Happiness is a butterfly which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but if you will sit down quietly, it may alight upon you. (Google File Photo)

As I rode the London Underground recently, a middle-aged man with a head like a peeled potato entered my coach carrying a ukulele. In a loud baritone he asked the assembled grouches, "Does anyone here remember happiness?" Nobody moved a muscle.
But by the time he had finished one of his sprightly tunes he had won over much of his traveling audience. Nearly half of them contributed coins to his knitted cap. It was an extraordinary result for five minutes of music.
This musician's success was the latest in a series of indications that people seem more and more intent on finding happiness, however briefly and however they may define it. Apparently they are willing to pay street performers for a sample.
I asked the musician, Harvey Mooney, why he thought he was getting such a generous response. "Happiness is not normally part of their lives," he said. "The Undergound is where they suffer most. I make a good living doing this."
Time magazine noticed the happiness trend earlier this year and devoted nearly an entire issue--47 pages--to its pursuit. All right, it's in the U.S. Constitution, right after life and liberty, but such a sharp focus on getting happy starts to sound like a symptom of a sick society. Happy?
Despite skeptics and political backlash, the happiness phenomenon is spreading relentlessly. I wouldn't pay attention if it weren't that positive psychology and its derivatives are turning it into a major money-making industry. The mix of therapy and easy money has always been unhealthy.
You can now discover the secrets of happiness by purchasing one of about 3,000 current books on the subject or subscribing to an American psychologist's website for $9.95, first 30 days free!
The movement seems to have tapped into a deep rut of unhappiness, teeming with people who don't like it there.
Yet one has to ask whether constant happiness is achievable or even desirable? If you watch the evening news, could you possibly be happy? Aren't our greatest pleasures found in solving problems and overcoming obstacles? The positive psychologists think not.
It is easy to dismiss the hype and the pop psychology, but the British model of indexing happiness is part of a much bigger movement. The Nobel economics laureate Daniel Kannemann is developing a formula to rank governments according to the happiness they deliver to their citizens. In his pilot research with 909 American working women, he asks them to record their degree of happiness with 28 kinds of activity each day. Somewhat surprisingly, the women say sex comes first, followed by seeing friends and having lunch with colleagues, then watching television alone, shopping with a spouse, spending money and cooking.
Kannemann is working with three other U.S. universities to build a methodology that can be exported to other countries. Each country can then rank itself, as Britain will be doing, on a scale of gross national happiness.
A sensible British doctor, Anthony Daniels, read three of the new British books and wrote in one newspaper that happiness is far too personal for any consensus definition to emerge. We know it is not about money or consumerism - at least not in Britain. And he found one of the books akin to being cornered by a pub bore who thinks he has something important to say but hasn't. "I have rarely read so many pages with so little profit," he says.
Personally, I'll settle for another five minutes of Harvey's ukulele.
Michael Johnson
IHT.COM

Presidential candidate John Kerry's platform and program were way to the right of popular opinion on just about every issue in the 2004 U.S. elections. To the extent that anybody could even understand the program, people didn't favor it. People who voted for Kerry are people who were concerned about the economy and about health issues. Do you think those people could tell you what Kerry's health program was or what he was going to do for the economy? I mean, I couldn't tell you.
Of the people who voted for candidate George Bush, the major categories were people who were concerned about terror and about national security. It's claimed that people who were concerned about values voted for Bush, but that's mostly a statistical artifact. When you asked the further question, "What values do you have in mind?" it turned out that the major values were things like, "I don't like this society because it's too materialistic," and "There's too much oppression." Those are the values. Is that what Bush stands for? Getting rid of that? As far as terrorism is concerned, the administration very consciously chose actions that it was expected would increase the threat of terror and, in fact, did. It's not because they want terror, it's just not much of a priority for them.
The Gallup Poll regularly asks, "Why are you voting?" One of the choices is, "I'm voting for the candidate's stand on issues." That was 6% for Bush, and 13% for Kerry and most of those voters were deluded about the positions of the candidates. So what you have is essentially flipping a coin. Each candidate got approximately 30% of the electorate. Bush got 31%, Kerry got 29%.
The party managers know where the public stands on a whole list of issues. Their funders just don't support them; the interests they represent don't support them. So they project a different kind of image.
If you listen to the presidential debates, you can't figure out what they're saying, and that's on purpose. The last debate was supposed to be about domestic issues. The New York Times commented that Kerry didn't make any hint about possible government involvement in health care programs because that position has, in their words, "no political support." Well, according to the most recent polls, 80% of the population thinks that the government ought to guarantee health care for everyone, and furthermore regard it as a moral obligation. That tells you something about people's values. But there's "no political support."
Why? Because the pharmaceutical industry is opposed, the financial institutions are opposed, the insurance industry is opposed, so there's "no political support." It doesn't matter if 80% of the population regards it as a moral obligation: That doesn't count as political support. It tells you something about the elite conception. You're supposed to vote for the image they're projecting. Just ask yourself, "Who runs the elections?"
The elections are run by the same guys who sell toothpaste. They show you an image of a sports hero, or a sexy model, or a car going up a sheer cliff or something, which has nothing to do with the commodity, but it's intended to delude you into picking this one rather than another one. Same when they run elections.
For many years, election campaigns here have been run by the public relations industry and each time it's with increasing sophistication. Quite naturally, the industry uses the same technique to sell candidates that it uses to sell toothpaste or lifestyle drugs.
COUNTERPUNCH.COM

