Marxism International

Chinese National Offshore Oil Company (CNOOC),  has dropped its $18.5 bn bid to acquire Unocal, which will now in all likelihood become the property of Chevron.   It seems too that several thousand jobs will be sacrificed in order to help raise the cash for the deal, jobs that would have been preserved had CNOOC’s bid been successful.   China was going to put up nearly 75% of the purchase price, through both a direct subsidy and a guaranteed loan, thus obviating the need for layoffs. 

In throwing in the towel, CNOOC cited “unreasonable” political opposition in the US, and especially, in the congress, which had actively intervened against the proposed sale. 

Well, now our congressmen can lay claim to the prescient ability to destroy American jobs not only by ratifying bad agreements like CAFTA, but by helping to jettison good ones, like the CNOOC-Unocal deal.

Oh well.  No wonder Mark Twain called the US Congress “America’s only native criminal class”…

Bosses would rather employ workers who are united.   Especially if they’re toiling for subsistence wages.

An article of faith among people on the Left is that capitalist employers seek to divide workers by race, ethnicity, occupation, sexual preference, gender and/or a myriad of other convenient but artificial “differences”.  

Of course they do.

On the other hand, there are important things to remember about today’s business climate, which alter somewhat the old formulations of a united boss class stirring up bickering and querulous workers.   Nowadays, for the most part, dealing with employees (organized or not) is too complex and too fraught with the possibities of litigation to tolerate, let alone foster, a fractured and divided work force.  

Liberal activists have succeeded in fashioning a sort of “truce” in the workplace, around “identity” issues like sexual harassment and racial discrimination while helping to sideline more militant demands, like increased wages and benefits.    No wonder the amosphere in today’s workplace tends to be one of insipid ennui; faceless, passive workers warily eyeing each other, pursuing a sort of impoverished individualism that makes unity with their fellow workers less likely if not impossible.

And with possibly 12.6m unemployed, there may be little need for traditional divide-and-conquer strategies traditionally used to weaken worker “instransigence”.    Labor agitation today has practically disappeared.   Traditional demands of workers throughout America are all but ignored by both political parties.   Even the Left has all but abandoned its former constituents and has more and more concerned itself with things like “identity politics” at home and tailing the leaders of various antediluvian superstitions abroad, all under the rubric of “anti-imperialism”.

And besides, employers now have something new to keep workers in their place.

Immigrants & American Workers: Corporate Americas’ Vision of a Happy Family

There is a disturbing and mystifying tendency on the Left to stand shoulder to shoulder with speculator capital in its embrace of illegal immigration, without any corresponding attempt to formulate and fight for programs that maintain the progress which has been won over decades while protecting the rights and perogatives of newcomers.  

Ever present among many on the Left is the notion that the American worker — especially that species of white, male, skilled and well-paid worker, the undeserving “aristocrat” (an animal that both boss and Lefty love to hate) has had it too good for too long.   Isn’t it time he made room for those from abroad who are less-well situated and who suffer the double indignation of poverty and racism?   It’s almost as if the Left, frustrated by its decades-long inability to attract more than an insignificant fringe of the workers’ movement, has suddenly turned on its former constituents, in favor of more promising recruits.

But, how promising is immigration for the Left?   I mean, are all those many millions attracted by the American Way of Life really part of some seething, revolutionary mass yearning to overthrow capitalism and usher in a more just and equitable order?   Or, does their arrival signal a new era in the assault on wages and benefits that has been gathering steam since the days of Jimmy Carter?   How can an exponential increase in the “reserve army of surplus labor” be anything but a boon to employers determined to cut labor costs to the bone and in the process reap billions from the concomitant increase in the cost of living?

The “Illegal” As “Scab”; A Mantra for the Right-Wing, A Boon For The Employer

The labor movement has always united against the use of “scabs”, those union workers who elect to cross picket lines and work during a strike to the consternation of their fellow unionists.   The term has over the years been expanded to include all those who seek to take workers jobs following a stoppage.

Until very recently, many in labor and on the Left were willing to accept foreign newcomers to the workplace as natural allies, ready to unite with struggling workers here against a common foe.  

