LEARNING FROM YOUR ENEMIES. Part Three:The Power-Elites´ Talking Shops.

The Power-Elites´ Talking Shops.

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) was originally founded in 1921, and has been nurtured ever since by generations of what William Domhoff calls the most sophisticated group of corporate capitalists.

In the 1930s and 1940s the CFR was used to persuade successive US governments to pursue an aggressive and expansionist foreign policy. By the 1960s, the CFR and its house magazine, Foreign Affairs, had become the most influential forum for extra-governmental policy-making in the USA, and was beginning to extend its influence to domestic issues.

Before going any further, I must say once again that I am indebted to William Domhoff´s meticulous research and his extended essays on www.whorulesamerica.com for much of the information on which I have based my view of why the power-elites have been so effective in pursuing their political agendas.

From its foundation, the USA has always followed corporate-friendly foreign policies regardless of who occupies the White House and sits in the Congress. Remember that George Washington was the richest landowner in all the thirteen colonies. Since the first World War, (1914-1918) however, those policies have been particularly influenced by an endless series of policy-forums that the CFR may have modelled on the Round Tables that played a similar role in the British Empire from the late 1890s onwards.

Developed by Arnold Toynbee and his disciples Cecil Rhodes, Lionel Curtis and Alfred Milner, the Round Table process combines well-researched and skilfully-presented ideas and information with absolute confidentiality and a rigorous but well-mannered debate. The format is now enshrined in what are called The Chatham House Rules.

The CFR´s talking shops, its policy-forums..

… bring together wealthy individuals, corporate executives, experts, and government officials. New ideas are tried out in weekly or monthly discussion groups, and differences of opinion are aired and compromised.

The talking-shops usually have 15 to 25 members and after a presentation by invited experts, there are questions and a discussion involving all participants. Today there are similar forums at federal, state and city levels in the USA. There are also their transnational equivalents: the Trilateral Commission, the Davos and Bilderberg Meetings, and lesser-known but very influential bodies such as the Atlantic Business Council. Through these relaxed but carefully-structured policy-forums at the CFR and at its many sister organisations, wealthy individuals and corporate leaders can hone their understanding of policy options from outside experts and from their more politically street-wise elders. CFR members who control much of the USA’s mass media provide platforms to discuss the notionally non-partisan products of the forums. Through such friendly exposure, business executives can work under the umbrella of the CFR to influence public opinion, shape the political agenda and build their public profile.

The process also allows senior members of the upper class and the corporate community to pick out new leaders and media-friendly personalities to serve their various political agendas. Equally, the give and take of the discussion groups, reveals who has the best ideas, can facilitate discussions, and handle complex issues skilfully. The forums thus serve as a sorting and screening mechanisms for the emergence of new blood among the power-elites´ leadership, advisory and operational groups.

Through their contribution to these so-called ´non-partisan´ policy-forums, wealthy individuals and corporate executives can also be presented as concerned citizens, above petty politics, and in the fullness of time, as “national leaders” and “elder statesmen.“

The policy-forums also provide a mutually beneficial space wherein members of the power-elites get to know policy experts, who, in turn, can advance their own careers by impressing their hosts.

The policy-forums do not follow a strict party line, but the range of permissible differences is not wide. Outside experts will encounter well-informed audiences representing a spectrum of views that range from the moderately-conservative to the ultra-conservative. The debates are often sharp but the aim of the process is to achieve a workable agreement, and since the 1970s, these have tended to favour the ultras, of course.

Through the expertise on social and ‘political issues that they gain from the policy-forums, leading members of the power-elites prepare themselves for top cabinet positions in both Republican and Democratic administrations. Without that background, their wealth and/or family connections would not be enough to justify their appointments. Later, after they leave government, they return to the private sector or to head up a major foundation or a key international agency, with invaluable personal contacts and a wealth of inside information. And then, with a new President in the White House, they may be back in the Cabinet once again. And, so the power-elites´ revolving doors spin merrily along.

Domhoff stresses the value of the face-to-face, small-scale nature of the processes. People may go from

a board of directors meeting at a corporation in the morning, to a meeting of a policy discussion group in the afternoon, and on for a drink with some buddies at an exclusive club in the evening.The literature of small-group research or small-group dynamics in social psychology..shows that people who meet in relaxed settings, and see their group as exclusive, become even tighter with each other than people in ordinary groups. … people in exclusive groups are more likely to listen to each other and come to a compromise if they have the task of figuring out what to do about some policy issue…..

Domhoff concludes that,

from a social-psychological point of view, the upper class is made up of constantly shifting face-to-face small groups —

All well and good, provided that the majority of citizens are happy that their policy-options, cabinet appointments, and `non-partisan´ policy-experts cover a spectrum that runs all the way from Moderate to Ultra-Conservative, and that their lives, their governments, the mass-media and what ´passes for political debate and difference is held fast in the grip of a highly-partisan and dysfunctional form of group-think.

