disturbing.

I'm sure there are many of you who are saying, "So what? The big guys do what they want and we have to see how we manage to get along", but what is most unsettling is the fact that the agreements stack the deck against the little guy, so if you think you have to put up with crap now, just wait. And for my European readers, I'd like to remind you that the handling of the Greek affair was also a bit of prototyping for what is in store for all of us once the agreement is through.

So, it would seem that this post is running over, so even though I don't like to do so generally, I'll have to pick up on this next time as well. Do come back ... it gets better.