Now, however, new questions are being raised concerning the wisdom of a carte-blanche welcome, especially for illegal immigrants.    As for unions’ hopes that the newly-arrived would provide fertile ground for organizing new members,  the experience of union-friendly California has all but dashed these hopes for those willing to draw lessons from current affairs.   Others have called attention to the fact that once-unionized jobs are now paying third-world wages thanks to floods of newcomers willing to work at virtually any price.

But the greater long-term effects of 11 million (!) illegal immigrants now poised to receive President Bush’s “amnesty” are being felt by virtually everyone.   The exponential rise in housing costs can be directly attributed to sudden surges in populations demanding a commodity in increasingly short supply.   Workers here are taking a double-whammy; reduced wages, or lost jobs altogether, while paying through the nose for basic services, like housing.

Too, the $70 billions or so it costs the American economy to provide basic services to those who are here without documentation threaten to close hospitals, bankrupt municipalities, and drive basic services into ruin. 

And those who profit most from unbridled immigration, American employers, real-estate speculators, and those in the saddle back in the home countries who enjoy a ready-made safety valve for their excessively surplus populations, keep getting richer.   They are getting literally a free ride at the expense of the American worker, especially workers of color.   And what of those left in the home countries?   Their hoped-for allies, their fellow workers, have packed up and left for better pickings overseas.

A Left that will not respond to this crisis, or one that offers only mealy-mouthed platitudes or vague pie-in-the-sky utopias, is a Left in serious political trouble.

So, what are possible solutions?   One cannot advocate sending people back en masse to societies which hold out no real prospect for them (although many who come here are relatively well-off and arrive as expectant capitalists, rather than as impoverished workers).  

The Left should, instead, insist that those who benefit most from illegal immigration foot the bill and help make it possible to insure gainful employment for all within America’s borders.  

All Workers, Legal and Illegal,  Must Be Organized into Trade Unions

There are a host of possibilities for turning this crisis into one for the employers, not the workers, but realizing them will be quite an inconvenience for a lot of people who have heretofore enjoyed a privileged existence in working America. 

Here are a couple of suggestions:

For one thing, the Left should be in the forefront of demands insisting that those who benefit most from illegal immigration be the ones to foot the bill and help make it possible to insure an adequate supply of tenable work for all within America’s borders.   Substantial and punitive levies on employers and home governments, the proceeds of which should go toward servicing the needs of both immigrant and displaced worker, so that the standard of living of both can be maintained.

For another, agitation for raising substantially the minumum wage should once again figure strongly in the Left’s agenda, as well as pushing for single-payer national health care legislation.

Unions should frankly accept the challenge posed by the collapse of the labor movement in industries like meat-cutting and janitorial services and devote serious resources to reclaiming those and other sectors of the service economy.   Resources allocated to organizing all immigrants, not just those in basic industries, should be substantially increased.

Finally, there should be moves toward nationalizing housing and other essential services.   Merely the serious talk of doing should start the ball rolling toward reigning in what has been a catastrophic rise in prices (with a corresponding decline in accessibility) of the common necessities of life.

Any discussion of the effects of immigrant labor on the well-being of workers will always risk eliciting howls of disapproval from across the political spectrum.   From cheap-labor-hungry employers to liberals and radicals still ensconced in the platitudes and ideologies of the past.    But it is nevertheless a task which demands the urgent attention of those concerned with the future of all toilers and indeed, of that of work itself.  

Think about it.

No one so far as I know has remarked on the similarities, within the last few days, of the state visits of Mr Manmohan Singh of India and Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe.  Or the differences.

Mr Singh of course was in Washington where he was feted as the “Man of the Hour” (although, admittedly, it was a very brief hour).   Others, notably at home, see him as a “first-rate second-rate man” who has been oversold here and abroad.   Mr Singh is facing tumultuous criticism, both from opposition parties and those within his own ruling coalition, for being a bit too obliging to the Bush agenda.  He has,  they say, played fast and loose with the national interests of his country, especially in the sensitive areas of nuclear weapons, gas piplelines, and that elusive UN security council seat.

Mr Mugabe’s fortunes are low, too, certainly lower than those of Mr Singh.   So low, in fact, that the only direction for them to travel is up.   And up they seem to have gone. The Chinese have not only welcomed Mr Mugabe, a pariah among Western elites, they have embraced him.