Moreover, while…

Their self-confidence and social polish are useful in dealing with people from other social classes, who often admire them and defer to their judgements, …, members of the upper class (and their chosen associates) usually come to think of themselves as “special” or “superior.” They think they are better than other people, and certainly better able to lead and govern.

Since the 1960s US power-elites have included in their policy-planning processes two new kinds of ultra-conservative activists.

Firstly, there were the post-Keynesian, monetarist and neo-liberal economists, who insisted that governments had to return to pre-New Deal policies based on Adam Smith´s free-market fundamentals. Frederick von Hayek´s protegé, Professor Milton Friedman was the most publicly active and notorious for his role in the counter-revolution, but he was but the most flamboyant of a small army of hard-line neo-liberal economists who have effectively expunged any new or even alternative economic ideas from academic and public discourse in the USA.

Secondly there were the neo-conservatives whose quasi-theological passions and social-psychological nous came to dominate the Republican Party after the Goldwater debacle of 1968 and the Nixon implosion of 1974.

Together, they set the USA on a course of restoring to corporate capitalism the robber-baron freedoms that it had lost from the 1930s to the 1960s. The totalitarian tendencies of such a relentless, multi-pronged process of economic, ideological and social reinforcement have become increasingly clear since the elections of George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004  with his ultra-conservative Cabinets’ drive for global military and economic dominance on behalf of the US corporatocracy.

In those circumstances, it may seem perverse to argue that enemies of US imperialism have much to learn from the power-elite´s talking shops. Nonetheless that will be the theme of my next posting.

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A 20TH CENTURY STORY

It is a sunny Saturday morning on the terrace of a smart café in the centre of Curitiba. Fernando introduces me to his friend, Josef. “He speaks English and Ukrainian and he´s a Jew,” he says jovially. Later, when I hear that his mother spoke only Yiddish and recall that he speaks Ukrainian, I ask Josef if he was born in Brazil. No, he was born in a small town on the Polish-Ukrainian border: in 1936. I reflect for a moment on the implications of what he has said. “So, you are lucky to be here,” I say cautiously. He nods, “Yes, all my family survived, “ he says.

The Germans invaded Poland in 1939, and eventually, the Gestapo started murdering and deporting Jews from their town. Knowing very well what would happen to them all if they were caught, some members of a Czech-speaking community hid him, his father, mother and brother and fourteen other Jews – men, women and children – in a pit behind and partly under, some pig-sties at their farm.

For two years, they ate raw potatoes and vegetables from the fields and the best bits of the pig-food. They all survived somehow, and when the Russians drove the Germans out of Poland in 1944/45, they managed to escape from the Red Army and walk to Italy. After two years in Italy, they emigrated to Brazil (not Israel, oddly enough) and arrived in Curitiba totally penniless..

Once in Curitiba, the Jewish community helped Josef´s parents to find a room, but they had no money and no work and of course, spoke no Portuguese. . His father pleaded with a Jewish shopkeeper to let him have some new clothes on credit, so that he could try to earn some money by selling them from door to door.

Speaking hardly any Portuguese, Josef´s father worked from 7 am to 8 pm, hauling two suitcases around the streets and knocking on doors. But he managed to sell the clothes at a small profit. After 6 months, he was able to hire a boy to carry the cases. After a year he was able to buy a horse and cart. People asked to pay on credit, so much a week for a suit or a dress and that added to the profits. By the early 1950s, he was making enough money to buy a 1929 Ford, and was on the way to being another successful Jewish entrepreneur. who had started with nothing

Now, in his early seventies, Josef sits in the Autumn sun in a pavement café and remembers his extraordinary childhood. His mother spoke only Yiddish but he speaks six or seven languages, well enough: Portuguese, Ukrainian, Polish, some Czech, English, German, Spanish and French.

He says that the Czechs are very good people. His parents tried to keep in touch with the family who had taken such appalling risks to save them from the gas-chambers. As soon as they could, they contacted their rescuers, who were now living under communism. Knowing that life was very hard in Eastern Europe, they sent food parcels to their saviours, but months later, the parcels were returned and they were begged not to make trouble for their friends.

Decades later, when it was possible to communicate safely, they learnt that the Czech couple had died, leaving two sons. One son had died of cancer and the other never married. Soon he too died, and there are now no surviving members of that heroic family.

