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.

Almost the same sh1t, different day

It is probably clear to most readers that my American friends get tired of me picking on the USA. Oh sure, they provide ample material, there's no doubt about that, and in reality, the only real complaint that I have is the hypocrisy of it all: claiming one thing and doing another. In this regard, I can assure you, the USA are not alone. The most recent developments here in Europe have shown that we have learned well from our mentor and we can be every bit as hypocritical as our big brothers across the pond can be. So, today, as a change of pace, I thought I'd let off a bit of steam for many of the same reasons, but with a different focus.

On more than one occasion, quite recently in fact, I have taken a very critical look at what the EU has done and is doing to Greece. (If you missed that or forgot, look here, here, and here.) What I did not do in those posts, and what has been bothering as long as it has been going on, is the role that Germany has played in all of this. Yes, the dismantling of representative democracy in Europe, the quasi-colonization of a (once) sovereign state, and the oppression of a whole people has taken place under the guise of a pan-European project, but, the truth of the matter is, it was a German-led action. And that bothers me to no end.

To be honest, I don't care what the motives are, nor am I all that concerned with the "reasons" or alleged "justifications". I don't care about the political rationalizations. What I have long maintained and what I never tire of saying: I don't care in the least what you say, I'm only concerned with what you do. Actions always speak louder than words, and that is the purest case for my problems with the USA these days, and it is the same reason that I've been ruminating over Germany for a while.

Most of you are not aware that everything that any of hears about the situation in Greece is propaganda. Over the past few days, as the Greek government "debated" the latest "emergency financial package" and "more quickly than expected" managed to "pass the appropriate legislation" to allow themselves to be "helped", I had to fight back the desire to "projectile regurgitate" on whatever media I was engaging at the moment. Seldom in my time on this planet have I been exposed to so much BS in such a short period of time.

It could very well be that the Germans were forced into the euro. It could very well be that so many mistakes were made in introducing the currency that there's no turning back now. It could very well be that political solutions to problems are always messy and always miss the point. It could also very well be that I'm seeing motives where there are only reactions. But, the fact of the matter remains that the Germans (Merkle in the background, coward that she is, and Schäuble in the foreground, power-addicted know-it-all that he is) believed it was their right to do what they did. But it wasn't. It never was, it never is, and it never will be.

The crisis is far from over, regardless of how the media try to spin it. The damage to be wrought will become more than obvious. The suffering of the people will become more than apparent. But the propaganda machine is running at full power here, just like it runs in America 24/7.

And, all of this is avoidable, if we would only stop talking and start listening, if we would only stop griping and start engaging, if we would only stop fighting amongst ourselves and realize that everyone who believes that they have even the least bit to say, is doing their best to ensure that we little folk don't ever, ever realize how much we're being manipulated. And that's all I have to say about that.

It's not all Greek to me

Most folks have not taken the time to read the tons of documentation that has been produced in regard to the Greek crisis. Tsipras is trying to buy some time to get through the next phase of the storm, but has anyone seriously asked themselves what he's doing and why? I don't know. I really don't know, but what I do know is that we're being fed an official line of distraction and confusion, and they're using every trick in the book to see that it stays that way.

The Greeks have been forced to put up all their public assets for sale. Just over a week ago, Warren Buffet took advantage of the sale and bought himself an island for a mere €15m. Not unsurprisingly, just this past week, it was -- quietly, subtly, almost unreportedly -- that the Americans are going to be given access to Greece's (not insubstantial) gas and oil reserves (just like they silently and forcibly moved in and took over the Ukraine's). In the meantime, just like in the USA where Social Security and Medicare are on the block for the upcoming elections, top priority was given to privatizing and gutting the pension system and the Value-Added-Tax, the most regressive of all taxes, was almost doubled.

The official line is that these "reforms" are necessary to get Greece back on its feet. When you call a program whose sole results is the destruction of what was there before a "reform", you have to be pretty damn cynical at heart. In the five years of the crisis, and here, in the last round, where it was do-or-die, the creditors (as if they should be given credit for something) demanded these changes, but not once in all that time have they demanded that a tax on the rich or super-rich be instituted, not once have they demanded that the government immediately clamp down on tax-evasion. Instead, the Greeks have been encouraged to "modernize" their administration (for example, by issuing very limited, but very lucrative IT-infrastructure tenders to be implemented whenever) and over all this time, the Greeks had submitted to continuous reviews, all of which were approved by those very parties who decided it was time for the Greeks to turn over their democratic sovereignty to extra-democratic institutions.