Barely off the tarmac, Mr Mugabe was reminded by his hosts of his “brilliant contribution” to diplomacy and international relations, his “strong convictions,” and last but by no means least his “devotion” to “world peace”.   He has been feted by the highest-ranking Chinese leaders, including President Hu Jintao himself.  

Zimbabwe stands to profit quite a bit from the Mugabe visit.  Loans, help with an expansion of the Hwange power station, aid in modernizing its air force, and, most of all “protection of national sovereignty”, which means China’s veto of any UN security council meddling in Mr Mugabe’s perceived misdemeanors, like his current and controversial campaign of “slum clearance.”

But, if Mr Mugabe gains, so does Beijing.   In all likelihood, China will win concessions to mine Zimbabwe’s bountiful resources, including platinum, coal, gold, and other minerals.   Too, China will strengthen its hand in yet another developing country; carefully building on such “soft power” in Africa, as well as in Latin America and Asia is a major foreign policy goal of Beijing.   

And they are succeeding far beyond anyone’s expectations.

Already, alarm bells are ringing in the newspapers of the bourgeoisie (who identify more closely with the interests of the West than they do with the aspirations of their own people).  Dark warnings of “Chinese colonization” fill the pages of opposition dailies throughout Zimbabwe (this from the same people who urge a policy of passively accepting every dictate of the IMF).   Mr Mugabe’s trip will undoubtedly increase the urgency felt in the West among those who wish to get rid of him, and, while they’re at it, other troublemakers like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, whose gaze, too,  has drifted eastward.

And so, what is the difference between our two travellers, Messrs. Singh and Mugabe?

Probably just this.  It is becoming a bipolar world again.  India, with its stratified class of Westernized sycophants and imitators, looks toward the US as its mentor and protector, and America’s politics and ideology as a talisman of wealth, influence and power.  Zimbabwe, with far fewer options and more humble aspirations, looks east, to China, and sees in the authoritarian one-party state a template for its own road to independence.   For the first time in more than nearly two decades, the developing world has a choice albeit an imperfect and ambiguous one.

That is the difference.  

And it will, I believe,  become an increasingly significant one in the years ahead.

These are not very edifying times for the Left in America.   Amidst the growing quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan, the hemmorrhaging of millions of jobs out of the country, our hellish inner cities, the lack of accessible health care, and the exponential impoverishment of millions of workers, the Left remains stagnant, bereft of popular appeal and very nearly invisible.   This in a nation of nearly 300 million, with a population steeped in history and constantly mindful of its pioneering and revolutionary traditions.

It’s not like they haven’t tried.   The Left is full of some of the best people in the country.   Bright, conscientious, hard-working, dedicated.   They have a nearly heroic capacity to soldier on, despite failure after failure, setback after setback.  

Too bad, then, that the two main groupings of the anti-war American Left are re-hearsing the old split and split again stategies that have served them so poorly in the past.   I’m talking about the ANSWER Coalition and the New York-based United for Peace and Justice.   The two have been fighting like cats and dogs over the proposed September 24 anti-war event planned for Washington, D.C.    Well, maybe I shouldn’t say that.   Cats and dogs at least battle with a certain urgent honesty that is lacking in most of these internecine struggles on the Left.   More like a couple of spoiled children.   The issue is after all is said and done Palestine (besides the usual jealousies over jurisdictional matters), and to a lesser extent “militant Islam”.   UfPJ is dominated and led by many with an innate hostility toward Muslims and especially Muslims calling for the kibosh to be put on Israel as an exclusively Jewish state.    ANSWER frequently tails a sort of nascent Arab nationalism and can be rather uncritical toward all those perceived to be enemies of the US military, regardless of pedigree.

But are these “principles” really important enough to derail a movement that could, acting in concert with other forces, provide some relief to the occupied, maimed and murdered?

It would be far better for the Left, and for the country, if these two quarreling entities could unite around the basic issues and really shake things up.   Moral principles are great and all that but they should not be overplayed.   Perhaps we could use a bit of knavery and opportunism if it helps put a half million people or more in the streets of D.C. on September 24th.