I tell Josef that I remember having to sleep in the cellar of our house when the Germans were bombing British cities in 1940 – 41. But, it was our cellar, under our house. The walls were whitewashed, and we had plenty of blankets. We even had a carpet and some chairs, though I can´t remember any beds. It was about 3 Metres by 3 metres. Instead of pigs we were next to our supplies of coal, apples were stored in boxes, and there were stacks of tinned food. After the All Clear siren wailed we all trooped back upstairs to our beds. “Anyone want a cup of cocoa and a biscuit? “

So even though the circumstances were very different, we have both spent part of our childhood hiding underground and here we are, sitting in the Brazilian sunshine, looking fondly at each other. He gets up to leave, “If you ever want anything”, he says, “give me a call.” We embrace and he strolls off to lunch with Fernando.

LEARNING FROM YOUR ENEMIES. Part Two:THE POWER ELITE’S SYSTEM

Once upon a time, say in the early 1970s, a highly-regarded but obscure young Assistant Professor at a prestigious University in the USA was approached by Bill, a member of the Board of Regents, at the coffee-break of a seminar on some aspect of global politics and invited to lunch. Over lunch, Bill said he had been very impressed by – let us call him – John´s contribution to the seminar, had checked him out, and would like to offer him a job in Washington. Within a few months, John had leave of absence from the University and was a member of a Policy Group working for Bill, who, for the second time in his career, was a member of the Cabinet of the President of the USA.
In his new job, with Bill as his mentor and sponsor, John moves in the circles where he regularly encounters members of the power-elites. In particular, he contributes to “Policy-forums” organised by the Council on Foreign Relations, (CFR). Other contributors will be rising stars like himself, and they will be discussing policy-issues with Wall Street moguls, Corporate CEOs , current and former Secretaries of State, National Security Advisers and other Cabinet officers, former heads of the CIA, Presidents of major Foundations, newspaper commentators and senior editors from Network and Cable TV, chief officers of global NGOs and prominent neo-liberal and neo-Conservative strategists.
The results of those policy-forums will be written up by a small team of academics. They will be published in one of the CFR´s House Journals such as Foreign Affairs, summarised in articles in the Washington Post and the New York Times, and presented on prime-time TV. Only those who know how the power-elites work will be aware that these proposals do not originate from a group of independent academic policy-wonks with no connection to business or government or any political party.
With Bill´s help and guidance, John´s career continues to flourish after he leaves Washington. He chairs important committees at the University, is promoted to a very senior faculty post over the heads of much better qualified colleagues. He gains a fearsome reputation as someone who makes life ruinously difficult for those who cross him. Through Bill, and his contacts at the CFR, he joins the Boards of several major corporations. He becomes moderately wealthy in a very short time. He travels by private jets and spends weekends at the summer-homes of corporate billionaires, ex-Presidents, leading Senators and Wall-Street moguls. The directors of the CFR invite him to become a Fellow.
During the next round of Presidential primaries and elections, he is one of a several dozen CFR Fellows who act as Policy Advisers to the main candidates from both parties. After the election, he returns to Washington, as an Assistant Secretary of State. He works closely with the President as a member of his inner circle of trusted advisers – all Fellows of the CFR. He has become – as they say – a Global Player, a member of the US power-elites, one of a mere six thousand people, a one in a million person who is part of what David Rothkopf calls “The Superclass” [FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX 2008]
David Rothkopf defines Superclass as people whose decisions have the power to affect millions of ordinary lives. And the CFR has acted as the hub around which the SuperClass has evolved and operated since the 1920s, initially in the US and later globally. The original members were almost exclusively drawn from or closely connected with some of the most sophisticated corporate capitalists in the world. Names like Morgan, Rockefeller, Harriman, Ford, together with those of foreign policy mandarins like the Dulles Brothers, Acheson, Kennan, appear in the 1920s and 1930s,, and today, in among many leading neo-conservatives and neo-liberals, they still appear. New blood from the middle-classes, like John, arrive from outside the East Coast or West Coast cliques, are spotted relatively early and groomed into positions of influence.
The system has been developed and refined to ensure that the new entrants can be relied on to continue the process of controlling the USA – and large parts of the global economy – that was embarked upon all those years ago. Not only are the people intellectually very capable, the power-elites system as a whole is one that is capable of constant learning and adaptation.

At http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/national.html William (Bill) Domhoff demonstrates that despite (relatively) free speech, regular elections, and organized opposition, in the USA, rule by the wealthy few is possible because, although they constantly claim to be relatively powerless:”

The rich” coalesce into a social upper class that has developed institutions by which the children of its members are socialized into an upper-class worldview, and newly wealthy people are assimilated.
Members of this upper class control corporations, which have been the primary mechanisms for generating and holding wealth in the United States for upwards of 150 years now.
There exists a network of nonprofit organizations through which members of the upper class and hired corporate leaders not yet in the upper class, shape policy debates in the United States.
Members of the upper class, with the help of their high-level employees in profit and nonprofit institutions, are able to dominate the federal government in Washington.
Working people have less power than in many other democratic countries.