In light of the documentation, and in light of the actions of the Greek government in the last couple of weeks, I'd say they know what's what. At the very slightest indication of non-cooperation, I would be willing to bet that what has so-far been accomplished below the radar will simply burst to the surface. There will be a radical, perhaps even violent, change of government right here on the edge of Europe. Greece is being made an example of, but there is growing distrust of the current powers-that-be, not only in Greece, but elsewhere, and it is very likely that Greece will begin living its myths and become Pandora's Box.

Just how insane does it have to get?

The past couple of weeks have been trying, at least for me that have been. I'm not talking about my personal life. It's as "normal" as it's going to get, but what I see going on all around me is taking its toll.

It's not just the colonization of a nation within the European Union; it's not just the war-mongering and sabre-rattling towards Russia including supporting fascists in the Ukraine; it's not just the Turkish flip-flop on not knowing whether the Kurds or ISIS is the biggest perceived threat to them. No, it's the insanity that accompanies even the smaller issues.

It's the sheer ignorance that comes with ignoring anything that looks like a fact and stating one's opinion as if it was worth listening to. It's the hypocrisy of claiming to help when all you are really doing is harm. It's the perverse way that history gets twisted to make us think that Iran, for example, was responsible for 9/11, or that we can't identify terrorism when it's homegrown, or we rush to suspect terrorism where there is none but it suits our purposes, or how it is possible to believe the answer to gun violence is more guns, or how it is possible, in the allegedly freest country in the world that a former general can float the idea of internment camps for those not loyal enough to America. And this, in the 21st century.

There can be no violence great enough that will make us believe that violence is not the answer. There is no belief so distorted that it can't hide reality from us. There is no self-righteousness so great that it can't allow us to believe that we're the good guys and everybody else is bad.

That's our world today ... day in and day out. It's not just that the inmates are running the asylum, they've got most of us cheering them on.

Was what just happened in Europe a coup?

The recent Greek situation was as close to a coup as you can get without involving the military. Let us recall, that a coup d'etat is, most often, when a democratically elected government is ousted by the military (our most common 20th century experience) which then sets itself up as a junta. No, it doesn't have to be the military, which is why Greece is so interesting: for the first time in a long time, the coup came about not from within and not by the military, but from without, by civilians, namely technocrats and bankers.

As part of the "deal", the Greeks must ask permission of the Troika (the current powers-that-be) even to discuss certain topics. If they want to pass a law, they must present it to the powers-that-be for their approval before it is debated. Think about it. The Greeks, for all intents and purposes, are no longer a sovereign nation. They cannot alone decide what is good for them, in their own interests, and they may not decide how they want to solve their problems. Others will now tell them what, how and why ... well, not why, for that would unmask the whole charade.

My American friends, no doubt, have trouble understanding the problem, I am sure. Oh, it's not as many of you think that they are somewhat ignorant and ill-informed. No, that's not it at all. They can't understand it because they've been living in Greece all along but never knew it. They have no national healthcare to speak of, they have private insurance that will soon take its revenge for the sins of Obamacare. They have no real unemployment or welfare benefits because they all know that whoever is out of work, for whatever reason, is solely responsible for his or her plight. If you had done better, you wouldn't be in that predicament. Americans have a rapacious tax agency, and point-of-purchase tax-collection agents (it's called sales tax for those not following). Americans are personally swamped by debt, lose their homes daily, "enjoy" (in the meantime) somewhat lenient bankruptcy laws (which are necessary when so many "citizens" have to take advantage of them), and Americans, even the Creationists among them, that social Darwinism is a mere fact of life.

That my American friends have been deceived, manipulated, cajoled, coerced, even brainwashed into believing that their oppressors are benevolent is clear to me and most people in Europe. You can't ever miss what you never had, whether it was a good idea or not. It turns out that social cohesion is a defining characteristic of humanity. Destroy that and you destroy humanity itself. And there we are at modern-day capitalism.