Roughly a decade ago, the world witnessed a corruption eruption. As democratic winds swept the world, the dirty deals of once unaccountable dictators and bureaucrats came out into the open. During the Cold War, kleptocratic dictatorships often traded their allegiance to one of the two superpowers for that superpower's countenance of their thievery. With the superpower contest over, such corrupt bargains dried up. And, thanks to the information revolution, if there was even a hint of corruption at the highest levels, it quickly became global news.
Once people learned that so many politicians had been on the take--often in cahoots with business leaders--it was only natural that there would be a public outcry for a "war on corruption." Countries enacted anti-corruption legislation, corporations adopted stern codes of conduct and nongovernmental organizations such as Transparency International were launched to "name and shame" countries into action. National watchdog agencies, complete with powerful anti-corruption czars, sprouted everywhere.
From Germany to Peru to South Korea, corruption scandals entangled seemingly untouchable former heads of state, and around the world an unprecedented number of top government officials and business executives were ousted or jailed. If you were running for office and challenging a powerful incumbent, you almost certainly ran a "clean hands" campaign, labeling your opponent as a corrupt fixture of the old order. For those in the trenches, the crowning event of this war was the 2003 U.N. Convention Against Corruption, endorsed by more than 100 countries.
Unfortunately, the recent reports from the front lines are not encouraging. "The last 10 years have been deeply disappointing," says Daniel Kaufmann, one of the leading experts on anti-corruption efforts. "Much was done, but not much was accomplished. What we are doing is not working."
In fact, it may be hurting. Today the war on corruption is undermining democracy, helping the wrong leaders get elected and distracting societies from facing urgent problems.
Corruption has too easily become the universal diagnosis for a nation's ills. If we could only curtail the culture of graft and greed, we are told, many other intractable problems would easily be solved. But although it is true that corruption can be crippling, putting an end to the bribes, kickbacks, and payoffs will not necessarily solve any of the deeper problems that afflict societies. In fact, this false belief can make it harder, if not impossible, to rally public support for other indispensable public efforts. Necessary tax reforms, for example, become impossible to pass when the general assumption is that any new public revenues will inevitably evaporate in corrupt hands.
The corruption obsession also crowds out the debate on other crucial problems. A country's bankrupt educational system, malfunctioning hospitals or stagnating economy cannot compete with headlines about a corruption scandal. These problems may be aggravated by corruption, but they are created by conditions that often have little to do with the behavior of dishonest government officials. Even when such social ills rise to the top of the national agenda, the fight against corruption tends to inform the public debate. Inevitably, the public's understanding of what it would take to tackle other national priorities becomes clouded by the corruption obsession.
But perhaps the worst collateral damage caused by this fixation is the political instability it can create. Electorates already have many reasons to be disappointed with their elected officials. The corruption curse feeds people's unrealistic expectations about what it would take to improve their standard of living and set a country on a more prosperous path. Popular impatience, exacerbated by the belief that nearly all those at the top are lining their pockets, unreasonably shortens the time governments have to produce results.
Moises Naim
WASHINGTONPOST.COM