Domhoff is but one of a growing number of scholars and commentators who aim to help the general public to understand the history and range of the power-elites´ anti-democratic modus vivendi, at every level from the local to the Federal to the Global,
From a process Point of View, however, nothing illustrates their capacity to maximise their potential better than their routine use of what are called “Policy-Forums” .
These highly-effective policy-forming processes were pioneered in Britain and the British Empire around 100 years ago, and at that time they was called “Round Tables”.
Their benefits to the power-elites are much greater than merely the production of a constant stream of influential papers. articles, and books. They are the engine that powers the power-elites.

TO BE CONTINUED.

THE FRIENDS OF JOSEF FRITZL

For 24 years, Josef Fritzl kept his daughter Elisabeth imprisoned in a specially-contructed ” flat” in the basement of his house. He had drugged and locked her in the basement when she was eighteen and subjected her to constant sexual abuse until she was in her 40s. .  Her disappearance was explained by a note that he forced her to write saying she had run away to join a cult.

The flat had no windows and between the ages of 18 and 42  Elisabeth never saw the sun. In that tiny, sunless prison, she gave birth to seven children. Three of the children had not seen the sun either until they were released last week. Another child had died in infancy and been incinerated by Fritzl. Three were  `found´, as tiny babies by Fritzl and his wife on their doorstep.  The infants came with a note from Elisabeth asking for them to be brought up by her parents. They were duly adopted by their father/grandfather and knew nothing of their siblings or their  mother until the whole tragic story came to light last week.

The details of Elisabeth´s unspeakable ordeal are slowly coming  to light. And, they are horrific, but the big unanswered question is,How did Fritzl get away with it? The tragedy took place in a  small town, with his wife and several lodgers living within feet of the unfortunate Elisabth and her babies´for 24 years.  No-one noticed anything, apparently. And, certainly,  as a prominent local builder, developer and domestic engineer, Fritzl had an excuse for taking massive amounts of equipment, building materials and rubbish to and from the basement.

Today, the Austrian justice minister said that local officials had been “gullible” in accepting Fritzl´s reasons for Elisabeth´s  disappearance.  Is that really all there was to it? Anyone who  knows something of the pattern of sexual abuse of a daughter by a father will suspect that there was far more to it than mere gullibility.

For a start, pedophiles are incredibly clubbable. They cannot resist forming pedophile rings  to provide each other with cover and with contacts and, of course, a supply of additional victims.  As far as I know, there has never been a case in which a pedophile operated in isolation.

When I was part of an informal  support group for the wives and children of  active child-abusers, the frequency with which they had encountered policemen, doctors, social workers, lawyers, magistrates and judges who dismissed or blocked their complaints and returned the children to the “care” of their pedophile husbands, was heart-breaking

So, if Fritzl has been an active member of a local pedophile ring – and the video of his holiday in Thailand gives a strong hint that he was – the group will be working feverishly to cover their tracks. They may include prominent figures in the community.  They will present a united strategy to say that Fritzl had never given a hint of what he was doing. They will bully their wives and children into silence on what they know. They will helpfully steer investigations into blank walls. They will destroy address books, files, videos, computer discs.

But, the rigorous investigation that Elisabeth and her children deserve might succeed in “rolling-up” Frizl´s pedophile network and then, it seems to me that one or two of  those “gullible” officials could well end up in the dock with him.

Master-minds

In his new film “21”, Kevin Spacey plays, Mickey, a professor of mathematics at the Massachussets Institute of Technology. When Ben, a new student, shows an exceptional talent for statistics, Mickey invites him to join a secret team of professional card-players, recruited from his fellow-students. The team goes to Las Vegas every weekend and wins tens of thousands of dollars “card counting”.  Ben needs $300,000 to pay for his college fees, and after some hesitation he joins the team.

From the naieve nerdiness of student life at MIT, Ben rapidly isuccumbs to the high-octane world of Las Vegas: vast hotel suites, private pools, stretch limos, glamorous women, limitless shopping. Of course, after riding high and beating the Casino´s security systems for some months, the team rapidly falls apart and the whole scheme unravels with very nasty consequences.

The story is very loosely based on the experiences pf several groups of MITstudents and graduates who actually used their collective statistical abilities to win a lot of money over a period of about twenty years from the late 1970s onwards.

Properly handled, the  true story could have made a fascinating film. But “21” is a glib and depressing experience. True, it gave Spacey the chance to do his charming -  but vicious – reptile act, but not one of the characters had an ounce of true weight or humanity. Whatever moral sense they might have had was swept away by the possibility of satisfying their greed and selfishness. At the same time, the sheer sensory assault of the Las Vegas settings reduced much of the film to a sort of hellishly over-blown travelogue.  For a European, the passion for making money at all costs, fuelled in this case, by the gross commercialism of the American Educational system, is sad at first, but ultimately sickening. That might have been the effect that the producers – and Spacey – wished to create but if it was they went about it in a very strange way.