The "money" that Greece owes is a paper -- no, digital -- fiction. Every rule of economics as we were taught them in school has been violated to create the situation in Greece (and elsewhere, including simple American households). All the so-called "laws" have been twisted, contorted, bent and broken in order that a fortunate few can live in excess at the expense of the unfortunate many. And there is no dearth of die-hard cheerleaders, from all walks of life and from every social stratum, who are willing to praise these thieves, these merchants of death, these heartless, mindless, and senseless parasites as idols, heroes, demi-gods. If they could only get just a little slice of the pie.

At the moment, it doesn't matter. We need to pay attention. We need take heed of what is really happening. A modern, sovereign nation has been declared mentally incapacitated, but as Ken Kesey exposed over a half-a-century ago: it's the inmates who are running the asylum.

What just happened in Europe?

There has been a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth going on around Europe the past couple of days, as well there should be. What is playing out is something for the history books, to be sure, but I suspect it will be reported very differently than it actually went down.

We've known since 2008 and since the leaks around the TPP, TIPP, and TISA that the banks and big business has taken over. This is not a conspiracy theory, it is pure and simple fact. There's not a government in the western, industrialized world that has 10 cents to spare for a single humanitarian program, not even for its own citizens, but there are tons of cash, in the form of bailouts, tax breaks, and subsidies for the most wasteful of things. What is different about the past few days here in Europe, however, is the fact that we have now seen (a) just how much power they possess and (b) to what lengths they are willing to go to deal with opposition of any kind.

I would be the last to maintain that the Greeks need to reform their governmental apparatus, start collecting taxes, and try to reduce unnecessary expenditures. However, in contrast to the EC, the IMF, the ECB, and the Eurogroup, I'm not willing to maintain that these reforms should be obtained at any price. For those of you both inside and outside Europe: this is not about the EU; this is not about the euro, as currency, per se; this is about power and what it means for us everyday little people.

The person in the street will tell you right out that without a land registry office, without a functioning tax system and tax authority, you cannot expect to get a grasp on your national income. Since 2010, the Troika -- the big players in the field -- have been placing one requirement after the other on the Greeks. If you take the time to look at the Memoranda of Understanding that direct this process, one significant feature become conspicuous by its absence: the demand, specifically, to set up a necessary tax infrastructure. There is a whole list of things To-Do, no question about it, but if placed in order of priority, it almost seems as if it has been inverted. Not the most necessary things to do were placed at the top, but the easiest to do. All the necessary reforms, the ones that may, perhaps, if everything went perfectly well, were placed at the bottom of the list. They are still to come, but there is other business to be attended to in the meantime, like bludgeoning the defenseless, cutting pensions by 30%, eliminating healthcare for a third of the population, driving the poverty rate from 26% to almost 35%, increasing unemployment to 25% overall and over 50% among the youth of the country, shrinking the economy by 25% and increasing the debt by over 25% as well.

In contrast to what is floated as common wisdom, neither Ireland nor the Baltic states were in a comparable situation to Greece, so they are not the success stories that everyone would like to maintain. Estonia, for example, had as good as no debt when their crisis hit; Ireland had a functioning governmental infrastructure. When the smoke clears, it's obvious that, well, a lot of folks are simply blowing smoke.

No, Greece had the audacity to elect a leftist government. That will not be tolerated. They had the courage to throw out the Troika. That cannot be tolerated either. They demanded reforms that work. And that cannot be tolerated in a world in which you are to do as you are told or you'll be squashed like a bug. In the end, the entire population said "no", and, strangely enough, when asked to present a list of reforms, the Greek government laid on the table, more or less, the take-it-or-leave-it agreement that the EC had dictated. The result: go back and do your homework, such a list is simply unacceptable.

So now, the Greek parliament has approved the plan they've been given. They had three days to do so. Private institutions and non-elected technocrats have desovereigntized a country in the 21st century, right before our very eyes. And that, my friends, is the Europe of today. It is not the Europe I migrated to (yes, I am a mere immigrant here), and it's not the Europe that encouraged me to say.