And, who knows?  Success here might even lead to the infusion of some fresh blood into a movement in dire need of it.   Many of its leaders have been around since Eisenhower and should be pensioned off and allowed to fade gracefully into the background.   If there’s one thing the Left doesn’t need, it’s this current crop of walking cadavers and their dreary progeny, repeating the same old discredited slogans and inviting defeat in an environment rich with the possibilities of triumph. 

Marx was right.   History’s tragic re-runs are always an embarassment.

On Monday,  the American labor movement will have yet another one in Chicago.

There’s trouble brewing at the AFL-CIO’s 25th Constitutional Convention.   True, President John Sweeney will be (perhaps unanimously) re-elected.   There will be politicians aplenty, mostly from the Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy and the party’s rising star, the newly-elected Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama.   Republicans Peter King and Arlen Specter will make video appearances.    China-bashing will figure prominently, as will the usual pieties about “fair trade” (CAFTA is a major sore point), “working families”, health care, and the always-present “workplace fairness” (isn’t it ironic that those who otherwise promote a system based on rank exploitation — capitalism — should adopt of all things slogans making liberal use of the word “fair”?).  

But, it will be difficult to disguise how little things have changed since 1996, when a then insurgent John Sweeney took the helm of the labor federation and ushered in a “new era” of labor activism.   Nine disappointing years on, labor looks set for a repeat.

And when it’s over, the AFL-CIO may be a tad leaner.  By about 5 million members, to be exact.   That’s the membership of the eight unions in the Change to Win coaltion of union dissidents that are challenging Sweeney to substantially alter the direction of the labor federation.   They range from the one and half million member Service Employee International Union (the so-called “low-wage union”) through the half million or so who call the United Brotherhood of Carpenters & Joiners home (their president, Doug McCarron, took them out of the AFL-CIO back in 2005 in what was to become the opening shot of the current revolt).   Represented, too, are the laborers, large but badly mismanaged, and the cadaverous United Farm Workers (they claim 30,000 workers, but that is almost certainly inflated; until recently they did not have a single contract).   Unions representing teamsters, the needle trades and the United Food & Commercial Workers make up the rest.

What is their program?   More “democracy”, though it is unclear what, exactly, that means; mergers of smaller unions into larger ones organized by industry; and spending more money (up to half of the federation’s budget) on organizing and other “growth-oriented” activities.    Around all of this is the usual noisy but minute “Left” cabal of academics, writers, NGOs, outhouse philosophers and the like.    They at least have raised the visibility of some tempetuous happening that will, in all likelihood, go unnoticed by the mass of workers themselves.

The truth is, the modern labor movement, overfed, sclerotic and in disarray, is a dinosaur in the new age, working against history and reduced to repeating slogans that have lost all their credibility to a working class that has moved far beyond the vagaries of Big Labor and the Welfare State.   Yes, it is evocative of a bygone halcyon era to speak of “restoring the poetry to our politics” or the “meaning that strengthens our muscle”, but such phrases cannot disguise the fact that organized labor has become all but irrelevant in the modern world.   One cannot turn back the wheel of history.   Labor long ago chose to accomodate itself to the capitalist world and work for whatever limited reforms that were possible within it.   That gave the initiative to the owners of capital.   Labor prospered, not because they were especially transparent or competent or “democratic”.   They were not.    They grew and became part of the social fabric because they were playing the historic role of providing labor “peace” and helping to create a millieu for the expansion of (mostly industrial) capital.   Having played its historic role and increasingly at the mercy of globalized financial capital (whose requirements for “labor peace” are less urgent), the union movement finds itself in steep and dangerous decline.  

This puts the Left in a conundrum.   For more than a century, it has been an article of faith that workers, and especially industrial workers, would be the advanced guard of the coming socialist revolution.    It did not happen.   Workers, given their druthers, nearly always chose the path of reform and individual economic betterment (more wages, benefits, and the chance to become  proprietors and petty capitalists themselves) over that of the dubious and risky path of revolution which might put paid to their own economic interests.   And revolutions in Russia and China and Cuba succeeded not in spite of the absence of an industrial proletariat, but because of it.   It is true revolutionary movements are alive today only in countries where the industrial proletariat is weak or non-existent.   The passive, reformist nature of western labor movements is a fact that many on the Left find too horrifying to contemplate.   Chicago is liable to leave a bad taste in some for a long time to come. 