By one of those flukes that tell us a great deal about the value-gulf between European sensibilities and mainstream USA, the BBC brought together four members of the team that had made the cult classic “Withnail and I” in 1986. Here again we have intensely unhappy and penniless young men and a rich older man who attempts to seduce one of them at his house in the country. But of course, this film is a comedy in which the characters are doomed to fail rather tragically. However, W &I is a comedy. The misery of their predicament, the waste of their talents and the stupidity of their behaviour (endless drink,  even a swig of lighter-fluid, lack of basic hygiene,cigarettes, drugs, sexual misadventures, boorishness and incompetence ) is played with absolute and at times heartrending seriousness, and is, of course, wincingly alarming and wickedly funny.

It would be interesting to see what Bruce Robinson, the author of the semi-autobiographical W & I , would have done with the original plot and characters that became “21”. With his eye for the absurdity of excess, and his talent for the tragi-comic, I guarantee that it would have been a damn site better film – and a lot more fun.  One of the great “If-Only”s perhaps.

LEARNING FROM YOUR ENEMIES. PART ONE: SOCIAL FORUMS vs THE GLOBAL POWER ELITES

The very smart people who put George W. Bush in the White House would have been delighted with the fury aroused by the mention of his name at the Mercusul Social Forum (FSM). If they heard that a very distinguished Brazilian lady deafened her audience with repeated shouts of “Booosh Fora!!!” (Bush out!!), they would be sure that the FSM represented no kind of a threat, and that the speakers and delegates remained in ignorance of the true nature of the power-system they were trying to change.

No-one at the MSF seemed to understand that Bush, like all but one or two of the US Presidents since the 1870s, is no more responsible for the broad thrust of US Imperialism than an obnoxious Cabin Steward is responsible for the lousy food being served by an airline. Bush is a figure-head for what scholars refer to as `the Power Elite´.

William Domhoff defines the US power elite as

the leadership group of the upper class. It consists of active-working members of the upper class and high-level employees in profit and nonprofit institutions controlled by members of the upper class through stock ownership, financial support, or involvement on the board of directors.

There are power-elites operating in every society and at every level. From the neighbourhoods, to the cities, to the states to the Federal – and especially – the Global level. As Governor of Texas, Bush was the front-man for the Texas power-elites. Now, like every President since Lyndon Baines Johnson, he is fronting for the global power-elites. They, in turn, through people like the hugely influential, but low-profile, ex-Senator Howard Baker, are closely- integrated with the elite-network in Texas. These are the people who have ensured that – by and large – the USA has been governed in the interests of their families and their corporations for several generations.

Moreover, Presidents, Governors and Mayors do not operate in isolation. The power-elites also choose most of the men and women who sit around their Cabinet tables, hold key policy-portfolios at city, state and federal level and run the World Bank, the IMF and the World Trade Organisation. It does not matter which party they nominally serve or which nationality they are. They have been allowed to take up important offices in order to serve the power-elites that have nurtured them, and into which they may well have been born.

The power-elites chosen front-men (and occasionally, women) are not mere puppets. They are very smart people. No matter how blatantly they are betraying the millions of people they were elected to serve, they – with the help of their speech-writers and PR staffs – argue their case brilliantly and give convincing displays of sincerity. They are often able to present their routine betrayals of the powerless as a protection from something far worse – Big Government, socialised medicine, and now of course, global terrorism. At the same time, the control that the power-elites exercise over the US mass-media, from the New York Times to the thousands of religious radio-stations, almost completely drowns out the voices of those who want to offer opposing arguments.

The same system used to work for the US and the national power-elites in every state in Latin America. Presidents (the ubiquitous `Harvard-trained economists´) were elected to serve the interests of their national power-elites to which they belonged and the US power-elites with whom they had close links. Now, however, with the election of left-ist or at least independent-minded Presidents in Venezuela, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay, the system seems to have broken down – at least temporarily. To an extent it also seems to be at least partially true with the Lula-government in Brazil. On the other hand, the skill with which the separatist movements are operating in Bolivia and the military threats to Ecuador and Venezuela from the Colombian regime, are classic examples of how local power-elites can simultaneously pursue their own sectional interests and the wider aims of the US power-elites.

Members of the Latin American `counter-elites´ seem to be more or less completely unaware of – or indifferent to – how the local and global power-elites operate, the possibility of achieving anything but short-term, local victories is very limited. Until they have a precise shared understanding of what and who they are up against, they will not be able to make any real progress towards achieving what we all want – a just and sustainable world.