The message is clear: hold all the referendums you want, cry democracy and the will of the people all you want. In the end, it's the money people who have all the say. It's the simple Golden Rule: he who has the gold, rules.

The power of questioning power

Most things come full circle ... well, they do if you allow them enough time to take their course. The question of power and the question of questioning power is one of those things.

When you get right down to it, "power" -- whatever it is, whoever is exercising it, in which form it comes or in which systems it disguises itself -- has one, and only one, "tool": fear. Power is powerful, because you are afraid. It is that simple.

One of my biggest heros, one of the individuals who walked this earth for whom I have the greatest and utmost respect, used to preface many, many things that he said with the simple words, "Fear not, fear not ..." In modern phraseology: "Don't be afraid ... ". Yes, yes, yes, we have gone through all the trivializations of this simple idea, and so we haven't come to realize just how trivial the idea is. And now, we return, after such a long diversion, to the root of the problem. How can you "speak truth to power", or question, even challenge, authority without real risk of repression? It's quite simple, really: ask questions.

Although I grew up in an age that scholastically lauded the Socratic method, questioning authority was simply something "you just didn't do". It was impolite, cheeky, pushy, cocky, and downright, insulting. Still, there are ways to simply "ask a question" that is none of these. What is more, when asked in the proper way, in the proper tone, at the proper time, a question can, and most often does, appear as a simple quest for knowledge and wisdom from someone who apparently and supposedly "knows". It is one thing to rebuke a claim, an assertion, a statement, but it is quite another to not respond to someone who is early seeking "to know".

Power always has the responsibility to answer a well-meant question, even if it may not want to answer at all. Power cannot simply reject a question, for to do so would expose it for what it really is: power for power's sake. Yet, we can learn from the three-year-old: keep questioning until the questioned can no longer answer, until his/her own power-based logic simply collapses upon itself. And, believe me, it will eventually do just that.

While fear is an extremely powerful tool, if not a weapon, it suffers from a significant, inherent weakness: it cannot stand in the light of Truth. I may not know the "truth", that is certain, but I believe (and Power believes) that Truth can ultimately be found. The way to the truth is questioning: pursuing the path, via the method, of perhaps the greatest philosopher who ever lived, Socrates.

Power knows how to utilize fear to its own advantage. Of that much, I am sure. However, Power is not immune from fear itself. And, if there is anything that Power fears, it is the power of the question ... the simple question. So, never, ever be afraid to ask "the next question", for it is always, without doubt, the most important question to ever be asked.

Question power before it questions you.

Question power

Power can be all-powerful ... well, at least it can be conceived as such. Most folks that I know would rather avoid any association with power, let alone a confrontation with it. As the Germans put it, "offering your forehead to power" (Macht die Stirn bieten), can reduce your height by about twelve inches (30 cm) and your weight by about 11 lbs (5 kg) very, very quickly. That is a tried-and-true method that power employs, but, as we saw, over time, as the shift from the merely physical to the more ethereal has taken place, a shift in "execution" of power has taken place as well.

In most places around the globe, we don't lop off people's heads anymore. Most peoples and nations have come to the realization that the same effect can be achieved with a lot less visual vividness. Sure, you can still imprison folks for long periods of time, knowing full well that "out of sight" (that is, not in the daily press" means "out of mind" (that is, forgotten). Or, you can simply "talk louder". The volume of mainstream media is always higher than anything an individual can offer. Another approach is to discredit the questioner: given enough money, I suppose, everybody's missteps can be found out and exposed, especially in the days of the Internet. What all of these "methods" have in common, however, is fear. You could be charged with a crime, even if you didn't commit one; most people are tried "in the press" before they ever get to trial. Convictions are then merely insurance. The mainstream media, since it is privately controlled, is more interested in profits than truth, so they can afford to make you a case instead of making a case for you, and they will benefit (i.e., profit) from it, in the end. What is more, given the lax security and the reluctance of most "good citizens" to challenge the "status quo", innuendo, even in cyberspace, can literally destroy an individual before s/he has a chance to defend him/herself. I know very few people who would be willing to risk going through any of that for any reason. You don't have to chop off heads to instill fear. At least, not any more.