So, what happens next?   It is an issue of extreme moment to me.   I am a union member (carpenters).   My son is a third-year apprentice in Local 195 of the Painters’ Union.   A daughter is in the SEIU, one of the dissidents challenging the AFL-CIO leadership.   A united labor movement, willing to put its considerable resources toward the fulfillment of important goals like a national health care system and the nationalization of important industries like energy and housing would go a long way toward reversing current trends.  

But, this will in all likelihood not happen.   The labor movement in the west is too irrevocably tied to the success of the capitalist system.   Invested union pensions amount to hundreds of billions of dollars alone.   “Where your treasure is, there be your heart also’.   Labor unions cannot go on in the same way in the long run, but the run can be long, perhaps longer than our current crop of labor bureaucrats need envisage.   The rank and file have signalled their willingness to tolerate two-tier wage and benefit schemes if it will “preserve” some jobs.   A concomitant ideology of “every man for himself” and a “war of all against all”  is percolating down into the ranks of the ordinary union member, reflecting the dominant political ecology of capitalism.    Things do not appear propitious for labor’s renewal.

It is important to remember, though, that the events which brought us globalization, the rise of Asia, and a veritable revolution in the productivity of human beings are unprecedented in our history.   If it is true that the labor movement must change or perish, the same is doubly true for capitalism, for it suffers from the same myopia and blinkered vision that affects unions in the west today.   I do not wish capitalism and its exploiting class to survive; I am interested in a long and prosperous future for those who work.

Today’s labor bureaucrats — and much of labor’s cheering section on the Left — are on the wrong side of a number of issues, ranging from immigration to globalization.   Consequently, they have failed to energize the very people in whose name they purport to act.   This, and not some lack of democracy (the labor movement has never been “democratic”, and especially during its early period of exponential growth) is the real problem, I think.

If our movement can present an innovative and optimistic vision of a future world that is optimistic, tenable, and can engage the imagination and the loyalty of the ordinary worker, the era of labor may have finally arrived at last.

Manmohan Singh’s Washington visit may have made a splash in America’s media for 24 hours or so, but it was 3-ring flop back home.   In fact, a few more triumphs like this, and Mr Singh may be out of a job.   Not only is the opposition BJP calling for his head,  prominent members of his ruling Congress party (along with many of the communists with whom they serve in the government UPA coaltion) are looking to give Singh his walking papers.

It’s his own fault.   Singh allowed himself to be seduced last December into thinking the US supported India’s bid for a permanent seat on any expanded Security Council at the UN.   What was really happening though was some old-fashioned horse trading.   The Americans wanted two things; an end to the Iran-India-Pakistan gas pipeline project (a threat to Israel), and Delhi’s signature on the WTO agreement giving the pharmaceutical companies full protection under its product patent and process patent provisions.   Never mind that this would increase by four times what Indians pay for drugs, both the international pharmaceutical industry (big contributors to Bush and the Republicans) and the growing BPO (business process outsourcing) sector were desperate to have it.   So, the carrot of a security council seat was held out to Delhi, together with a promise of support for its nuclear-weapons program.   In the end, Mr Singh, who caved on the pharmaceutical issue and, apparently, the trans-Asian gas pipleine, got neither.   He did receive a vaguely-worded promise of American aid for India’s civilian nuclear energy program, but even that is not turning out what it was cracked up to be.  

So, Fissiporous cracks are beginning to widen in the Kafkaesque world of Indian political alliances.  The BJP cynically plays the nationalist card on the pipeline and especially the phantom US seat.  The Communists are unhappy about the BPO-friendly schemes being hatched by Congress ministers in the government (they were hoping too for India’s veto power on the security council).

So, what happens next?   All things being equal, probably nothing.   The Congress is unpopular, but the BJP is even more so.   The Communists are not going to put the kibosh on the UPA government.   They still support important provisions of the Common Minimum Program, the ruling scheme set up when the Left won the last election.   Besides, like Communists everywhere who join bourgeois governments merely to push them to the Left, they are reaping plenty of the growing voter antipathy toward all political groupings.   Another election might end up with the Communists coming out the loser.