Although much of their work is done behind closed doors, with participants required to maintain strict confidentiality, the history, memberships, modus operandi, and political strategies of the power-elites are reasonably well-documented.

The meticulous researches of academics such as William (Bill) Domhoff, James Petras, Carroll Quigley, Laurence Shoup and William Minter, enable us to know a great deal about their personnel, structures, processes and policies.

Other researchers such as Sara Robinson and Bruce Wilson have argued that, if progressives study how the neo-liberals and neo-conservatives have managed to achieve such a dominant position in US politics, it is also possible to learn a great deal from them.

It is so important to understand the power-elites that I will continue discussing who they are and what they do for some time yet. Watch this space.

In praise of Flip-charts

In the English-speaking world, there are Flip-Charts everywhere: in managerial offices, training centres, in team-rooms, in the middle of offices, in business, in government, in schools, police-stations, universities, in the city, in the country. Even if they are used just as a crude note-pad, for messages, or reminders, or to record an event, they are useful tools.

Used with even the most basic of facilitation skills, however, they can enhance the quality of team-dialogues and thus team-efficiency, vastly improve problem-solving capacities, planning, decision-making, dilemma-resolution, idea-generation, information-sharing and leadership potential.

From community-participation projects to board-rooms, from sales-offices and research laboratories to the factory floor, flip-charts are invaluable tools for raising the levels of energy, understanding and collective-effectiveness.

When there are large numbers of people involved, as at a conference, it is commonplace for the big audiences to break up into a dozen or more smaller groups, each group working around a flip chart for thirty or forty minutes, before they reconvene to share their groups´ outputs in plenary sessions.

Such processes require teams of at least semi-skilled-facilitators. But the pay-offs are well worth the effort. Obviously these large-scale events take a lot of forethought, creativity and planning. Again, the use of flip-charts can eliminate the vagueness and uncertainty that blights much conference planning.

Learning facilitation skills is not hard, and there are many good facilitators in every effective organisation. Facilitators do not need a University degree. They just have to understand the importance of following the basic rules of facilitation and write reasonably legibly with a felt-tip pen (though I have known good facilitators with terrible writing). Secretaries seem to have a special aptitude for facilitation.

There is an enormous literature in English concerning effective large- and small-group processes. It goes back to the 1950s. In many ways, the principles underlying effective group-processes are very similar to the dialogical culture-circles pioneered by that great Brazilian innovator, Paulo Freire.

Until I came to Latin America I thought flip-charts were as universal as bicycles or computers. But they are not. They can be bought in the biggest office-supplies stores, but otherwise they are as rare as hens-teeth.

Their absence does perhaps go some way to explaining the incredibly frustrating experience of attending and contributing to a conference anywhere South of the Rio Grande. The much-lamented absence of administrative competence, customer service and innovation in government, business and the public services owes somethiong to the failure to understand the benefits of using flip-charts small- and large-group processes.

Above all the indifference to the potential benefits of using fli-charts effectively may reflect the persistence of an extreme form of the Command and Control Leadership.

These thoughts began to stir in me as I endured an endless succession of tirades from speakers at the Mercosul Social Forum (FSM) last weekend. It was a painful introduction to one of the central features of Latin American culture.

As I sat through the sessions, I thought of how sad Paulo Freire would have been to see the serried rows of passive and often blatantly inattentive listeners being harangued by through sound-systems that bore an uncanny resemblance to those installed in the Evangelical Churches that open out onto the pavements in so many city-streets. They in turn take their cue from the deafeningly amplified rhetorical techniques of multi-millionaire pastors and priests who take up much of Brazilian TV

At the FSM, there would be as many as ten impassioned orations in any two-hour session. The atmosphere resembled a three-day political rally, and at times, even a revivalist meeting.

As far as I could see, there was nothing resembling debate, or dialogue or any real learning, any more than there is from a hell-fire sermon or an election speech. The use of inspirational music, slogan chanting and hymn singing heightened that impression.

A number of films were shown, but rather than serving as a stimulus for discussion they were applauded and wrapped up with one or two words of uncritical praise. In three days I saw only three speakers who offered any kind of visual material, and none of them had bothered to tailor their presentations to fit either the time that they were allowed or the audiences they were addressing.

In their turn, the audiences scarcely bothered to listen to the speakers: a low-roar of chatting and greeting persisted in the main hall, and a crowd of people stood at the back or even in the aisles, totally ignoring the impassioned words being addressed to them from the stage. And, on the platform, mobile phones were freely used, expressions varied from the impassive to the pained, and neighbours emgaged in – admittedly muted – conversations.