Still, as long as fear dictates our lives, as long as fear is our primary motivation, whoever or whatever is in power will succeed. It has always been this way, and it will continue to be this way, unless we change. And, I'm pretty sure, that's really far down on the ol' priority list.

It's too bad, really. One doesn't have to start a rebellion, a physical, military, violent, armed revolution to initiate change. The most effective change is never public, it is private. Here's a very simple thought experiment: imagine that you had no fear of anything any more: what would/could you do? Think about it. Because we hang on too many "things" (our house, car, savings account, possessions, you-name-it) we are afraid that someone can or will come and take it away from us. It could be a thief, but it could be the "government". Why the "government" would want it, given that it extracts exorbitant taxes from you, often without you even knowing it is doing so, and it has you regulated, legislated, controlled, and subdued by the mass of legislation you have to live with. You are allowed to "talk a good (maybe even "tough") game", but if they decide you're done, for whatever reason, you're outta here. And that, dear reader, is the price you pay for (alleged) freedom.

And that's why I say, quite simply, question power, before it questions you.

The question of power

Lord Acton, who most of us have never heard of, once said something that just about everyone of us has not only heard, but said: "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." That's not a direct quotation, but it is a direct expression of the sentiment he wished to express. This is one of those old sayings, those "wise, old" adages, that we let slip from our lips without a second('s) thought, which may be why we don't really get it; that is, really understand what the good Lord was trying to say.

As I confessed last time, questions really got to me. But if there ever was a concept that occasionally rivaled that enthrallment, it would be the notion of "power". Here is another used and abused notion that everybody talks about, that everyone thinks they understand, but that is, without a doubt, one of the most illusive notions that we've ever come up with.

First, we have the concept of "enabling things to function". We need power to drive the steam engine and power to run our computers and keep the lights on. Power is what is talked about when we think of any kind of machine or gadget. We also relate "power" to "authority": those who can tell us what we may or may not do, what is permitted and what is not. And, we also use the concept to describe whoever or whatever can ensure that certain things happen, as in legislative power, or "the power of the pen". OK, in the latter instance there is no ensuring, but potentially a lot of influencing. When it comes to physical power, we have lots of good science to "explain" to us how it works, why and how machines are efficient or why some people can benchpress hundreds of pounds and others can't do a single push-up. When it comes to other kinds of power, though, we're pretty much lost.

Again, Shakespeare's Macbeth is ready at hand: it exemplifies Lord Acton's statement, hundreds of years before Lord Acton expressed it. It indicates that this is not a new problem we are dealing with. In the meantime we know (probably more than we want to) about the "power of the sword", "power of nuclear weapons", the (fire)power of the American military, the "power of the 'almighty dollar'", the (alleged) "power of the press", even the "power of persuasion", and many more. We quickly begin to realize what a complex and intricate concept "power" can be.

All of these phrases show examples, to be sure, but none of them, and certainly not any one of them, defines the notion of "power". Why? Because "power" is always the same and never the same, all at the same time. There was a time when "physical power", in any of its forms -- strength, superior weapons -- played the dominant role. There was a time when "political power", in any of its forms -- diplomacy, alliances -- was most important. And now, we live in a time, when the "power of perceptions" plays the dominant role. We all still have to deal with the same, old same-old, but it comes in ever-changing guises.

It doesn't amaze me at all that most folks feel powerless in the face of power.

The power of questions

Anyone who knows me knows there is one "confession" I must always make, especially when I meet new people or have the opportunity to work in new groups: I absolutely and unequivocally love questions. I do. I am fascinated by them ... mesmerized sometimes. They stir my imagination and unlock secrets. They are, without a doubt, the most powerful intellectual and analytical tool -- if used properly -- that I have ever had the privilege to use.

These days, I believe that questions are terribly underestimated and their true power has never been properly recognized.