Manmohan Singh has exercised a lamentable want of discretion and has been much reduced for his pains.   He has succeeded in infuriating his nationalist supporters, while handing the opposition new ammunition to be used to cripple the ruling Congress party.   Further, he has alienated many liberals in the west by refusing to toe the line on the nuclear weapons issue (many had hoped that India would eventually sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty).   Many of them are worried that Mr Singh’s “intransigence” (another fop to Washington) will encourage others to acquire or expand their nuclear programs.

So, the clear winner for now is not India, but President Bush, or rather the vision that the neo-cons in Washington have for the Indian sub-continent.   Mr Singh, regrettably, has advanced their cause at the expense of the Indian people.   For now, at least.   Will the world’s largest bourgeois democracy rest content with being a passive and docile client of Washington?   Or, will awakening nationalisms put paid to America’s ambitions to acquire both a huge and pliant market and a nuclear-armed bulwark against China?

I was as surprised as anyone when CNN announced early yesterday that China had decided to float its currency.  I had not expected such a move until January, at the earliest.    Of course, the devil is in the details.   A 2.1% revaluation, coupled with a system that will pemit the yuan to fluctuate only by about 0.3% one way or the other, is hardly revolutionary.    The Bank of China, clearly, is hedging its bets against any sudden changes in the market; theoretically, it could “revalue” every 24 hours until Doomsday, or until an Asian currency collapse, whichever is sooner.   Other currencies in the region, especially the Yen, will now face increased pressure to do likewise.  Malaysia for one, immediately followed suit.

But to what extent does Beijing’s actions constitute an about-face?   It has resisted for years the entreaties of various governments and foreign banks to float the Yuan (the currency has been pegged to the U.S. dollar for eight years).   The Chinese have a saying about “sweating fear” in one’s own house (something to be avoided, and certainly not to be done publicly if it cannot).   Were they worried about Senator Schumer’s threats of an across-the-board imposition of tariffs if they remained inflexible?   Or, was it an attempt to (a) insure a “soft landing” for an overheated economy should there be a repeat of the Asian currency crisis of the late 1990s, (b) boost consumption in China and control rapidly growing exports (now growing by an astonishing 30% a year), and (c) send a signal to India and the U.S. in the wake of Mammohan Singh’s Washington visit earlier this week?

My money is on the last three.   True, Beijing is interested in reducing tensions with the Americans as it contemplates President Hu Jintao’s visit to Washington in September.   Similar feints in the direction of placating intransigent U.S. nationalisms were made prior to Jiang Zemin’s visit back in 1997.   Then it was pieties about shipping disputes and labor reforms.  

But, now, much more is at stake.   China is poised to become a world power, already outstripping the US in “soft power” in much of the world, and making progress in building an efficiently modern military, as well.   Some are of the opinion that China does not have to “match” American military might, missle for missle to achieve parity; merely possessing the werewithal to maximize its growing influence throughout the world coupled with armed services sufficiently developed to thwart hostile US objectives in Asia would be enough.   Revaluation, on a limited and timely basis, subject to modification or even reversal should exigencies warrant, actually facilitates China policy, both with regard to its growing energy relationship with Russia, and its developing arms industry, which is at present export – oriented.   Floating the yuan will also cut the costs of importing energy, a major consideration for China.

For the moment, the practical effect of Beijing’s surprise move will be limited.   It will temporarily make American goods more accessible to the Chinese (good news to American manufacturers); it will render more intimate the relationship between Pakistan and China (already drawing closer thanks to Mr Singh’s overtures to Washington), and it will send a message to the U.S. that China, while willing to be flexible, reserves the right to protect its own interests in fiscal policy along with everything else.   

In the long run, China will probably come to profit substantially from yesterday’s move.    What will the U.S. get?   Not much, probably, over the long run, except the short-term appeasement of nationalist appetites and some temporary relief from Beijing’s accelerating ownership of America’s debt.   Beyond that, much depends on how Asian economies develop and are merged with those of the European Union and Japan.  