And the net result of all that time, effort, and expense? Nothing as far as I could see. Of course, that could well have been the organisers´intention and that I had failed to understand what their aim had been. It is far more likely however, that their only model for a public event is taken from political rallies and religious ceremonies. They are simply unaware that another approach is possible.

In nearly forty years of organising and attending conferences, however, I have yet to meet a member of the audience who actually wanted to be subjected to endless haranguing. Instead they wanted to have the chance to tell their stories too, to question the experts and decision-makers, to listen intelligently, gain new ideas and deeper understanding of important issues, and contribute, to the development of programmes of positive action.

If I could wave a magic wand and take charge of the next social forum, my first decision would be that for most of the sessions, the microphones and sound-systems should be replaced by flip-charts. overhead projectors and power-point screen. Speakers would be told that at least 50% of the allotted time for every session would be give over to facilitated discussions much like Paulo Freire´s Culture Circles. They too would take part in the facilitated small group work. They would learn a lot by listening respectfully to what members of the audience had to say. And, the outcome of the event would be some plans, some commitments, some positive moves towards a better future – and a basis for ever-more successful Social Forums on the future.

But none of that can happen without our blissfully unpretentious flip-charts. All praise to them

FOR HUMPH

The British newspapers are all carrying long obituaries and appreciations for `Humph`, aka Humphrey Lyttleton, a jazz-trumpeter turned radio comedy-quiz show host, and without doubt, a national treasure. At 86 he was still playing a weekly date at a small jazz club in the suburbs and remained warm, easy and approachable, in spite of his great age and the awed veneration in which he was held by generations of fans.

There are hundreds of people who knew him personally who can express their appreciation of his majestic gifts better than I. For me, he was always a joy to listen to whether playing or talking about jazz, or delivering the Chairman´s script for `I´m sorry I haven´t a clue´, for more than thirty years.I won´t try to explain the show, and why it enraptured its audiences in the studio and at homw or ov er the Internet. I can only wuggest that you go to www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 and link to it through their `Listen Again´ facility.

With Humph in the chair and four comedians invited to `play´ silly panel games, such as announcing the guests at the Ski-Instructor´s Ball, the show expressed an absolutely, unique, irreverent, surprisingly erudite and quintessentially British spirit of playful anarchy.

It is an overworked cliché to say that without him, the world will never be quite the same again, but in Humph´s case it is entirely apt to say so.

In a very important kind of way, Humph was one of those very rare people who make you proud to be British.

A comedy is a tragedy that happens to someone else

As my flight started its take-off surge the other night, the young man in the next seat crossed himself, touched the knuckle of his thumb to his lips and bowed his head for a moment. I suspect a number of other people on the flight did much the same. What Muslims or Buddhists or Mormons do, I have no idea, but there must be millions who go through similar tiny rituals every day as their plane starts to roar along the runway. And again, as it bumps down at the end of the flight and the engines roar into a reverse thrust.

Since we landed safely, I suppose my devout fellow-passengers thought that their prayers had been answered. Me, I just had a statistically reasonable faith that the guys doing the maintenance checks had done their jobs properly, and that none of them or my devout fellow-passengers had decided that the best way of serving their God was to put a bomb somewhere on the plane.

I thought of my neighbour’s little ritual as I watched a short video clip from the rain-soaked Brazilian coastal resort of Paranagua. It started with the final moments before a certain Father Carli took off in an attempt to break the world record for a multiple helium-balloon flight On his previous attempt on the record he had landed somewhere in Argentina – a valiant effort,but some hours short of what he was seeking.In view of the weather, no doubt all of the people who had blown up the balloons, fastened him into his harness, secured his helmet, checked his radio, prepared his emergency rations, had not only crossed themselves and chanted prayers for his safe return, they had also prayed for the rain to stop

The clip showed the priest saying, in a rather quavery voice, that now the rain had abated, they would go for the record. Father Carli could not bless himself because he was semi-pinioned in a bulky safety suit and tightly strapped into a full-body harness. In its turn the harness connected him to hundreds of gaily coloured helium-filled balloons floating above his helmeted head.

In the next shot we see him being borne aloft by the multi-coloured frog-spawn of balloons. There is then a brief glimpse of a very distant blob sailing away at a considerable height – out to sea. Paranagua’s prevailing wind is normally from the East and Father Carli had expected to be borne inland by the breeze and land in a place that would be handy for the newsreel cameras and his supporters to find him

Sadly – and it is a terrible tragedy for the poor man and the many people who no doubt love him dearly – the whimsical weather-gods played a cruel trick, and after the rain ceased and he had been left to their mercy, they turned the wind to the West and away he sailed, over the sea and over the far horizon. He was 55 miles out to sea when he radioed a desperate plea for a rescue to be organised as quickly as possible. Four days, later, he has still not been found and thousands of brightly-coloured bits of balloon have been washed ashore hundreds of miles to the South.