Vladimir Putin

Since Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Kremlin and launched the program of modernization known as perestroika, Russia has not stopped changing.
But have the shifts in property ownership really brought democracy? Is the new economic elite any less intertwined with those who hold power in the Kremlin than party managers were in the Brezhnev period? Do ordinary Russians feel more in charge of their lives under the new capitalist system than they were under Soviet communism?
In recent months, most Western discourse on Russia has focused on the alleged revival of dictatorial tendencies at the top. Two versions clash. Vladimir PutinÕs defenders define the issue as order versus chaos. They characterize Boris YeltsinÕs rule as a time of zigzags and loose government in which the rulers of RussiaÕs regions developed so much power that the country was in danger of falling apart.
Western critics see the issue as democracy versus authoritarianism. But they also contrast Yeltsin and Putin, claiming the freedoms brought in by RussiaÕs first president are being reversed by his successor. They cite the imprisonment of Mikhail Khodorkovsk (the major shareholder in the countryÕs biggest oil firm), the state takeover of the last independent TV networks and a new law allowing the Kremlin to nominate the candidates from whom regional governors are elected. Combined with PutinÕs appointment of army and security service officers to top political and managerial posts, these moves certainly amount to a tightening of what Russians call the Òpower verticalÓ. Yet they pale against the similarities between Yeltsin and Putin; there is far more continuity than many of PutinÕs critics care to admit.
The intermingling of business and politics, the green light the Kremlin gives to crony privatization schemes, the selective blind eye turned to tax fiddles and corruption and the use of pressure on judges go back to the Yeltsin era. RussiaÕs switch to democratic freedoms preceded Yeltsin. It was Gorbachev who introduced contested elections, permitted independent political parties, created a parliament, abolished censorship, ended the Communist PartyÕs Òleading roleÓ and gave Russians the right to travel freely outside the country. The retreat began two years after he and perestroika were driven from the stage.
In their eagerness to prevent a return to communism in the mid-1990s, Western leaders and the advisers they sent to Moscow confused the introduction of capitalist institutions with democracy. As long as Yeltsin took steps toward ÒreformÓ, by which they meant the fastest feasible switch to market economics, and the privatization of as many state assets as possible, anything was tolerated on the political front. When Russian MPs hesitated to authorize further change after the lifting of price controls launched hyperinflation, destroying peopleÕs savings and impoverishing the middle class, Yeltsin closed Parliament and rewrote the constitution so as to strengthen the powers of the president.
When it looked as though a disappointed electorate might choose a communist for president in 1996, albeit one who accepted multiparty pluralism and advocated only a mild review of the privatization scandals, the West backed Yeltsin and the oligarchs to use their control of TV to shut out or distort opposition views. Many Russian ÒliberalsÓ who complain of Putin supported YeltsinÕs illiberal campaign for re-election then.
Vague calls for Òcleaning up corruptionÓ, strong as opposed to weak government and foreign policy stances for or against ÒEuropeÓ and Òthe WestÓ become the dominant themes. But beneath the slogans the main issue between challengers and incumbents is who can capture the state, and thereby enrich themselves.
GUARDIAN.CO.UK

The State Department claims that the ban on propaganda doesn't apply to them; so, as The New York Times reports, they use fake news extensively to spread positive messages about Bush's policies.
Continued violence in Iraq, a struggling economy, an unpopular plan to privatize Social Security, homeland security left underfunded while the rich get giant tax cuts ... what's a White House to do when the news about its policies isn't favorable? Fake it. An explosive, front-page New York Times story this weekend exposes President Bush's vast manipulation of the media and White House attempts to manipulate public opinion. Over the past four years, it turns out at least 20 different federal agencies have been involved in producing hundreds--yes, hundreds--of fake TV news segments, many of which were "subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government's role in their production."
In fact, since President Bush took office, the White House has spent at least $254 million on these fake segments and other public relations ploys to spread positive propaganda about his policies. President Bush has paid lip service to the concept of a free press, saying in January 2005, "there needs to be a nice, independent relationship between the White House and the press, the administration and the press." He also claimed "our agenda ought to be able to stand on its own two feet." Here's what happens when it can't.
Lose Your Identity: One of the largest concerns about these fake news segments is that they obscure the fact that they are paid for using taxpayer money and contain a one-sided, purely positive take on administration policy. In a now-infamous segment by the Department of Health and Human Services, a PR official named Karen Ryan posed as a reporter interviewing then-Secretary Tommy Thompson. (Her role in the well-rehearsed spot was to give Thompson "better, snappier answers" to her pre-approved questions.) The Government Accountability Office found the agency "designed and executed" her segments "to be indistinguishable from news stories produced by private sector television news organizations."
Office of B.S.: The Office of Broadcasting Services is a branch of the State Department which traditionally has acted as a clearinghouse for video from news conferences. That all changed three years ago. In 2002, "with close editorial direction from the White House," the unit started producing fake news segments to back up President Bush's rationale for going to war in Afghanistan and Iraq. As one senior official told Congress, the phony segments were "powerful strategic tools" used to influence public opinion. In all, the office produced nearly 60 segments, which were then distributed around the world for local stations to use as actual news footage. Although the White House has claimed ignorance about the use of fake news, it was well aware this was happening. A White House memo in January 2003 actually said segments the State Department disseminated about the liberation of Afghan women were "a prime example" of how "White-House led efforts could facilitate strategic, proactive communications in the war on terror."
AMERICANPROGRESSACTION.ORG