All of this started, of course, when I was going through teacher training at college, oh, so many years ago. In "my day", there was only one, accepted pedagogical (teaching) method: the Socratic method. Lesson plans described a topic, a digestible amount of material, and the way to get the students from wherever they were to wherever the lesson was to take them was to be achieved solely through the use of questions. It was frowned up that the teacher provide any "answers", be it information or -- heaven forbid -- interpretations or declarations. It was up to the teacher to guide the students to discover knowledge for him or herself, solely through the use of appropriate questioning techniques. This is considered more than old-fashioned these days, but, truth be told, this was a very old method when I became exposed to it. If you want to see brilliant examples of how it works, I recommend reading Plato. His writings are nothing other than Socratic dialogs (for Socrates always plays the main role), and they are every bit as informative and didactic today as they were at the time they were written. Some things simply refuse to change. (And anything that does, and anything that stands the test of time like questions do, deserve a second, third, or even an infinite number of looks).

And when did this fall out of favor as a teaching method? I don't know. I suspect, however, that it was about the time that "somebody decided" that the results of standardized tests or the regurgitation of factual knowledge was more important than the ability to think, to explore, to discover, and to search (for the truth). Oh, I'll be the first to admit it: questions can be uncomfortable, as any parent on the planet will tell you. There isn't a parent alive or dead who hasn't been exasperated (positively or negatively) by their 3-year old who will not give their questioning a rest. Once you fork down that "why" path, there is never an end in sight. Nor should there be. What we don't do as parents, or what enough parents don't do, or what most parents do not encourage, is that they continue asking those questions. If there is one ability in our children that we should never, ever discourage, it's the asking of questions. I firmly believe that the world would not be in the shape it is, that we would not be confronted with all the challenges that we have to deal with, if we had been encouraged as children to question more.

To me, it's never really been a priority to just "keep on trucking". No, for me, it's important to "keep on questioning."

Ideological subterfuging

It could be that I mentioned it somewhen before, but I love neologisms. New words, that is. I love thinking them up, and I love to watch the pained and sometimes even surprised expressions on people's faces when I use them around them for the first time. Oh, I've had downright "battles" with people over such words. They're argument is, if it's not in the dictionary, it's not a word. I say, in Shakespeare's day, they didn't have dictionaries and if they had had them, I'm not sure he would have cared. He is -- and I know I have said this before -- is my absolute hero, idol -- the Master of Masters of the English Language -- as far as I'm concerned. I don't feel even worthy to walk in his shadow, but that's not going to stop me from trying to sneak into the shade from time to time.

There has long been a lot of debate, not necessarily in public, but certainly in certain academic circles, about the relationship between language and thought. Whorf is probably the most widely known name in this regard. He postulated a direct link between language and how we access reality. I tend to think he's got a point, and whether language influences, or even determines, thinking or vice versa is not the real point for me. There is a relationship, undeniably. I am tending to believe it is symbiotic, not unidirectional, nor causal, but I still have to think a bit about that. What I am sure of, however, is that our experience of reality is most certainly influenced by the language(s) we speak.

Even this is, of course, too much for some people. They like to think they've got a complete, comprehensive, and objective grip on things. Nothing could be further from the truth. We can know a lot. We can be right about a lot of stuff. Our perceptions can conform to objectively verified, factual realities, but we never really have a sound "grasp" of things. We only know our experience of things, and that, dear reader, is the definition of subjectivity. You and I have different experience sets, hence we must, by definition, have differences in our perceptions of reality. This is not to say that we can't agree about many, many things, but there will never be a 100% match between your (perception of) reality and mine. That's OK. I can live with that. Unfortunately, there is a large (and growing?) number of people who can't.

Language is certainly one perceptual filter, but never, ever underestimate the power of ideologies (as I've talked about the last two posts) in filtering our experiences. Ideologies, once we believe in them, are personally dangerous in that they are so obvious to us that we fail to question them. We assume that their filtering is accurate. In most cases, we're not even aware that they are there and at work.

So, how does one "protect" oneself? Is there a way to at least mitigate their effects? But of course. There is no problem, no hazard, no disease or illness, no anything that Nature has not provided a cure/antidote/help for. In this case, our own human nature comes to our aid. We humans, believe it or not, are the only living species that can question.

Question everything.

Ideological abusings

The dominant ideology these days, as I said last time, is Neoliberalism, unbridled capitalism. Its purpose, of course, is the justification of the outrageous economic inequality that we are all experiencing and the exploitation of the climate and natural resources that are becoming ever more threatening.