Now this is an undoubted tragedy, and my heart goes out to everyone involved, not least the priest himself. But, that brief glimpse of his final moments on the ground, and the multi-coloured blob disappearing into the distance, is also blisteringly, stomach-achingly funny.

Had the guy in the next seat not crossed himself as our flight launched itself down the runway, I don’t think it would have struck me in quite the same way. But somehow, the certainty that Father Carli’s tragedy would have been accompanied by a blizzard of prayers and genuflections, not to mention the quaver in his voice as the rain stopped, got to me and I am sorry to say that I laughed out loud for several minutes – and I am still prone to giggle at the memory.

Across the aisle from me the other evening, on that same flight, a young man with earphones was laughing uncontrollably at a Simpsons cartoon he was watching on his laptop. I could see his screen, and his was yelping with delight at a sequence in which Homer and his family are killed off and arrive in Heaven, complete with wings, haloes and flowing white robes to – as it were – die for.

So there it was, for the much-loved Simpsons’ tragedy was – intentionally – totally hilarious. And we all know that when terrible things happen to people on the stage or in movies (think of the hapless burglars in `Home Alone`) audiences of all ages are reduced to helpless laughter.

But, as the Father Carli’s story shows, some real life tragedies can also be irresistibly funny.

It depends a lot on your temperament, of course. I have always thought that all of humanity is divided into two halves. There are those who cannot help but see life as – ultimately – a comedy. And there are those who see life as a tragedy. The same events provoke entirely different responses according to their basic comedy – vs – tragedy orientations.

It is not that those of us in the comedy-camp are callous. We are often extremely compassionate and take many things in life very seriously indeed – high-quality aircraft maintenance and reliable short-term weather reports, for example. But that doesn’t mean we have to be miserable about them.

I take my lead from a famous Scottish wit – in itself an amusing combination of words – a clergyman called Sidney Smith. He was laughing with some friends when a dour fellow-Scot said, by way of greeting, ‘Ah, Mr. Smith, I see you are still treating life as a joke!`

Smith smiled at him for a moment, and then said, ‘ Ah, Mr. Brown, just because I have the good fortune to be make the occasional witty remark, you should not think that I am frivolous. Just as, (A SMILING PAUSE) because you are pompous, sir, you are not necessarily serious. I wish you very good day.`

The world needs many more Reverend Sidney Smiths and far fewer Mr. Browns, don’t you think? I can imagine that if Smith had been asked to go for the world record helium-balloon flight to raise money for a good cause, his response might have been, “You surely cannot be serious!”

“The Origin of Wealth”

You will notice that the title of this book echoes both “The Origin of Species”by Charles Darwin, and Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations”.

The Subtitle is “EVOLUTION, COMPLEXITY, AND THE RADICAL REMAKING OF ECONOMICS”, and it published by Harvard Business School Press.

These are tremendously important – and so far, mostly ignored – issues in economics and the author, ERIC D. BEINHOFFER, is to be complimented for the energy and creativity with which he tackles them.

In approaching 500 pages of argument and information, I usually start by asking what it has to say about issues that I think are important in ‘remaking economics‘. High on my list are words like “Ecology” or “Gaia” because classical economics operates in total isolation from the natural  – the Gaian – world.

None of those words appear in the index. Pity. It begins to look as if the Beinhoffer’s remaking of economics is not going to be as radical as it will need to be if it is to address the crucial issues of the 21^st. Century.

Then in the opening pages, the author begins to try to fit the evolution of our complex, adaptive economic systems (so far, so good) within the Darwinian model of evolution, and there I think he makes a fundamental theoretical error.

Darwinian evolution is not a conscious process. Organisms do not pass on useful adaptations to their environment from one generation to the next. That was Lamarck’s theory of evolution and Darwin proved him wrong with his Theory of Natural Selection. With his theory, Darwin provided an almost complete explanation of how evolution works in the natural – the biological – world.

Now,it is true that in human societies, there is a constant and obvious process of social, economic, technological, scientific, intellectual evolution at work, but, in my view, that evolutionary process is not a biological process. Therefore it is not Darwinian: it is Lamarckian.

The fact that it is sort of spontaneous, seemingly unplanned (and I stress ’seemingly’), does not make the process Darwinian

Unlike complex, adaptive biological systems, our complex, adaptive human societies have the capacity to evolve by passing on from one generation to the next all kinds of conscious adaptations to their environments. And that is a quasi-Lamarckian process. Isn’t it?

That said, Beinhoffer’s work offers much to admire. I will return to some of his admirable insights in a later post.

For now, I would like to know if I have in any way missed something in Beinhoffer’s argument that makes the attempted Darwinian connection more valid.