America’s star has for some time been diminishing in Asia.  China’s currency revaluation, for so long devoutly wished for in Washington,  may render inexorable that long-term prospect.

Tom “The Trog” Trancedo’s remarks about “bombing Mecca” in response to any further explosions ostensibly authored by the followers of Muhammed have precipitated howls of disapproval in the press and even in the halls of the U.S Congress where Mr Trancedo currently sits as a (Republican) congressman from Colorado.   Of course, everyone know’s he’s just kidding.   Civilized people, and especially civilized Republicans, would never bomb a holy site.   Or civilians.

If you believe that, then you’re bound to believe that poor Mr Mammohan Singh, probably soon to become the ex-prime minister of India, made a friend for life when he lined up behind George Bush’s bomb-happy War on Terror.   True, India did get some too-little-too-late assistance on developing its civilian nuclear program, and in all probability will receive some aid in preserving the habitat of the Bengal tiger, but poor Mr Singh came up empty on the really big-ticket items like a permanent seat on the expanded UN security council.

Of course, Indians don’t have the same thing about saving face that, say, the Chinese do, so he may return to Delhi in one piece and even keep his job for another few months.  Mammohn’s not a bad guy, he just doesn’t have a very strong hand to play.  And besides, he’s not the real political power in India, anyway.  Sonia Gandhi is, and she ain’t talking.

Unlike the North Koreans.   They’re talking plenty.  Voice of America is reporting that they’re returning to the six-party talks, but I think the sense is that the US is about ready to cave and hold direct talks with Pyongang.  I mean, even the New York Times is calling for such a step to allay worries about nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsular (of which the United States by far possesses the greatest number).   America may be ready to consider bombing Mecca, but it ain’t about to tangle with North Korea (and China).   Especially not now.

Now that things are going badly in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Oh, sure, the US will prevail militarily at some point.   Its foe is opportunist and medieval.  No one in their right mind wants to live under a fundamentalist regime of any stripe, be it Muslim, Christian, Hindu or Jew.  My guess is we’ll end up winning by buying off the opposition.  After all, they just want to be in charge, or to be better paid for supporting whoever is.   

We could have continued to buy off Saddam, too, but the Israelis wouldn’t hear of it.   So, now he’s gone and the zionists are contemplating a Palestinian-free Jerusalem, and much else.   Now we get to the crux of the “terrorism” issue.   This Israeli thing cannot continue indefinitely.  Yes, the Palestinian does evil things.   The Jew does evil things.   The Palestinian cannot afford to be less evil than the Jew, as it is the latter who sits atop the Palestinian’s stolen land. What will happen in the end, I believe, after thousands more on both sides are dead, is one entity, for both.  Palestinian and Jew living side by side in peace, security and self-determination.  At last.

Of course, this will please neitherTom Tancredo, nor many others.  But, it is the one viable solution to a problem made far worse by religious bigotry and the mischievously lethal fetus of fascism which awaits in the womb of every capitalist society.

At least it’s better than bombing Mecca.

So, half of all Americans lose it at least once before they shuffle off their mortal coil? 

Well, I don’t mean really lose it, but a new study claims that about half of all Americans will develop one or more mental disorders in their lifetimes.  Anxiety disorders plague a third of us, and one out of five will at some point abuse drugs or alcohol. Another third are candidates for anger management classes and a slightly greater number are or will be just plain depressed.

Study author Ronald Kessler offers cold comfort to those who point to advances in the science of the mind in offering relief.  Seems as though less than 20% of those who suffer maladies of the spirit will actually seek medical care.  Most prefer the internet or “spiritual advisors”.  And, most disturbingly, of those who do see a physician or counseler, most will receive “inadequate” care.

So, I repeat; half of all Americans…

Bear in mind three things here.  First, almost half of the mentally ill carry the burden of two or more disorders.  Secondly, the classifications of mental illness remain the province of agencies within the federal government and a privileged coterie of private psychiatric societies.  Finally, remember that definitions of mental illness keep expanding to cover more and more situations.  This jibes with capitalism’s innate tendency to pathologize behavior it deems unprofitable or threatening.

