Author: KlatooBaradaNikto

When I arrived in Umm Qasr near the Kuwaiti border of Iraq,I was not very optimistic.The British, who were keeping a low profile, had recently come under attack and have announced plans to withdraw from Iraq.One of the pleasant surprises for me was to find that my friend and taxicab driver from Bangalore, Chauncey Gardner, was plying a cab in Umm Qasr. When I greeted him with a hearty handhshake and told him what a pleasant surprise it was for me to have him to talk to.He said”the money is better here than in Bangalore, Tom Sahib, you know”.”But what about all the bombs on the roadside, Cauncey, isn’t that a little dangerous?”

” Well, Tom, you know as well as I do,that the flowers bloom in the garden during spring and start falling in autumn.I am now in the autumn of my life, you may say”.

“Chauncey, this is why I like you;you simplify everything.Not to mention giving me quotes from a highly placed source for my op-ed piece that will be published in the New York Times.Now can you tell me what do you think about the Iraq situation?”

“Well Tom Sahib, here in Iraq there are a lot of olive trees and just a few Lexuses.If that were reversed, we can have peace”.

I was stunned by this bit of wisdom from Chauncey even though he drops pearls like this all the time. At long last we may have a glimmer of hope for our side in Iraq.From what Chauncey said, I gathered we need to turn Iraq into a high tech paradise( the Lexus part) and get rid of the backwardness ( the Olive Tree part). Simple.

But how does one go about doing that in a practical way?Here I recalled the insight another friend of mine, Nandan Nilekani, the CEO of Infosys Technologies in Bangalore told me: “Tom, geography is history”.That insight was so profound I remembered it and now it provided a solution for our Iraq problem. If we withdrw from Iraq and convert Iraq into the high tech paradise I talked about, everything will fall in place, just like that.And because geography is history, we don’t have to be in Iraq at all!.

What a great day! I have to call Bill Keller right away and tell him about this.May be I can give him some insights on his problems with Judy Miller too. I believe in striking while the iron is hot!

The terms offered by Delphi Corporation to its workers make it starkly clear what the average American worker can expect in the future.The blue collar worker who used to enjoy $25-30 per hour wages with full benefits is going to be a thing of the past soon, to be replaced by $9-10 an hour worker with no benefits whatsoever.Training in specialized skills such as numerically controlled machining may temporarily stem the tide of low wages but even in those cases the fast rising countries of Asia have such a massive number of people coming into the workforce with the same skills and willingness to work for $2-5 a day wage rates, I do not expect our labor to become competitive soon.

What is at work here is that the countries of Asia have absorbed the lessons of the US well and invested in the education and training of their workers instead of squandering their resources on war making equipment.
In the white collar segment, of course, India has become a leader in software, medicine and biotechnology, while China is fast becoming a leader in manufacturing and pulling the entire economy of Asia along with it.

At a time like this, we need wise and competent leaders able to transition us into the new state of affairs by educating people on the realities ahead for most workers.The old fixations on ideology will not work.Illusions of power and might makes  right have to be given up.Only then can we start challenging countries like Japan and Germany which have learned these lessons the hard way and are now the models for many Asian countries.

Those of us who see only the mad military adventures of Bush and ignore his polcies that are causing economic devastation are unwittingly giving Bush a free pass on both accounts.That the two are inextricably linked goes without saying.His profligate spending on “defense” has just about decimated all the programs in health, education and welfare for people.When the full impact of Delphi’s bankruptcy is felt throughout the Midwest and many small suppliers to Delphi go under and even the big dinosaurs like GM bite the dust, the reverberations throughout our economy will be comparable to the depression of 1929.

Even with these telltale signs of disarray,he seems totally unaware of the suffering his policies are causing for working people.And because he is moronic, stubborn and wedded to ideology, he seems completely incapable of evaluating facts and responding to conditions as they exist today.His response when he is found wanting is to create photo-ops that cast him in  a favorable light.To the thousands left homeless in New Orleans and the many more thousands that are going to lose everything from Saginaw, MI to New Castle, IN., his photo-ops mean nothing.And his constant repetition of the terror threats have reached the point of diminishing returns.

His administration that was conceived in fraud, has been kept alive by fraud and is now running on fumes.He has put this country through immense suffering to stroke his own paltry ego.Many people have paid dearly for that wanton exercise.

That was a quote from the Hindu scripture that J.Robert Oppenheimer recalled at the first ever...

Associated Press this morning is reporting that Delphi Corporation, the world’s largest auto...