The foundation of this particular ideology is what has become known as the Washington Consensus, first expressed in 1989 by John Williamson, the then chief economist and vice-president of the World Bank. Its goal is simple: the privatization of the world, and this by means of a very few simple principles:

• Tax reform: fewer taxes on the rich; more taxes for the working and the poor
• Total deregulation of all financial markets and the worldwide economic sector
• Protection of foreign investment and investors
• Increased protection for private property
• Reduction of national deficits
• Elimination of public subsidies
• Elimination of the public sector

Now, there is nothing in this list that we haven't seen being put into practice (well, except, of course, for the elimination of public subsidies ... as long as major corporations can get an extra hand from government, one shouldn't become too radical), but there is also nothing in this list that is a good idea because it is based on sound experience.

The rich and the benefactors of capital gains received preferential treatment, as was recently noted around Tax Day in America. The deregulation of capital and financial markets produced an economic meltdown that the little tax-payers got to bail out; the next (I believe, more severe) crash is on its way. And, we only need to look at what is being done to Greece (or look back to what was done to Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, Poland, or even Russia) to see what the results of these principles are. Yet, even though there is no factual evidence to support these principles, they are pushed and propagandized to such a degree that even their victims have begun to believe in them.

And so we are made to believe that this is how the world "is", that there are natural, economic laws that decide who succeeds and who fails, and yet not a word of it is true, nor can it be demonstrated by example. The propagandization of the ideology, however, and we should remember that all propaganda is based on fear, instills fear into the heart of the so-called middle class, those who thought they had risen above all that had been so painfully achieved on May Day.

I am ashamed to say that they got my generation to buy into this fantasy, but as is so often the case, converts are the worst. We have come to love and defend our oppressors. How sad is that?

Ideological musings

May Day could have been so worth celebrating. Too bad all we're left with is those long demythologized notions about the rights of spring. OK, that could be a reason for celebrating too, but we decided in our enlightened ignorance that anyone who came before ourselves really didn't know all that much in the end. We think so lowly of our forebears and ancestors that you really have to wonder how you can explain that we have survived as long as we have as a species.

Of course, we're poised to take care of that too. You can lie to yourself all you want, you can have governments censuring employees (in a supposedly free country), but you can't change the fact that we humans are doing our damnedest to pollute and heat up our planet so badly that Mother Nature will have no choice but to retaliate. But that's a discussion for another time.

No, what I wanted to pick up on was an idea in my last post that might have been overlooked by some of you, namely the part "ideology" played in the workers' defeat. We tend to think that when the Soviet Union collapsed it was because our own ideology proved to be "right", but as Wadsworth points out in the movie Clue, "Communism is simply a red herring." And that it is. No, there's a new ideology on the street to get us all, and it's known "officially" as Neoliberalism, or, for the less erudite among you, unbridled capitalism.

First, let us get clear on what an ideology actually is. In simplest terms, it's an "idea" posing as a "science" (-ology), that is an objective, clear, and proven way of knowing about the world. The key here, though, is the word "posing", for ideologies are diametrically opposed to science of any kind. When it comes to ideologies it is not so important that you know. It is much more important that you believe. And that's why they're so dangerous.

Every single ideology is there for one reason only: to interpret the world, to tell us how the world "is". To do this, it constructs a system of expression and symbols that follow the ideology's own internal, relative autonomous logic (cf. Jean Ziegler, Retournez les fusils!: Choisir son camp, Paris, 2014). While that all sounds relatively harmless, it ideologies are belief systems that provide justification for the actions of its believers. For example, the ideology of American Exceptionalism says it's OK for the USA to do things that they believe others have no right to do, such as overthrow governments or assassinate foreign politicians who resist America's right to do as it pleases, simply because it is in a unique position in the world. Or, the ideology of, say, Calvinistic predestination in the 16th century which was provided justification for the rise to political power of the commercial class and even the genocide of indigenous populations in the name of expanding trade, for example, in the American, Dutch and British colonies.

In other words, a given ideology is not based on facts, evidence or experience, rather it is a way of seeing and explaining the world that is grounded in a set of beliefs that are then used to say why what someone or some group is doing is good, right, and proper. Challenges, of course, usually come from outside, but not always.