I think personally the biggest problem we face is worry; the loss of a job or a partner or the effects of some natural disaster.  Daniel Gilbert, who teaches psychology at Harvard and whose book Stumbling on Happiness will be published next year, has found that most people assume that they will be emotionally devastated by some calamity.  As a consequence they vastly overestimate the intensity and duration of breakups, divorces, financial losses, trauma and the like.  Of course people suffer from these unfortunate occurrances but they also recover more quickly than they had feared.  “Our ability to spin gold from the dross of our experience means that we often find ourselves flourishing in circumstances we once dreaded….we recognize them as opportunities to reinvent ourselves, to bond with our neighbors and to transcend the poverty of material excess.”

Think about that the next time you’re fired.

Of course, there are many who suffer from what behavioral geneticists call “negative affectivity”, a tendency to be crabby, critical, bitter and irritable no matter what happens. 

The problem is that many of us seek anodynes like television instead of filling time with activities that are “intrinsically” satisfying and create a sense of competence.  Given a choice, how many people choose narcotic pleasures (like blogging?) that “dull the mind and quell its restless search for meaning” over activities that, in their complexity and challenge, offer the real promise of satisfaction. 

Likewise, the ubiquity of advertising – the engine that drives the marketplace – creates a craving for material things that promise happiness.  A new thing will do so, for awhile; then the purchaser habituates to it and soon needs another thing to boost happiness.  The resulting ‘hedonic treadmill’ is, well, you get the picture.

But, certainly, this has much to do with how we define happiness and whether we feel we enjoy its effects as fully and as often as we should.  I’ve always felt that it is relatively unimportant whether we love or hate, so long as two interwining criteria were met; that we felt empowered to effect sooner or later the objects of our desire, and (most importantly) whether we are able to do ‘good’.

So, maybe feeling empowered to do right by our fellows is a key to not only becoming happy as productive human beings; it could cure a lot of America’s mental miseries as well.

Indian prime minister Mammohan Singh is arriving this morning.   No one in India seems to know why.  Last winter, there were high hopes that the U.S. would a) support India’s bid for a permanent seat on the expanded UN Security Council, b) lift remaining export controls on dual-use technology and nuclear fuel, and c) withdraw its objections to the proposed Iran/Pakistan gas pipeline slated also to service India.

Singh now knows he will get none of this.   So, why is he coming?    To please America, mostly.  The prime minister is doubtless trying to strengthen India’s trading ties with Europe and America by demonstrating his independence from both the Congress Party’s communist allies and especially those elements within India’s strategic elite still wedded to the principle of non-alignment.   This latter group has been growing bolder of late, worrying out loud that Delhi’s growing rapprochement with Washington could jeopardize burgeoning trade with China and old ties to Moscow.

But, that’s the whole point.   India, willy-nilly, is America’s counter-balancing force to Beijing on the Asian continent.    It is a shaky proposition.   India is the fourth largest economy by purchasing power and the second most populous country (after China and closing fast), but it lacks the stability as well as other attributes which its neighbor to the east enjoys.    Precisely because it is prone to the twists and turns of policy common to any multi-faction democracy, it could end up retarding, rather than promoting Washington’s strategic goals.

On the other hand, Japan is too small and evokes too many bad feelings among Asians to adequately fill the role.   South Korea takes such a jaudiced view of America lately that it might as well be an ally of Kim Il Sung (as indeed it is regarded in some quarters within the pentagon).   And, besides, Seoul now looks increasingly to Beijing, rather than to Washington, as a reliable trading partner.

So, India is it.    For today at least,  Mr Singh will get the Mahmoud Abbas treatment; plenty of flags, speeches and banquets.   He will return to India with a plethora of “joint statements” and bogus “treaties” (covering everything from space exploration to the future of the Bengal tiger).   The prime minister, too,  is slated to experience the apotheosis of the “important but useless” state visit; an address to a joint session of congress.   

But, in the end, India will not get much from this extravaganza (a consolation prize; the other candidates vying for a permanent seat on the Security Council have agreed to temporarily withdraw their requests, thus mooting for the time being India’s rejection).   Delhi will have to exhibit greater stability and a more pronounced acquiesescence to US designs on the region to get more.